Q & A : Goldberg Says Voters Want Access

* Jackie Goldberg, 48, is a candidate for Los Angeles City Council’s 13th District, which stretches from Hollywood to the neighborhoods of Northeast Los Angeles. She and the other candidate for the seat, Tom LaBonge, face each other in a June 8 runoff election. An interview with LaBonge will appear in this section next Thursday.

* Claim to Fame: A longtime teacher and community activist, Goldberg was a member of the Los Angeles school board from 1983 to 1991, serving as its president the last two of those years. She teaches government, economics and English as a second language at Grant High School in the San Fernando Valley. She also is currently on leave as a deputy to Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, whom she advises on children’s issues.

* Background: A native of Los Angeles, Goldberg has a bachelor’s degree in social science from UC Berkeley, where she was a prominent participant in the Free Speech student protest movement of the 1960s. She has a master’s degree in history teaching from the University of Chicago. If elected, Goldberg would become the first openly gay or lesbian member of the City Council. She and her partner, Sharon Stricker, live in Echo Park with Goldberg’s adopted son, Brian, 18.

Q: What do you see as the issue voters are most concerned about right now?

A: Access is probably the thing that comes up most. Many people in the district do not feel connected, listened to, cared about, honored, respected by people in public office, particularly city and county government.

Q: Is that something people you meet really complain about?

A: They say it but they don’t say the word access. They say, ‘I hate those people downtown. They never listen to me. I hate what they’ve done in Hollywood; they’ve done stuff in spite of us, not because of us. I don’t trust anybody who’s running for office because they say that they’re going to work with us about crime and then they never do.’

So they may name other issues, but if you listen to the meaning behind the words, what they’re saying is ‘I’m not a part of any of this system. You don’t include me in anything that’s important.’

Q: Let’s take the crime problem. What ideas do you have to offer?

A: We’ve got to have more police patrolling the streets. I’d like to see the Police Department reorganized more in a prevention mode. Now (Chief Willie) Williams is obviously committed to that; at least he says he is when he talks about community-based policing. I think we need to get the 622 officers that Williams has identified doing paperwork out of doing paperwork jobs and back on the streets. Let’s civilian-ize all of the paperwork positions.

We’ve got (about) 2,600 police cars in this city, but only 971 of them are painted black and white. Paint another 971 unmarked cars black and white and immediately people see twice the police presence.

I’d love to see more officers, but I don’t see any way that’s going to happen. So the question is, how do you deploy existing officers for the maximum safety in neighborhoods? We may have to sit down with the chief and talk about not doing some things (the police) currently do in order to put more people on the street.

Q: Such as?

A: There are some things that they do around victimless crimes, in the vice squad, that perhaps we could live without in these harsh times of violence and break-ins and drug deals.

Q: Prostitution busts?

A: I wasn’t talking about street prostitution. (It) unfortunately has become more involved with drugs and victims. I meant more in terms of some of the monitoring of parks and gay bars, which some communities feel is harassment to begin with. But harassment or not, leaving aside the value judgment on that issue, there are things that frankly are not as high a priority as preventing gang violence and drug dealing and all of the other things. . . . The question is, do we have our priorities straight?

Q: I haven’t heard you say we need to hire more police.

A: Oh, I think we do. I just don’t see any feasible way to do that and so I’m not Pollyannaish. A lot of (politicians) will run around and say, ‘I’m for more police’ and they know full well when they say it that there’s not a chance of it happening right now.

Q: The City Council faces some extremely tough choices to deal with the city’s anemic finances. There’s talk of taxing entertainment venues such as Dodger baseball and cable TV, and imposing a garbage collection fee. Would you be willing to consider those things?

A: I haven’t made up my mind on those, but I will tell you that we’re probably going to have to find both ways to cut and redirect (services) and we’re going to have to find ways to increase revenue.

Q: So you would be willing to raise taxes?

A: I’m willing under the following circumstances: that I’m convinced that all of the waste in government has been eliminated, or at least substantial portions of it. That we’ve reduced our overhead and our administrative costs dramatically. That we’ve looked at eliminating (unnecessary) layers of management. That we’ve combined departments to make sure we’re using money most efficiently.

When you’ve done those things and when we’ve taken care of the perks that people at the top get--which is the first place you should cut--if there’s still not enough revenue, if the state’s (budget problem) still hasn’t worked itself out, if we don’t see an end to the recession in Southern California, after all of that’s done, it takes raising some fees, I’m certainly willing to do that.

