Antelope Valley Human Relations Commission

Antelope Valley Press – Sunday, February 21, 2010

Lancaster to return donors’ funding

By BOB WILSON
Valley Press Staff Writer

LANCASTER – Less than two weeks after the Antelope Valley Human Relations Commission voted to send letters criticizing comments by Mayor R. Rex Parris and Councilwoman Sherry Marquez, city officials are moving to end a 14-year history of handling operational money contributed to the organization.

City administrators’ plan to return the task force’s funds to the group’s donors rather than transferring the funds to the task force. That has, in turn, generated a request by task force President Darren Parker for an investigation by the Sheriff’s Department to determine whether the city has legal authority to do anything with money contributed directly to the organization.

City Manager Mark Bozigian said the two events, the criticism of the mayor and councilwoman, and withdrawing aid to the human relations group are unrelated.

He said the city simply doesn’t want to be the financial instrument for the Human Relations Group. The group, however, had enjoyed a non-eventful and harmonious relationship, with service and support from the City of Lancaster since its founding 15 years ago, with the active sponsorship of former Mayor Henry Hearns.

Hearns was one of the movers behind original support for the group, flowing from its origins as a means to address what was a cluster of hate crimes that afflicted the Antelope Valley in the mid-1990s.

In the days that led up to a Feb. 8 meeting that convened under the auspices of determining whether Mayor Parris’ remarks about “growing a Christian community” deserved scrutiny as a potential hate crime or incident, city officials made active inquiries into the group’s jurisdiction, and its relationship to Los Angeles County. The group also intended similar scrutiny for Councilwoman Marquez’ online condemnation of the religion of Islam.

Once city officials determined the human relations group had no official connection to the county, the city made moves to rescind its role as a money-handler for the organization.

“I’m trying to figure out how to do this without being confrontational,” Parker said in a phone interview Friday. “I don’t believe the city has the authority to disburse the funds” to anyone other than the task force.

“They can send (funds) to the task force, and if the task force for some reason does not meet the guidelines of those that donated, then the task force needs to deal with those donations. But the city, even with the best intentions, I don’t believe has the right to go in and move our funds,” he said.

The mayor’s comments, made last month to an audience of Christian ministers invited to hear his State of the City address, were about his stated policy goal of “growing a Christian community.” The councilwoman’s comments, made on her personal Facebook Internet site, categorized Muslims as likely prospects to behead their spouses, saying “that’s what their religion is all about.” She predicted a wave of spousal beheading in the United States.

Both since have apologized for their remarks, but both declined to participate in a meeting that was called by the Human Relations Commission on the day the apologies were given during a Feb. 8 news conference.

The letters to be sent by the task force in response to those comments have yet to be delivered, Parker said.

Reached Friday, Bozigian said the move to relinquish oversight of the task force’s money was not spurred by that group’s decision to send letters of condemnation to the two councilmembers.

“It was during that (process) I discovered – well, actually I think the community discovered – that the Human Relations Commission was not officially created by the county, and that is what triggered this (move),” the city manager said.

“We were under the impression, as a city, that the Human Relations Commission was somehow created by, or under the authority of, Los Angeles County or the county Commission on Human Relations. It’s (now) clear that that is not the case,” Bozigian said.

Support for the task force was voted in by the Lancaster City Council in 1996, and a similar vote happened in Palmdale.

Based on the assumption that the task force was a county-authorized entity, the money contributed to its operations were held by the Lancaster Community Services Foundation.

Now, “Because (the task force) is not a quote-unquote ‘county organization,’ I do not feel comfortable with our foundation continuing to act as a fiduciary,” Bozigian said. “It’s an administrative function that I’m responsible for.

“All we are simply going to do is return the funds” to those who have contributed them to the task force, he said. “We’re not doing anything other than saying, ‘We’re not going to act as a fiduciary.’ ”

From this point, the task force could become a nonprofit organization empowered to accept and hold its own contributions or “they could find someone else to act as the fiduciary,” Bozigian said.

“How we return the funds and the technicalities of it – we’re still working out, because we want to make sure we do it right,” he said.

“This has nothing to do with the city’s relationship” with the task force’s continued operation, and whether the city continues to help fund the organization “is a policy matter for the council,” Bozigian said.

“This has nothing to do with the activities of the task force,” he said.

Multiple requests seeking comment from Parris drew no immediate response.

Bozigian said Parris should not be expected to comment “because this is an issue of administration of funds, and that’s in my purview and the city attorney’s purview.”

