LOS ANGELES

@THE GUSS REPORT-You know that the City of Los Angeles is in trouble when Councilmember “Grand Jury Nury” Martinez seems like a less risky choice than her colleague Mitch Englander (photo above) to serve as City Council president pro-tem when council president Herb Wesson is not running the meetings. 

Englander, running Friday’s City Council meeting in Wesson’s absence, came this close to putting the city (i.e. the taxpayers) in significant legal jeopardy when he threatened Armando Herman, an all-star button-pushing gadfly, with suspension from future Council meetings as he was being ejected from his second consecutive meeting for violating random, inconsistently enforced and historically illegal decorum rules. 

That is precisely what caused the city to be on the losing side of a very costly federal 1^st Amendment lawsuit a few years back when it was brought by 2017 mayoral candidate David “Zuma Dogg” Saltsburg, who wrote the book on successfully exposing local politicians at public meetings, often with colorful rap lyrics. 

California’s Ralph M. Brown Act, passed in 1953, gives great leeway to members of the public to express their beliefs – especially their derision of elected officials – at public meetings. The biggest known settlement the city had to pay for abusing a member of the public exercising that right was the $215,000 it paid in 2014 to Michael Hunt, a black man dressed in a KKK outfit – this was for kicking him out of a 2011 meeting because his outfit was deemed disruptive to the meeting and he refused to take it off. 

Englander, who held various staff positions, including Chief of Staff, in the office of his predecessors Councilmembers Hal Bernson and Greig Smith, during those lawsuits, tangled with virtually every public speaker on Friday, refusing to give them their due leeway to make their points. Englander had his omnipresent chip on his shoulder from the get-go. 

At the 1 hour and 20 minute mark of the video, Englander threatens Herman – who was in his characteristic obnoxious-but-legal mode, “….we are going to ban you for…for a number of meetings, for disrupting the meeting.” 

Englander’s mic was immediately cut, as he turned to consult with the new Deputy City Attorney who advised Englander that he could not make such threats. 

Read Englander’s lips while his mic was silenced. The next thing he says to the Deputy City Attorney is unclear, but in the sentence after that, Englander clearly says, “we can’t?” 

When Dion O’Connell, the previous Deputy City Attorney in charge of enforcing rules at City Council meetings, was recently given a public send-off before going on to his next job, he said that his biggest regret during his lengthy tenure was his failure to protect the city from the Zuma Dogg lawsuit, in which there was a nominal verdict, but massive legal fees to pay.

With Englander still not understanding the legal and financial risks of his own misconduct, it is time for Wesson to step in, protect the city from liability and remove Englander from occasionally running the meetings altogether. 

The reason for Englander’s misconduct might be similar to that of Martinez, who is female, and Wesson; they are the three most diminutive of the city’s 15 lawmakers, and they each adopt a bullying – and costly – mentality when they take the several steps to ascend to the Council President’s elevated podium. 

But things are different with Englander, who at about 5’3”, perpetually tries to project a macho facade.

In his 2016 run for LA County Supervisor, Englander raised the most money of any primary candidate, but came in 5^th place out of a field of 6 (of those who got at least 10% of the votes) in part because a judge publicly shot down his effort to list his profession on the ballot as “police officer,” a macho authority figure, when Englander is simply a part-time reserve officer. 

In 2014, Englander was dismissive of a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by a staffer against him and his chief of staff, John Lee, which a city panel unanimously agreed to settle.

And even with dog licenses, Englander did not pay them for his own purebred Golden Retrievers for years, despite having a high kill shelter located in his own district where he could pay them, until I made a public records act request for those records. Englander still hasn’t paid the late fees for those dog licenses.

Should City Attorney Mike Feuer be forced to defend LA against another free speech lawsuit, his lawyers won’t be able to tell a jury that the city didn’t know about these problems, especially if it is triggered by Englander’s misconduct: the running joke at City Council being Englander’s nickname “The Bad Mitch,” which is used to differentiate him from his colleague, Mitch “The Good Mitch” O’Farrell. 

You can read more about the Ralph M. Brown Act here. 

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a contributor to CityWatch, Huffington Post, KFI AM-640 and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

FILM WATCH-Sorry if I'm a little late on reporting this February 9th-20th film and art festival at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza, but there is still enough time left for you to enjoy some of the close to 200 films that will continue to have multiple screenings before the festival comes to a close on February 20th. You can go on line for more information about these films and book tickets to see this rich and thrilling variety of films and art exhibits. 

No, I'm not exaggerating. Yesterday I saw one of six free screenings for seniors offered by the festival called "Biography, Battles & Bernard," about the life and times of past LAPD Police Chief Bernard Parks. Unexpectedly, I came away with from this film appreciating how much of Parks' life we all share or can empathize with as Angelenos, Americans, and the more recently arrived -- who not so coincidentally, have remarkably similar stories to those of the Parks family. 

What must it have been like to arrive from Beaumont, Texas, where Parks' dad would walk his mother home from work, with him on one side of the street and his wife on the other? Why? Because she was light-skinned and his father was dark. She was able to find work, again because she was light-skinned, while the father never had an easy time of it. What does this do to the fabric of a family? 

When the Parks family arrived in LA, they lived near Central Avenue, because racially restrictive covenants in force until 1948, made it illegal for them to live anywhere else. The is similar to the five segregated Latino barrios of the same period, as well as the racially restrictive covenants that made the Beverly-Fairfax one of only a few Jewish neighborhoods, because my people could not live legally elsewhere. 

So what is the origin of Parks’ tenacity and drive that was necessary for him to succeed and bring about, against all odds, at least some profound change in Parks life? Well, let's just say that I wasn't surprised that he went to Catholic school and not the Los Angeles Unified School District. 

Once Parks set his mind to something, I seems he never gave up because he had the atypical familial nurturing and education that still remains so rare in the inner city. If he had to work at the old General Motors plant on Van Nuys Blvd. before he got into the police academy and the department, so be it. 

Parks’ rise from cadet to chief is chock full of overt and covert racism that was still the rule through much of his tenure at LAPD. Black male officers could never be partnered with while female officers, even though they shared the same pernicious discrimination by a system that refused to promote them. No matter how well they did on written examinations, they somehow would mysteriously do poorly on their orals when judged by their white male superiors whose primary role was maintaining the segregated status quo. 

