HELPLINE--In hopefully learning from the suspicious disqualification of approximately 125,000 voters in Bernie Sanders home town of Brooklyn during the New York primary on April 19th of this year, I would suggest that Californians who want to be absolutely sure they can vote and be counted in California's primary on June 7th take the preemptive precaution of avoiding any potential unpleasant surprises on election day by now checking their own voter registration status well before the May 23rd voter registration deadline.

All you need to do is go to the County Registrar of Voters office for the county you live in and click on the link "Online Voter Registration Status." If you find that for some reason you are not deemed registered, you can immediately rectify this situation by clicking on the link "Online Voter Registration" to immediately remedy the problem. So, for example, if you live in Los Angeles County, you would go to the Los Angeles Country Registrar of Voters cite and then click on either the link "Check if your registered" or "Register Now."

It is worth pointing out that unlike the restrictive voting eligibility rules in New York and elsewhere that played no small part in Bernie Sanders' losses in these states, California's somewhat open primary rules allow registered voters with "no party preference, unaffiliated, or declines to state" to vote in either the Democrat or Republican primaries.

However, this does not include people registered to the American Independent or other recognized political parties who would not be able to cross their own party line to vote for either a Democrat or Republican in the June 7th primary. Might this not be a good motivation for a Green Party member to at the very least change their registration to "declines to state" for at least the upcoming primary?

One cannot emphasize enough the marked difference between the relatively open primary process in California with the restrictive primary processes of New York and many other states where younger and first time voters, who are at the core of Bernie Sanders supporters, were blocked from voting by unnecessarily restrictive primary voting qualifications designed to purposefully limit the number of new and younger voters, who have clearly shown their disproportionate support for Sanders in the states he has carried.

It is my firm belief that the only way the corporate-donation-subsidized-politics-as-usual policies of a Hilary Clinton or her predecessors- be they Democrat or Republican- can continue to win in California and beyond from the likes of a Bernie Sanders and the revolution he has started is with a relatively small voter turnout.

Sharing the ideas expressed in this post with your own online networks can go a long way in dismantling and circumventing what up until now has been the continued corporate media success in marginalizing, devaluing and demoralizing what I believe to be the clear majority of voters, who want something more than just more political smoke and mirrors.

In a democracy- at least in theory- the majority is supposed to win isn't it?

(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected])

-cw

JUST THE FACTS-The Mayor, City Council and Department of Water and Power Commission have all approved recent increases in both the water and power rates for all Los Angeles City consumers. As we read about broken water pipes and aging power poles on a regular basis, we can understand the necessity to raise revenues to upgrade deteriorating systems. Yet this is just a preview of what to expect in the near future for Los Angeles residential and commercial consumers.   

The next rate increases will involve a vote of the public. That means that you have option of approving or rejecting the measures. But this can only happen if you are registered and take the time to vote. Currently, we are saddled with a 9% sales tax in Los Angeles and a portion of that is for our public transit system. 

Here’s a question about our public transit system: How many of you ever ride it in Los Angeles? I would guess that most of you never have. On infrequent occasions, I have ridden on both buses and trains. The stench of marijuana has been present nearly every time, along with the combative and hostile attitude displayed by some riders. This has turned many people off from riding public transit in our region. Many potential riders just don’t feel safe due to the lack of law enforcement presence on the transit lines, other than the ones who check for fare violators at transit stops. 

Politicians are moving forward with a proposed extension and increase in our region’s sales tax to fund an expanded public transit system as well as money to deal with the estimated 40,000 homeless people in Los Angeles County. This will push our sales tax to 9.5% for the next 40 years. Yes, forty years. In addition, there is a proposal to extend the current transit tax for another 40 years. I thought it was interesting that City Hall described the increase as four decades. Maybe this softens the hit by saying four decades, instead of forty years, but the math is the same. 

This is a lot money, and for what? Many of us won’t even be here in forty years, but I know we have to plan for future generations. With that in mind, we should recognize that we have over-populated the city, pushing housing costs and rents out of reach of most young families. Can they afford to pay more taxes? 

Although the Mayor declared a homeless emergency months ago, there is a major lack of funds to help deal with the situation. One proposal is to link a fee to all new developments. This fee, to the tune of thousands of dollars, will just force up the cost of new development. As you can see, there seems to be no easy answer other than more and higher taxes and fees. But I say enough with that! 

I am opposed to any new tax increases to fund the transit tunnel under the 405 freeway or any other pie in the sky solution to traffic gridlock. The solution is more controls on over-development. Our city and county have seen an increase in population in all categories, including 40,000 homeless. Los Angeles County population is currently at 10,241,335, up 0.8% from 2015. Los Angeles City is currently at 4,030,904 people, an increase of 50,000 people since January 1, 2015. California’s growing population is now 39,256,000. 

