How To Kill L.A. City Council Corruption, Short Version

For those of us Angelenos who already know that the city is lethally corrupt, Zwartz Talk will not belabor the obvious and move directly to how to kill corruption.

Here is the Solution To LA Corruption

The Alternative to the Current Corrupt System is the 3/15/45 City Council

Here’s the new system. Each council district will have three (3) at large councilpersons. As there are fifteen (15) council districts, that means the City Council will have 45 members. This number is consistent with other large metropolitan areas.

Chicago has 50 councilmembers. Their districts are called “wards” And each councilmember represents and serves 54,000 resident.

New York City has 51 councilmembers and each serves 158,824 residents.

San Francisco has 11 councilmembers and each serves 77,273 residents

Present day L.A. City Council has 15 councilmembers, and each serves 330,468 residents [The City’s population in 2015 is 4,957,022 people.] The Los Angeles City Council has the worst per resident representation in the entire nation.

Increasing the number of L.A. councilpersons to 45 will still leave Chicago and San Francisco with a better ratio of residents per councilmember. Chicago will have 54,000 residents per councilmember, San Francisco will have 77,273 residents per councilmember and Los Angeles will have 110,156 residents per councilperson.

Thus, the new 3/15/45 City Council will move Los Angeles from being dead last in representation to being third best in representation.

The Goal of the 3/15/45 City Council

The goal of the 3/15/45 City Council, however, is to destroy the present criminal voting system. Merely expanding the number of councilmembers will not achieve that goal. The problem is that each member has geographic exclusivity which makes him/her the dictator within his district. The only way to limit his/her power is to counter-balance it with other power.

The key to ending corruption is a new balance of power and that requires destroying geographic exclusivity. Geography exclusivity is easily destroyed. When each council district has three councilmembers all who serve at large and who are elected in the same election, no councilperson will be the exclusive voice for his district. All councilpersons will be in competition with each other to get votes for the next election. Since only the top three vote-getters will be one of the three councilpersons, no one’s position is secure. They will have to work and earn their $187,610.00 per year.

How Ending Geographic Exclusivity
Will Prevent City Council Corruption

When each councilperson has one out of three votes, no single councilperson can deliver his/her entire district in support of another district. If councilperson #1 is a shill for the developers and votes yes for a project in another district, the other two councilpersons are likely to vote No.

Here’s why the other councilpersons will not also shill for developers. Since all councilpersons in one district have to run against each other in the same election, they are all competing against each other, knowing that the top three vote-getters will become councilpersons. When councilperson #1 is the developers’ shill, candidates #2 and candidate #3 concentrate on voters with other interests. Councilperson #2 may appeal to voters with a passionate interest in the schools, or parks, or street repair, or in DWP reform, or in traffic improvement. Candidate #3 may be the anti-developer person and there may be enough anti-developer candidates to make him one of the three. Appealing to the non-developer votes can gain the other candidates enough votes to come in 2nd or 3rd in the election and hence become a councilperson.

Under the new 3/15/45 city council, the council candidates know that they can oppose the mega-developers or any other special interest group like billboard companies and still be elected. It does not matter if the developer candidate out spends everyone else 100 to 1 in order to get elected. There still will be two other councilpersons who are not beholden to the developers.

As Councilmember Garcetti proved, under the current system, one may remain councilmember until terms limits kick him out of office, and he will never have to pay any attention to anyone except to the mega-developers with their mega-bucks. If Councilmember Garcetti had had two other CD 13 councilmembers, they would not supported the Millennium Earthquake Towers, they would not have supported the fatally flawed Hollywood Community Plan, or the Target Store at Sunset and Western. Instead, the other two CD 13 councilmembers would have been more likely championed a better qualify of life for Hollywoodians — not more profits for mega-developers. 

How Destroying Geographic Exclusivity
Destroys The Criminal Voting Practices

Under the 3/15/45 system, retaliation against a councilperson who votes against a bad project in another district is impossible. While Councilperson #1 may want everyone to vote for his bad project, when one or two of the other councilpersons from his own district vote No, there is no way for him to retaliate against councilpersons from another district. So what if two councilpersons from San Pedro vote against a Project in the Valley and councilperson #1 tries to retaliate by voting No on a San Pedro project. There are still two other councilpersons from his district to support the project in the San Pedro area. The present criminal voting pact is held together by the threat of retaliation, but when Geographic Exclusivity is destroyed, the ability to retaliate is destroyed.

The same would be true for Councilmember Krekorian’s CD 2. All three CD #2 councilmembers would not have allowed Marilyn Monroe’s home to be unlawfully demolished. With three councilpersons representing the same council district, no single councilperson can guarantee a developer that his project will be approved despite his breaking the law. The other councilpersons will have a vested interest in exposing the unlawful behavior.
Certain key points of the 3/15/45 City Council need to be emphasized.

1) Each district has three (3) councilpersons.

2) Each councilperson serves at large. No councilperson will ever be allowed to have exclusive control over a geographic area. That means no sub-districts.

3) All three councilpersons have to run in the same election against each other. There will be no staggered elections within a council district. Competition among the three councilpersons is crucial in order to create a balance of power. No competition = no balance of power

4) Because all three councilpersons are elected in the same election, that requirement reduces the number of votes needed to become a councilperson. The third top vote-getter may receive less than 20% of the vote.

5) More people are likely to vote when they realize that the chances of their obtaining some representation is much higher.

Right now, a challenger has to get 51% of the vote to unseat a councilmember and that is very hard. The challenger has poor name recognition. When voters see a familiar name on the ballot, they overwhelmingly vote for that name. [That’s the way things are, not the way they should be.]

With the new 3/15/45 city council, there will be an absolute guarantee that there will be three (3) winners in each election. Thus, the percentage of votes necessary to become a councilperson is much lower. Someone with only 20% might come in third place. Under the present system, that person has no chance to become a councilmember.

Another way to phrase it is that the emphasis shifts away from trying to drive someone out of office to trying to gain enough votes to be one of the three who is put into office. That requires a lower total number of votes for the third candidate.

The likelihood that more citizens will vote is much higher with the new 3/15/45 city council. Voters will realize that there is a good chance that their candidate will win one of the three seats. People do not vote when they see it as hopeless, but they do take the time to vote when there is a realistic opportunity to put “their guy/gal” into office.

Also, under this new system, the most dishonest and the most honest councilpersons have to behave properly. They all have to strive to please the voters. But, let’s say one councilperson has the deep pocket support of the mega-developers? So what? He won’t have the power to get approval of the developer’s projects as he has only 1 out of 45 votes. Rather, projects will be judged on their merits – something that never occurs under the present system.

How would this 3/15/45 system have worked in real life Hollywood during the 2000’s? For one thing, Hollywood would have had a new Target Store years ago. When Councilmember Garcetti demanded that Target construct an unlawful project which violated SNAP, Target would have moved to the next councilmember who wouldn’t be making extortionist demands. Garcetti would have lacked the power to carry out his alleged threat to prevent Target from building unless they built what he wanted. Target would have walked out on Garcetti and gone to a councilmember who wasn’t involved in extortion.

Thus, it is vital that we break the Geographic Exclusivity which each councilmember holds. Even two councilmembers are likely to collude. The triad of three makes collusion virtually impossible as it will be so very easy for the voters to kick one or two of them out of office.

Summary

If we want to leave our children a less corrupt city, now is the time to institute the 3/15/45 City Council.

=====

publish date January 24, 2018