Despite Difficult LA City Budget Deliberations, City Professionals are Taking Charge
I haven’t been at the LA City Council meetings every day, and I am not reporting all I saw, but here are some highlights:
The Budget and Finance Committee held a marathon session with the CAO, Miguel Santana, past midnight on Monday, Feb. 4. When the Council convened the following morning, they were already convinced the City had only one responsible course of action, layoffs and sales of assets.
The MOU 8 Bargaining Team had already distributed the tax scofflaw list, and we were pleased to see Councilman Alarcon waving it in the CAO’s face, and demanding to know why getting the money we are owed is not an option. That got Councilman Parks started, and he wanted to know why he had been repeatedly told there was only one possible course of action. Once the other Council members smelled blood, the attack was on. This led to a decision to conduct a thorough investigation of all options before approving layoffs and a fire sale of City assets.
721 members and staff have been there in force each and every day, joined by MOU 8 and MOU 17. We new members are doing exactly what we were promised we would be able to do, taking the stand to advocate for ourselves and getting our message across to the Council. No more sitting in our cubicles reading an email “update” from our former union, with sentences devoted to saying we can expect real action real soon because we are a real union, and paragraphs telling us that SEIU 721 does everything wrong.
Things appear to be going downhill for the CAO and the Mayor. After being blasted for neglecting to consider viable options to layoffs, Santana sat and listened to Alarcon rip into his financial consultants. The Councilman identified one consultant as the very same person who proposed selling DWP to investors a few years ago. Alarcon correctly identified the interests behind privatization as the same people who used to raid distressed corporations, now using their profits to raid distressed cities.
MOU’s 8 and 17 have spoken at each and every meeting about the impact of our furloughs on the City’s ability to generate revenues, retain grant money, process permits to allow a construction rebound, and the performance of legally mandated duties. We feel we are controlling the furlough debate.
On Thursday, Feb. 11, Councilman Koretz decided to put a stop to the madness, and he proposed a motion to halt furloughs immediately. Council President Garcetti set aside a vote until they hear from the City Attorney about the legal implications of Koretz’s motion. This motion will either go to a vote or die next Tuesday.
The Council has not yet actually taken a step on the path to a responsible decision, but they are on the correct path, and they are leaning over so hard that even the CAO decided it would be wisest to agree with their thinking. We of MOU 8 and MOU 17 are hearing the Council use the very same words we put into their mouths!
This is incredible! So far, we are exactly where we want to be, right in the middle of every decision-making process that impacts us, and seeing things moving our way.
Layoffs are another matter. We are bound by our old contract, and we have had to listen to repeated comments that the City can’t lay off Coalition members, but…
We anticipated this, and we have done our best to preempt management’s challenge by taking the City negotiators and our contract negotiations right into our workplaces. Our members and their managers are working together to explain who they are, what they do, how and why they do it, how it fits into the greater scheme of City operations, how the work of the various sections and departments is interdependent, and the cascading damage from disrupting the operations of any one of the interdependent parts.
We have been and we will be at every budget hearing, and at every off-site meeting that might influence budget decisions, advocating for all City workers and for quality municipal services delivered by a workforce not driven by corporate interests.
While fighting furloughs and layoffs, we still have a new contract to negotiate. All I can say at this point is that both we and the City would prefer to be negotiating in different circumstances, there are no backrooms, and we won’t be doing this in front of hecklers from our old union.