SOUTH OF THE 10-Two weeks ago 2 Urban Girls discussed African-American men supporting the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and caused quite an uproar. While the article looked at why Black men are supporting HRC, commenters remarked, why would ANY Black person support her? Most articles speculate that HRC has the women’s vote sewn up.

According to the Center for American Women and Politics, in every presidential election since 1980, the proportion of eligible female adults who voted far exceeded the proportion of eligible males who voted. 

Last week, social media was ablaze with African-American women posting selfies with Hillary Clinton when she appeared at the California African-American Museum (CAAM) in Exposition Park at the request of Congresswomen Karen Bass (D-CA37) and Maxine Waters (D-CA43). (Photo above.) 

Many of the women on hand were political movers and shakers, with many being members of an established political organization focused on grooming African-American women for a career in politics. 

The Los Angeles African-American Women’s Public Policy Institute (LAAAWPPI) has, since June 2004, been the premier organization for women of color seeking a more active role in civic engagement. Women who join LAAWPPI have backgrounds ranging from running nonprofits to working with elected officials to serving on various boards and commissions throughout Los Angeles County. 

Curious as to why women of color are supporting Hillary, I spoke with several alumni -- “baby boomers” to “millennials” -- about their reasoning. 

Joy Atkinson, Executive Director of the Los Angeles African American Women's Public Policy Institute (LAAAWPPI) is no stranger to politics. Her father was the first African-American to run for Los Angeles City Council. 

“I have been around the political arena for many years and I think I know what [issues] politicians can and can't deliver. Mrs. Clinton served as an attorney for the Children's Defense Fund and helped stop the incarceration of teenagers in adult prisons and worked for the rights of disabled children in Massachusetts,” Atkinson remarked. 

“She also tackled the desegregation policies of Mississippi way after the 1954 decision to not segregate school children. She has been and still is an advocate for women's rights. As Secretary of State under President Obama, she was able to negotiate a cease fire between Israel and Hamas,” said Atkinson. 

Atkinson is also looking to separate fact from fiction when it comes to people’s perception of Hillary.

“Would somebody give me some reliable proof that Hillary Clinton is a "crook" and can't be "trusted" - I mean some evidence and not innuendo,” continued Atkinson. 

Many would think trigger words like “Whitewater” “Benghazi” “Email Server” would emit some concern in the areas of “trust”, yet that doesn’t seem to apply here. 

Hillary Clinton has also managed to finagle the support of Compton Mayor Aja Brown. Speaking at an event hosted by hosted by the Center for American Progress (CAP) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in early 2015, Hillary publicly floated the idea of offering the mayor a job if elected President. 

“Don’t be surprised if you get a call,” Mrs. Clinton said after praising the Democratic mayor’s anti-gang programs. 

More than 70 percent of black women voted in 2012, out-voting white women (65.6 percent), white men (62.6 percent), and black men (61.4 percent). Exit poll data from Democratic primaries in 2016, show black women continue to make up a larger proportion of the Democratic electorate than black men.

 In 2008 and 2012, 96 percent of black women voters cast their ballots for Barack Obama. Will those same women show up for Hillary Rodham Clinton? 

Not all women of color have made Hillary Clinton their de facto choice for President.

Next week’s column will look at African-American women who are supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders.

(Melissa Hébert is an alumni of California State University Dominguez Hills with a degree in Political Science and a member of LAAAWPPI. She is the editor-in-chief of blog 2urbangirls.com and host of the Urban Girl Show. Melissa is also President of School Site Council in Inglewood Unified School District and is the mother of two handsome sons. She can be reached at [email protected]) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams. 

GUEST WORDS--“The City’s repeal proposal is bad enough, replacing meaningful neighborhood zoning protection with virtually no protection. But the way the City is processing this proposal exemplifies its continuing broken planning system and completely undermines the City’s credibility at a critical point in time.” --Carlyle W. Hall. 

To head off a proposed ballot initiative that would impose a moratorium on major construction projects throughout Los Angeles, it’s been widely reported that the City is now seeking support for a planning and zoning “reform package” that will, once more, simply update the City’s 35 community plans. This proposed “solution” overlooks the City’s fundamental credibility problem: an ever-widening gulf between what’s promised and what’s actually delivered.  

In a recent example, Los Angeles Neighbors in Action prevailed against the City when Superior Court Judge James Chalfant found that, since May 2010, LA’s building officials have been routinely ignoring the City’s adopted zoning standards for development of second units (sometimes called “accessory dwelling units” or “granny flats”) in single-family residential zones.  

