ValleyVote Update for 5-29-01 |
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By JOSE CARDENAS, Times Staff Writer
As the Los Angeles mayoral runoff fast approaches, a Latino organization aims to improve on the strong showing by Latino voters in April's city election by mobilizing 15,000 additional voters--new or young registrants or those who have never voted. This is the third phase of the voter mobilization effort--dubbed Voces del Pueblo, or Voices of the People--started in March by the educational fund of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.
The effort is focused on getting to the polls people who are being ignored by candidates more interested in spending their resources on likely voters, said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the L.A.-based nonpartisan organization. "Consultants don't say, 'Who votes sometimes?' " said Vargas at a news conference Friday to announce the final phase of the effort. He lives in northeast Los Angeles in a predominantly Latino neighborhood where, he said, voter turnout is low. "I don't get inundated by mailings."
During the recent Los Angeles city election, Latinos accounted for 21% of the total voter turnout, a figure generally seen as encouraging. And since the April primary, 6,898 more Latinos in Los Angeles have registered to vote. Still, Vargas said, thousands more could participate. There are 29,635 Latinos in Los Angeles who are registered to vote but who have never voted, he said.
The young also have poor voting records, regardless of ethnicity. In Los Angeles, there are 17,400 Latinos between 18 and 24 registered to vote, and the association would like to see more of them going to the polls. The group plans to contact up to 60,000 potential voters. It will sponsor radio commercials, send out 100,000 mailings, operate a phone bank and deploy 200 volunteers to walk 200 precincts.
Next week, it will host a Spanish-language televised debate between the mayoral candidates, City Atty. James K. Hahn and former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, in which residents themselves will ask questions.
Back in March, the association and the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion conducted forums in six Latino-dominated city neighborhoods--Boyle Heights, Pico-Union, northeast San Fernando Valley, South Los Angeles, the Wilmington/Harbor City area and northeast Los Angeles--to identify the issues of concern to residents.
Among their stated concerns were education, housing, public safety and transportation. Many saw secession from the city as a solution to their concerns, according to the association. And many participating in the forums said that poor public services in their neighborhoods made them feel disenfranchised from the system and discouraged them from voting. [The highest percentage of voters in a area signing ValleyVote's petition was in Pacoima and the lowest in Toluca Lake see the data.]
It was an unguarded moment, to be sure.
But unguarded moments are often the most telling. They offer an insight into the hopes and beliefs that a cautious person -- especially a politician -- is otherwise unlikely to share.
In a helicopter high above the Sepulveda Pass on the San Diego Freeway, staring down at the gridlock below, Mayor Richard Riordan had just such a moment. He was taking his new best friend, mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa, on a bird's-eye tour of Los Angeles.
"This will be your city, Antonio," he said. "What do you think?"
With that one remark, Riordan belied the truth about how the city's politicians, insiders and power brokers see Los Angeles: The city belongs to them. These are not the people's humble servants. The people of Los Angeles work for them. That's why taxes are so high that every major corporation has left town, and services are so poor that half the city is contemplating secession.
In Riordan's mind, he isn't turning over the keys to city government to his successor. He's turning over the deed to the city. He hopes the new owner will be Villaraigosa, a candidate he likes so much it took him a full month after the primary to decide to endorsement him.
From the nearly restored tower of City Hall, the 3.7 million ordinary people of Los Angeles must look very tiny -- Lilliputians to the giants who sit at the table of power.
Riordan unwittingly spoke a truth that is at the core of what's broken -- what has always been broken -- in L.A., power is held by the few instead of shared widely in a city that recognizes the valid concerns of all and respects their values in balancing out political equations. Through their closed-door meetings, their back-room deals and their overall neglect of the public welfare, the city's leaders display the same arrogance.
This is a matter truly worthy of Cardinal Roger Mahony's investigation of civic morality in Los Angeles. Perhaps, when the Council of Religious Leaders takes a break from analyzing the morality of political self-determination in the San Fernando Valley, it will have time to consider this question: Who owns Los Angeles?
In ValleyVote's response to the LAFCO IFA it states in part The City of Los Angeles appears to concur that the citizens own the city. The City’s Web site; "CITIZENS' INTERESTS - ... In a very real sense, the City government is a huge corporation with over 3 million stockholders." Valley residents and non-Valley residents alike have an equitable interest in the assets, and that each is entitled to their rightful share of the City’s assets and operations.
The answer to that question may lead to throwing the influence peddlers out of City Hall and the establishment of democracy in a city whose whole history is one of the government being controlled by narrow private interests. If the clerics' inquiry is to achieve anything at all, it would be the knowledge that everyone in the city wants to secede -- except, of course, for those lucky few who can say they own it.
So, Mayor Richard Riordan wants to get Cardinal Roger Mahony to make a morality judgment in the San Fernando Valley secession effort. Nothing could be better. The cardinal has no choice but to be in favor of the Valley's secession based on the historical fact that Leonidas Polk, the bishop of Louisiana, gave up that office to become a Confederate general in order to help the South secede from the union.