Did Bernard Parks ever give up, even when forced out as police chief after only one term by Mayor James Hahn? Well, I don't want to ruin the ending for you, but let's just say his subsequent career in elective politics and the fact that his son wrote, produced, and directed this film might tell you that you can't keep a good Parks down.

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

CORRUPTION WATCH-On Wednesday, February 8, 2017, the Los Angeles City Council unleashed its latest volley of frauds perpetrated on the voters in its attempt to stop approval of Measure S, which would outlaw Spot Zoning. Spot zoning occurs when a developer pays the mayor and a city councilmember to “up zone” his property so that he can build a project which would otherwise be illegal. 

One name for this practice is Pay-to-Play, which means that in order to get what is wanted from the City Council, a person must first make a payment to the mayor and city councilmember. A more commonly understood definition is Extortion-Bribery. These are two sides of the same coin. 

The alternative system for approving projects is one of laws, where a citizen can bring a project to the city planning desk. If the project is legal, the city provides the permits but if the project is illegal the developer gets no approval.  

Of course, the City employees cannot have the final word or else they would be “king of the hill” for this extortion-bribery racket. Thus, in a city run by the rule of law, there has to be a level of appeal and review so that Joe at the Planning Desk does not become a millionaire by approving illegal projects. 

Although the rule of law system is laid out in the city’s planning code, it is not the actual process that exists. Developers do not start with the Planning Department. They start with the councilmember in whose district the developer wants to build. 

The reason they go to the council office first is to find out how much to bribe the councilmember for an approval of the illegal project. Since this horse trading is done behind closed doors, no one in the public gets to see what the councilmember has demanded or what the developer will give in exchange. The first chance the public gets to see a project is after the deal has been struck.

The Purpose of Measure S the City Hates. 

Measure S was placed on the ballot because many voters did not think the city’s zoning laws should be up for sale. The best way to stop the biggest sales was to make spot zoning illegal. The measure halts the up zoning for the mega-projects which have the greatest potential for abuse. The larger the project, the more the mayor and city councilmember can extort from a developer. As the LA Times showed, Garcetti got $60,000 from developer Samuel Leung while hundreds of thousands of dollars went to City Councilmembers for the district. Also, developer Rick Caruso “donated” $125,000. 

The fact that Measure S focuses on mega-projects does not mean that much smaller projects are not part and parcel of this extortion-bribery racket. At least Measure S will take a big bite out of the corruption. 

The steps that City Council proposed on Wednesday, February 8, 2017 are laughable in the way they ignore all the extortion-bribery machinations and provide zero relief to Los Angeles’ “planning problem.” 

(1) The Proposal for Panel of Consultants to Write the Environmental Impact Reports. 

The panel will include the same firms which presently write the bogus Environment Review Reports. The only new aspect is that the EIR writing firms will probably have to bribe their way on to the panel. 

(2) Update the Community Plans. 

The City acts as if some horrible force is preventing them from updating the community plans. Really, is Godzilla sitting on top of City Hall waiting to gobble up anyone who updates a community plan? 

The mayor and councilmembers could have updated the Hollywood Community Plan any time after 2001, but Garcetti refused. As Judge Goodman wrote in January 2012, the city knew when the 2010 U.S. Census data was released that the plan was fatally defective. Instead, Garcetti insisted on using bogus data, causing Judge Goodman to reject the 2012 Update. The 1988 Community Plan was reinstated and Garcetti refuses to release a new one. Why would he when he can make millions of dollars off the 1988 Plan? 

How Out-of-Date Community Plans Benefit the Criminals. 

Here’s the great advantage City Hall criminals find in out-of-date community plans. When plans are out-of-date, projects are more likely to run afoul of community plans. That provides the councilmembers and the mayor a plethora of opportunities to extort money from the developers. When a plan is purposefully twenty-five years out-of-date, it does not sound so unreasonable to up zone. The voters say, “Oh well, the plan was so out-of-date that it had to be modernized,” all the while ignoring that the crooks who are shoveling cash into the pockets of elected officials are responsible for the plans being out-of-date. 

Accounting Control Fraud Rules at City Hall. 

Perhaps, Accounting Control Fraud would be taken more seriously if it had a sexier name. Look at RICO, enacted in 1970. It means “rich” in Italian (ricco) and it was directed at the Italian Mafia. Today the name would be politically incorrect, but in 1970, politicians considered it “smart marketing.” 

Accounting Control Fraud applies to cities as well as to corporations like Enron. It occurs where the people in control use accounting to transfer the city’s money into the mayor’s and city councilmembers’ pockets and/or election campaigns. 

As we often find out after the unanimous approvals, the City subsidizes these mega projects. Sometime even smaller projects like CIM Groups’ 5929 Sunset Blvd receive City subsidies. The Grand Ave project got $197 million, CIM Group’s Midtown Project allegedly got $42 million plus all the sales taxes generated at the site. 

In 2015, Garcetti gave $48 million to help the $28.5 billion Westfield Corporation with its $250 million project in the San Fernando Valley. Westfield affiliates have contributed $950,000 to two Garcetti initiatives including Measure M to promote the 2024 Olympics in LA. Thus, Westfield gets $48 million from the City and Garcetti gets almost one million for initiatives to advance his career. Let’s remember that when Garcetti runs for office, he has the protection of the Citizens United case to take as much money as he wants from CIM Group, from Westfield, from the developers of Grand Ave, etc. 

The pattern at LA city Hall is classic Accounting Control Fraud where the money leaves the city treasury for one purpose but works its way back to benefit the people who authorized the gifts. 

The City Council’s Wednesday, February 8, 2017 resolutions did not even hint at stopping this type of criminal looting of the City treasury. 

We have to mention the lynchpin of the massive multi-billion criminal racket which runs Los Angeles. The Vote Trading Agreement. This agreement requires each councilmember to vote Yes for every project proposed by another councilmember and in return, each councilmember must reciprocate with a Yes vote on every project on the city council agenda. That is why all projects pass unanimously. 

