LOS ANGELES

GELFAND’S WORLD—(This is part of a year-long effort by CityWatch to help inform and support city government reform.) In a previous article, I laid out the basics for creating substantive reform in the city government. The strategy is to make use of a ballot initiative process that we already have. 

@THE GUSS REPORT-Last week marked 20 years since Los Angeles City Councilmember Gil Cedillo was first elected to public office, yet he made a rookie error when he winged it during an adjourning motion, when members of the public who have died are memorialized by what are supposed to be a few thoughtful words. 

STANDING UP TO GREED-The Los Angeles Times announced on Friday that its newsroom earlier this month voted overwhelmingly to unionize, 248–44.

CAPITAL & MAIN-(Editor’s Note: A reminder here that constitutional scholar Chemerinsky also chaired one of the two commissions that created Los Angeles Neighborhood Council system. In those early days Neighborhood Councils were in good company amid great expectations.) Since Donald Trump took office once year ago, perhaps no American has called into question the legal and ethical behavior of the president with more persistence and authority than Erwin Chemerinsky. One of the country’s preeminent constitutional scholars, and the dean of the University of California, Berkeley’s law school, Chemerinsky has sounded the alarm from day one of Trump’s administration – most strenuously over the president’s alleged daily violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. 

RANTZ AND RAVEZ-I don’t want to be too critical about the leadership or lack of it at LA City Hall. I just want to be fair and objective as I point to a failed system of direction and accomplishments – failures that impact all of us who are trying to enjoy life and happiness in the Golden State and the City of LA. I am talking about the ever-growing population of homeless living on the streets of our city. 

CORRUPTION WATCH-Mayor Garcetti’s declaration to make Los Angeles into Silicon Beach bears as little resemblance to reality as Trump’s declaration that he is “like a really stable genius.” Garcetti proclaims that LA will become a center of the STEM industry. (STEM = science, technology, engineering and mathematics.) In September 2017, CNBC showed a grinning Garcetti sitting in a self-driving car, as it heralded LA’s emergence with infusions of investment capital. 

PACIFIC STANDARD-Last week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swooped down on about 100 7-Elevens across the country. The coordinated pre-dawn raids arrested 21 workers and launched audits of employers who, if found to knowingly employ undocumented workers, face fines and jail time. The message was clear: Undocumented people—even those who escape workplace arrests—will soon find it impossible to seek employment at all. 

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-City Planning has developed a host of ways to assist real estate developers building for the high end of the real estate market. Their helping hand, though, is based on cheating, and it also hides behind several totally spurious claims. While they don’t yet concede their bait-and-switch approach, their friends, like Senator Scott Wiener, unabashedly support real estate speculators with many outlandish predictions. 

PERSPECTIVE--Have you experienced water faucets that spray tiny jets of water onto your hands? You know, those eight tiny jets of water, each about 1.0 millimeter in diameter, that are emitted with so much pressure that the paltry quantity of water bounces off your skin before you can get it wet enough to apply soap, and makes rinsing the soap off nearly impossible? You can find these water faucets in airports and other public places, where they constitute a minor annoyance. But wait. Thanks to California’s state legislature, they’re on their way into your home.

ALPERN AT LARGE--As stated in a previous CityWatch piece, we're supposed to pursue transportation policy and infrastructure improvements as engineers, not social justice warriors. 

CAL MATTERS-To intertwine cliches, Gov. Jerry Brown let the cat out of the bag last week and acknowledged that he’s concerned about killing the golden geese. 

BCK FILE-One year ago, the day following the Inauguration of Donald J. Trump, 750,000 people gathered in Pershing Square as part of a global Women’s March. For many of us who participated in the very first march alongside fellow members of the resistance across the country and even the world, this was one of the first steps to show our solidarity on behalf of not only women, but every group and issue marginalized by the Trump and Republican agenda. 

EXPOSED--In a statement released shortly following the false ballistic missile alarm that sparked panic in Hawaii on Sunday, FCC chair Ajit Pai placed blame for the incident on the state's lack of "reasonable safeguards"—while failing to mention that it was telecom giants, including his former employer Verizon, that played a specific and outsized role in preventing the implementation of several key safeguards.

ALPERN AT LARGE--We live in a nation where one side wants to save us all from the other ... but who shall save us from those trying to save us? 

420 FILE-Although the Los Angeles City Council adopted three ordinances to regulate and zone cannabis businesses in Los Angeles, it’s hard to imagine the impact of legal pot becoming significant enough to shrink the black market. 

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--California is so big that you don’t need to be a mouse to hide here. You can be a giant elephant, and still escape notice.

@THE GUSS REPORT-As President Donald Trump confounds supporters, detractors and the detached alike with his latest daily dose of foot-in-mouth syndrome (late last week he allegedly inarticulately pondered why the U.S. has immigrants from “shithole” countries), some brilliant someone came up with a hash tag that offers some agreeable and much-needed comedic relief:  #AddShitholeToMovieTitles, which quickly went viral. 

JUSTICE--Opening statements are scheduled to take place in Los Angeles this week in the civil trial (Case No. BC621315) of a disabled woman who alleges that in 2015 a Los Angeles police officer repeatedly punched her, including in the face, and pinned her non-functioning arm underneath her body.  (Photo: As they beat the mother of four, LAPD officers repeatedly yelled at her to give them her arm and to “stop resisting” but due to her disability she was unable to unpin her arm voluntarily.)

MASS TRANSIT DEBATE-The war on transit has launched a new salvo with accusations that subways, light rail, and trolleys are financial weapons of destruction out to destroy LA, using poor and working mothers as cannon fodder. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--We used to talk about ethical and structural reform within the city of Los Angeles. We've been distracted for the past year, but someday we will get back to thinking about fixing what ails us at the local level. Hey, we could even take up local reform while we're waiting for the mess in DC to pass. How could reform actually be made to happen at the citywide level? 

DEEGAN ON LA-Chances are it will be a happier year for the homeless in 2018 than it was in 2017, thanks to a couple of proposed ordinances that would expedite housing, an abundance of programs for many types of homeless, and possibly even having a “Homeless Czar” at City Hall.