TRUE TRANSIT SUPPORTERS-I’ve been taking a bit more transit than usual these days, as a bit of a change of pace from pedaling the Brompton absolutely everywhere. 

My changes of pace, by the way, never involve a private motor car, which I drive four or five times a year under marital duress; I’ve put in enough miles behind the windshield -- that is to say, over a quarter-million or so -- to know exactly what I’m missing by avoiding the driver’s seat, and it is absolutely nothing. Physical and emotional stultification just don’t tickle my innards. 

So there I was on the Wilshire Rapid, making good time to my dentist’s office in SaMo, when we crossed Westwood Boulevard. And of course the intersection hosted a lineup of people on bikes, waiting to proceed to UCLA. A cyclist had just gotten off the bus, presumably for the same purpose; bikes were rolling up and down Wilshire; and the bike racks around the intersection were full to overflowing. 

It naturally brought to mind the lack of bike lanes connecting UCLA with the new Expo Line station at Westwood. This vacuity comes to us, of course, courtesy of chair-warmer District 5 council member Paul Koretz, who has been kowtowing so vigorously to a cabal of Cheviot Hills homeowners that he probably needs a live-in chiropractor. The Chevioteers failed in their attempt to block the entire Expo Line -- yes, they tried to hold the entire western half of LA County hostage to their fear of “those people” crowding onto the train to steal their porch decks -- but cyclists are an easier target than ethnic groups, especially since “cyclist” is often (in white pseudo-suburbia) a code word for “dark.” 

Saving car lanes and parking was the ostensible excuse, but that excuse flew out the window when Ryan Snyder presented a bike lane plan that removed no car lanes or parking, cleverly entitled the “Remove Nothing Plan.”  

“Remove Nothing went nowhere. Koretz and his puppeteers ignored it, and Koretz went further, saying he would permit no study to be made of any plan including bikeways of any sort on the southern portion of Westwood. 

People will be riding bicycles on Westwood anyway, and probably slowing traffic in a way they wouldn’t with a bikeway in place. Angelenos old and young, of every shade, will want to get from the Expo Line to UCLA, and, of course, the many delectable restaurants along the way. Fewer will choose to do so lacking a bikeway; a number of those will opt to use cars, further clogging traffic. Stoopid, ain’t it? Opportunity misplaced. 

I won’t call it a lost opportunity, though, because I think we can find it again, and soon; it hasn’t been lost, but simply hidden from view for a while. After all, Jesse Creed is running against Koretz for the council seat in CD5, and he is a strong supporter of transportation choices, including bikeways. He himself endeavors to pedal anywhere within a two-mile radius of home. 

Remember that, come March and the election. If you live in CD5, Creed’s the real deal. (Photo above, left.) 

Naturally, if you live in CD1, the home district of this blog, its Joe Bray-Ali, running to retire “Roadkill Gil” Cedillo. (Photo above, right.) 

If you live anywhere else, send a little cash to these two gentlemen. Two more progressive voices added to Huizar’s on the city council might be enough to transform LA. No more rubber stamp votes against the future! Bray-Ali and Creed for City Council! 

Grass roots vs. trickle down: which side are you on?

(Richard Risemberg is a writer. His current professional activities are focused on sustainable development and lifestyle. This column was posted first at Flying Pigeon.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

VOICES-At a time when Los Angeles City is asking the taxpayers to approve a $1.2 billion bond measure for supportive homeless housing, our Governor continues to refuse to declare homelessness a "State of Emergency" in California – an action that would release $500 million immediately from the rainy day fund. 

How can this Governor close his eyes to the tens of thousands of his citizens, allowing them to sleep in alleys, streets and behind dumpsters…eating from garbage cans and defecating on themselves and on the streets? 

It is time for everyone to light up the switchboards at the Governor’s office and the offices of all our state elected officials, demanding they declare a "State of Emergency" and release the funds. 

And while we are at it.... 

Why is Los Angeles City asking for $1.2 billion when Prop 30 has $2.1 billion already segregated for the same cause, in addition to the availability of half a billion dollars in rainy day funds? 

