This will be voted on in City Council on October 8th.
Do you think any of our City Councilmembers will care enough to catch this major missing piece and correct it? Or will lack of proper qualified leadership continue to threaten the very existence of the Park Ranger Division?
The challenges facing the health of our Park Ranger Division have directly impacted the health of our large Regional Parks in Los Angeles. Read all about why this is the case in the PUBLIC COMMENT below.
Hansen Dam Ranger Station - Nobody Home
So what exactly are those challenges? There are a number of us parks advocates out there who know from years of experience and advocacy that these challenges facing the survival of the Park Ranger Division are substantial. Ever hopeful, this particular advocate was looking for some real discussion of this important parks issue during the committee meeting on Monday.
Alas, it was not to be. After what amounted to a haphazard non-report by Recreation and Parks' AGM Kevin Regan (who is, himself, one of the very challenges in question), the motion was amended to have this report presented in 60 days.
AGM Regan could easily have produced a report at Monday's meeting on the challenges facing the Park Ranger Division. Easily. After all, he's put himself fully in command of the POST-certified division. That said, one suspects that if any give in hiring
new Rangers was likely by the Parks Department-hating CAO,Miguel
Santana, it would have happened yesterday since they could hire to fill
funded positions that are currently unfilled due to attrition. But the entire hearing on this item was just giving the pretense about doing something concrete to address the serious issues
affecting the Park Ranger Division, so Santana must be saying "no".
Not surprising. CAO Santana simply hates the Department of Recreation and Parks. He actually went out of his way to taunt them during their budget hearing, which is utterly shocking behavior for an alleged professional.
OK, so add CAO Miguel
Santana to the substantial list of challenges facing the Park Ranger
Division. And facing the children of Los Angeles.
As for myself, I took a different approach to this hearing. Rather than adding to the number of simple public comments I've made on the Park Ranger Division, I decided to respond to the motion and write that report from what I know firsthand. And, oddly enough, a number of questions Kevin Regan was asked by the committee and didn't necessarily respond to are factually addressed in my public comment. Fascinating, that.
So here for your reading enjoyment is an update on the challenges currently facing the Park Ranger Division. Minus CAO Miguel Santana. I'll be adding him in to my next draft.
The City of Los Angeles Park Rangers are a California POST-certified agency. Park Rangers are highly trained professionals whose job duties evolved directly from the day-to-day needs in our Los Angeles parks. No other agency can or does respond to these needs like Park Rangers.
Currently, Park Rangers are the in-the-field managers of our Regional Parks (largest City parks), including Griffith Park, Hansen Dam, Elysian Park, Harbor Regional Park, Sepulveda Basin, Ascot Hills, Augustus Hawkins, Debs Park, O’ Melveny Park, Verdugo Hills park, Angel’s Gate, and others. When allowed to respond, Park Rangers typically answer 26,000* calls for service in parks annually (*2007, 2008).
Park Rangers also play a critical and under-appreciated role in the Mass Care portion (Recreation and Park’s responsibility) of the City’s Emergency Plan.
Vital park-specific services provided by Park Rangers -
Major job duties:
1. Security and Law Enforcement 2. Firefighting 3. Search and Rescue 4. Community Policing 5. Wildlife Management 6. Education and Interpretive
Park Rangers patrol Recreation and Park facilities by vehicle, foot, horseback and bicycle to prevent unauthorized entry, vandalism, theft or other crimes.
Park Rangers provide emergency services, shelter and welfare to persons in emergency conditions.
Park Rangers respond to accidents and administer First Aid and/or Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) to victims, some may have infectious diseases.
Park Rangers carry out search and rescue operations for people who are lost.
Park Rangers manage park resources to address wildlife issues, special events, repairs and maintenance, fire safety, patron utilization.
Park Rangers present both professional and impromptu educational and interpretive programming to the public to enhance the enjoyment of the community.
B. What are the current challenges facing the Park Ranger Division?
A reasonable full deployment of Park Rangers for the Los Angeles Regional Parks we currently have looks essentially like this:
1 Chief Park Ranger 3 Sr. Lead Rangers 28 field Rangers (Griffith Park Ranger Station) 12-16 full-time Rangers (Hansen Dam Ranger Station) 8-12 full-time Rangers
Part-time Park Patrol officers and trained volunteers and docents can cover some of duties of these positions but are in no way replacements for full-time Park Rangers.
Currently, the sum total of Peace Officer Park Rangers and grandfathered Non-Peace Officer Park Rangers in the field is less than 18, placing the Division and parks services and safety at a very critical tipping point.
Why are we at this point?
During the past decade, the City has allowed non-negotiable hiring freezes, lay-off threats, ersatz “park patrol” entities, managerial neglect and misuse, and attrition to literally decimate the Park Ranger Division.
Peace Officer status is vital to the safe, effective ability of a Park Ranger to efficiently manage their parks in the City of Los Angeles. The current situation is this: a non-POST certified civilian Assistant General Manager acts as the Chief Ranger through a puppet peace officer (typically a Captain) loaned from a different agency. The loaned officer often has little to no understanding of the full scope of the Park Ranger job and most have shown no desire or received no motivation to learn the job.
