Outgoing Councilmember Calls Out Long Beach on Transparency, Energy Priorities

Before she was elected to the Long Beach City Council, Jeannine Pearce was a member of Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community, where in 2012 she helped found the People’s State of the City event, a sort of counterpoint to the mayor’s “official” annual review of the city.

“[… T]he Mayor’s State of the City was always: ‘Everything’s excellent. Everything’s great,’” Pearce says. “[…] Doing the People’s State of the City was an opportunity for us to highlight the reality that everyday people were experiencing.”

Partly because of that sort of spin, Pearce is walking away from the city council after four years as the representative of Long Beach’s Second District. 

“One of the reasons it was easy for me to walk away and not run for a second term is that I feel I need to do more of the stuff in the community, versus just putting a name on something and calling it a win,” Pearce says. 

Worse still, she feels, is a lack of transparency. She gives Long Beach a failing grade when it comes to fulfilling Public Records Act Requests, the legal requirement that cities produce upon demand any documents not explicitly exempt from such disclosure. 

“On PRA Requests, the City has done a terrible job — they just never get called out on it,” she says. As an example, she cites the period leading up to the city council’s vote on Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), a program that would allow the city to purchase electricity generated via renewable means and sell it to residents. When her office did a PRA for the prior year’s emails between City officials and consultants, she says, the City Manager’s office (the department responsible for fulfilling PRAs) failed to include six months’ worth of emails “and acted like it was nothing. So they had to go back in and [respond to] another PRA request, which was four months ago — and they still haven’t responded,” despite the fact that state law requires PRARs to be fulfilled within 24 business days even under “unusual circumstances.”

“Tom [Modica, the city manager] has been good on most issues, [but] on the issues of transparency, a culture shift needs to happen in the city,” she says. “But it will only happen when the majority of the council believes that and cares about that issue. […] When it comes down to transparency, it’s the council’s fault that [the City is] not transparent, even though we have absolutely no power when it comes to that. […] We could publicly call them out and ask for new standards and review. [… In 2018 budget discussions] we made a big to-do about the fact that PRAs weren’t getting done, so we budgeted for another one or two staff people to do PRAs. But that’s just about getting them done in a timely manner, not whether they provide what was requested. […] If we’re not having a conversation about improving our standards, it’s not going to happen, you know?”

Pearce also calls out the police department for its lack of transparency.

“When I’ve PRAed for police data, I never get it,” she says, “or I’m told I’ll get the data, but it never comes in the form it was supposed to. Not until George Floyd. [After that,] it didn’t come quickly, but it came. […] This was the first year that a lot of data has [been forthcoming]. My worry is that that will go away […] if people on the street don’t keep applying pressure and educating our councilmembers about other forms of public safety. […] Historically the city has tried to downplay the police use of force, gaslighting the community and telling them they do not understand the data or they have it wrong. […] Those numbers have gone down, and I’m very proud of that, but I wish that our [police] department was transparent and open enough to have honest conversations with the public about what they’re doing to reduce use of force. […] Our city manager has said that [the LBPD] is a military-style department — and that’s why our police department does not have the accountability mechanisms or check-ins with the city council that other PDs have. […] We’ve put in meeting requests, but they get moved or cancelled. One of the shifts I’d like to see is that the [police] chief meets at least quarterly with councilmembers. […] He’s a department head [that is] being funded by taxpayer dollars. They should not get to operate independently. But I believe that’s the way the City treats them.”

Pearce also sees problems with the City Attorney’s Office, which she feels has too much power and too little accountability.

“Historically, people look at the city attorney and say, ‘He’s not political’; but outside of the mayor, [the city attorney] is the most political person in this city, if you ask me. And he’s the one who gives us direction when it comes to things like the police department — do we go to court, do we settle, how much information is allowed to come out. […] It is the seat [in city government] that deserves to have the most transparency and the most integrity — but there is none. […] I also firmly believe that the residents of Long Beach are not paying enough attention to the decisions [City Attorney Charles] Parkin makes, from homelessness [and] housing to land use. We need more transparency and accountability in the City Attorney’s Office, regardless of who has the position. […] When we talk about the Downtown Plan, the police budget, [etc.], it should be about transparency and access and being honest with our residents about what’s really there so we can all get on the same page [regarding] what little changes will make a real difference.”

