All-or-Nothing Charter Reform Guarantees the Latter

There seems to be no disagreement that charter reform is a necessary antidote to many of the problems created by the dysfunctional government and bureaucracy that control the city of Los Angeles.

However, in the midst of the hullabaloo as to which of the two charter commissions will come up with the best rules for governing the new Los Angeles, commissioners have overlooked a basic problem: What if voters don’t like one or two of the dozens of ideas that will be recommended, and turn down the entire ballot measure as a result? We will then be back to square one, with a dysfunctional government and an unhappy citizenry that will take a fresh look at secession movements all over the city.

To ensure that this doesn’t happen, commissioners should present each section of the revised charter as a separate proposition on the 1999 ballot. Breaking the proposed charter into bite-size pieces would enable voters to approve recommendations they liked and reject those they didn’t. (Rejection, of course, would mean no change to the individual amendment being proposed.)

For example, charter commissions might ask voters to decide if they wanted to triple the number of City Council districts, shut down the city attorney’s office, privatize the police and fire departments, close every library, sell all the city parks to developers, eliminate business taxes, create 100 neighborhood councils with absolutely no power to do anything, and refund all sewer fees paid to the city over the past six years. It would be impossible to gain majority support for all these proposals if presented to voters as an all-or-nothing proposition. But if they were split into separate ballot issues, voters could decide which of these and other ideas they wanted implemented for the 21st century.

To assure voters that the city is serious about reforming itself, the amended charter should contain a new section that automatically allows a different charter commission to be elected every 4 years, with the goal of presenting additional charter amendments to voters two years after each election.

These new commissions would take up where the old commissions left off, gathering fresh input from residents and reexamining old ideas rejected by voters, to come up with a better set of reforms that would win voter approval in the next election.

A prime ingredient in the success of such a plan would be immediate creation of a perpetual charter “suggestion box” into which ideas could be deposited every day. With an existing city Web site, this could be implemented immediately.

It finally appears that both charter commissions will place a recommendation on the ballot for creation of neighborhood councils. The big issue, of course, is whether the councils should be elected by local residents or appointed by the City Council or the mayor. But whether the commissions recommend appointed or elected neighborhood councils, they must first establish a method by which Los Angeles neighborhoods are defined and recognized.

The most obvious way to do this would be to start with existing maps that show community boundaries and survey property owners near the boundaries to determine if they believe they are a part of that community or a neighboring one. When the survey is completed and firm community boundary lines are set, the next step will be to let residents of each community decide whether they have an interest in forming neighborhood councils.

Many people have apparently overlooked the fact that there may be a dozen or more communities in Los Angeles content with the way things are going, with no desire to exercise local control over city services. There may also be a few communities that do want changes but don’t want to be bothered with setting up their own councils. Still others may not meet the minimum (or maximum) size requirements the commissions probably will establish.

A community not interested in forming its own council or too small to be effective could let one or more adjoining communities make its decisions or could become part of a coalition of several neighborhood councils that make “regional” decisions. Or it could even continue to have the downtown government chart its destiny until when--if ever--the community changed its mind.

Because it is not possible to form neighborhood councils until neighborhood boundaries are established, any effort to put the councils on the ballot should include a companion effort to define those boundaries.

There is no question that the two charter reform commissions hold the key to whether secession movements in the San Fernando Valley and other areas of Los Angeles will wither in 1999 or will get all they way to the ballot box in the year 2000. Decisions made by the commissioners, to restructure city government and create neighborhood councils that have budgets to control their own city services and land-use issues, will determine which way the city will vote.

But none of it will happen unless the proposed amendments are placed on the ballot in such a fashion that residents can vote for passage of different sections rather than an all-or-nothing charter that does not, cannot and never will satisfy everyone in the city.