Gadfly Arnold Sachs says he likes to "annoy the board" by speaking on every agenda item. Photo/Daily News

For the past several weeks, a lot has been said and written about my proposal to modify the amount of time each member of the public is allotted for comment during our weekly Board of Supervisors meetings.

Unfortunately, much of that discussion has lacked balance, context and, at times, accuracy, thus serving mostly to misinform people about what I’d hoped to achieve upon becoming the board’s chairman in December. As a result, the prevailing narrative has become this: we on the Board of Supervisors believe that when it comes to our meetings, the public should be neither seen nor heard.

The most recent example of this was a lengthy story in Saturday’s Los Angeles Times. Appearing on the front page, it flatly and wrongly asserted that I think “members of the public talk too much” and mischaracterized fundamental elements of the proposal. Inexplicably, I was never asked for my comment, even though the piece was aimed squarely at me. Had I been asked to do so, readers would have come away with a fuller understanding of the issue.

The truth is I wish we had more public engagement. Our huge hearing room is often empty, despite the breadth and enormity of matters the board confronts every week. In this regard, we are not alone. Visit City Hall and you’ll find much the same. Recent coverage would have you believe that we want to yank the microphone on a public that’s clamoring to be heard. This is not the case.

Most weeks, the same tiny cadre of individuals speak on a multitude of agenda items—sometimes dozens of them in a single meeting. Under the current practice, they’re allowed to talk for two minutes on each item and then can speak for an additional three minutes at the end of the meeting on non-agenda matters. One of these so-called gadflies admitted to a Daily News reporter recently that he had signed up to talk on every agenda item simply to “annoy the board.”

Of course, this is his right—as it is the right of another of our regular speakers to participate in this weekly spectacle by repeatedly delivering the same racially-tinged diatribe against undocumented immigrants and reciting the names and addresses of those she alleges, without evidence, of being “gangbangers.”

But under California’s Ralph M. Brown Act, it’s also the right of government bodies to impose reasonable limits on public comment as a way to ensure a healthy balance among all stakeholders in the meeting process. All our local legislative bodies have rules to this effect, including the Los Angeles City Council. In this spirit, and at the suggestion of our County Counsel, I proposed that our rules be modified to give speakers a three-minute block to discuss their agenda items—rather than two minutes for each one—and two minutes at the end of the meeting for general comment.

While this might be a tight squeeze for the small number of gadflies bent on testifying about virtually every matter before us each week, we considered it a fair policy for the vast majority of people who, in good faith, take time out of their days to travel downtown and speak on the one or two issues that directly affect their lives.

Now, we’ve put the proposed changes on hold so that our county attorneys have time to correct misperceptions and explain the board’s motivation to concerned stakeholders as we move forward.

For those of you who’ve followed my time in public life, you know that I’ve been a consistently strong advocate of government transparency—a record that includes, among other things, my successful push to make board meetings available to a wider audience by having them webcast, televised and posted online with transcripts. As some of you may also remember, I authored Los Angeles’ first freedom of information act while serving on the City Council.

So I encourage you to join me at a Tuesday Board of Supervisors meeting and see for yourself what all the controversy is about. You be the judge. Take it from me, you can’t trust everything you read.

Posted 1/24/12

Affordable housing must continue, despite state actions.

Redevelopment agencies may have begun with noble ideals. But all too often in recent years they have devolved into slush funds for insiders—not to mention a bureaucratic means of denying our schools, social service agencies and fire departments the resources they needed to make California a better place to live and work. Auditors throughout the state are now starting to open the books of these agencies. And I believe the public will be shocked by what they find—including huge sums wasted on frivolous projects or left to idle in agencies’ coffers while vital community needs were ignored.

So I applaud the California Supreme Court’s recent decision to uphold state legislation that puts redevelopment agencies out of business starting February 1.

But that doesn’t mean we can afford to ignore the funding stream that some of these redevelopment agencies—notwithstanding their glaring flaws—provided for desperately-needed low- and moderate-income housing, along with some other legitimate local development purposes.

So this week, we took the first steps toward making sure our current affordable housing programs transition smoothly to new management as our redevelopment agency dissolves, and receive the strong and appropriate levels of oversight mandated by the new state law. (Here is the motion I co-sponsored with Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas.) We also directed county staff to begin working on a new framework for how we will fund and manage affordable housing programs going forward. (My motion is here.)

There’s not a moment to waste.

