A verdict on Feuer
After the histrionics of Carmen Trutanich and the poor judgment and egotism of Rocky Delgadillo, Mike Feuer is fast on his way to being Los Angeles’ best city attorney in decades. He’s upgraded the quality of work in his beleaguered office of more than 500 lawyers and he’s gone out of his way to find practicable solutions for vexing legal stalemates that have bedeviled the city for many years. He’s off to a strong start, although he can do even more.
The job Feuer fills is frankly a little odd. He’s a lawyer charged with defending the city against lawsuits and providing legal advice to city officials, but who is really his client? On paper it’s the municipal entity that is the city of L.A., but in practice it’s the mayor, the City Council, city departments and sometimes city employees. Even though they’re the clients, however, they don’t hire him and can’t fire him. He’s an elected official, installed or ousted by the electorate and responsible to them — yet only up to a point, because voters aren’t his clients and are in no position to judge the day-to-day legal work that is his office’s bread and butter. The office that comes closest in comparison may be California’s elected attorney general.
Feuer became city attorney by defeating incumbent Trutanich, who came in like a breath of fresh air but fumbled the delicate balance between lawyering, leadership and politics and suffered an understandable backlash in the form of budget cuts and loss of voter support. Feuer’s primary task in his first two years was to clean up what Trutanich had left behind.
In that basic task, Feuer has excelled. He has instilled a work ethic and a measure of pride in his staff. Tasked under last year’s Proposition 47 with prosecuting thousands of crimes that had previously been handled by the district attorney, he quickly got his office up to speed. Numerous judges interviewed by The Times have noted an increase in the preparedness and ability of L.A. deputy city attorneys in their civil and criminal courtrooms. Officials in City Hall have cited a night-and-day difference between the quality and timeliness of drafts and documents now compared with those produced before Feuer took office.
He restored the neighborhood prosecutor program, which had been cut during the budget crisis and, in so doing, he returned to action a troop of problem-solvers who deal with neighborhood disputes, nuisances and low-level crimes before they get too far out of hand.
The city attorney’s office, at its best, should focus on more than merely defending against lawsuits and providing routine legal advice; it should be oriented toward problem-solving. That’s an approach at which Feuer has demonstrated some notable ability. One example is the settlement of the long-running dispute over the city’s responsibility to curb the dust whipped up off the Owens Lake bed, left dry by a century of Los Angeles water diversions. The parties several times seemed close to agreement but were too often stymied in the past by city lawyers who laid out the reasons to say “no.” Soon after Feuer took office, he got the city and its opponents to “yes.”
The same orientation was clear in his quest to forge an agreement with hospitals to stop them from dumping patients who have nowhere to go when they are discharged. He showed his independence, and his advocacy on behalf of the public, in issuing public opinions about the enforceability of billboard restrictions — and offering a range of options — even when his clients on the City Council might have preferred an opinion that was more accommodating to their supporters in the sign industry.
His engaged approach is a good example of the kind of thing an elected city attorney can and should provide beyond the mere competence expected of a solid law firm or appointed lawyer. Feuer offers leadership and a certain political deftness, gently prodding the council and mayor by laying out opportunities, yet not crossing the boundary into their territory.
On homelessness, an issue replete with political, social and legal challenges, Feuer has taken some steps — offering the council a range of options, for example, on removing bulky items from public streets and sidewalks while still preserving the property rights of the homeless owners. On Friday, he announced a program to streamline the process for clearing minor criminal citations for homeless people and for connecting them with vital services. Still, on the difficult homelessness issue, Feuer’s grade must be “incomplete,” because he has a long way to go (as do other city officials) to steer the city to a workable solution.
There are areas where he ought to be more engaged and aggressive. He should demonstrate a firmer commitment to investigating workers’ compensation and overtime fraud on the part of city workers, referring felony cases to the districting attorney, prosecuting misdemeanors in house and counseling city departments on how to prevent such problems. If he can go after Wells Fargo Bank for allegedly victimizing customers with illegal charges — and he can, and should — he can and should also defend Los Angeles residents and taxpayers from abuses by the city’s workforce. If such abuses are mostly folklore, he should say so, and if they are real, he should act.
Having set a solid foundation, Feuer will face thornier challenges in the second half of his term and, if he’s reelected, a second term. His steepest challenge may be steering Los Angeles through rising crime, changes in criminal law wrought by Proposition 47, a spate of high-profile police shootings around the country and a rare moment in history when society is rethinking its approach to crime and punishment.
As city attorney for the nation’s secondlargest city, and with his dual role in criminal and civil law, Feuer has an opportunity to set a national example for policies and processes that allow a long generation of drug and petty offenders to get clean, put their pasts behind them and reenter civil society safely and productively; and he must do it while keeping public safety in the forefront.
Feuer has experimented with pilot programs for restorative and neighborhood justice. They are fine moves, although tentative ones, but they do not constitute the sweeping transformation of the justice system for which Feuer could be the chief thinker, actor and spokesperson. Taking up the challenge would be fraught with political risk. But if not Feuer, who? If not now, when?
Feuer has come a long way from his first days as a councilman in the 1990s, when his colleagues and others in City Hall scoffed at his earnestness, his impatience and his focus on ethics, and called him a “Boy Scout” and “Saint Michael.” Today he is more politically savvy and excels at dealing effectively with his colleagues and counterparts. And that’s — OK. There are times, though, when some more of that old impatience would be welcome.