The Most Thankless Gig in L.A. City Government

THE JUNE MEETING OF the Los Angeles City Health Commission ended the way the panel’s sessions so often do, with one of the newer members asking why nearly half the seats on the 15-member body remain vacant. Maybe, the new commissioner suggested, they could form a task force to visit City Council members to urge them to make appointments? Or maybe they could recruit applicants themselves and deliver their resumes to the council? Or maybe they could do a study to learn why no one seems to value the commission’s work?

But they’ve tried all that, and more besides, multiple times. Former member Susie Shannon said she once scheduled a press conference to try to get the council’s attention. Members periodically testified at meetings of other city bodies to remind the council of the commission’s importance. Or its existence. 

Commissioners are trapped in a civic crisis of Kafkaesque absurdity: They’re a panel of smart, hardworking and community-minded appointees who take expert testimony on vitally important issues once a month and offer recommendations and warnings, as required by law, to safeguard the health of Los Angeles’ 3.9 million residents in meticulously detailed reports that few people read and virtually no one heeds. They prepare semiannual presentations to the council, also as required by law. But in more than a decade of monthly meetings, they have never once actually made such a presentation because the council has never once put them on its agenda.

There is no city health department or city health service to oversee. They have no budget or paid staff, and rely instead on a team of unpaid research associates. The current mayor tried (and failed) to disband them. The rest of City Hall appears puzzled by them. The L.A. County Public Health Commission seems never to have heard of them. The County Public Health Department (which provides the city’s public health services) has no formal relationship with them.