Developers would not be giving Garcetti and the councilmembers millions dollars unless the money guaranteed their project’s approval. All a developer has to do is work a deal with one councilmember and when the councilmember places that project on the city council agenda, it will be unanimously approved. Without a vote trading pact, when it comes time to approve a project, Wesson might say, “Well, I don’t know,” and then a few others may say the same. Soon there would be no majority. 

That is the genius of the Vote Trading pact – a developer only has to buy off one councilmember and the mayor and in return he gets a guarantee that his project, not matter how illegal, will receive unanimous approval without a single dissent. Of course such a system of extortion-bribery can never survive any coherent planning. 

Nothing the City Council suggested on February 8, 2017 to stop Measure S addresses any of our problems. Corruption trumps planning.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

DEEGAN ON LA-“Traffic and crime have been overtaken by homelessness as the defining issue for voters right now, and that’s pretty amazing,” said Tommy Newman, spokesperson for the Yes on H campaign, citing internal polls. 

The homeless, seen everywhere and discussed constantly, continue to penetrate the consciousness of city leaders and citizens in the run up to the March 7 Primary Election when voters will be asked to support Measure H: The Los Angeles County Plan to Prevent and Combat Homelessness. 

It will become the third part of a comprehensive plan to help the homeless. If approved, this is what we will have: 

(1) County-sponsored Homeless Initiative.            

A collection of strategies to prevent and combat homelessness within Los Angeles County. Approved by Supervisors in February 2016. 

(2) City-sponsored Measure HHH. 

$1.2 billion in general obligation bonds to buy, build, or remodel facilities for the homeless, passed by voters in November 2016. 

(3) County-sponsored Measure H.  

A quarter-cent sales tax that is expected to raise about $350 million every year for a decade to fund services for the homeless. Voters will decide this on March 7. 

The County and City will then have moved from lots of rhetoric with zero plans, exactly one year ago, to a fully defined, funded and approved three-part program to deal with homelessness. The politicos, the homeless and the citizens should all be happy about this. Leading the surge toward a solution was the County Board of Supervisors, heavily influenced on homeless issues by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. 

Measure H will fund a menu of services for the homeless that includes:

• mental health
• substance abuse treatment
• health care
• education
• job training
• rental subsidies
• emergency and affordable housing
• transportation
• outreach 

Funds will also be applied to programs for the prevention and supportive services for homeless children, families, foster youth, veterans, battered women, seniors, disabled individuals, and other homeless adults. 

What voter could say no to this? So far, there is no organized opposition, nor is there anyone speaking out singly about the proposed measure. Hopefully, very few will oppose it, and the city will start making a dent in the chronic problem of homelessness. 

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, a leader in efforts to support the homeless, gave shape to the measure by describing it as “a critical component in the fight against homelessness and part of an effective one-two punch along with HHH.” 

Approved by 77% of voters in November, Measure HHH allows the City to issue up to $1.2 billion in general obligation bonds to buy, build, or remodel facilities to provide temporary shelters, supportive housing for individuals and families with low income, homeless veterans, and facilities, such as storage and showers. 

“Measures H and HHH complement each other by providing necessary ongoing revenue specifically allocated to funding vital and essential supportive services for homeless children, women and men, while seeking to build thousands of permanent supportive housing units,” says Ridley-Thomas. 

Yes on H’s Newman rounds out this scenario, adding, “The Proposition HHH bond measure (permanent supportive housing, supporting chronically homeless) and H work together and complement each other. Measure H focuses on strategies that are more immediate in their impact -- like street outreach and short term housing as well as paying for supportive services that are part of permanent housing. The scale and scope of what Measure H does is comprehensive and broad -- and covers the entire County of LA. It’s not simply the other half of Proposition HHH -- it's that and more.” 

Another impact, unique because it’s not been at the top of anyone’s list, is the prevention of homelessness that, says Newman, “is being looked for the first time. Measure H allows the assistance to go upstream and prevent the flow of families and individuals into homelessness. Historically, we have primarily dealt with the consequences of homelessness and used our emergency responders -- like the police and fire departments -- to treat those issues. Measure H invests in preventative solutions. Measure H, for the first time, will direct resources to keeping people in their homes, as opposed to waiting until they've lost that stability. It's a smart goal to try to prevent homelessness instead waiting until everything has fallen apart in someone’s life.” 

How will we know if this measure works? Newman explains that “Measure H has significant accountability and transparency components: it will take a 2/3 vote to pass and the funds can legally only be spent on the strategies to end homelessness that are called out in the law -- the funding can't be used for other purposes by county government…the measure includes a citizens oversight committee to monitor how the funds are spent and an annual public audit.” 

Adds Ridley-Thomas, "Our objective here is to evidence that we are serious about accountability, serious about transparency and to be comprehensive as is committed in the ballot language." 

You can bet on that; now, you can go vote on it.

(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.

PERSPECTIVE-The Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) is pretty clear about how it wants state or local governments to report Net Pension Liability. As stipulated by its Statement 68, on the face of the financial statements, not buried in the morass of footnotes. 

But the City of Los Angeles did not read the memo.  

A quick survey of the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFR) of a few major cities – New York, Seattle and San Francisco – show compliance. 

There are probably a few, besides Los Angeles, who have failed to do so, but weak oversight by GASB is a prescription for sloppiness. 

There is no shortage of other professional or authoritative materials on the subject, for example, articles published by the AICPA, such as this government brief.  

This is also the second year in a row where the liability was not reported on the face of the financial statements…and the pronouncement has only been in effect for two years! Although the required footnote disclosures were included, footnotes amplify the contents of the standard accounting reports; they are not a substitute. 

Before I go any further, why is this even important? 

Analysts, accountants and numbers geeks will know to dive into the footnotes, so who cares if it is not staring at the users on the face of the balance sheet, or statement of net position, as it is also called?

As GASB and others have clearly stated, it is about transparency. 

As residents, we are the most important recipients of the city’s financial statements. We live here and bear the consequences of our elected officials’ decision-making; the financial effects of which are imparted in the CAFR. Even though only a fraction of the residents bother cracking open the CAFR, and those that do rarely get into the footnotes, there is an obligation to provide complete disclosure. Anything less is implicitly misleading and a disservice. 

