Policy-makers fuss about making policy
Two Villaraigosa appointees are retaining their seats on local councils
By George Garrigues
Unlike the city attorney's adviser to the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners (the BONC), I took a drive down to South L.A. on May 21 to attend a "retreat" of the board
The city attorney's people said nobody from that office would attend because it was held in the Bethel African American Methodist Episcopal Church.
The attorney said a public agency shouldn't hold its meetings in a church.
Good luck with that. If neighborhood councils had to give up meeting in churches, temples and mosques, many of them — like the Palms Neighborhood Council — might go out of business.
Pastor Lewis Logan, a member of the BONC, said his church auditorium was open to everybody. Chairwoman Linda Lucks said she didn't think it was a big problem.
The seven commissioners — all unpaid volunteers appointed by Antonio Villaraigosa — were seated facing a coterie of paid administrators, some four or five, from the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment.
A half dozen spectators were in the spacious but bare-bones auditorium (not a crucifix or Bible in sight). One of them was Stephen Cheung of the mayor's office.
I asked him in a sotto voce conference how come longtime Commissioner Lucks of Venice and newcomer Esther Cepeda of Harbor City got to keep their seats on the governing bodies of their local neighborhood councils?
What about the obvious conflict of interest? The commission is supposed to keep its eye on the local neighborhood councils — not crawl in bed with them.
Cheung said the city's Neighborhood Council Review Commission (the NCRC) had recommended that more commissioners come from the NC movement.
Yeah, I said. but everybody knows the NCRC was stacked to the ceiling with people from the neighborhood-council power structure! Newly appointed commissoners should bow out of activities with their local councils.
He said he'd take the matter up with the folks in the mayor's office.
Lucks later told me by telephone that she could "see both sides" of the issue but didn't consider she had a conflict.
The informal "retreat" was guided by Alan Kumamoto, who does that sort of thing for a living. He oversaw the inevitable big sheets
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