That Special Election in PA: Not about Dem's Enthusiasm; It was about Fear and Loathing

The buzz word used by radio commentators has been enthusiasm, as in Democratic voters coming out to vote. Let me tell all the pundits who have been using that word: This was not about enthusiasm in the sense of joyful optimism. 

Anything but. 

It was all about what we have been talking about since the day after the presidential election. It was about disgust for what Trump represents, opposition to what he is doing, and fear of what he will do next. The difference is that some people who habitually vote Republican are holding back, and Democrats who might have ignored the chance to vote saw a chance and took it. 

No, it wasn't enthusiasm in the traditional sense. It was more like anger and fear. In this sense, it is the mirror image of the Tea Party vote. 

It was also an indication that the Resistance, such as it is, is having an effect. Of course the main contributor to the Resistance is Trump himself. 

And by Resistance, I don't mean any organized group -- although there are plenty of them -- I mean the day-to-day grinding down of our human sensibilities. It's all the taunting, lying, and just plain bullying. It's the growing recognition by the political center that we have to protect ourselves from Trump, and the way to do that is to vote against Republican control when we have the chance. The resistance is what is happening inside of people's heads. 

The big difference is that the reaction to Trump is so pronounced that even traditionally Republican districts have been shifting. It's not necessarily a huge shift in each case, but ten points is a lot of voters and a ten point switch will affect a lot of congressional elections. 

What the Democratic Message Ought to Be 

The PA 18 election suggests that the majority of voters (however narrow that majority will turn out to be) felt that the  Republican Party has moved out of the mainstream. The Democrats ought to be subtly communicating that they are the party of the center. I know that a lot of activists on the left won't like this, but the way to win at the national level is to convince the people that you represent progress without tearing down the walls. 

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Making Things Overly Complicated: Neighborhood Council Funding 

They're all nice people. On Wednesday night there were 19 of them ranged around a table, four long meetings into a process that could have been finished in half an hour. But they are trying to be fair. And this is one time where there is truth in the description being fair to a fault. 

We're talking about something called the Funding Equity group. It's not an investment bank or a political slush fund. It's a group of people thrust into the position of trying to square the circle or solve Catch 22. 

The context is the Los Angeles system of neighborhood councils as overseen by the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners (BONC). 

The Funding Equity group consists of a couple dozen people who were appointed by the BONC to find a solution to a problem we have had all along but have managed to avoid solving. 

Briefly speaking, their problem stems from this historical context: 

In 2001, neighborhood councils came into existence. 

Between 2002 and 2004, many neighborhood councils joined the system. 

The city's Charter and enabling legislation called on the city to fund them. 

The city agency charged with aiding neighborhood councils didn't want the hassle of renting offices and buying equipment for the councils. 

The mayor and the agency's general manager figured out that they could just give money to the councils and let the councils do the detail work. 

The mayor (Jim Hahn) decided on a ridiculously high figure of $50,000 per council per year. That number has varied over the years, going as low as $37,000. It has now settled in at $42,000. 

Meanwhile, the original councils that had come into existence before the money was decided -- and had been functioning quite adequately on extremely minimal budgets --  were of all shapes and sizes, ranging from a few thousand people to nearly a hundred thousand. Then came the money, but at a uniform level for all councils. This meant that the larger councils had a lot less to spend per capita than the smaller ones. 

So the inequity of neighborhood council funding has been with us from the very beginning of the funding. People have talked about it over the years, but there was no consensus to be found. 

The problem came to a head when -- due to some political inventiveness by the City Council -- a new, very small council was carved out of a larger council. The Hermon Neighborhood Council has a population of less than 4000 people. Right now, it is entitled to spend $42,000 per year, just like every other council. That's about ten dollars per person, compared to the fifty cents per person available to the larger councils. 

So, to paraphrase the words of one of the Funding Equity group, there is equality but not equity. 

The Simple Approach 

When I originally wrote about Hermon NC and the funding question, the answer seemed simple to me. The logic hasn't changed: 

There are some costs (such as mailing out a newsletter) that are proportional to the number of people you are addressing. That means that if there is to be any funding at all, some of the funding ought to be proportional to population size. 

There are some costs that are pretty much fixed, no matter how big or small the council happens to be. If a council has to provide translators at the monthly meeting, it's pretty much a fixed cost. If they hire somebody to take minutes, that is another fixed cost, and that would be true whether the meeting is attended by 10 people or 200 people. Therefore, there should be some minimal funding level that is fixed for all neighborhood councils. 

Put these concepts together, and you come up with a formula which includes a fixed base plus a second component which is proportional to population. 

When I wrote that earlier column, I was thinking about a fixed component somewhere in the realm of $7000 or so. It could be adjusted upward a little or it could even go down a bit. I also passed along the idea that translational services should not be paid out of the council budget, but should instead be covered by a separate fund run by the city. 

Complicating Things 

My original calculation was based on the idea that the city should appropriate money with as few strings as possible. That is not to say that councils can be unaccountable -- clearly they have to deal honestly with the taxpayers' money -- but it should be left to the individual councils to decide the beneficiaries of its expenditures. 