There is no end in sight to the multiple and weighty matters facing our region. If you want to make a difference, you must get involved and voice your concerns to your elected officials. We are blessed here that most of our elected officials do listen -- to some extent -- to our concerns and issues. While Rome was not built in one day, we need to continue working to remedy the many issues facing all of us in the City of the Angels…… 

Clinton or Trump? We will soon know who will lead this country forward into the future.      

(Dennis P. Zine is a 33-year member of the Los Angeles Police Department and former Vice-Chairman of the Elected Los Angeles City Charter Reform Commission, a 12-year member of the Los Angeles City Council and a current LAPD Reserve Officer who serves as a member of the Fugitive Warrant Detail assigned out of Gang and Narcotics Division. He writes Just the Facts for CityWatch. You can contact him at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GUEST WORDS-The Coalition to Preserve LA said today that a sharp jump in homelessness in Los Angeles, as reported today, vividly points up the devastating effects of LA City Council practices that are driving tragic levels of human displacement and the demolition of 20,000 rent-stabilized apartments that can never be fully replaced. 

A map published this morning by the Los Angeles Times shows in vivid color the city’s heavy new concentrations of severe homelessness -- particularly in Downtown Los Angeles, Venice and Hollywood, areas targeted by multimillionaire developers for frenzied levels of demolition and luxury housing construction. 

Jill Stewart, campaign director for the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative sponsored by the Coalition to Preserve LA, called the new data “a stark condemnation of the Los Angeles City Council’s policies to destroy working-class communities and replace them with half-empty luxury towers built by developers who give the City Council a lot of campaign cash.” 

A City of Los Angeles housing report from late 2015 shows that even as homelessness surges citywide, the Los Angeles City Council clings to policies that exacerbate the problem. The city itself admits that housing projects it approved during the past 10 years suffer from a huge vacancy rate of 12%, and that this empty “market rate” housing is aimed at households earning more than $100,000. 

Meanwhile, average people and the poor cannot find a place to rent. 

Older apartments are being destroyed at a fast pace instead of being preserved, and the City Council has no plan for preserving the older and inexpensive rental housing that acts as the safety net for LA’s working class and middle class. 

“The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative on the March ballot will force the City Council to end its behavior of fanning this frenzy of luxury development,” Stewart said. “We are talking about a group of Los Angeles politicians who take huge sums of money from developers, encourage them to build massive luxury complexes that rent for $3,000 or worse, and then they ignore the displacement of longtime residents due to runaway gentrification they create.” 

In a City Hall affordable housing report released earlier in 2016, Stewart notes, the City does not mention its key role in driving up homelessness. 

Instead, the city report blamed this traffic trend on numerous factors that don’t lead back to City Hall.  

(John Schwada is a former investigative reporter for Fox 11 in Los Angeles, the LA Times and the late Herald Examiner and is the Communications Director for the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. He is a contributor to CityWatch. His consulting firm is MediaFix Associates.) Photo credits: Top-LA Times, above right-LACurbed.

-cw

GUEST WORDS--It’s open season on administrative agencies, people. Are you paying attention? 

The Coastal Commission’s longtime Executive Director just got fired. So did the highly respected Executive Officer of the local air pollution agency, the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD). Big money business interests and political machines are making their moves. 

And now, taking advantage of the turmoil, an old-fashioned Los Angeles County political machine is trying to pay off one of its members with a seemingly insignificant job. But the job is not trivial, and the machine’s move threatens to undermine the integrity of decision making about the air we breathe. 

The Hearing Board at the SCAQMD is an administrative law panel (snore, snore). It has significant powers, though. It can grant temporary exemptions from the air district’s rules. It can overrule the district’s decisions about whether a business gets a permit to operate or how many pollution trading credits a factory must buy. And it can issue orders forcing polluters to shut down or comply with rules. You don’t hear about it much, but the Hearing Board has recently had the Exide lead smelter, the Porter Ranch gas leak, and ExxonMobil’s Torrance refinery on its docket. 

Despite the importance of the Hearing Board, the political machine thinks it can dole out a slot or two on the 5-member board as $50,000-a-year favors to whomever it pleases. The machine crony on the Hearing Board now is the board’s medical member, an old doctor who has said virtually nothing during hearings and often doesn’t seem to be following along. Hosting a fundraiser for one of the machine’s next generation apparently helped the doctor get the job. 

Now the machine thinks it can give one of its oldest members the Hearing Board seat currently occupied by David Holtzman. Holtzman is a highly-qualified, experienced air pollution health scientist and public interest attorney who has been on the Hearing Board for almost three years with no complaints.  

His career in public service has focused on making complex scientific issues understandable to the public. Perhaps most notably, he managed responses to public comments and document updates for California’s health risk assessment of diesel exhaust, the first official document at any level of government to label diesel exhaust particulate matter a cancer-causing substance. 