At a time when federal housing resources are being slashed by nearly 50% each year, Los Angeles County must take the lead in quickly identifying ways to continue providing the means to build affordable housing for the most vulnerable among us.

Over the past few years, the need for such housing has skyrocketed as the resources have shrunk exponentially. A recent survey found there were nearly 200,000 people on the waiting list for Section 8 housing in Los Angeles County—and that the waiting period is now 10 years. It’s even worse in some cities within the county, including one, in our own 3^rd District, where the wait is an astronomical 399 years.

As Los Angeles County and other jurisdictions up and down the state adjust to the complexities of life after redevelopment agencies, we must not lose sight of all the human need behind those terrible statistics.

And we can’t let California’s decision to dismantle these agencies deter us from our responsibility to help people get access to housing they can afford.

Posted 1/18/12

Reserve Sheriff Shervin Lalezary.

Every now and then, a crime spree spreads through our communities that it is particularly hard to fathom, so senseless and random that it catches us off guard, even in a region that, sadly, is no stranger to crime.

During four days over the New Year’s holiday, we were caught in one of those moments as the Westside, West Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley were unnerved by an arsonist whose motives are still to be discerned. Dozens of residential buildings and many more dozens of cars were torched. Our communities were terrorized as the arsonist lit one fire after another under the cover of darkness.

I live in one of those communities. One fire occurred less than four blocks from my home. The steady drone of sirens in my neighborhood and beyond was evidence of the mayhem’s sweep.

Throughout the night, families took turns keeping watch. Others took to Twitter with updates. Some fought fires with garden hoses. As we so often do in times of trouble, neighbors took care of neighbors and strangers joined forces.

As we’ve come to expect, our public safety organizations once again rose to the occasion. In what felt like an eternity but was just four days, a suspect was apprehended, arrested and criminally charged—a testament to the collective work of agencies operating in “unified command.” The LAPD, the L.A. County Sheriff, the city and county Fire Departments and the federal Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives unit checked their agency seals at the door and worked as one team.

Although several millions of dollars in property damage occurred, no one was killed or injured. Since the suspect’s arrest, the fires have stopped. And for that, we owe an especially big thanks to a grateful immigrant named Shervin Lalezary.

A reserve deputy for the Sheriff’s Department, Lalezary was on just his fourth shift as a $1-per-year volunteer. He was patrolling Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood when he spotted and pulled over a minivan that reportedly was being driven by the alleged arsonist, who’d soon be taken into custody.

Lalezary came here from Iran as a child after the Ayatullah Khomeini revolution in 1979. He studied hard, went to law school and is now a successful real estate attorney practicing in Los Angeles. But personal success was not enough for him. Lalezary says he was determined to give back to the community that welcomed him as an immigrant. Through the sheriff’s reserve program, Lalezary found his way to contribute. Today, we’re all beneficiaries of his courage and commitment.

Los Angeles has a lot for which to be thankful as we begin the new year. So let me wish you a happy, healthy and peaceful one, indeed.

Posted 1/3/12

In the legislature’s view, getting at least some money into the state’s depleted treasury is better than getting none. And for the offenders, well, the upside is obvious.

But not everyone catches a break under the amnesty program, thanks to some wrongheaded rules concocted by the statewide Administrative Office of the Court. The AOC has determined that only people who’ve paid nothing on their tickets during the past two years are eligible for the 50% discount. This means that if you’ve sent along any money at all since 2009, then you’re excluded from the deal. In L.A. County, some 75,000 people fall into this category.

If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking: What? Why would we essentially penalize people who’ve made some good-faith efforts to pay their tickets while offering bargain rates to those who haven’t?

Actually, there’s no good reason.

The AOC is simply—and cynically—playing the odds. It apparently figures that anyone who’s made good on even a sliver of their debt is likely to keep paying. Conversely, those who’ve paid nothing will probably continue along that same course. This latter group, the thinking goes, needs special inducements.

But here’s the problem: it’s blatantly unfair. What’s more, there’s no place in the law that calls for this exclusion. In fact, the Los Angeles County Counsel and the counsel for the Los Angeles Superior Court have concluded that the AOC incorrectly incorporated an eligibility requirement not found within the four corners of the statute, SB 857.

Next Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors will consider a motion I’ve authored to reverse this inequity. I’ve asked my colleagues to join with me in sending a five-signature letter to the California Judicial Council, urging that the AOC be required to include in the amnesty program individuals who’ve made any payments towards fines incurred or due prior to January 1, 2009.

