VENICE NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL PRESIDENT LINDA LUCKS said she will allow members of the council’s Land Use and Planning Committee to vote at its next meeting even if they missed the Aug. 1 deadline to take the city ethics training course.
By Gary Walker
Less than half of the members of the Venice Neighborhood Council Land Use and Planning Committee have not taken ethics training, despite a board resolution requiring them to pass the city’s mandated course by Aug. 1.
The local council, which has historically been one of the most compliant of Los Angeles’ 95 neighborhood councils, voted 15-0 May 22 to amend its bylaws to require the Land Use and Planning Committee to also pass the conflict of interest test.
“Any member of the board of officers who has a financial or material pecuniary interest in an item, as defined by state, federal or local laws, shall recuse themselves from voting on any item in question,” the new rule states.
“Any member of the Venice Neighborhood Council who has not received a certificate of completion for the mandated ethics training within 55 days of taking office, whether by appointment or election, will be prohibited from voting on any land use issues or financial expenditures of any city funds.
“This standing rule shall apply to all members of the Budget Committee and the Planning and Land Use Committee effective Aug. 1, 2013.”
The Land Use and Planning Committee members are Jory Tremblay, Sarah Dennison, Mehrnoosh Mojallali, Jake Kaufmann, Robert Aronson, James Murez, John Reed, Mia Herndon and Steven Traeger.
Their meetings are held on the first and third Wednesdays of each month. The first meeting of August was held Aug. 7.
Venice Neighborhood Council President Linda Lucks said perhaps four or five committee members had shown her their certificates of completion when she was contacted by The Argonaut Aug. 2. Lucks said she will permit committee members who did not comply with the local council’s mandate of Aug. 1 to vote on planning and land use matters, despite the new council guidelines.
“I am making an executive decision that anyone who hasn’t taken the training by Aug. 1 but does so before the next board meeting will be allowed to vote,” she said.
Venice resident Karen Wolfe found the contradiction between the committee’s lack of compliance and the local council’s history of being a standard-bearer on ethics in the city confusing.
“How serious can anyone take the board if they can’t even enforce their own motion?” she asked. “And how meaningful was the motion?”
Sue Kaplan thinks those who have not taken the conflict of interest course should take it prior to voting on any project before them.
“Especially as the mission of the committee is to handle exactly just the sort of things that could bring them into conflict in their deliberations with community and the business community,” added Kaplan, who lives in Venice. “They have a complicit obligation to the community to be forthcoming and responsible in their committee dealings.”
Board member Ira Koslow, who chairs the council’s bylaw committee, said in May that members of the budget and land use committee are instrumental in shaping board fiscal and planning policy in two areas and therefore should be held to the same ethical requirements as council members.
“The idea is if you’re voting on financial and land use matters, then you should be taking ethics training,” he explained.
Only one member of the committee – Kaufmann, the committee chair – is also a member of the neighborhood council, and unlike those on the full board, their compliance or noncompliance with ethics training is not listed on the website of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, the city agency that oversees neighborhood councils.
DONE General Manager Grayce Liu said the reason the committee members are not listed is because very few neighborhood councils require their committees to take ethics training.
As for requiring members of certain committees to take conflict of interest training, Liu responded, “For all neighborhood councils, the more that you know, the better it is for everyone.”
Challis McPherson, who is a former member of the local council and the land use and planning committee, said the committee was one of the most important on the council and agrees with the ethics training requirement. “They’ve had plenty of warning about this,” she asserted. “They need to take the training. There is no excuse.”
The committee has been criticized by some residents for prior votes allowing for larger developments and home additions, as well as for approving a number of liquor licenses. While advisory in nature, neighborhood councils and their committees held a great deal of sway with former City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who represented Venice.
Councilman Mike Bonin, who took Rosendahl’s place on the council and who recently visited the Venice Neighborhood Council, has indicated that he, too, will give a great deal of consideration to his neighborhood councils’ votes on issues in Council District 11.
Wolfe, a former member of the Land Use and Planning Committee, wondered if Bonin’s office could now take any of the local board’s resolutions seriously if they act in a cavalier fashion regarding the committee’s ethics training mandate.
“I’m really surprised at this because the council has a long history of being in compliance with ethics,” said Wolfe, who served for two years on the neighborhood council.
Some neighborhood councils appear to be taking ethics training more seriously in recent months. Following an Argonaut story that detailed how many Westside incumbents were not in compliance when they sought reelection during the 2012 neighborhood council elections, all have now completed the city-mandated conflict of interest course.
On March 9, the Neighborhood Council of Westchester-Playa approved a motion by vice president Mark Redick that allows the council’s president to remove a member of the council who has not passed the city’s ethics requirement after three months.
