THE GUSS REPORT--Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has reappointed Roger Wolfson to the LA Animal Services Commission, which City Council will undoubtedly unanimously reconfirm on Tuesday. An attorney and television writer whose last IMDB credit was in 2012, Wolfson had no qualifications or prior experience when first appointed, and has since that time failed to consistently attend the twice monthly meetings or do much of the work of a Commissioner except for his self-described “personal” humane pursuits. 

“He’s so arrogant that [he] can’t seem to be bothered to show up at all very often,” said Marla Tauscher, an attorney involved in humane affairs inside and outside of the city, and who recently filed suit against LAAS. “In the last 4 meetings I’ve attended, he hasn’t been at three and was late to the fourth. If he’s so busy he can’t make it, he should resign. It’s not as if we can’t live without his searing insight.” 

Tauscher is right. 

In 2015, of the 22 LAAS meetings that Wolfson was supposed to attend, he was either absent (4x) or late (5x) 41% of the time. And it is tough to tell whether he rolled out of bed in time for the 10am and occasional 7pm meetings in 2014 because he refuses to force LAAS to post the meeting minutes for that year, 76% of which are still missing from the LAAS website. 

In 2014, Wolfson did offer a written observation about LAAS before he acknowledged that he was warned that one does not criticize LAAS when on the Commission. 

“(LAAS is) a leaking rowboat, Dan. No way to plug all the holes at once. I’m doing my best,” he wrote in an August 28, 2014 email. 

To date, Wolfson’s “best” resulted in none of those holes being plugged or even addressed honestly, including: 

• The 8,807 pet “adoptions” that the city falsified by simply shuffling animals between cages in city-owned buildings, while Garcetti falsely told the public that “adoptions were up.” 

• The inconsistently applied $25 drop off fee that is written in LAAS policy for people bringing an animal to a city shelter, while Garcetti falsely told the public that “impounds are down.” 

• Failure to enforce no pet sales laws or to determine why breeder permits are available to anyone who wishes to breed their animals, including pits and Chihuahuas, the two breeds most often killed by LAAS. 

• Failure to pick up stray animals reported to LAAS. 

• Inability to collect millions of dollars in annual dog licensing revenue, including from Wolfson himself, who failed to pay his dog license fees to the city until he was first appointed by Garcetti, and even then, only for the present year due. According to LAAS records, his obligation remains unpaid, as are his unassessed late fees that others, including City Council president Herb Wesson, are charged when it was determined that he, too, was delinquent. 

Wolfson’s delinquency is treated differently than was that of his predecessor Ruthanne Secunda, a wealthy literary agent who was terminated from the appointment when it was discovered that she voted on city leash and licensing laws while disregarding both herself. 

Councilmember Paul Koretz, at that time, wrote in an email,  “A Commissioner violating a leash law and license law that she voted on or at least clearly knew about is unacceptable. The fact that she acted once she was caught and licensed her animals shouldn’t impress anyone…. Your commissioner is an idiot and absolutely should go.” 

Later in Koretz’s email, he erroneously referred to me as a “moron” for pointing out Secunda’s failures, and somehow concluded that it was a criticism of the LAAS GM. Note: Koretz at first denied writing the email, but apologized in person after being shown a copy of it. 

At the last Commission meeting that Wolfson actually attended, he called for more nighttime meetings that are held at the local shelters, but simultaneously tried to reduce the amount of speaking time that local attendees could use to share their concerns, rendering such meetings moot. Why have meetings in the community if you are not dedicated to listening to the community? 

Wolfson, who did not respond to requests for comment for this article, also admitted the emotional atmosphere in the shelter is so "intense" that sometimes he can't go back for several weeks. 

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a contributor to Huffington Post, KFI-AM 640, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News and other publications. He blogs on humane issues at http://ericgarcetti.blogspot.com/.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

HEALTH POLITICS--Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, Calif., has been in the news twice in the past two weeks. But the stories weren’t about one of its doctors discovering a cure or inventing a new life-saving procedure. They were about 11 tragic deaths that occurred at the hospital and about the hospital’s costly and illegal union-busting campaign that forced Huntington into signing a settlement agreement with the California Nurses Association.

This is what happens when a hospital puts profits over people—its patients as well as its employees.

The 625-bed facility made headlines when it reluctantly admitted that 11 Huntington patients had died between January 2013 and August 2015 after being infected by dangerous bacteria from medical scopes. Another five patients were infected but are still alive. The hospital acknowledged the deaths only after the Pasadena Public Health Department (PPHD) was about to release a report about the outbreak of multi-drug-resistant (MDR) pseudomonas aeruginosa linked to procedures (called endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography) performed with scopes made by the Olympus Corporation.

