CityWatch Los Angeles
Politics. Perspective. Participation.
ROOS RUMINATIONS--Shame on you Los Angeles
The international movement admiring “strongmen” leaders which sanctions rhetorical, and sometimes even physical violence, has seen its latest expression in Los Angeles’ battle for public schools.
EASTSIDER-Thank God May 16 is behind us and the CD 1 runoff is over. Everyone has written about this race ad nauseam, so I won’t say much more, other than the fact that I endorsed Gil Cedillo (you can read it here,) and that in the later phase of the campaign, this race got about as ugly as I’ve ever seen in LA City politics, and that’s ugly indeed. Notwithstanding the huge win for Gil Cedillo (about 70/30) it’s going to take a lot of healing to make this District work together going forward.
About that Congressional District 34 Race
I was going to wait for the EAPD’s Endorsement meeting on May 23 to write about the Congressional District runoff, but someone decided to send out the mail-in ballots for this race during the week of May 8. Thus this article, even as people fill out their mail-in ballots. That seems very early to me, and actually overlapped the runoff elections on May 16.
It also means we will not get to see both Jimmy Gomez and Robert Lee Ahn face-to-face before most of the mailed ballots are in, and I think that sucks. I’m not a political consultant, but I’m sure that Parke Skelton/SG&A has models as to how many mail-in ballots will already be turned in before there is any real forum or opportunity to see both candidates on May 23. This will be a detriment to being able to see both candidates in a robust campaign.
At least in the CD 1 race, we had a number of face-to-face debates which both galvanized voters and told us a lot about our choices. Here we have a much bigger deal, an opening for a House of Representatives seat, with no term limits, in the midst of a crazy time in D.C., and it’s almost like this runoff is under the radar.
A note to self: this campaign season has made me decide to stop using the words “progressive” and “Bernie democrat.” Everyone is running as a progressive this year, whatever their real political colors. Both Gil Cedillo and Joe Bray-Ali ran as progressives, and by now the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is trying to pretend that they are progressive. Heck, if he was still in office, Dennis Zine would probably try to pass himself off as progressive.
Same for who is the true successor to Bernie Sanders. In the wake of the Dems getting creamed by none other than Donald Trump, suddenly the California Democratic Party is all in for Bernie. Happy faces and “The Burton legacy -- Empower the Grassroots, Build for the Future.” Grassroots? Funny how I didn’t see that from the CDP and the Clintonistas last November. And after the post-election Our Revolution staff changes, I’m not too sure who they are anymore and have stopped giving them money. Individual campaigns only.
About Jimmy Gomez and Robert Lee Ahn
Jimmy Gomez should need no introduction to California Democrats. Born in Fullerton, he followed the traditional Democratic establishment path to politics. From AFSCME to the obligatory east coast stint at Harvard and then on to Hilda Solis’ staff, he became the Political Director for the Nurses in California (UNAC) as he positioned himself for office. Not bad creds.
He was elected to the Assembly in 2012, and reelected in 2014, as well as last November 2016. If you have any doubt that he is the establishment candidate in this race, a recent mailer shows Xavier Becerra endorsing Jimmy on one side; the other side reads like a who’s who of every Democratic California official, from federal to state to local. I was going to list them, but then this column would be way too long and no one would read all the names anyway.
Mr. Gomez is handled by Parke Skelton/SG&A Campaigns, our local powerhouse political fixer lobbyist gang. Of course. Glory be to them, and if Jimmy is successful in this race, I’m sure they will handle the (yes another) Special Election that will have to be run to replace him in the legislature.
To his credit, Jimmy is a bright, very engaged and articulate politician who has been extremely successful in the California Legislature, and was rumored to be the likely replacement for Kevin de Leon in the Senate.
On the other side, in this season of uncouth and slimy politics, Robert Lee Ahn is the outsider who allegedly had no chance in a Congressional District carved out for a Latino. Yes, the same 800 pound gorilla as we saw in the CD 1 race.
Yet he beat 21 other candidates to win a seat at the runoff table, and even I was embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of him until the votes were counted in the primary. He is clearly running as the younger, activist, bottom-up small “d” democratic candidate who could shake up the Democratic Party Establishment.
As far as I know, there are no public debates planned between Jimmy Gomez and Robert Lee Ahn, other than the endorsement meeting of the East Area Progressive Democrats on May 23. I think that this indicates a deliberate strategy by Parke Skelton and his gang to avoid any face-to-face debates between the two candidates. Bury the challenger in targeted mailers casting aspersions on his character, and rely on the big bucks and establishment endorsers to bring home the bacon.
Witness a mailer I received last week, basically accusing Ahn of being a “closet Republican” trying to secretly galvanize republicans to vote for him, while Jimmy Gomez is the paragon of being “a champion for progressive democratic values.” This is silly -- there aren’t more than a handful of republicans in the district, and you can see from these mailers why I won’t use the “progressive” tag anymore. Everyone Parke Skelton represents is evidently progressively poorer from paying SG&A their fees, I suspect.
Meet Robert Lee Ahn
After my article pushing back against an LA Times piece with the spiffy title of LA voters “didn’t just turn their backs on Berniecrat progressivism, they went positively Clintonesque,” some of my fellow Dems let me know that Robert Lee Ahn might not be as big a Bernie progressive as I had been led to believe. Another reason I am trying to avoid the use of “progressive” and “Bernie dem.”
So I recently went to a local meet and greet in Highland Park for Ahn. He directly took on the rap about being a Republican. His answer was that a lot of immigrants from his parents’ generation who had small businesses became republicans because that’s what business people did, and at that time, politics was not the kind of a life or death game that it has recently turned into. So he went along with his parents, like a lot of other people.
At the same time, his father founded a non-profit group called PAVA (Pacific American Volunteer Association) which got involved in the LA River, Friends of the LA River, and even actual homeless people with the LA Mission. Mr. Ahn became seriously involved in these efforts, ultimately leading him to become a democrat as his activism increased. Hardly the picture of a conservative republican who simply registered as a democrat in 2012 to run for office.
I believe this is a credible response. Over the years, I’ve talked to a lot of folks from Lincoln Heights, Boyle Heights, El Soreno, and Highland Park whose parents were Latino (or other) immigrants, had small businesses, and were republicans. Ahn shouldn’t be tarred with the same brush as Joe Bray-Ali has been in the CD 1 donnybrook. And as the candidate quipped, “Elizabeth Warren was once a republican too, and look at her now.”
As a native Angeleno from the District, Ahn keys on the fact that CD 34 is of one of the poorest Districts in California, and something needs to be done about it. After the meeting I did a fact check, and he’s right. Outside of the San Joaquin Valley, CD 34 is right in there at the economic bottom, with over 25% of our residents living in poverty.
To me, that’s the kind of thing that a native Angeleno raised locally would know, whereas other professional politicians might not really be aware of it -- or would choose to downplay this reality. Remember, aside from all the newspaper headlines about Washington, congressional members get paid to represent the troops in their district.
The Takeaway
Lest you think that I’m simply gushing over Robert Lee Ahn, let me assure you that I’m not. I’m not endorsing anyone. What I am saying is that if you can, delay sending in that mail-in ballot until you find out more about both candidates as legitimate contenders for the job. I just think we deserve a competitive race instead of a coronation.
Ignore the hit pieces and check out both candidates before you cast your ballot. Obviously I recommend the East Area Progressive Dems meeting on May 23 at the Goodwill Center on San Fernando Road. I am assured that there will be at least a 15-minute or so debate between the candidates before the endorsement vote. Also, Maria Elena Durazo will be making an appearance in her run for California Senate.
If you can, attend an event for each, or both, candidates. This is likely to be a super low turnout election, and yet it will have a serious impact on the House of Representatives and California for decades to come. We owe it to ourselves to check out our candidates rather than relying on the same old same old system that produced republican majorities in both the House and Senate.
Your vote is important. The May 16 election had something like an 8 1/2% turnout citywide, which is pitiful, and shame on us. It also means that each and every vote counts big time. With over 61% of the ballots being cast by mail, it is all too easy to fill out a ballot without paying much attention to the candidates. You are important! Check out the candidates and the issues, and pretty please, VOTE!
(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.
-cw
THE ALPERN ADVISOR--As I addressed in a recent CityWatch piece, we just had an UGLY election between two good men on the Westside for the LAUSD Board seat: both two-term incumbent Steve Zimmer and challenger Nick Melvoin were two good men, but that election was not easy on just about anyone ... and the low-voter turnout was in part a result of that.
There were a variety of other reasons, of course--the amount of money involved, the recent elections burning people out on more voting, and the propaganda flying back and forth makes many a potential voter throw up their hands and scream "Whatever! I'll sit THIS one out!"
And then there are those of us who do not have children, and who do not think this election means much to them...while those of us who have children are both PRO-education but ANTI-LAUSD.
This election, so very expensive and favoring challenger Melvoin, was heavily funded by the pro-charter lobbies.
And the final vote tally was higher for Melvoin than for the other elected newcomer in the San Fernando Valley, Kelly Gonez (who replaced outgoing LAUSD Boardmember Monica Ratliff).
So did the voters give the charter school lobbies a blank check? Did the teachers' union (United Teachers Los Angeles) learn their lesson?
Probably NO to both counts--but both the charter schools and teachers' unions need to know that reform is needed, and that the parents need to be listened to...while their children need to be prioritized by focusing on the students, and spending our ever-growing education tax dollars well:
1) Acknowledge you screwed over the parents and students by doing the bait and switch by voting to return to the awful, terrible "start in mid-August" school year. We had a deal. You got the voter money in November. And then you reneged. You lied. So...goodbye!
2) Acknowledge that there is a rea$on or three why so many--the majority, even--of parents in the LAU$D send their children to charter schools. Parents who really love their children often decide to work harder, spend more of their own money, and drive their kids long distances every day to go to their charter school of choice.
3) Acknowledge that UTLA is really a horrible, horrible union that is as regressive a caricature of out-of-touch, self-serving public-sector unions that we've ever seen. Hence the flight of so many otherwise-progressive parents and their children to charter schools. Really, UTLA...you really are one the biggest reasons it's so darned tough to raise kids in Los Angeles.
4) You can hate Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos all you want, but can we please do better than Common Core? Standards are awesome, and standardized tests are vital...but the ivory tower wizards who dominate Common Core are the worst--and our children have been hurt because of those evil wizards (who probably think they're doing the Lord's work).
