MAYWOOD : Councilwoman Has City Hall Stirred Up

She wanted change, and she got it.

Elvira Moreno-Guzman, who was elected to the City Council last year, stepped into city government with the idea of shattering the status quo by questioning authority and implementing a new vision geared toward establishing better ties with the community.

She was at the forefront of a surge in Latino political activism in the Southeast region, which saw several Latinos take seats on city councils. During the campaign Moreno-Guzman, a Mexican American, said her youth and Latino heritage, coupled with her zeal for change, made her well-suited to represent the 28,552-person city, whose population is 93% Latino, with an average age of 23.

“No one ever questioned these (government) people before,” said Moreno-Guzman, 27, who is a full-time student at East Los Angeles College pursuing an associate’s degree in political science. “Staff recommends and council approves. They just want us to rubber stamp everything.”

Yet it has been this will and zest for change that has made Moreno-Guzman one of the city’s most controversial figures lately.

Moreno-Guzman has found herself alone in trying to carry out her vision, often the single dissenter in council decisions. City policy-makers say her uncompromising aggressiveness and political naivete are what isolate her and occasionally cause her trouble. She’s the first council member in the city’s 70-year history to be censured--once for using a city car without staff authorization and then for issuing orders to police officers without the chief’s permission.

Moreno-Guzman “doesn’t understand that you can’t do what you want as an individual, you have to work as a team,” said Chief Administrative Officer Ronald L. Lindsey, who has often had personal confrontations with the councilwoman.

Last February, the councilwoman took a city car to visit a church group for what she called official business.

Besides not going through the proper administrative channels for permission to use the car, Lindsey said he believed at the time that council members were not insured to use a city vehicle, making it a financial liability on the city. Moreno-Guzman later agreed she used poor judgment, but the tension didn’t stop there.

At the next council meeting, she publicly called Lindsey a liar and demanded his resignation after she learned the city’s insurance carrier does cover council members.

“I was mistaken with the policy,” said Lindsey, who has worked for the city for 25 years, 2 1/2 years as the city’s top staff official. “I would not purposefully lead on the council with something as serious as this.”

Shortly thereafter, she ran into trouble again, this time with the Police Department.

According to a grievance filed by the Police Officer’s Relief Assn., Moreno-Guzman ordered officers on patrol not to cite illegal street vendors and allegedly demeaned an officer in front of his superiors.

“She was circumventing my authority and giving mixed signals to officers,” said Chief Gil Bowman, who helped draft the grievance letter.

Despite her troubles, some of her colleagues on the council maintain she could be a player, if she would only learn to work with them.

Moreno-Guzman “has potential . . . and she’s very honest in what she wants to do,” said Mayor Dorothy Ramirez, who has been on the council for three years. “There’s nothing wrong with that. But when she becomes a liability to the city, that’s a problem. It’s difficult to work with someone like that.”

Moreno-Guzman remains unruffled, but disturbed at the lack of progress in implementing her agenda. She promised to be a clear voice for the community, but believes she has been shut down. For instance, her push to widen busy streets near schools and improve relations with water suppliers has not garnered support from the staff or council, she said.

She says most of the city staff of 85 have something against her because they don’t like her asking questions.

“I never knew I would have so much trouble like I have had this first year,” said Moreno-Guzman. “Maybe if I would have gone with the program it would have been much easier. All I know is what I do comes from the heart.”

But she takes comfort in continuing support from constituents and promises to carry on.

“We pay just as much taxes as anyone else, and yet we’ve never truly had any representation,” said Maria Elena Hernandez, 49, who has lived in Maywood for 27 years. “What she has brought to the city is a voice for the Latino population.”