Minutes from the Regional Governance/Grievances Reforms Work Group - Meeting #3

The last work group on regional governance and grievances focused on grievances.  Deputy City Attorney Darren Martinez was present to answer legal issues.  It turned out that many of the legal issues resulted in too much detail at this point for the Department's City Council report so they were skipped. 

There was a major clarification in the proposed grievance process that the Peer Grievance Panel wouldn't be outright imposing remedies on grievances they found to be true.  The Panel would make a recommendation to the NC to address the grievance with a time frame for compliance.  If the NC did not meet the time frame, the Panel could choose to have the Department follow through with some consequences suggested by the Panel.  The exact list of consequences for the various types of grievances could not be addressed because of time issues, but is something the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners could address if the City Council adopts the grievance system.

We'll be updating the grievance systeem flow chart and uploading it tomorrow for everyone to comment on.  We look forward to hearing from you!

Neighborhood Council Regional Governance and Grievances

Reform Work Group Meeting
Agenda/Minutes

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Goals:

1. To determine how grievances/complaints are handled

2. To start the discussion on a potential regional

governance systemAgenda/Minutes

Purpose: To develop processes and policies to create a system that increases the Neighborhood Councils’ effectiveness and ability to self govern.

I.          Welcome and Introductions

·        Charles Lindenblatt – Mid City West CC

·        Glenn Bailey – Encino NC

·        Randy Waller – Westlake North/South NC

·        David Hechter – North Hollywood West NC

·        Mary Garcia – Midtown NoHo NC

·        Len Shaffer – Tarzana NC

·        Carlene Davis – Board of Neighborhood Commissioners

·        Darren Martinez – City Attorney’s Office

·        Grayce Liu – Department of Neighborhood Empowerment 

II.          Grievances

·        Clarification of grievance and complaints

o   Grievances are handled by the NC

o   Complaints are filed with the Department and can lead to decertification

o   Comment that needs to make clear what can lead to decertification

o   Department will still need to review certain issues that the grievance system doesn’t cover, e.g. allegations of funding mishandling  

• Review of revised flow chart of the grievance process discussed last week

·   Grayce stated that she showed the grievance process to staff who stated that additional staffing of one person, who could work on grievances and other projects, would be needed to operate the proposed grievance process 

• Answers to questions directed towards City Attorney from last week

·   Question on who would decide the time limit for grievances regarding “should have known within 30 days” since that is a legal question

1.     Darren states it’s not a legal question – the NC Board/panel would have to make the decision

2.     Need to clarify “calendar” days

3.     Department should be allowed to make the call when initially reviewing the grievance for validity

4.     Suggestions for Statute of Limitation –120 days for financial and 60 days for everything else

·   Question about what constitutes a “conflict of interest” that would preclude a Peer Grievance Panelist from serving on the panel.  Darren stated:

1.     Not actual legal conflict of interest typically applies, but some state law could apply under political reform act

2.     Can put in specific exclusions, such as can’t be on the Board affected

·   Question on who provides the training for conflict resolution to the panelists

1.     Darren stated be decided by the Department likely with NC input

·   Question on what due process rights are provided during the hearing, e.g. right to discovery, right of rebuttal, etc.  Darren explained:

1.     This grievance system is not triggered by due process usually because have to have a liberty interest under the Constitution

·   Question on what opportunities there are to appeal for the NC’s if they disagree with a panel imposed remedy

1.     Darren stated that this is not necessarily a legal question, but what does the work group want to recommend

2.     Grayce stated that to resolve this now is too much detail for the report back, but did acknowledge that this is an issue that needs to be resolved before final implementation of any grievance system

·   Question on whether financial disclosures would come into play for panelists, such as Form 700

1.     Darren will look into, but thinks the answer will be no

·   Question on what happens to those who want judicial review of the panel’s decision

1.     Grayce again stated that this is too much detail at this point

2.     Important issue because duty of panel to keep records will change depending on ability for judicial review

·   Request to have a list of detailed grievances and specific remedies for those grievances

1.     Grayce stated it is too much detail at this point

·   Question on whether stakeholders could bring legal action against the City for the removal of an entire Board as a remedy because the election/selection of the Board is a City Chartered sanction action and could be taking rights away from an entire group of stakeholders

1.     Darren stated it could potentially bring legal action on a number of theories – hard to evaluate without types of claims asserted

2.     Grayce stated this is too much detail, but other participants felt it was important to address because it is listed as one of the remedies.  Grayce gave an example of where she thought this limited remedy would take place:  there was a NC where the entire Board just disappeared and wouldn’t return any contact from the Department.  They had $150k that would have been lost had the NC been decertified so the Department chose not to seek recommend decertification because the community would lose the money.  The Department, however, could do nothing else since there was technically an elected Board in place even though they had been gone for over a year.  The Department had to wait another year for the next election cycle, which deprived the community of a functioning NC for that time access to the funds.  If the Department could have vacated the Board, then they could have held an immediate selection for a new Board. 