5) When DO we stop talking and start building bridges between colleges, vocational schools, and other pathways that leads to jobs, financial literacy, and economic self-sufficiency for children?
6) When DO we start spending our money better and build more colleges (even if that means ripping away 5-10% of state K-12 funding to do it)?
7) The elections are over--we want parental input and control, and we want front-line teacher input and control. Probably the principals/administrators are the ones who need reforming (and perhaps some firing) first, but the teacher/parent/student relationship is more vital than ever to consolidate, and those who did vote made it clear that was their #1 goal.
Who knows if bridges can ever be built by the newcomers to the supporters of those who lost in the LAUSD elections---and arguably, unless UTLA leaders (and members) have a "come to Jesus" moment that the UTLA really is the "Darth Vader" of local education in Los Angeles, will they ever come on board?
It's up to these relatively low-paid LAUSD Board members with their extremely well-funded election coffers to restore the trust of the voters, taxpayers, parents and other adults who made a tough decision just now.
But more importantly, it's up to the LAUSD Board to start really, REALLY focusing on the students...because while our educational gurus SAY they're focusing on the children, it's pretty clear that the adults need to admit to their own lack of education, and their own lack of ability, in meeting the needs of the children they are supposed to be serving.
(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D. is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties. He is also 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 was co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee and chaired 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 Dr. Alpern.)
-cw
LOOMING PENSION PAIN--The Jerry Brown administration last week released its revised May budget and, lo and behold, it has finally decided to (kind of, sort of) tackle the state’s massive and growing level of unfunded liabilities – i.e., the hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer-backed debt to fund retirement promises made to the state’s government employees.
It’s best to curb our enthusiasm, however. The governor didn’t have much of a choice. This was the first state budget that is compliant with new accounting standards established by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board that requires states to more properly account for retiree medical and benefits beyond pensions.
Because of those new standards and low investment returns, the state’s unfunded liabilities (including the University of California retirement system) soared by an astounding 22 percent since last year. But even this new estimate of $279 billion in liabilities is on the optimistic side. Some credible estimates pin California state and local governments’ pension liabilities at nearly $1 trillion, based on more realistic rate-of-return predictions.
The pension system invites eyes-glazing-over debates about the size of the liability. That’s because debts are calculated on guesswork about future investment earnings. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) recently voted to lower its predicted rates from 7.5 percent a year to 7 percent. The lower the predicted rate, the higher the liabilities, which is why CalPERS and the state’s unions are so bullish on Wall Street.
CalPERS’ latest investment returns were below 1 percent, but the agency insists there’s nothing to worry about and no need to do the unthinkable (reduce future benefit accruals for current employees.) That’s the same CalPERS, of course, that in 1999 assured the Legislature that a 50-percent retroactive pension increase wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime. I suppose CalPERS was right. It didn’t cost a dime, although it did cost many billions of dollars. Their returns were then yielding 13.5 percent a year, and CalPERS figured the heyday would go on forever.
The other reason to be skeptical of the Brown administration’s commitment to solving the problem can be found in the May revise itself. The budget “includes a one‑time $6 billion supplemental payment” to CalPERS, according to the Finance Department. “This action effectively doubles the state’s annual payment and will mitigate the impact of increasing pension contributions due to the state’s large unfunded liabilities.”
Where is the extra $6 billion coming from in a budget that supposedly is so pinched that the governor recently signed a law raising annual transportation taxes by $5.2 billion?
Simple. The state is borrowing the money to pre-pay some of its debt. “The additional $6 billion pension payment will be funded through a loan from the Surplus Money Investment Fund,” according to the budget summary. “Although the loan will incur interest costs (approximately $1 billion over the life of the loan,) actuarial calculations indicate that the additional pension payment will yield net savings of $11 billion over the next 20 years.”
In other words, the state will be borrowing the money at fairly low interest rates and then investing the money and earning, it hopes, higher rates. The difference will help pay down some of those retirement debts. Even the well-known pension reformer, Sen. John Moorlach, R-Costa Mesa, lauded the administration for embracing that idea.
But it’s something of a shell game. It should work out well, provided the markets do as well as the state expects. In doing this, however, the state is taking out new debt that will need to be repaid. There’s no free money here. A number of localities have embraced a similar strategy with pension-obligation bonds, which are a form of arbitrage, in which the government is borrowing money and betting on future market returns.
This gimmick is similar to the one people will embrace in their personal lives. Are those credit-card debts crushing the family budget? Then borrow money from the home-equity line of credit at 5 percent and use it to pay down the 10-percent credit card loans. It makes sense, but it doesn’t deal with the real problem of excessive consumer spending.
“This is the Band-Aid,” said Dan Pellissier, a former aide to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and well-known state pension reformer. “The surgery everyone is trying to avoid is on the California Rule – changing the benefits public employees receive in the future.”
When it comes to pensions, everything comes back to that “rule,” which isn’t a rule but a series of court precedents going back to the 1950s. In the private sector, companies may reduce pension benefits for their employees in the future. An employee can be told that, starting tomorrow, she will accrue pension benefits at a lower rate. The California Rule mandates that public employees, by contrast, can never have their benefit levels reduced.
That limits options for reform. In 2012, Gov. Brown signed into a law the Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act (PEPRA), which promised to address the pension-debt problem by primarily reducing benefits for newly hired employees. A reform that affects new hires will reduce contribution rates but won’t make an enormous difference until they start retiring.
“Gov. Jerry Brown’s attempt at pension reform has failed,” opined Dan Borenstein, in a recent East Bay Times column. The reason: the rapidly growing pension debt. “The shortfall for California’s three statewide retirement systems has increased about 36 percent. Add in local pension systems and the total debt has reached at least $374 billion. That works out to about $29,000 per household.”
CalPERS rebutted Borenstein by arguing that he “greatly oversimplifies and needlessly discounts the real impact that Governor Brown’s pension reform has had since it took effect in January 2013.” The pension fund insists, “PEPRA already is bending the pension cost curve – and will keep doing so with greater impact every year going forward.”
Yet the growing liabilities and the administration’s latest budget plan suggest that whatever minimal cost savings PEPRA is achieving aren’t nearly enough. Of course, union-controlled CalPERS’ goal isn’t protecting taxpayers or the state general fund – it is to enhance the benefits of the state workers whose pensions it manages.
As Calpensions explained, that $6 billion of borrowed money doubles the amount of general-fund dollars that the state is paying to deal with pension obligations. Meanwhile, as the state borrows money to pay that tab, it raises taxes to fund transportation. If Brown and the Legislature had trimmed pension costs, it would not have needed to raise gas taxes and the vehicle license fee. And the problem reverberates for local governments, too.
The May revise also showcased the same old issue with the administration’s priorities. Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton noted that “Brown’s entertaining rhetoric itself made him sound, as usual, like a skinflint, a penny-pinching scold. But the introductory document could have been written by Bernie Sanders, if not Depression-era Socialist Upton Sinclair, the losing 1934 Democratic candidate for governor who ran on the slogan ‘End Poverty in California.’”
The budget championed myriad big-spending programs, including higher pay for public employees. So the state has been spending like crazy, but can’t manage to deal with its pension problem – at least not without borrowing money to temporarily paper over its growing debt.
All these games are about avoiding dealing with the obvious fact that California’s public-employee pensions are absurdly generous, filled with costly and anger-inducing features (spiking, double-dipping, liberal disability retirements, etc.) and unsustainable.
In 2011, the state’s official watchdog agency, the Little Hoover Commission, argued to the governor that “Public agencies must have the flexibility and authority to freeze accrued pension benefits for current workers, and make changes to pension formulas going forward to protect state and local public employees and the public good.” Six years later, the governor is still just chipping away at the edges by embracing gimmicks.
(Steven Greenhut is a contributing editor to the California Policy Center, on whose website this piece originally appeared. He is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
NEIGHBORHOOD POLITICS--In the four plus decades I have lived in Los Angeles, I’ve seen the huge impacts on our community -- both positive and negative – of liquor stores, markets, and other retail alcohol establishments. We have many responsible and conscientious business owners that sell alcohol. But not all sellers are in that group.
Being able to manage how these businesses sell and serve alcohol is crucial, particularly considering the endless influx of more alcohol-related businesses into our crowded neighborhoods.
There are currently over 900 applications for new alcohol licenses in the City of Los Angeles. The challenge here is that the city and the state rarely if ever deny alcohol license applications. The state cannot provide any real monitoring of problems stemming from these establishments and the city has recently shut the door on public input concerning the acceptable practices of these licensees.
Most of us in LA have felt alcohol’s impact in one way or another.
No one enjoys having to step over someone who is passed-out on the sidewalk while en route to their morning coffee or their children’s afternoon theater performance. Nor do people like having their late night sleep ruined by loud music with folks screaming outside their window or seeing bunches of after-party red cups strewn throughout the neighborhood on a morning walk.
For years, committed community members, including LAPD and neighborhood councils, have worked with new business operators, sometimes for months, to reach mutually agreed upon operating standards for alcohol sales, known as “alcohol-specific conditions.” This created a platform for dialogue between alcohol retailers and the community and a means of insuring a neighborhood’s quality of life.
These conditions -- which for decades, through a public hearing process, were placed on alcohol permits to curtail problems such as late night nuisances and noise, loitering, or the sale of youth-attractive alcohol products -- are routine in cities throughout the state.
Unfortunately, the City of Los Angeles has recently taken the position that alcohol-specific conditions are no longer permissible, which ultimately silences community input into how alcohol is sold and served locally. In addition to refusing these standards for new businesses, alcohol-related conditions already in place for established businesses are deemed “unenforceable” -- the city is essentially stripping them out.
This is nothing short of outrageous and completely unacceptable. It flies in the face of our democratic process and our rights as residents, business owners, and property owners.
South Los Angeles residents have long protested the proliferation of liquor stores as well as the absence of healthful food and quality markets.
Downtown and Hollywood have some of the highest concentrations of bars, clubs, and other on-premise alcohol establishments along with the noise, nuisances, fighting, and crime that accompany it. The sale of single-serve containers to serial inebriates helps fuel the homelessness challenges in many parts of the city.
Westside communities suffer from high concentrations of crowded bars and restaurants that send noisy, drunk patrons out to litter, urinate, and worse in the yards of nearby residents.