The linear Command-and-Control structure that is fundamental to POST agencies was removed by the AGM in 2009. When there was a Chief Park Ranger previously, they were answerable to an AGM rather than to a GM.
The current type of structure and leadership are fairly unheard of for a California POST agency. Undeniably, it is not healthy, safe or appropriate.
Additionally, more than a century (100+ years) of invaluable institutional Ranger knowledge was lost during ERIP due in large part to the alleged hostile work environment created by the AGM in question.
Morale has understandably been low.
Non-equal pay (lower) within the City is a factor negatively impacting hiring.
The college degree requirement impacts hiring but expertise is necessary for this complex position.
Most Peace Officer Park Ranger agencies in California are armed. The current lack of being armed negatively impacts hiring. At face value, this should not be an issue since it is common in California. Los Angles politics remain the main reason for the continuation of this negative hiring impact, sadly.
Many of these challenges have been and remain completely unnecessary, specifically where the management of the Division is concerned. The management issue can quickly be corrected by hiring or naming a truly qualified Chief Park Ranger.
C. How do these challenges affect our parks and parks patrons?
During 2004-2008, hundreds of concerned parks patrons and almost 20 neighborhood councils representing more than 800,000 Angelenos passed resolutions or community impact statements that not only supported keeping the Park Rangers in our parks as full peace officers, but with increased staffing to include full coverage of each regional park with Senior Lead Rangers and a Chief Park Ranger. (List is attached)
The situation now with few Rangers and no proper Chief Ranger is that no one is home in these parks.
When no one is home... Parks users are not safe. Park inhabitants are not safe. Park resources are not safe. When no one is home, our fragile City resources are damaged and abused, costing even more funds to restore. Or they are damaged beyond restoration altogether.
LAPD is not a replacement for Park Rangers.
OPS was not a replacement for Park Rangers, and neither is LAPD. Except for special details, LAPD simply answers radio calls. Most typical park calls are prioritized by LAPD as lower than Code 2 and are placed in the non-emergency call queue (1-877-ASK-LAPD phone line). I have personally been on hold on this line for more than 30 minutes more than once before an operator addressed my call for service.
If the call is at a location without a street address such as we have in our Regionals Parks (ex: “Water Crossing” at Hansen Dam), the vast majority of LAPD patrol officers and dispatchers don’t know the location.
LAFD is not a replacement for Park Rangers.
Witness the insane amount of expensive helicopter rescues in Griffith Park by LAFD in the past few years. Rangers contact, educate and inform the public about safe use of the parks before it gets to this point. Park Rangers intimately know their parks. Including locations without addresses.
Peace Officer Park Rangers in the field enforce:
· Alcohol laws · Trespass laws · Fire code violations (such as smoking in the brush or attempted arson) · Handicapped parking violations · Narcotics violations · Animal welfare/abuse laws · Vandalism or graffiti · Vehicle code violations
…and other important quality of life laws and ordinances that LAPD will not bother with.
Citing the smaller offenses in parks is proven to prevent escalation of criminality.
Both LAPD and LAFD work most effectively and efficiently in and around our parks as needed when they work with a strong Park Ranger Division.
Ranger role goes largely unrecognized in Emergency Preparedness.
Park Rangers play a critical role in the Mass Care portion (RAP’s responsibility) of the City’s Emergency Plan. The impact of the “OPS Consolidation” that removed 56 peace officer positions from the Dept. of Recreation and Parks (along with millions of dollars in vital equipment and dispatch positions) on RAP’s specific role in the City Of Los Angeles’s emergency plan has gone unrecognized, with little acknowledgement, and without any real analysis. Due diligence requires that this be addressed.
The first General Manager the Mayor should absolutely retain is Jon Kirk Mukri.
General Manager Mukri works very well with an extremely passionate and diverse parks
community. He's made the Mayor and every City councilmember look really
really good over the years with key projects in their districts, and other cities look to his department as a national leader.
This in spite of the crippling budget cuts and chargebacks the City
Council has levied unfairly on the department. Yes, some of the parks are a
mess, but the department hasn't been allowed to keep enough employees or
hire to keep up with demand.
I know a little bit about how the Dept of Recreation and Parks works,
having been a parks advocate and an operations volunteer with the
department for the past decade. I know I am not the only one who found
the Gelfand's content a bit nutty. Most people I spoke with read it and went... "what??
huh?"
In actuality, the author's main complaint about Mukri specifically seemed to be that Mukri didn't know
who the author was. That isn't exactly a heinous crime.
"Condom Tree" at Harbor Regional Park
The vast majority of the complaint sketched out in Gelfand's article lies squarely on the
performance of Assistant GM over Operations, Kevin Regan. That particular administrator is someone with whom much of the community has difficulty. He isn't doing a good job -- witness Gelfand's description of the perpetual operations mess in Harbor Regional Park -- and the employees he oversees are allegedly abused by this person unless they've been promoted to be one of his "spies". The only thing Regan is supposedly good at is sucking up to politicians.