I would not be as irritated or concerned if this had not occurred before, but suspect political pressure is behind not reporting the NPL as evidently as it should. And that rankles me more…as it should you!

Most of our officials depend on the support of the public unions to fund their campaigns. In return, they receive generous retirement benefits that come at a high cost to the residents of the city. 

Shining the light on the $7 billion net liability that has been incurred to support these plans is not in their best interests. It’s much safer to bury it in a line with other long-term liabilities. Doing so does not invite questions. 

The NPL is over 50% of the total long-term liability in the governmental activities segment. It cries out for the specific recognition GASB 68 mandates. 

To make matters worse, the footnotes downplay its significance by stating it is not, by itself, evidence of economic or financial difficulties. 

Tell that to the city of Richmond, CA, which faces the prospects of bankruptcy. Its residents are already feeling the impact of diminished services, the result of diverting more of the budget to pay for pensions. Add San Bernardino, Stockton and Vallejo to the list, too. Others will follow. 

In Los Angeles, we cannot afford to increase the police budget to deal with the rising crime rate. 

So while our officials avoid the subject, we will pay more for less service. That’s the city’s plan to deal with the problem. 

The City Controller is in a position to educate the public about the dangers of ignoring this bleak prospect. Ron Galperin has the wherewithal and the standing to heighten awareness, but if he is not willing to at least give it the basic recognition it warrants on the face of the balance sheet, where it is more visible, then it is unlikely to get any attention at City Hall. 

Galperin has not shied away from auditing waste and abuse, however unpopular that has been among some powerful forces. He is still the most effective City Controller we’ve had, but he must lead the charge to fight the pension cancer, which is consuming our city from the inside. 

The NPL is the tip of an iceberg. Pretending it is not there will only run the city into the rest of it.

(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].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CALBUZZ-Californians resoundingly reject Republican President Donald Trump himself and the intrusions he threatens to implement on state policies governing immigration, health care, climate change and access to abortion, according to the latest survey from the Public Policy Institute of California. 

The state that gave Democrat Hillary Clinton 62% in 2016 -- a margin of about 4.3 million votes – holds Trump in extraordinary low regard, with 58% of adults disapproving of his handling of the presidency and 60% holding an unfavorable view of him. 

Californians’ view of Trump is far worse than Gallup’s historically high disapproval rating nationwide of 52%. 

Fewer than a third -- 30% -- of Californians approve of Trump and those are mostly Republicans, among whom 72% approve of the president. The president’s favorability rating is just 33%.

Meanwhile, Gov. Jerry Brown’s approval rating is historically high -- 62% -- and almost as many people -- 58% -- say they believe the state is headed in the right direction. 

Above-ground Resistance. 

So, it is with considerable support that Brown and the Legislature (57% approval) have tasked California Attorney General Javier Becerra (photo left) and special legislative counsel Eric Holder, the former US Attorney General, to protect California’s interests in key areas where state policies conflict sharply with Trump’s announced intentions. 

– While Trump is promising to build a wall on the Mexican border and deport undocumented immigrants, 85% of Californians (93% of Democrats, 84% of independents and 65% of Republicans) believe there should be a pathway to legality for those immigrants. And 65% say state and local governments should pursue their own policies – not the federal government’s   to protect the rights of immigrants. 

– Although the president has pledged to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act (with no sign of “replace” on the horizon), 53% of Californians oppose repeal of the ACA while another 26% say it should not be repealed until a replacement is available. Only 16% of Californians favor outright repeal of the ACA. Moreover, the law is seen favorably by 51% of all adults and unfavorably by just 39%. 

– With Trump calling climate change a Chinese hoax (except where rising seas threaten his seaside golf properties) and threatening to withdraw from historic climate change accords, 65% of Californians see climate change as a major threat and 63% favor the state making its own policies and agreements governing carbon emissions and climate change. 

– Having at one point called for penalties for women who obtain abortions, Trump has declared his intention of stacking the Supreme Court with justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade, that made abortion a matter between a woman, her family and doctor. But in California, 71% of adults -- including 60% of Republicans -- say the government should not interfere with a woman’s right to choose, while only 27% want stricter controls. 

“Californians’ policy preferences are deeply at odds with the new federal direction on abortion access, climate change, health insurance, and undocumented immigrants,” said pollster Mark Baldassare, PPIC president and CEO. 

PPIC surveyed 1,702 California adults (60% by cell phone and 40% by landline) Jan. 22-31 in English and Spanish. The margin of error for all adults in the survey is +/- 3.3 percentage points.

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

THIS DEAL MAKES SENSE--I gotta hand it to Mayor Garcetti. He really knows how to put together a group of endorsers. Looking over the list of folks saying “No” to Measure S, makes you say to yourself, “I wanna vote with this crowd!” 

A couple of months ago, I was part of a focus group on Measure S. We studied it quite a bit, talked about it and opined about it. Now, I look at that list of endorsers and I can’t for the life of me see why all these fine folks are voting against it. Maybe they haven’t actually read the measure. I haven’t met anyone who actually has. Well, read it. Here are a few reasons why it makes good sense: 

• It will place a two-year moratorium on development that “seeks Spot Zoning and General Plan Amendments to Intensify Land Use.” (Taken from the text of the Measure) Basically, there’s been a whole bunch of slicks getting a break from the rules. Why? Who knows? - but City officials have somehow ended up with at least a quarter of a million bucks in campaign contributions from big developers. That’s just what we know about from the Los Angeles Times expose on the Sea Breeze debacle, just to name one. 

Shoot, the moratorium doesn’t even have to run two years if the City gets its’ act together. The Measure provides that the moratorium will be in effect until the City provides 1) an updated General Plan Framework and 2) an updated community plan text and zoning map for a particular community plan area or 3) within 24 months of the effective date of the Act, whichever is sooner. So there ya go. 

• Ban developers from doing their own environmental impact reports. Let me repeat that. Right now, developers are allowed to do their own environmental impact reports. Well, in a world where the Secretary of Education wants to destroy public education and the head of the EPA is out to gut the EPA, I guess this makes some kind of sense but we Angelinos don’t need this kind of logic. 

