VOX POP--On Thursday, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission gave billionaire Rick Caruso special spot-zoning approvals for his 20-story luxury high-rise known as “333 La Cienega.”  Proposed for the gridlocked intersection of La Cienega and San Vicente boulevards, the residential skyscraper will loom over its neighbors and open the door to more tall development in the area. 

Caruso, a longtime City Hall insider, is the super wealthy developer of high-end shopping malls The Grove and Americana. Between 2000 and 2016, according to the city’s Ethics Commission, Caruso and his associates at Caruso Affiliated Holdings have shelled out $123,600 in campaign contributions to 42 LA political candidates. 

Caruso (at City Hall, photo left) has personally written checks totaling $65,750 to LA. elected officials such as ex-City Council member Tom LaBonge ($4,500), Mayor Eric Garcetti ($2,900) and Council members Jose Huizar ($2,200) and Paul Koretz ($2,200). The developer also gave $100,000 to Mayor Eric Garcetti’s “Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles,” a non-profit that helps Garcetti finance his pet projects. 

Such generous giving from deep-pocketed developers seeking favors from LA elected officials is all too common. 

In October, LA City Hall was rocked by the infamous “Sea Breeze Scandal,” in which the Los Angeles Times revealed that a developer and his associates spent hundreds of thousands in campaign donations that benefitted City Council members and Mayor Eric Garcetti, who ultimately approved a residential mega-project that the City Planning Commission had rejected. 

With 333 La Cienega, Caruso seeks profitable spot-zoning favors to build a 20-story luxury high-rise in a neighborhood that’s not zoned for a tall, dense mega-project -- the billionaire wants a zone change, a General Plan amendment and a height district change. 

At City Hall on Thursday, Caruso appeared before the City Planning Commission, whose members are appointed by Mayor Eric Garcetti. The billionaire described his mega-project as “iconic,” a “palace” and “luxurious.” The developer, who lives far from San Vicente and La Cienega boulevards, also said with an odd sense of entitlement, “We have been tolerant of the community, and inclusive.”  City Council member Paul Koretz of District 5 stated in a letter that he supports the mega-project. Many neighborhood activists, however, testified in opposition. 

Robert Sherman noted that the height of the luxury project will “set a precedent” in which other developers will seek to build even more skyscrapers in the residential and commercial area.

“We don’t want that to happen,” Sherman told the planning commissioners. 

Dick Platkin, a member of the Beverly Wilshire Homes Association and a supporter of the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, said his group has “strong objections” to the “enormity” of Caruso’s skyscraper. He added that Caruso and his supporters also misrepresented 333 La Cienega as a “transit-oriented” project, a selling point that developers often use to win favor with the public and City Hall officials. 

“It is a transit-adjacent development,” Platkin said. 

Toby Horn, another member of Beverly Wilshire Homes Association, said 333 La Cienega was one more example of developer greed in LA. 

“How much more money does a billionaire need?” she asked emphatically. 

Several planning commissioners breezily dismissed the community’s concerns about the height and size of Caruso’s luxury high-rise. 

“The height doesn’t bother me, quick frankly,” said Commissioner John Mack. 

“I don’t have an issue with the height,” added Commissioner Veronica Padilla-Campos. 

“I’m not bothered by the height,” said Planning Commission President David Ambroz, who’s widely known for his patronizing comments to the public. 

Although the mega-project will dramatically alter neighborhood character, impact an already congested intersection and open the door to more tall development, the City Planning Commission took less than 20 minutes to deliberate and then unanimously approve the profitable spot-zoning favors Caruso sought. It now moves to our City Council’s powerful Planning and Land-Use Management Committee. 

(Patrick Range McDonald writes for 2PreserveLA. Check it out. See if you don’t agree it will help end buying favors at City Hall.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CALIFORNIA VALUES VOTE-Donald John Trump, a racist and sexist obsessive liar, pathological narcissist and vicious bully, early Wednesday was elected the 45^th President of the United States. 

But he struggled to win barely one-third of the vote in California. 

Although Trump won an astonishing and appalling victory that confounded every pollster, pro and political journalist in America, California triumphed by earning anew its iconic designation as the Great Exception. 

While the ferret-headed, orange-stained demon rallied millions of resentful whites railing about “taking our country back,” Californians voted in huge numbers for policies and values that challenge and reject the fear and hatred mouthed by Trump – and that embrace and embody the diversity of what America is becoming. 

