Ending months of speculation about his immediate political future due to an impending loss in medical benefits, Vice Mayor Scott Malsin announced at the Dec. 12 city council meeting that he would be leaving office this month.
Malsin, who was first elected to the council in 2006, had for several months been weighing whether to step down in order to preserve his current healthcare benefits. Next year, Culver City employees will have a much different benefit and pension structure, reached during budget negotiations earlier this year.
Malsin had until Dec. 31 to choose whether to stay on the council or resign and keep his existing healthcare and pension plans.
In an interview with the News, the former vice mayor indicated that has considered leaving the council for some time. “Though I didn’t make my final decision until recently, deep down inside I’ve known the answer for quite some time,” he acknowledged. “Like any husband and father, my first obligation is to my family.”
Malsin said subsequent to a Dec 1. News story about his pending decision in which he explained his dilemma, many constituents expressed their sympathy for the difficult choice that he was facing.
“The public has been overwhelmingly understanding of my situation. It’s a human story, a familiar story, and it just happens to be a public one as well,” he said. “It’s spurred some incredibly interesting conversations too.”
Malsin’s announcement comes almost four months before Culver City’s municipal elections, when the seats of councilmen Christopher Armenta and Andrew Weissman and mayor Michéal O’Leary will be up for grabs.
After Malsin’s announcement, the council adjourned to confer with the city attorney to decide on the next option: appoint a replacement for Malsin’s seat or, per the city charter, call a special election to fill the vacancy.
The council chose to allow the seat to remain vacant until April, when the election will take place. “It was decided that there was no need to fill the vacancy because there is an election on the horizon,” Weissman said the day after Malsin resigned.
According to Asst. City Manager Martin Cole, a special election would not be required under these circumstances. “The city charter states that no special election shall be called if it cannot be held at least 180 days before the next general municipal election,” Cole, who also functions as the city clerk, told the News last month. “Since we are now within that 180-day period, so long as the general requirements of the elections code can be met, a special election cannot be called.”
Malsin said that was one of the reasons why he did not wait until later this month to announce that he would be leaving office.
“By resigning as of Dec. 12, the city has the ability to put my unexpired term on the ballot in 2012,” the former vice mayor explained. “I did not want the city to incur the costs associated with a special election.”
Malsin said his reasons for stepping down from the council have ignited conversations in Culver City about health benefits.
“Many people have come up to me to share their healthcare horror stories. Rising premiums, increasing deductibles and shrinking coverage are taking an incredible toll on people’s lives, especially on those whose work doesn’t provide coverage,” he said. “People with pre-existing conditions are trapped in their jobs because they can’t risk losing their coverage; families with no insurance are scared and anxious about the impact that a single injury or illness could have on their lives.”
The former vice mayor said he has considered seeking public office in the near future.
“If I were to run again, I would do so in 2012. My experience, institutional memory and relationships are most valuable to our community right now,” he stated. “While I had considered running in 2014, I’m not the sort of person who would sit around for two years waiting.”
Political consultant Jewett Walker said leaving office in the middle of his second term probably not hurt Malsin if he seeks office again next year.
“If there is no organized opposition against him, then the chances that he will be reelected are 99.9%,” predicted Walker, who lives in Culver City.
The political consultant said Malsin, who began his career in Culver City as a community activist and later as a planning commissioner, has the advantage of holding public office before and name recognition.
Malsin said the larger picture of healthcare costs as well as how it is provided is a conversation that is critical from a political as well as societal standpoint.
“Our nation is heading into dangerous territory. As healthcare becomes increasingly unaffordable, we should anticipate that a greater and greater burden to pick up the tab will fall on government,” he said. “That is neither a humane, an effective, nor an efficient way to provide healthcare. For financial, societal and humanitarian reasons, affordable quality healthcare must be available to every American.”
Cynthia Gibson, the president of Culver City-based CKG Communications, a public relations firm, believes that healthcare benefits and how politicians react to them will resonate with much of the public in the next election cycle, and not just in the presidential race.
“I think that it will be one of the hot-button issues in 2012, even at the state and local level,” she predicted.
The former Culver City lawmaker said others in the public and private sectors are also grappling with the same concerns about the futures of themselves and their families as he did before deciding to resign and he expected many to do the same.
“If it’s worth their while to retire, we should expect them to retire,” he asserted. “Whether someone is a UCLA professor or a Culver City bus driver, whether they’re a white-collar worker at a law firm or a union employee on a factory loading dock, we have to expect that individuals will make the right decision for their families.”
One resident, in a Dec. 1 letter to the editor in the News, took issue with officeholders like Malsin being given healthcare benefits.
“I feel that people serving as city council and school board members should not take benefits as a perk for serving in these capacities,” wrote Jerry Gottschalk. “These positions are not their main career. They run on platforms of serving and should not need the incentive of medical and retirement benefits.
“Service on city council and school board are not full-time jobs,” he continued. The expense of providing these benefits to these here today/gone tomorrow-people adds unnecessary costs to both city and school budgets.”
Malsin realizes that not everyone is sympathetic to his reasons for leaving the council.
“It is so very difficult to find myself at this crossroads, but ultimately my decision revolves around one simple fact: It’s important for me to know that, no matter what life throws at us, I will have done everything I can as a husband and father to ensure the health and security of my family,” he concluded.
