Whose Lawyer Is She? Why West Hollywood’s City Attorney Doesn’t Work for You

When residents complain about a councilmember, they write to the City Attorney expecting a referee. They have misunderstood the office. In a general law city like West Hollywood, the City Attorney’s client is the city, acting through the same council a resident wants checked. That is not a scandal. It is the design. Here is how the office actually works, what residents can realistically do about it, and why the only real remedy is the vote.

In March, West Hollywood Public Safety Commissioner Tod Hallman put a complaint in writing. He said Councilmember John Erickson had called him and warned that supporting a council candidate would cost him his commission seat. Hallman called it “a clear and direct threat” and asked the City Attorney, “how the city will address this breach of public trust” (WEHOonline).

It was a reasonable thing to do. It was also the wrong office.

Hallman was asking the council’s own lawyer to discipline the council. To see why that almost never works, you have to understand what a city attorney is in West Hollywood, and what she is not.

What Kind of City Is This

Start at the foundation. West Hollywood is a general law city. It incorporated on November 29, 1984, runs on a council-manager system, and contracts out much of its government, including police to the Sheriff’s Department and legal work to a private law firm (City of West Hollywood). It has no charter.

That word, charter, decides a lot. Under the California Constitution, a charter city writes its own rules for “municipal affairs.” A general law city like West Hollywood only gets the powers the state hands it in the Government Code (Cal. Const. art. XI, §7). West Hollywood chose the general law option in 1984 and never changed it. Changing it is a heavy, unlikely lift, so this piece sets it aside and deals with the city we actually have.

What State Law Says the City Attorney Is

In a general law city, the city attorney is not a watchdog and not a public protector. The job is defined narrowly in the Government Code.

The council “may appoint” a city attorney, who is listed among the city’s subordinate officers (Gov. Code §36505). Her duties are short and specific. She must “advise the city officials in all legal matters pertaining to city business,” she frames the ordinances the council asks for, and she performs “other legal services required from time to time by the legislative body” (Gov. Code §§41801-41803).

Notice who appears in every one of those duties. City officials. The legislative body. Not residents. The office exists to serve the institution and the people who run it.

This is not a loophole. It is how the law defines the job. The city attorney represents the City of West Hollywood itself, the municipal corporation, and she takes her direction from its governing body, the City Council. She is the city government’s lawyer.

She is not the public’s lawyer.

A resident who calls with a complaint is not her client.

A commissioner who writes her a letter is not her client.

That is how the role works for government lawyers across California: the client is the public agency, speaking through its elected officials, and the duty to “advise the city officials” (Gov. Code §41801) runs to the institution, not to the people who live under it.

And the relationship runs one way. The council hires the city attorney, pays her, and can replace her. West Hollywood’s own code makes the point: the City Manager runs and can remove every department head in the city, except the City Attorney, who answers to the council (WeHo Muni Code §2.04.080).

So the official a resident might want to complain about is the same official who renews the lawyer’s contract.

For contrast, big charter cities do it differently. Los Angeles elects its City Attorney, who prosecutes cases “on behalf of the people” and runs consumer and neighborhood protection units (L.A. Charter §271).

That is a public-facing job that answers to voters.

West Hollywood’s is a contracted advisory job that answers to five people on a dais.

The current City Attorney is Lauren Langer of the firm Best Best & Krieger, who took the role in 2021 after Michael Jenkins held it for about 36 years (Beverly Press). The title changes hands. The incentives do not.

Advice, Not Direction

Here is the line residents most need to learn. The city attorney gives legal advice and guidance. She does not give direction, and she does not enforce. She cannot prosecute a crime. She cannot order a councilmember to step aside. She cannot remove or discipline anyone. She advises, and the council, as the client, decides what to do with the advice.

Watch how that plays out.

Last winter, our own reporting raised questions about whether Councilmember Erickson had a conflict of interest (Occupied West Hollywood). He had cited his employer, the Alliance for a Better Community, as his reason for opposing a street vendor enforcement motion, and that same employer had backed the state law limiting such enforcement. After the question was raised, the City Attorney was asked to weigh in. She found “no disqualifying conflict of interest.” Her reasoning leaned on Erickson’s own account of his job, which she described as work that “primarily involves operations and logistics,” and on his word that he was not in the room when his employer decided to back the bill (WEHOonline).