Keeping Regan in that position in a department that is as public service-oriented as Recreation and Parks is the only thing I can really ding Mukri on.
Regardless of Mukri's performance to date, the rumor mill has been in full swing since it began to look like Garcetti could win the election. "Those in the know" have been saying that Mayor Garcetti will be exacting revenge on Recreation and Parks' general manager because Mukri's significant other, Claire Bartels, was Wendy
Gruel's chief of staff for ages.
I believe that Mayor Garcetti is above
such nonsense. Garcetti was raised in a political family where politics
is what you do outside the home and couples may have different political
ideals when they are at work. Mukri did not campaign for Garcetti's
opponent, so why would there be retaliation on an excellent manager? If Garcetti is indeed calling the shots, I
can't see this kind of nonsense controlling his decision.
So how do the employees feel? When then-mayoral candidate Garcetti announced that if elected he would make all of the City's general managers reapply for their jobs, I started taking an informal poll of Recreation and Parks employees I know who have been in the department for a long time. The question:
"Of all the General Managers the Dept (of Recreation and Parks) has had in the last two decades, which one could have managed to keep the department intact given the $155 million taken from the Dept budget over last 5 years?"
or none of them at all. All of these general managers were chosen by previous mayors to run the department and could be considered a reasonable example of someone now-Mayor Garcetti might choose. Some of the four were very popular with their employees.
Everyone I asked did spend time thinking about their answers, but ultimately it has been unanimous so far:
Jon Kirk Mukri, 8 - 0.
Mukri became GM not very long after I began caring for Amir's Garden following Amir's passing in 2003. He was coming off of experience in straightening out the General Services Department - a true 'managers' department, with very little direct public interaction. Given the mess he corrected there, it was clear this guy was a very good manager in the literal sense of the word.
That said, the Department of Recreation and Parks is a very different beast from General Services. Public interaction at every turn is mandatory.
First time I ran into the gentleman face to face was at an Arts Parks Committee meeting at City Hall in 2004. Every City employee in the room was dutifully spewing the praises of the impending Consolidation and creation of the now-defunct Office of Public Safety. Most of us parks advocates in the room were there to pull the Park Ranger Division out of that consolidation and keep them in our parks where they rightfully belong.
The spewing was thick in there and the whole meeting was pretty ugly - loaded with obscene revisionist history which is something the City specializes in. As the meeting ended, Mukri came over to us parks advocates in the audience and said something that was one of the pro-Consolidation bullshit bullet-point guarantees designed to assuage the fears of the unwashed masses. None of of those guarantees ever later materialized, by the way. Pretty sure I responded with something like "Stop insulting our intelligence!" Because, in all honesty, the entire plan created by Wendy Greuel and James Hahn stunk to high hell.
That was how new RAP GM Mukri was publicly introduced to "the community" he would have to work with for the next decade. And you know what? The man never insulted our intelligence again. He's been a pretty straight shooter to both politicians and the community alike, even when we vehemently disagreed with him.
So here we are in 2013, and Mukri has had to reapply for his job along with the 30-some odd other City general managers. That process is kind of insulting, really. It's one thing to carefully evaluate current managers, but another to treat them like political and managerial neophytes.
That said, would you recommend that Jon Kirk Muki keep his job?
"If they tried to finish a thought, he would rush to the podium and hulk over them in an intimidating manner."
The above is how senior community garden patron Don Feinstein described Dept. of Recreation and Parks Assistant General Manager Kevin Regan at a meeting in which a 500% increase in community garden fees was discussed. Each speaker was given two minutes.
This fee increase primarily affects senior citizens who use the City's community gardens to grow fruits and vegetables to supplement their diets on fixed incomes.
The really ugly details of the encounter between public servant Regan and 100 senior community gardeners can be heard in this segment from right-wing radio dudes John and Ken. If you don't like John and Ken, ignore their 'act' but pay attention to the information provided to them from Mr. Feinstein.
According to the City Salaries database, Regan makes a paltry $160,000 per year to utilize his people skills as the face of the public-service-based City parks department. That's a bargain - equivalent to just 1600 seniors facing community garden fee increases.
On Sept 9, 2009, fifty parks users and community members from regional parks* all over Los Angeles drove into the heart of Los Feliz during rush hour to meet one-on-one with Councilman Tom LaBonge.
No need for such a unit utilizing the full skills set of a Los Angeles City Park Ranger had been or has yet to be demonstrated, and the people who use the parks daily wanted an explanation. More importantly, they needed to be heard.
The Rangers being pulled by Recreation and Parks from real field work were Rangers grandfathered under somewhat controversial conditions at a time before POST certification. Some of those grandfathered were already peace officers. One swears an oath to be a peace officer. A few chose to ignore that oath in the grandfather deal, although they readily accepted continuing to receive the same pay as the full peace officers.
