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Segura on Expanding Representation and Accountability in L.A.

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News outlets covering testimony before the L.A. City Council’s ad hoc committee on government reform carried the comments of Gary Segura, professor of public policy at UCLA Luskin. Segura is co-chair of the L.A. Governance Reform Project, a group of university scholars drafting recommendations to increase transparency and accountability at L.A. City Hall. A preliminary report from the project called for several reforms, including the creation of 10 additional City Council seats for a total of 25, including four at-large seats. “The purpose of that was to have an additional cohort of members of the council who had a citywide constituency and therefore were interested in advancing the interests of everyone in the city,” Segura said. He added that the Governance Reform Project is continuing research into the value of at-large seats and conducting further conversations with community-based organizations and members of the voting rights community. The group expects to issue its final report in November.

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‘Become a Leader, Not Just a Bureaucrat’

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A Los Angeles Times piece asking veteran public servants to offer words of guidance to the seven new members of the Los Angeles City Council included insights from Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin. Yaroslavsky, who served the people of Los Angeles as a city councilman and county supervisor for nearly four decades, stressed the importance of mastering the rules and processes of legislating, but said it’s essential to become a leader, not just a bureaucrat. He advised each of the new councilmembers to look in the mirror each morning and ask: “What issue am I willing to lose my job for?” He continued, “People will respect an elected official who takes a calculated risk in the interest of the public.” 

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A Sweeping Proposal to Reform L.A. City Governance

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News organizations including the Los Angeles Times, Daily News and Associated Press covered a package of recommendations issued by the Los Angeles Governance Reform Project, co-chaired by UCLA Luskin Professor Gary Segura. The advisory group, created in response to a series of corruption scandals that have plagued L.A. City Hall, called for 10 additional seats on the City Council for a total of 25; two independent redistricting commissions; and a more powerful ethics commission. “As we speak today, there are 260,000 souls in every City Council district in Los Angeles. To say that this stretches the definition of local representation as it was understood by our founders would be an understatement,” Segura said. He called the proposals in the group’s interim report a “starting point, intended to spark a meaningful and actionable conversation that will drive reform forward.”

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An L.A. Story of Power, Influence and Big Personalities

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The Los Angeles Times put a spotlight on the newly released autobiography of Zev Yaroslavsky, a fixture in L.A. civic life for decades and now the director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin. “Zev’s Los Angeles: From Boyle Heights to the Halls of Power” revisits “the period in which Los Angeles became what we know today: big and complex, multiracial, exciting, divided and far deeper than what meets the eye,” writes UCLA Blueprint editor Jim Newton in his review of the book. “Zev’s Los Angeles” recounts Yaroslavsky’s family history, his UCLA student activism and forceful defense of Soviet Jews, and his election to the L.A. City Council at age 26, which spawned a long and consequential career in politics. Newton calls the memoir “a solid history, an insightful analysis of power and a sincere reflection on a life of service,” with fresh insights and behind-the-scenes details about key turning points in the region’s polity.

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‘Powerful, Strong, Indefatigable, Courageous’

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News outlets covering the death of trailblazing Los Angeles political leader Gloria Molina spoke with Zev Yaroslavsky, a longtime public servant who served alongside Molina for nearly a quarter-century. Molina was a “powerful, strong, indefatigable, courageous woman” known for her unflagging commitment to regular people, Yaroslavsky told KCAL News. She was “the greatest ally you could have when you were on the same side — and she was the worthiest of adversaries when you were on opposite sides,” he told LAist. Her fierce independence and confrontation style grated on some colleagues “because she held up a mirror to ourselves,” he told the Los Angeles Times. Molina was the first Latina to serve in the California Assembly, on the L.A. City Council and on the L.A. County Board of Supervisors. Molina and Yaroslavsky left the Board of Supervisors in 2014 due to term limits, and Yaroslavsky now serves as director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin.