The city agency’s investigation, which began last August with an unannounced site visit and continued with cooperation from hospital staff, blamed both the design of the scope and the hospital for lapses in infection control. For example, according to the report, the hospital used canned compressed air from Office Depot to dry the scopes—which is not recommended by the manufacturer or by nationally recognized cleaning guidelines. The PPHD report triggered stories in the Los Angeles Times headlined “11 deaths at Huntington Hospital among patients infected by dirty scopes, city report says” and “Pasadena hospital broke the law by not reporting outbreak, health officials say.”

Initially, Huntington only notified patients who had been treated with the scope between January and August 2015 about the possibility of infections. The PPHD, after it began its investigation, insisted that Huntington notify all patients who had been treated with the scopes since January 2013. The PPHD had to ask Huntington twice to notify those earlier patients before the hospital complied.

The duodenoscope is, according to the Times, “a long snake-like tube with a tiny camera on the tip that is inserted into a patient’s throat and upper gastrointestinal tract. It is used to treat cancer, gallstones and other problems in the bile or pancreatic ducts.” The PPHD report concluded: “This broad bacterial contamination supports the hypothesis” that the hospital’s disinfection and maintenance “were insufficient to prevent the spread of infection.”

“We take responsibility for the deficiencies outlined in the [Pasadena Public Health Department] report and have taken steps to ensure rigorous compliance going forward,” wrote Derek Clark, the hospital’s director of public relations, in an email response.

The same week that the story about the deaths broke, Huntington also made news when it reluctantly agreed to a settlement with the California Nurses Association (CNA). The hospital agreed to rescind the firing of registered nurses Allysha Shin (whose last name was Almada before she was married last October) and Vicki Lin and restore their full back pay. Both were illegally fired as part of Huntington’s vicious and expensive anti-union campaign last year.

The results of last year’s union election were overturned. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) will determine a new election date. Huntington also agreed to abide by labor laws that protect the RNs’ right to organize and agreed to post its commitments throughout the hospital and email the notice to all nurses.

It would hardly be news that a hospital has agreed to obey the law, except that Huntington so egregiously broke the law last year that they had to put it in writing before CNA would approve the settlement agreement.

During last year’s organizing campaign, the union caught Huntington engaging in dozens of illegal acts of intimidation designed to prevent the nurses from gaining a stronger voice in their workplace. CNA brought these unfair labor violations to the federal National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which ruled against the hospital. Hospital officials were scheduled to testify on June 6 before an NLRB hearing. But on June 1, the hospital agreed, as part of the settlement with CNA, to set aside the results of last year’s election and allow the nurses to move forward with a new election.

“We have the best nurses in the world and we continue to respect all of their rights, including their right to be represented by a union, should they so choose,” said Huntington public relations director Clark.

If you’re wondering whether there’s a connection between these two news stories—the 11 deaths and the union battle at hospital—wonder no longer. There is.

Sources among nurses and CNAbelieve that the hospital knew that the deaths were due in part to its negligence in sterilizing its scopes—and its efforts to keep them secret—was about to go public, because a Los Angeles Times reporter had been asking questions. Huntington signed the settlement agreement with CNA on May 31. The Times’ first story about the scopes scandal came out the next day.

Were Huntington’s top executives worried about this double whammy of news stories about the hospital’s self-inflicted wounds? Better to settle with the union than to expose themselves to more negative publicity at the NLRB hearing, where nurses were prepared to testify about the hospital’s outrageous and costly efforts to frighten and intimidate them from organizing and voting for the union. An administrative law judge was slated to review 42 objections to the 2015 election. These included the 175 challenged ballots that led to an inconclusive election result, the firing of Shin and Lin, and other labor law violations committed by Huntington administrators. The NLRB had anticipated a three-to-four-week hearing.

“The terms of the agreement make it clear that we have the right to speak out and that the hospital’s campaign to silence us must stop,” said Terri Korrell, who has been an RN at Huntington Memorial Hospital for 42 years.

But there’s another important missing piece to the story about the tragic deaths of 11 Huntington patients. Huntington nurses warned hospital management about the problem with unsterilized scopes, but their concerns were ignored. It wasn’t until a Huntington nurse expressed concerns to CNA—which then, protecting the nurse’s identity, notified federal health agencies and the Los Angeles Times—that Huntington removed the scopes and began taking appropriate action. This is one reason that many Huntington nurses were organizing to gain a voice in their workplace. It had to do with patient care—specifically, the hospital administration’s prioritizing of revenue over patient care.