We need to send a clear message to court administrators that such fiscal gamesmanship—even in the service of a good cause—is unacceptable.

Posted 12/7/11

Capt. Ralph Ornelas discusses conditions in the Men's Central Jail with Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

The Men’s Central Jail sits on the edge of downtown, a non-descript structure surrounded by a cottage industry of bail bondsmen. Built mostly during the Kennedy Administration, it’s a deeply depressing place, filled with 4,000 or more men crammed into dank cells.

A good number of them are short-timers—misdemeanor offenders serving just a fraction of their sentences because of the overcrowded conditions. But there are hundreds upon hundreds of others—accused murderers, rapists, drug kingpins and the like—who are incarcerated in the so-called MCJ while they await trial, a process that can sometimes consume years.

Unfortunately, it’s a place where some Sheriff’s Department deputies also have crossed lines of behavior demanded of them in a civil and constitutional society.

As you may have heard or read, Los Angeles County’s sprawling jail system, which includes the more modern Twin Towers Correctional Facility, is under investigation by the FBI because of alleged brutality by deputies who run the operation.

On Friday, a new investigative body, comprised of seven distinguished individuals, will begin its inquiry into excessive force behind the bars. The Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence was unanimously created by the Board of Supervisors through a motion by Mark Ridley-Thomas and me. The commission was infused with a no-holds-barred mandate to help us understand how a small minority of deputies could poison the culture of an entire institution.

In the hopes of better understanding the challenges ahead for the commission and the Sheriff’s Department, I visited the Men’s Central Jail this week with Sheriff Lee Baca and Captain Ralph Ornelas, who oversees the facility. (See the photo gallery below.) Day in and day out, I can’t imagine a tougher, more menacing workplace, especially for rookie deputies who spend their first 3 to 5 years assigned to the jails—a practice now rightfully being reexamined.

Ornelas, the Brooklyn-born son of a New York cop, was put in charge of MCJ in March. He says he’s determined to be a force for change, inspiring a fundamental shift in the way his charges approach their jobs. “It’s about brains, not brawn,” he tells the deputies. “Let’s be more cerebral, more sophisticated, more professional.”

He says that when deputies resort to force too quickly, they’re not only unnecessarily escalating situations but undermining their own effectiveness today and in the future when they’ll be in patrol cars. “You have to develop your people skills, think through problems. It’s about verbal tactics. This way, you become a more confident deputy, who can solve problems.”

“The deputy in the jail,” he preaches, “becomes the deputy on the streets.”

I wish Ornelas and the Citizens’ Commission much success in their parallel missions because the stakes could not be higher—not just for the inmates and deputies but for all of us.

In the months ahead, thousands of new inmates will be entering our jail system thanks to a monumental shift of responsibilities in California’s criminal justice system called realignment. As of October 1, inmates convicted of certain non-violent, non-serious, non-sexual crimes that used to get them a stay in one of California’s 33 prisons, are now being sentenced to county jails.

Virtually overnight, the management of our lockup has become immensely more complicated, requiring daily decisions about which inmates should be freed earlier to clear space for the arrivals. The implications for the safety of our neighborhoods are enormous.

So while it may be easy for some to dismiss the pain inflicted on inmates by their jailers, it’s important to remember that what happens inside that difficult place can affect each and every one of us. Every facet of the facility must be operated with precision and professionalism. The jail may be located on a small, obscure street named Bauchet, but this is one problem that’s in everyone’s backyard.

Photos by Henry Salazar/Los Angeles County

Posted 11/16/11

Like a lot of people, I caught the opera bug relatively late.

And I have my son’s Academic Decathlon team at Monroe High School to thank for that.

One year, their Super Quiz subject was opera, and I was treated to strains of great works like “Carmen,” “Aida” and  “La Traviata”  coming from David’s room each night as he listened to audiotapes in preparation.

And, to my surprise, I liked what I heard—a lot.

Fast forward a few years. I was in Salzburg on a mission to try to secure a major donation for our county’s Music Center. Though jet-lagged, Barbara and I went to hear Plácido Domingo perform in “Parsifal,” a Wagner opera that goes on at Wagnerian length—easily 5½ to 6 hours.

Afterwards, we had a chance to go backstage and meet Domingo. Wagnerian operas are not among my favorites but I was thrilled at the prospect of meeting the most renowned tenor on the planet, and we had a memorable exchange.