Many other clergymen also supported the South's right to secede. So it must be morally OK for people to secede from an established government that does not listen to them or take care of their needs. We are not trying to revolt and take over Los Angeles, we are just trying to break away. Los Angeles can keep what it paid for and the Valley can keep what it paid for. Thanks, Mr. Riordan, for advancing our cause
Frank Clack Winnetka
THE new buzzword in City Hall is "quality of life" -- as if the leadership has finally heard the cries of San Fernando Valley residents who think local government should deal with the basics of city life instead of ideological dogma and self-service. But just because the politicians have mastered the lingo doesn't mean they actually grasp the concept.
Take City Councilman and would-be city attorney Mike Feuer, who has liberally applied the QOL label to the council's revised version of Mayor Richard Riordan's budget. Having chaired the budget meetings, Feuer takes much pride in his handiwork. He boasts that the council's budget "says to the city that we care about quality of life."
To wit, he points to certain highlights: three new skate parks, an additional $4.9 million for sidewalk repair, $2 million for a summer-job program for youths and $90,000 to issue a library card to every school kid in Los Angeles. These are all good and long overdue. But they're just a few crumbs tossed to the citizenry in order to get them off City Hall's back.
While economists see tough times ahead, city budget projections still reflect boom times, showing $150 million in unanticipated revenues. No one at City Hall can bear to see that much spare cash sit idle. So the council has gone to work to authorize spending as much as it can of this imaginary surplus and then some. Council members voted unanimously to borrow an extra $53 million because even the surplus isn't enough.
The money will be used to make city employees' QOL better, starting with $25 million to buy the city a new piece of real estate to house the Department of Transportation.
Then there's $20 million for asbestos removal in City Hall East, where the council and mayor have been hanging out the past few years without adverse health effects while the real City Hall gets a $299 million face lift to improve.
It's not enough that the budget contains $71.6 million for city employee pay raises -- 50 percent more money than is slated to make the Fire Department marginally functional again, more than four times its allocation for sidewalks that have been neglected for a generation and 35 times more than it plans to spend on summer jobs for hundreds of thousands of kids with nothing to do.
Whose quality of life do city leaders intend to improve -- ours, or their own? Mounting debt and a bigger, more expensive bureaucracy -- that's sure a strange definition of quality of life.
WANT to know who's pumping in cash to boost the mayoral campaigns of Antonio Villaraigosa and James Hahn? Too bad. That's classified information. And City Council members Mike Hernandez and Hal Bernson are using every trick in the book to keep it that way.
Last fall, confused voters passed Proposition 34, a deliberately deceptive ballot initiative sponsored by the two major political parties that gutted campaign-finance laws under the guise of reform. One of its effects was to let unions, political parties and special interests spend an unlimited amount of cash on a city candidate's behalf without disclosing their spending until after the June 5 runoff.
Thanks to Prop. 34, politicians can sell their souls with the knowledge that voters won't find out about it until well after they've cast their ballots. Last week the City Council could have closed the loophole, but Bernson and Hernandez sabotaged the effort -- at least for the moment. The duo withheld their votes, which, because of vacancies and absences, deprived the 15-member council of the necessary super-majority that was needed.
That effectively scuttled the much-needed reform, at least until the council takes up the issue again Friday. When the council debated the legislation, a majority -- eight members -- expressed support.
Whether they would have also walked the walk, of course, is another question altogether. But because Bernson and Hernandez pulled the plug on a vote, the council never had the chance. If we had to guess, it will come up with another trick to derail the measure next time it comes up for a vote.
Hernandez said he supports the reform but thinks it should take effect after the election. "I've never been to a football game where the rules change in the middle of the game," he said.
But the rules in politics exist for the public -- not the politicians. The only candidate who would be harmed about full disclosure is one with something to hide -- and that's something the voters have the right to know about.
As it is, Democrats and Republicans spent heavily to influence the supposedly nonpartisan mayoral election in the primary, which was grossly inappropriate and corrupting of fundamental political processes.
With the Democrats prepared to spend freely in the runoff for their preferred party member, Antonio Villaraigosa, they are attempting to take over the city for their own benefit -- not the public's.
Remember, it was Los Angeles people's tax money [38 million dollars paid by LA including free services] that was used to bail out last summer's Democratic National Convention. Now that money has come back to dictate who our next mayor will be.
That's about as wrong as it gets.
The real race for the next mayor of Los Angeles has started with City Attorney James Hahn and former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa battling it out to convince Angelenos he can do the best job of keeping Los Angeles together and fixing what's broken.
Now the real dialogue begins. And we think both candidates should begin providing specific answers to the following questions:
We all know there's a consent decree governing the Los Angeles Police Department, but put that aside for a moment. How many officers does the new mayor want to hire to put on the streets of Los Angeles? Mayor Richard Riordan eight years ago wanted to hire 3,000 more officers. He never came close to that. How many officers should Los Angeles have to protect its citizens and how will they find a way to recruit and retain them?
What about adding firefighters and paramedics? How many would you add so that response times come down in the Valley?