All this tells me is there is no serious plan and no real political will to end homelessness. 

Remember, if you are not angry about homelessness, then you have just not been paying attention.

(Jay Handal served at the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment for ten months as Election Manager for the 2016 Neighborhood Council elections. He is Treasurer of the West Los Angeles Sawtelle Neighborhood Council, Co-Chair of the Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates Committee for the upcoming 2016-2017 fiscal year, and a hearing examiner for the Los Angeles Police Commission.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

EDUCATION POLITICS--Public education supporters in Los Angeles are shocked and gratified to learn that the staff of the Los Angeles school district has recommended rejection of several charter school petitions to be considered at next week’s school board meeting. For years, it seemed there was no reason to ever expect LAUSD to reject charters and recent reports show senior district staff coordinating with Eli Broad's nonprofit to expand charter choices even as it grapples with decreasing enrollment.

The board will decide whether the staff recommendations will stand at the Tuesday, October 18 meeting. Presumably, that meeting will include heated discussion among the school board and district staff, as well as comments from charter advocates and the public. It’s common for charter schools to organize large showings of supporters at their hearings, usually with matching t-shirts.

The recommendations were posted on the district’s website on Wed. The district’s Charter Schools Division made the recommendations after facing heavy criticism for its perceived mishandling of oversight responsibilities in the wake of financial scandals at El Camino Real Charter High School.

The recommendation which has drawn the most speculation is the one to approve the issuance of a Notice of Intent to Revoke the charter of El Camino Real.

Staff has also recommended the denial of the renewal of three Magnolia Science Academy Schools, part of the Gulen chain of charters which are associated with the Turkish Imam suspected of organizing a coup against the government of Turkey. That California chain has been under fire since a legal complaint was filed last February, calling on the California Department of Education to investigate. The complaint was first reported on the PSconnect blog.  It cited more than accusations, and included findings made in a state audit such as 69% of Magnolia's financial transactions being unaccounted for; that Magnolia routinely awarded large contracts to vendors with overlapping connections to their own employees and board of directors; and that Magnolia had illegally used hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to pay for visas for Turkish nationals. A report in today’s Los Angeles Times shows that number is closer to $1 million. 

Other charter proposals facing the new wrath of the LAUSD: WISH Charter is hoping to add more grades to its school. Citizens of the World wants an additional school and to grow an existing school. Celerity Dyad and Celerity Troika schools are petitioning to renew their charters. Staff is recommending that the board reject all those petitions.

It is unprecedented in recent memory for the LAUSD staff to recommend rejection of so many charters since the district began instituting market based reforms years ago. A top priority of so-called reformers is charter school expansion, and the wind has been at their backs. One year, LAUSD voted for 67 out of 72 charters. California lifted its cap on charters when Netflix founder Reed Hastings forced the California legislature to accept a measure similar to the one currently on Massachusetts' November ballot. Senator Elizabeth Warren has taken a stand against that measure, called Question 2, and it's more and more common to see criticism of charter schools in major news outlets. The Washington Post recently published two pieces (here  and here) by the Network for Public Education's Executive Director, Carol Burris. Capital and Main, a leading Sacramento political blog, has been posting a series (here and here) featuring the billionaires funding California's charter industry, and the NAACP has recommended its board pass a moratorium on new charters. (Diane Ravitch posted phone numbers to call to express support for the moratorium.) 

Whether next week’s agenda represents the beginning of a reversal of fortune for the charter juggernaut in Los Angeles remains to be seen.

(Karen Wolfe is a public school parent, the Executive Director of PS Connect and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.)

-cw

PLAYTIME AT CalPERS (Part 1)--Grab a cup of coffee - this one’s a bit long. CalPERS and other public pension plans have had a rough go of it in recent months, Mostly, the Federal Reserve’s policy of 0% interest & buying back toxic financial assets on the taxpayers dime, has managed to wreck the investment assumptions of public pensions. 