He vs. We 

Trump blood libeled minorities and immigrants while espousing disgusting attitudes about women; California for the first time elected an African-American woman to represent us in the U.S. Senate – in a campaign that matched her against a Latina congresswoman who is the daughter of Mexican immigrants — in a state where citizens strongly favor a path to citizenship for undocumented workers. 

Trump licked the boots of NRA leaders, called for more and more guns, and even suggested Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton should be shot; California voters with Proposition 63 overwhelmingly approved some of the toughest gun control measures in the country, determined to stop the insanity of violence abetted by the easy availability of weapons and ammunition made for war. 

Trump called for massive tax cuts for the wealthy, most of all for himself, so that the huge and relentlessly growing gap between the richest and the rest of us can increase further; Californians in a landslide vote passed Proposition 55, imposing higher taxes on those best able to pay them, in the name of funding public schools and health care for the poor, the sick and the elderly. 

Trump said women should be “punished” for having an abortion; California long has had the strongest pro-choice constitutional and legal guarantees in the nation, going back to 1967, when Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act. 

Trump personifies a brutish, all-against-all view of a rapaciously capitalistic society; Californian voters across the state looked favorably on hundreds of fiscal measures for education, communitarian expressions that acknowledge we’re all in this together. 

Boy did we blow it 

We were wrong, completely wrong, about this election, for one basic reason: we simply did not believe so many white, non-urban Americans were capable of electing someone who a large majority of voters described as unfit to be president. 

Trump will take office with fellow Republicans in control of both houses of Congress and, potentially, the U.S. Supreme Court, as Democrats find themselves in the weakest political position in memory.

World markets already are plunging and roiling with panic that a New York real estate thug and reality TV charlatan, who exhibits not a whit of awareness that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, has been elected. 

That’s not to mention his authoritarianism, his virulent nationalism, his ignorance of the Constitution, his climate change denial, his hatred of a free press, his “bromance” with Vladimir Putin, disdain for U.S. military alliances, and the unhinged personal volatility he brings to his authority over the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. 

His presidency is a nightmarish prospect that fills us with dread, regardless of our good fortune of living in California.

(Jerry Roberts is a California journalist who writes, blogs and hosts a TV talk show about politics, policy and media. Phil Trounstine is the former political editor of the San Jose Mercury News, former communications director for California Gov. Gray Davis and was the founder and director of the Survey and Policy Research Institute at San Jose State University. This piece appeared in CalBuzz.  Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.)

ELECTION REFLECTIONS-I promised myself I was not going to write about the presidential election -- and then Donald Trump won. That result has been characterized as the most stunning in American political history. Truman beating Dewey in 1948 was surprising. There’s no word strong enough to describe this outcome. 

One wonders what the great columnist of his time, H. L. Mencken, would have to say. Among other things, he wrote, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” He’s also credited with claiming you can never underestimate the intelligence of the American people. 

It’s beyond belief how wrong the pollsters and pundits were. In an era ruled by algorithms, the whiz kids blew it big time. The operator of one (until now) fairly accurate site that aggregated polls admitted that everyone in his field got it wrong from the very beginning. He also pointed out that in this election nothing (Trump’s outrageous statements, poor debate performance, lack of support from his own party) mattered. Nor did Clinton’s status as perhaps the most qualified candidate in history or the potential for making history as America’s first female president. 

The question for historians is whether this election was the last gasp of the white, male power structure or herald of a new era of “America first” and walls -- physical and economic. I grew up among the people in the upper Midwest and understand why they would choose to accept Trump’s sales pitch to “Make America Great Again.”

In my youth in a mid-sized city dominated by manufacturing, it was a given that anyone with the ability to get a high school diploma could go into a factory for the next 40 years and retire with a secure pension. Along the way, there would be a family and a house and nice cars. Much of that good middle-class life was due to the unions to which these workers belonged. 

The jobs left for the southern states, where they don’t have unions, and then overseas, where they don’t have labor laws. The decline of the neighborhood where I grew up was dramatic. Houses were abandoned as factories closed. Eventually they were demolished and the street seems to slowly be returning to the state of nature it was in 150 years ago. Jobs left. Businesses left. Families left. 