Holtzman’s volunteer work includes time on a neighborhood council, a short stint with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, and two terms as President of the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles (the first male president there), championing progressive electoral reforms and civic education. 

Bill Burke, the patriarch of one of the machine’s families, is currently chair of the SCAQMD’s Governing Board, which appoints the Hearing Board’s members. With all the recent turmoil, Burke may not be chairing the board much longer. And his longtime friend, the patriarch of another family in the machine, could use a job. And Burke thinks he can get away with booting David Holtzman from the usually-obscure Hearing Board to install his crony, Nate Holden. 

Yes, Nate Holden. The long-ago LA City Councilmember whose legal troubles from sexual harassment charges cost the City over one million dollars, and who got illegal campaign contributions from the private business known as the LA Marathon and controlled by Bill Burke. The machine lives on. Holden and Burke each have a kid in the state legislature. 

The ties between Holden and Burke make Holden uniquely unqualified to serve on the Hearing Board. Every case the Hearing Board hears has SCAQMD on one side, so the Hearing Board must be independent of the SCAQMD’s leadership. 

The Holden and Burke political families are entwined through monetary contributions, political endorsements, and close friendship. An administrative law judge, however, must be independent, beyond a reasonable doubt of the judge’s agency, because the agency is a party in every case before the judge. 

People say integrity and impartiality are incompatible with Nate Holden.  

The appointment vote is scheduled for early on Friday, May 6. You may want to communicate your feelings ASAP about the replacing a qualified judge like David Holtzman with a old-time politician like Nate Holden. So write to the AQMD’s clerk of the board at [email protected] and its new executive officer Wayne Nastri at [email protected]. (Contact information for individual SCAQMD Governing Board members is here.)  

Administrative agencies are important. It’s good that you’re paying attention.

(Lauren Steiner is a grassroots activist and organizer who has worked with Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, the California Clean Money Campaign, the Occupy movement, Food and Water Watch, Hunger Action LA, the LA Food Policy Council and many other groups. Currently she is the lead organizer of Los Angeles for Bernie Sanders trying to get him elected and advance the political revolution he is calling for.)

-cw

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW--Once again, the LA City Council displayed its unanimous voting tendencies – and its deep connection with developers. Wednesday, they voted to permit the construction of a controversial Target shopping center in Hollywood, which seems to be one of the epicenters of runaway development. Close to two years ago, a judge ordered work at the site to be stopped but times, they are a-changin’.

Following a 13 to 0 vote, the council revised planning and zoning rules to give heads up on the Sunset Boulevard Target’s 74-foot-tall retail center … more than double what the City allows and in the face of law suits and protests from the community. The city council has been pretty liberal with zoning variances, allowing for a Wild West, anything goes environment that seems to be friendlier to commercial interests than to constituents.

In 2014, Superior Court Judge Richard L. Fruin Jr. put the brakes on the council’s approval of the Target center. The judge said the council failed to demonstrate that Target would suffer an “unnecessary hardship” if the retail chain complied with the city’s height rules … which limit shopping centers at that location to no more than 35 feet. The construction was halted but is now expected to resume within weeks.

Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, whose district includes part of Hollywood, is a proponent of the vote, which he says will bring in tax revenue. Challengers to the project say they’ll file another lawsuit, charging that an environmental impact report should have been prepared on the changes to city planning rules.

Proponents of the multi-story Target also cite increased commercial revenue, employment opportunities, and convenience as reasons to support the project.

On another front, the city council faces concerns that its approvals may continue to be challenged in courtrooms, which happened when a judge struck down a 22-story apartment building that had been approved by the city council. A judge also invalidated the council’s greenlight on the Millennium skyscraper project, ruling that the city didn’t properly assess impact on the nearby community.

Target was also at the center of a controversy over a city requirement that a child care facility be included in the project. In lieu of onsite facilities, O’Farrell told the LA Times, Target will absorb a fee for childcare services near the store. The Board of Recreations and Parks Commissioners will determine the fee. According to Target, the new store will bring 250 full- and part-time permanent jobs to the community. The store is expected to be completed next year.

Although commercial development may have the upside of increased employment, the continued path of unanimously approved development projects has left Hollywood and other communities in a whirlwind of constant construction. EIRs funded by independent sources or the city should be the rule, not reviews funded by less than objective developers themselves. The fox cannot be trusted to guard the hen house. Should neighbors and activist groups bring a lawsuit to put a damper on the project once again, they’ll join a long list of community activists who aim to maintain the integrity of the city.

(Beth Cone Kramer is a successful Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.)-cw

NEIGHBORHOODS RIGHTS--While short-term rentals help a few people make ends meet by renting their home to vacationing strangers, the protection of the safety, stability and character of our residential neighborhoods is being threatened by a misguided proposed Home-Sharing Ordinance. Furthermore, it is a disservice to the legal system and system of justice to pass a law that you know is going to be disobeyed – and not enforced! 

