Health Aides Protest County’s Secret Vote

Home health-care aides and their elderly and infirm clients Tuesday protested a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors’ secret vote to kill an initiative that would raise the low-paid aides’ wages.

The aides, who contend the issue has put the integrity of the board in question, are demanding that the board release all documents and minutes of other closed sessions related to the initiative for the last six months.

“The integrity of this board is unequivocally in question today,” said Tyrone Freeman, president of Service Employees International Union Local 434B, which represents the workers. “If they refuse [to provide the documents], we have to raise the question of their conduct. What are they trying to hide?”

Supervisors were divided in their reactions to the request. Gloria Molina said through an aide that the group should be allowed access to all documents related to its initiative.

Don Knabe and Yvonne Brathwaite Burke both said the county counsel would decide whether the documents are public record but said they believe the documents are not public because state law allows discussion in private of personnel matters and pending litigation.

Zev Yaroslavsky said that he did not want to set a precedent of releasing what he too believes are privileged documents but that he would be open to having a third party, such as a retired judge, review the documents for any signs of wrongdoing.

“I think the board has to bend over backward to prove itself now,” Yaroslavsky said.

December Session Started Brouhaha

The controversy involves a Dec. 18 closed session in which the board voted 4 to 1 to instruct County Counsel Lloyd Pellman to ignore his legal requirement to prepare a ballot title and summary for the initiative, which would increase the health aides’ salaries from $6.75 to $11.50 an hour.

Without the title and summary, proponents of the initiative could not begin to gather signatures to qualify it for the November ballot, stopping the proposal in its tracks.

The decision, opposed by Yaroslavsky, was not subsequently announced to the audience attending that day’s Board of Supervisors meeting, as is usually required by law. County Counsel Pellman--who made the original suggestion to avoid certifying the measure--eventually reversed himself and did the required work.

Even in that reversal, the workers and Molina contend, Pellman violated open meeting laws. Documents show that he telephoned a majority of the board without posting a notice of a meeting.

Molina and Knabe assert that Pellman did not include them in the phone calls, so they did not know about his actions to reverse himself until after they were taken.

Union official Freeman said the fact that the measure was only momentarily sabotaged does not lessen the misconduct.

“If a bank robber goes to the bank and holds it up--whether or not he takes the money, it is still a bank robbery and he’s still prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” he said. “This Board of Supervisors has violated the law. They ought to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, just like that bank robber.”

Lawyers representing the initiative’s proponents complained last week to the district attorney’s office that the board violated open meeting laws in the Dec. 18 meeting, during the serial telephone calls and subsequent closed-door meetings to discuss what happened.

A prosecutor in the Public Integrity Division is reviewing the complaint to determine whether an investigation is warranted.

Pellman denies that the board violated any open meeting laws.

The board’s actions were revealed last week when the county refused a public records request by The Times but included the documents sought with the denial letter. The county later said the documents were released by mistake and asked for their return.

“It seems to us that a cover-up of the secret meetings would have happened and the public would never have known how the board reached its conclusion about an important issue that should have been debated in the open if the Times reporter had not accidentally been given the critical documents,” Karen Ocamb of the Los Angeles Press Club told supervisors during public comment Tuesday. “We of course look forward to a full explanation of how these secret meetings came about and whether this is an isolated incident or a pattern.”

Her group is requesting that the board review its open-government ordinances to allow broader access to documents and discussions.

Publicity Has Helped Cause, Supporters Say

Proponents of the initiative said recent publicity about the board’s hostility to the measure has familiarized the public with the issue and made it easier to gather signatures.

Outside the board’s meeting room Tuesday, they set up poster-sized photographs of home health aides and their clients and enlargements of the notorious documents.

“I’ve lived in L.A. County all my life and I’m appalled that five of our representatives would try to do such a dastardly deed as not even letting it go to the voters,” said proponent Hugh Hallenberg from his wheelchair. “I call on the Board of Supervisors to stop trying to squash us before we’ve even had an opportunity to circulate our initiative.”

“It’s unconscionable for them to have secret meetings and undermine democracy,” said Julia Scoville of the Gray Panthers of Long Beach. “Most of our members are seniors. Their biggest concern is, as they age and become more and more disabled, that they can’t remain in their own homes.

“We feel that the Board of Supervisors and their families will one day be in the same situation,” she added, “and would like to have competent care.”