The schism caused by how poorly this change was handled still taints the entire Division today, and certain individuals, the Department of Recreation and Parks itself, and the associated unions continue to take advantage of it as a destructive manipulation tool.
The non-peace officer Park Rangers arePublic Officers as defined in the California Penal Code and are trained to do a number of vital park-specific services, including:
• Security
• Patron assistance
• Firefighting
• Search and rescue
• Community policing
• Wildlife and resource protection
• Education and interpretive - both formal and the all-important in the field interactions
Public officers can enforce City parks codes. Peace officer Park Rangers do all of these things, with the additional job of being able to enforce all State and City codes - not just park codes - and arrest.
All Park Rangers know their parks like the backs of their hands. Locations without addresses are their forte when an emergency call comes in. They are the de facto "facility managers" of the large open spaces in Los Angeles. Their visible presence can be the difference between civility and safety, and complete and utter anarchy on a busy day.
To do their jobs, they must be tactical in their response, working in the parks, on patrol, and with the public. Being a Park Ranger isn't just a job, but a vocation in the true sense.
During the two and a half hour meeting in September in Los Feliz, every single citizen, neighbor, and parks user who made it there in rush hour said almost the exact same thing to Tom LaBonge. It didn't matter which parks they came from across the City. They needed Park Rangers on patrol in their parks. Park Rangers doing the full scope of Park Ranger duties. Vital duties that were borne out of the very day-to-day need in the parks of Los Angeles as it has evolved over the century.
Why would you pull highly-trained and paid Rangers from the field? The heavy lifting with respect to interpretive work, if there is such a thing as compared to the need for other services in parks, can easily be done by trained docents and volunteers in similar, but appropriately scaled down uniforms.
But as is often the case with the City, this whole action wasn't about the public or what parks really need. The very next day after the meeting, Tom LaBonge met with Recreation and Parks Assistant General Manager Kevin Regan. LaBonge told Regan that he wanted the Interpretive Unit created anyway, to just do it. To hell with the public and public safety. To hell with union work agreements. To hell with CA POST. And to hell with taxpayer dollars. Tom wanted people in Ranger hats available for show and tell at the drop of that very recognizable hat.
So it was written. So it was done.
Today, by AGM Kevin Regan's orders, these ten public officer Park Rangers do not respond to the required chain of command that California POST units are required to adhere to. They spend their days not in the Park Ranger Station, but allegedly watching television for the most part over at CSY, Recreation and Parks' central service yard on the Atwater Village side of Griffith Park. They are now Regan's -- and LaBonge's -- highly-trained, overpaid and underutilized 'Interpretive Unit', whether there is a real demand or not. Whether it fits their job descriptions or not. Whether it best serves the parks, or not.
Ten million visitors descend upon Griffith Park alone annually. Regan's and LaBonge's body-snatch has left just ten peace officer Park Rangers to handle almost all of the work load. Other regional parks have no Park Rangers.
Unless management-by-malice and draconian practices are considered Best Practices within the Department of Recreation and Parks, it is truly hard to fathom how Assistant General Manager Kevin Regan has come to wield such exclusive control over the Park Rangers.
Originally a tree trimmer within the Department and well-known among other employees for running his personal home business doing the same while using City equipment, rarely is something positive said about Regan as an administrator outside of the official record, such as it is.
Communities who've dealt with Regan on important issues over the years during tenures as a superintendent in their area for the most part simply despise him. The stated complaints? Abusive. Arbitrary. Insane. Threatens. Lies. Flakes. Misrepresents. ... and other not so proper words we won't publish. It wasn't very hard to collect peoples' thoughts in this regard. The words flowed freely.
In fairness, with a little work we did find two community members who had been charmed by Mr. Regan at some point. Older women, both in their '70s who say lovely things about the man. But just two. And two in a City the size of Los Angeles isn't even worth mentioning statistically as an aberration.
With a pedigree like this, making Regan one of the faces of a major public service department is a choice someone somewhere should be questioning.
Since being handed carte blanch with the Park Ranger Division, Regan's not-terribly-positive behavior seems to have escalated to new levels. Perhaps it is the fact that the employees he is dealing with are both college-educated and either peace or public officers, therefore they are not easily intimidated. Whatever the reason, Regan has been on a mission that to any observer is clearly diametrically opposed to the successful enabling of the Park Ranger Division. People he supervises in other divisions openly state that they are grateful Regan is so hyper-focused on controlling the Park Rangers... it keeps him off their backs.
Beutell does and says whatever Regan tells him - he himself is under orders to do so. A puppet peace officer to disguise the fact that a civilian is running a California POST agency.
Regan's Interpretive Unit is sub-commanded by Senior Park Ranger Sharie Abajian. Abajian, a non-peace officer, was not a finalist for promotion to Senior Ranger until, likely needing a spy, Regan chose to intervene in the formal process and select her. By way of her comeuppance, Sr. Ranger Abajian is indeed loyal, shamelessly makings no secret about her activities in this regard.
