LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE STUDIO CITY NC "IMPLOSION"
Everyone from KTLA to the Los Angeles Times, from the UK’s Daily Mail to KFI Talk Radio have had their say about the media-penned “implosion” of LA’s Studio City Neighborhood Council. Let’s put on our thinking caps and dive into the details.
Quite a bit of information has been disclosed since the second CW article regarding Studio City NC on August 29th. Television coverage, newspaper articles, and one very detailed radio interview has flowed over the catastrophe like sand, consuming both small crevices and large gaps to create a better informed, more contiguous map of what occurred the days subsequent to the August 16th Board meeting.
As with most news stories, the known facts come first. Then, the truths, followed by what was previously unknown. The differentiating factor is the people. As more stories are told, there is both symmetry and conflict as truth is merely one’s perception of the events. The very idea of what the facts are in a given case is nothing apart from people’s sincere beliefs about the case, which means those beliefs that people take to be true. Eventually, enough information is revealed to correspond with the facts, and thus a better map may be constructed of the cataclysm.
A note: Jung once stated “if you cannot understand why someone did something, look at the consequences--and infer the motivation”. Keep that in mind as we press on.
WHERE WE CURRENTLY STAND
As of September 28, 2023, over a month and a half has passed since the mass resignation of all but three members, and a month since the appointed-in-question had stepped down from his seat. And yet, as of this writing, the proposed reconstitution of the SCNC Board has yet to occur.
Both City Council members Paul Krekorian and Nithya Raman have made clear the desire to reconstitute the SCNC. EmpowerLA, the City advisory body tasked with Neighborhood Council guidance, is working to resolve the situation.
Yet, with funds frozen, no perceived progress, and a City that has been reluctant to stand tall and take the lead in resuscitating local governance in the South East Valley neighborhood, the short term future of the SCNC is in doubt.
So, what in the bloody Hell happened?
LET THERE BE LIGHT
Every great story has a beginning. For this tale, such a definitive start point is unclear. Alas, over the course of this folly three “beginnings” have been told.
1. An anonymous email received just prior to the Board Meeting. This was the initial genesis of the developing controversy communicated just after the mass resignation. A past SCNC president had been in conversation with the sitting SCNC President, Scott Mandell. During this communication Mr. Mandell mentioned an “anonymous email” received just prior to the meeting, insinuating no earlier awareness of Ian Mitchell King’s conviction and incarceration. For a while, due to across-the-Board (pardon the wordplay) silence, this was the unofficial beginning of the end: a shocking email received with no time to spare sends the SCNC into a tailspin of self-destruction. Page Six couldn’t have written a better headline.
2. Kim Clements conducting due diligence. During an interview with KFI’s John and Ken on September 13th, Clements noted that, in the late afternoon of the meeting, her research of the applicant uncovered an unsettling past. She contacted Mr. Mandell, who at that point confirmed the information, “and then reached out to the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment…and I believe the City Attorney that day as well to see what we could do”. This communication occurred approximately 3.5 to 4 hours prior to the 7pm Board meeting, according to Ms. Clements. So by her own words, both empowerLA and the City Attorney were contacted by the President SUBSEQUENT to their communication. There was no mention of the President having previous discussions with either entity regarding the matter.
3. Mass confusion. Jen Bladen, a newly-elected Board members who’s also an employee of the Harvard-Westlake School, spoke to The Chronicle, Harvard Westlake’s news publication, on September 22nd. In her account, Kim Clements and Dean Cutler were the first to resign, sparking the eventual mass exodus. Mr. Mandell called her at around 7pm to alert her as to why the resignations were transpiring. As written in The Chronicle:
Bladen said Mandell, who voted to confirm King, knew about his previous charges before his appointment, but could not legally prevent him from running for office.
“Scott had been talking to the City Attorney’s Office, all leading up to this,” Bladen said. “The President of the [SCNC] and City Attorney’s Office kind of came to the conclusion that, as a formerly incarcerated person, Ian King had every right to run for office in California
So, we have, in chronological order:
• An alleged anonymous email sent only to the President of the SCNC right before the meeting revealing the truth about the applicant.
• A Board member learning of Ian Mitchell King's the day of the meeting, only to discover when contacting the President that he was well-aware of the same information, at which time he contacted the City several hours before the meeting.
• A second Board member stating that the President told her he had been feverishly working with the City preceding the meeting to find a solution, only to realize there were none to be obtained.
If Story #1 is accurate, wouldn’t such an anonymous email have been sent to the entire Board, rather than one person, in order to achieve maximum effect? In addition, the version discounts the almost-legendary researching ability of Mr. Mandell, who takes great pleasure in deep-diving every City Council File, every State Bill, to uncover the kind of facts and figures that might shame a seasoned paralegal.
If Story #2 is to be believed, and Ms. Clements has a penchant for neither embellishing her words nor pulling her punches, then Mr. Mandell’s propensity for copious research is in play, but the question now lay with exactly WHEN he knew? In the meeting, he stated to have had coffee with the applicant. Could he have known Mr. King’s past at the time of the encounter, having received the applicant’s information well in advance of such a meeting? And if so, was there any discussion of Mr. King’s incarceration and inclusion on a sex offender list?
If Story #3 is what transpired, then Mr. Mandell had been in correspondence with the City Attorney well before the August 16th Board meeting regarding the applicant.
The problem with version three is two-fold.
First, the City Attorney was correct in the assessment that Mr. King could not be denied the “opportunity” to be appointed due to his inclusion on a sex offender list. However, once he was before the Board and responding to questions, the State law would have been satisfied. As such, the Board could have voted him down due to their possession of publicly-accessible information.