“Oh, you don’t know what it’s like to stand up there and sing for 5½ hours,” he told us.

“You don’t know what it’s like to sit there and listen for 5½ hours!” Barbara retorted.

And that, to paraphrase the old line from “Casablanca,” marked the beginning of a beautiful collaboration. I’ve been fortunate to work with Domingo and James Conlon and other leaders as they’ve put opera on the map in Los Angeles. I even had a chance to interview Domingo at the Hollywood Bowl a couple of years back.

As L.A. Opera celebrates its 25^th birthday this month, its artistic successes coincide with what I like to think of as the golden age of arts in Los Angeles.

With remarkable new facilities ranging from Disney Hall to the Valley Performing Arts Center at Cal State Northridge to the Broad Stage in Santa Monica—to name just a few—we’re truly in the midst of a cultural explosion.

Local audiences and arts lovers are big winners in this boom, of course. But the benefits don’t stop there. The arts now employ more people than the defense industry in Southern California. Aside from those directly involved, arts institutions create new customers for surrounding businesses.

And cultural tourists from around the world flock here for performances at the county’s Music Center and other venues—enhancing our global arts reputation and serving as an important engine of our economy.

I’m grateful that our Board of Supervisors has long realized that investment in the arts, far from being a frivolous expenditure, is smart public policy—both from an economic and quality of life point of view.

That’s why, in an effort to make sure our top musicians reach the broadest possible audience, regardless of means or mobility, my office has underwritten L.A. Opera and L.A. Philharmonic broadcasts on KUSC 91.5 FM.

If you can make it to the opera’s 25^th birthday open house at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Saturday, November 5, I hope you will. You certainly can’t beat the price—free. And if you can’t make it, I hope you will tune in to KUSC’s live broadcast of “The Opera Show” from the lobby from 9 a.m. to noon.

Because, as my own experience shows, you never know where listening in on a little opera will take you.

Posted 10/27/11

Media and advocacy organizations have detailed numerous cases of alleged inmate mistreatment that, if true, suggest a breakdown of accountability and discipline within the agency that runs the jails, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. These incidents are notable not only because of the alleged ferocity of the beatings but because some of them were reported by civilian observers who say they were shocked and scared by what they witnessed.

Allegations of brutality in the nation’s largest jail system are not new, and the Sheriff’s Department itself can rightly point to a history of firing and disciplining deputies who’ve been accused of excessive force. I feel confident that the vast majority of deputies are conducting themselves appropriately in the stressful environment of our overcrowded lock-up. But there appears to be a certain brazenness in these recent cases that raises questions about whether a culture of disregard for the constitutional rights of inmates is taking root among some deputies.

Currently, the FBI is investigating this alleged mistreatment of prisoners, and Sheriff Lee Baca has assembled an in-house task force to examine, or reexamine, a number of alleged incidents compiled by the ACLU and others. I’m confident that these will lead to disciplinary action and criminal prosecutions if warranted.

Still, more is needed. The Board of Supervisors is responsible to the taxpayers and to the broader community for the safe, efficient and constitutional operation of our jail system. To that end, Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and I will introduce a motion at the board’s Tuesday meeting urging our colleagues to create a Citizen’s Commission of five distinguished county residents to “conduct a review of the nature, depth and cause of the problem of inappropriate deputy use of force in the jails, and to recommend corrective action as necessary.”

It also would be the responsibility of the commission’s five members, each one appointed by a member of the Board of Supervisors, to hold the sheriff and the board accountable for the “speedy and effective implementation” of potential solutions.

As Supervisor Ridley-Thomas and I write in our motion: “It is the Sheriff himself, as head of the department, and the members of the Board of Supervisors as the ultimate decision-makers for the County, who will be held accountable for the quality and constitutionality of law enforcement services to the county.”

Posted 10/13/11

The approved plan, while not perfect, is far better for residents throughout Los Angeles County than the two proposed alternatives. It keeps together communities of shared geographic, economic and environmental interests (to name a few), while remaining fully compliant with the federal Voting Rights Act, which protects the crucial electoral interests of minority groups.

To be sure, the process that culminated in Tuesday’s historic vote was punctuated with strong words and heated emotions. But there was something encouraging about it all, no matter what your views or loyalties. From one end of the county to the other, from its urban core to its rural reaches, people were engaged, writing thousands of letters and appearing en masse to express their diverse opinions on representative democracy in their communities.

