Endorsement: Serena Oberstein for Los Angeles City Council District 12

Feb. 5, 2024 5 AM PT

Because there are only two candidates running for Los Angeles City Council District 12, the race will be decided in the March 5 primary. Either voters will give incumbent John Lee another term, or they will replace him with challenger Serena Oberstein, a nonprofit executive and former president of the L.A. City Ethics Commission.

For voters it’s a choice between clinging to outdated ideas about the northwest San Fernando Valley or embracing a fresh, sustainable, vibrant vision for the future. We hope they choose the latter and vote for Oberstein.

Lee represents the status quo. He is the product of a pattern of 12th District conservative council members anointing their top deputy as successor. Lee won the seat in a special election in 2019 when his former boss (and now convicted felon) Mitch Englander quit abruptly to become a lobbyist.

We thought Lee was the wrong pick for council then, and his performance since has not changed our opinion. His policies seem tailored to a narrow constituency — anti-growth residents, business groups and police and fire unions — that is often resistant to the kind of necessary changes sweeping California and Los Angeles.

Again and again, he has acted in ways that are counter to a healthy, sustainable and prosperous city. For example: He helped scuttle a Metro plan to build a bus rapid transit lane along Nordhoff Street, one of the main arteries to Cal State Northridge. These types of projects often face localized opposition but are necessary to build a public transit system that people will actually use.

Nor has he been an effective leader on homelessness. Lee says that when he took over in 2019, there were no interim shelter beds for homeless people in his district, which extends across West Hills, Chatsworth, Porter Ranch, Northridge and Granada Hills. Now there are more than 200 beds with more to come.

That’s not enough to serve the district and it pales in comparison with what other council members are doing in their communities. Furthermore, there would be a lot less homeless housing if Lee had been successful in his attempt to pull Proposition HHH funding (which he voted for two years earlier) for the first permanent supportive housing project in his district — the last district in the city to approve such a housing project. He argued that the 54-unit building was not the right use for the former used-car lot on Topanga Canyon Boulevard, a state highway, near Devonshire Street.

Homeless advocates say his office isn’t responsive and overuses encampment sweeps. And although his district has the fewest unhoused people in the city, it had the highest number of arrests — by a wide margin — for violations of the city’s anti-camping law. Early last year he voted against some tenant protections intended to help renters avoid eviction, and perhaps homelessness, and later against a compromise that lowered allowable rent increase from as much as 9% to a more reasonable 6% when the rent freeze lifted Feb. 1.

And finally, he does not support council expansion and curbing land-use power, two City Hall reforms that good-government experts have urged to help curb public corruption, which has brought down several city officials in recent years. That includes Englander, who was given a 14-month prison sentence after he was caught taking envelopes of cash from a businessman, including on a trip to Las Vegas. It’s still unclear what Lee’s role was in that case, though his identity as “city staffer B” in the federal indictment was revealed in October by the city Ethics Commission, which accused Lee of a number of ethical violations including aiding and abetting his boss in misusing his city position. Lee disputes any wrongdoing and is suing the commission over the allegations. The case won’t be heard until after the March election.

We think Oberstein would be a much better representative for the district and a more thoughtful member of the city’s leadership. She worked for former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and served four years on the Ethics Commission, including as president, and helped shepherd through significant reforms to city’s matching funds campaign finance program. She has deep ties to the district where she grew up and is now raising her family. We also like that she would bring to the council a broader worldview from her work as executive director for Jewish World Watch, a nonprofit dedicated to helping survivors of genocide and mass atrocities around the world.

Oberstein would be among the more moderate members on the council. For example, she does not support shrinking the police force and says public safety should be a priority in the city. She doesn’t believe in criminalizing people for being homeless, and will push for outreach over sweeps. But she also says she’s willing to use 41.18, the city’s anti-camping law, though only as a last resort. While she would listen to the community concerns about development, she would still push for more affordable and denser housing construction in appropriate places such as along transit corridors and near the Metrolink stations in Chatsworth and Northridge.

Her approach is refreshingly forward-looking and will help to guide District 12 into a better future.