L.A. City Council upholds Bass veto, killing proposal to let police chief fire officers

A divided Los Angeles City Council opted not to override Mayor Karen Bass’ first veto of her administration, effectively killing a ballot proposal to let the police chief terminate officers for misconduct.

The City Council needed 10 votes to override Bass’ veto, which she issued two weeks ago. On a 9-5 vote, the council agreed to accept the mayor’s veto without a challenge.

Councilmember Tim McOsker, who spearheaded the effort to get the LAPD discipline measure on the Nov. 5 ballot, voiced disappointment in the results, saying city leaders had “missed a window of opportunity to do a great deal of reform of the LAPD disciplinary system.”

McOsker voted against receiving the mayor’s veto without further action, along with Bob Blumenfield, Kevin de León, John Lee and Monica Rodriguez.

Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky welcomed the outcome of Tuesday’s vote, saying the measure “isn’t the systemic real reform that we need.” The veto, she said, will allow city leaders to restart the legislative process, giving the mayor “a chance to do more substantial reform.”

Yaroslavsky, who voted in June to send McOsker’s measure to the ballot, said she discussed the proposal with Bass and the city’s lawyers and now believes it is “problematic.” She criticized a portion of the proposal that would have allowed police officers to appeal their firing as part of a binding arbitration process, arguing that such a system would be too lenient.

“We know arbitration outcomes aren’t good for maintaining that ability to keep that person fired,” she said.

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez also criticized the binding arbitration concept and said the measure would have limited the types of misconduct that could result in a firing by the police chief.

That would have left the LAPD with a “two-tier” system of discipline, he said.

“That is not reform,” Soto-Martínez told his colleagues. “That is putting lipstick on a pig.”

The proposal, approved by the council in June, would have allowed for the outright firing of officers found to have engaged in “serious” misconduct, including dishonesty, physical abuse, racial bias and other forms of discrimination, and membership in a law enforcement gang.

The measure also would have reworked the composition of the LAPD’s three-member disciplinary panels, known as boards of rights, ensuring that one member is a commanding officer.

In her veto letter to the council, Bass said the ballot proposal would have left the LAPD with “gaps in guidance,” putting the agency at the risk of “bureaucratic confusion.”

Bass said she has met with hundreds of officers and heard a common theme: the need for a “more fair and less ambiguous disciplinary system.”

“We must bring all parties to the table and we will,” she said in a statement after Tuesday’s vote.

A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents about 8,800 officers, said the union looks forward to working with the mayor and the council to fix the department’s “unfair and favoritism-laden discipline system.”

“We fully support the Mayor’s pledge not to enact any changes to the current discipline system until a comprehensive fix is placed before the voters in a subsequent election,” said Tom Saggau, a spokesperson for the league.

City Council President Paul Krekorian, who is in France for the Olympic Games, missed Tuesday’s meeting, the first since the end of the council’s three-week summer break. On the agenda, he had asked for the veto override vote to be postponed until Aug. 14.

McOsker objected to that idea, pointing out that that meeting would take place after the deadline for getting the proposal on the ballot. He asked his colleagues instead to schedule a full discussion of the mayor’s veto for Aug. 6.

The council deadlocked 7-7 on McOsker’s request, with Yaroslavsky, Soto-Martínez, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Eunisses Hernandez, Heather Hutt, Imelda Padilla and Nithya Raman all voting no.

After the vote, McOsker said he did not understand why the council was “so eager to sustain the veto on the first day we had the opportunity to do so, and without debate.”

“We can’t be so afraid of losing our jobs that we don’t do our jobs,” he said.