Twelve of 15 Los Angeles City Council districts -- 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14 and 15 -- rank in the top tier for their incidence of three or more different alcohol-related harms -- violent crimes, vehicle crashes, deaths, emergency department visits, and hospitalizations, according to a recent County study.
And alcohol-related problems pose hardships across LA. In fact, each year alcohol-related problems take approximately 2,800 lives in the county, accounting for approximately 80,000 years of potential life lost, and costing the county an estimated $10.3 billion a year. That’s $1,000 every year for every child and adult in the county!
LA is one of the only cities in California that prohibits local conditions and this is extremely disempowering for our communities.
These conditions are in many cases our only protection from alcohol-related problems since we absolutely cannot rely on the state to manage those problems for us.
To rectify the situation and restore our community voice in these important decisions, a “conditions motion” is circulating and gaining momentum across the city. The motion asks City Council to return to its former practice of allowing alcohol-specific conditions, and to cease stripping existing conditions.
Conditions are good for businesses. Allowing the community to come to a consensus with a new business operator around key practices helps speed the “path to yes.” Getting critical community buy-in facilitates the successful establishment of new alcohol businesses. And when businesses negotiate conditions at the local level, they don’t have to renegotiate at the state level, which saves them time and money, and ultimately encourages more growth and development.
Recently the South Los Angeles Alliance of Neighborhood Councils (SLAANC) voted in favor of this motion. It also has the support of the Zapata-King Neighborhood Council, along with 15 other neighborhood and area councils, including the Westside Regional Alliance of Councils (WRAC), and nearly 20 public health agencies including Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, and alcohol industry watchdog, Alcohol Justice. This motion is critical to ensure that our community’s longstanding efforts to address alcohol problems are not dissolved.
The Valley Alliance of Neighborhood Councils and other alliances will soon have an opportunity to support this motion. This way we can get the city to again start honoring these standards.
I urge the VANC board and others to join with SLAANC and WRAC and all the other neighborhoods in standing up for our communities and businesses by supporting this motion.
We deserve to have our voices heard again.
(Jean Frost is a long time resident of West Adams and chair of the Policy Committee for NANDC, the West Adams neighborhood council organization.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
PERSPECTIVE--In a recent news release, State Treasurer John Chiang said: “…the Governor and I are partnering on a fiscally prudent plan to buy down our pension debt using what Albert Einstein once called ‘the eighth wonder of the world,’ compound interest. ”
It’s not Albert Einstein he should be crediting, but Bernie Madoff.
HIGHJACKING DEMOCRACY IN LA-Once Nick Melvoin joins the Los Angeles Unified School District board, he’s going to require all high school civics teachers to add a new lesson plan to their curriculum: “How To Buy An Election.”
That’s what happened on Tuesday. Melvoin and his billionaire backers dramatically outspent school board president Steve Zimmer’s campaign, making the District 4 race the most expensive in LAUSD history.
Political pundits will spend the next few days and weeks analyzing the Los Angeles school board election, examining exit polls, spilling lots of ink over how different demographic groups -- income, race, religious, union membership, gender, party affiliation, and others -- voted on Tuesday.
But the real winner in the race was not Nick Melvoin, but Big Money. And the real loser was not Steve Zimmer, but democracy – and LA’s children.
Melvoin’s backers -- particularly billionaires and multi-millionaires who donated directly to his campaign and to several front groups, especially the California Charter School Association (CCSA) -- outspent Zimmer’s campaign by $6.6 million to $2.7 million. Melvoin got 30,696 votes to Zimmer’s 22,766. In other words, Melvoin spent 71% of the money to get 57% of the vote.
Here’s another way of looking at the election results: Melvoin spent $215 for each vote he received, while Zimmer spent only $121 per vote.
There’s no doubt that if the Zimmer campaign had the same war-chest that Melvoin had, he would have been able to mount an even more formidable grassroots get-out-the-vote campaign and put more money into the TV and radio air war. Under those circumstances, it is likely that Zimmer would have prevailed.
Billionaires, many of whom live far from Los Angeles, bought this election for Melvoin. Their money paid for non-stop TV and radio ads, as well as phone calls, mailers and newspaper ads (including a huge wrap-around ad on the front of Sunday’s LA Times.) Melvoin’s billionaire backers paid for 44 mailers and at least $1 million on negative TV ads against Zimmer.
The so-called “Independent” campaign for Melvoin was funded by big oil, big tobacco, Walmart, Enron, and other out-of-town corporations and billionaires. They paid for Melvoin’s ugly, deceptive, and false attack ads against Zimmer, a former teacher and current school board president. Melvoin is so devoted to the corporate agenda for our schools that during the campaign he said that the school district needed a “hostile takeover.”
Among the big donors behind Melvoin and the CCSA were members of the Walton family (Alice Walton, Jim Walton, and Carrie Walton Penner) ― heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune from Arkansas. Alice Walton (net worth: $36.9 billion), who lives in Texas, was one of the biggest funders behind Melvoin’s campaign. Other Melvoin and CCSA backers included Michael Bloomberg (net worth: $48.5 billion), the former New York City mayor; Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix (net worth: $1.9 billion), who lives in Santa Cruz; Doris Fisher (net worth: $2.7 billion), co-founder of The Gap, who lives in San Francisco; Texas resident John Arnold (net worth: $2.9 billion), who made a fortune at Enron before the company collapsed, leaving its employees and stockholders in the lurch, then made another fortune as a hedge fund manager; Jeff Yass, who lives in the Philadelphia suburbs, and runs the Susquehanna group, a hedge fund; and Frank Baxter, former CEO of the global investment bank Jefferies and Company that specialized in “junk” bonds.
What do the corporate moguls and billionaires want? And what did Steve Zimmer do to make them so upset?
They want is to turn public schools into educational Wal-Marts run on the same corporate model. They want to expand charter schools that compete with each other and with public schools in an educational “market place.” (LA already has more charter schools than any other district in the country.)
They want to evaluate teachers and students like they evaluate new products -- in this case, using the bottom-line of standardized test scores. Most teachers will tell you that over-emphasis on standardized testing turns the classroom into an assembly line, where teachers are pressured to “teach to the test,” and students are taught, robot-like, to define success as answering multiple-choice questions on tests.
Not surprisingly, the billionaires want school employees -- teachers -- to do what they’re told, without having much of a voice in how their workplace functions or what is taught in the classroom. Rather than treat teachers like professionals, they view them as the out-sourced hired help.
The corporate big-wigs are part of an effort that they and the media misleadingly call “school reform.” What they’re really after is not “reform” (improving our schools for the sake of students) but “privatization” (business control of public education.) They think public schools should be run like corporations, with teachers as compliant workers, students as products, and the school budget as a source of profitable contracts and subsidies for textbook companies, consultants, and others engaged in the big business of education.
Like most reasonable educators and education analysts, Zimmer has questioned the efficacy of charter schools as a panacea. When the billionaires unveiled their secret plan to put half of LAUSD students into charter schools within eight years, Zimmer led the opposition. In contrast, Melvoin is a big backer of charter schools and a big critic of the teachers union.
Now the billionaires and their charter school operators will have a majority on the school board. LA will become the epicenter of a major experiment in expanding charter schools – with the school children as the guinea pigs.
Pundits will have a field day pontificating about the LAUSD election, but in the end it’s about how Big Money hijacked democracy in LA.
(Peter Dreier is professor of politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
-cw
PERSPECTIVE--Governor Brown is making an appeal to the Trump administration to transfer oversight of environmental reviews of the high-speed rail project from the federal government to the state.
If this strategy sounds familiar, it is. The City of Los Angeles allows developers to arrange their own EIRs.
Brown has a vested personal interest in pushing HSR. It’s his vanity project. It will probably put the state in a position where it will have to subsidize the system, in direct violation of Proposition 1A, as approved by the voters in 2008.
He and his colleagues, along with other politically connected interest groups who stand to benefit from the most expensive folly in history, are hell-bent to complete the project, regardless of the cost and the diversion of funds from far more critical needs. Do not think for one moment that the state will take an unbiased approach in evaluating the results of an EIR under its control.
There is no private investor interest in the project. That is unlikely to change even if an initial segment, constructed over the easiest terrain and serving markets with the least possible need, were to be completed. The risks of tunneling through faults in the San Gabriel Mountains, essential for fulfilling the promise of service between San Francisco and Los Angeles, will be too risky to attract sensible investors unless the state were to offer substantial guarantees and establish reserve funds. Such a move would put California on the hook for losses. Like a subsidy, that would contradict taxpayer protections in 1A.
CAHSR will collapse under its own weight and from voter frustration with pouring more money in what will be a system which grossly underdelivers for the costs.
There is no scenario where it can be built and operated within the limits of Prop 1A. The sooner the governor and legislature put aside their personal ambition and admit it will be a fiscal failure, the more likely the state will be able to afford far more pressing capital improvements.
There is much work to do; we do not have endless sources of affordable debt and tax revenue. Choices have to be made, and HSR is near the bottom.
(Paul Hatfield is a CPA and serves as President of the Valley Village Homeowners Association. He blogs at Village to Village and contributes to CityWatch. The views presented are those of Mr. Hatfield and his alone and do not represent the opinions of Valley Village Homeowners Association or CityWatch. He can be reached at: [email protected].)
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EDUCATION P0LITICS-- A runoff election Tuesday in Los Angeles will determine the fate of public education in one of the nation's largest school districts, in a first major test of the influence of the Trump-era charter school industry.
Voters will head to the polls on May 16 to choose between charter school ally Nick Melvoin and current LA school board president Steve Zimmer in a race for District 4, and between charter school teacher Kelly Fitzpatrick-Gonez against public school advocate Imelda Padilla for a seat in District 6.
If the industry-supported candidates win, they will be able to "squash democratic control of public schools," wrote education historian Diane Ravitch on Sunday. That includes diverting public funds to corporate charter chains and entrepreneurs, widening the reach and power of an industry that has no system of public accountability and has been plagued by theft and fraud scandals.
The Los Angeles Times explained Saturday:
If the charter-backed candidates prevail, charter advocates will win their first governing majority on the seven-member body. If the election goes entirely the other way, unions will strengthen their influence on a board that leans pro-labor. In that scenario, the board would be more likely to limit the growth of charters in the nation's second-largest school system, which has more charters and more charter students than any other school district.