• Provide for an overhaul and ongoing public review of the City’s General Plan, including specific procedures for Amendments which prohibit the practice of amending it for purposes of catering to a single project. As of 2005, it was decided that the City never has to update the Plan at all. This measure provides for a solid plan and a blue print for amendments. Sounds good to me. It might sound Pollyanna but I’d love to keep the backroom deals scenes to movies like Chinatown instead of real life scenes that affect my quality of life. 

We heard a lot in the focus group and I hear a great deal today about the threat of Measure S to affordable housing. They (and the focus group facilitator did not divulge who “they” were) even showed us photos of homeless people and working class families with small children and sad eyes then asked us if that would convince us to vote No. They also asked us about what would convince us to vote Yes. 

I’ve read the articles made by the ‘No on S’ campaign stating, “Don’t believe your own eyes. We’re really in a housing slump.” We are in an AFFORDABLE HOUSING SLUMP - and NO WONDER! Evictions from 2013 – 2015 rose 235%. AN LA Times article from April of 2016 reported that the City took 20,000 rent controlled units off the market since 2001. The Ellis Act, designed to allow Mom and Pop landlords to get out of the rental business without too much pain is being abused by developers who evicted at least 1100 people in 2015 (This from the FT Journal in July 2016.) 

Why do the No people keep repeating the same mantra about lack of affordable housing when Measure S explicitly spells out in black and white that structures built for affordable housing are exempt from the moratorium? Could they be referring to the 3 units out of hundreds that big developers offer up to replace the rent-stabilized units they demolish? Would this be the “affordable housing” we will miss out on if we pass Measure S? 

I called up one of those mega compounds up on Wilshire and La Brea once to see how much their so-called affordable housing was. The “affordable” units started at $2700 a month. 

In some ways, it doesn’t seem that the Mayor and his bunch care that much about affordable housing or about quality of life for those who have less than luxury accommodations. And I hate to say it, because the mayor is a likeable fella. 

I felt good when Mayor Garcetti vowed to defy Trump and keep Los Angeles a sanctuary city. I gotta scratch my head when I see that now, the mayor’s appointed City Planning Commission has decided to hollow out the proposed Miracle Mile Historical Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ), exposing some 1000 residents right here in my neighborhood to eviction. 

These are working people like me who have been living in these units covered by the Rent Stabilization Ordinance for decades. Some of us will become homeless. Some of us will be forced to leave the city. 

Last week, I was out gathering signatures and sending emails trying to appeal to my councilman, David Ryu, who has shown a lot of support for preserving historic affordable housing. I want to urge him to continue to do so. It could be a tough road if he has to go up against the mayor and his developer buds. 

I want to ask Councilman Ryu to consider the working people like me who want to continue to live in our homes which are often quite humble but which we love as we love our neighbors and our city. I want to ask him to consider that quality of life or maybe even having a home at all is more important that mega bucks made by mega builders. 

I understand that Councilman Wesson, who represents my neighbors to the east, is basing his vote on a survey he is taking that excludes tenants and also counts an abstention or a lack of response as a “no” vote. I want to ask him how he figures that is the proper way to represent all of his constituents. I wonder if he’ll ever pass some of the ones who become homeless over on Wilshire Boulevard and if he’ll give them a dollar. 

On a clear day, you can see for miles from the corner of my street. From here, it looks like the very same mega-developers who are praying that Measure S won’t pee in their gravy bowl are the same ones who are eyeballing the RSOs in my neighborhood with an eye for big profit at the cost of broken lives. 

For me, I’ll do all that I can do. Yes on the Miracle Mile HPOZ. Yes on Measure S.

Somebody’s gotta stop ‘em. 

NEED TO KNOW: 

READ THE DANG THING and PLEASE, if you have a good argument why this isn’t a good idea, let me know! I haven’t heard a CONVINCING one yet: text of Measure S. 

If you live in the Miracle Mile, contact Councilmember David Ryu and City Hall and request that the neighbors excluded by the mayor’s Planning Commission be added back to the Miracle Mile HPOZ.

Email: [email protected] or Call: 213-473-7004 

And, copy your email to: 

PLUM Committee Secretary Sharon Dickinson:

[email protected]  

and, also copy: 

Herb Wesson:

[email protected] 

(or call him at 213-473-7010) AND ASK HIM HOW HE FIGURES HE’S REPRESENTING ALL OF HIS CONTITUENTS. 

You can also contact PLUM Committee Members: 

Gilbert Cedillo:

[email protected] 

Marqueece Harris-Dawson:

[email protected] 

Curran Price:

[email protected] 

Jose Huizar:

[email protected] 

Mitchell Englander:

[email protected]  

You can also attend the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Committee meeting on February 14, 2017 (contact [email protected] for more information or if you need transportation to the PLUM meeting). For more information contact: 

[email protected]

(Jennifer Caldwell is a an actress and an active member of SAG-AFTRA, serving on several committees. She is a published author of short stories and news articles and is a featured contributor to CityWatch. Her column at www.RecessionCafe.wordpress.com is dishing up good deals, recipes and food for thought. Jennifer can be reached at [email protected].  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jennifercald - Twitter: @checkingthegate ... And her website: Jenniferhcaldwell.com)  

-cw

JIM CROW IS ALIVE AND WELL-The film “13^th” derives its title from the one exception to the 13th Amendment that abolished slavery in 1865: "except as a punishment for crime." As this documentary points out, this exception has allowed the profit-driven institution of slavery to continue unabated over the last 150 years in one form or another. Only the name has changed. 

The coherence with which Compton's own documentary filmmaker Ava Du Vernay insightfully lays out various historical incarnations of this “slavery exception" that occurs within what we now call the “prison industrial complex” left me with an unanticipated takeaway: If the mostly minority contributors to the making of this exceptional film are representative of the awesome human ability and insight it took to make it, just how much more unrealized human potential might be languishing in our prisons? 

What is still being lost within in our for-profit incarceration system -- where 97% of those behind bars never even had a trial because they were too poor or intimidated by the probability of a mandatory 30-year sentence if they went to court and lost? 