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Segura on Approaches for Reforming City Government

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UCLA Luskin Professor Gary Segura spoke to LAist’s “AirTalk” about the L.A. Governance Reform Project, an effort by Southern California scholars to develop proposals to reform Los Angeles’ scandal-scarred city government. While the project will initially focus on establishing a fair redistricting process, it will also consider the merits of increasing the number of City Council members, which currently stands at 15. “The idea is that there should be a representation system in which all of the city’s various ethnic, racial, sectarian and linguistic groups have an opportunity to see their views represented,” said Segura, the team’s co-chair. “The truth is that’s just easier when there are more seats.” The scholars will invite civil society and social justice organizations to weigh in on this approach. Past efforts to expand the council have met with public opposition, and Segura acknowledged that recent controversies exposing corruption and racist conversations may make electing more City Council members seem unpalatable.

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Segura to Co-Chair Project for Better L.A. Governance

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UCLA Luskin Professor Gary Segura has been named co-chair of a coalition of Los Angeles-based scholars and researchers who will develop proposals for bringing better governance to L.A.’s halls of power. The L.A. Governance Reform Project was launched amid recent controversies at Los Angeles City Hall that have underscored the need for a transparent, accountable and community-driven system of government in the diverse and dynamic region. The group’s first task will be to produce recommendations for an independent redistricting process to be presented to policymakers in the coming months. The team will then turn to other areas, including but not limited to City Council expansion, ethics and land use reform. As they conduct their analysis, the scholars will consult with several members of the governmental, civic, activist and academic communities. “This is an all-hands-on-deck moment in Los Angeles. Interest in reform is high throughout the community, and the best reforms will generate the widest and broadest community support,” said Segura, whose academic work focuses on political representation and social cleavages. Segura serves as co-chair with Professor Ange-Marie Hancock of the University of Southern California, and the project will be administered by the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles. The L.A. Governance Reform Project team also includes scholars from Cal State Northridge, Loyola Marymount University and Pomona College. The project has received funding from philanthropic organizations including the California Community Foundation, The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Weingart Foundation.

 

Yaroslavsky on the Evolution of L.A. Governance

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Zev Yaroslavsky, who served as city councilman and county supervisor in Los Angeles for 40 years, spoke with the California Sun about the evolution of L.A. governance. Politics today is “much more coarse, meaner … less of ‘how do we solve the problem’ and more of ‘how do I score a political point,’ ” he said. But he expressed faith in the county’s young, energetic voters who are holding officials accountable. “Voters are not as foolish as the political class thinks they are. They have a pretty good B.S.-sniffing meter, they’re attuned to what’s going on, and they know what they want,” he said. Now director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, Yaroslavsky shared results of the annual Quality of Life Index, which identified housing costs as residents’ top concern. Homelessness, he said, is “one of the great stains on our society,” caused by a wealth gap that lies at the root of most of our social problems.

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Yaroslavsky on New Faces at L.A. City Hall

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to LAist about recent upheaval in local government. In the 15-person L.A. City Council, one member has been suspended, two were defeated in reelection bids, two others left to run for other offices, and one resigned amid the scandal over a leaked recording of a racist conversation. As a result, several new faces will join the council, including a community activist, a labor organizer and six women — the most the council has ever had. Yaroslavsky, who served on the City Council and county Board of Supervisors for decades, praised the range of life backgrounds brought by the newcomers. “It is not good for the City Council to be a homogenous entity where everybody has the same career and life experiences,” Yaroslavsky said. “That’s not been healthy. And I think it’s part of the reason that there’s a malaise in City Hall.”

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Terriquez on Lessons Learned From L.A. Scandal

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Urban planning professor Veronica Terriquez spoke to media outlets including Newsweek and USA Today about how Los Angeles can move forward after the scandal sparked by a leaked recording of racist comments by city leaders. “Civil society leaders learned a valuable lesson here, that hate speech cannot be tolerated among Latinos or any other elected officials,” said Terriquez, who directs the Chicano Studies Research Center at UCLA. She said she sees hope in the overwhelming condemnation of the bigoted comments, as well as in the rising political generation’s ability to build bridges between groups. “In Los Angeles and Orange County, you see diverse coalitions across ethnicity and race,” Terriquez said. “I think that the younger generation tends to form coalitions that are more inclusive.” She concluded, “The lessons learned from this week may pave the way for the more careful selection of leaders and inclusive representation.”

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