Parker, a longtime community activist, helped establish the task force and has been its only elected president. He said Lancaster officials agreed to oversee the group’s funding because Palmdale agreed to fund the operation of the task force’s hate-crime hot line.

“Each city wanted to have its stake in the claim of a success, so Lancaster took the responsibility for watching the money, and Palmdale took the responsibility of paying for the 1-800 number,” Parker said.

Valley Press records show an outcry for a community-based organization to confront racial violence in the Antelope Valley came in March 1995 from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, particularly 5th District Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, whose jurisdiction includes Lancaster and Palmdale.

A directive from the supervisors came shortly after back-to-back attacks – one a drive-by shooting – on black Lancaster residents by white supremacists in February 1995.

The supervisors directed the county Commission on Human Relations to develop a strategy to halt such attacks by working with the cities of Lancaster and Palmdale, the NAACP, area school districts, the Sheriff’s and Probation departments and community groups.

The result was the creation of the Antelope Valley Human Relations Study Group, which spent a year formulating a plan to track and investigate hate-crime reports and seek prosecution of perpetrators.

The study group, which included Parker, evolved into the Antelope Valley Human Relations Commission headed by Parker. The group was directed to use volunteers to log hate-crime reports while its hot line, billboards and anti-crime outreach efforts were to be funded by contributions from the county, Lancaster, Palmdale and other willing supporters.

Since its inception, the task force has held public meetings to discuss high-profile hate incidents and crimes, sending its findings to the Commission on Human Relations as well as to the Sheriff’s Department and the District Attorney’s Office.

In the past, the task force has reviewed allegations of:

Allegations of sexism among board members at the Eastside Union School District.
Allegations of racism between campus guards and students at Knight High School.
Racism involving physical attacks and verbal confrontations between blacks and whites, and between blacks and Hispanics.
Religious intolerance involving fliers distributed by a Christian pastor calling on Muslims to repent, followed by anti-Muslim comments made in jest by Lancaster Councilman Ed Sileo.
Religious intolerance prompted by a confrontation between a Christian minister and members of a Wiccan group.
Discrimination by blacks lodged by a group of white supremacists.
Racism when a black middle school pupil died after a fist fight with a white pupil.

None of those incidents, including the one in which the task force reviewed comments by Sileo, have drawn any rebuke or anything resembling retaliation, Parker said.

Additionally, task force members have involved themselves in organization of an International Heritage Picnic annually, and summits to prevent teen violence conducted at local high schools.

Membership of the group is open and consists of a wide spectrum of religions, membership across racial lines and sexual orientation. Essentially, the group gathers to discuss controversies involving aspects of prejudice or controversy, and if warranted, votes to refer reports to county law enforcement. It has no official prosecutorial or legal authority.

The task force reviewed the comments by Parris and Marquez after it received reports of numerous threats against the two Islamic mosques in the Antelope Valley, he said. On a voice vote, the group voted to send letters of condemnation.

“For the work of the task force to be challenged at this point is almost insulting,” Parker said, noting that the move by the city to return the task force’s funding without permission “came up, coincidentally, at the same time that the issue of the mayor and the councilwoman came up.”

The task force was formed under a community-based partnership so it could act independently, Parker said.

“It was the result of a directive by Supervisor Antonovich … to address the hate-crime issues here in the Antelope Valley.

“There are multiple organizations that contribute money to it,” including funds that are earmarked through the United Way, he said. The checks, made out to the task force, are turned over to the city as received.

The task force was approved as a nonprofit organization in 2001, but approval was suspended because no one filed financial reports required to keep its nonprofit status active, Parker said.

“I assumed that when the city of Lancaster filed every year on its foundation, it would file the corresponding paperwork” for the task force, he said. “That means we have to clean up that paperwork. … Since we have records and everything, that’s not a problem. … But in fact, the task force is a nonprofit.”

At this point, “I think that the role that the city is taking with the task force is ‘different,’ ” Parker observed. “For the last decade, we’ve gotten monthly statements from the city on what our balances and expenditures were since they took the funds in.

“The task force was started with zero dollars, and we don’t need any dollars to exist,” he said.

The task force “was created by the leadership of Lancaster, it was supported by the leadership of Lancaster and the only obvious difference is the change in leadership in Lancaster,” Parker said.

“I don’t think that the city of Lancaster has changed its commitment to addressing hate crimes one iota, and I know for a fact that the citizens have not ended their support for addressing those issues,” he said. “As a matter of fact, it was very obvious that the community stood up. It was not the task force that led this (inquiry into the comments by Parris and Marquez). It was the community speaking out on what the community felt.”

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