Our excessive minimum sentencing laws, pushed by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), offer the mostly minority poor, who are caught up in a rigged criminal justice system, a Hobson's choice of copping a plea to a crime they didn't commit or facing a trial with a potential mandatory minimum 30-year sentence. Under these circumstances, it is understandable that they choose to play it safe and wind up in prison where, once in, many never fully emerge. This is because they are either hit with imaginary infractions that extend their sentences or end up unemployable (if they finally get out of prison) due to their criminal records. 

As Du Vernay points out in “13^th,” the one thing that never changes, no matter what incarnation the theft of Black labor takes, is that the greatest impediment to ending racism in America has always been the reality that somebody -- not the worker -- is always making obscene amounts of money in the belief that Black Lives (Don’t) Matter. 

So you might ask, "Why don't I mention the white folks in prison?" The answer is simple. In a prison industrial complex that has gone from a population of 357,292 behind bars in 1970 to 2,306,200 in 2014 we find that Blacks make up 40.2% of the prison population. Put another way, 1 in 17 whites will spend some time in prison during that person’s lifetime. The figure for Black males is I in 3. 

There is one area Du Vernay and her filmmaking colleagues could have explored in greater depth: she mentions in passing that the purposefully degraded, still segregated public education system plays a role in filling our prisons today. This happens when students are pushed through school without being trained or socialized in a manner that could make them productive members of society instead of being swept up in the prison industrial complex. 

Put another way, I don't think the inner city communities like Chicago or other large minority filled urban areas in this country would experience the current levels of violence, murder and incarceration if we did not have purposefully failed and segregated public school systems. These schools seem content to measure success not by the achievements of their students, but by the profits their vendors can make, a process that continues to hold the leadership of these public school systems captive.

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

ALPERN AT LARGE--To the best of my knowledge, using a car, pushing for new options for mobility, wanting affordable home prices, advocating for better parks and schools, and questioning the quality of life for Angelenos and other Californians isn't against the law...yet.   

So suggesting that the local and state leaders who are screaming and diverting their collective outrage to protest our new President are no better, is it? Why scream about anti-environmental or other new policies coming from Washington when the local and state leaders are just as awful for our environment? 

Enter rising star Assemblymember Melissa Melendez (R-Lake Elsinore) who just introduced AB 351 to restore billions of dollars back to California taxpayers through road improvements. 

Revenue generated from Vehicle Weight Fees were diverted to the General Fund due to the Great Recession, and AB 351 reallocates the estimated $1 billion Vehicle Weight Fee annual revenue back to the State Highway Account, which would be spent on the new construction, operations and repairs of highways and local streets. 

Of course, this would require our state to acknowledge a few things: 

1) While local and statewide rail and other mass transit projects are worthy and important to support, roads and highways are still worthy and important to support, too. 

2) Those non-transportation Sacramento special interests used to getting fed with transportation funds will have to be shoved away from their feeding troughs and find their meals elsewhere. 

3) Building roads, water storage facilities, and an enhanced electrical grid to keep up with rising needs are among the priorities that taxpayers want a lot more of--and if we don't do that, the middle class (on its way to extinction in California) will be more hurt than ever. 

Of interest is that the new Trump Administration values infrastructure spending more than just about any Republican presidency in recent history.  Only Eisenhower ranks as someone who valued infrastructure as much as President Trump, and it's safe to say that the "Republican Establishment" in Congress is both: 

1) Not on the same page as the President. 

2) Not on the same page as the taxpaying majority--including the Republican voting base. 

As might be expected, the 50 projects that the Trump Administration wants to tackle first are not as nice to California as it is to the East Coast and to the Midwest, which always get represented better to Congress than California...but of note is that the Huntington Beach water desalination plant has a very prominent role to Trump's infrastructure team. 

In other words, just because someone has a different point of view than the Democratic Orthodoxy in Sacramento doesn't mean that person (in this case, President Trump) is anti-environment...especially when that person also has a different point of view than the Republican Orthodoxy in Congress. 

And it should be remembered that liberal, Democratic California has no shortage of automobile users that won't be able to use mass transit to get their jobs any time soon. 

Assemblymember Melendez, a Republican, has the idea that we don't always need to pay MORE taxes to get more transportation funding...just spend the taxes the way they were promised to be spent. 

Both Republican and Democratic leaders in Los Angeles County just got behind two huge sales tax hikes for transportation, and we're no longer lagging behind other regions in transportation funding--in fact, we're a national leader. 

But wouldn't it be nice if Sacramento were to be as much of a partner for transportation funding as Washington, D.C. was during the Obama Administration?  Wouldn't it be nice to put Sacramento's political elites' collective feet to the fire as much as we do to politicians from Washington, D.C.?  

Our roads (and budding rail systems) are the cornerstone of our economic prosperity--without them we go nowhere--physically or economically.   

Conservative Orange County has more Metrolink service than L.A. County for a variety of reasons, and the more conservative San Gabriel Valley and San Bernardino/Riverside Counties are pushing for both more freeways AND the Gold Line Extension to Montclair and beyond...even to Ontario Airport! 

Liberal LA and SF both want more rail service and lines, but I don't see commuters and taxpayers complaining too much when the roads get fixed and the updates are done. 

Whether it's a road or a rail line, we're not going ANYWHERE until they get done/fixed first.  All the other stuff we divert this money to will, sooner or later, need to be either reduced in funding or funded in a more efficient (and sustainable!) manner. 

Unless you're a partisan political hack, most of us just don't care where the source of the funding comes from--we just want our transportation options preserved and enhanced. 

Some folks in this state love our new President, and many more probably do not.  However, in the middle of all the hullaballoo, maybe remembering how we're going to fix our doggone transportation, energy, and other infrastructure needs to be revisited, and with a focus on results to benefit our Economy, our Environment, and our Quality of Life.

(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 is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at   [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.) 

-cw 

EASTSIDER-I really don’t mean to keep pickin’ on CalPERS, but lately their Board and smarmy General Counsel seem to be doing a better job of “ready, shoot, aim!” than Donald Trump. 

Recently the CalPERS Board held a junket, I mean retreat, in beautiful Monterey, out of public sight, and without any of the usual videotaping of the event. It must be really rough to be a Board/staff member looking out for our pension money. At this event, a cabal of the appointed members got together to take out the one Board member who has displayed the openness and transparency that the rest pretend to care about. 