The debate forced us to assess—and rally behind—the things that are most important to us in this complicated region of competing interests and values. We may not always have liked what we heard, but I had the sense that, at least, we were listening and learning. Consider this: despite the passionate feelings on all sides, I can’t recall a single speaker of the hundreds who testified who was shouted down or disrespected.

As we move forward, I know this issue could continue to generate controversy with potential litigation. But I do believe it’s important at times like these to reflect on those things that we, as a broader community, can take pride in. I’d like to thank all of you who participated in our deliberations and demonstrated your commitment to our collective future.

Posted 9/27/11

The Expo light rail line, which will run from downtown L.A. to Santa Monica beginning in 2015, offers people traveling to and from this jobs-rich and traffic-choked part of our county a real alternative to sitting and stewing in the gridlock that’s become an unfortunate way of life on the Westside for decades. Tens of thousands of commuters, residents and tourists stand to benefit every day.

To get a sense of the full sweep of what the 15.2-mile Expo Line will deliver, check out this map of the route. In the coming months, trains will start running in the line’s first segment, and construction will begin on Expo Phase 2, which will go from Culver City to 4th Street and Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica.

When completed, we expect the Expo Line to be one of the busiest light rail lines in the country. And its downtown connections to Metro’s existing and future lines promise to magnify its significance across the region.

The good news doesn’t stop there; all of us will be breathing easier as a result of the car trips that this new light rail light line will help eliminate.

But the most immediate upside is this: Expo Phase 2, largely funded by the Measure R ½-cent sales tax overwhelmingly approved by county voters for transportation improvements, can start putting people back to work again.

New jobs, more than 9,000 of them, are being created. And those jobs have coattails, creating ancillary jobs and paychecks that in turn pump new life into struggling local businesses and services.

As job creation rightly assumes new urgency as Topic No. 1 in the national political dialogue, we’ve got news for our leaders in Washington and Sacramento: The solution to fixing our national economy can start right here in Los Angeles County.

The American Jobs Act, released by President Obama this week, includes nearly $3.4 billion for California transit and modernization projects, which the White House says could translate to at least 51,500 jobs here. But we can do more.

We have the projects—not just Expo Phase 2, on which we broke ground Monday, but the much-needed Westside Subway extension and others—that together can put 166,000 people back to work. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s plan to tap future Measure R funds to jumpstart these local transit projects offers a clear way to get our economy moving in the right direction.

And that’s a train that officials at every level of government need to jump aboard now.

Posted 9/13/11

In the days to come, business as usual ground to a halt, of course. My scheduled meetings were cancelled (except for one with the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, from whose office we both gazed out at a still-smoking Pentagon.)

It was four days later that I was finally able to catch a plane back to Los Angeles, where one of the most moving sights I encountered as I drove toward home was a banner and flag store on Vine Street in Hollywood, where a line of people stretched around the block to buy American flags.

For me, back from our nation’s capital in its moment of crisis, that line of my flag-buying fellow Angelenos brought it all home viscerally—that we were all standing as one, regardless of where we happened to live.

There are no silver linings in the aftermath of attacks as dastardly as those that claimed nearly 3,000 lives in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.

But there are indelible memories of an extraordinary test of our national character in which we showed the world—and each other—exactly what we were made of.

I don’t think there’s ever been a time in my memory when people came together in common cause and unity as they did then. Party didn’t matter, ethnicity didn’t matter, religion didn’t matter—we were all united as I’ve never seen us before. We were all Americans.

It’s something I’ve never forgotten.

This 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks is a watershed mark in our history. I find myself talking these days to young people—those too young to remember what happened well, or at all—and I feel a responsibility to convey to them, as the Pearl Harbor generation conveyed to me, what it meant to live through those momentous days.

As Elie Wiesel has so often said, memory is a very powerful thing. We remember 9/11 so that these lives will not be lost in vain, and to recommit ourselves to never experiencing anything like this ever again.

This is not a once-a-year or a once-a-decade commitment. These events are always with us. And I suspect that like me, you feel a surge of gratitude and remembrance every time a fire truck passes by, flying the American flag or proudly emblazoned in memory of fallen FDNY colleagues. What we feel is a day-in, day-out recognition of these first responders’ bravery and service under pressure—an outward manifestation of the best we as a society have to offer.

This 10th anniversary gives us a chance to acknowledge that debt of gratitude, remember those whose lives were lost and recapture the spirit of unity that permeated our nation for all too short a time.

Posted 9/8/11