"Think of this as the great Charter War of 2017," said Dan Schnur, former director of the Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. "The stakes are unusually high, substantively but even more symbolically. The outcome of these races will determine control of the largest school district in the western United States."
The election will also serve as a microcosm of the Trump administration's vision for public schools nationwide, with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos having expressed her support for privatization throughout her confirmation hearings and previously compared the controversial issue of school choice to ride-sharing apps. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has also referred to public schools as a "product."
"Unregulated charter schools and vouchers allow private groups to control taxpayer dollars and—in the worst cases—profit from them," Donald Cohen of the watchdog group In the Public Interest wrote at the Huffington Post last week. "But they also help fulfill a vision of society in which government is run like a business and people—and corporations—are customers."
Billionaire Eli Broad and other wealthy supporters—including Walmart heiress Alice Walton, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings—have poured millions into Melvoin's campaign. Zimmer has been endorsed by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, teacher and labor unions in LA, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt), and other city officials. But although he received 47.5 of the vote in the primary to Melvoin's 31.2 percent, Zimmer faces a well-funded opposition, and Melvoin has picked up endorsements from major players in the corporate education industry, including former Education Secretary Arne Duncan.
"Why do they want to control it? None of them has a child in the system. They despise public schools and they want to turn Los Angeles into a charter school demonstration district. It is all about power and money," Ravitch, who also endorsed Zimmer, wrote in another recent blog post. "No matter how many scandals [there] are in charter schools in Los Angeles or in California, or how many charter leaders are arrested, or how much money is stolen or misappropriated, the charter school advocates won't give up. They refuse to devote their energy and money to rebuilding the Los Angeles public school system."
(Nadia Prupis writes for Common Dreams … where this report originated.)
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ANIMAL WATCH-"Mexico has made dog fighting a felony with some of the strictest penalties in the world," the Yucatan News announced on May 1, 2017. "All dog fighting in Mexico is now illegal and anyone associated with it will face lengthy imprisonment and huge fines…Until now, most states in Mexico prohibited dog fighting, but now the laws are nationwide and have some big teeth."
A petition to Ban Dog Fighting in Mexico was initiated by Humane Society International in June 2016, declaring, “There is no place for dog fighting in Mexico.”It also asked for clear enforcement and penalties.
Over 200,000 people from all over the world signed that petition in support of the nationwide ban, demonstrating agreement with the premise that, "Dog fighting still takes place because no federal law explicitly prohibits it. Federal legislation banning and criminalizing dog fighting would eliminate the loopholes in these state laws and establish strong penalties for anyone associated with this blood competition."
According to a leading polling agency, 99% of Mexicans condemn dog fights and 85% believe dog fighters should be penalized, the petition states.
In an illustration of the changing attitudes of the new generation and the awareness of animals as sentient beings, David Marcial Pérez, writer for El País, described on November 24, 2016 how over 200 charitable and civil organizations, including coalitions to end human trafficking, presented two initiatives to the Mexican Congress to extend a federal prohibition on dog fighting and include breeding and/or sale of any animal used for the purpose of training dogs for fighting. They also supported changes in penal code sections to include penalties for being a spectator at an event.
Although dog fighting has been widely considered a cultural tradition, Pérez confirmed that, “a recent study shows that only 1% of people are in favor of these events, while 80% would like to see a ban.”
Many Mexican states are also looking at imposing severe penalties, activists state. Cruel dog fighting bouts continue unabated in clandestine underground locations, but they also openly take place during municipal celebrations around the country.
According to activists, an Annual international dog fighting even is held in Aguascalientes in the spring where as many as a dozen dog fighting matches involving pit bulls are on the bill.
“The dogs can be worth thousands of dollars,” Antón Aguilar, executive director of the Humane Society International in Mexico, told the Mexican News Daily, "and betting at such events can be high. The breed of choice is the pit bull.” He added that the organizers of the fights usually kill dogs that lose. Even those who win the fight often die as a result of injuries or infections they sustained.
On November 26, 2016, a Mexico News Daily headline read, "Senate approves bill to ban dog fighting," announcing, “The Mexican Senate has passed a dog-fighting bill that would prohibit the organization and staging of dog fighting events at the national level and assure all dogs are treated with dignity.”
The report explains that the bill also amends the General Law of Ecological Balance and Environmental Protection and “…stipulates basic principles regarding the care of dogs, such as the provision of adequate food and water and providing medical attention when needed.”
Martha Carrasco, a Mexican veterinarian who lives in Los Angeles, is the local representative for APRODA (Association for animal rights and the environment,) based in Guadalajara Jal Mexico, which actively supported and is still involved in this project.
She explained that the law was approved with 71 votes in favor, three against and three abstentions. It provides a modification to the Federal Penal Code to impose a penalty of up five years in jail and a fine of $15,000 for violation. The law will go into effect as soon as it is published in the federal register, Diario Oficial de la Federación.
OTHER COUNTRIES THAT RECENTLY BANNED DOG FIGHTING AND OTHER ANIMAL CRUELTY
Adding to the celebration of Mexico's legislative success is that this reflects a change in ethical thinking about how animals are viewed and treated in society in Latin America. Demands are being made on those in political office to honor the will of the people.
Guatemala
"On March 7, 2017, Guatemala took a huge step forward in the battle against animal cruelty," writes Susan Bird, an environmental attorney and freelance writer on animal causes. "The Congress of Guatemala passed first-of-its-kind legislation in February 2017. Now, protection is firmly in place for wildlife, animals used in research and companion animals."
The new law also bans animal testing for cosmetics, using animals in circuses, and dog fighting. "Humans who are spectators at any of these events can be criminally charged under the law as well," she adds.
Honduras
On November 12, 2015, in Honduras Bans Use Of Animals In Circuses And Dog Fighting, Animalequality.net declared, "Honduras joins countries like Canada, Sweden, Greece, Peru, Paraguay and Costa Rica (among others) in banning the use of all animals in circuses. The Honduran National Congress approved the Animal Welfare Act that regulates use of animals in various types of industries and shows."
The law also bans dog fighting. It credits passage to several organizations, including the Animal Rights Society of Honduras (Sociedad Animalista de Honduras.) Penalties of three to six years in prison can be imposed and also high fines for abuse or neglect of animals.
And a strong message was broadcast to those in other countries who want to bring about change for animals, "We hope that other countries [will] join Honduras…It is vital that protection of animals is included in the political agendas of all governments."
The challenge will, of course, be enforcement, but that is true in every country. The fact that federal law is being written in multiple countries to change actions -- not just acknowledge theory -- will affect the atmosphere in which children are raised and, thus, the mindset of future generations about how animals must be treated.
(Phyllis M. Daugherty is a former City of LA employee and a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
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THIS IS WHAT I KNOW-Since Trump was elected back in November, and even during campaign season, protests and resist actions have become pretty commonplace. In fact, some have said that marches are the new “brunch.”
Around 9 a.m. Saturday, a group of about 200 activists who refer to themselves as “Indivisible San Pedro” gathered in a public park within Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes. Trump National Golf Club is a public course owned by The Trump Organization. In a well-executed, creative protest, a flash mob formed the word “RESIST!” on the coastal property to call for a special prosecutor to investigate Russian interference in the election, as well as Trump’s administration and for the release of his tax returns.
In what took about fifteen minutes, the group, dressed in white, created 30-foot tall letters while singing “God Bless America.” Organizers had investigated during the planning and found out they would not need a permit. The space is overseen by the California Coastal Commission, which deals with public access to the ocean and protects the park from encroachment.
Indivisible San Pedro was organized post-Inauguration to voice concerns about the administration by contacting legislators, attending town halls, and participating in protest marches.
Trump National Golf Club officials and sheriff’s deputies observed from a clubhouse balcony but did not intervene.
Saturday’s flash mob attracted national media coverage and was a peaceful, creative display of resistance. With hope, the continued displays of resistance will result in policy changes and investigations. If there is an upside to the Trump Administration, it’s the increased awareness and participation on the grassroots level that has occurred, whether it be by communicating with legislators via text, phone or emails, marching, or organizing creative displays like this flash mob.
(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
@THE GUSS REPORT-The LAPD punted last week when it received a complaint about burglars caught on video breaking into a Sherman Oaks condominium’s mailboxes, refusing to even take a report, explaining that mail theft is a federal crime and should be handled by the U.S. Postal Service. But in doing so, the LAPD ignored the burglary committed to get to the mailboxes and likely identity theft or financial crimes done with the haul that is supposed to be handled at the local level. That enabled three more break-ins, for a total of four, by the same crew at the same location in less than a week.
The burglaries took place on May 3, 5, 6 and 8 at the upscale condo located across from the Van Nuys-Sherman Oaks Memorial Park.
Detective Meghan Aguilar of the LAPD’s Media Relations division said that while only one such complaint was made to the station, she understood that their lack of response to it dissuaded the victims from reporting the subsequent break-ins by the same crew.
The May 3 burglary took place at 2:33am, with a Dodger-cap wearing ringleader and a taller male accomplice.
On May 5 at 3:46 a.m. the ringleader returned alone with his face exposed but not captured on camera.
Then on May 6 at 5:13 a.m. he returned with a waifish female accomplice. (See photo top of page.)
And on May 8h at 9:48 p.m., he returned by himself again, without a bag for the loot, but this time with his face exposed as he first read the building directory, after which he opened only two of the four mailbox panels and took only targeted contents.
“This is neither our policy, nor the way the LAPD is supposed to fight crime,” Aguilar said of their poor response, assuring that a detective would be in touch with the condo “in a day or two.” But nearly a week since that promise was made, the LAPD has failed to contact the property management company or condo board of directors.
“If the LAPD ever does show up to take a report,” an unnamed condo resident said, “we also have bare-faced photos of other prowlers checking for open car doors in our garage.”
There is an unconfirmed report that U.S. postal inspectors may have nabbed the crew’s ringleader but they did not return a request for an interview in time for this article. Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office could not be reached for comment.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. Verifiable tips and story ideas can be sent to him at [email protected]. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
EDUCATION POLITICS-Really. It’s true. You may have heard differently, but if so, what you’ve heard is not correct. Here’s what LAUSD did do: they raised the course distribution requirement for graduation, and decided to retain the same grade requirements. In the end, the net effect was that graduation requirements increased.