In 2014, Huntington nurses felt that they weren’t being listened to about this and many other aspects of patient care. So they contacted CNA and began talking about organizing a union. The nurses who called CNA felt that having a union, with a collective bargaining agreement insuring an independent voice for nurses in advocating for patients, was the only way that they would be listened to regarding the erosion of patient-care conditions, including chronic short staffing and inadequate supplies.

On paper, Huntington is a “nonprofit” institution, but in reality, it operates like a large for-profit corporation. Soon after the nurses’ union drive began in May 2014, the hospital (named for Henry E. Huntington, a turn-of-the-century railroad tycoon) engaged in a nasty and expensive union-busting effort. They paid a bevy of experienced and high-priced anti-union firms and consultants—Littler Mendelson, IRI and Genevieve Clavreul of Solutions Outside the Box—to harass nurses and undercut their organizing efforts. Managers at the hospital interrogated nurses about their union activity, required nurses to attend anti-union “captive audience” meetings and denied pro-union nurses access to the hospital when they were off-duty and wanted to discuss union matters.

When pro-union nurses and community allies, including a number of prominent local clergy, were meeting in the cafeteria, hospital security staff told them to remove their literature from the tables, but didn’t say anything to a group of anti-union staff at the other side of the cafeteria who had their own materials. One of the hospital’s security staff took photos of a pro-union nurse as she passed out leaflets on the public sidewalk outside the hospital. The hospital arbitrarily switched the retirement date of one nurse who had worked at Huntington for 31 years—and who was an outspoken union supporter—so she wouldn’t be able to vote in the union election last April.

Not all the nurses were initially sympathetic to the idea of unionizing. One of the reluctant nurses was Shin, who worked in the intensive care unit. Shin considered Huntington Hospital her second home. Her mother has worked there as a nurse for over 30 years. She was born at the hospital, attended its day care center and volunteered there when she was in high school. She worked as a nurse’s aide in Huntington’s ICU before becoming an RN. The family volunteers their dog at the hospital as a therapy dog.

“I was close with my mom’s coworkers. I loved Huntington,” Shin recalled. “I knew I wanted to go into nursing.”

Given her strong ties to the hospital, Shin was thrilled when she was hired at Huntington five years ago after graduating from the nursing program at California State University in Los Angeles. She worked hard, made close friends among her fellow nurses and enjoyed caring for her patients.

“I was outspoken about patient safety,” Shin said. “In nursing school, I learned that a lot of hospitals use lift teams to help patients turn over or get out of bed, so nurses don’t have to strain or hurt their backs. I gave my manager some research about this, but nothing happened. When we were short on linens or IV pumps, I mentioned it to my manager. But the problem continued. I thought the hospital was jeopardizing patient care, so I said something.”

Her words went unheard.

“To cut expenses, the hospital began rationing supplies, like bed linens and patient gowns,” Shin explained. “Many of our patients in the ICU have very compromised immune systems so the risk of infection is very high. It is absolutely essential that we have adequate supplies of clean linens, yet the hospital is intent on limiting these basic necessities.”

Nurses say that patient care standards at Huntington have eroded, compromised by cuts in nursing as well as support staff. Nurses have been forced to do more work with less help. They were made to do more admissions, more transportations of patients and more housekeeping tasks because of hospital cutbacks in these areas. The unsterilized scopes were among the many issues that nurses brought to Huntington management’s attention.

Thanks to CNA’s efforts, California is the only state in the country to enact a law mandating the ratio of nurses to patients in acute care facilities, which Huntington and other hospitals opposed before it was passed by the California Legislature and signed by Gov. Gray Davis in 1999. The law took effect in 2004, giving hospitals five years to phase in the changes. Nurses report that Huntington has repeatedly violated the nurse-to-patient ratio law, endangering patient safety.
Even so, when some of her colleagues contacted CNA to help them organize a union at Huntington, Shin had doubts.

“At first I wasn’t sure it was a good idea,” she said. “I went to some informational meetings. But I soon realized that we needed a collective voice to be advocates for ourselves and our patients. I’m not afraid to stand up for what I believe is right.”

Shin became a visible leader in the union drive. Before and after work, she met with fellow nurses—in their homes, coffee shops and outside the hospital—to encourage them to support the unionization effort. She was one of three Huntington nurses whose photo appeared on a CNA-sponsored ad on public buses running throughout the Pasadena area. “Save one life, you’re a hero,” the ad said. “Save a hundred lives, and you’re a nurse.”

Last July 26, she spoke out at a public community forum at a local church and at a news conference on the need to improve conditions at the hospital, joined by many local elected officials and community leaders who supported the nurses’ right to organize. A few days later, she was quoted in a local newspaper about conditions at Huntington Hospital and management’s expensive union-busting campaign.

