Last week we started getting hit with some pretty tough questions. Occupied WeHo had published a piece, and our readers wanted to know why we hadn’t responded; some wondered if we were covering something up. The headline, “Your City Council Has Been Lobbying Against You,” was pretty hard not to miss. The charge: West Hollywood City Councilmember John Erickson killed a vendor enforcement motion last October while working for an org that lobbied for the state law at the center of the fight. He never disclosed the connection. The piece cited WEHOonline’s coverage of the unlicensed street vendor issue plaguing many WeHo small businesses. Some accused us of sitting on a corruption story. We weren’t.
We went back through our own coverage first to see what role we’d played in the narrative. A story published here in December described the motion being tabled “after resistance from Councilmember Erickson and Mayor Byers.” Not wrong, exactly. But also not the whole picture either. So we pulled the transcript.
What we found is more complicated than either version.
We reached out to the two people best positioned to answer the conflict question: Councilmember Erickson and West Hollywood City Attorney Lauren Langer. Langer responded. Erickson did not.
What Was Flagged
The piece flagged three things. First, Erickson’s day job is Chief of Staff at the Alliance for a Better Community (ABC), a Latino advocacy nonprofit out of Los Angeles, and according to state legislative records in CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database, ABC was formally on the record supporting Senate Bill 635, the Street Vendor Business Protection Act, when it moved through Sacramento last year. Newsom signed it October 7th. Second, when Councilmember Danny Hang brought a motion to council thirteen days later asking staff to look at enforcement options for unlicensed vendors in the Rainbow District, Erickson cited his employer as his reason for opposing it. Third, he never disclosed that his employer had a stake in the outcome.
The piece described Erickson as the reason it failed. The transcript tells a different story. Hang asked to table his own motion before Erickson said anything. Partly because Councilmember Meister was no longer in chambers; she left due to a medical emergency. Then Erickson weighed in with this. “Working for a Latino immigration organization, I cannot in good conscience vote for this in its current form.” The motion to table passed 4-0. But the transcript also shows Erickson asking detailed questions of staff, expressing willingness to find a solution, and offering to help develop a pathway forward.
The enforcement study was directed to come back to council by November 17th. It never did.
The City Attorney’s Answer
Lauren Langer responded to our questions in writing. The bottom line is she doesn’t see a conflict.
She drew a distinction with what was actually being voted on. Hang’s motion was about enforcing against unlicensed vendors. SB 635 is about protecting licensed vendors’ personal data. Those, she said, are two different legal issues, and what ABC lobbied for in Sacramento didn’t have a direct bearing on what the council was discussing in October.
On Erickson’s job at ABC, she told us “Councilmember Erickson’s role primarily involves operations and logistics” and says he confirmed to her office that he wasn’t in the room when ABC decided to back SB 635. The Political Reform Act standard, she explained, isn’t tripped just because you work somewhere that takes a policy position. His salary isn’t tied to ABC’s lobbying wins. Street vending isn’t their main focus. And the motion was tabled anyway, no final decision got made. “There was no disqualifying conflict of interest in this instance that warranted further examination or concern,” she concluded.
An Asterisk on the Job Description
Langer says Erickson’s job “primarily involves operations and logistics.” But ABC’s own website says he leads “ongoing policy development and strategic lobbying efforts.” Those two descriptions aren’t describing the same job. We can’t independently sort out which one is accurate. And her conclusion that he had nothing to do with ABC’s SB 635 decision comes from what Erickson told her office and there’s no way for us to verify that independently either. Erickson chose not to respond to our request for comment, so we don’t have his version of any of it.
Where Things Stand Now
The unlicensed street vendor problems that set so much of this off are still a problem. Yes, the City has been doing weekend night monitoring along Santa Monica Boulevard, moving vendors away from storefronts and shifting a security ambassador post to the corner of Larrabee and Santa Monica. But there’s no sustained funding for it and nobody expects it to continue at that level. What the City’s long-term enforcement options actually look like under SB 635 is still anybody’s guess.
The city attorney answered the conflict question. The question that remains is why the enforcement study that was supposed to return by November 17th still hasn’t shown up on a council agenda. Businesses and residents are still waiting. So are we.
Related Coverage
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WeHo Sidewalk Vending Fight Has a Warning Sign in L.A.
I just love a Lauren Langer response, a combination of spin and tall tales. We’ve been there before with her. Protect anyway possible, always to protect someone in the city at any cost . Weho first always, myth and spin, shades of DJT. Truth be damned, this is what happened. And so it goes… again.
Guess there were no Latinos available to be the Chief of Staff of the Latino Advocacy group……..Yeah, that’s the ticket.
This reads less like an independent legal analysis and more like the City Attorney taking John Erickson’s word for it. That’s not scrutiny, that’s deference. And it’s not the first time Lauren Langer has relied on an official’s self-description rather than digging into how things actually operate. What’s also glossed over is the mismatch between what Erickson says his job is and what Alliance for a Better Community publicly says his job is. You can’t ignore an employer’s stated advocacy role just because it’s inconvenient to the conclusion. Even if this passes the narrow legal test, it fails the common-sense… Read more »
Brian. Thank you for this. A note to readers. Lauren Langer’s job is and always will be to protect West Hollywood staff’s integrity She will always spin a story to make it work to defend their actions. She does not represent the public’s best interest. Very telling that John Erickson has chosen not to clarify his job or reasoning for his actions regarding the street vendors. As an elected official one should answer his reason. Couldn’t a call to ABC have helped knowing their position on the CA policy and if John Erickson lobbied for them. Conflict of interest still… Read more »
David, thank you for your insights. It is hard to have two masters but as John Erickson does not have any substantive skills that would apply to the private sector, taking a job that gives him access to Sacramento legislators is perfect for him. But I suspect there are lots of snickers in the Capitol when he says he is representing a Latino organization. I am somewhat surprised that Erickson did not describe his employer as being “Latinx” except that no self respecting Latino/Latina organization would use such an inauthentic term.