The confusion arises because the current system is less punishing than a change that would have affected both course and grade requirements. But this whole narrative has been alternatively spun because “lower” graduation requirements were never implemented.
Simple, right?
A fuller explanation requires gazing back a dozen years or more, and thinking about ideas like the meaning of Education. It’s a simple concept wrapped in surprising complexity.
A dozen years ago, folks were merrily chugging along in high school, where a mix of vocational and academic courses were offered to interest kids of varying backgrounds and aspirations.
Meanwhile qualitative letter grades were awarded, as per usual, but not according to any standard. The history of grading is as disparate as anything across time, place or countries. You may have grown up with some system or other and think that what you know is what must be…but it’s not so. There have always been myriad ways to assign grades, between classes and even within a school.
And it turns out that what’s considered a passing grade often increases with age. So older, specialized graduate students are expected to demonstrate higher grades to be considered “passing”, because their specialty is presumed of particular interest, and therefore better grades are expected than for a generalized mish-mash of everything. This practice rolls back continuously through the types of schools; passing in college is harder than in high school, grade school frequently doesn’t even consider “passing” a sensible concept.
But this imposes a problem at the transition between high school and college in California, which has a strong state college system with well-defined requirements. Admissions to CSU and UC colleges requires a “C” grade in a set of prerequisite courses. Meanwhile, to graduate from high school “D” has long been considered passing and adequate to earn a high school diploma. However, there is a disconnect between graduation and admissions.
There is another prerequisite to higher education in California: a set of fifteen courses known collectively as “A-G.” These are typically “academic” classes and not “vocational” -- e.g. Math and English, not auto-mechanics. And accordingly they are sometimes considered more “rigorous” in the sense that there is a core body of knowledge to be mastered in order to demonstrate “proficiency.”
Now demonstrating these quantitative measures of proficiency is a hallmark of our modern computer society. Because we can measure it among millions of people relatively easily nowadays, there are powerful forces urging us to believe that we must.
Therefore several factors coincided resulting in a different landscape for the courses offered at LAUSD.
While kids were focusing on a vocational-track of courses, they progressed through LAUSD’s graduation requirements successfully, even sometimes receiving a diploma before understanding that their course load failed to satisfy the “A-G” requirements to be considered for admissions to a California state college.
This disconnect between graduation requirements and subsequent ability to proceed to the next educational level upset many. It came to light that some schools, typically composed of poorer children, did not even offer their students those courses necessary to become eligible for higher education. This was understood – rightfully – to be terribly inequitable.
To make the A-G courses available to all students at all high schools was expensive in terms of money and also kids’ schedules. It required rearranging curricular priorities and graduation requirements; course schedules became filled with academic classes that squeezed out the vocational. Consequently many vocational classes were closed in favor of providing sufficient “A-G” classes to enroll the entire student body.
So now that these more academic courses were available to one and all, the district faced a new problem: encouraging former vocational students to sign on to the new, more rigorous course of instruction. A stick approach was adopted whereby all students were required to take “A-G” courses in order to graduate from LAUSD. Thus the curriculum became more rigorous for one and all.
Meanwhile, the grading discontinuity remained; while a “D” was adequate for passing high school and receiving a diploma, this still resulted in a certain subset of students who, even though they took and passed “A-G” classes, were still not eligible for college with its higher level of “passing.”
To bridge this gap and align graduation requirements from LAUSD with CSU/UC eligibility requirements, on May 23, 2012 the board passed a resolution to take effect only with the class of 2017, raising LAUSD graduation requirements in “A-G” classes from a “D” grade to a “C.” If you graduated from LAUSD, you would then be eligible for admissions to a CSU or UC school.
However this imposed a double-whammy of increased rigor on our high schoolers, harder courses coupled with the higher designation of “passing.” Suddenly a whole subpopulation of students was ineligible for graduation and disenfranchised; they met the challenge of enrolling in the more rigorous “A-G” courses, but having received what once was considered a passing grade, they were now denied a diploma. They had risen to the challenge and followed the rules but did not receive reciprocal academic recognition.
And so the prospective rule-change was understood to be inequitable; it clearly impacted disadvantaged students disproportionately.
Accordingly in a subsequent board resolution on June 9, 2015, “To Recommit to A-G for all”, the grade requirement for graduation was dropped, restoring the old grade requirement for graduation in all classes.
Thus graduation requirements were never lowered, but they were restored to their traditional level. And the reason for doing so was a joint initiative by board members Garcia, Zimmer and McKenna, acknowledging the injustice of disenfranchising students who had met graduation requirements.
Already, LAUSD students had been returning and staying in school at ever-growing rates, even under the more rigorous “A-G“ program requirements. The percentage of graduates eligible for CSU/UC admissions was increasing strongly. To rebrand a whole subset of diligent students as “failures” was inappropriate and improper as it denied them their diplomas, earned under expected conditions.
So why is it necessary to draw out this explanation in such gory detail?
Because the CCSA’s candidate for board district four has exploited this slightly complicated and obscure history by misleading parents into fearing some great social injustice is being maliciously foisted on our students. His supporters have absorbed a narrative of outrage surrounding a spurious injustice that never was, buttressed by fake statistics that are not real.
Writing in the DeVos Foundation-supported LA School Report, a parent suggests that “…school board members voted to lower the student requirements for A-G college prep coursework from a C grade to a D. As a result, more than half of LAUSD’s 2016 graduates were not eligible for CSU or UC universities. Our own elected officials failed our children….”
None of these confused tangle of claims is true. There was no vote to lower student graduation requirements. More than half our graduates are not ineligible to continue in the California college state system (see chart above) the school board’s vote did not affect anyone’s eligibility, but the imminent and unfair ineligibility of dozens was stopped. Our elected officials did not “fail” our children: far from it. They acted to increase equitability and prevent cruel and unfair disenfranchisement from K-12 schooling.
Melvoin’s message assuages educational jingoism by offering outrage for a grand social injustice that simply didn’t happen. This is not a tale of quality downgraded or standards diminished. There is no story of fiddled with statistics. There is no yarn here of a vulnerable population done wrong.
In reality, LAUSD met the mandate of providing more rigorous schooling for one and all, and it has met the challenge of engaging its greater access equitably – and even with a dramatically increasing rate of graduates.
It can be argued that this has come at a cost to important vocational and even science training, as well as widespread, fully activated arts programming. The budget for public schools is insufficient, but if only Melvoin’s corporate supporters would redirect their seemingly infinite resources into district schools rather than swamping a private campaign coffer, the equations governing our kids could change overnight.
(Sara Roos is a politically active resident of Mar Vista, a biostatistician, the parent of two teenaged LAUSD students and a CityWatch contributor, who blogs at redqueeninla.com) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
DEEGAN ON CALIFORNIA-The board of the Metropolitan Water District, the mammoth agency that brings water from the Colorado River to lots of Southern California, has announced a $10 million dollar capital campaign as a solution to what had been described as awful living conditions being suffered by their workers -- highlighted by a March 8 petition to MWD Chair Randy Record from three dozen workers asking him to step in about a sewage leak at the Gene camp, one of the desert housing centers. All MWD camps now are slated for major infrastructure improvements in the plan the MWD board just approved.
“We were notified in late February 2017 about leaking waste water pipes under five desert houses, and the problem was addressed immediately,” Jim Green, the manager of MWD’s Water System Operations Group (WSO) told CityWatch.
Green added, “The recent sewage leak validated the approach we were taking upgrading desert housing as part of a comprehensive capital campaign that was unanimously approved by the MWD board last week. We consider desert housing at the same level of importance as the pumps and pipes that transport the water.”
Who knew the MWD was a landlord housing workers in several remote desert camps, built many decades ago and badly in need of the upgrade that is now in the works? The board directors did, and so did the management. Now, they are doing something about it.
And, why are those workers so important in keeping MWD running smoothly? It sounds archaic and reminiscent of “company towns” where workers were forced to endure whatever conditions the employer placed them in, but there’s a reason these workers are located in harsh-conditioned, isolated desert camps.
According to MWD Director Stephen Faessel, to help understand why the housing infrastructure devolved into what some would call “slum-like” conditions, you must take a trip back in time to eighty-six years ago when William Mulholland was assigned to create an aqueduct to carry water from the Colorado River to the Southern California region.
In 1913, Mulholland had already tapped the Owens Valley for water, but the population explosion in Southern California demanded yet more water. The Colorado River Compact gives California a large share of that river’s water and that is what Mulholland went after.
Construction of the 242 mile Colorado River Aqueduct began in 1931 and took eight years and 10,000 men to complete. It has been described by historians as the biggest Depression era public works project in Southern California. It’s a massive engineering feat that is recognized by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) as one of the "Seven Engineering Wonders of American Engineering.”
The aqueduct pumps more than one billion gallons of water each day through pipes 10 feet in diameter that bring the Colorado River water to Southern California, from Lake Havasu/Parker Dam, the main holding reservoir for the Colorado River Aqueduct, to six counties in Southern California, providing water to more than 19 million people throughout the region (the Los Angeles DWP got 70% of its water from the MWD last year.) It accomplishes this by moving the water through a system of 90 miles of tunnels, nearly 55 miles of cut-and-cover conduit, almost 30 miles of siphons, and five pumping stations. The Gene pumping station, located near Parker Dam, one of the five that lift water up over the mountains, is where the sewage problem was.
The danger of pumping such massive quantities of water is that there may be a harmful “back flow” if the pressure suddenly drops and water is flushed backwards through the system, wreaking havoc on, and potentially destroying, the pumping machinery. The most effective safety valve for this contingency is to have MWD workers live no more than 15 minutes away from the five sets of pumps that service pipes that stretch across the desert from the river to the sea, so they can immediately intervene. Hence, when the pumps and pipes were built, MWD built worker housing to be sure their workers were within the 15 minute call-zone. It’s those tenants, who pay rent to the MWD to live in company housing, that have been living in bad conditions.
Speaking about the $10 million dollar capital campaign that will pay for a major overhaul to upgrade the desert housing conditions at the five pumping plants, MWD’s Green said, “It’s just phase one of our major capital improvement plan.” It could, like MWD Director Brett Barbre said, “make it a paradise so people strive to live there….and say Metropolitan takes care of its people.” Some board members were shocked when they saw pictures of the living conditions and said they did not know about the sewage problem. One MWD board member, Sylvia Ballin, told CityWatch, “I’m really upset about this and distraught.”