But, not all of them. Those who weathered the economic storms of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and the other states of the Rust Belt voted for Trump as their last, best hope to bring back the past. He won’t, of course.

Building walls, turning our backs on America’s history of opening its doors to immigrants, and engaging in economic warfare with our trading partners isn’t going to alter reality. Nor is wrecking the social safety net, spending billions more on the military, and giving the biggest tax cuts ever to millionaires and billionaires. 

That reality doesn’t matter. In 2008, half the electorate voted for Obama’s “hope and change.” Eight years later, the other half voted for Trump’s.

(Doug Epperhart is a publisher, a long-time neighborhood council activist and former Board of Neighborhood Commissioners commissioner. He is a contributor to CityWatch and can be reached at: [email protected]) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CORRUPTION WATCH-As the Sol Price School of Public Policy noted a few years ago, Los Angeles has ceased to be a growth city and the little population increase will be from the number of births exceeding deaths and number of people who leave. The City is also experiencing a net exodus of more people leaving LA than are coming to Los Angeles. The City has lost more employers than any other urban area and the most affluent portion of the middle class, the professionals and business service workers, have ranked Los Angeles as #60 on the list of desirable places to live. Foreign investment from Russia is shrinking since Putin clamped down on money leaving the country, and China and Brazil are similarly experiencing an economic slow-downs. As a result, less foreign money is looking for Los Angeles real estate in order to launder the money which they have liberated from their homelands. 

The worse news for Los Angeles is that Family Millennials are like prior generations. When they age out of the “dorm style” of living, they want detached single family homes with yards and fruit trees. Overwhelmingly, they are done with the high rise in Transit Oriented Districts [TODs], especially in cities with atrocious school systems like LAUSD which ranks near the bottom of the industrialized world. Since the peak millennial birth year was 25 years ago, they are increasingly entering into the family-rearing phase of their generation, while there are substantially fewer young Millennials in Los Angeles. 

Los Angeles, however, has followed a housing pattern where we have fewer single family homes just as the number of Family Millennials is increasing, but the city insists on constructing more dorm room style high rises. On paper, these small units look financially beneficial to the developer – until he finds out that he cannot rent the apartments or sell the condos. Garcetti’s perennial subsidizing of his developer buddies with billions of tax dollars has resulted in a glut of these higher end, highly dense apartments and condos. 

As a result, Los Angeles has hit upon a brilliant plan. They will tear down the homes of poor people in order to manufacture a homeless crisis and then tell people that they can rid their neighborhoods of the homeless by passing a $1.2 billion bond measure to construct homes for the homeless. (For some reason, homeowners do not understand that a bond is actually a tax on their property – they are not getting a free ride on someone else’s back.) 

But where do we put the homes for the homeless? Under JJJ developers can be given the $1.2 billion to sprinkle affordable units among their luxury units. In this way, the money homeowners will be paying to help the homeless will go to subsidize the dense projects that are making Los Angeles unliveable. 

The money from Measure M promises to construct subways and fixed rail systems. Thus, when it is pointed out that we cannot increase the number of bedrooms in the Valley, they respond that people from the Valley can take the subway beneath Sepulveda Pass to the Westside office towers in the Century City-Westwood-Santa Monica triangle. 

Since Valley people have to live within ½ mile of a subway station before they will use it, the Valley will be filled with extra-high density apartment complexes near the subway stations. However, the Family Millennials are abandoning DTLA and Hollywood due to traffic and residential congestion. So why would they move to the Valley to replicate the same unpleasant conditions, only in a place that is hotter, with considerable longer commute time? 

As mentioned in previous articles, NYC runs an $8 billion annual deficit for its subways and fixed-rail lines over and above the cost to construct them. Thus, Measure M promises to increase the City’s annual operating deficit by billions of dollars per year. If we try Washington D.C.’s ploy and do not maintain the subways, then we too will end up having to close the system until repairs are made. Meanwhile, the pension costs due to the additional public employees hired by Metro will make today’s pension woes look like the good old days. 

So, what is likely to happen as the City continues to deteriorate due to our increasing density which drives away the middle class tax base? It is likely that when many homeowners see the handwriting on the wall, they will realize that it is smart to sell their Los Angeles home for $900,000 and purchase a better one in Texas for only $325,000. There is also Tennessee, and Colorado, Utah, and Arizona and much of the South where the living favors the middle class family. 

