Biography
TONY CARDENAS
Councilman, Sixth District, City of Los Angeles
Tony Cárdenas was first elected to the California State Assembly in 1996. He went on to serve three terms in the assembly and was elected in 2003 to the Los Angeles City Council. His engineering degree and business background have prepared him to find practical and realistic solutions to difficult problems. Born in Pacoima, he was raised with eleven brothers and sisters and still resides in the San Fernando Valley with his wife, Norma, and their children.
As Chair of the State Assembly’s powerful Budget Committee, Cárdenas oversaw the most robust reserve budget in the history of California. This former small business owner brought his financial acumen to the City and applied it as Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Business Tax Reform, simplifying the city’s business tax categories and reducing them from 75 to seven. He also initiated passage of the City’s first Business Tax Reform package to reduce red tape for small business owners so that they could expand and create more jobs.
Throughout his career, he’s written groundbreaking legislation to support and protect our children by reforming toxic emission standards on school buses. His state reforms brought 78,000 new classroom seats to Los Angeles and 15 universal playgrounds that are user-friendly for children with special needs. He also secured more than $650 million for new school construction in Los Angeles to help relieve overcrowding in classrooms.
His unprecedented policy work dates back to 1996 when he began the battle to completely reform the state’s gang prevention and intervention programs with the Schiff-Cárdenas Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act, legislation still intact and funded by the state. As Chair of the City’s Ad Hoc Committee on Gang Violence and Youth Development, he identified millions of dollars overlooked by the City to help keep kids off the streets, and reduced crime while reducing expenditures on crime abatement programs.
As Vice Chair of the Public Safety Committee, Cárdenas was the chief catalyst in the development of the most comprehensive gang intervention model in the country. The Community-Based Gang Intervention Model standardized and defined the methods used by gang intervention workers to help stop violence in some of LA’s most dangerous neighborhoods. The model strengthens the resources of true gang interventionists who, at times, risk their lives to help rehabilitate gang members caught in a cycle of violence. This model has since been codified and introduced as a federal bill by Congresswoman Diane Watson (D-33). The Tony Cárdenas Community-Based Gang Intervention Act, H.R. 3526 is the first federal bill named after a sitting Los Angeles Councilmember and is currently making its way through United States Congress.
”Firsts” are what Cárdenas does best. He created Los Angeles’ first Animal Cruelty Task Force which arrested dozens of callous animal abusers. One of the task force’s first felony convictions put a known gang member away for three years for abusing a family pet. He co-authored the City’s mandatory spay/neuter ordinance to curb the stray animal population and decrease the number of animals euthanized in the city’s shelters. In 2003, Cardenas spearheaded the city’s anti-trafficking policy after the U.S. Department of Justice estimated that 14,000 to 18,000 people are trafficked into the country annually.
In his first two years on the city council, Cárdenas orchestrated the cleanup of more than 5,000 tons of trash and bulky items from Valley streets. In 2010, he mobilized nearly 1,000 volunteers at five sites throughout the Valley to remove and dispose of a record-breaking 43,160 pounds of trash in a single day. As Vice-Chair of the Energy and Environment Committee, Cárdenas was influential in the passage of the Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard that established goals and timelines for the Department of Water and Power to obtain 20% of its energy from cleaner sources such as wind and solarpower. His fellow councilmembers unanimously backed his innovative plan to convert the City’s taxi fleet to fuel efficient vehicles by 2015.
Embarking upon his third City Council term and fifteenth year of public service, Tony Cárdenas shows no signs of slowing down, taking on the challenges that face Los Angeles with an entrepreneurial expediency and an engineer’s precision.