Joy Picus

Joy Picus (born 1930)

Joy and her husband lived in Woodland Hills in the San Fernando Valley, where she became active in the Parent-Teacher Association and League of Women Voters. She was also president of the Valley branch of the American Association of University Women. She was employed for three years as the Community Relations Director for the Jewish Federation Council, and was a founding member of Temple Aliyah.

She became a feminist after reading Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique in 1964. She said of the book "That was my awakening. Before I didn't know who Susan B. Anthony was." When she became a councilwoman, she sponsored a yearly Susan B. Anthony essay. She had previously sponsored a "Great Expectations" program for high school girls to help them expand their goals.

City Council

Elections Picus began her political career in 1973 by challenging the incumbent councilman, Donald D. Lorenzen, in Los Angeles City Council District 3. Lorenzen won in a tight election that demanded a recount; the vote was 27,575 for Lorenzen and 27,027 for Picus. She took on Lorenzen again in 1977, and won by nearly 5,000 votes. Picus said that voters turned against Lorenzen because he forced streetlights upon certain residential districts which resulted in higher taxes. Lorenzen had referred to her as a "wild-eyed environmentalist".

She was targeted for recall in 1979, a movement that failed for lack of signatures, and she was opposed by the city's police and firefighters' unions, which considered her "anti-labor".

In the 1985 and 1989 elections, Picus was unsuccessfully challenged by Jeanne Nemo, "a Republican activist from Reseda" who was supported by Supervisor Michael Antonovich. Picus recalled that "My opponents were sending partisan mailings to registered Republicans, so I did my own mailing, signed by Maureen Reagan, who's been a friend since we campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment." Picus won the 1989 vote by a 51.5% majority.

Picus's 16-year incumbency ended in 1993 with her loss to Laura Chick by 17 percentage points.

Highlights

In the first year of her service, Picus was said to have "naively" slashed into "City Hall's flock of sacred cows, for example trying to delete funding for the Watts Parade and the Police Band from the city budget. Later, though, she was successful in ending the city practice of "paying for city employees attending veterans' conventions on city time, the full-time salaries of seven police and fire union lobbyists at City Hall and performances of the Police Band and motorcycle drill team on city time." Along with two other council members and the city itself, she was sued by the developers of a proposed office complex on Warner Ridge in Woodland Hills for their efforts in attempting to block the development. The developers won, but "unrelated factors led them to abandon the project." A Picus proposal to set up four independent planning commissions to make decisions in different parts of the city was rejected 10-3 by the City Council.

Ms. magazine Picus was named a "Woman of the Year" by Ms. magazine in 1985 as a result of her successful drive to include an historic "pay equity" plan in the city's collective bargaining agreement with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Also known as "comparable worth," the effort refers to upgrading pay rates for jobs that were paid lower wages because they had traditionally been held by women. The magazine credited Picus with "helping bring about a $12 million pay equity agreement between the City of Los Angeles and 3,900 of its employees, most of them women."