Elected Officials Forget Why They're In Office And Who Put Them There
This is an exchange I had with one of the Deputy City Attorneys in Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer's office.
I'm one of a coalition of volunteer mediators that has forced Feuer to unkill the grant-funded, volunteer-staffed free community mediation program his office had previously announced he was ending.
We volunteer mediators did this through op-eds I wrote (that others cosigned), radio shows I went on, 55 letters to City Council, the Board of Supes, the Mayor, the Chief of Police, and the Police Commission, and my blistering Feuer repeatedly on Twitter.
Disgustingly, Feuer has shown us that this is an "in-name-only" unkilling of the program, which he's starved of resources for years, taking away cubicles (formerly 10; now only 3, meaning only 3 volunteer mediators can come in to work for free at a time).
Part of this search is investigative. I need to see the contract just signed by Feuer's office with the county. This is an office of lawyers, and they obviously kept a copy of it.
Yet check out this runaround, this refusal to participate in any way in government transparency.
P.S. That contract is LA community members' contract -- it belongs to the people.
Email from a Deputy City Attorney in Feuer's office -- a guy surely doing his bosses' bidding (which is why I've blacked out his name) -- giving me a ridiculous runaround over a contract he knows and I know they have a copy of:
-----Original Message-----
From: NAME DELETED
To: Amy Alkon Sent: Fri, Jul 19, 2019 2:45 pm
Subject: Request for Latest DRP Contract
Good Afternoon Ms. Alkon,
On July 13, 2019, the City received your request for a copy of the latest contract related to the LA County grant for the Dispute Resolution Program. After conducting a diligent search, the City Clerk could not locate the contract you requested, as it is currently in the possession of the County. We anticipate the contract will be on the City Clerk's website in the near future (once the County provides the contract to the City), so we advise that you continue to check the City Clerk website on a regular basis for updates. If you would like to obtain a copy of the contract sooner you can redirect your request to the County who currently possesses the contract. I hope this information is helpful.
Warm Regards,
NAME DELETED
Deputy City Attorney
Los Angeles City Attorney's Office
My reply:
On Fri, Jul 19, 2019 at 3:41 PM Amy Alkon wrote:Thank you, Mr. NAME DELETED,
I know that the LA City Attorney's office has a copy of this contract.
This contract was signed by the head of the Dispute Resolution Program of the City Attorney's office.
I see that you're a Deputy City Attorney at the Los Angeles City Attorney's office.
Since you are right in this office that the program is a unit of, I ask that you help expedite government transparency by sending me a PDF of the contract that I know is filed in the LA City Attorney's Office.
I'm guessing it was not your doing to send me on an adorable wild goose chase for this document, but I hope you'll consider whether that's the kind of government behavior you want to be a part of.
Government transparency is a vital part of democracy and government "by the people, for the people," as Abraham Lincoln put it.
I look forward to your emailing of the PDF of the contract before end of day today.
-Amy Alkon
His reply:
-----Original Message-----
From: NAME DELETED
To: Amy Alkon
Sent: Fri, Jul 19, 2019 4:07 pm
Subject: Re: government transparency -- the City Attorney has this contract Re: Request for Latest DRP Contract
Hello Ms. Alkon,
My response is the same - my office is currently waiting for the County to deliver the contract to us so we can publish it on the County Clerk's Office website for the public to assess. In the meantime, you may submit a request to the County if you need to see the contract sooner: http://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/lac/1033324_PRAContacts.pdf.
"Submit a request." I did that under the California Public Records Act to try to get the exact amount it costs every time a police car goes out to a nuisance complaint. They took months to get back to me (after repeated begging from me) and then the LAPD Discovery Unit said nobody knows what it costs.
Really? Really?!!
This is the sort of runaround Feuer's people are trying to send me on. And I'm not having it -- or at least, I'm going to have it publicly, since I'm forced to have it.
My "open government" question: Why can't "the public" immediately "assess" a contract made with our money (taken from an $8 fee from court filings per the Dispute Resolution Act of 1986, which I have read every word of)?
Oh, right -- it would help we annoying volunteer mediators in using our right to free speech to attack Feuer for killing a program, staffed by volunteers, that doesn't have his stamp on it. (Avis Ridley-Thomas founded the program 30 years ago.)
As I wrote before -- not interested in whatever petty political or personal bullshit led Feuer to kill this program:
Killing the Dispute Resolution Program is simply fiscal idiocy. It preserves vital LAPD resources for crime-fighting when our agreements resolve problems that were leading residents to call LAPD sometimes hundreds of times a year on a neighbor or neighboring business...Additionally, in the midst of a huge housing and homelessness crisis in LA, the Dispute Resolution Program helps keep people in their homes through the landlord-tenant mediations we do.