What has Regan actually accomplished during his tenure as commander-in-chief?
A detailed, well thought out Strategic Five Year Plan for the Park Ranger Division, developed by both peace officer and public officer Park Rangers in May 2009 at the request of the General Manager, sits ignored. Reading this plan is a good way to understand the history of the Park Ranger Division, who these people are, and why their job has evolved into what it was at the time of writing.
Regan wants none of this - revisionist history is underway. His revisions. If he says it enough, it must be true.
It's all about control. In an employee complaint he and Abajian themselves initiated, Regan allegedly ordered an investigating peace officer to create or manufacture the necessary evidence that he could use to fire the individuals. The investigating officer refused to manufacture evidence, and the investigation did not warrant termination. In fact, it barely warranted investigation.
For more than two years, Regan sat as decision-maker on the 3-person personnel hearing committee that investigated personnel grievances directly involving himself and his subordinates, including Park Ranger senior staff.
Regan regularly discusses personnel issues with other employees, agencies, departments, and officials. He conducts personnel management and discipline via broad sweeping, dictatorial email which is sent to high-level Recreation and Parks management, other agencies, and City officials. He does this typically with few, if any of the facts actually in hand. The facts come later, and they are not rebroadcast to the original recipients.
A
popular acting chief park ranger with 30 years experience is sitting in an
office downtown, having been moved there by Recreation and Parks
with no substantiated reason for having done so. The Ranger is the only Sr. II in the division, and as such has important administrative duties. No real reason for the removal except "it's a personnel issue" will be
forthcoming, because a real investigation has no hope of turning up
anything real. Better to let the rumor mill be judge and jury.
Yet
for the record, this
Ranger was Acting Chief for at least five years which technically
gives him job rights to the position in Civil Service rules. His removal
had nothing to do with anything Civil Service. California POST approved him in the position. The real reason for his removal is likely that he remains in the way of Regan's 'Interpretive Unit'.
Regan put a non-peace officer supervisor in charge of peace officer
Park Rangers in the mounted units and the Observatory security. This is
against California POST policy.
Park Rangers work with a number of other agencies in the performance of their duties. They have Memoranda of Understandings and Agreements for things like booking suspects and mutual aid with the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Fire Department just to name two. MOUs clarify roles and are directly related to officer safety and job performance.
Out of the blue, Regan outright canceled the MOU between the LAPD and the Park Rangers. He did not notify any Ranger Division administration. Attempts to re-establish the MOU by Senior staff were derailed by Regan. The last word was that Regan and Beutell would be writing a new MOU. Regan claimed that Park Rangers, even peace officers, do not need an MOU with the LAPD.
In summary, and trying to be positive for a moment, when he was first assigned the Division AGM Kevin Regan may have had more noble motives. That has evolved to today: Regan's major actions as the faux commander in chief of the Los Angeles City Park Rangers are now all about removing the support systems from every single part of the Park Ranger Division - except Regan's 'Interpretive Unit', that is.
The hardworking men and women who are forced now to make up Regan's 'Interpretive Unit' were grandfathered into the Division in 2002. Their jobs and responsibilities were worked out in two Union meet-and-confer documents from the time, and their liability-protection as it applies to their specific work inside parks is clearly laid out in the California State Penal Code for Public Officers.
There is no question about what those job duties are, unless you listen to Kevin Regan who claims otherwise when convenient. That said, read for yourself. There is no issue in what these public employees are supposed to be doing. None of these documents have been revoked, only conveniently ignored. Non PO Ranger Duties-RecandParks Non-PO Ranger MOU-RecandParks
As we move into a number of holiday weekends this month, these public officer Park Rangers assigned to Regan's 'Interpretive Unit' will not be working as real Park Rangers. With few exceptions, they only work Monday-Friday now no matter when the busiest time in your average park occurs. Obviously this would be the weekends. Regan for his part is trying to now cut off peace officer Park Ranger services at 8pm, too. Parks close at 10:30pm.
Meanwhile back in the parks themselves, the patron calls come in and the services need to be provided. The remaining peace officer Park Rangers scramble to handle as they can, while Regan's 'Interpretive Unit' watches TV and hikes.... and contemplates interpreting things. They only do something if their commander says they can. Yet if calls are coming in and the Ranger Watch Commander sees five of them sitting there, if Sr. Ranger Abajian is not around to ask, they might as well be wall paper. Expensive, highly-trained wall paper who must properly follow someone else's orders.
There are no more Monthly Reports detailing unit activity to speak of, although a recent public records request by community members may see a hastily created one make an appearance. We'll be happy to publish that anticipated work of fiction when and if it makes an appearance. Comparison to Park Ranger Monthly reports before Regan's 'Interpretive Unit' came to be should be instructive.... like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
No, last I heard Chief Al Torres - a popular 30 veteran - is warming a desk somewhere where the phone never rings. Good stuff.
Guess again.