Shin was suspended a week after the article was published and fired several weeks later, despite her long-term ties to the hospital and her excellent performance evaluations.

“I put my whole soul into caring for my patients, and management knows this. At Huntington, I worked as a nurse educator and sat on a committee of nurse leaders who bring patient care concerns to management. I have special training in trauma and open heart,” Shin said. “I care deeply about providing the best possible care, and that’s exactly why I spoke up at the community forum—to help ensure that RNs are supported in providing top-quality, safe care.”
“The next thing I knew, I was fired,” she said. “They tried to silence nurses. They tried to intimidate other nurses from speaking out. It’s wrong.”

On election day, the hospital received 539 votes to the union’s 445, but 175 votes were disputed, leaving the final results inconclusive. In addition, CNA filed dozens of objections to management’s illegal conduct during the election period. As a result, the NLRB did not certify the results.

CNA filed many “unfair labor practice” charges against the hospital with the NLRB, including Shin’s firing and other efforts to suppress voting and otherwise rig the outcome of the election. CNA asked the NLRB to seek a federal court injunction to force Huntington to rehire Almada and Lin. In January, the federal agency found that there was enough evidence to show that Huntington had illegally terminated Shin and Lin for their union involvement. 

The nurses intend to continue their efforts to win representation with CNA in the near future. They plan to wage another union campaign, and they hope that Huntington will abide by the settlement agreement to obey the law and refrain from hostile intimidation tactics so that the election will take place on a level playing field.

The settlement “is an enormous breakthrough for all Huntington RNs who have worked hard to seek union representation and stood up valiantly for justice in the face of HMH administration’s illegal and immoral campaign,” CNA President Malinda Markowitz said. “Management is finally accepting reality. We nurses deserve a place at the table. Our voices deserve to be heard. In order to be patient-care advocates, we need the protection of a union to fight for our patients.”

The experience had a profound impact on Shin, who was raised in a conservative family and had no prior involvement with activism of any kind. Last October, Shin was invited to the White House Summit on Worker Voice because of her leadership role in the union drive at Huntington. She presented a stethoscope to President Obama on behalf of her fellow nurses and the California Nurses Association. Engraved on the stethoscope was the message: “Listen to Nurses.”

“Watching the courage of my fellow nurses as they dealt with the hospital’s anti-union campaign, and seeing activists from other unions and from the community lend their support, really opened my eyes and strengthened my resolve to fight for workers’ rights and patient care,” she said.

Shin was thrilled by the CNA-Huntington settlement, which she called a “huge success for Huntington nurses.” But she decided to resign from Huntington and continue her nursing career at Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, a CNA-represented hospital nearby.

“For the past six months, I’ve been working at Keck USC, a hospital where RNs enjoy a CNA contract,” she explained. “Huntington RNs deserve the same protections and benefits that RNs enjoy under CNA contracts. I am committed to supporting my former HMH colleagues with their quest to win union protection. I’ll be there each and every step of the way.”

Underlying the scopes scandal and the hospital’s illegal anti-union efforts is a larger problem that isn’t unique to Huntington. At many hospitals, nurses try to alert management about issues with patient care and management blows them off or retaliates. This is emblematic of the corporatization of health care—pushing for profit at patients’ expense. Hospitals like Huntington spend large sums of money in certain areas, while cutting back on areas that support safe patient care. The difference at Huntington is that nurses, unlike the majority of California hospitals, do not yet have a powerful independent voice through union representation, leaving management’s priorities unchallenged.

Since 2010, for example, Huntington has increased the prices it charges for its services 16 percent faster than its costs have increased. In other words, the hospital seeks to boost its bottom line at the expense of patient care. During that same period, the hospital has received almost $2.5 billion in revenue from patients and had a net income of almost $87 million.

On a day-to-day basis, Huntington is run by longtime CEO Steve Ralph, who earned $3.9 million in 2014 according to its most recent 990 form submitted to the Internal Revenue Service. . (Huntington’s PR director refused to provide Ralph’s current compensation). But the hospital’s broad policies and direction are shaped by its board of directors, who include doctors, business people and civic leaders. Nurses and other employees, patients and their families, and community members have a right to hold the board accountable for the hospital’s patient-care problems as well as for its expensive and illegal anti-union campaign.