How long will Angelenos hold on to their high priced homes in a declining market while knowing the costs in the Austin-Antonio corridor, for example, will be only be increasing. We know where the good jobs will be: the places where the middle class can find the best quality of life. Los Angeles ranks in the bottom 10 of areas which offer the best quality of life for the middle class [Chapman University, 2015, Building Cities for People). That is the reason Los Angeles has become an exodus city. 

How Long Will Lies and Myths Deceive Angelenos? 

The capacity of Angelenos to believe what they are told rather than what they can see is prodigious. Angelenos have known for decades that spending billions on subways and fixed rail transit has coincided with longer commute times and not “15% less freeway time” which Garcetti promised in this deceptive and misleading TV ads. 

Judge Goodman and Judge Chalfant told Angelenos in 2014 and 2015 that the city uses false data to justify its decisions. Judge Goodman called this “fatally flawed data” and “wishful thinking,” i.e. Lies and Myths. The Mayor has no shame in his Lies and Myths. The April 2016 Notice of Preparation for the new Hollywood Community Plan said that Hollywood’s population was 206,000 people in 2015, based on SCAG data. SCAG data, however, placed the population at only 204,700 people and that high figure was at odds with a proven annual loss of 12,000 people between 2000 and 2010. Then in November 2016, Garcetti announced that the Hollywood 2015 population was estimated at 210,511 people. Really? Hollywood’s population increased by 4,500 people between April and November 2016? Angelenos are excessively gullible. 

Trying to make sense of data which is actually “Lies and Myths” is a fool’s chore. Until Garcetti can lock Angelenos behind the city gates at night to prevent them from leaving, the exodus will accelerate. Tuesday’s election successes of Measures JJJ, HHH and M have hastened the day when the middle class exodus from LA may rival Cecil B. DeMille’s exodus of Jews from Pharaoh’s Egypt.

(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.

ALPERN AT LARGE--The people have spoken, but some of us might not like to hear what the people spoke to, and what their decision was.  Four years ago, and eight years ago, the people also spoke. And I was one of them.  Simply put, the "hope and change" of eight years ago will have to be channeled in a new direction, because this nation lacks too much hope, and has endured the wrong type of change. 

EASTSIDER-Hats off to my friends in the labor movement, particularly AFSCME and SEIU -- they managed to block DWP Reform Measure RRR, even though most everything else passed in the LA City Special Municipal Election. Life should get interesting, now that RRR is gone. As a result, the LA City Council and the Mayor own the DWP, no change, and nowhere to hide. 

I think this is big news, especially when you look at the line up for the LA City primary election arriving around the corner on March 7, 2017. The Mayor, the City Controller, the City Attorney, as well as a majority of the City Council Districts: 1,3,5,7,9,11,13, and 15. Too bad it doesn’t look like Mayor Eric Garcetti has any serious competition. 

And in Other DWP News. 

Last Saturday, November 5, there was an information packed meeting of the DWP Committee held at DWP Headquarters. The issues covered were somewhere between opaque and mind-numbing, but you have to remember that these innocent sounding initiatives are going to determine what our rates are going to be and how we get there from here. So it’s time for us to start paying attention to two different “I have no idea what they mean” concepts: Equity Metrics and the Integrated Resources Plan. 

The other discussion item, questionable leases of office space for the DWP in City owned properties, we can figure out all too well. 

Equity Metrics. 

This initiative is a fancy way of saying that the DWP will be setting up a big database to track how all the neighborhoods are currently treated by DWP and how they can or should all be treated equally. Or not. 

Board of DWP Commissioners Vice-President William W. Funderburk, Jr. gave the presentation and answered questions. I will have to admit to being remiss in never paying much attention to the DWP Board, since they are all appointed by the Mayor and dare not bite the hand that feeds them. So this was all new to me. And useful. 

Mr. Funderburk is an interesting guy in that he is both an engineer and an environmental lawyer. He was even on a Neighborhood Council (Greater Wilshire), and as you can imagine with this background, his appointment letter (CF 13-1074) indicates that there are numerous opportunities for him to have a statutory conflict of interest in matters before the Commissioners. 

