By Shane Harris

These are dark days in otherwise sunny Los Angeles. The city council has approved a consent decree giving the federal Department of Justice authority to oversee administration of the police department. This action comes as the city continues to uncover more damning details about the worst police corruption scandal in its history.

It’s understandable that the LAPD might be loathe to be put on probation and allow an effective federal takeover of the city’s most high-profile agency. But a brief examination of the other significant crises shadowing Los Angeles right now suggests that the City of Angels requires some quick intervention, divine or otherwise.

The Los Angeles transit system, the second largest in the nation, is in the grips of a strike that has shut down all bus and train operations, has stranded a half-million commuters and is costing the city a reported $2 million a day.

For months now, one of the city’s most well-known labor pools has been in the midst of a strike of its own. Commercial actors of the Screen Actors’ Guild have yet to hold productive discussions with advertisers on the issue of future contracts. In addition, another larger strike is set for next spring by the television and film talent of SAG, as well as all members of the Writers Guild of America. Such a stoppage will halt production of new TV shows and movies entirely, having a grave ripple effect on the local economy.

And as if that weren’t enough, now the Hollywood district wants to secede from the city! (Unfortunately for the petitioners, they recently discovered that approximately 5,000 signatures in support of putting the issue on the November ballot were invalid.)

Now, L.A. could simply be a victim of very, very bad timing. However, this convergence of so many troubling issues should be a wake-up call. From a management standpoint, the LAPD has already proven itself to be one of the most inept public agencies in the country. The city and its occupants ought to consider themselves lucky that Janet Reno and Bill Lann Lee stuck their noses into the local business. No one else was doing it.

Some in city government might take a lesson from all this and realize that it’s time to get the city’s house back in order. Commuters are stranded, citizens don’t trust the police officers sworn to protect them, and thousands of members of the entertainment industry are getting ready to squirrel away their money rather than spread it around in the grand Hollywood style to which the city has grown accustomed. While it’s true that major cities do encounter major problems, and that L.A. shouldn’t be expected to act as the great arbiter of every labor disagreement, public officials should see the signals that these are truly tenuous times, ones which demand a level of vigilance in all aspects of the city’s well-being that has been conspicuously absent of late.

The lights are all on. Who’s minding the store?

Shane Harris, a resident of the Los Angeles area, is a former research coordinator for Governing.

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