According to the hospital’s website [[http://ourstory.huntingtonhospital.com/ ]]   and press releases, Huntington’s board of directors [[ http://www.huntingtonhospital.com/Resource.ashx?sn=BoardofDirectors ]]   include: Paul Ouyang (chairman); Jaynie Studenmund (vice chairman); Stephen Ralph (president and CEO); Sharon Arthofer; former Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard; Wayne Brandt; Louise Bryson; James Buese, M.D.; Michelle Chino; Reed Gardiner; Armando Gonzalez; Christopher Hedley, M.D.; R. Scott Jenkins; Paul Johnson; David Kirchheimer; Ellen Lee; Lolita Lopez; Lois Matthews; Allen Mathies Jr., M.D.; John Mothershead; Elizabeth Olson; Kathleen Podley; James Shankwiler, M.D.; John Siciliano; Rosemary Simmons; K. Edmund Tse, M.D.; and Deborah Williams.

Americans view nurses more favorably than any other profession. Nurses have ranked No. 1 in the Gallup Poll’s “honesty and ethics” survey every year but one since 1999. (The exception is 2001, when firefighters topped the list, shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks). Despite this, hospitals like Huntington refuse to grant nurses the dignity and respect that they deserve.

If nurses had union protection and did not have to fear retaliation for voicing concerns about patient safety at their hospital, would 11 innocent patients have died? The question lingers with many people. Huntington nurses want the hospital to return to its founding mission: to provide quality and safe patient care.

Over the past two years, Huntington nurses and community members alike have had to endure an aggressive anti-union campaign of harassment, intimidation, surveillance, bullying and wrongful termination—a campaign launched with the Huntington administration’s blessing. This costly battle has been waged against nurses who simply want to exercise their federally protected rights to organize a union and, more importantly, to uphold their responsibility to protect the sick and vulnerable admitted as patients under their care.

(Peter Dreier is professor of politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College. His most recent book is The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame.)

-cw

THE CITY-Los Angeles is facing an economic disaster. The 2020 Commission’s December 2013 report, A Time for Truth, set forth our tale of woe, and two years later, our situation is more precarious. When the time came for the illustrious and clueless 2020 Commission to set forth some remedies in its 2104 report, “A Time for Action,” it came up dry. The centerpiece seemed to be a huge political gift to BNSF Railway, a client of Mickey Kantor, a senior partner at Mayer Brown Law Firm who was the major force behind the 2020 Commission. The City of Los Angeles would simply take over the port of Long Beach like Wall Street raiders take over and destroy smaller companies, and then make Kantor’s client the only freight railroad for the port. 

For a while, some people thought that building a football stadium in DTLA would financially save Los Angeles. That idea fell through when the voters refused to increase the sales taxes so that the city could give the NFL the $1 Billions it wanted. The financial theory behind the football stadium was that it would employ a lot of people to build and then a lot of hotdog venders on game days. Not only do football stadiums not benefit the local economy, the $1 billion was not going to CIM Group, federal felon Juri Ripinksy or other developer friends of Garcetti. 

As the City’s own HCIDLA department wrote in its November 17, 2015 report, Los Angeles has a glut of apartments constructed within the last ten years. There is a 12% vacancy rate and 5% vacancy is equilibrium. In 2013, the City construct 150% of the housing needed for people who had above moderate income.   

Wall Street has become reluctant to loan developers money to construct into a glut, and poor people cannot afford to pay the rents which will create the revenue stream to repay the Wall Street loans for mixed-use projects. Projects in TODs are more expensive as the land costs more and construction costs escalate as building heights soar. The City has demolished over 20,000 rent controlled units since 2001. Thus, we have a significant homeless crisis due to the City’s allowing poor people’s homes to be demolished and thrown on to the streets. 

Basta! Enough with the Doom and Gloom already. What’s the solution? 

The Know-it-Alls have decided that the City of Los Angeles will Deficit Finance its way to prosperity. Here’s the plan. 

(1) The City will issue bonds for several billion dollars more than it can repay. The City must deficit finance on a huge scale in order to make this scheme work. The City has to borrow billions of dollars more than it can possibly repay. The City has make certain that its debt will be so enormous that a bankruptcy reorganization will be infeasible, leaving a quick and complete bail out as the solution. 

(2) The City (Metro and the County) will give these billions of dollars to those multi-millionaires and billionaires who finance the various political campaigns aka real estate developers. 

(3) These developers will construct massive projects which Los Angeles does not need and Angelenos for the most part do not want... 

(4) By spending billions of dollars which otherwise would not be spent, the entire economy will be stimulated. 

(5) When the time comes to pay off the bond holders and repay the banks, the City won’t have the money. The City will be billions of dollars short and then it will run to Washington DC, screaming: “Bankruptcy, Bankruptcy, Bankruptcy.” As everyone knows, no federal government can allow Los Angeles to go bankrupt. Wall Street will not tolerate it? Who, do you think, bought all the bonds and loaned LA all those billions of dollars? If LA went BK, they would lose billions of dollars. Deja vu 2008. 

