The Los Angeles City Council took the historic step of censuring Councilmembers Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo and former Councilwoman Nury Martinez for their roles in the City Hall racism and redistricting scandal on Wednesday, Oct. 26 – the first time in at least a century that the council has censured any of its own members.
The 12-0 vote to censure the three, along with a statement calling for de León and Cedillo to immediately resign, marks the strongest measure the council can take since it cannot suspend the councilmen or force them to resign without proof of criminal conduct, said City Council President Paul Krekorian.
According to the City Clerk’s office, no council member has been censured since at least 1911.
“With this vote, we have literally done every possible action available to the council in demanding the resignations. … We’ve now done it by formal vote. In addition to the censure, there are no steps remaining for this council to take to demand those resignations,” Krekorian said during a news conference after the council meeting.
“It’s now up to the people of the 14th Council District to really step forward with a recall in order to remove Mr. de León from office,” he continued.
Unlike Martinez, who stepped down as council president on Oct. 10, then resigned her council seat two days later amid unrelenting pressure, the two councilmen tied to the latest City Hall scandal have thus far resisted calls to leave office.
De León’s term is not up for another two years, whereas Cedillo is set to leave office in December when his term ends. Cedillo lost his bid for reelection in the June primary, and those calling for his resignation have suggested swearing in early the person who defeated him, Eunisses Hernandez, if Cedillo resigns.
De León, in an interview with KBLA on Tuesday, maintained that he was not going anywhere.
He said leaving office would still leave many pressing issues unresolved, such as the city’s homelessness crisis, and he did not want constituents in District 14 to be left without a voting member on the council for an extended period of time. In addition, he said he wanted an opportunity to atone for his mistakes.
“You resign and you walk away, and that’s it,” de León said during the radio interview. “But the atonement, the dialogue — that has to be made. It has to be done. And that’s what I’m committed to.”
Although Cedillo and de León have not shown up to a council meeting since Oct. 11, when they were booed and pressured by protesters to leave before the meeting started, the two continue to be paid well over $200,000 per year, as councilmembers.
Asked by a reporter if any councilmember has said they don’t want to be present in the same Council Chamber as Cedillo or de León, Krekorian said it’s clear that if de León were to participate in council meetings, “there would be other members who would not be part of that.”
Krekorian said the council is exploring whether it can remove a councilmember who is failing to perform his or her duties, but it’s not clear whether simply missing council meetings would be enough to take that sort of action.
In an effort to apply more pressure on Cedillo and de León to resign, Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, acting as the interim council president last Monday before Krekorian was named permanent president on Tuesday, stripped both men of their chairmanships on council committees and removed them from most committees.
Wednesday’s censure vote included Martinez among those to be censured because the motion was introduced before she resigned from the city council. But a representative from the city attorney’s office said during a morning meeting of the council’s Ad Hoc Censure Committee that it was unclear whether the council can censure a former member.
The fallout at City Hall stems from a private conversation that Martinez, de León and Cedillo had with then-L.A. County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera a year ago in which the four Latino leaders conspired to redraw the city’s redistricting map to benefit themselves and to strengthen Latino voting power in the city while diluting the voting power of Black residents.
The backroom conversation, which was secretly recorded a year ago, posted on Reddit earlier this month and published by the Los Angeles Times, was laced with racist comments about Blacks, Oaxacans and other races, as well as demeaning remarks about the LGBTQ community. Most of the comments were uttered by Martinez, though many have criticized the other three men for not intervening.
Moments before the censure vote, Councilman Mike Bonin, whose Black son was compared to a monkey in the secret recording and referred to as an accessory like a luxury handbag, said that their ugly comments — while directed at his son — reflected a broader issue.
“Those comments, while they were made specifically about one beautiful Black boy, was really an example of a pathology and an attitude of systemic racism against all Black boys and all Black girls,” Bonin said during the council meeting.
While elected officials have used their platforms to call for the resignations of the councilmembers involved in the secretly taped conversation, members of the public have also made clear their disdain.
Just like on Tuesday, two to three dozen people disrupted Wednesday’s council meeting, refusing to quiet down or leave until de León and Cedillo resigned.
As soon as the Wednesday meeting was called to order, the Council Chamber erupted in pandemonium, with protesters chanting to “shut down” the meeting. It was so loud that, just as on Tuesday, councilmembers were forced to use headphones to hear what others were saying to them via microphones, and to hear the comments by people who phoned in.
Krekorian, in only his second week as council president, recessed the Wednesday meeting before the council discussion on the censure vote and asked protesters to quiet down and to clear the aisle as police officers stood by.
Shortly after, the protesters, who had not complied with Krekorian’s instructions, were warned that they could be arrested if they did not disperse and were given 20 minutes to clear the room.
Despite the warning, the 15 or so officers in the chamber stood by and allowed the protesters to continue chanting without confrontation.
“Who’s got the power? We’ve got the power! What kind of power? People power!” went one of the chants.
After about 40 minutes of chanting and drum-beating, the protesters, numbering about two dozen, filed out of the chamber without incident while chanting, “Who shut it down? We shut it down!”
They vowed to return Friday when the council next meets.
After the protesters left, councilmembers returned to the chamber to resume the meeting, and voted on the censure issue.
Afterward, Krekorian told reporters that as council president, he has demonstrated “far more patience than should reasonably be expected” in terms of the disruptions. But, he said, he also recognized that “these are extraordinary times” and vowed that the council would continue to conduct its business.
“This council will do the work that we’ve been elected to do, and we will not be taken off of that path by distractions, by noise, by disturbances, by disruptions,” he said.
“We demonstrated it yesterday,” he continued. “We demonstrated it again today, and we will continue to demonstrate it at each and every council meeting.”
City News Service contributed reporting.
