Neighborhood Councils Plan May Be Losing Ground

Support appears to be waning for a ballyhooed effort to decentralize Los Angeles city government by giving individual neighborhoods the power to decide how land is used.

Members of the Elected Los Angeles Charter Reform Commission predicted just a few weeks ago that their group would endorse a plan, unique in the nation, to allow elected neighborhood councils to settle many zoning questions.

But a Times survey of 14 of the 15 commissioners conducted over the past few days indicates a change of heart. Only four commissioners now say they are firmly committed to the idea that elected community councils should be empowered to make zoning changes or grant individual variances.

Most of the rest said they are undecided about the plan, which some see as an instrument of grass-roots democracy and others as appeasement of secessionists. “People who I thought would be advocates . . . are no longer sure,” said Commissioner Chester Widom, an architect.

Commission Chairman Erwin Chemerinsky, who had been one of those predicting an endorsement, said he now believes that a consensus is likely to emerge on a fallback position: giving elected neighborhood councils control over a small amount of city funds.

The rethinking has resulted in a fluid situation, prompted in part by forceful challenges from the big-business community. It has argued that neighborhood councils would be a costly layer of additional bureaucracy and, with land-use powers, would court economic disaster.

The reevaluation has also been prompted by opposition from Mayor Richard Riordan, some elements of organized labor and some City Council members. It is also attributable to a dawning awareness among commissioners that designing a novel additional level of government is extremely daunting and complex.

The business opposition is founded on a prediction that neighborhood councils would be tempted to reject developments that are in the interests of the city as a whole because they would not want them built in their own backyards.

Leaders of unionized construction trades have not taken public positions, but have privately shared similar concerns, according to political leaders who have spoken with them.

To blunt their criticisms, advocates have argued that neighborhood councils should decide only matters of local import.

But they have had great difficulty figuring out a practical way to make an objective rule--such as the dollar value of a development or its square footage--that would differentiate local projects from those with citywide impact.

Advisory-Only Role Is Among Options

Los Angeles’ ranking union official, Miguel Contreras, executive secretary of the County Federation of Labor, said “there may be some flexibility on our part about using a set mark [such as a dollar figure],” but the unions, preoccupied with fighting Proposition 226, the statewide ballot initiative to curtail union political contributions, have not developed a coordinated position.

Finding a magic dollar figure or other dividing mark between developments of citywide and local significance may be impossible.

“I continue to struggle with that problem,” said Chemerinsky, a USC constitutional law professor who had been a leading backer of the plan and, like a majority of the commissioners, was elected with labor backing. “I haven’t given up.”

Some other commissioners have been sobered by uncertainties over the wisdom of etching such a bold, untried government scheme into a document as difficult to change as a city charter. Charter changes must be approved by voters.

“We’ve gotten a lot of the rah-rah of community councils,” said Commissioner Gloria Romero, a psychology professor at Cal State L.A. and candidate for state Assembly, “but I don’t think we’ve looked enough at the downside. Community councils and staff and elections can be quite costly.”

“You get caught up in the emotion that there’s something we’ve got to do better,” said Commissioner Woody Fleming, an aide to City Councilwoman Rita Walters. “But in doing better, I don’t want to dislodge . . . people--especially working people.”

Many other cities have neighborhood councils. But they operate only in advisory roles.

Riordan has endorsed an advisory approach here, but not necessarily with the paid support staff that academic researchers have said maximized their chances for success elsewhere.

Greg Nelson, chief deputy to City Councilman Joel Wachs and, like his boss, a leading advocate of neighborhood councils with support staff, has urged a go-slow approach: Experiment with advisory councils first; then, if there is demand, expand to a decision-making model.

4 Still Support Broad Authority

A second, appointed commission also working on revising Los Angeles’ charter has already tentatively decided to propose an advisory model. Details of its plan--which must be approved by the City Council before it can be submitted to voters--are being hashed out. But it will probably include a requirement that developers present their plans first to a neighborhood council, which would then make its recommendations. Advocates of this approach say it has the potential to make neighborhoods more influential without giving them the capacity to act arbitrarily and do harm.

The City Council has never voted on the issue, but Nelson said he believes most members oppose neighborhood councils because they would dilute the council’s powers.

Recommendations of the elected charter commission bypass the City Council and go directly to voters.