As the long term assumptions of return on investment go significantly down, there is a necessary increase in the employer/employee contributions to the system, in order to keep their long term payoff ability intact. This puts Cities, Counties, & Special Districts on the hook for a higher percentage of their annual budget going to pay CalPERS, and the media has by and large responded with hit pieces about ‘greedy public employees’. 

Why’s Everybody Pickin’ On CalPERS?

As the 800 pound gorilla of the public pension world, CalPERS seems to have become the poster boy for hit pieces, even though the articles tend to ignore the basic math that all defined benefit plans are trying to deal with. Lower returns. So when the New York Times does a hit piece on CalPERS, I don’t pay too much attention. They are probably just tired of talking about their very own Donald Trump. 

But when the Los Angeles Times starts a multi part investigatory series on “the consequences of an historic expansion of retirement benefits for California public employees”, you know it’s a hit piece. And by the way, it is not really an LA Times series -- it is billed as a collaboration with something called CALmatters and an associated radio station, Capital Public Radio. 

As near as I can figure it out from their website, CALmatters is an attempt to provide California political news for sale much as the AP & Reuters do. It looks to me like the Chicago Tribune/Los Angeles Times owners are engaging in even more cost cutting of staff & using deals like this to provide the illusion of investigatve reporting. Sheesh. 

Anyhow, about this series of articles on CalPERS. Since it is clear that CalPERS itself incapable of explaining, much less defending, itself, I thought someone should at least explain what CalPERS is, who’s on their Board, who’s on their staff, how they function (or all too often don’t function), so that people can make up their own minds about the agency.

To provide context, a lot of the articles to date have implied that CalPERS should be ‘privitatized’ into 401(k) type plans. Oh yeah, that works. Just ask me and an entire generation what happened to their 401 plans (not to mention real estate values) when the financial collapse of 2007/08 took place. A lot of us watched instant decreases of around 40% of the value in our ‘retirement portfolio’. Many of my friends will never be able to retire, and will work until they die or get too sick to work. 

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t problems at CalPERS. There are. But to understand their dysfunction, it is necessary to take a look at how the giant $300 Billion plan that impacts over 1 million beneficiaries & their dependents actually operates. Both at a Board of Directors level and at a staff level.

The LA Times Article

You can read the first LA Times article here. Their central thesis is that then Governor Pete Wilson was desperate to find money since the State was broke, and wanted to gain control of the State’s retirement fund, CalPERS. Gee whiz. Every desperate politician that I can remember has wanted to do the same thing. Pete’s scheme involved taking over the actuarial function of the Plan so he could diddle the numbers, and to be able to directly appoint a majority of the CalPERS Board to validate the fix.  

The article then goes on to imply that the Unions response was to launch an preemptive ballot measure in 1992 (Proposition 162) which wound up meaning that “pension directors were no longer required to balance benefits with costs.”   They also characterized CalPERS doing it’s own actuarial projections was somehow suspect and found it “quite independent” as if that’s a bad thing.   

Honestly , the article is largely much ado about nothing. You could argue that by having sole and exclusive control over actuarial projections, the CalPERS Board has an extremely high fiduciary duty to be very conservative and prudent with their numbers. And the language which talked about the Board’s duties to beneficiaries taking “precedence” also says that they have to “minimize employer contributions thereto”, a balancing offset. 

Finally, Proposition 162 in no way changed the composition of the Board, nor did it change the appointment/election process of any of the seats. 

Ok, so I find the Times article misleading. What then, does the Board of CalPERS really look like? 

Composition of the CalPERS Board

In almost all public sector pension plans in California that I’m aware of, the Board of Directors structure is carefully set up to provide that the number of elected Public Employee Members are less than the number of appointed Board members, and the total of both is always an odd sum - like 13 in the case of CalPERS. This to avoid tie votes and to guarantee that the management “grown-ups” will ultimately be able to control the majority vote. 

At least that’s the theory. In the case of CalPERS, here’s how the appointment process works for the Board of Administration: 

6 members are elected - 1 elected by school members, 1 elected by retired members, 2 elected by active and retired members, 1 elected by public agency members, and 1 elected by state members. 