For right now, the Equity Metrics Initiative consists largely of a power point presentation, although it seems that the blanks are going to be filled in quite soon. Here’s what the language in DWP’s press release describing the Initiative talks about -- performance metrics over “reliable delivery of water and power service, equal access to energy efficiency, conservation and assistance programs, small business economic development for competition in LADWP contracts of goods and services, and equal access to LADWP employment opportunities.” 

We’ll see how it all plays out. On its face, this is one of those soft and fuzzy concepts that imply equal treatment of all ratepayers. My personal observation is that, given enough data, you can prove darn near anything you want to and we all know who appoints the DWP Board of Commissioners. 

Like, who has the least reliable power in town? Pacific Palisades. And that means? 

Stay tuned, because the politics of this one are going to be fascinating. 

Figueroa Street Plaza’s DWP Lease.

And speaking of the DWP Board of Commissioners, here is fuel for my concerns over how things really work. According to my pal Jack Humphreville, this deal has stunk from the beginning and he has written a number of fairly incendiary articles on the self dealing, double dealing of our Mayor and City Council, as they use the DWP to shift LA City costs onto the DWP ratepayers. 

Jack’s latest article is a doozy, with the spiffy headline, “DWP Fig Plaza Deal: DWP Board Caves, Mayor Goes Back to Basics, Ratepayers Screwed ... Again.” The title says it all, and chronicles the 4-1 vote of the Commissioners to ok a 10-year, $41 million deal for office space at Figueroa Plaza, which just happens to be owned by -- you guessed it -- the City of Los Angeles.

I only hope that Commissioner Christina Noonan has made enough money as a real estate professional that she doesn’t need the gig. If history is a guide, our notoriously thin-skinned Mayor Eric Garcetti does tend to micro-manage how “his” appointees vote. And the Equity Metrics and Integrated Resources Plan involve literally billions of dollars. 

Integrated Resources Plan.

Speaking of opaque, how many of us have a clue what the Integrated Resources Plan actually is? That is, aside from our own DWP guru, Tony Wilkinson, Chair of the DWP MOU Committee. 

So ok. An Integrated Resources Plan is really a fancy way of saying how DWP plans to handle long term power management, and get from its current mix of non-renewable and renewable energy resources to some public policy driven goal within the next 20 years. Whew! 

While the plan may sound innocuous or mushy to you and me, it is a very big deal and has far reaching impacts on how much ratepayers will be paying to achieve these goals. 

Speaking of Tony Wilkinson, he has a very nice article at EmpowerLA, about all of these matters, and you can find it here.  

Essentially, the plan is a constantly moving target, and gets revised every two years. The current 2015 Plan has us going from 20% renewable energy to 50% renewable energy by the year 2030 -- mostly by eliminating coal and substituting renewable such as solar, wind and geothermal. As we speak, the Department is in the process of developing its 2017 Plan with even more ambitious goals. You can find the DWP website on the IRP here. 

While the title of IRP seems innocuous, the downside of all these grandiose plans is that they are expensive! Coal and nuclear may be “dirty,” but they are 24/7 reliable and relatively cheap. Further, most of the renewables like wind and solar can’t provide power on a 24/7 basis, which is what we need. And the reason that these 20-year plans are important is that the Department has to expend billions and billions of dollars on capital projects in order to get there from here. 

Those projects take decades to implement, and simply can’t be changed at will to suit the whim of elected officials. I mention this because our sound bite City Council has grandly “requested” that the DWP look into what investments they would have to make in order to get to 100% Renewable energy. Really. They fail to realize that their political posturing doesn’t simply happen by a stroke of the pen. Remember this next March. 

Just as a mini-example of what we’re talking about, the Ratepayers Advocate has recently released an analysis of the DWP’s proposal for a rooftop utility-built and owned solar Pilot Program. 

While this is a relatively minor project, it reveals oodles about the renewable energy game. Reading between the lines, this project would probably cost something like two to four times what it would cost to simply go out and purchase solar. Multiply this by a 20-year plan. 

The Takeaway. 

My point is simply this -- feel good green energy plans can break the bank in a heartbeat if we are not very, very careful. All of these technical initiatives make sense from a planning standpoint, but the devil is in the details, and politicians are absolute masters at twisting data to support whatever half-baked scheme they are interested in at the moment. Witness the recent 4-1 giveaway over Figueroa Street office space.

(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.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.)