As mayor of Los Angeles, what's your plan for cutting city red tape to help the LAUSD acquire and build schools faster and make them part of our parks and community center system?
How much money are you going to spend and on what programs to keep kids out of gangs?
The city has embarked on renovating libraries as part of a bond measure that voters approved earlier. But what does the new mayor want to spend on more books, hiring more librarians and keeping libraries open more hours once the expansion is complete?
How and when are you going to revamp the city's tax code to make Los Angeles more business friendly? What's the time frame? Two months from now or two months before the next election in four years so you look good to voters?
How much money does the state owe the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power for electricity, and when is L.A. going to get paid? And when is the city going to lower fees for people who conserve energy so that Angelenos enjoy some of the bounty?
What are your priorities for neighborhood councils? How will you make them work effectively so that residents feel connected and that they have a say and a voice in making their communities better?
What's your plan for LAX? Do you support the regional transportation plan that calls for improving other airports in the six-county region and limiting the number of passengers at LAX to 78 million a year?
What will you do to encourage more businesses to locate in the northeast San Fernando Valley and North Hollywood, where economic development as lagged? How much money are you prepared to commit to neighborhoods vs. downtown?
What museums and cultural venues do you want to build in Van Nuys and other parts of the Valley?
What's your answer to cut the out-of-control workers' compensation payments, reduce massive claims judgments, get people back to work sooner and prevent unnecessary accidents and waste and fraud within city departments?
Are you tough enough to talk straight with public employee unions about how they need to make a commitment to make the city work for the people instead of the people working to make them fat and lazy?
Will you promise to reopen public swimming pools faster than four years, like the one in Panorama City that was closed after the Northridge Earthquake and still hasn't reopened? City officials promise it will be ready this summer. We'll wait and see.
What's your plan for providing affordable housing, one that doesn't destroy single-family neighborhoods in Winnetka or Sherman Oaks or other parts of the Valley and Los Angeles?
What services would you cut to pay for all of the new services you're promising? The city has limited resources and unlimited problems.
How are you, as the next mayor, going to begin to solve those problems and in what order?
Will you make government open and transparent and promise to eliminate back-room deals and chase the influence peddlers from City Hall?
What about Sunshine Canyon Landfill and the DWP's toilet-to-tap water recycling program in the East Valley?
Our list of questions could go on and on. But we hope the point is made: Stop the double-talking and start plain speaking to the public. Getting elected is one thing, governing this city is another.
The voters need answers so they can decide.
By PATRICK MCGREEVY, Times Staff Writer
One day after the election, the Los Angeles City Council race in the southwest San Fernando Valley was still undecided. But that didn't stop those hoping for a place in the June 5 runoff from staking out political turf. Police union director Dennis Zine of West Hills was the leading vote-getter, garnering 26.94% of the ballots in the 3rd District. Judith Hirshberg received 21.80% of the votes, and Francine Oschin, 21.32%.
Hirshberg, [Who was finally determined to have placed second] a former council deputy, held a 164-vote lead over council deputy Oschin for the second spot on the runoff ballot with Zine, but the city clerk's office said there were about 1,000 ballots yet to be counted. "I don't see her making up that many votes," said Hirshberg, who was already planning her runoff campaign. Oschin declined to concede.
"I think until we have a final result, it is open," Oschin said. "But it does not look as positive as I hoped." All three candidates attended the funeral of a mutual acquaintance Wednesday, but afterward the gloves came off. Zine and Hirshberg each claimed to be more in tune with what the voters of the West Valley district want.
Hirshberg, an Encino resident, said she is encouraged that the district has a history of electing women who are Democrats, including incumbent Laura Chick and Joy Picus before her. Zine is a Republican; Hirshberg is a Democrat who was a deputy to former Councilman Marvin Braude. "I personally think it's an advantage," she said. "This is a Democratic area. It's not a Republican district."
Zine downplayed party affiliation, noting that he is a labor leader and that the race is a nonpartisan contest. He pointed out that he had previously been elected from the district to serve on the city's Charter Reform Commission. On issues including crime, education and city spending, Zine said West Valley voters tend to be conservative. "I think the voters recognized my commitment, my contribution, my dedication and my leadership," Zine said.
He was greatly helped by strong support from fellow police officers. The Police Protective League spent $43,000 on independent mail and telephone campaigns for Zine. "The people of the West Valley support the LAPD despite Rampart," he said.
Zine said he is more in step with voters in the
district on issues, including Valley secession.
"I support the secession study," he
said. "I'm the only one who signed the Valley VOTE petition. [Hirshberg] is
adamantly opposed to secession. I have read the analysis, and if we can't turn
government around to provide the services people want, I would support
secession."
Hirshberg said she opposes secession. Oschin supports the secession study but has not yet taken a position on whether a new city should be created in the Valley. If Oschin does not catch Hirshberg when the final votes are counted, she could play a key role in the runoff depending on whom she endorses.
Oschin said she has not thought yet about backing Zine or Hirshberg, but is still angry over a Zine mailer that included an ugly caricature of her
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