What Does a Progressive City Controller Look Like? Kenneth Mejia Will Tell You
Interview by Joaquin Romero
We spoke with Kenneth Mejia, candidate for Los Angeles City Controller in 2022. Kenneth is a housing activist and accountant, who previously ran for congress in LA in 2016 and again in 2018. Having already earned the endorsements of a host of local activists and organizers, as well as local organizations like Youth Climate Strike LA and The Future Left, Mejia joins a growing number of progressives seeking local office in the Los Angeles area.
Here, Mejia describes what the city controller role entails, and how these responsibilities can be used to advance a progressive agenda.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity
RIFT Magazine: So you are running for the office of LA city controller. Tell me a bit about yourself. Who are you, what’s your background, and what compelled you to run for this office?
Kenneth Mejia: Yeah, so about me; I was born and raised in LA. I am a housing justice activist, mainly around tenants’ rights and helping out our homeless population. I’m a member of the LA Tenants’ Union. As a professional, I’m a Certified Public Accountant, close to eleven years. And that’s sort of what propelled me to run for city controller, because the city controller is the chief accounting officer, and the auditor, and also the paymaster. That’s already what I do as my job. And what better way than to have a progressive LA city controller to help people get the knowledge that they need and fight for the resources and funding that their communities need, right. It’s just a perfect opportunity and the perfect position.
RIFT: Describe what the city controller does, because some people might not be familiar with what the city controller does. And what does it mean to be a progressive city controller?
KM: Right, so I think what it means is we need someone who is gonna put the data out there, to be radically transparent. To put all the information out there about every department, no matter who it is, whether it’s libraries, or it’s the police, or it’s housing. We need to know where our money is being spent. And a progressive city controller is someone who not only puts it out there, but also communicates it out there — posts it on social media, sends out newsletters, sends out emails, talking about the city’s finances. Someone who is always responsive, in order to get all financial information and show if that money is being well spent.
And I think a progressive city controller as well is someone who can make financial data very, very people friendly. Because the current controller, you go on his website, it’s still not user friendly. It’s good that he put a lot of information out there, but sometimes people don’t know where to go, where to filter, and if they do find it, they download it and their computer freezes. So just making data more people-friendly and accessible.
And then we also want to be educational. I think a lot of people are not aware of the city controller role, and so we want to teach people how to learn about finance in general, how to find city information on our website. Just basically empowering everyone in LA.
RIFT: Tell me about your priorities should you be elected into office. What are you looking to do other than what you’ve already mentioned.
KM: Our platform…the three big ones are…knowing where the money’s going, where we’re getting it, and how we’re spending it. We want to make this data people-friendly, and we want to be educational. I don’t think the current controller is doing the best that he can, and that’s sort of why we want to change it. We’re using our campaign right now to pose information about the city of LA that’s very relevant with social issues. Whether it’s police brutality, or the fact that these developers own hotels and they’re not housing our unhoused population during a pandemic, right. We’re putting financial information out there that we wish our current controller could do. And we’re also doing classes, we’re doing weekly or biweekly classes on the city’s finances, about the city’s annual financial report. We’re gonna do a class about how to use Excel, we’re gonna do a class about how to fill out a 1040 tax return. That’s really our platform, is put everything out there on the table to help everyone make decisions, and use this role as an educational role.
Our motto is ‘hold power accountable’, because with all this information, when you get the information that you need, you can hold our elected officials accountable.
RIFT: Tell me about the election as it’s coming along right now. Because like you said a moment ago, a lot of people don’t know about the city controller role. How do you get people to be excited about this race, and how do you get people to actually go out and vote. What is your impression about how people are feeling about your run right now?
KM: Yeah, this is the lowest voter-turnout local race, and what we’re doing right now is we’re really spicing it up a bit. We’re using social media, we’re doing fun events, we’re doing TikToks. We are trying to make information that is otherwise boring, because it’s a bunch of numbers, and we’re trying to make it digestible, we’re trying to bring it to people in a fun way, and in a way that is engaging. And so a lot of people didn’t know about it until we started talking about it, and so I think we’re doing a good job.
RIFT: I became aware of your campaign just a couple of months ago, through David Kim, who ran for congress in the 34th district. And I became aware of you as a figure in LA politics also from David Kim, because he told me about how inspired he was from your run for congress. What is your experience this time around? How does it feel to be running for office on this level? Is it a different experience?
KM: Yeah, definitely. I mean, we ran last time on a national level and it’s a lot more difficult, there’s a lot less money. The good thing about running a local race here in LA, is that they do matching funds, and they multiply LA donations times six. So it really helps out grassroots campaigns like ours to get money.
I think also it’s the environment...a lot of people are paying attention on the lower level. With what happened with Jackie Lacey, with Nithya [Raman] winning, with Measure J passing, I think a lot of people are getting activated at the local level. And we saw last year, the city of LA’s budget was giving a lot of our money away, like over $3 billion to the police, and a lot of other critical departments like housing or transportation got a lot less. And I think this role that we’re running for is such a unique role, in the sense that we’re not policy makers. We can’t cancel rent, we can’t do a whole bunch of stuff that people want us to do. But the controller is such a unique role in the sense that we’re an oversight role. We have independence, and we can do whatever we want to make sure that our cities are operating efficiently and effectively, especially using our money.
Definitely a different vibe. People love it, people had no idea what the controller was until we started blasting it out there. I think the timing’s right, the environment’s right, and yeah, people want to know…where’s our money?