4 members are ‘ex officio’, a fancy way of saying that they automatically have a seat by virtue of their public office. Those officials are the State Treasurer, State Personnel Board designee, Director of Human Resources for the State, and the State Controller. In the case of these officials, the actual person sitting on the CalPERS Board is usually one of a number of designated staff members, and they can rotate. 

2 members are appointed by the Governor. One Represents the Insurance Industry, and the other represents local government. 

1 ‘public’ member is appointed jointly by the Assembly & Senate of the State. 

The Elected Members

Of the 6 elected members, two are pretty much straight up Union folks. 

Rob Feckner, current President of the Board, is elected by school members of CalPERS. He is out of CSEA (California School Employees Association), and is the longest serving Board member, going back to 1999. He’s been working for the Napa Valley USD for some 39 years as a ‘glazing specialist’, which should tell you how hot he is for power. Most of us would have retired a long time gone. 

Henry Jones is Vice-President, and holds the retired CalPERS members seat. He is a product of that exemplar of fiscal prudence, the Los Angeles Unified School District, where he was their Chief Financial Officer and retired in 1998. He has ‘only’ been on the CalPERS Board for some 8 years, but evidently the lust for power has overtaken him as well, since he recently and unsuccessfully challenged Rob Feckner for the post ion of President of CalPERS. 

Theresa Taylor was elected in 2015 to represent state members on the Board. She is Secretary-Treasurer of the very large SEIU Local 1000 (Service Employees International Union), as well as being on their State Council Executive Board. She works for the Franchise Tax Board & lives in Carmichael. 

There are also 3 other directly elected Board members. Pyria Mathur is the elected member from public agency members (read employers), and has been around since 2003. She has worked for BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit District) since 1998, and prior to that worked as a consultant massaging Municipal Bonds. 

The last 2 elected members are elected by all CalPERS members at large. First is Michael Bilbrey, who works for the Bookstore at Citrus Community College in Glendora. He also is a past-president of CSEA, which makes him the second straight up Union type.

And finally we have JJ Jelincic, the second at-large elected member. JJ has been on the Board since 2010. Interestingly, he works directly for CalPERS, and once upon a time was President of the California State Employees Association, which was largely supplanted by SEIU after the State passed a collective bargaining law for state employees (SEERA). JJ is my favorite Board member, since he knows where some of the bodies are buried, and actually asks honest and direct questions of both the Board, and even scarier, the paid CalPERS staff. More on the paid staff in a follow up article. 

JJ’s actions have caused the Board and staff to try and marginalize him, thus exposing their true siege mentality & lack of intestinal fortitude. To demonstrate that I’m not making this up, check out this article at Calpensions.

The Ex-Officio Members

Of the 4 ex-officio members, clearly the grown-up in the group is John Chiang, currently the State Treasurer, and one of the few technically competent elected officials in the State of California. Prior to this position, he served as State Controller, and on the Board of Equalization. Unfortunately for us, he is currently busy in running for Governor when Jerry Brown terms out. His usual designee, Grant Boyken, has engaged in some seriously questionable acts regarding legislation sponsored by Chiang that directly impacts CalPERS private equity interests, while he (Boyken) sat on the Board as representative of the Treasurer. 

Richard Gillihan is a member because he’s the head of the State’s Department of Human Resources, where he acts as the State’s employer of record for all collective bargaining matters, including pension reform. He was appointed by Governor Brown in 2014, and has been of the CalPERS Board since then. He remains a mystery to me, in that as an HR Director, he clearly knows better as he passively allows the staff of CalPERS to violate many basic principles in their hiring and personnel practices.  

Betty Yee is the current State Controller, and as such sits on the Board. She’s sort of following in Chiang’s footsteps, having started out with the Board of Equalization before becoming Controller. For whatever reason, she rarely personally shows up at CalPERS Board meetings, sending a designee who tends to go along to get along. 