(Tim Deegan is a long-time resident and community leader in the Miracle Mile, who has served as board chair at the Mid City West Community Council and on the board of the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition. Tim can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
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CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--All the debate about how to address California’s massive housing shortage is obscuring the big picture: a state takeover of local housing policy has begun.
That’s the real import of the more than 100 bills that have been introduced in the legislature to change housing policy in various ways. None of the current proposals is up to the task of getting the state to build sufficient housing. But the varied legislative activity—proposals to cover production incentives for builders, rental assistance, streamlining regulations, new regional planning initiatives, increased enforcement of state housing laws, and even taxation of second homes—clearly signals the state’s intention to take a leading role in how California houses itself.
The prospect of a Sacramento intervention is usually worrisome. But this one should be welcomed. The threat of the state seizing power may be one of the few levers that could prompt the biggest obstacles to new housing—local governments—to get out of the way.
One can hardly blame state government for aggressive meddling in housing. California has a nasty history of destabilizing calamities: from the run-up in housing prices in the 1970s that produced the Prop 13 backlash; to the debt-fueled mid-2000s increases that led to the housing crash and the Great Recession.
Today, California’s crisis is rising prices resulting from a profound failure to create enough units to meet the population’s needs. While the state needs an estimated 180,000 new units a year, it has been getting less than half of that. By one estimate, the resulting shortage is a $140 billion annual drag on the state economy. Companies and individuals leaving the state most often cite housing costs as their top reason. Home ownership is at the lowest rate in California since the 1940s.
The crisis also represents a public health issue. Millions of Californians pay so much for housing that they have less to spend on health care, food, education, and transportation. Housing costs force Californians into long commutes that damage our health, infrastructure, and environment. And housing prices are one big reason why California suffers from the greatest homelessness and the highest poverty rate of any state.
Adding to the difficulty is the bewildering mix of federal, state, and local policies that affect housing. Federal and state programs support people who seek housing and those who wish to provide moderately priced housing. But such programs are tiny compared to the need for subsidies in expensive California; the Legislative Analyst’s Office found that most low-income households receive no assistance with housing, and that nearly twice as many households are on waiting lists for housing vouchers as there are available vouchers.
Local governments add to the shortage by passing and enforcing limits on housing development, density, and sometimes rents themselves. This local hostility to new housing is fueled by NIMBYism, environmentalism, and a state fiscal system that encourages local governments to pursue retail development (which produces sales tax for local coffers) instead of housing.
The state’s goal should be straightforward: more housing. That should mean more assistance to those seeking housing, more incentives to produce more housing, and fewer regulations that limit housing.
The state has a great deal to do, but its goal should be straightforward: more housing. That should mean more assistance to those seeking housing, more incentives to produce more housing, and fewer regulations that limit housing. But the politics are wickedly complicated, even by California standards.
The debate is already dividing key interests that must come together to pass ambitious laws. Labor is split on housing, as building trades unions oppose reforms to lower housing costs, a change that would benefit working-class members of service sector unions. There also are divides among environmentalists (between those who embrace denser development and hardliners who oppose any growth at all), advocates for the poor (between those who want to revive poorer communities with new housing and those who fear new housing will merely displace poor people), and even among Republicans (between those who want to protect older people and their housing values and those who want more housing for the young families in their inland communities).
“I’m not super optimistic about the state being a positive force in housing yet,” says Chris Hoene, executive director of the California Budget & Policy Center. “The number and range of proposals suggests that there isn’t consensus yet among state leaders and housing advocates about what levers to pull.”
Some of the more than 100 housing bills could make things worse, by adding to the costs of housing, or creating disincentives for local governments to approve housing. It’s also difficult to make even small gains in encouraging more housing for poor and working-class people.
State Senator Toni Atkins of San Diego, for example, has built a formidable coalition behind a bill to provide a dedicated funding stream to support below-market housing. Politically, such funding would be a major breakthrough. But the legislation would produce just $250 million a year, a fraction of the tens of billions in affordable housing needs statewide.
And subsidized housing reflects only a fraction of the California housing market. The Legislative Analyst’s Office has called for a focus on encouraging additional private housing construction in high-demand coastal areas. Shortages there, the legislative analyst said, have rippled across the state, sending people further inland in search of cheaper housing, and driving up housing costs for everyone in the process.
The crisis is urgent and has been years in the making, and the state’s legislative efforts to gain power over the problem could take many years, with hiccups and mistakes. Is there any way to go faster? Perhaps, but it would require the politically difficult step of empowering developers.
One model, with roots in Massachusetts, gives private developers, nonprofit organizations, and local authorities great powers to challenge land-use regulations that prevent housing development. The developers get an especially free hand in localities that fail to meet state requirements on housing. The Massachusetts model thus puts local governments on the defensive. They can no longer say no to housing projects; they either must make plans for housing, or watch as developers do as they please.
Such pressure from the state may sound extreme. But so are the consequences of our housing shortage.
(Joe Mathews is Connecting California Columnist and Editor at Zócalo Public Square … where this column first appeared. Mathews is a Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (UC Press, 2010)
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EDUCATION POLITICS--(Steve Zimmer, who is running for re-election for the Los Angeles Unified School District school board, wrote this unusual article, “The Case Against Myself.” The election is Tuesday. Decide for yourself whether he persuaded you.)
I want to present four legitimate arguments against me. These are good and fair reasons to vote against me on May 16th.
I know this is unusual, but because my opponent has lied so much about my record, I thought I would just go ahead and do this myself. I hope you will share this with your friends and family and explain to them that everything they are reading about me is a lie whether it is on the television, on the radio, or wrapped around their Sunday newspaper. Give them the real reasons to vote against me. Here they are:
Bottom of Form
This is what I have done. I understand some people can’t vote for someone who has done this.
But Nick Melvoin hasn’t used any of these reasons. Instead he has lied and he has distorted. I can’t stop someone from lying, but I can certainly tell you that this is not how you should win an election. Here are some of the lies he tells about me:
Nick’s Lie #1: The iPads were my program
The Actual Truth #1: The iPad program was started by Melvoin supporter John Deasy. I voted to end the program once it became clear that Deasy had lied to the school board and lied to the public.
Nick’s Lie #2: I created a $1.4 billion deficit.
The Actual Truth #2: The Board has balanced our budget every year. With the Governor’s latest announcement , we will have our budget balanced for 10 years straight.
Nick’s Lie #3:: I lowered graduation standards
The Actual Truth #3: We raised the rigor for all students by ensuring that all students be enrolled in college preparatory courses. While we increased rigor, we have raised graduation rates to record levels, from 56% to over 75%
Nick’s Lie #4: I laid off teachers
The Actual Truth #4: I anchored the difficult negotiations that allowed us to save our schools and save thousands of jobs
Nick’s Lie #5: I cut arts education
The Actual Truth #5: I stopped the cuts to arts education and have added over 18 million dollars to the arts budget each year.
I respect the democratic process and I value debate about the important issues facing our public schools. But that’s not what’s happened in this election. I am not perfect and I try to be a better board member every day. If Nick and the California Charter Schools Association waged an honest campaign, I would not be writing this argument against myself. It terrifies me that such an important election could be determined solely on lies and distortions. It should scare us all.
There is much more than even the control of our public schools that is on the line this Tuesday.
Our democratic values and the value of truth itself seem to have worked their way into this moment. I am proud to stand for honesty and service. I hope we can set a better example for our kids.
(Steve Zimmer represents District 4 — which stretches from the Westside to the West San Fernando Valley — on the LAUSD school board. Peter Dreier is professor of politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.)
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CORRUPTION WATCH-When the courts jettison facts and law, all of society suffers. The resulting corruption is so systemic that people often cannot recognize where things went wrong. As we previously showed, but for the corrupt California judiciary, we would not have had the 1992 Insurrection in South Central. Not only did judges hideously abuse Blacks but the courts maneuvered moving the Rodney King Trial to Simi Valley in order to secure a victory for the police officers on trial. The corrupt nature of the California courts is not limited to victimization of minorities: rather, abusive “corruptionism” is its essential character.
How did California end up with such a corrupt system?
Starting with the judicial elections of 1986, the California judicial system has been devolving into a primitive institution that threatens society itself. Without taking the effort to consider the type of people who would be put in charge of the state court system, Californians ousted three judges because they were not killing enough people. That allowed Governor Deukmejian to appoint his law partner, Malcolm Lucas, as Chief Justice; and he appointed three new “hangin’ judges” to the Supreme Court.
Myths blind Californians to the court’s danger to society.
Californians allow myths and taboos to control their minds and this perpetuates a system in which personal loyalty enables cronyism to trump the rule of law. Why do people think that judges are above reproach? Why in the world would society protect corrupt judges by penalizing lawyers who criticize them? Why do we allow those judges to operate in secret, along with the faux oversight of the Commission on Judicial Performance whose hallmark is also secrecy?
The high and mighty set forth the shibboleth that we lowly citizens need to have respect for judges or else they cannot do their jobs. Really? They’ve got bailiffs with guns to shoot people in their courtrooms. When they rule, they can order the police to take writs of execution and empty people’s bank accounts. If people knew how judges act in the court system, they would have no respect for it.
The corruptionism that infects the California court system is more complex than, for instance, just the act of someone handing a judge an envelope of money in exchange for a favorable ruling. Rather, it revolves around judges’ believing they are above the law. They can alter facts, conceal evidence, manufacture evidence, intimidate witnesses, and all the while be assured that no one will be able to do anything about it. When a judge writes an opinion that changes the evidence, the appellate court overlooks that falsity and pretends it is true. For example, if a judge changes the undisputed evidence that a Mrs. Jones ran the red light to a Mr. Smith ran the red light, everyone in the system will look the other way. And because of that, the public never learns that Mrs. Jones’ lawyer and the judge are fishing buddies. As the federal court said in January 2015, everyone in the state court system “turns a blind eye.”
Commission of Judicial Performance’s passion for secrecy.
Some naive people believe that the California Commission of Judicial Whitewashing, er, I mean, Performance, is there to protect the public from wayward judges.
The Commission’s behavior shows that its actual mission is to protect judges rather than the public. Let’s look at the type of charges the Commission made public in 2016. Out of more than 1,200 complaints, charges were publicized against two judges and one commissioner:
Clarke, Edmund (LA County judge) publicly rude to prospective jurors.
