CommentsPLATKIN ON PLANNING-If you want to understand the deeper politics of empowerment, especially when it comes to Neighborhood Councils in Los Angeles, please read on.
This is the political essence of empowerment: no one who has power bothers to become empowered.
They are already the decision makers, what George W. Bush called the “deciders.” This is the essence of their governmental power. And, no one who has been “empowered” actually has any real power because they are still NOT the decision makers.
At best, the empowered are kibitzers, people who offer their opinions to decision makers because these officials periodically take heed of their views. At worst, the empowered just keep busy through committee reports and parliamentary procedure, periodically passing motions that get shelved at City Hall.
Why bother with empowerment?
Why have the decision makers created so many avenues of empowerment, when in fact, they still monopolize power? It is because the purpose of empowerment is to give the powerless the subjective feeling that they have a say in top-down governmental decisions that affect their lives. This illusion of power obfuscates the actual decision making process, even when the City of LA’s Year 2000 charter spells it out in detail. That is when the City Council established Neighborhood Councils, to which they now award small annual grants.
Prior to the new Charter, neighborhood groups were independent from City Hall, and they successfully forced through many land use changes, including the AB 283 zoning consistency program and many Specific Plans. Community groups even mounted serious ballot initiatives to peel off the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood, and San Pedro from Los Angeles to become separate cities. In that era, City Hall felt threatened by successful local activists, which is why the City Council created two parallel Charter Commissions. Part of their agenda was to sidetrack neighborhood activists through empowerment programs, especially Neighborhood Councils.
In this effort, Los Angeles is hardly alone. Many major cities have comparable empowerment programs, and they have a clear intellectual history.
One of the foremost exponents of municipal empowerment is political scientist, Robert Putnam, former Dean of the Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In Bowling Alone, Putnam advanced the idea of neighborhood councils as a tool of convincing governance. In effect, he meant successfully creating a subjective feeling of power while keeping the public on the fringe of decision-making.
Putnam’s concept of neighborhood councils has been widely implemented across the entire country. This means that local Los Angeles pols, like Mayors Richard Riordan and Antonio Villaraigosa, who became public supporters, were hardly their originators. They just hopped on the bandwagon.
In other cities the same process often goes by different names. In New York City there are 59 official Community Boards, all legally created in 1975. In Washington, DC, they are called Advisory Neighborhood Commissions. In Seattle, where I first worked as a City Planner, there are 13 official Neighborhood Districts.
But, regardless of their name or numbers, the underlying concept, as developed by Putnam, is the same. Use municipal government to legally establish local councils – in effect, student councils for adults – that keep organized residents busy offering their non-binding opinions to decision.
In addition to neighborhood councils, cities also have other ways to give their residents the impression that they are part of the decision-making process. For example, in Los Angeles, we have:
- City Commissions. These were created in the “good government” period of the early 20th Century to counter local corruption. The City’s Charter creates them, and the Mayor nominates their members, who the City Council then approves. Because elected officials vet all Commission members, when it comes to land use decisions, they almost always side with real estate speculators.
- Public hearings and public testimony. The commissions and some quasi-judicial officials, like Zoning Administrators, hold public hearings on their cases. The public has the right to review files, attend hearings, and submit written and oral testimony.
- The right of appeal. In land use cases the public has the right of appeal, and depending on the type of case, some appeals eventually reach the City Council, which makes the final call.
- Some Historical Preservation Overlay Zone Districts and Specific Plans have appointed boards that review cases and make recommendations to the Director of Planning.
In addition, there are less formal forms of empowerment. When preparing plans and complex land use ordinances, City Planning typically organizes community workshops, on-line discussion websites, and focus groups. In the past, Planning also formed Citizen Advisory Committees for large projects, and even considered creating Community Plan Advisory Committees for each of LA’s 35 Community Plan areas.
But, all of this hustle and bustle overlooks the most sophisticated empowerment tool of all, voting. While this observation may startle many readers, it deserves careful consideration. In the case of elections, between 8 to18 percent of potential LA voters go to the polls every few years and spend a few minutes voting for a City official. But, as other CityWatch writers have pointed out, these elected officials rarely disagree with each other in public. If you think that the electoral process produces careful examination and debate over policy and budget issues, think again. LA Councilmembers unanimously approve or reject everything that comes before them 99.9 percent of the time.
Of course, it is possible for an outsider to occasionally win an election, as demonstrated by Jackie Goldberg in Council District 13 in 1993, but her City Council colleagues and City Hall’s permanent courtiers quickly cocooned her.
In reality, there is far more intellectual diversity on the pages of CityWatch than at City Hall. At 200 N. Spring Street, groupthink prevails -- debate and disagreement rarely waft up to the high and mighty.
Can knowledge about empowerment become power?
Yes, there are at least three tactics that can covert knowledge about empowerment into political power.
The first tactic is initiatives, such as the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, that cleanse the decision making process -- independent of any cabal at City Hall.
The second tactic is lawsuits since they can force elected officials to follow State and Municipal law when they skirt them to approve favored projects.
The third tactic is mass actions that ignore official protocol. For instance, in Sunland-Tujunga the local community took to the streets in large protests against questionable permits that City Planning issued to Home Depot to build at an abandoned K-Mart site. The formal process was so corrupt that local residents turned to the informal process of mass protests. It is rare in land use cases, but these Angelinos showed that it can be done and that it can work.
(Dick Platkin is a former LA city planner who reports on planning issues for City Watch. He also consults, teaches planning courses, and welcomes comments and corrections at [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
