No Money for Neighborhood Council Elections, Budget Official Warns

The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to transfer authority for running the Chatsworth Neighborhood Council elections this year from the city clerk to the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, amidst a warning there will be no money for the races.

On an 11-2 vote, the council agreed to instruct the City Attorney's Office to draft an ordinance for all 90 Neighborhood Councils to make the transfer of authority official.     

The city's administrative code requires the city clerk to run Neighborhood Council elections between April-June of every even-numbered year. However, the council took away the clerk's budget for running the elections during budget negotiations in May, putting City Clerk June Lagmay at risk of violating the code.

The City Attorney's Office had until 2014, a move Councilman Paul Krekorian said would be the death of the Neighborhood Council system.

"If you tell Neighborhood Council board members that, like it or not, they're on the hook for another two years, I can tell you that you will have extensive defections throughout this city," Krekorian said.

"The Neighborhood Council movement that we promised to the people of this city, the commitment to neighborhood empowerment and democracy that we promised the people of this city when this city was on the verge of breaking apart, we would have abrogated that promise if we sabotage these 2012 elections," he said.

Instead, Krekorian proposed transferring the authority to Department of Neighborhood Empowerment General Manager BongHwan Kim, who said he could run the elections with a budget of around $650,000.

City Clerk June Lagmay said she had requested $1.9 million to run the elections, but was given $1.3 million.

City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana, the city's top budget adviser, told the council there is no money to pay for the elections.

"We don't have the funding to pay for this," he said, reminding the council that the city is facing a $72 million budget deficit for the fiscal year that ends in June. Santana said no department would be spared by cuts in the next six months to reduce the deficit.

Councilman Richard Alarcon strongly opposed giving Kim authority to run the elections, saying the department did a poor job when it previously did so.

"The city clerk should not be strapped with something that they are not funded to do, but I also believe that DONE is not funded to conduct these elections," Alarcon said. "They cannot do a proper job."

Alarcon recommended postponing the elections from six months to two years, but was overruled.

Kim said the department could run the elections efficiently and cheaply and said he would bring a detailed plan before the council in four to six weeks.

-- City News Service