RIGHT TO TAKE ACTION--Thousands of illegal short-term rentals of 30 days or less that are strictly prohibited by existing law are being openly advertised and rented in Los Angeles every day. The lack of inspections, investigations, and prosecutions reflect the lack of resources and commitment to enforcement on the part of the Department of Planning, the Department of Building and Safety, and the City Attorney. There is nothing new in the Draft Ordinance that provides any enforcement process against a Host that refrains from registering. 

Under a similar law passed February 2015 in San Francisco, it is reported that only 1,647 Hosts had registered by March 2016 -- out of an estimated 9,000+ Hosts with listings on Airbnb, VRBO, HomeAway, and Flipkey. The only hope of containing this illegal activity is to afford neighbors and/or neighborhood homeowner associations the right to bring a civil action in Court for injunctive and monetary relief with the right to recover attorney fees and costs. And the private right of action should be based on the existing law in Los Angeles that completely prohibits short-term rentals -- not complicated by new issues proposed in the Ordinance that would be difficult to prove, such as whether a Host has resided at the property for at least 6 months or a limit on short-term rentals by a Host for no more than 90 days each calendar year. 

NO REASONABLE LIKELIHOOD OF ENFORCEMENT--The critical primary residence requirement is not capable of being disputed by the City and would be difficult even in a private right of action. What proof would the City Attorney require, and how would the proof be obtained, to show that a Host is not eligible to register because the property was rented out legally to four different persons for 60 days each during a calendar year? In addition, how would the concepts of “Host” and “Primary Residence” be made applicable to properties owned in the name of different limited liability companies organized in Nevada -- where no information is required about the ultimate owner? This is only one example of the impossible morass created by any attempt to regulate short-term rentals as opposed to the existing, clear, outright prohibition. 

Questionable Jurisdiction-Does the City have a legal opinion that it has the necessary legal jurisdiction over any Hosting Platform to be able to impose the requirements and impose the fines set forth in the Draft Ordinance? Is there jurisdiction if the Hosting Platform has no personnel, office, or assets in Los Angeles or even in California? It is delusional to expect that Airbnb will willingly help with enforcement. Time after time, they have testified before governing bodies throughout the country and refused to divulge any information about their Hosts. 

Hasn’t Airbnb asserted Federal law and the First Amendment as shields preventing them from being compelled to monitor and police their users, and from liability for content generated by users of their services? Is the City Attorney, who has not brought any cases against illegal Hosts, now ready, willing and able to take on the Hosting Platforms?

90 DATS TOO LENIENT-The prohibition on operating Home-Sharing for more than 90 days each calendar year is much too lenient. It would allow a constant stream of different strangers to occupy a home for 45 full weekends each year which is 87% of the year (assuming the 2 nights between Friday and Sunday equates to 2 days.) If an Ordinance is passed (which it should not be), the maximum permissible annoyance of neighbors should be 34 days, or 17 weekends per year which is 33% of the year. That would be both more reasonable and more enforceable. 

GUEST LIMIT--The provision in the Draft Ordinance limiting a rental to no more than one group of guests is not effective nor adequate. It would allow a 2 bed/2 bath house to be rented to a fraternity of 40 persons for a weekend, which should not be allowed. There should be a limit of 2 guests per available bedroom. 

SHORT-TERM RENTALS LIKE HOTELS--If the City is going to legalize what are, in effect, hotels in residential neighborhoods, the City should enforce the fire code, health, safety, insurance, and labor laws applicable to hotels. The rules should be the same - both for the protection of guests and to level the playing field out of fairness to competing businesses. 

New Ordinance is Not Necessary--The proposed Home-Sharing Ordinance is motivated by a desire of the City Council to collect hotel-type transient occupancy taxes, and by a situation caused by a complete failure of the City Attorney to enforce the prohibition against short-term rentals. Our residential neighborhoods were never intended to accommodate hotel-like environments with transient occupancy by strangers and the noise, parking, traffic, litter and other activities not usual and customary in a residential zone. 

The financial problems of a relatively few residents, and the financial problems of the City, must not be solved on the backs of homeowners who had a right to expect that the residential neighborhood in which they made a large home investment would not be commercialized in any manner. It is doubtful that the City leaders would be considering this Ordinance if the provision for tax revenue was not included -- as usual, follow the money. 

Threatening the destruction of the character and safety and cohesiveness of the single family neighborhood that has meant something since the beginning of urban zoning is not the answer. Enforce the existing law!

(Raymond Klein has been involved with land use and transportation issues for over 10 years on the Boards of the Brentwood Community Council and Brentwood Homeowners Association and is an occasional CityWatch contributor. Views expressed are his own.) Prepped for CityWatch by Llinda Abrams.