 Under state law changes enacted in 2002, second units must be approved on a “ministerial” basis (i.e., no public hearings and no conditions of approval) if they meet a city or county’s adopted standards—no matter how negative the ensuing traffic and infrastructure impacts. Further, if a locality does not have its own adopted standards, it must approve any second unit application that meets certain state “default” standards. The Legislature specifically designed those “default” standards to be so utterly weak—providing virtually no protections for the surrounding neighborhood—that any rational city would prefer to adopt and enforce its own local second unit standards. 

The 2002 legislative changes have made strong local second unit standards, like those adopted in Los Angeles, of great importance. LA’s adopted standards, for example, strictly regulate a proposed second unit’s size (no greater than 640 square feet in floor area), location (no second units in designated hillside areas) and visibility (second units must not be visible from the street). In contrast, the disfavored state “default” standards allow second units as big as many primary residences (1,200 SF), have no restrictions on the location or visibility of second units, and contain no other meaningful protections for surrounding neighborhoods. 

Like other cities, LA’s adopted second-unit standards were originally intended to be administered on a discretionary basis through the conditional use permit process. Shortly after the 2002 state law changes, then-Chief Zoning Administrator Robert Janovici issued an administrative memo in 2003 describing how the City would thereafter administer its adopted standards on a ministerial basis. For the next seven years, the City successfully administered those standards, issuing approximately 40 second-unit permits a year. 

In 2009, however, at the city attorney’s urging, former Planning Director Gail Goldberg undertook a series of community workshops to study alternatives to the City’s adopted standards. These workshops were swamped with homeowners wanting a voice in potentially major density changes to their neighborhoods. In light of the strong outpouring of citizen opposition to the 2009 effort, Goldberg “pulled the plug” on the study and refused to send any ordinance to the City Council.  

Most citizens assumed the issue had been put to bed at that point. But in 2010, the Planning Department issued a behind-closed-doors administrative memo (ZA 120) based on the city attorney’s mistaken legal advice. The city attorney wrongly counseled that, as a result of the 2002 state law changes, the City needed to “formally amend” its adopted standards in order to provide for their ministerial administration. 

ZA 120 ordered the City’s planning and zoning officials to stop following its adopted standards and instead to follow the weak state “default” standards. For the next six years, the City issued about 75 second unit permits annually, but essentially all of the increase in permits involved unlawful permits that exceeded the City’s adopted standards. 

In 2014, Los Angeles Neighbors in Action brought its lawsuit demanding that the City set aside ZA 120 and resume following its protective local standards.  After almost two years of litigation, the Superior Court recently ruled that, since 2010, based on the city attorney’s mistaken legal advice, the City has been unlawfully ignoring its adopted second unit standards on a routine basis. As relief, the City was ordered to stop using ZA 120 and the state “default” standards, rather than its adopted standards, as the criteria for issuing second-unit permits.  

The City’s response? Perversely, it now proposes to “fast-track” a proposed repeal of its adopted second-unit standards. Without any prior community input and study, that proposal is now scheduled to be heard by the Planning Commission on May 12.  

The City’s repeal proposal is bad enough, replacing meaningful neighborhood zoning protection with virtually no protection. But the way the City is processing this proposal exemplifies its continuing broken planning system and completely undermines the City’s credibility at a critical point in time: 

• The public notice for the March 12 Commission hearing, for example, blatantly misstates that repeal of the City’s adopted second-unit standards is proposed “for the purpose of complying with state law AB 1866.” This is nonsense. Judge Chalfant ruled that the City had to stop routinely violating its adopted standards, and he specifically ruled that the City can properly continue enforcing its existing adopted standards. There is no legal need whatsoever to repeal those adopted standards and replace them with the weak “default” standards. 

• The City has put the proposed repeal ordinance on a “fast track” as an “urgency” ordinance. But it is hardly an emergency when a City is ordered by the Superior Court, as here, simply to follow its adopted zoning standards. Beyond that, under its adopted standards, the City issued approximately 40 permits annually over a seven-year period—the same number currently projected by its 2013 housing element. No crisis there. 

• The great majority of California cities have adopted their own local standards, rather than choosing to implement the undesirable state “default” standards. Similar to LA’s adopted standards, cities throughout Southern California enforce their local adopted restrictions to protect surrounding neighborhoods. The City’s repeal proposal would embrace the “default” standard without even first examining the alternative second unit ordinance approaches of these cities. 

• The much-heralded re:codeLA study will include, among other things, customized second-unit zoning standards designed to take into account the undeniably different topography, density, and character of LA’s diverse neighborhoods. The study’s rhetoric strongly denounces “one size fits all” zoning practices. But instead of awaiting the re:codeLA zoning recommendations, the City’s repeal proposal would immediately replace our existing strong second-unit standards with the weak “one size fits all” state “default” standards. 