(6) Thus, LA plans to issue a series of billion dollar bonds and it will also borrow up the ying yang. The City knows now – right now in 2016 – that it has no intention of paying off the bonds or repaying the loans. The Feds will step in and pay whatever it takes – $1 trillion, $4 trillion, more. It does not matter! The Feds will pay off the debt to avoid a Los Angeles Bankruptcy. 

Will federalizing Los Angeles debt work? 

Yes and No. 

Answer #1: Yes, it will work. 

No matter how much LA borrows, the Feds will pay off the debt. There is no number too high. In fact, the higher the debt, the more pressure on the Feds to pay off the debt outright rather than allow Los Angeles to re-organize. Organization takes time and some lenders may have to take a financial “hair cut.” Wall Street will want is $1.75 on the dollar and the surest way to get all its money is to have a gigantic crisis. 

It’s the same as the game play where the City destroyed thousands of rent-controlled apartments in order to manufacture a huge homeless crisis so that people will vote to issue $1 billion in bonds. Then developers will BK their LLCs and LLPs, causing the City in turn to scream bankruptcy so that the Feds will bail out Los Angeles. The poor will still be poor, but the billionaires will become wealthier. Kind of like the last 30 years! 

Answer #2: No, it will not work. 

The things which LA is buying range between worthless and detrimental. Los Angeles is investing in 19^th Century choo-choo trains and dense residential construction which the overwhelming majority of Angelenos and Americans shun. 

Meanwhile, other areas of the country are busily re-creating old Los Angeles in places like Texas and the Carolinas. If people take the time to look at what Austin is doing and at what is happening outside Dallas and what could happen in North Carolina if it stopped its run-away bigotry, one sees that it is what made Los Angeles a destination city. We offered a combination of job opportunities, a decent climate and virtually endless single family homes. 

Garcetti has declared war on the single family home. The lack of single family homes and the atrocious school district are the largest factors driving out the productive middle class. Employers are shunning Los Angeles and the type of highly dense housing which Garcetti loves will quicken the departure of both educated workers and employers to other states. The exodus is already under way. 

Some very short term events are likely: 

(1) CEQA will be gutted so that more high density housing can be constructed faster to pump more money into the economy faster. 

(2) Billions more in bonds will be issued. 

(3) The courts will rule against all or almost all challenges to any construction project with no regard to whether it is legal or illegal. 

Leading up to 2012, many State leaders saw that the Community Redevelopment Agencies were pushing cities and the State into insolvency due the billions of tax dollars which the CRAs were sucking away from incremental property taxes. Effective February 1, 2012, all the CRAs were abolished and massive insolvency was avoided. At that time, there was no plan to bail out the cities or the State. 

After 2008, the public was extraordinarily hostile to bailouts so the CRA’s had to be killed off and killed quickly. In that climate, many politicos saw the need to force the developers and city to hold back on development. The orders went out to the judges to uphold the challenges to these projects until the economy could correct itself. 

Now in 2016, there is a plan to bail-out the Cities but there is no need to resurrect the elaborate CRA structure. Each councilman says what he wants, and the LA City Council passes it unanimously. Don’t worry about Penal Code 86 which criminalized the vote trading agreement. The judges have their new marching orders to kill any lawsuit which questions the propriety of the City’s being run by a criminal vote trading pact. 

With the bailout plan in place, the priorities have shifted to stop all citizen challenges to the massive spending which is being launched. Most likely the trial courts will rule that citizens have no right to question the decisions of the City leaders and that will throw the cases into the appellate process for several years. Meanwhile, billions of dollars will be borrowed and given to the developers. 

The construction industry will keep Los Angeles’s economy afloat, and ironically, as City devolves it probably will become less crowded as an increasing number of people move away. That will leave LA with more elderly, until they start dying off. A city without modern jobs will lose young of working age. 

Starting after 2026, what we currently call “corporate welfare” will morph into “municipal welfare,” in that city will perpetually need the Feds to prop up the economy. Who knows if LA will continue to have the political clout to keep the Deficit Spending Plan going after 2040. In a culture where only the short term matters, only fools ask such questions.

(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.)

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW-Last Friday, ABC’s 20/20 detailed the unfathomable saga of rehab mogul Chris Bathum, (photo above) subject of an April expose in LA Weekly written by Hillel Aron. Bathum’s company, Community Recovery, Inc., took in over $30 million in revenue last year, despite his record as a convicted felon and, by his own admission, that he is neither a licensed drug counselor nor a therapist. 

