The Governance Reform Task Force scheduled seven August meetings in order to be ready for a September vote. But its Aug. 26 session was deemed to have accomplished so much that a planned follow-up two days later was cancelled.
The Task Force voted to send the Board of Supervisors a final set of recommendations on what has become known as the 120-hour requirement – ensuring that board agendas are posted at least five days in advance of a meeting instead of the state-required three days.
Their solution is to require posting 11 days early. Agendas for two board meetings will be posted at any one time.
The idea was to preserve the “green sheet” – the supplemental agenda that catches things not published in the regular agenda. Posting the green sheet five days in advance means posting the regular agenda even earlier.
The supervisors have yet to take up the matter, and it’s not clear what they will make of turning Measure G's 120-hour posting requirement into a 264-hour requirement. The need for notice and transparency have to be balanced against the need to keep up with events as they happen.
The Task Force also continued its discussion of the new county legislative analyst position and considered whether to gradually ramp up the office now, with phased funding and a timeline for moving over staff from existing offices, instead of waiting until the county executive takes office in 2028.
After all, there is nothing preventing the Board of Supervisors from creating the new position right away. They don’t need to first get the executive in place.
By last week, though, the Task Force had chosen a different path.
Much of the meeting was devoted to what the Task Force refers to as public engagement. Members have had some successes. They reported on visits to two different groupings of county employee unions and said they had great turnouts. Member David Green, president and executive director of SEIU Local 721, described a meeting at which so many members participated that they ran out of seats and food.
In his final Task Force meeting, SEIU 721 Executive Director and President David Green discusses a successful Measure G briefing session for Los Angeles County employees. (GRTF video)
“I had to order 20 extra pizzas,” he said.
Supervisor Lindsey Horvath spoke. Several members of the Task Force were there.
Member Derek Hsieh, executive director of the Association of Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriffs, discussed a meeting attended by members of unions that are part of the Coalition of County Unions. Task Force Executive Director Shadi Kardan made a presentation and answered questions.
Both Green and Hsieh fill Task Force seats that are specifically reserved for labor representatives. So does Vivian H. Gray, an attorney, former sheriff’s deputy and retired member of the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association board. So did her predecessor on the Task Force, former Los Angeles County Federation of Labor director Steve Neal. So does Green’s successor – this was Green’s last Task Force meeting, although there was no announcement about that at the time – SEIU 721 Deputy Chief of Staff Raymond Meza, who chaired the Los Angeles City Charter Reform Commission. Meza’s appointment was reported by Elizabeth Chou in LA Squawk Box.
Chair Nancy Yap asks member Derek Hsieh, executive director of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs and Coalition of County Unions chair, to discuss a meeting with GRTF staff. (GRTF video)
There is clearly a great deal of interest in Measure G implementation among a large swath of the county’s 100,000 or so employees and their labor unions. It stands to reason. They will be directly affected by changes in county governance.
They also already have their seats at the table, quite literally. County government may be a source of frustration to them, but it’s not the mystery it is to most of the rest of the county’s 10 million people. County employees and their unions know what to ask, and whom to ask it of. They know how to reach the Task Force and the Board of Supervisors, and the Task Force and the board know how to reach them. They are the Task Force, to some extent.
By contrast, the Task Force does not seem to know how to reach people who don’t already have a seat at the county table.
After discussing the successful two meetings with county employee unions, the Task Force turned its attention to an Aug. 21 public engagement session at the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration in downtown Los Angeles that followed the regular Task Force meeting. How did it go?
They planned for six break-out groups, moderated by Task Force members, to elicit thoughts about what the public wanted to see in a county executive. They sent out thousands of email notices, as well as a few direct invitations. I don’t remember whether there was pizza. There were lots of chips and nutrition bars.
It was a bust. There was no need for break-out groups. Fewer than a dozen people showed up, most of whom had already spoken their minds or at least attended previous Task Force meetings.
Why the big disparity between labor attendance and general public attendance?
Maybe it had something to do with scheduling a public engagement session to discuss government for 5 p.m. on a Friday evening (Come on. Seriously?).
Maybe it was because notice and invitations went out two days before the event. Two days.
Maybe it’s because instead of making the trip to labor’s house, on labor’s terms and labor’s schedule, the Task Force expected people to come to the Hall of Administration and pay $25 to park across the street.
Maybe it was because unlike the labor sessions, no county supervisors or other elected officials offered (or were asked) to come.
Or maybe people came but encountered the same thing I did.
When the earlier Task Force meeting ended at around 4:15, I left the building, got something to eat, and came back a few minutes before 5. The door to the Hall of Administration was locked. I pulled on it a few times and an irritated security officer came out.
“What do you want?” he asked. “The building is closed.”
It can’t be closed, I told him, because it’s not even 5 yet and, besides, there’s a public meeting scheduled.
“No public meetings here,” he said. “We’re closed.”
I showed him a printed agenda. He directed me to another officer.
“We close at 6,” she said.
It’s only 5, I said, and I’m missing my meeting.
“I meant 5,” she said.
They seemed suspicious, but let me in after I showed my driver’s license and signed a register.
I remember the testimony from a representative of Catalyst California a few weeks earlier. She had been invited to speak at the Task Force meeting, but was locked out anyway. As she described the institutional barriers that prevent many residents from being able to access county government, she noted, “We didn’t even know how to get into this building.” It’s a good metaphor, even when it’s not just a metaphor.
I know how to get into the building, but that’s because I have followed county government as a reporter since 1992. I know that you can see the door and still not be able to open it. You can open it but still not be able to walk inside. You can walk inside and still not find what you’re looking for. You have to bring the agenda. You have to be insistent. But not too insistent.
Did others come to the engagement session but give up after pulling on the locked door? Maybe. Maybe not.
Too much of the nation’s largest local government runs on an “if you know, you know, and if you don’t, you don’t” basis. Too many people who don’t already have a seat at the table – people trying to survive toxic smoke from a weeklong warehouse fire or noxious fumes from a month of rotting food, or figure out why county warning systems didn’t work when fire destroyed their house and killed their neighbors, or get the attention of county officials in unincorporated areas like Castaic or East Los Angeles, or hug their child at a juvenile hall, or get help with addiction, poverty, homelessness, unemployment, wage theft or any of the many hundreds of duties that are assigned to counties – have been locked out of the metaphorical building.
The point of Measure G was never merely to tinker with government org charts, because really – who cares? The point is to make Los Angeles County government more responsive to the needs of its people.
Good on David Green for saying, as he did, that members of his union not only want to protect their rights as workers, but also want to serve county residents better. I believe him.
I also believe the Task Force wants to do a better job of engaging the public. More than a year into their work, it would be nice to see them get a little better at it.
Next: "It's too confusing."
Previously: "Executive dominance."