The four elected commissioners who said in interviews that they remain steadfastly committed to the idea of elected neighborhood councils with land use powers are all members of a subcommittee that has focused on the issue. They are Marguerite Archie-Hudson, a former assemblywoman and now candidate for state Senate; Marcos Castaneda, an aide to City Councilman Richard Alatorre; Janice Hahn, a public relations executive with Southern California Edison and a candidate for Congress; and Bennett Kayser, a schoolteacher and longtime neighborhood activist.

Archie-Hudson believes the business community’s argument is specious: “It’s senseless to think that communities would be deliberately running businesses out,” she said. Hahn agreed, saying, “I am not afraid of local communities making decisions.” Castaneda sees the decision-making councils as “a way to empower communities that historically had had little say. . . . It’s like a sign of hope.” And Kayser is convinced that anything less than decision-making status will lead to neighborhood councils being ignored.

Their report, which suggests limiting the councils to an advisory role only on citywide issues, says these include projects of clear regional economic significance, such as the proposed Los Angeles International Airport expansion, the Alameda Corridor high-speed rail project to transport freight from the port to downtown, and other transportation projects. Also included are industrial facilities, waste management facilities, large retail stores that provide much-sought-after sales tax revenues for municipal budgets, and a slew of social service facilities, affordable housing developments and child-care centers that homeowners often oppose for fear they would reduce property values.

That would leave decisions on small variances and locations of businesses such as pool halls and dance clubs and perhaps strip malls to neighborhood councils.

It would also leave open the door for a decision-making role for neighborhood councils on approving community plans. The city is divided into 35 community plan areas and the community plans--basically road maps for zoning--are supposed to be revised by the Planning Department every five years.

But Commissioner William Weinberger, an attorney, said he is concerned about entrusting neighborhood councils with the power to approve community plans. “If each community decided they didn’t want any commercial development in their plan, that would have an effect on the entire city,” he said.

Commissioner Rob Glushon, a land use attorney, wonders if the remaining decisions are significant enough.

“Most people are not excited about having decision-making power on the real small variance issues--whether a roof can be two inches higher,” he said. “People really care about the big issues--the very issues” that the report classifies as having citywide impact.

Glushon said he favors a formal advisory role for neighborhood councils on significant land use matters and decision-making powers on how to allocate a limited amount of city funds. For example, does a neighborhood want to spend discretionary funds on tree trimming, street repair or longer library hours?

Drawing Boundaries Could Be Difficult

Commissioner Paula Boland, a former assemblywoman who operates with an 80-person advisory committee, said she is exploring a hybrid model in which neighborhood councils would have control over a small amount of the city budget and have incentives to behave reasonably in permitting growth by being allowed to keep a proportion of the resulting additional tax revenues.

Although a large majority of commissioners remains committed to the idea of having neighborhood councils, not everyone on the commission believes that electing them would be wise.

Commissioner Jackie Dupont-Walker, an affordable housing developer, said she is concerned that a small-minded, single-interest group could dominate an election. She would favor giving someone--perhaps a City Council representative--power to appoint others to balance viewpoints.

Romero, who represents an inner-city district where the 1990 census shows that almost two-thirds of the adults are not U.S. citizens and are therefore ineligible to vote, has another concern: that elected councils will keep the door to local government closed to a majority of residents in some sections of the city.

Romero’s concerns alarm Dennis Zine, a Los Angeles police sergeant who does not want noncitizens, particularly those who have crossed the border illegally, having a say in local government.

Zine likes the idea of decision-making neighborhood councils, but he is troubled that complications mandated by the federal voting rights act may defeat their purpose. That law requires proportional representation--meaning neighborhood council districts would have to be about the same size. And it requires that the votes of protected minority groups, which include African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans, not be diluted.

Zine is concerned that could force the city to draw odd-shaped boundaries for community councils which, like the City Council district boundaries, would not keep neighborhoods intact.

Anne Finn, community activist and widow of former City Councilman Howard Finn, is one of the few commission members who characterizes herself as being undecided about whether neighborhood councils are necessary at all. “If you have small enough City Council districts, you may not even need neighborhood councils,” Finn said.

The districts are the largest in the country, with each of 15 City Council members representing at least 230,000 people.