OPINION
Has this union lost its way? - the Los Angeles Police Protective League
Under consultant Don Novey's direction, the Los Angeles Police Protective League has become far more assertive in state and local politics — with decidedly mixed results.
by Tim Rutten
Los Angeles Times
December 4, 2010
Historically, the political influence of the Los Angeles Police Protective League — the union representing the city's rank-and-file officers — has been a force in local affairs more often assumed in conversation than evident at the polls.
Under its current leaders, however, the league has become far more assertive — with decidedly mixed, often confused, results, many of them flowing from the hiring of a high-priced political consultant who has unsuccessfully attempted to make the union a force in statewide politics. The consultant is Don Novey, a storied figure in California politics who, as president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., turned the prison guards union into Sacramento's most potent lobby. Under Novey's leadership, the union cemented a lucrative alliance with Indian gaming interests, backed a series of winning gubernatorial candidates and negotiated lucrative increases in wages and benefits. It also threw its money behind a laundry list of tough-on-crime measures, including the three-strikes initiative (for which it provided the seed money) that enlarged the prison population, increasing the need for dues-paying prison guards.
Since stepping down as the guards' labor leader, Novey has gone into the political consulting business. This year, the Los Angeles officers' union will pay him $245,850 for his services, though he has little experience in local politics, where the league has its most vital interests. If you want to do the math, the league is paying its consultant $20,487 a month or, according to Novey himself, $2,048 an hour. (His former union is suing him, alleging that his outside work violates an agreement to provide consulting services to it. In a recent deposition, Novey told the union's attorney that he spends about 10 hours a week on his contract with the Protective League. You can see a videotaped excerpt on YouTube at "thedarksideofdon.")
Nice work if you can get it. But what did the league receive in return?
When it comes to electing its candidates, the record is mixed: Locally, the league spent $800,000 to help elect Carmen Trutanich as city attorney and $400 on Christine Essel's losing City Council race against Paul Krekorian in the Valley. It also spent $250,000 in support of Mark Ridley-Thomas' supervisorial bid, though the county supervisors have nothing to do with the LAPD. (His opponent, former police chief-turned-City Councilman Bernard C. Parks, is an old foe of the league.)
Novey also has taken the league — or at least its members' dues — deep into statewide politics, where the union's interests appear even more attenuated, and the results have been disastrous. Through Novey's California Law and Order Independent Expenditure Committee, the league broke with most of California's unions and spent $400,000 on television and radio commercials supporting Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman and $100,000 on behalf of Steve Cooley's failed candidacy for state attorney general.
Another of Novey's clients, the California State Law Enforcement Assn., which paid him $198,000 this year, put $1.6 million into pro-Whitman ads. Its members would have benefited directly from Whitman's pledge to exempt peace officers and firefighters from the pension cuts she planned to implement as governor. Because LAPD pensions and benefits are determined by the city, the league's members had less directly at stake in that election, though — oddly — one of the league's directors, Scott Rate, told journalist Celeste Fremon that Whitman's stand on pensions was the major reason the union endorsed her.
In an interview Friday, Novey said the principal reason for the endorsement was Whitman's stand on increasing the LAPD's recruitment and retention of officers. "Los Angeles," he said, "is the most understaffed big-city police force in the country." That sentiment contrasts with the position the league took this week, opposing any further recruitment in favor of a smaller force whose officers could once again collect overtime pay rather than compensatory time off as they now do. That stand puts the union at odds with Chief Charlie Beck and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa but on the same side with its old nemesis, Councilman Parks.
Go figure.
Paul Weber, the league's president, said in an interview that he was uncertain how much Novey had been paid but that he has "tremendous knowledge of state politics." Weber acknowledged that he did not "know how many hours he put in or didn't put in," but insisted that hiring Novey was good for the league: "He represents a lot of law enforcement agencies, and we have common interests."
Some of Weber's members might wonder just what those are.
