Thursday, 4/10/97
Q&A
with Erwin Chemerinsky
By Scott Lunceford
Daily Bruin Staff
In Tuesday’s election, Erwin Chemerinsky was voted charter
commissioner for District 5, which includes UCLA and its adjacent
communities. On July 1, he, along with 14 commissioners from other
districts, will embark on a rigorous legislative journey: updating
the arcane, 70-year-old Los Angeles City Charter. After
streamlining the 680 page document to better fit the needs of 21st
century Los Angeles (a two-year task), Chemerinsky and his
associates will face another challenge: getting local citizens to
vote their proposal into action.
In addition to his extensive academic and professional
experience in government structure, Chemerinsky is sensitive to
issues of diversity and equal opportunity. In today’s Q & A,
this newly-elected member of L.A.’s inaugural Charter Commission
discusses ways in which local government can be shaped to address
the pressing concerns of our rapidly-expanding city.
On Tuesday, three judges in a federal appeals court overturned
the injunction against Prop. 209. In your June ’96 paper on CCRI,
you anticipated the drop-off in college applications from ethnic
and underrepresented communities. The Office of the UC President
has already acknowledged this is taking place within the UC system.
How can the revision of the city charter help repair the access to
higher education that will be damaged by Prop. 209?
Unfortunately, the city charter is going to be very limited in
what it can do to repair the damage of 209 with regard to
education. Most higher education is regulated through the state
university and state college systems. So, there, the city is
powerless. Even as to the city college system, 209 is binding. If
Tuesday’s ruling goes into effect, what the city can do is
limited.
However, the city still has an obligation to the city colleges
and to the Los Angeles Unified School District to make sure that
the effects of discrimination are eradicated, that there is full
opportunity for women and minorities. So, the challenge for the
city with regard to those programs it can control is to find
substitutes for affirmative action, to find ways of increasing and
maintaining diversity without the affirmative action programs.
At the city level, there can be outreach programs designed to
reach into underrepresented communities and strengthen the K-12
schools in those areas, and let people know that the conduit to
college and university education is still open and available.
Yes, and it is essential that the city do everything that it can
– consistent with 209 if it goes into effect – to ensure equal
opportunity, but not just in education. Los Angeles is a huge
employer. Los Angeles is engaged in the vast business of
contracting. And it is essential that the city does not become an
"Old Boys" network.
Each member of the City Council represents an average of almost
a quarter-million people. It becomes questionable as to whether the
individual Los Angeles resident has adequate access to and
influence on local government. Is the advent of neighborhood
councils one way of addressing this concern?
Members of the Los Angeles City Council represent more people
than any other city councilperson in the country. The 15-member
City Council was devised in the 1870s for a city that was much
smaller. So there are a couple of things which need to be
addressed. First, the size of the City Council needs to be
increased. We need to reduce the size of City Council districts.
Obviously, as the numbers within the body go up, there is a
possible loss of efficiency. On the other hand, the expansion of
the City Council to 25, 30, 40, or even 50 members, as seen with
Chicago, would allow more access to their City Council.
The second thing that I think there needs to be is neighborhood
councils. These are sometimes called boroughs. Some decisions don’t
need to be made in downtown Los Angeles; they can be made in the
neighborhoods. Zoning decisions and land use decisions are some
examples of that. I would like the Charter Commission to adopt, as
part of its city charter proposal, neighborhood councils with paid
elected individuals with specific authority in particular areas.
The only catch is there has to be the opportunity for the City
Council to override by a two-thirds voucher. And the reason for
that is, there are some things that no one wants in their
neighborhoods, like sewage dumps, and it is essential that those be
someplace.
For the mayor of the second largest city in the U.S., it is
surprising how little executive authority Mayor Riordan has. Is
there a need to allocate more power to the mayor’s office, and if
so, are there ways of allocating more power to the mayor without
undermining the power of local communities?
Yes, in answer to all of that. The mayor’s power does need to be
strengthened, but it has to be strengthened together with there
being checks and balances to make sure that it is used in an
accountable way.
