Laura Chick
The City Controller blew the whistle on L.A.’s failed gang prevention programs and vows to hold the mayor accountable for fixing them
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, in his third State of the City address Monday night, focused on two of the biggest problems facing L.A.: burgeoning gang violence and the bloated public debt.
Recent high-profile shootings that have been rocking Los Angeles have brought violence front and center, and the mayor talked up his plan to oversee gang-prevention programs in his office.
A big player in all of this is City Controller Laura Chick, who audited the mess of gang prevention programs overseen by the City Council’s ad hoc gang violence prevention committee and other city departments, and pushed for placing all of them under the mayor’s control. After a two-month row with Councilmember Tony Cardenas, the City Council finally signed off on the deal.
Chick, in an interview with Citybeat, gives some insights into how L.A. might finally end up with gang programs that work.
–Ashley Archibald
CityBeat: Why did you think it was so important to move the gang prevention programs from under the auspices of the ad hoc committee to the mayor’s office?
Laura Chick: It was not so much about moving it from council to mayor, it was moving programs that have been uncoordinated, disconnected and not under the direct auspices and oversight of a single person or office. This was about consolidating and coordinating.
Why will it work better now?
Moving these programs to the mayor’s office creates a single point of accountability. We have a variety of different programs and they just were not all brought together with a single strategic plan that says this is about lowering gang violence.
What about the way it will be organized now will make it more accountable?
What’s being created now in the mayor’s office is a Request for Proposal at the very beginning when they’re picking the agencies that will be delivering services. Those agencies are going to know exactly what is expected of them, what outcomes they are supposed to be producing. We’ve been almost giving money to agencies as a matter of entitlement. That’s not a good way to go about it.
What’s going to be different about these programs that’ll address the gang problem better than before?
The old programs weren’t based on crime statistics, and that is something also that is changing radically. The dollars are going to be reallocated, and it’s not going to be that every council district gets a program. It’s going to be that the neighborhoods that have been identified by high gang violent crime, those are the areas that are going to get the dollars and the programs.
And there are going to be needs assessments. Some of the communities may need many other things beyond one or two gang prevention programs. They need parenting classes, they need job training, mentoring programs, they need safe passage for the kids to and from school. So it’s not just going to be an isolated gang prevention program that’s just dropped into these communities, it’s going to be a whole array of services that chip away at the root causes of why people are joining gangs to begin with.
Are these the gang reduction youth development zones that I’ve heard about?
You know, I’m not sure. I just know these are key features of how the city is going to run and administer its anti-gang-violence programs. It really is revolutionary when you think about it. Government usually gets dollars to pass out to various community-based organizations and nonprofits to target a problem to provide services to provide to a population in need. They’ve never really gone about it in any scientific way to say we need to measure our performance, we need to evaluate how we’re doing, we need to rank all these services.
We really seem to throw money at things. It’s like government builds a building, we cut the yellow ribbon, congratulate ourselves that the building is open and then walk away. That is how the government has traditionally funded programs and services.
What will be the criteria to evaluate whether these programs are working? It would be very difficult to say, “Well x many lives were saved.”
Right. Well, first and foremost, crime statistics will be closely watched. There are other things to be measured. School attendance, dropout rates versus graduation rates, young people employed in the geographic area, how many mentoring programs exist in an area and how many kids are signed up as mentees. There are a variety of metrics that will be closely watched and followed because that’s the only way to be able to know whether a program is successful.
It sounds like you’re targeting mostly teenagers.
We’d like to get in younger than middle school. By high school you’re starting to get awfully late, you’ll have to get intervention and reentry programs. Oh, and that’s another thing that’s changing. Sheriff Baca, Chief Bratton are saying we need intervention programs. We need interventionists, not just prevention. We need workers going in and actually pulling young people out of gangs, brothers and sisters of gang members away from gangs, and to give more dollars to intervention programs than we’ve been giving.
There seemed to be some real tension between you and Councilman Cardenas on this issue. How did that play out for you?
Clearly, there was a process that needed to take place for some of the key leadership in the City Council and maybe even in the mayor’s office for this to evolve and move toward the best of all worlds. Without being petty about it, that expression “all’s well that ends well” (and we haven’t ended, we’ve just begun) … but trying to figure out what direction to go in, that waiting game is over.
What is the continued role in the ad hoc committee in this?
My understanding from President Garcetti, who has reiterated this to me multiple times, is that the ad hoc committee on gang violence will finish its work by July 1.
And the council wanted to help with the measurement tools and that sort of thing for the programs under the mayor’s office?
Well, in my mind, the ad hoc’s role is to hand over to the mayor recommendations for an evaluation tool. Similarly, when the council requests the city controller to do something, requests the city attorney to do something, requests the mayor to do something, it will be in that spirit because the city council does not tell the mayor, does not order the mayor, does not advise the mayor. It requests, it communicates, in tandem and as a team player.
I think the ad hoc committee has been stellar. They’ve used many of the same experts that the mayor’s office and I have used. That’s why I’m saying it’s all come together and whatever they turn over to the mayor as a measurement tool will be very, very helpful. But everyone is finally on the same page. The ad hoc’s work is winding down and the council will be very vigilant and will be watching and listening. And so will this office and hopefully so will the media. Everyone’s watching and we can’t fail. We can’t.
And the goal was not to give these programs more money, but just to streamline them to make them more efficient?
No. The mayor has increased the money that’s going into prevention and intervention. What my report called for and what the mayor’s agreeing with is that we’re not adding more money from the general fund for gang programs right now. We’re reallocating money that’s already in existence for similar programs.
As you know, there is conversation from the council right now about asking the public for more money for gang programs and that is one potential way to get more funding.
And what programs are we thinking about un-funding to bolster gang prevention funding?
We identified about $19 million worth of programs that did not seem to have clear goals and objectives and priorities. For instance, there are some programs funded for domestic violence. We are not saying, “Don’t fund domestic violence programs,” but we’re saying, “How does this fit with anti-gang programs and how can we make this fit as part of the program? How can we make this more effective?” That decision will be up to the mayor.
We can’t be all things to all people.
Published: 04/16/2008
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