Q: How about leasing Los Angeles International Airport, as mayoral candidate Richard Riordan proposes?

A: No. It may sound corny, but anytime someone tells you they can run something for a lot less money, make a profit and still pay you a high lease payment, the only two places they can change in order to do that is to pay their employees very little--in which case you get constant turnover--or to reduce services to the public.

I’m not interested in reducing services to the public, and I’m not interested in having an agency as important to this city as that airport with constant turnover in employees, which is another way of reducing service to the public.

I’m not making a stand that couldn’t be changed. I’m willing to look at all the research and why some people whose views I respect support it, but my initial take is, you don’t get something for nothing.

Q: How about privatizing garbage collection?

A: No. I mean to go the other direction. I think that private garbage collection has not been doing the recycling, at least some (companies) haven’t. I’d much rather see it all be city (operated) so that we can do the recycling that’s necessary to clean up our environment. I think (those who favor privatization) are going in the wrong direction.

Q: Given the negative association many people attach to the Los Angeles school board, are you concerned that having sat on the board for eight years and served as its president for two of those years will damage you in this election?

A: No, I’m really not, because the people who have anything to do with the school district know that I did a great deal for this area in terms of new schools, maintenance, safety, stabilizing teachers. When I first came on the school board there were 800 empty classrooms. You couldn’t get teachers. When I left we had people trying to get in to teach in L.A. Unified.

I’m not an apologist. I don’t say that there are no problems with the school district. But considering the hits we’ve taken financially, we’re a very efficiently run system. I cut 40% of the bureaucracy while I was still on the board, and that was during years when we had money, before we had to do it. So we’re a pretty lean machine over there.

Q: Your opponent has hammered away at you as someone more interested in global issues than in dealing with the nitty-gritty problems of people in the district. How do you respond?

A: Those issues affect constituents--crime, lack of jobs, lack of park space, the inability for people to get help when somebody wants to build a building that they don’t want in their neighborhood. You see, that’s why we don’t take any developer money in this campaign, because we want the people who live and work in a neighborhood to have greater control over their lives whatever the issue is. That’s our primary goal.

In terms of constituent services, you only have to look at my record on the school board to know that, without a staff--because school board members don’t have a staff--we took care of constituent services mightily. It went all the way down from the parent not being able to understand what the report card meant because it wasn’t printed in a language he or she read, to not being able to find out where to get a vaccination, or not being able to get grass or something green on their kid’s playground area when the Westside (schools have) rolling lawns.

(As far as) constituent services, I think that’s all (LaBonge) can run on. He doesn’t have anything else. He’s not running on issues.

Q: You talk about tax incentives for businesses providing child care. Are you concerned that voters may view this as unaffordable during times such as these?

A: That is costly but so is absenteeism in the work force. When we have businesses leaving this area, this is a way to attract businesses.

I mean, there’s a trade-off here. This is a win-win program I’m talking about. You produce something for the city by keeping people’s jobs there. They therefore pay state taxes. The state taxes come back to the city. You create more sales taxes because you keep businesses in Los Angeles and people have money to spend.

You have to do something to prime the pump, and those things which prime the pump should have specific cost-effectiveness. If they don’t, if the people who advise me say, ‘Well that would be a nice thing for business and I certainly would like to help business, but it doesn’t get you anything in terms of getting us out of the recession,’ I’m not going to support it.

Q: You’ve carefully avoided criticism of Councilman Michael Woo, and yet you have not sought his endorsement and you have not made any campaign appearances together. Why the distance?

A: Because I appeal to people who wouldn’t support him, and I appeal to people who would support him. What I’m interested in is getting my message out about who I am, what I want to do, how I think I can do it and what I can offer people in terms of ability for them to get involved. I feel a new sense of activism in the city.

Q: Do you see a Woo endorsement as a political liability?

A: Oh, I’m sure if he endorsed me there are people who wouldn’t support me because of that endorsement. Absolutely, in some parts. In other parts it would help me tremendously. You know, it’s like anybody else, there are people who can find reasons to like or dislike anybody in public office.

Q: What is Hollywood’s most outstanding need?

A: There some things we should do immediately. We should (install) proper lighting on Hollywood Boulevard. Not just in front of the buildings but behind. A lot of people would come to Hollywood except they don’t want to park their cars in those dark parking lots.