That Board member is JJ Jelincic, an actual elected member of the Board who has the temerity to ask questions before the Board does what staff tells them to do. Evidently this Board has a penchant for deliberately keeping you and me in the dark. 

Presided over by Rob Feckner, the thirteen-time elected President of the Board, they might have gotten away with it if someone hadn’t managed to produce a transcript of the hit job. Mr. Feckner personifies the “go along to get along” mentality and he’s been doing so even as he praised Fred Buenrosto back in 2008. For readers of this column, good old Fred was about to be indicted. 

Below is my open letter to Governor Jerry Brown, requesting an investigation into the event and the replacement of the three Board members who are currently appointed: Bill Slaton, Ron Lind, and Dana Hollinger. If you would like to look at the transcript of proceedings I refer to in the letter, you can find it here. 

February 8, 2017

Governor Jerry Brown

c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173

Sacramento, CA 95814     

Via FAX and mail

Dear Governor Brown: 

As a third generation Californian, I have been a supporter of yours since your first term in office as Governor, further back than I would care to remember. You have been a pillar of California politics during most of my adult life, and I believe a positive one. These days, I view you as the lone grown-up in the California Democratic Party, fortunately for us, curbing the excesses of our assembly and senate to steer a rational course for the State. 

I am writing you as a retired state employee and beneficiary of CalPERS, regarding the inexplicably bizarre actions of all of the three appointed members of the CalPERS Board of Governors, in engaging in a scurrilous attempt to unseat an elected Board member, JJ Jelincic, for unspecified “breaches of confidentiality” regarding Board information. If somebody tried this stuff in the legislature, they’d be laughed out of the building. 

The main leader in this charge is your direct appointee, Bill Slaton, who I believe is clearly abrogating his fiduciary duties in favor of a witch hunt on the one CalPERS Board member who has been willing to speak out in favor of transparency over the last few years. 

In short, Mr. Slaton has utilized his position to lead a charge, in secret, to sanction a fellow Board member and force him to resign, “or else.” This event took place at an offsite retreat in Monterey which was not videotaped as regular Board meetings are. I attach for your review a copy of the seven page transcript of the discussion in question. 

Mr. Slaton proposes to ban Mr. Jelincic from “attending any closed sessions conducted by any committee or the full board”. The allegedly egregious conduct which would warrant this unprecedented and arguably unlawful action is nowhere specified in the discussion by Mr. Slaton, as you can see from the transcript. 

Directly thereafter, Ron Lind, the joint appointee from the legislature (Senate and Assembly), slides in to support his buddy, and another of your direct appointees, Dana Hollinger, wants “a trial.” 

Presided over by Rob Feckner, the 13-term President, the transcript reveals a fairly well choreographed, in private attack on Mr. Jelincic, who is actually elected to his position.   

So, out of the thirteen members of CalPERS Board, all three of the appointed members basically conspire with the President to take out an elected Board member. I don’t get it. This kind of ‘in my briefcase I have the goods, but I won’t show them to you’ behavior smacks of the days of the House Unamerican Activities Committee. 

As virtually all of my law enforcement friends are fond of saying, ‘if they aren’t doing something wrong, why are they afraid to make everything public”?” 

Even more preposterous, the basis of Mr. Slaton’s attack is that somehow Mr. Jelincic is breaching his “fiduciary duty” in these unnamed disclosures. Evidently Mr. Slaton forgot that the fiduciary duty of the CalPERS Board is to the beneficiaries of the system rather than some kind of smarmy internal politics of the Board itself. Of course, having hired a sleazebag Florida lawyer who wasn’t even licensed in California as the Board’s outside fiduciary counsel, what can we expect? 

If this letter sounds like a rant, I apologize. I know that as Governor you have your hands more than full with the legislature & the budget, and don’t have much time to pay attention to CalPERS. You do, however, have a staff, and I would strenuously urge you to have them look into this matter. This issue directly affects the economic security of us, the beneficiaries. CalPERS is playing around with some $300 billion dollars and some 1.6 million Californians’ pension money, including yours truly, and the Board should not be playing children’s games. 

As you know, public pensions in general, and CalPERS in particular, are under unremitting attack by those who would like to privatize or fundamentally diminish defined benefit plans. Trying to muzzle an elected Board member whose only crime lies in openness and transparency, just gives the fund’s opponents ammunition. The Board needs reminding that theirs is not a private club that can hold secret meetings and do as they will. 

In the event that you determine that the substance of my allegations is true as to what took place, I would urge you to directly remove and replace Bill Slaton, and direct someone to have a chat with Dana Hollinger and Ron Lind. Unlike the elected Board members, you clearly have the authority to do this for appointees. 

Perhaps Mr. Slaton’s talents would be better utilized in playing with community banks and the internal operations of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, instead of the CalPERS Board of Directors. 

Sincerely,

Tony Butka

State Mediation & Conciliation Service (Ret.)

(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.

GUEST COMMENTARY--As it turns out, Los Angeles’s new love for sports does not end with acquiring the Rams and Chargers to play football.

Los Angeles has its sights set on a bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, and is in competition with Budapest, California and Paris. It has a solid chance – an Eiffel tower backdrop pales in comparison to one of our city’s smog-blurred sunsets. 

While the prospects of international superstars roaming Westwood is exciting, it is worth noting that Los Angeles was not the first choice of the United States Olympic Committee to put forth an American Olympic bid. Boston was the committee‘s first pick, but the city withdrew its bid due to worry from its citizens after concerns arose about the financial repercussions. Students at UCLA and residents of Los Angeles should be worried about expenses, too.

If the International Olympic Committee demands newer facilities and improvements, the city should withdraw its bid. The debts the event could incur are not worth it and could impede city projects for years to come. Montreal took 30 years to pay off the debt incurred by their 1976 Olympics.

It seems readily apparent that Los Angeles is a logical host for the games, with a bustling city center full of infrastructure and experience handling star-studded events. From demonstrations like the Women’s March to red carpet award shows, the city has demonstrated it can easily work with crowds.