Newly updated community plans also offer an opportunity for the City to formulate effective second-unit policies to be implemented throughout its widely diverse neighborhoods. But with its proposed repeal action, the City’s planning establishment appears willing to let LA’s neighborhoods suffer the negative consequences of unwanted (and unstoppable) second-unit development without first making any meaningful effort to study alternatives and to formulate public policies that take into account differing points of view. 

The bottom line: When the City says one thing but does another -- as its second unit policies and practices continue to do -- it completely undermines potential public support for its ongoing planning and zoning efforts.

(Carlyle W. Hall is an environmental and land use lawyer in Los Angeles who founded the Center for Law in the Public Interest and litigated the well-known AB 283 litigation, in which the Superior Court ordered the City to rezone about one third of the properties within its territorial boundaries (an area the size of Chicago) to bring them into consistency with its 35 community plans. He also co-founded LA Neighbors in Action, which has recently been litigating with the City over its second dwelling unit policies and practices. This piece appeared first in PlanningReport.com.)   Illustration by Kyle T. Webster. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

The full quote goes, “Behold how good and pleasant it is for the brethren to dwell together in unity!”

…Which may not even be something to hope for. A lust for “unity” seems to lead to fascism, and whether of left or right doesn’t matter, because it is inherently oppressive. I prefer to think that what would really be good and pleasant would be solidarity: working together towards common goals, while making room for, and use of, the exhilarating diversity of thought and talents in our bustling little communities here in LA.

Sad to say, we don’t even get that, as our (sort of, in one case) elected leaders play us off into factions that fight each other over quibbles and intuitive but usually incorrect gut feelings, while the powers-that-be make their own quiet plans.

That may be changing. For now, CD 1’s Gil Cedillo (who squeaked into office by fewer than 800 votes, and then immediately backstabbed the good folks he’d pandered to in the safe streets community), gets to play tin god in the council chambers, blocking road diets and bike lanes, then grudgingly tolerating a traffic signal or two after enough bodies pile up, while keeping North Figueroa the perfect model of a modern Slaughter Alley. But opposition is rising …

As the LA Times noted a couple of days ago, not one, not two, but three candidates are gearing up to oppose him after what many in NELA hope will be his single term. They are former opponent Jesse Rosas, Miguel Amaya, and our own Josef Bray-Ali, the owner of Flying Pigeon LA, a former white-hat developer, and a tireless advocate for safe streets, local businesses, and a healthy community. Although the Times article characterizes him as a “bicycle advocate,” we all know that he is much more, and that the original road diet plan would have strengthened commerce and neighborhood solidarity and made the street safer for all—cyclists, yes, but walkers and drivers as well.

All Cedillo’s efforts have done is paint the street with blood—literally.

Meanwhile, across town, Paul Koretz is seeing opposition, as Beverly Grove lawyer Jesse Max Creed prepares a run for CD 5. Koretz has been steadfast in blocking bike lanes on Westwood, refusing even to permit an impartial study of the matter—which leads you to wonder what hidden interest he is “protecting” in his busy Westside district. Even Ryan Snyder’s plan for the street, which would have left all car lanes and parking intact, was refused consideration. 

Creed is not running on a pro-bike ticket (at least not yet), but there’s a chance he’d be more reasonable than the ever-obdurate Koretz.

So it looks like, with a little bit of solidarity, we might be able to vote a couple of neanderthals out of office, and move in folks who believe it is people, and not traffic jams, that make a city great.

Don’t forget to vote local on March 7th next year!

BEGGING FOR RECALL-We’ve all heard about the ruckus in Hollywood about spot zoning. That is the practice of councilmembers’ taking R-1 lots with single family homes and re-zoning them for large apartment complexes, often to be built with tax dollars as Affordable Housing. 

Hollywood got so fed up that it spawned the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. Well, Councilmember David Ryu isn’t going to ignore poor old Sherman Oaks. Councilman Ryu has brought Spot Zoning to the Valley. 

Claiming to be the homeowner’s friend and to protect his constituency from the developers, Councilmember Ryu has not voted NO on a large development project since he was elected. 

Councilmember Ryu did vote YES on the gigantic Palladium Towers in Hollywood, and now he has moved on to destroying single family homes in Sherman Oaks. Approving Spot Zoning is a strange way to protect his district from Spot Zoning. 

When the neighbors told the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council that they wanted to retain the R-1 zoning for their homes along Magnolia Boulevard and in the nearby neighborhood, Ryu’s response was that the community should be glad that he let them know what was happening. 

