Source: Spectrum News 1
LOS ANGELES — Having lived her whole life in the port community of Wilmington, Gina Martinez knows local representation is at stake with Measure HH.
If passed, the measure would amend the Los Angeles City Charter to give the community of Wilmington and the adjacent neighborhood of San Pedro each a guaranteed spot on the five-person Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners. The board oversees the management and operations of the port, such as commerce, fisheries, public access to the waterfront as well as environmental impacts — many of which take place or impact both San Pedro and Wilmington.
“When you consider the vast majority of the port is in the confines of Wilmington, that matters because the people who are there now don’t have to live with the consequences of the decisions they make,” said Martinez, who is also the chair of the Wilmington Neighborhood Council.
She says the council is carrying on decades of grassroots efforts to have permanent local representation.
The makeup of the five-person volunteer board is appointed by LA’s mayor and does not guarantee representation for both of the two adjacent communities, Wilmington or San Pedro. That is because the current charter says only one member must be from the Harbor area, with the only residence requirement for the rest being they live in the city of LA. At the moment, only one member is from San Pedro.
That’s why LA City Councilmember Tim McOsker, who represents both Wilmington and San Pedro, is sponsoring this measure with the hope of local voices being heard.
“One resident from the San Pedro community, and one resident of the Wilmington community. What’s significant about that is we’re not just doubling the representation that’s required, we are making sure that the Wilmington community is always represented. It is a community that has been underrepresented on this commission for a long, long time. It has had representation, but it does not have representation today,” said McOsker.
The Wilmington area is home to a predominantly Latino, working-class community that lives with the Port of Los Angeles as their backyard. Although the port is a major economic driver for the neighborhood, Martinez says it does have downsides.
“The traffic or the damage to the streets, and the curbs or your vehicle constantly getting hit or blocked or, you know, having it ruin a curb,” said Martinez, adding that the air pollution created from the ships and trucks that go through the community is more reason to demand a seat at the board.
According to the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the Port of LA and Port of Long Beach together create 100 tons of smog and other particulates daily, which is more than the combined daily emissions of 6 million cars in that region.
McOsker says that’s also a big reason why having local representation is a big deal.
“If you live in the area of the port, if you breathe that air that the port activities create, if you drive those streets that the port activities congest, you know what the issues are, you know where the problems are, you know where the opportunities are,” said McOsker.
So far, there has not been any opposition submitted to the measure, which isn’t necessarily worrisome, according to Christopher Hallenbrook, political science professor at CSU Dominguez Hills.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean it is good or bad. It can just mean people don’t know what is going on,” said Hallenbrook.
Hallenbrook says that if he had to decide, the only caveat he sees is finding board members with the right level of expertise.
“These sort of local limitations might make it harder to find that expertise. But certainly, in recent years, they have been able to get a lot of people who are qualified to be on the board and who have also lived in the area,” said Hallenbrook, noting that the current appointment system works in the mayor’s favor, who chooses the board. “It’s simply a connection to the mayor in giving the mayor additional influence on the board through people she moves in the same political circles with.”
However, the mayor would still choose the board members. For Martinez, this measure seems like the opportunity they have been fighting for to also have influence on decisions.
“It is imperative. This is huge. This is massive. For years, we’ve been saying we need representation. This is our opportunity to get it codified, to have it written without any sort of questioning. This is it. This is our time. We’ve been asking for it. This is it,” said Martinez.
Along with this reform to the makeup of the board, the measure also includes several other changes to the operations of the city.
Among those are requiring any LA commissioner to disclose conflicts of interests, giving the city controller the ability to audit contractors the city has hired and gives the city attorney power to subpoena witnesses, among others.
