No Issue Too Small for L.A. Council

First came rules for strippers, to stop them from gyrating on people’s laps. Next came an edict against urinating on city streets. And then last month, the Los Angeles City Council prohibited silly string in Hollywood on Halloween and even talked of extending the ban across the metropolis.

The council makes the laws for the nation’s second-largest city, but these days, it seems there is no issue too small to catch its attention.

In its passion to fine-tune life here, the council has pushed a raft of new laws. Some are creative approaches to long-standing problems, such as illegal dumping. Others, such as the silly string ban, address such tiny issues that they have drawn ridicule.

In some respects, it’s unremarkable the council members would be sensitive to such concerns; after all, that’s their job.

But this council, with all but two of its 15 members elected in the last three years, is especially willing to heed neighborhood desires and citizen complaints.

Unlike earlier council members, who spent decades in office plugging away at issues, these officials are term-limited and have just eight years to impress voters before seeking another post. And they are governing in the shadow of secession, which threatened to tear Los Angeles apart because some residents were unhappy with city services.

“When I have office hours, people come in to talk about issues on their block,” said Councilman Eric Garcetti, a former professor of diplomacy who pressed for a solution to the annual silly string mess.

“It’s easy to mock these issues, but most Angelenos are concerned about their neighborhood and their quality of life.”

The council has obliged with a steady output of laws aimed at encouraging appropriate behavior and spiffing up the city’s appearance.

Among the targeted activities: prostitution in strip clubs and on city streets, urinating and defecating outdoors, smoking on the beach, hanging out in cyber-cafes instead of school, driving drunk and drag-racing, and snoozing on the steps of the city’s libraries.

To clean up a city that is sometimes compared to a Third World capital, council members have tried to stop the dumping of debris in back alleys, restrict shopping carts to grocery parking lots, and prevent taco trucks from parking in one place for extended periods.

And they are putting the finishing touches on laws to fine people who staple signs on telephone poles and to make all newspaper racks ivy green.

One of the council’s favorite enforcement devices is to seize the vehicles of lawbreakers, including those who race, dump trash, sell drugs or seek illicit sex. Councilman Greig Smith also wants to take cars from drunk drivers.

As if the council has not been busy enough improving the quality of life for people, it’s now looking out for dogs. In August, council members directed the city attorney to write first-in-California rules to outlaw tethering Fido for extended periods and to mandate window flaps on his doghouse.

Next on the council’s quality-of-life agenda: Smith plans to introduce a “good neighbor motion” to require residents to take care of their homes. By that, he means: no broken windows or junk on the lawn.

“People don’t like the look and feel of the city, and they really want to see it spruced up a little,” said Smith, who represents the northwestern edge of the San Fernando Valley, where support for secession was strongest.

Though some of these laws appear to be working, the trend has some policy experts concerned.

“I want to see more debate on how to deal with big issues,” said Larry Berg, retired director of the Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics at USC, citing the environment, transportation and infrastructure.

Los Angeles laws aimed at the smallest problems have tickled people around the world. When the council voted to prohibit silly string, it was reported across the nation and as far away as Europe. Last fall’s vote to outlaw lap dancing was mocked on late-night shows and is still featured in the “Love & Sex” section of a website based in South Africa.

Some members agree that it’s time for them to emphasize weightier issues on the council.

“We aren’t looking as long-term as we need to,” said Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, who earned the nickname the “Pothole Queen” her first year in office. “We need to take risks.”

Council members have not ignored more difficult endeavors. They voted to place a $500-million water bond issue on the November ballot and approved landmark hurdles that Wal-Mart and others must clear in order to build so-called superstores.

Greuel has also fought for years to eliminate taxes for small businesses in the city. Garcetti and Councilman Ed Reyes have been plugging away at zoning changes they think will create more affordable housing.

And this council has presided over the development of the city’s neighborhood council system, inspiring some members to work with those panels to craft laws to address specific concerns.

Councilwoman Janice Hahn, a proponent of neighborhood councils, argues that quality-of-life ordinances are not insubstantial, calling them “big-picture, long-term improvements that will change the character of these neighborhoods.”

The Los Angeles laws mirror a trend that picked up steam in New York. With that city’s former chief of police, William J. Bratton, now running the LAPD, several city officials said they enthusiastically subscribe to the “broken windows” philosophy he popularized, which holds that being tough on petty offenses such as vandalism helps prevent more serious crimes.

“If you see a neighborhood go down, it causes urban problems to accelerate,” said Councilman Tom LaBonge.

The council has also discovered another benefit of quality-of-life legislation: Voters get it.

Silly string and taco trucks are much easier to understand than, say, complex changes to mind-numbing zoning laws.

“The reality is, I’ve gotten many more compliments from people about banning smoking on the beach than I have for increasing vigilance against terrorism,” said Councilman Jack Weiss.

Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, whose seven years in office make her the body’s senior member, said she attributes the council’s focus on quality-of-life laws to members who are in their first term, fresh from knocking on voters’ doors.

The last of the city’s veteran council members left last year, forced out by term limits that L.A. voters approved in 1993.

“What you have are some council members who are really responsive to getting a call from the community and bringing in a motion the next day,” Miscikowski said. “And since these aren’t substantively profound things you need to think about for a long time, they can bring in a motion and have something done.”

That’s just what LaBonge did when he proposed still-to-be-drafted rules to prevent children from being lured into traffic by the hypnotic jingle of ice cream trucks. As Hahn pushed for restrictions on taco trucks, LaBonge asked that ice cream be included, musing on the council floor, “Sometimes, your love of ice cream takes away your thought process on safely crossing the street.”

Some of the laws appear to be having an impact. Since last winter, more than 60 people have been charged with relieving themselves in public. And over the last year and a half, police have seized 209 vehicles from people they say were seeking illicit sex, 39 from alleged drug dealers, seven from drivers accused of drag-racing and two from those caught illegally dumping.

In Hollywood, some residents say they are seeing fewer prostitutes. In the Valley, Greuel says, the drag-racing problem has eased.

Still, sometimes ordering up a new law doesn’t work out quite the way council members intended.

A year after the council approved the ideas, Hahn and LaBonge are still working out the details of their taco truck and ice cream vendor laws.

And last fall, council members hastily scrapped the package of new rules that effectively banned lap dancing in strip clubs by mandating that dancers stay at least 6 feet from customers. The council backed down after club owners gathered signatures to force a referendum that could have overturned the law. Instead, the council compromised, allowing the provocative dance but imposing other regulations, such as prohibitions on touching breasts and genitals.

Other laws, residents complain, sound good but aren’t working.

Quentin Drew, president of the Watts neighborhood council, said he was initially delighted with the law allowing police to seize the vehicles of those who dump mattresses in alleys. But months later, he said, “It still looks filthy.”

“The hard work is not passing the new regulations,” said Councilman Garcetti, who brought his sometimes-carsick staff along this summer as he cruised his district looking for graffiti to clean up. “It’s making sure they get enforced and acted upon.”