(bzzzzz) - wrong! It's the GSA Office of Public Safety gang! Our park rangers don't have a chief, and GSA OPS has kindly lent one of their own to play Chief. Isn't that convenient? Between some OPS lieutenant and beloved AGM Kevin Regan, Wrecks and Parks got it all covered even though what they're up to is, er... illegal. Yeah, illegal. But hey - it's Los Angeles! The law doesn't apply here. ("Li'bility? We don't care about no stinkin' li'bility....")
Bet all those community folks and folkettes who fought so hard to save park rangers are loving that GSA OPS is running their rangers now. Bet they love the idea that half the ranger staff are doing just interpretive tree-hugging stuff now too. Yet they get paid the same as the smokies doing all of the job!
I'd just love that, too. Where do I sign up?
I'm sure we all noticed how great Ranger service has been since Nov. 8th. After all, GSA OPS provides great service, don't they? Plus, they're just so darned efficient! Now that IS park progress for the people. Yee haw!
Well, kewl. Mebe with the new leadership we can finally get some of this wicked action in Griffith now too.
Popular Chief Ranger Albert Torres is getting the axe, LA City-style. Torres is being relocated to another position in the Department of Recreation and Parks after more than 30 years as a park ranger. Torres has been an extremely popular public servant within the parks community.
Update 9-16-09: Discussions on E-RIP went until midnight at City Hall last night with no decisions. Interestingly, a City Hall insider made the following observation via anonymous comment on another blog: "Seen having lunch today: (Ari) Swiller, AV(illaraigosa), Parke (Skelton), (Eric) Hacopian, (Julie) Butcher (of SEIU), (Brian) D'Arcy (of IBEW). You know some bad sh-t is going down if this bunch is all together." Indeed! Swiller, Hacopian, and Skelton advise everyone in town and run every election in town. You also might recognize Swiller from another interesting Zahniser investigative report published yesterday about the DWP being trumped on buying land in Kern County by Swiller using insider information from the Mayor. Word is that negotiations/discussions on E-RIP resumed at 9am this morning and City Council will resume session at noon today. -Green Stealth
UPDATE:it's almost 4:30pm and after two hours of public comment, City Council has been in closed session on the E-RIP issue for almost five hours. Before Council went behind closed doors,Zahniser reports that Mayor Villaraigosa threatened to veto any Golden Handshakes passed by the council, punctuating the completion of his flip-flop. A ton of people are probably very frustrated with the City's limited access to viewing and listening in on this meeting. Councilphone has been busy since before 10 am , and the City's web broadcast has been very effectively trashed by all the hits. Meanwhile, for those who did manage to get a line on Councilphone, we're listening to the Board of Public Works welcome new appointee Andrea Alarcon to the money trough. Andrea is Councilman Richard Alarcon's daughter, and she takes the place of Councilman Tony Cardenas's brother on the board. Unlike almost all other City boards which are populated by volunteers, board members on the Board of Public Works are paid six figures per year. --------------
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
David Zahniser, probably the last real reporter at the LA Times actively reporting City Hall, is reporting that Villaraigosa is flip-flopping on the Golden Handshakes deal.... finally.... after a near all-out revolt by the CAO and Bernard Parks' Budget and Finance committee. The City Council vote is to take place sometime today on the package, and it looks like the Mayor can't win this one, so Antonio's chickening-out. Great news for LA taxpayers!
What does this mean for LA City parks? Potentially a great deal. As a direct result, the huge loss of experienced workers will probably not take place. This is obviously a good thing. If the Mayor's expensive kowtowing to SEIU was passed, that coupled with a completely loony management would have meant that Recreation and Parks could have suffered the single greatest loss of accumulated job experience in its history. Yay for the parks!
But not so fast. The questionable managerial style of Assistant General Manager Kevin Regan is still firmly entrenched at the DRP, while looming is possible City bankruptcy. Less employees will be eligible for full retirement, but most of the competent veterans will still want to get away from Regan if they have any self-respect remaining. Complicating their decisions is the potential bankruptcy. If Los Angeles declares BK, then employees become creditors in a long line of creditors that the City owes, essentially. Their packages are going to be renegotiated, to their probable detriment. The question becomes whether the renegotiation is more detrimental if one is already retired, or soon to retire. Such is the nature of what experienced DRP employees may be facing. Bad news for employees.
Regardless, Tony and his 15 fiefs will need to lay off workers and furlough everyone else now. Unless SEIU and the Mayor opt for yet another misdirection to delay dealing with the debt for a few more months. Furloughs and layoffs will impact what parks services we still have left. So bad for the parks!
Where this all shakes out remains to be seen. Meanwhile, keep lobbying the people who are supposed to be representing the public to support our parks!