Culver, Taylor (Alameda Co Commissioner) rudeness to defendants in court.
Kreep, Gary (San Diego Co judge), public misstatements during election campaign and ten other counts.
While everyone should consult the Commission’s webpage to make their own determination, the Commission’s primary concern seems to arise when a judge’s behavior makes the courts look bad in the public eye. Due to the Commission’s passion for secrecy, no one can gather statistics about the allegations of serious misconduct. Instead the public has to rely on the Commission’s categorization of the complaints in its annual reports. The Commission will not even divulge the number of complaints made by county.
Commission presents its scant data in deceptive manner.
On its website, the Commission tells us that in 2016, it received 454 complaints about persons who were not California judges, but it is silent about the 1,234 complaints it received about California judges. Why highlight the number of complaints that were misdirected to the Commission and remain quiet about the real complaints?
One has to dig into the 2016 Annual Report to find out that there were 1,234 complaints. Going through the number of complaints per year, 1,200 is about average. In 2015, there were 1,245; in 2014, there were 1,212; in 2013, there were 1,209; in 2012, there were 1,143.
The Commission’s web page reports eleven judge removals, but when looking at the dates, it appears that those eleven comprise the total number of removals over twenty-one years -- which amounts to about half a judge per year. Reporting removals in 21-year batches conceals that fact that in the years 2009 through 2015, only one judge was removed from office. That means that with almost 11,000 complaints in the last seven years, only one judge was removed! That case involved fixing traffic tickets for family and friends (Judge Richard Stanley, Orange County January 11, 2012.)
Types of complaints cataloged by public advocates.
One out-of-state activist compiled a list of illicit judicial behaviors, and the list seems in line with the complaints which reform activists are compiling for California. The range of alleged misconduct is extensive, and the types of charges are similar to ones we are hearing about in California.
Without naming any judges, the list of charges includes: (1) Ignore the Law, (2) Cite Invalid Law, (3) Ignore the Facts, (4) Ignore Issues, (5) Conceal Evidence, (6) Say Nothing in Orders (The Ninth Circuit has made this complaint about the California supreme Court in habeas corpus cases,) (6) Block Filing of Motions and Evidence, (7) Tamper with Evidence, (8) Deny Constitutional Rights, (9) Violate and Ignore the Rules of Civil Procedure, (9) Automatically Rule against Certain Classes of People, (10) Order Monetary Sanctions against Parties they want to Damage, (11) Refuse to Disqualify Themselves, (12) Violate their Oath of Office and the Code of Judicial Conduct, (13) Conspire with Fellow Judges and Judicial Employees, (14) Allow Perjury, (15) Deny Hearings, (16) Dismiss Cases or Grant Summary Judgments, (17) Deny Jury Trials, (18) Don't Publish the Improper Orders. (Complied by Bill Windsor of Lawless America)
Reform activists are complaining about substantial abuses of the law, but the Whitewash Commission never sees any of it. The reformists, however, concur with the (federal) Ninth Circuit’s January 2015 accusations, as cited in the LA Times, about the epidemic of judicially inspired misconduct.
With a court system that tramples upon Truth, Justice and the American way with impunity, corruptionism flourishes throughout the State. The only thing these types of judges seek is a piece of the action. As we will see in future articles, judges retaliate against people who disclose their nefarious dealings by throwing them in jail under the pretext of civil contempt.
Let’s remember that even a foolish President cannot subvert the rule of law the way a corrupt judiciary can.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. 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.
@THE GUSS REPORT-The election cycle ended for most people back on November 8 when the president and a full slate of national, state and local votes were cast.
In LA’s spring primary when other key races and issues were decided, turnout was, as California political strategist Michael Madrid pointed out in the LA Times, abysmal regardless: “People here seem more political than in the past — they go to a lot of protests and town halls, and they fill their social media accounts with anti-GOP screeds. But less than 12% of eligible voters showed up.”
On Tuesday, we reach the actual end of the voting cycle, which includes two LA City Council runoffs representing 13% of City Council’s voting power; Measure C, which addresses how LAPD officers may be disciplined (the LA Times’ Editorial Board opposes it); and two LA School Board seats.
Despite the likelihood of an even smaller sliver of voters showing up on Tuesday, at least one panicked person claiming to be a polling place volunteer says they will be woefully understaffed:
“I have [only one other volunteer] with me for this election, to cover four precinct table jobs, voter roster clerk, street index clerk, ballot clerk and voting machine clerk. [And we have] three precincts instead of the usual two….The city saves $100 per clerk and $40-50 on a polling place. This is abuse by the city of me and my poll worker by under-manning the precinct this way and will cause a delayed and poorly supported voting experience for LA voters.”
While we were not given time to confirm whether these claims are accurate, these are fair points if true. In 2014, LA City Council president Herb Wesson was so mortified by local turnout that he turned to cash prizes to boost the numbers and enhance the experience.
Still, LA School Report’s Mike Szymanski wrote last week to not worry, “…if history is any indicator, the poll workers … will have plenty of down time.”
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. Verifiable tips and story ideas can be sent to him at [email protected]. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
EDUCATION POLITICS--Some of America’s most powerful corporate plutocrats want to take over the Los Angeles school system but Steve Zimmer (photo above, center), a former teacher and feisty school board member, is in their way. So they’ve hired Nick Melvoin to get rid of him. No, he’s not a hired assassin like the kind on “The Sopranos.” He’s a lawyer who the billionaires picked to defeat Zimmer.
The so-called “Independent” campaign for Melvoin — funded by big oil, big tobacco, Walmart, Enron, and other out-of-town corporations and billionaires — has included astonishingly ugly, deceptive, and false attack ads against Zimmer.
This morning (Friday) the Los Angeles Times reported that “Outside spending for Melvoin (and against Zimmer) has surpassed $4.65 million.” Why? Because he doesn’t agree with the corporatization of our public schools. Some of their donations have gone directly to Melvoin’s campaign, but much of it has been funneled through a corporate front group called the California Charter School Association.
To try to hoodwink voters, the billionaires invented another front group with the same initials as the well-respected Parent Teacher Association, but they are very different organizations. They called it the “Parent Teacher Alliance.” Pretty clever, huh? But this is not the real PTA, which does not get involved with elections. In fact, the real PTA has demanded that this special interest PAC change their name and called the billionaires’ campaign Zimmer “misleading,” “deceptive practices,” and “false advertising.”
These out-of-town billionaire-funded groups can pay for everything from phone-banks, to mailers, to television ads. Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez described the billionaires’ campaign to defeat Zimmer, which includes sending mails filled with outrageous lies about Zimmer, as “gutter politics.”
As a result, the race for the District 4 seat — which stretches from the Westside to the West San Fernando Valley — is ground zero in the battle over the corporate take-over of public education. The outcome of next Tuesday’s (May 16) election has national implications in terms of the billionaires’ battle to reconstruct public education in the corporate mold.
The contest between Melvoin and Zimmer is simple. Who should run our schools? Who knows what’s best for students? Out-of-town billionaires or parents, teachers, and community residents?
Before examining just who these corporate carpetbaggers are, let’s look at who Steve Zimmer is, what he’s accomplished, and what he stands for.
Zimmer grew up in a working class community and attended public schools. His father was a printer and his mother was a school teacher. After college, he became a teacher, beginning with Teach for America in 1992.
He spent 17 years as a teacher and counselor at Marshall High School. When he taught English as a second language, he used an experiential approach that related to his students’ daily lives. He created Marshall’s Public Service Program to make public service intrinsic to the student experience. He founded Marshall’s Multilingual Teacher Career Academy, which was an early model for LAUSD’s Career Ladder Teacher Academy.
To help address the concerns of at-risk youth, he founded the Comprehensive Student Support Center to provide health care services for students and their families. He helped create the Elysian Valley Community Services Center, a community owned-and-operated agency that provides after-school, recreational and enrichment programs, a library, and free Internet access.
He was elected to the school board in 2009 and re-elected in 2013 despite the onslaught of billionaire bucks against him.
What are some of Zimmer’s most important accomplishments on the school board?
As a member of the Board, and his last two years as President, Zimmer led the school district through difficult times, weathering a recession, dealing with tragedies, and transitions in leadership. He used his skills to resolve challenges by working collaboratively.
Zimmer has received numerous awards for his work with children and families, including the LA’s Commission of Children, Youth and their Families “Angel Over Los Angeles” award, El Centro Del Pueblo’s “Carino” award and the LACER Foundation’s “Jackie Goldberg Public Service Award.”
Nick Melvoin is the candidate completely sponsored by the 1 percent. His extreme lack of experience clearly doesn’t bother them. Melvoin is so devoted to the corporate agenda for our schools that he claims a “hostile takeover” is needed.
Who are some of the billionaires and corporate lobby groups that want to defeat Steve Zimmer and elect Nick Melvoin?
What do these corporate moguls and billionaires want and what has Zimmer done to make them so upset?
They want to turn public schools into educational Wal-marts run on the same corporate model. They want to expand charter schools that compete with each other and with public schools in an educational “market place.” (LA already has more charter schools than any other district in the country). They want to evaluate teachers and students like they evaluate new products — in this case, using the bottom-line of standardized test scores. Most teachers will tell you that over-emphasis on standardized testing turns the classroom into an assembly line, where teachers are pressured to “teach to the test,” and students are taught, robot-like, to define success as answering multiple-choice tests.
Not surprisingly, the billionaires want school employees — teachers — to do what they’re told, without having much of a voice in how their workplace functions or what is taught in the classroom. Rather than treat teachers like professionals, they view them as the out-sourced hired help.
Congresswoman Karen Bass, LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, and Senator Bernie Sanders are among the many elected officials who have endorsed Steve Zimmer
The corporate big-wigs are part of an effort that they and the media misleadingly call “school reform.” What they’re really after is not “reform” (improving our schools for the sake of students) but “privatization” (business control of public education). They think public schools should be run like corporations, with teachers as compliant workers, students as products, and the school budget as a source of profitable contracts and subsidies for textbook companies, consultants, and others engaged in the big business of education.