It may sound strange for a councilmember wanting praise for not concealing when a developer seeks Spot Zoning. In the culture that permeates Los Angeles City Council, however, being deceptive and closing the community completely out of any and all input to major decisions like Spot Zoning is Standard Operating Procedure. So, councilmember Ryu does seem to be a little more open than the other councilmembers. Some think that it’s the same as the difference between a polite mugger who does pistol whip you and one who needlessly whacks you on the head after stealing your wallet. 

Spot Zoning can destroy the value of a family’s major asset, the home. 

But these enterprising families are fighting back. They got the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council to reject the project despite the developer’s renting a large bus to bring his friends and employees to stack the Neighborhood Council’s audience in favor of demolishing the homes. Perhaps, the SHNC Board member resented such crass manipulation. 

And now, these neighbors may sign on to the Recall Ryu campaign which grew out of his support for the Palladium Towers and his deception over putting a professional basketball court in the wilderness of Runyon Canyon. 

We can expect Ryu’s crocodile tears any time now. Nothing makes a Councilmember tear up faster than a Recall. 

But don’t be naive, that will not stop Ryu’s Spot Zoning of R-1 homes to Multifamily Affordable Housing. Ryu has promised this R-1 neighborhood to the developer, and Ryu knows on which side his bread is ultimately buttered. 

On the other hand, Ryu’s mega support for developers is earning him a lot of enemies. Along with Krekorian and O’Farrell, Councilmember Ryu may become prey in the Recall Games.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

TAXED TO DEATH--Members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors have suggested an income tax on millionaires dedicating the money for homelessness relief. Opening the door for local governments to impose income taxes would erode the state’s major fund raising mechanism, burden taxpayers with more paperwork, hit small businesses whose owners pay business taxes through personal income taxes, and subject more government revenue to a highly volatile revenue source. 

All in all -- a bad idea 

Last week, when Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the bill that would have permitted local governments to levy cigarette taxes, he complained that there already are too many taxes on the coming ballot. A push for an income tax would increase the volume of tax measures facing voters. 

Yesterday, the LA Board of Supervisors put off for one week a motion to ask county lobbyists to try and convince legislators to change the law that prohibits local jurisdictions from imposing an income tax. 

Still, Pandora’s Box on local income taxes has been cracked open. If the movement persists, the consequences can be great. 

The proposal to levy local income taxes comes at a time that a statewide effort to extend the Proposition 30 state income tax levies is on-going. California’s top income tax payers already pay the highest income tax rate in the country. 

LA County wants to pile on. 

The LA County supervisors think they have a winning proposal. The press release announcing the effort said a poll showed 76% support. Advocates of the idea will point to 14 states that give permission for some local governments to raise income taxes. Of course, it’s always easy for those polled to say they are willing to raise taxes on someone else. 

But what happens when there is an economic downturn? I dealt with that concern for the state last week considering the possibility of a Shakespearean Tragedy for the State Budget. Looks like the locals want to stage a similar play. 

When I write “locals,” I mean more than Los Angeles. If the legislature decides to change the restrictions on local governments imposing an income tax, does anyone think other jurisdictions will sit idly by? Los Angeles County supervisors say they want the money to help the homeless. There are a lot of other interests in communities around the state that consider the causes they believe in worthy of more economic help. 

But, what about the taxpayers? 

How long before local taxpayers who continue to get hit with increased tax rates throw up their hands and give up on Los Angeles and California? The burden continues to grow. Proposition 30 was sold as a temporary tax for seven years. Perhaps many high-end income taxpayers said they would weather the storm. However, those taxpayers are now looking at an additional twelve years of the highest income tax rate in the country BEFORE local governments jump on that gravy train. 

In the Los Angeles County Business Federation (BizFed) poll of members issued last week, the number one concern for small business owners was the income tax. 

Before anyone thinks the push for new taxes is only about the rich, consider what likely might occur if government budgets relying on increased income tax revenue are hard hit during a recession or economic slowdown. 

I remember reading about the Midwest congressman who announced on the floor of the House of Representatives in the early years of the 20^th Century that he was voting for the amendment to the United States Constitution that would establish an income tax because his constituents wouldn’t pay the new tax. It was aimed at the rich. 

The income tax eventually came after his constituents, too.

(Joel Fox is the editor of Fox and Hounds and President of the Small Business Action Committee. This column was posted first at FoxandHoundsDaily.com) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

THE ISSUE: If prostitution is the oldest profession in the world, then debating its social benefits and whether it should be legal or not is the oldest pastime. Below, Erin Fuchs makes a case for legalization to help get the debate cranked up again. Let us know what you think.