Besides possible City bankruptcy and other serious citywide issues, the implementation of Mayor Villaraigosa's expensive planned retirement package, aka "golden handshakes", will have a serious detrimental effect on the Department of Recreation and Parks, and Griffith Park in particular. Along with enticing the most skilled senior employees to retire, when coupled with the abusive management of Assistant General Manager Kevin Regan, the pricey retirement packages will encourage frustrated experienced employees and employees sick of the abuse to bail out. Regan's favorite targets appear to be the most productive employees - after all, if you don't do anything, then you don't draw attention to yourself - and the divisions most likely to be impacted are the ones Regan is rumored to ply his managerial skills upon the most: Forestry, Golf, Park Rangers, and Personnel, although reports of Regan's managerial abuse come from almost every part of the department.
As this digest has described before, the antics of Mr. Regan coupled with the passage of this package may result in the largest loss of experienced talent in the history of the Department of Recreation and Parks. Since we first publicized this "hush-hush" internal issue, no significant management changes in either personnel or policies have been implemented by General Manager Jon Kirk Mukri, pretty much implying his support of both Regan and the impending catastrophic loss to his own department. Whether the support stems from a similar misdirected-punitive managerial philosophy, or simply from inability to act is unclear. We'd like to hear from those who know Mukri as to which they think is the case.
More on the ramifications from a passage of the "golden handshake" package comes from two articles in today's edition of CityWatch:
$130,000 + is the value of the Golden Handshake that each city employee will receive if they sign up for the Early Retirement Incentive Program (the “E-RIP”). The City intends to finance this $293 million program by burdening the already seriously underfunded Los Angeles City Employee Retirement System (“LACERS”) with an additional $250 million in Unfunded Accrued Actuarial Liability. The City will also lay out $43 million in cash to finance the $15,000 cash incentive to each participating employee. The City … and the unions they count on to fund their election campaigns … propose to finance the $250 million liability over a 15 year period beginning in two years.
On July 1, 2011, the plan calls for increasing the retirement contribution for each remaining city employee by 0.75%, not the 1.07% determined by the experts. As a result, LACERS is short changed by about $100 million according to the Report to the Ad Hoc Committee dated September 1, 2009 (the “Report”). The Report, in a major concession to the City, since prudence would dictate no amortization period, recommended a “reasonable” amortization period of five years. However, this would require a contribution rate of 2.86% of payroll as compared to the 0.75% rate contemplated by the Early Retirement Plan. The 15 year amortization … or pay back … was not considered “reasonable” by the Report, but was only “acceptable.”
This 15 year amortization schedule results is a negative cash flow to the retirement system for the first seven years, is not consistent with the recommendations of the Government Accounting Standards Board, and would result in significantly higher interest payments ($180 million) by the City. The Report also questioned, with good reason, the City’s ability to successfully manage the “backfilling” of positions vacated due to the E-RIP. In classifying the long period as not desirable, the Report said, “The backfill rates are difficult to monitor, difficult to enforce, prone to circumvention, and can be negated by higher than expected salary increases or superseded by new ordinances during the long 15 year period."
Another major consideration is that the City’s contribution to the employee retirement program is going to increase by about $450 million next year, contributing to the projected budget deficit … your city budget … of over $1 billion. This in itself raises significant questions about the City’s credit worthiness and whether LACERS should even consider participating in the E-RIP at all. Given all the questions surrounding the E-RIP, it is amazing that a committee of LACERS Board of Administration voted not only to participate in the E-RIP scheme, but to do so with a 15 year amortization schedule, contrary to the five year recommendation of the Report. This appears to be a blatant violation of their fiduciary duty to LACERS participants and their beneficiaries and may expose the Board Members to liability for negligence. Put another way, Mr. Holoman, would Magic Johnson Enterprises engage in such a scheme?
The E-RIP is an ill conceived, self serving, overly complicated, Enron like scheme that the City cannot afford given its dire financial condition. The LACERS Board of Administration should not approve the E-RIP in any form, but if it does so, with the recommended five year amortization term. Likewise, the City Council should not approve the E-RIP, but inform the mayor, his financial wizards, and the unions that the City cannot afford to pay departing employees $130,000 each, no matter how such payments are financed. The City has some very tough financial decisions. But raiding LACERS and delaying only makes the financial situation worse. The delay alone costs the city about $12,000 a month. That’s your money folks!
(Jack Humphreville is a publisher and the Rate-Payer Advocate for the greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council. Humphreville writes LAWatchdog for CityWatch.)
Bernard Parks, L.A. City Councilmember from District 8, Chairman of the Budget & Finance Committee on Saturday spoke candidly with the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Coalition in a nearly two hour Q & A session at their monthly meeting. Even Ron Kaye (Link to Kaye commentary and video clips), former editor of the L.A. Daily News, and sharp critic of city hall, complemented Parks on his understanding of the financial problems facing the city and appreciated his concern. According to Parks the city employee unions have crafted work rules and influence to stymie any rational chances to bring the budget under control. Here we are in September, he said, and the unions have not allowed one dollar of the Mayor’s budget of shared sacrifice to be implemented. The city’s finances are rapidly becoming a dark comedy like the 1989 movie “Weekend at Bernie’s”.