The final ex-officio member is Richard Costigan, who represents the California State Personnel Board. Mr. Costigan is a type we are all familiar with - professional pol. He comes from Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, one of the seriously big time political lobbyist law firms. After working in the assembly as Chief of Staff to a couple of minority leaders (read Republican), he jumped up as Deputy Chief of Staff and legislative affairs secretary for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was elected as the State Personnel Board’s representative in late 2010, and continues to hold that position as we speak. He, of all people, should know how this stuff works and be more vocal.  

The Appointees

There are three appointed members to fill out the 13. Two are directly appointed by the Governor, and one is appointed jointly by the Assembly & the Senate. 

First there is Dana Hollinger, the Insurance Industry Representative, appointed by the Governor in 2014 to the CalPERS Board. Her public resume says virtually nothing other than she is a 25 year veteran of the life insurance industry, and “is a sought after speaker”. She got a JD from Southwestern, her insurance group The Hollinger Group is based in Century City, and she’s licensed in Beverly Hills :-).

The second gubernatorial appointee is Bill Slaton, first appointed in 2012. He originally came out of IBM in the seventies, handled structured asset financing for public agencies with particular emphasis on IT projects, and was on the Board of two Northern California community banks. He is on the high profile SMUD (Sacramento Municipal Utility District), where he was President for two terms and is currently Vice-President. 

The final appointee is Ron Lind, jointly appointed by the Assembly & Senate. Wouldn’t you like to know how that one gets handled:-). Anyhow, Mr. Lind comes via a large private sector union, the UFCW (United Food & Commercial Workers) in the Bay area. He was appointed in 2013, and stepped down from his union positions - UFCW International, California Labor Federation, South Bay Labor Council, and the Northern California UFCW Employers Pension Fund - in 2014. 

So There You Have It - the CalPERS Board of Administration

I should be clear that I do not personally know any of these people. This article was derived from publically available information, and notes from some prior articles I”ve written about CalPERS over the last couple of years. 

It is important to know who these 13 Board members are, however, as we go forward and analyze their actions, and their interactions with CalPERS staff. As should be apparent from these brief descriptions, the composition and range of the CalPERS Board members is a lot more complex than advertised in the Times article.  

The second part of this series will be about the staff of the agency, their history and how the interactions between the staff and the Board take place. Also by then further articles from the LA Times series should have appeared. 

Stay tuned.

(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.)

-cw

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-If you think a Hillary Clinton administration, even with another Great Recession and the Democrats in control of Congress, will result in an Urban New Deal, don’t hold your breath. It is not going to happen. This is why. 

Part of the story is the steady decline of the Democratic Party over the past 40 years. It does not just consist of negative campaigning and shallow debates, rigging the Democratic primaries against Bernie Sanders, smearing Dr. Jill Stein; endless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya; flooding the Middle East with US weaponry; and unleashing aerial death squads called drone missiles. Nor is it just mass incarceration of US citizens and refugees, wholehearted support of fracking, and record levels of deportations. 

Less obviously, the Democratic Party’s downward trajectory also includes the total abandonment of the urban programs it once championed, such as public housing. As evidenced by the White House’s recent position paper on affordable housing, as well as a succession of ineffective affordable housing programs in Los Angeles from the 1980s to date, the party’s urban policy has imploded into unrestrained capitalism, also called urban neo-liberalism.  

Long gone are urban programs that included public investment in infrastructure and services, as well as careful regulation of private investment. Since the days of LA Mayor Tom Bradley in the 1980s to date, from Washington, DC, to LA’s City Hall, the Democratic Party’s approach has been a three-legged stool: jettison zoning and environmental laws, abolish government housing programs, and bend over backwards for glad-handing real estate speculators. When challenged, they invariably resort to name-calling. Their critics are always NIMBYs, not supporters of strong planning and environmental regulation. 

So, let’s get into the specifics, including the House LA approach now underway at LA’s City Hall. 

More Revelations from the Mountain Top: Straight from Washington, DC, the Obama Administration has issued a White House Housing Development Toolkit. It identifies two barriers to affordable housing production: local zoning and environmental laws. It never mentions that the U.S. has been in a perpetual housing crisis for the past 40 years and that this crisis coincides with the wholesale elimination of Federal housing programs in the 1970s and 1980s. 