We need to increase the cleanliness of the area. We need to have (police) foot patrols. We may need to stop all parking on Hollywood Boulevard at certain hours so that traffic can flow more smoothly. I would love to see a program which uses (Community Redevelopment Agency) money to employ young people to be tour guides who help guide people around, point out landmarks and give people a sense of security.

We need to be talking with the film industry and theater owners about putting more theaters back on Hollywood Boulevard (and) find out what it would take to get some of the (closed) theaters open again.

We’ve got to make parking less expensive. Hollywood is one of the few areas with enough parking, but it’s too expensive so people don’t want to park.

Q: You’ve acknowledged that Hollywood is a place that many people prefer simply to drive past, that it needs to be cleaned up and redeveloped. At the same time you’ve made a point of not accepting contributions from real estate developers and have criticized your opponent for doing so. Some would argue that Hollywood should be more developer-friendly, not less. What do you say to those people?

A: What’s wrong with courting developers is that by a quirk of the city charter an individual council member has life and death power over a project in their district by virtue of having the final say on conditional-use permits. That makes it a conflict of interest, pure and simple, to accept money from people who want to build things. I have met with developers. I will continue to meet with them. We need to build some things. But not because I’m beholden to them or because I needed them to get elected.

I have very close friends who are developers who’ve been offended that I won’t take their money until I explained that we’re not talking about you being the evil force. This is not Darth Vaderism. This is ethical behavior. Taking money from people where you’re the only vote that matters is unethical in my opinion.

Q: You’ve been critical of the Community Redevelopment Agency, as has nearly every city politician this election cycle. In what ways would you like to see the CRA change?

A: First, I’m not calling for its elimination. Some of the CRA’s problems relate to style and some are substantive. For example, when I was on the school board representing Hollywood there was a report the CRA had that called for perhaps eliminating Hollywood High School. I called (a CRA official) and said, ‘Gee, I’m the representative of that area. Could I have a copy of the report?’

He said, ‘What report?’ I said, ‘No, no, no. I know the name of the report. I’d just like to get a copy of it.’ After it was denied to me for several weeks I finally called Mike Woo, who had to direct them to send me the report. Now, you see, by my way of thinking, the CRA is a public agency. Under the law, they don’t have any choice over what the public gets to see. The public gets to see everything. Not just a school board member, anybody. When you behave that way you reinforce everybody’s fear that they’ve got something to hide. That’s what I mean about style.

The substantive issue is that people do not believe that the folks that work with and for CRA have a plan that was developed by the people who live and work in a project area. They believe that they’re looked at by the CRA and the developers as standing in the way. When people have that kind of perception, it really doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not.

Q: I take it that, if elected, you will not favor bleeding the CRA for revenue to pay for more police and other needs?

A: No. There are two separate issues here. (As far as) what they’ve done downtown, there’s no more development needed (there). We’ve got too many empty office buildings, half-empty hotels (and) several convention centers. We just don’t need more.

Now there’s Hollywood, which is in a terrible way and in need of development and redevelopment--the right scale, with the right thoughtfulness, with the right amount of preserving the historically significant buildings, with the involvement of people who live and work there. I’m telling you we need that (CRA) money (in Hollywood). (It) could be a very important tourist area for the city again. . . . So I’m saying refocus (CRA). First focus on business retention, holding on to what we’ve got.

Q: As opposed to?

A: As opposed to big glitzy projects which may make the developer a fortune but may never make a profit for the owner and which inhales tons of taxpayer dollars.

Q: Is the Simon project, the huge commercial venture that was proposed for Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, the kind of development you’re pleased to have seen fail?

A: I don’t know (if I was) pleased (or) not pleased. I don’t think it was a project that was well thought through in terms of how it would impact other issues in Hollywood. To be very honest with you, I didn’t pay enough attention to give you a strong feeling.

But I do know that the scale of it and the notion that somehow you could put a shopping mall in Hollywood that would increase foot traffic--I’m not sure it wouldn’t send more traffic out of Hollywood. All you have to do is take a look at parts of Glendale and see what happened when the Galleria opened. Did it increase the foot traffic on Brand (Avenue)? No. Brand’s a ghost town. So I think if we want to increase tourism we’ve got to put some resources into Hollywood Boulevard and not necessarily a huge anchor project.

The revitalization of Hollywood has got to be treated as something more than just a 13th District problem. It has to be viewed as a resource for the entire city.