Finally, the Dispute Resolution Program fulfills a DOJ mandate to provide "access to justice" for all -- which means access to conflict resolution and fair outcomes by all people, including those with financial and other disadvantages.
The disgusting thing I've learned from my time close to government -- volunteering as a mediator, doing free dispute resolution for LA residents one day a week since September?
As morally bankrupt as you, as a relatively clear-eyed libertarian, believe government to be, it's loads worse -- to an absurd degree.
Yes this is how it goes. Which is why you want the smallest government possible. It also isn't unusual to have the cops sent out to harass you or city inspectors or any of the other multiple branches of government.
Think how great it would be if the city inspector decided your apartment no longer was qualified to be grandfathered in and needed to be updated to code right now. You would have to move and wouldn't have as much time to keep bothering city people while costing them pretty much nothing. Plenty of other ways government 'discretion' can be used against you. Which is why I consider 'discretion' and 'flexibility' the same as corruption when the government has them.
Ben at July 21, 2019 8:54 AM
This is the type of situation that would make one fantasize about storming into the City Attorney's office and blasting off kneecaps until someone produces that document. "Was that so hard?"
Fayd at July 21, 2019 9:08 AM
"Thank God we don't get all the government we pay for." - H.L. Mencken
jdgalt at July 21, 2019 9:24 AM
Stop playing their game. Just go out and get grant and commitments to finance the program. Then go public with a big announcement that the program has been saved by an outpouring of support from the community. That'll put the CA over a barrel and they'll be forced to either finance the program or accept the grant commitments. Doing neither will be an admission that they're acting in bad faith.
This is done all the time by non-profits and in Academia. Feuer's tactics are typical when someone wants to kill a program but doesn't want to be accountable for doing so.
And you don't have to get binding grant commitments, a statement of intent is enough at first.
charlie at July 21, 2019 10:21 AM
The bureaucracy exists first and foremost to protect itself, from accountability and from sunshine.
I am pretty sure the mediation program only existed to throw some money at some important constituencies.
Maybe those people have been replaced by another squeaky wheel. Money will follow.
Isab at July 21, 2019 12:12 PM
Charlie, I wrote a letter to Eli Broad, a very wealthy Angeleno.
But I am a financially struggling writer who's putting time in -- in addition to the day I volunteer once a week -- to also save the program.
This program is fiscally valuable to the city and prevents violence, and it should be funded.
The notion that I should "just go out and get grant and commitments to finance the program..."
How should I pay my rent while doing that?
I'm sacrificing now financially and otherwise to put so much time into saving this program because I think it is vital to creating a better Los Angeles and ending individuals' suffering.
However, it is actually the obligation of the City Attorney's Office to fund this program and to support it instead of killing it for whatever petty political or personal bullshit reason.
These programs across the country -- free mediation programs staffed by volunteers like me -- are the wave of the future in conflict resolution, eliminating lengthy and costly court battles and violence when issues go unresolved and then escalate.
What does it cost to keep a person in prison these days?
PS If I were "playing their game," I would have rolled over and taken it when they said the program was cancelled instead of roasting Mike Feuer in every fucking media venue I could get myself into, from Dr. Drew, to John Phillips on KABC morning, to Brian Hunt on KFI...and more to come.
And no, Isab, the mediation program did not only exist "to throw some money at some important constituencies." The people I do mediations for and who the office has done them for in the past are often the poorest and most vulnerable Angelenos. Power brokers can just sue each other.
Amy Alkon at July 21, 2019 1:40 PM
And no, Isab, the mediation program did not only exist "to throw some money at some important constituencies." The people I do mediations for and who the office has done them for in the past are often the poorest and most vulnerable Angelenos. Power brokers can just sue each other.
Amy Alkon at July 21, 2019 1:40 PM
Yes, but those poor people weren't getting paid, and neither were you. Who was? When you know that and you know where the funding was diverted to, you will know who the beneficiaries were.
This is most probably why they are hiding the contract.
It clear that you have a lot emotionally invested in this thing. Might I suggest for your own sake, that you go tilt at some other windmills?
The maxim, “you can’t fight city hall” has never been more apt.
Not trying to be cruel here, but life lesson number one is; No one cares how much time you put into something. They only want to see the results.
Isab at July 21, 2019 3:33 PM
I believe government is so bad-- and impossible to make "good" by any ethical measure-- that I simply won't work with them at all. It's worse than negotiating with (other) terrorists because these terrorists believe they aren't terrorists.
I understand people like you trying to "work within the system", and I see how well that turns out.
Kent McManigal at July 21, 2019 6:32 PM
After all, they need the money for that redundant choo-choo they're building downtown, using the early 20th Century technology, don'tcha know.
mpetrie98 at July 21, 2019 8:51 PM
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