As for the White House’s solutions, they are the same market-based mantras that have been recited by real estate speculators since today’s boomer retirees started paying off their student loans. I have listed them below, with my plain English translation written in italics. 

• Establishing by-right development. (Up-zone commercial properties to avoid discretionary zoning applications, environmental reviews, public notices, public hearings, and appeals.) 

• Taxing vacant land or donate it to non-profit developers. (Thirty years ago Mayor Tom Bradley called for using the air rights above City parking lots for affordable housing.) 

• Streamlining or shortening permitting processes and timelines. (Cutting corners for well-connected real estate investors.) 

• Eliminate off-street parking requirements. (Under-park apartments before a mass transit system is in place.)

• Allowing accessory dwelling units. (Turn single-family homes into duplexes without upgrading public facilities and infrastructure to accommodate a population increase.) 

• Establishing density bonuses. (Allow developers to get free variances in exchange for a handful of unverified affordable units.) 

• Enacting high-density and multifamily zoning. (Permit apartment houses in single-family neighborhoods without upgrading infrastructure and services.) 

• Employing inclusionary zoning. (Require new market-rate apartment buildings to include a small percentage of uninspected affordable units.) 

• Establishing development tax or value capture incentives. (Allow developers of market housing to pay an in lieu fee for off-site affordable units.) 

• Using property tax abatements. (In addition to Prop. 13 provisions that freeze most commercial property taxes to late 1970 rates, any increase in assessed valuations would also be exempt from property taxes.) 

It is my contention, especially for Los Angeles, these programs did not work several decades ago, and they will not work now. The simple reason is that the private sector has never been able to meet the housing needs of lower-income Americans. You can easily enrich the crony capitalists buzzing around elected officials intoxicated by the sweet nectar of laissez faire capitalism, but the cumulative, long-term result is dismal. After several decades, these market schemes have only managed to build a tiny fraction of the affordable housing needed in the United States. In fact, the situation is now so bad that every county in the entire county has an affordable housing shortage.  

Bradley Administration: To understand House LA, we need to step back in time to the Tom Bradley administration, when LA first acknowledged that it had an affordable housing crisis. Like the Depression, in the 1980s, only one family in five could afford to buy a home, 200,000 families were doubled or tripled up, 40,000 families lived in garages, and 150,000 families were homeless at some point in a year. 

Initially slow to respond, Mayor Bradley eventually made it clear that the crisis resulted from the extensive cutbacks in urban programs that began during the Nixon-Ford years (1968-1976), and only got worse under Carter (1976-1980), Bush 1 (1980-84), and Clinton (1984-1992). By the late 1980s, nearly all Federal urban programs, especially housing, had been eliminated. This era marked the end of New Deal liberalism and the beginning or urban neo-liberalism: the myth that the private market could solve persistent urban problem if showered with enough deregulation and financial incentives. 

Beginning in 1988, that is exactly what Mayor Bradley undertook through a detailed proposal whose premise was a quickly discredited low-ball calculation of LA’s residential zoning potential. The Bradley program intended to eliminate environmental reviews of small and medium sized apartment houses, permit apartment houses and second units in single-family neighborhoods, demolish houses with code violations to furnish free building sites to non-profit housing corporations, impose linkage fees on new residential projects to fund affordable housing projects, and build affordable housing in the airspace above 105 city-owned parking lots, beginning with 10 prototypes. 

In response to widespread community opposition, however, the initial Bradley program was modified to include the rehabilitation homes and apartments in low-income neighborhoods and a slumlord task force to target slum properties for criminal prosecution. It also shifted the construction of affordable apartments from single-family neighborhoods to transit corridors and stations. 

The Planning Department’s updated housing calculations also revealed that Los Angeles had sufficient zoning for one million additional housing units, or 25,000 new units per year for the next 40 years. Other Planning Department estimates from the early 1990s indicated an even larger buildout potential. Based on existing zoning, Los Angeles could add nearly 5,000,000 more people, reaching a total population of 8,000,000. In the intervening 26 years, however, the City has never updated any of its zoning build out calculations. Despite claims and counter-claims, the actual changes between 1990 and 2016 are not known. 

