New harbor commission appointee John Pérez goes before LA City Council Friday

Following weeks of heated opposition expressed within the Harbor Area community, the nomination of John Pérez for the Los Angeles harbor commission unanimously passed a city committee hearing this week and will go before the full City Council on Friday, Sept. 20.

The city’s Trade, Travel and Tourism Committee heard several hours of testimony on Tuesday, Sept. 17, much of it centered around direct questioning of Pérez by 15th District Councilmember Tim McOsker. Ultimatley, McOsker said he was satisfied by Pérez’s responses and joined the rest of the committee members in voting to send the nomination on to full council.

“What I heard were very good answers,” McOsker said in a Thursday, Sept. 19, telephone interview about Pérez, who lives in the Boyle Heights area near Downtown L.A., in Council District 14). “My effort (at the full council) will be to describe some things I’ve heard and suggest to my council colleagues that, based on those, he’d be a worthy commissioner.”

McOsker stressed, however, that local representation on the panel remains a priority. He has authored a city charter amendment requiring that two members of the five-member harbor commission be local residents, one each from San Pedro and Wilmington. That proposal — Measure HH — will be on the city’s Nov. 5 ballot.

Tuesday’s hearing drew about a dozen speakers from the San Pedro-Wilmington area.

Many expressed displeasure with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’s decision to not reappoint Diane Middleton, a longtime San Pedro resident with strong longshore union ties.

“It just doesn’t make sense to take that representation away from the Harbor Area,” said John Bagakis, a resident and business owner in San Pedro.

Elise Swanson, CEO of the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce, told the committee there are “deep concerns regarding the diminishing local representation on the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners.”

Ideally, she said, there should be three local members out of the five.

Commissioners who do not live in the district, said Gina Martinez, speaking on behalf of the Wilmington Neighborhood Council, “don’t have to live with the decisions they make and they don’t know the area. It’s our backyard, it’s our sandbox.

“We need (local) representation.”

McOsker, a member of the committee, quizzed Pérez, 54, about many of the hot-button issues that come before the harbor commission, including automation, job protection and the environment. He said Pérez was well prepared.

“He gave solid answers and I would expect him to live up to those commitments,” McOsker said later.

Serving on the committee with McOsker are Councilmembers Traci Park, chair; and Kevin De León, Curren Price Jr., Hugo Soto-Martinez.

Pérez has been a regent of the University of California since November 2014 and previously served as speaker of the California State Assembly (2010-14). He handled political matters for the United Food and Commercial Workers, a union representing supermarket workers and also served as political director of the California Labor Federation.

Pérez stressed he’s had a long history with the labor movement.

“Throughout my career, I’ve consistently sought to give voice to those who could not be heard,” he told committee members. “I come (to this appointment) with a perspective on jobs, the environment, economic development and trade.”

In his remarks, McOsker spoke of the longstanding frustration that has plagued the Harbor Area, once known as the “100-year war.”

“The relationship between the Harbor Area communities and Downtown L.A. for over 100 years was just bad,” he said. “It was just a couple decades ago that the 100-year war began to break with some significant decisions by political leaders to work together on environmental protections, protecting jobs and a gradual move to reinvesting back into the communities that had been overlooked.”

Pérez said the “special relationship” the people in San Pedro and Wilmington have with the port needs to be recognized and he said he planned to vote for Measure HH.

The chamber, for one, Swanson said, will focus its efforts going forward on getting that passed, with the board voting earlier in the week to support the measure.

“When I hear people talk about the lack of local representation, it resonates with me, and I think it’s something that needs to be corrected for,” Pérez told the committee. “I grew up in a part of this city that had been gerrymandered so badly that we didn’t have representation for 24 years, so I know what the challenges of representation look like, and I commit myself to working with you, and particularly with you, Councilman McOsker, to try to rectify the situation as we move forward.”

In response to a question by McOsker, Pérez said he could stand up to the mayor and others on issues.

“I have no problem having honest disagreements with people I respect and people I am close to,” he said.

“I don’t roll over well and I don’t roll over easily ,” he added. “I have a record of pushing back.”

The City Council will be asked to make the final appointment of Pérez at Friday’s 10 a.m. meeting in the John Ferraro Council Chamber, Room 340, Los Angeles City Hall, 200 North Spring St., Los Angeles. Meetings can be streamed live and on-demand on the City Clerk website at https://clerk.lacity.org/calendar.