Bathum doesn’t even have a college degree and the only certification he holds is from a hypnotherapy institute. His legal troubles had been the subject of an LA Weekly cover story back in December. The founder and board chairman of a chain of over 20 sober living houses and outpatient clinics in California and Colorado has been the target of three lawsuits in early 2016 for allegations ranging from wrongful termination to sexual battery.

A pair of former patients at Bathum’s Community Recovery Los Angeles (CRLA) facilities alleges that Bathum had “isolated and targeted (the) plaintiffs and other women to prey on their addictions by using and supplying drugs around them, moving them to isolated hotel rooms and remote locations, encouraging them to use drugs with him, and sexually molesting them when they were high and/or incapable of consent.” 

According to various reports, Bathum is the subject of over 50 lawsuits, including former client Amanda Jester who filed a suit that he had molested her in a sweat lodge during a meditation session. Another client, Erika Bruakis, claims he provided her with crystal meth and made sexual advances toward her. Dana Reardon, the most recent patient to file a suit, claims he provided her with meth and heroin, forcing her to watch him engage in sex acts with two of his other patients. 

20/20 and LA Weekly both reported that Bathum overdosed on heroin and was taken by ambulance from a Malibu motel in December, which he denies. In fact, when questioned during the 20/20 report, he denied all charges and claimed his identity had been stolen. The Los Angeles County sheriff’s department says he never filed a report. He is currently countersuing multiple women who have filed lawsuits against him for libel.

Bathum’s troubles didn’t start at CRLA. Last July, one of his former patients, Julie Hluchota, died of an overdose. Hluchota had entered a Malibu rehab clinic, Seasons, where Bathum was the co-founder and the director. After spending 90 days in the program, she began to work at the facility and relapsed just two months later. Hluchota alleged that Bathum made unwanted sexual advances toward her, which is denies. 

Just how does a convicted felon without a degree or credentials open and run a chain of sober living facilities and rehab clinics, preying upon young women in the most dire of conditions? 

Kenneth Whoridaz Whitfield has a lot to say about it. The 46-year old military veteran has been in recovery since 1993 and has been sober for the past six years. He shares that he made some bad decisions and relapsed in 2008, serving time in County and as a result, awakened to what recovery really is and what it isn’t. 

“People in the Inland Empire, San Bernardino, and other areas aren’t as affluent,” he says. “They might not have as many resources other than 12 step-programs. It was a real culture shock when I arrived in LA in May 2010. After I was incarcerated, I got clean and sober, thanks to the VA in West LA and Henry Waxman who was committed to staying on top of things to get veterans the best care possible,” he shares. “My experience at the VA wasn’t perfect but they did the best with limited resources and I’m back to being a productive member of society.” 

Following his time at the VA, Whitfield got into the field of recovery, managing a sober living facility in Mar Vista and working in marketing for another facility. When his last contract was up, he says he “didn’t like the direction the treatment world was going.” 

The U.S. is the most addicted country in the world, he says, and the consumer of 90 percent of prescription drugs worldwide. As a result, the addiction treatment centers and rehab have become a multimillion dollar industry. “Until society looks at prescription and illegal drugs as drugs anyone can get addicted to, nothing will change,” says Whitfield. 

He continues, warning, “Big names in rehab are just about making money. It’s easier to get a license as a rehab owner in California than it is to get a contractor’s license. If you have a felony record, you just have to write to the governor. Doctors who have had their medical licenses revoked can open clinics and rehab facilities. There’s no process to make sure they are legit and they are given carte blanche to scam insurance companies.” 

What can be done to change the broken system? 

Whitfield points to the Governor. “When it comes to this issue, he’s dropped the ball. He needs to put his foot down and say if you’re a sober living facility, you need to be non-profit,” he advises. “The East Coast has far more regulations. In New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, they don’t have this stuff going on. To open a treatment center there, you have to get a license like a hospital or mental health facility.” 

If someone owns an outpatient treatment clinic, he or she should not be able to open a sober living facility and the facilities need to be licensed, he suggests. There should be some oversight and regulation to check up on non-licensed employees handing out medication, as well. Residential treatment centers must have doctors and nurses present to provide the level of care necessary.

Substance abuse and addiction come at a tremendous cost to individuals, families, and society. As the need grows for rehab and sober living facilities, it’s crucial that we don’t allow unscrupulous entrepreneurs to take advantage of Californians in the most dire straits. California should follow the lead of other states that place more restrictions on who can open and operate facilities, as well as how the facilities operate. 

(Beth Cone Kramer is a successful Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.) Photo: LA Weekly. Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--The California media keeps getting it wrong. The state legislature hasn’t passed a budget. And the governor hasn’t made it law.

It’s not because they don’t want to do those things. It’s because they can’t. Not in California.