I think it is essential that the mayor be able to appoint the
heads of all departments and commissions and bureaus in the city.
Right now, the mayor doesn’t get to appoint, for example, the
police chief, or the head of the fire department, or the head of
almost any of the departments. I think that should be the mayor’s
prerogative. It should be, however, subject to City Council
confirmation …
I would generally allow, if my vision was followed, the mayor to
remove the heads of departments and commissions, subject to some
exceptions. For example, I would not allow the mayor to be able to
remove the head of the Ethics Commission, because that’s somebody
who is potentially investigating the mayor …
Right now, as of this morning, you are looking at the first days
of your two-year tenure as charter commissioner. You are doing much
more than thinning the pages of what people consider to be an
arcane, 680 page book; you are participating in structuring an
enormous local government. Are there specific areas of the task
that you find especially daunting?
I find the entire task is daunting, but it is also a wonderful
challenge. The challenge is to design the structure of city
government of Los Angeles for the 21st century.
There is no city that is like Los Angeles in the country. It is
huge in population, although perhaps not the biggest. It is huge in
geographic scope – probably the biggest. It certainly is diverse,
if not more so, than any other city. Every advantage of any city is
here, but so is every problem. The question is: How do we design a
structure of government to deal with it? It is an incredibly
important challenge.
The City Charter Commission has another challenge to add to
that. What we devise will go before the voters in two years. It
will only go into effect if the voters approve it. Given the
history of charter reform in Los Angeles and other cities, it often
happens that wonderful charters are written but get turned down by
the voters.
In 1970, there was a really good proposal for a new city
charter, and it got rejected. San Diego, and many other cities,
have had that happen. So, from the very beginning, the City Charter
Commission is being mindful both of the task of devising what the
government should be like, but also going about its business in a
way that maximizes the chance that it will ultimately get
approved.
I keep talking about the possible lack of representation and
lack of access to government in Los Angeles. I read that Tuesday’s
dismal 20 percent turnout for the elections may be a record low,
and I noticed that ballot measures one and two were both voted
down, which were designed to create better access to the polls.
From your perspective, what will it take to get voters to show up
at the local level?
I think the single largest reason for the low turnout yesterday
(Tuesday) was the mayor’s race, which was not perceived as close.
It didn’t inspire the people. The issue of charter reform never
caught on in the public consciousness.
I think we need to think of ways to get people more involved in
local government. I think we should consider changing the time of
municipal elections to coincide with June or November elections
where people are going to be participating anyway. The original
rationale is if you put a mayoral election at the same time as a
presidential election, it will get drowned out in the public
consciousness, but I don’t think that is necessarily so, and you
will certainly have more people participating than you have people
participating now.
Also, my hope is that if we would have neighborhood councils
where more people could feel directly involved in government, then
more people might be more likely to participate.
Regarding the newly elected commission, do you feel like there
is going to be a period where you have to hammer out certain topics
and work out a direction, or do you already see a unified vision
for Los Angeles among the other members?
We are a brand new organization. We don’t have any precedents to
follow, so we have to decide how we are going to go about our task.
Two years seems like a long time, but it can go by very fast. There
are many questions we have to ask, even questions like, "Where are
we meeting? Do we have any money?" The initiative didn’t provide us
any money. Riordan said he would raise money for us, but show me
the money! So, I have concerns. We can’t be beholden to the
mayor.
The importance of Prop. A is that we are independent. We are
elected. We are answerable to the people – not the mayor, not the
City Council. So, if the mayor raises the money does that create
some appearance of impropriety?
How are we going to structure our agenda? What issues are we
going to take in what order? I would like to see us hold public
hearings for the first six months so that everyone gets a chance to
participate.
Are we going to try to produce an entire charter, or are we
going to go piece by piece through it? How are we going to gain the
assent of the city as we go along if there’s a chance that it’s
going to get canned at the end? I could go on and on with these
questions and how we deal with those organizational, logistical
agenda questions will probably determine whether or not we succeed
or whether or not we fail.