Lucks said she would ask board secretary Kristopher Valentine to provide to The Argonaut the certificates of completion of those who took the training before and after the deadline. As The Argonaut went to press, no certificates had been provided.
Gary@ArgonautNews.com
This article never should have been written. For the accuser to attack volunteers in this fashion as if they did something unethical is irresponsible and McCarthy-like. The members of the Land Use and Planning Committee deserve an apology as well as a thank-you for their service. To suggest some lack of credibility of the whole Venice Neighborhood Council is arrogant, rude and self-serving.
I agree in part with my fellow constituent: A publication, political rival or individual stakeholder would be arrogant, rude and self-serving to attack civic volunteers without evidence of wrongdoing.
I disagree that this article does that. I also disagree that the article attacks the entire Venice Neighborhood Council.
The article follows its own title, reporting that some LUPC members failed to provide timely certification of ethics training.
The article also reports that the VNC President made a difficult choice: Allow the busy LUPC project calendar to move forward this one time or stop LUPC’s work because the non-compliant LUPC members created a hardship for themselves, their fellow committee members and the community.
VNC is eminent among our city’s Neighborhood Councils, with enough organized participation to help bring the kind of change mandated by the City’s NC-enabling Charter amendment. LUPC is arguably VNC’s most influential committee.
Under Challis Macpherson, LUPC Chair from 2006 to 2010, the committee assembled an exemplary NC land use review procedures template, which Challis has shared by request with many NCs throughout our city.
Having worked alongside Challis throughout that period, and with long-time LUPC members Robert Aronson, Jim Murez and John Reed, I can testify to the high level of transparency, public notice and records availability we provided to the Venice community. So can fellow stakeholder Bruce Birch, whose regular reminders made us work better.
LUPC earned its title “The Jewel of VNC” during Challis’ term. LUPC continues to work hard under Jake Kaufmann; however, we hear too many community members complaining today of alienation due to reports about LUPC’s internal and public-facing failures.
While perfection cannot be expected, we must move in that direction. This article might signal a need to review LUPC’s responsibilities to the Board and its responsiveness to the public.
“The Jewel of VNC” needs to dust itself off so that its project review choices and applicant negotiations are more transparent and publicly available for open review.
Further, LUPC’s influential role dictates that, in addition to acting with transparency, the committee must also provide the _appearance_ of transparency, as directed by ethics code guidelines. Simply providing audio meeting recordings, as LUPC did until 2010, would go a long way towards repairing current perceptions about LUPC.
The snafu is also about leadership. The LUPC Chair can and should urge members to fulfill their compliance obligations before the next Board meeting. This required volunteer work can be completed in under three hours – even if you resist the self-serving temptation to take the exam as an open-book test.
LUPC is in a position to renew its primary objective: Put the community first. Timely completion of ethics training will improve credibility going forward, both with project applicants and with the community. It will also make you an even better public servant.
First, the correct spelling of the chair of LUPC’s name is spelled Jake Kaufman. Many people, including myself, think that Jake and the current members of LUPC are doing an exemplary job of representing Venice. The amount of time these highly skilled members put into this voluntary commitment is staggering. Their level of knowledge about everything is impressive. Personally I believe everyone should have completed their ethics training in time as the board had voted, but did this issue really deserve a whole page in the Argonaut? No one can doubt that Challis made a huge contribution to LUPC and the Neighborhood Council – but it should also be noted that she was reprimanded several times for conflict of interest and representing her own views instead of the way her committee voted, which I witnessed personally once at a city planning hearing. What’s more interesting to me is how Linda, once again, right or wrong, went around her own elected board’s decision about their bylaws to make an “executive decision” of her own.
Linda Lucks shame on you for this article. Your job as president is to reach out to your board, not put them in shame and criticize them behind their back in a newspaper article. You have really broken that trust of ethics with many of them. It shows lack of respect and losing control of your board. You owe an apology to Jake Kaufman because his committee is one of the most hard working of all.The LUPC meets deadlines and reports. If anything, contractors and builders fear presentation before LUPC because they are really a tough group. You are dealing with top professionals not children. Lawyers, accomplished architects of the first class. More books have been published on Venice because of its uniqueness in architecture, and development. I have never seen in the years of my participation with the VNC seen any hanky panky business from the LUPC nor the Budget Committee. If some think so there is a grievance procedure to file. Do you have an agenda in them meeting this certificate of ethics? We are an example as a Neighborhood Council for the city. If anything monies have been given fairly to the right organizations for projects. You have been a Commissioner for DONE, been elected three times to the VNC. This article should have never been written and should have gone before the board. Not taken upon your own to make a statement.