·        Grayce clarified that the next 4 issues had already been answered by the City Attorney in the last meeting and was accidently left on the agenda.

·   Financial penalty against the NC – not against individuals – City Attorney stated this is feasible and could direct NC’s to spend that money towards outreach in their community for example.

·   Reversal of Board action taken or reholding a meeting – City Attorney stated this can happen, but need to resolve what would happen if in a funding situation, the money is already spent?  Sometimes the legality of doing something is easier than the feasibility.

·   Vacating the entire Board as a step before decertification – Panel could also have the ability to prohibit vacated Board members from running for the Board for a time period (1-2 years) – this prohibition was not discussed by the work  group because of time

·   Right to bring an attorney to Peer Grievance Panel – Darren will look into it 

• What constitutes valid grievances and what remedies are specific to the types of grievances

·   Grievances are intended to address matters involving procedural disputes, such as the Board's failure to comply with Board Rules or its Bylaws. It is not intended to apply to Stakeholders who merely disagree with a position or action taken by the Board at one of its meetings, which may be aired at public comment at Council meetings. 

·   Board members may not file grievances against the NC or other Board members

·   In limited circumstances, grievances can be about violations of the Brown Act so long as the remedy requested, such as Board training, is not a penalty under the state law violation

·   Grievances cannot be about the PRA, a Demand to Cure under the Brown Act (which must go directly to the NC), violation of city/state/federal law, conflicts of interests

·   Time Frame – Statute of limitations – thirty days from the incident or when a person should have known about the incident, which could apply in delayed time situations such as glitches on the quarterly audit submission or draft/approved minutes

·   Darren stated NC does not have authority to review violations of state law; for example, conflict of interest complaint against an individual Board member, the Board runs a risk of slander and defamation of making such a finding of conflict of interest  

1. During the discussion, it became evident that the grievance flow chart was unclear on what exactly the Peer Grievance Panel could recommend once they made a determination.  Some members of the work group thought that the Panel could have an NC funds frozen or could remove someone straight away.  They wanted the Department to have that authority.  Grayce apologized for not making it more clear on the grievance flow chart that the Panel makes recommendations to the NC to address the issue and only if they didn’t could the Panel then make a recommendation that the Department follow up with consequences of ignoring the Panel’s findings.  Here are the steps for the Panel:

•  Panel Determination

·   Panel has to make a finding as to whether the grievance is valid (true) or not

·   The Panel then makes the following recommendation:

1.     Identify what occurred and what rule was involved

2.     Suggestion of the NC needs to make a correction and provide a time frame for NC action

3.     Panel could then also state that if the NC did not make the correction, then the Department would then follow up with a consequence (remedy) that the Panel chose off a list of recommended consequences based on the type of grievance and how often the NC has done this before 

• Who is on the Regional Peer Grievance Panel?  Work group only discussed the Brown Act issue for lack of time

·   Selection process – Every NC will select 1-2 Panelists be it a Board member or stakeholder to be in a pool for the region or possibly citywide.  In addition, Panel could potential include the region’s Commissioner from the Board of Neighborhood Commissioner or a representative from the City Councilmember’s office for diversity (was not decided). 

·   Brown Acted Bodies – Have the option of not making it Brown Acted bodies if the resource infrastructure is not there to support public meetings. 

1.     Can provide the power to the Department to create the panel and therefore would not have to be a Brown Acted body, which can decrease the necessity for staffing support

2.     The Department, however, can still make it mandatory to notify everyone and be as open and transparent as possible. 

·   Training – All selected Panelists would have to receive training as a group prior to hearing a grievance  

• Should there be a limit on how many times a person can file a grievance each year to address serial grievers?

·   Yes – Participants have had experiences with multiple grievances and would like relief

·   No – Thinks can be handled in bylaws; any number would be arbitrary;

·   City Attorney – not inappropriate to set a number as long as it is fair and reasonable because it is a volunteer system depending on limited resources   

• How are the regions selected for a Regional Peer Grievance Panel?  Not discussed

• Would a Regional Peer Grievance Panel handle election/selection challenges?

·   No – the Election Task Force will deal with this issue 

3. Regional Governance System Not discussed

·        Could a pilot program be created for those regions desiring regional administrative support?

·        Could a regional administrative system support elections and how? 

4. Next Steps
• Grayce will update the grievance flow chart for dissemination

·        Work Group Recap October 22, 2011 Meeting - Hollywood Constituent Center - 6501 Fountain Ave. Los Angeles 90028 – 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

o   Clarified that everything will be up for more comments