Yes, the legislature approved a document called a budget, and Gov. Brown signed it. But that is not the state budget. That is sort of a holding document that decides all the very easy things that can be decided under the California budget system.

All the budget optimism has blinded us to the unchanging reality in California:

The real budget is decided by voters.

And that’s not because they necessarily want it that way. It’s just how California works.

Anything that changes the constitution or affects previous initiatives has to be decided by ballot – that’s what makes California different. In addition, difficult tax and spending questions get put on the ballot by the rich and the interested – because they want political power or notice, or they want leverage, or they want something that they can’t get from the governor and the legislature.

Gov. Brown and the legislature’s main budget reform has been to move all these big ballot measure questions away from June, and pile them up on a big messy November ballot. That’s where voters will decided on the key points of the budget—various taxes including partial Prop 30 extensions, and a host of other questions that could affect spending and taxes.

So it’s November – or maybe December, when the votes are all finally counted – when the budget gets passed. Well, sort of. The courts can rule on measures, further delaying things.

So hold the congratulation about passing budgets, at least until the stores are decorated for Christmas.

(Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square. This was originally posted at Fox and Hounds.

-cw

TRANSPORTATION POLITICS-We live in conflicted times.  Whether it's presidential politics, state politics, or local politics, the ambivalence and anger seem to be at historic levels. Ditto with transportation and planning here in the City of the Angels.  I've heard many impassioned, if not infuriated, individuals who are all over the place with respect to transit/transportation efforts, but one common sentiment appears universal: overdevelopment is neither economically nor environmentally smart or safe ... and if LA City transit leads to overdevelopment, then sentiment for more transit will certainly drop. 

So whether it's the proposed half-cent transportation tax ("Measure R-2") scheduled for this November's ballot, or the troubled California High-Speed Rail (CAHSR) project, ambivalence and conflicted sentiments abound.  I'm not the only transit/transportation advocate who recognizes BOTH the benefits and shortfalls of mass transit, and who NEVER wanted the blatant overdevelopment we're seeing in LA. 

And I'm not the only transit/transportation advocate favoring passage of BOTH Measure R-2 this fall as well as the Neighborhood Intregrity Initiative next spring.  Expediting rail to our airports and suburbs, as well as funding transportation operations, is in no way mutually exclusive to delivering the legal and political smackdown that overly-empowered developers and their political puppets so richly deserve. 

In my last CityWatch article, I emphasized how the City of LA--which has a huge hunk of county voters--is undermining the county's efforts to pass Measure R-2 by the City's corruption, poor planning, horrific abuse of environmental and planning laws, and belittling of its City's residents' rights. 

But then ... we had Bill Rosendahl show up, and now we have Mike Bonin. 

Visionary goals, prudent planning, a focus on credibility, and no B.S. allowed in CD11 with respect to development and obeying the law. 

Unfortunately, the rest of the City Hall too often provides milquetoast, or aloof, or even downright corrupt leadership with respect to appropriate economic, environmental and quality of life issues.   

Garcetti's record is mixed with positive new initiatives and an appalling record of overdevelopment from his City Council days.  And as for City Council President/Boss Wesson...well, let's just be grateful for term limits. 

In my last article, I mentioned the imperfect but overall-favorable approach to the Martin Cadillac project adjacent to the only CD11 Expo Line station at Bundy/Olympic that Mike Bonin could influence--he and his team are fighting for a transit-oriented project with community benefits and affordable housing. 

Ditto for the LAX Northside Plan Update on Westchester Parkway, and sandwiched between LAX and Westchester/Playa Del Rey.  The City Council passed it, and it's an example of community participation and more appropriate and sustainable planning the City sorely needs. 

As articulated by Argonaut newspaper journalist extraordinaire Gary Walker, the originally-approved 4.5 million square feet of commercial land use was cut in half.  Westchester residents will have a virtual extension of the Downtown Westchester Business District, and will have Westchester Parkway buffered to protect local neighborhoods.  Green space, open space, community/civic land use, and even a dog park is planned.  And, of course, it's transit-friendly. 

Mike Bonin and both the Westchester and LAX leaderships worked together on this plan, which shows that--as with the LAX/Green Line/Crenshaw Line effort--former foes can work together to come up with compromise that best serves all parties. 

Unfortunately, Mike Bonin isn't mayor...yet.  But he does show that honor, credibility, and compromise can get the job done during an era where citizens are so used to getting the heave-ho that they presume government will never serve him. 

Maybe there's hope for Measure R-2 after all ... but, of course, that doesn't mean we shouldn't also pass the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative.  Not everyone is as well-represented as folks are in CD11.

(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at  [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)

-cw