Set Council Standards

Insisting that elected city officials do their job and behave like adults hardly seems an incendiary notion. Yet judging by the melodramatic City Council debate last Tuesday, the point is arguable.

Effective July 1, the new City Charter will require that all elected officials in Los Angeles conform to “the highest standards of personal and professional conduct,” a requirement missing from the current charter and one long overdue. The council will also have the power to censure its own members for “gross failure” to meet those standards, even if the action does not constitute a ground for removal from office.

The sorry antics of some council members in recent years illustrate why the city badly needs these provisions. When Nate Holden was embroiled in charges that he had sexually harassed a female staffer, charges the city ultimately settled after footing an estimated $1.3-million legal bill, and when Mike Hernandez pleaded no contest to cocaine possession, council members had no mechanism to express their disapproval. Absent such procedures, elected officials whose behavior falls short of felonious but would be considered out of bounds in any other workplace can get the message that anything goes here.

The council debate last week concerned draft censure procedures submitted by the city attorney and modeled after those used in Moreno Valley. The charter provisions take effect with or without this council’s adoption of a censure procedure. But council members’ far-fetched scenarios for misuse of these provisions, used to justify delaying their adoption, demonstrate that many still don’t see the problem.

One member worried that homosexuality could become grounds for rebuke; another feared persecution for unpopular opinions. Or as Nate Holden put it: “All these holier-than-thou, do-gooder people looking for ways to chop up people they don’t like.”

Obviously the council can’t punish its members for their sexual orientation or political beliefs, and since the charter requires a two-thirds vote for censure that option seems most unlikely. The problem in Los Angeles has been that for way too long, nothing has been beyond the pale.

The council will take up an amended censure procedure again in the coming weeks, including a list of the types of behavior that should not trigger censure. There can be no more excuses for inaction.