L.A. City Council President Paul Krekorian recalls the pandemonium following the release on Oct. 9, 2022, of a secretly recorded audio tape of colleagues making racist and derogatory remarks. For weeks, council meetings were marked by loud, angry protests that often shut down the proceedings.
City Hall was in crisis.
“The anguish was visceral in the council chambers and the council meetings were bedlam,” Krekorian remembers. “We could barely proceed with the work of the city.”
The scandal involved former councilmembers Nury Martinez and Gil Cedillo, Councilmember Kevin de León, and Ron Herrera, the former president of the influential L.A. County Federation of Labor. The audio was from a meeting where the four were discussing how to redraw council district boundaries in a way that would maintain their power.
In the year since the tapes were leaked, the fallout from the scandal has fundamentally changed City Hall. Martinez resigned, and Cedillo was voted out of office. (Herrera also resigned from the labor federation.) De León was urged to resign but remained defiant, not only staying on the council but announcing that he’ll run for reelection next year.
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