Ms. Bladen stated as such, noting that “Ian King had every right to run for office in California”. This is correct. However, the City Attorney never told Mr. Mandell, according to Ms. Bladen, that the SCNC had to appoint Mr. King. In fact, the City Attorney’s Office may well have clarified “giving one an opportunity” does not equate to “hiring or appointing”.
Clearly, based on the Chronicle interview, this was not conveyed properly to Ms. Bladen, who seemed confused at the time of the appointment (an uncertainty shared by Ms. Clements) that the option to vote down the applicant was not viable.
Secondly, Mr. Mandell maintained two legal minds within the Board — Jeff Hartwick and Laurie Rittenberg. With advanced knowledge of the truth, he conceivably may have requested opinions based on their experience as how to convey information to the Board regarding Mr. King’s past without violating any local or state laws. A stakeholder close to the President who owns a skillful legal mind could additionally have been tapped as a third advisor on the matter.
At any rate, all three stories have precisely one thing in common: The SCNC President was the first to be made aware of Ian Mitchell King’s past. This is clear. What’s less clear how far ahead of the August 16th meeting did he “realize there was a problem”, and why available options were not utilized to mitigate?
LESSON ONE: KNOW YOUR ROLE
Considering Mr. Mandell’s penchant for hyper-researching pending motions, one might postulate that Mr. Mandell could have been aware of Mr. King’s criminal past very near the reception of his application for the position. This would have afforded him time to research all available options, communicate with the City, and coordinate with “legal eagle” Board members and stakeholders.
Again, according to Ms. Clements on the September 13th John and Ken Show, only TWO Board members knew of King’s past — presumably her and Mr. Mandell.
At the meeting, she sat alongside the aforementioned Jeff Hartwick who most likely would have shared with her any prior knowledge of the situation. Chip Meehan, who sat to Hartwick’s left was the third of the trio posing leading questions to the applicant that evening. If Mr. Meehan, who at the time was the Vice President of the Council, had prior knowledge of the kerfuffle, then certainly Ms. Clements would have been made aware of that fact.
This would suggest that the one practicing attorney on the Board AND the SCNC’s second-in-command had no advance knowledge of the situation. If anything, one might assume the President, in a pickle, might discuss matters with their Vice President in order to sort out solution. Add the legal minds, and this would make four Board members in discussion of an upcoming agenda item (posted or planned to be posted): Mandell, Hartwick, Meehan, and Rittenberg.
At the time of the meeting, the SCNC had eleven seated Board members. Thus a quorum would have been six to consider such a meeting a no-no in the eyes of California’s Brown Act.
LESSON TWO: KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
Let’s talk about that pesky Brown Act.
California’s Ralph M Brown Act ensures the public the right to attend and participate in government meetings as well as substantial transparency in how government bodies interact with the public. This Act plays a role in all three genesis storylines: if it’s been agendized we can’t change it; I knew about it but couldn’t talk about it; and the City told me but I couldn’t email you their findings.
The ONE THING absolutely known of the Brown Act is this: the Act was designed to be corrective, not punitive. Any legislative body receiving a Brown Act grievance has 30 days to “address, cure, and correct” the offense. In this case, the solution would be a simple “I’m sorry! We won’t do it again… we promise” response.
Seriously, that’s it. And if the grieving party finds no joy in such an answer, then a follow-up might state that the Board was taking the initiative to potentially protect the integrity of the Board in the eyes of the public by intentionally violating state law.
How, exactly, might the grieving party play that card? Any aggressive response would place the prosecuting citizen squarely on the side of a registered sex offender who’d served prison time for the offense, and failed to convey such information to the Board in any previous correspondence.
The further in advance of Mr. Mandell’s knowledge of Mr. King’s offenses and incarceration, the more obvious the move to address the Board as to the applicant’s past and deal with any Brown Act complaint at a further date. As a wise man once said: "Do what you have to do, apologize later if you have to".
And if the Board received a letter of intent from the applicant, then countering the applicant at the Board meeting with pointed questions would be due to a combination of the letter and a Board who performs basic due diligence.
As for Parliamentary procedure, in the case of the SCNC Robert's Rules of Order, the previous CW article on Studio City covered what could and should have been enacted to ensure the legitimacy of the Board.
LESSON THREE: KNOW YOUR SH*T
Generally, when a stakeholder wishes to apply for an open seat, a letter of interest is sent to the Board Secretary or President, and then forwarded to the entire Board so they may conduct their own inquiries. No longer a member of the Board, I’m assuming the procedure was duplicated for Ian Mitchell King. If so, the apathy of the Board to address the letter of interest and perform due diligence is disturbing. Only Ms. Clements, it appears, found the necessity to perform the slightest bit of research.
And there is no hyperbole in the use of the term “slightest”. The week of the resignations, I was alerted that the massive desertion had something to do with one of the applicants. I received at the time no further information. I opened the YouTube video of the meeting and skipped to the second applicant of which quite a number of interesting question had been levied upon that night. Once I had his full name, the inquest was on!
It took me 30 seconds to find “People v King”, and only that long since I first clicked on the applicant’s consulting website first. Once I locked on to the who and the what, all else fell into place — including the Megan’s Law list and the 2009 LAWeekly article documenting the incident.
Total research time: five minutes…. if that.
One might believe the appointment of a Public Official, regardless of government tier, would warrant at least that amount of time, if not more, to engage a basic inquiry to properly address the applicant at the meeting. As it stands, this didn’t not occur, with only three Board members at all interested with found intel surrounding the name Ian Mitchell King during questioning, and the President — who may have possessed such information all along — unusually reserved on the matter. Apparently the oration that he “had coffee with the applicant… and he’s well qualified” was enough social outlay that evening for somebody who far more often than not interjects himself into discussions with a verve of Bill Maher on crack.
But that night…. silence.
Sometimes, silence speaks volumes.