House LA - Old Wine in New Bottles: Based on information from the Los Angeles Business Council, House LA appears to be the Los Angeles version of the White House Housing Tool Kit. It mostly repackages old, off-the-shelf market programs. Unfortunately, most of them go back nearly three decades, with little to show for themselves. As before, my translation is in italics. 

• Expansion of Expedited Processing Section in Planning. (Pay to Play: Quick zoning approvals for well-off real estate speculators.) 

• Site Plan Review Modifications. (Zoning deregulation.) 

• Permitting Micro Unit Housing (Increasing density without upgrading public services and infrastructure.) 

• Deferring Fees. (Municipal subsidies for well-connected real estate speculators, like AEG.) 

• Expanding the Use of Shared Vehicles. (Under-parking new buildings prior to the build-out of the mass transit system.) 

• Facilitating Accessory Dwelling Units for Affordable Housing. (Turning single family’s homes into duplexes without upgrading public services and infrastructure and without collecting additional property taxes.) 

• Using City-owned parking lots for affordable housing. (House LA recently added Tom Bradley’s long-neglected program to use City-owned properties, mostly parking lots, as affordable housing sites. Other than a 30 year hiatus, the only other differences is that House LA identifies 100 not parking lots and proposes 11 not 10 affordable housing sites.) 

Why so much hostility from House LA to the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative? Gil Cedillo, the City Councilmember who has campaigned for the House LA market-incentive proposals, has sharply criticized the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. But, his talking points come straight from the Astroturf funders: CH Palladium, LLC and Westfield DD&C, LLC. These Big Real Estate players have every reason to oppose an Initiative that will force the City of Los Angeles to systematically and quickly update its General Plan, including permanent bans on parcel level spot-zoning and spot-General Plan amendments. 

This is because the Palladium and Westfield business models rely on spot-zoning and spot-planning. As they scour Los Angeles for shopping center and high-rise building sites, they inevitably run into conflicts with zoning and planning ordinances. But, they could care less if their projects conflict with the character and scale of existing neighborhoods or exceed the capacity of existing infrastructure.

For them, their criterion is profitability. But, they can hardly go to the city’s voters and fess up that they oppose the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative because it impinges on their bottom line. So instead, they have created an Astroturf organization, the Coalition to Save Los Angeles Neighborhoods and Jobs, that claims spot-zoning and spot-planning is essential to the production of affordable housing. 

It doesn’t matter that they cannot identify projects from the Bradley to the Garcetti eras where affordable housing projects required zone changes and General Plan Amendments. Even their latest gambit, grabbing a hold of the Tom Bradley program of using city parking lots for affordable housing sites, is a desperate act. This is because this option has been around for nearly 30 years, has hardly ever worked, and could be easily pursued on city-owned parcels that did not require the City Council to adopt spot-zones and spot-plans. 

So, with deception in one hand, and a check in the other, they march on to block a voter initiative that would force the City of LA to properly plan, including rigorous criteria for the approval of any deviations from legally adopted plans and zones.

(Dick Platkin is a veteran city planner who reports on local planning issues for CityWatch. He also serves on the boards of the Beverly Wilshire Homes Association and East Hollywood Neighborhood Council Planning Committee. Please send comments and corrections to [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

OPENING UP THE PROCESS-The importance of women's leadership in politics is not only apparent in Democrats' selection of Hillary Clinton to run for President, but also in the candidacy of another talented woman pursuing the top leadership role in the state party in 2017. 

Kimberly Ellis, a progressive Black woman from the Bay Area city of Richmond, is running to become chair of the California Democratic Party. She heads the statewide nonprofit Emerge California and trains women candidates, some inspired by Hillary Clinton, in how to mount effective campaigns for office. She has a remarkable record in fund-raising and building her organization to equip a diverse group of women for public service. As party chair, she would succeed John Burton. 