Like most reasonable educators and education analysts, Zimmer has questioned the efficacy of charter schools as a panacea. When the billionaires unveiled their secret plan to put half of LAUSD students into charter schools within eight years, Zimmer led the opposition. Zimmer isn’t against all charter schools but he doesn’t want the board to rubber-stamp every charter proposal. He wants LAUSD to carefully review each charter proposal to see if its backers have a track record of success and inclusion. And he wants LAUSD to hold charters accountable. This kind of reasonable approach doesn’t sit well with the billionaires behind their front group, the California Charter School Association.
Zimmer has also questioned the over-reliance on high-stakes standardized testing as the primary tool for assessing student and teacher performance. Testing has its place but it can also become an excuse to avoid more useful and holistic ways to evaluate students and teachers — and to avoid the “teach to the test” obsession that hampers learning and creative teaching. Zimmer has called for — and helped negotiate the deal for — some portion of teacher evaluations to include test scores. But that’s not what the billionaires want.
As a former LAUSD teacher with 17 years in the classroom, Zimmer respects teachers as professionals. He understands the jobs and frustrations of teaching. He wants LAUSD to create schools that are truly partnerships between teachers, parents, students and the district. He is often allied with United Teachers Los Angeles, but he is nobody’s lapdog. He has always been an independent voice and has disagreed with UTLA on some significant matters.
In fact, four years ago, Times’ columnist Lopez wrote that Zimmer “... has tried to bridge differences among the warring parties, winning supporters and making enemies on both sides in the process.”
But the billionaires don’t want a bridge-builder. They want a compliant rubber stamp, and that’s what they’ve found in Nick Melvoin, the advocate for a “hostile takeover.”
Zimmer is endorsed by many LAUSD parents and community activists as well as Mayor Eric Garcetti, Senator Bernie Sanders, Congressmembers Karen Bass, Judy Chu and Maxine Waters, City Attorney Mike Feuer and the Councilmembers serving the neighborhoods in his 4th School Board District. At the state level, State Superintendent Tom Torlakson, Secretary of State Alex Padilla, State Controller Betty Yee, Senate President Pro Tem Kevin De Leon, and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon have all endorsed Zimmer. At the County level, he’s backed by Supervisors Hilda Solis and Sheila Kuehl along with former Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.
In his endorsement of Zimmer, Mayor Garcetti said: “The campaign against Steve has turned vicious, and I feel compelled to reach out on behalf of a champion for all our kids. I’ve worked closely with Steve Zimmer for more than 15 years. I’ve watched him make change in the lives of kids and in the fabric of our communities. Under Steve’s leadership, Los Angeles Unified schools have shown impressive progress. Steve’s collaborative, ‘all kids, all families’ approach is what we need on the School Board.”
The Los Angeles Unified School District is the second largest school system in the country with over 700,000 students. So gaining control of its board — and its budget — is a good “investment” for the billionaires who want to reshape education in this country.
Melvoin’s campaign and backers have outspent Zimmer by a huge margin. Their battle has turned into a remarkable David vs. Goliath contest. But let’s recall who won that Biblical battle. Goliath had the big weapons but the feisty David had the slingshot. That’s how Zimmer beat another hand-picked billionaire-backed candidate four years ago, with a grassroots campaign that relied on parents, teachers, and neighborhood residents, and he’s hoping to do it again next Tuesday.
(Peter Dreier is professor of politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department at Occidental College and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.)
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BELL’S VIEW--The other day a video posted on Facebook drew my attention. In it, a motorcycle moves in slow motion toward the middle of an intersection and a certain crash with a left-turning car. I could see where this was heading, but I couldn’t look away. I have no real desire to watch a motorcyclist pinwheel through the air and crash to the pavement (he survived, thanks to his helmet), but I watched anyway.
So many events I have seen I wish I hadn’t. I’ll never get the video of the Tamir Rice shooting out of my head. And I don’t suppose I should. Maybe this destruction of our illusions – the illusion that we can prolong our innocence through looking away – is the price we have to pay to bring any real change to the world. We live in in-between times, where one person’s truth is another’s lie. How can that be possible? I’ve never completely bought the old chestnut that there are two sides to every story. Tamir Rice was a thirteen-year-old boy playing in the park. I don’t care what the grand jury said.
Another slow-motion wreck sucking my attention these days is the continuing saga of the Joe Bray-Ali (photo above) campaign to unseat incumbent City Councilman Gil Cedillo – the 70’s B-movie villain currently ignoring his constituents in Council District 1. As anyone following the story knows, Bray-Ali either had his character assassinated or his true identity revealed last week when LAist broke the story of Bray-Ali’s former career as an Internet troll. The story prompted Bray-Ali to publicly attempt to recreate John Hurt’s chestbuster scene from the first Alien movie. He apologized, but he didn’t do it. He’s only human, but he’s not that guy. He made mistakes, but he was only trying to do the right thing.
Flailing, he revealed a few other juicy indiscretions (tax evasion, marital infidelity, and tagging, in that order) and promised to explain it all later as he blithely reassumed his campaign persona. Meanwhile, the old Joe came out swinging on a few Facebook threads, where he just couldn’t seem to help himself. In one, he trotted out a list of some of the crazy misdeeds (bigamy anyone?) of our current City Councilmembers, including Mike Bonin’s long-past meth habit. How, one commenter asked, is Bonin’s triumph over addiction comparable to your Mr. Hyde impression on Voat?
How indeed? One truth has emerged: Bray-Ali’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington shtick is not exactly the real thing. He’s brash, he’s bold, he’s – either – racist, sexist, and transphobic, or some kind of satirical anthropologist employing the awesome power of the n-word to move us all toward positive social change.
The question remains whether Bray-Ali’s move-along, nothing-to-see-here approach can sweep him into the Council chambers on May 16th. A few prominent Bray-Ali supporters have jumped ship, while others have either drunk the kool-aide or just admitted they don’t care. I sympathize fully with the impulse to support the lesser of two evils. City Hall needs a shakeup. The question District1 voters have to ask themselves is: how much is too much?
Bray-Ali’s explanations have been satisfying only to the rubberneckers and the kool-aide drinkers. The pen, they say, is mightier than the sword, but, at this point, Bray-Ali needs to get hold of something sharp and cut out t he rotten bits. Words just aren’t going to do it this time. As a proponent of the power of language, I’ve never felt so adrift. Debate has evolved away from a means of challenging ideas and into a method of silencing our opponents. Shame, humiliation, degradation, and name-calling – all dressed up as free speech – work only to drive speech into hiding, oblivion, or meaninglessness. Joe Bray-Ali has seen this process from both sides – from give and take – and now he’s in the fight of his life with the beast we’ve all been feeding since the turn of the millennium.
On May 16th, the voters in District 1 have a choice – but the choice is all Joe’s at this point. He needs to find a way to the other side of the wall he’s built for himself. And he needs to do it fast.
(David Bell is a writer, attorney, former president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council and writes for CityWatch.)
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CAPITAL & MAIN REPORT--If you’re bidding to build the border wall, the City of Los Angeles may soon want to know about it. In the latest effort by blue cities to resist President Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, a Los Angeles City Council member announced Thursday that he will introduce a motion requiring city contractors to disclose whether they’re bidding or working on Donald Trump’s border wall – or risk stiff fines and penalties. The motion is the first of its kind, but follows a trend of major cities exercising their authority to oppose the wall.
Los Angeles is home to more than 1.5 million immigrants. Voters in the county voted more than three to one for Hillary Clinton; the president’s policies remain unpopular here, and the school district and City Council have already taken other measures against the administration.
“City residents deserve to know how the City’s public funds are being spent, and whether they are supporting individuals or entities involved in the construction or operation of the Border Wall,” reads a draft of the motion, which Councilmember Gil Cedillo’s office says will be introduced Friday.
The move is being supported by a broad coalition of religious and immigrant-rights groups as well as unions, whose members include construction workers. “Every construction worker I know takes great pride in showing their children the things they built,” says Rusty Hicks, who leads the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. “None of them want to point with pride to something as horrible as a wall between two countries.”
If firms are forced to disclose any bids on the wall, advocates will then have an opportunity to put pressure on these companies — something that many businesses might rather avoid.
The city’s approach is novel, and it’s informed by the work of the Partnership for Working Families (PWF), a national network of advocacy organizations that develop city-based policy campaigns. In March, PWF sent a letter to major contractors urging them not to bid on the border wall; few companies responded. PWF has also been working with officials in individual cities to figure out how to identify contractors that are planning to bid on the wall and have existing city contracts. In Los Angeles, it’s been working closely with the LA Alliance for a New Economy, or LAANE, to get a motion off the ground.
New York City’s public advocate unveiled a plan to block border wall contractors from getting city contracts. Berkeley’s city council voted unanimously to approve a resolution that both denounces the wall and seeks to divest from any companies that are working on the project. It was the first to do so.
But Berkeley’s plan may face a legal challenge. John Yoo, a former Bush administration official who now teaches at the University of California, Berkeley Law School, told Fox Business that the resolution “may violate the Dormant Commerce Clause, which prevents cities from discriminating against outside companies, and there’s no legal exception for political disagreements.” Any ordinance that blocks corporations working on the border wall from operating in certain cities may also violate federal preemption statutes, which stipulate that when local and federal laws are in conflict, the federal standard applies.
The proposed Los Angeles ordinance seeks to circumvent these restrictions by requiring city contractors to disclose their participation in the wall rather than penalizing them. That doesn’t mean corporations bidding to work on the border wall wouldn’t file suit or otherwise protest should L.A. move forward with the ordinance. Tom Janssen, who directs external affairs for Nebraska-based Kiewit, a corporation that’s registered as an interested party to build the border wall, says the company doesn’t publicly discuss its projects. He withheld further comment pending release of the motion’s full language.
Enforcing the ordinance may also present a challenge. A wide spectrum of contractors do business with the City of Los Angeles, and keeping track of their involvement with the border wall could prove challenging. When the city council passed an anti-apartheid ordinance 30 years ago restricting contracts with companies that did business in South Africa, more than 900 ordinance exemptions were racked up in just three years. But PWF’s Jackie Cornejo, who has been coordinating efforts for various border wall ban and disclosure proposals, is confident the city’s Bureau of Contract Administration will ensure accountability. “It’s worked to keep policies like the city’s living wage in place,” she says.
Councilmember Cedillo has high hopes that the proposed ordinance will soon become law. “We will work with the City Attorney’s office to make it a reality,” says Cedillo, “and start talking with colleagues on the City Council to build consensus.”
(Aura Bogado posts at Capital and Main … where this report originated.)
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