There is a documented problem with that. The Alliance for a Better Community’s own website describes Erickson’s role as leading “ongoing policy development and strategic lobbying efforts.” Even WEHOonline, reporting the finding, noted that the two job descriptions are not describing the same job. The City Attorney took the official’s word and cleared the official.

Then came the Hallman letter, and the same logic. A commissioner accused a sitting councilmember of a threat, conduct a sitting state legislator, Assemblymember Rick Zbur, called “textbook public corruption under California law” (WEHOonline). The commissioner asked the city attorney to act. The city attorney took no public action. No recusal advice, no referral, no response that ever reached the public record. That is not a surprise, because the city attorney does not represent the commissioner. She represents the city, through its council. The complaint went to the office least able to use it, and nothing happened.

Here is the pattern, and we say it as our own conclusion, not as a charge of lawbreaking: in West Hollywood, when residents bring a grievance about a councilmember to the City Attorney, the office’s instinct is to protect the sitting member. She cleared Erickson when his conflict was questioned. She took no action on Hallman’s complaint when a member stood accused, part of a pattern we have traced before (Occupied West Hollywood). The direction does not change. That is not a betrayal of her client. The council is her client. She is doing the job. The problem is that the job was never built to be yours.

What Residents Can Actually Do Now, and Why It Is So Hard

If the city attorney is not the referee, who is?

The honest answer is that residents have to go outside City Hall, and every road is long.

You can file a complaint with the Fair Political Practices Commission, which enforces the Political Reform Act on conflicts of interest and financial disclosure (Gov. Code §87100 and following), and the separate ban on officials having a financial interest in city contracts (Gov. Code §1090). Filing is free. But the FPPC can only impose fines, up to $5,000 per violation, and it cannot remove an elected official (FPPC Enforcement). It handles roughly 2,500 complaints and referrals a year, many of which close with a warning or advisory letter and no penalty at all.

You can write the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Public Integrity Division (LA County DA). But that is the criminal track. It requires a provable crime and intent beyond a reasonable doubt, and the decision to charge is entirely the prosecutor’s. Most ethics complaints never clear that bar.

You can ask the county civil grand jury to investigate city government (Penal Code §925a). But its findings are only recommendations. The city has to respond to them, not act on them, so the grand jury has no power to fine, remove, or compel.

You can try to recall the councilmember. That is the one tool that actually removes an official, and it is the heaviest of all. For a city West Hollywood’s size, recall proponents need valid signatures from 20 percent of registered voters (Elec. Code §11221). With about 26,000 registered voters, that is roughly 5,200 verified signatures, gathered on a deadline, followed by a special election the proponents largely have to fund and run.

You can sue. A resident can bring a taxpayer suit to stop illegal spending (Code Civ. Proc. §526a) or seek a court order forcing a legal duty. But that costs real money, often five figures, and the court can stop an illegal act. It cannot unseat an official.

Add it up. Only recall actually removes a councilmember, and it is the hardest path of all.

Everything else ends in a fine, a recommendation, or an injunction, after months of effort by a resident with no staff and no budget.

That burden is not an accident. It is what protects incumbents.

The Bottom Line

The City Attorney is not failing West Hollywood when she protects the council. She is doing the job a general law city assigns her, as counsel to the institution that hires and renews her. The failure is not personal. It is structural, and the council likes the structure exactly as it is.

So stop waiting for a rescue from inside City Hall.

A new ethics office or watchdog sounds appealing, but the same council would create it, fund it, and staff it, and it would answer to the same people it was built to check. The captured do not appoint their own jailers.

Any oversight body the council controls will protect the council, for the same reason the City Attorney does.

There is only one form of power in this city the council cannot capture, and that is your vote.

Look again at every avenue above. A complaint to the FPPC ends in a fine. The District Attorney needs a provable crime. The grand jury writes a recommendation no one has to follow. A lawsuit can stop an illegal act but cannot unseat anyone. Only the ballot removes a councilmember. Recall does it mid-term. The next election does it on schedule.

The councilmembers causing the damage hold their seats for one reason: voters keep returning them. The remedy is not a better letter to the City Attorney, and it is not a new commission she would quietly manage for the council. It is a better result at the polls. If you want different behavior from the people in power, change the people in power. Vote them out.