During Burton's 8-year tenure as chair, the state party has secured its own headquarters and paid it off while championing healthcare expansion, LGBT equality, gun safety, climate protection, vaccination for all, and opposition to the death penalty. Everyone takes his calls -- perhaps to hear a revealing story of politics past, told in his signature salty language, or more likely to touch base with someone who influences politicos and shapes policies in California. 

As former state Senator Burton steps down, a political insider from LA has stepped up alongside Ellis to seek the chair's role. Eric Bauman, the senior adviser to Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, is also chair of the Los Angeles County Democratic Central Committee and male vice chair of the state party. 

Ellis, at age 43, is also a leader in state Democratic circles. She is recording secretary of the state party's African American Caucus and a member of the party's Finance Committee. 

But if she is a queen of empowering women candidates and African Americans, Bauman fancies himself a kingmaker. 

About to turn 58, he has the ear of many elected Democrats and personifies the bullying tactics of an old-school boss. The manner in which he peddles his influence can sometimes be a problem. In June, for instance, the Beach Cities Democratic Club in LA invited him and Ellis to address them to enlighten the club's consideration of endorsement in the contest for state Democratic Party chair. At the event, Bauman modestly claimed it was the first such speech he had given. Yet he was already listing endorsements from 16 clubs on his flyer before that meeting. Shouldn't open and even-handed opportunities to address clubs come before an endorsement -- especially for a role as weighty as state party chair when that election is still a year up the road? 

How does Bauman's style of campaigning promote inclusiveness, diversity, and participation? This is an example of old-boys' favoritism that shows how it can corrupt party politics. We give credit to the Beach Cities Democrats for actually seeking out more than one candidate. 

Using his influence, Bauman has also made connections for his own profit that have attracted the critical eye of good-government watchdogs. His consulting business, Victory Land Partners, solicited and received $12,500-per month payments from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, better known as Pharma, to stop an initiative to reduce prescription drug prices for Californians, which turned into Proposition 61, the Drug Price Relief Act. All this happened while he drew $145,000, plus benefits, as a state employee. 

President Obama has said the big pharmaceutical companies put Americans' health at risk, writing that they "oppose any change to drug pricing, no matter how justifiable and modest, because they believe it threatens their profits." Trading on his party role for personal profit, Bauman is treading on the same thin ice that has collapsed under past operatives who put self above public service. Do we want the chair of the party to be an expert at this icky kind of manipulation? 

In contrast, Ellis has worked to make the state Democratic Party a bastion for progressive ideas and candidates. She believes that progressive voters -- including people of color, environmentalists, union members, professionals, the disabled, the elderly, millennials, the poor, the tired, those yearning to be free -- make up a largely untapped majority of the electorate. It's the job of the state Democratic Party to seek out those voters, energize them, show that elections are relevant to their interests, engage them as voters, and train promising advocates among them as the next generation of Democratic leaders. 

Commanding a reliable progressive majority in the electorate, California Democrats will have to recruit and support progressive candidates, and overcome resistance to the kind of legislation that aggressively promotes great education for all from preschool to grad school, protects the environment, revamps the criminal justice system, and promotes income equality. That's how California Democrats will write and pass the kind of legislation that can reinvigorate our public schools, our community and state colleges and universities, and our pre-kindergarten programs.
Young voters sent a message in this year's primary election about wanting an open, inclusive party that delivers on policy goals like an affordable path to a college degree for them and the next generation. Ellis is listening. 

California Democrats are about to make a major choice for state party chair. They can take a timid step to dance with the old-boys' club or a bold progressive step to dance with the future. The opportunity to select Kimberly Ellis in 2017 will follow the election this fall, when Hillary Clinton is likely to gain more than 60 percent of Californians' votes. Electing Ellis will send another strong message that the door to leadership for women and progressives in the Democratic Party is finally open.

(Delaine Eastin is a former state Superintendent of Public Instruction who served four terms in California's state Assembly. Ron Kaye is former editor of the Los Angeles Daily News who continues to advocate for honesty in public service and a better informed electorate.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.