In each of the two Funding Equity group meetings I've attended, there have been panelists who have argued for specific limitations on particular kinds of spending. One such argument in this week's meeting involved limiting the dollars spent on office rentals, among other things. 

A Decision is Made 

Well into the second hour of the meeting, Tony Wilkinson made a motion. It was for agreement in principle that annual stipends should be composed of a funding base plus an additional amount proportional to population. Like I said weeks ago, this is pretty much where things need to go if logic is followed. 

(You can even use math if you want: seven thousand dollars base plus one dollar per resident.) 

But then a small tempest blew up. You see, the city Charter and the enabling legislation refer not to residents, but to stakeholders of neighborhood councils. That category isn't limited to residents of a council district. It also includes people who work in the district. It includes property owners. So here is the problem: How do you define population -- is it to be residents of a district, or some estimation of the total number of stakeholders, with employees and property owners included? 

I think that a little bit of thought should convince you that defining population by the number of people who reside in the district is the way to go. Otherwise, we would be facing a perpetual argument over how many people work in downtown on a given day, and how to handle that number in determining neighborhood council stipends. 

Or -- this is my favorite argument on the stakeholder question -- consider the fact that when China Shipping was using San Pedro, it meant that we had a business that was at least partially owned by Red China, which meant that every Chinese citizen was in some small way an owner of property in our council district. Should the San Pedro and Wilmington neighborhood council districts be credited with an extra billion stakeholders? We've got downtown L.A. beat if we go by that standard. 

Interestingly, the Funding Equity group came around, adding residence to the definition of population and passed the motion with two nays and one or two abstentions. In this sense, the Funding Equity group has rejected the oft repeated idea that neighborhood councils have some undefined population of stakeholders, and went with a concept that is more practical. From a legalistic standpoint, I would argue that the city can appropriate dollars to neighborhood councils on a measurable number of residents rather than on an undefined number of potential stakeholders. We'll see if the attorneys agree or disagree. 

And One Other Thing 

As I mentioned above, I originally suggested a baseline stipend of around $7000 because it covers basic expenses like photocopiers, food for meetings, and hiring some outside staff to take minutes. Perhaps that number is a little low, but for a council with a total of 3500 residents, I don't see the need for a huge electromechanical infrastructure. Nevertheless, if somebody wants to total up reasonable expenditures and show that they add up to $10,000, I will be willing to look at the data. 

But the current members of this Funding Equity group have a very different idea. In general, the baseline stipend as suggested by panel members ran from $25,000 to $32,000 and in one case, $37,000. 

I think I understand the political underpinnings of these proposals. They protect the middling-small neighborhood council from having its current budget cut. Most everybody gets in on the goodies, as defined as a stipend pretty close to the current level. 

I think it's also obvious that many of the panelists think of themselves as representing a particular district (or even one particularly small neighborhood council) in offering these proposals. 

The people proposing these baseline levels are missing one point. It's going to come out in public that Hermon Neighborhood Council is still getting a huge level of support that it doesn't deserve. I have a feeling that this won't go over well in the City Council. It has what they call "bad optics." 

So I Made a Suggestion 

At public comment, I suggested that there should be both minimum and maximum levels on a per capita basis. If there were a maximum stipend of $3 per resident, then Hermon Neighborhood Council would still get $10,000 but it wouldn't look quite so crazy to outsiders. Likewise, a neighborhood council with a population nearing 80,000 should get a little more than the current level, so a minimum stipend of 75 cents per person would get them up to $60,000 or so. 

Personally, I would go for a maximum level of $2 per resident per year, but a level a dollar higher would be a reasonable compromise.

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The Subdivision Maze 

The historical fact that has half this panel obsessed is that the Hermon Neighborhood Council carved itself out of a larger council -- and now they get the same $42,000 per year. The process by which a group of people or a small neighborhood decides it wants to secede from a larger council is referred to as subdivision. Why, the panelists ask, should we reward secessionist groups by giving them the same amount of money as everyone else? What's to stop small neighborhoods from filing their subdivision papers just to get their hands on more money? 

There were some panelists who were strongly opposed to subdivisions, apparently for these reasons. 

I think this is an unfortunate position to take. Back in the original days of the L.A. neighborhood council system, a local university studied public participation and found that groups of about 5000 people were the optimal size for getting people involved. There may even be some neighborhoods that are twice that size and that have cohesion. It is easy to see how the neighborhoods in the area I live can be divided into five or ten thousand person chunks. 

We shouldn't reject the virtues of subdivision on the basis of a wholly artificial worry about smaller groups grabbing all the money. There should be an equitable way of apportioning money to a larger number of smaller groups. And this is particularly true because the smaller groups would select their populations and boundaries based on the fact that cohesion and internal communications already exist. 

In short, the Funding Equity group should consider how a funding system would work for neighborhood councils varying in size from 3500 to perhaps 20,000. That change would solve a lot of problems we currently have, ranging from representation to elections.

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])

-cw