Pearce calls the Downtown Plan “a huge missed opportunity. […] We have done more than the City has in the years prior, with the mayor’s leadership we have a roadmap to more housing. [… But the City] has not built enough affordable housing units, we have failed to move forward with a housing bond, and we missed the opportunity to increase density outside of downtown with the passing of the Land Use Element. [Plus], our inclusionary housing policy has not been finalized. Long Beach’s most recent Regional Housing Needs Assessment has the city needing 1,500 new units. Nevertheless, during [discussions regarding] the Land Use Element, [Second District City Council candidate] Robert Fox led a NIMBY movement to oppose any increased density in the city — and it worked. One of the most influential interest groups in the city of Long Beach is the Apartment Association, who oppose every housing item we bring up. Politics is why we have not made the progress we need.”

Pearce also criticizes the city’s cozy relationship with Big Energy, claiming “there are all these backroom issues that are holding the city back from being really bold in our climate goals.” She singles out the city’s relationship with Southern California Edison as particularly problematic, noting that former Mayor Bob Foster, who was president of SCE before being elected mayor in 2006, orchestrated a “sweetheart deal” between the city and SCE that unduly influences the city to drag its feet on fully committing to renewable energy. 

“Essentially, [Edison’s] got an office with like one desk somewhere near the airport, and for that the city makes millions of dollars a year in sales tax. So when [the city council] brought up the CCA, all City staff had to do was say, ‘You really shouldn’t go with this, because Edison isn’t a fan of CCAs, and if you do they’re going to take their $4 million [of annual tax revenue] with them.’ The sweetheart deal was deemed illegal, but it’s still in place, and it basically tied our hands. […] The City went so far as to have Edison as a part of their presentation on the CCA.” 

In August, the city council voted 5-4 against joining the CCA program, which Pearce says is part and parcel of the city’s ignorance and short-sightedness when it comes to energy policy.

“I applaud the mayor for the statewide climate benchmarks he’s been supportive of,” she says. “Unfortunately, we still do not have a climate adaptation action plan, [even though] there are dozens of other cities in California that do. […] One of the things I was told is that it’s very difficult to reach our greenhouse gas reduction goals without having a CCA plan, and that [City staff] were waiting for us to pass a CCA. That didn’t happen. What did happen was that labor from the building trades and oil […] started lobbying and pushing back, because essentially having 100% renewable energy will shift [profit] from those companies. Our City staff is not well versed in energy overall. [… W]e as a City have not shifted our staff time, resources, and finances to be independent from oil. I believe we are on that path, but the lack of urgency is frustrating. This is one of those areas where we [as a city council] try to lead on and give stuff for staff to work on, but we’re told staff has a lot on their plate, and it’s going to take some time […] It’s just always another excuse. […] We’ve gotta be aggressive. […] We have oil wells that have not been capped since the ‘50s, and there’s tons of research out there about how much CO₂, methane, etc. is leaking from them while we don’t mitigate that. We have some of the highest asthma rates around our 710 corridor and the 91. What are we doing as a City to aggressively reduce that? If that means we have to come to terms with our identity as an oil town, then that’s what we have to do. And I don’t think that having a [former] oil executive as the head of our Energy Resource Department [viz., Bob Dowell] is the best decision. I’m very hopeful that anyone who gets elected in this next round will take this seriously. We need funding in the budget for a climate point person for the entire city, so that every single purchase we’re making meets the benchmarks to get off of oil as fast as we can.  And we also need to invest in renewables. Our current Financial Management Director [John Gross], while he’s been with the City for a while and helped us through a very difficult time, he’s not well versed in renewable energy and what that could look like for the City as an opportunity. We need to be looking at what opportunities there are for us to invest in clean energy that will make us money in the long run. Corporations are doing it all over the place; we as a city should be able to do it, too.”

Pearce’s willingness to speak out about Long Beach’s shortcomings should not be misunderstood as a blanket indictment of the city and its government; she simply wants her city to be better.

“[A lot of] this is politics, policy, and bureaucracy — [and] most of this is not unique to Long Beach,” she notes. “Nevertheless, we should strive to always put the interest of residents over any other. The city has made great progress in this effort over the last four years. […] I am very proud of this progress. But to be proud means also never settling.”