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A conversation with City Atty. Mike Feuer is a trip through the nitty gritty of city government, starting with dangerous sidewalks and including graffiti prevention. medical marijuana regulation and aid to prostitutes who want a better life.
I visited Feuer last week in his office in city hall east, the 16-story annex across Main Street from city hall. We had run into each other at a party, and he invited me to stop by and chat. I’ve known him since he was a young attorney running Beth Tzedek, a community organization, which provides legal aid to low-income older people. Later, I followed his career as a member of the state assembly and the city council. I was interested in his view of his current job.
He was energetic, enthusiastic and immersed in the details of policy. He wanted to sell me on his agenda and made sure he got through his points in the 45-minute interview.
Close to Feuer’s heart are his neighborhood prosecutors, deputy city attorneys who are stationed full time around the city. He aims to increase the number from the eight under his predecessor, Carmen Trutanich, to 21, with one in every police division. They go after quality- of- life offenses, small crimes that, when added up, drive people crazy.
With the prosecutors guiding them, police, residents and business people try to work things out at the neighborhood level with a goal, Feuer said, of “restorative justice” rather than jail time. A vandal might be given a choice of cleaning up his or her mess rather than being prosecuted. “If you complete the program, we won’t prosecute you, if you don’t we will,” Feuer said. The prosecutor arranges the terms helped by possibly the property owner, cops as well as neighborhood residents who have volunteered to assist.
Another example is prostitution. In the San Fernando Valley, repeat offenders were given a choice of jail or participating in a program run by the Mary Magdalene Project, which is dedicated to helping women leave the street life. “We’ve had 121 prostitutes enter the program and 108 completed it,” Feuer said.
Feuer is also in charge of enforcing the city medical marijuana law, enacted by the voters in 2013. It limits marijuana dispensaries to those operating since 2007, keeps them away from schools, parks and residential areas and closes them between 8 p.m. and 10 a.m. There were hundreds of them operating before Proposition D passed, and the measure’s goal was to reduce the number to less than 140. Given the dispensaries’ determination to fight back in court, and their tendency to move around, that may be difficult to attain. But Feuer said the city has closed 386 in the past year.
Not even his enthusiasm could provide much comfort to me on the broken sidewalk issue. My wife and I weave our way through cracks and hillocks created by tree roots on our morning walks while ducking self-involved, texting Westside drivers. Making it home is a miracle. Nothing can be done about the situation, Feuer said, until a suit against the city is settled, an action brought by disabled people unable to navigate the obstacles. Until then, city money set aside for repairs remains unspent.
The interview over, we shook hands and I left. Maybe what Feuer told me wouldn’t have been hot news for city hall regulars. But as an infrequent visitor, observing the place from the outside, I found the session illuminating, a feeling I bet many Angelinos would share.