Except the dead guy in our case is not Bernie but our City of Angels. City employee unions pretend that LA is still alive and well because they are determined to continue to have their really good pay and perks uninterrupted even though they are dragging around a corpse just like in the movie. The need to confer with individual unions and even individual employees with arcane civil service work rules regarding job protection and layoff essentially has taken the fine tuning of staffing and firing decisions out of elected official’s hands.
Enter the “bumping rule”. Parks said that even after several decades of being a city employee he was surprised at this one. When the Mayor and Council have determined that the layoff of several thousand employees … the least essential to running the city … is necessary, and those employees are so informed, they not necessarily laid off? Apparently an employee can go back to the department where they initially entered city employment and, depending on job class and seniority, “bump” another employee who would then be laid off.
When the smoke clears it is possible that none of the original employees have been removed from the city payroll. So, for example, mechanics and collections personal necessary to keep vehicles maintained or to collect fees owed the city could be out of work while less necessary workers stay on board. Parks said that this has happened in the past. The Councilman’s economic portrait clearly painted a city that is almost certainly near or at insolvency. Still it is unclear whether LA will be able to file for Chapter 9, the bankruptcy section for municipalities.
In Sacramento there is a bill supported by unions, AB 155, that would require a municipality to get approval of the California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission before filing. Unions hope to prevent municipalities from filing for bankruptcy altogether or at least delay the process long enough to give them more leverage. The DWP employee union, IBEW, represents 95% of the employees and their pay, Parks said, is 40% higher than the rest of city workers, even though only a small fraction of DWP workers actually work with high voltage.
If you try to bring their pay in line with other city departments, he said, we could find ourselves without water and power. So the rate increases will continue. All of this, according to Parks, because the Democratic Party in seeking to gain more control of State and Municipal government made this pact with public employee unions. They are legal monopolies. To get elected and receive their funding and support in LA and many parts of the State you need a 100% pro-labor voting record. Parks knows what he’s talking about. During his recent run for LA County Supervisor the unions turned on the money spigot with independent expenditures and drowned him. Parks offered a partial solution to undo the influence of employees by appealing to the business community to get more involved in changing the downtown culture.
(Michael N Cohen is a member of the Reseda Neighborhood Council and is a long time community activist in the San Fernando Valley. Views expressed are entirely his own.)
Hard working city employees are really starting to wonder what in the heck is going on with Rec and Parks' once-popular General Manager Jon Kirk Mukri.
The word on the street: Mukri's top guy -Assistant Gen. Manager Kevin Regan - has the entire department either hating him, terrified of him, or believing he is a complete lunatic. From multiple detailed reports, Regan apparently abuses employees to the point that most of the professional and skilled ones who are forced to work under his tyranny can't wait for those 'Golden Handshakes'** from the Mayor to materialize so they can bail out.
Regan supposedly terrorizes less educated employees and makes educated, motivated employees hate coming to work. He bad-mouths his own department's employees to other departments, and to other employees. Every management action is rumored to be punitive. Employees are either set up to fail, or they have every ounce of initiative beaten out them by Regan's pico-managing* actions. A possibly over-promoted arborist, Regan doesn't seem to really know what he wants, so he makes it up as he goes along while his false-starts and declarations keep workers wondering if their job will even exist the next time they come in. A number have confided to this blog that they don't want to even be in the same room with Regan because they know he's going to beat them up, no matter how good a job they're doing.
(*pico is even smaller than micro - look it up.)
In short - AGM Kevin Regan is the perfect example of everything any good manager should avoid at all costs.
Tellingly, Kevin Regan is also the epitome of old Recreation and Parks culture - exactly the culture Jon Kirk Mukri swore to eliminate when he left the General Services Department to head Recreation and Parks.
Unless Mukri gets control of the tyrant acting in his name, Mukri's tenure as General Manager will be forever linked with the largest loss of job knowledge that the Department -- and perhaps even the City -- will ever experience.
Rumor has it the Park Ranger Division will be the first large casualty, with 120 years of experience just waiting to jump on those retirement packages as soon as they're available. Similar losses for the exact same reason in the Forestry Division and Golf Division are right behind them.
What a sad legacy for Mukri to leave the children and people of Los Angeles with!
(**Golden Handshakes might be on hold as the City's entire budget process is collapsing even as we type this.)
$130,000 + is the value of the Golden Handshake that each city employee will receive if they sign up for the Early Retirement Incentive Program (the “E-RIP”). The City intends to finance this $293 million program by burdening the already seriously underfunded Los Angeles City Employee Retirement System (“LACERS”) with an additional $250 million in Unfunded Accrued Actuarial Liability. The City will also lay out $43 million in cash to finance the $15,000 cash incentive to each participating employee. The City … and the unions they count on to fund their election campaigns … propose to finance the $250 million liability over a 15 year period beginning in two years. 
Bernard Parks, L.A. City Councilmember from District 8, Chairman of the Budget & Finance Committee on Saturday spoke candidly with the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Coalition in a nearly two hour Q & A session at their monthly meeting. Even Ron Kaye (