“We know how to do this, nobody is taking a chance that Los Angeles will blow this,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, UCLA alumnus and long-time Los Angeles councilman and city politician. Yaroslavsky has experience with the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, which is still famous for its financial success.

The 1984 Olympics went as smoothly as any other Olympics – something that comes rarely – due to the use of existing facilities and private money. Many modern Olympics, like the ones held in Sochi, Russia in 2014 and Rio de Janeiro in 2016, have indebted their respective cities.

While the citizens of Los Angeles voted to amend the city charter to prevent public spending on the games, the charter has since expired, according to Yaroslavsky.

It appears things are lining up differently for this Olympic bid. In addition to the charter’s expiration, Los Angeles is competing with two impressive cities. If the city does host the Olympics, city officials might not be able to cut as many expensive corners.

This Olympic bid has one important similarity with that of 1984: Los Angeles was not the first pick in 1984. In fact, the city was awarded the host of the 1984 Olympics by default when Tehran, Iran, the only other city in contention, withdrew its bid. This allowed Los Angeles to negotiate with the Olympic committee over terms of hosting the Olympics on even ground, without trying to outdo and outspend competing cities.

With Paris and Budapest also trying to hold the 2024 games, Los Angeles will not be able to have the same bargaining power it did in negotiations for the 1984 Olympics.

The competition for hosting privileges is one of the major drivers of expenses in the Olympics, with some hosts willing to spend millions or even billions to build and update facilities to the newest and most ostentatious configuration possible. Los Angeles does not need to do that; the city has numerous stadiums and arenas, from the Staples Center to our own Pauley Pavilion.

There are stadiums as big as the Coliseum, which can hold over 90,000 people, and can handle the enormous crowds. In comparison, Rio de Janeiro’s own Estadio Olimpico, where track and field events for the 2016 Olympics were held, can only contain 60,000 people.

In 1984, there was not even an Olympic village, with the city instead opting to house athletes in dorms at USC, UCLA, and even UC Santa Barbara. The plan for 2024 is to use UCLA dorms. If the IOC does not accept using existing facilities, the city needs to withdraw rather than plan a more expensive bid. 

The IOC might not be okay with collegiate “villages” when other competitors are offering the beautiful-but-costly facilities and villages associated with the Olympics. Los Angeles could host the Olympics cheaply and effectively, but if that is not what the IOC wants, the city needs to withdraw rather than make more costly plans.

For the city council and politicians though, hosting the Olympics is an impressive opportunity to host something memorable and prestigious. If it is not economically viable, are they willing to walk away?

(Stuart Key blogs at the Daily Bruin … where this perspective was first posted.)

-cw

VENICE VOX-We are a contingent of Venetian neighbors, business people, property and home owners, renters, political representatives and social activists, as well as constituents of the disenfranchised who up to now have had no united voice. 

The existence of Publius owes itself to one common cause: our vehement opposition to the candidacy of Mark Ryavec (photo above) for the 11th District seat on the LA City Council. 

There are countless reasons to reject Ryavec: restraining orders for stalking; numerous landlord and rental violations; abhorrent ad hominem attacks on anyone disagreeing with his extreme, controverted views; fostering fake health scares throughout Venice; various instances of vicious cyber-bullying; and always, criminalizing those suffering from lack of shelter (Apparently, Ryavec’s privileged upbringing and subsequent inheritance left him devoid of empathy for those less fortunate than he.)

While the Beachhead cartoon of Ryavec as an SS Commandant overseeing the homeless as they enter the gas chambers is admittedly risky satire, it nonetheless accurately encapsulates the lack of feeling Ryavec displays towards those in most need of society’s alms. In Ryavec’s eyes, however, the powerless and marginalized, “can do anything they want with impunity,” leading to his dystopian vision of a Venice where streets are currently choked with “hundreds of individuals” immersed in “harassment, intimidation, trespass, vandalism, home invasions and burglaries.” Venetian Carnage -- to coin a phrase. 

This deprecating, sordid and false impression is antithetical to the views and sensibilities of Publius. While our community has many problems, Venice is not a war zone teeming with violence-prone indigents running roughshod throughout the neighborhoods sans restraint. Ryavec’s toxic vision is simply a scare tactic – prejudicial, hyperbolic, alarmist images are Ryavec’s political bread-and-butter.

This is a primary reason we oppose Mark Ryavec for city council: governing implies bringing residents and neighborhoods together for the common good. Ryavec’s recurrent motive, on the other hand, is always singular and specific: what will best profit Mark Ryavec? His unscrupulous, self-centric purposes make him dangerous; this also explains his unrelenting willingness to stoop as low as possible in furthering his rapacious desire for power and advancement. 

Overtly obtuse about facts and objective reality, Ryavec nonetheless weaves a fine figure -- sometimes in interviews or in person -- that only makes him more dangerous! He’s an educated man who comes off calm and rational and always articulate in his harsh abasement of his enemies and the disenfranchised. Heck, he often makes it sound like he’s concerned for the souls he actually despises. 

Sullen and morose by nature, Ryavec’s peevish disdain for humanity at large reveals itself once you listen carefully. Just lift the rock and look under it. Scrape off the prosaic patina and you will see past the faux grin that is rounded by a caterpillar moustache. This is when you will witness Ryavec’s rabid, petty intolerance for the unhoused, his vitriolic belittling of his many enemies, his vulgar political tactics and the promiscuous power he craves for his own self-aggrandizement.

Publius does not want Ryavec to receive more attention than he is due. We don’t want to give his deluded, self-serving candidacy any more ink than it deserves. But for the welfare and interests of our Eleventh District, we respectfully ask the voters in our community to vigorously reject this most undeserving of candidates.

Ryavec’s constant verbal dreck -- where fungible facts masquerade as concern for the community -- is a political Siren Song. Only deluded faith or willful ignorance could elect such a person to the city council. While serving his moneyed masters, Ryavec may cause the trains run on time, but make no mistake: his epicurean tastes too closely match the whiff of Weimar wafting from Washington. We must not ignore the fatal cancer of this candidacy for city council. 

A final note. Since Ryavec serves as a mouthpiece for the secret cabal of wealthy residents calling themselves the Venice Stakeholders Association (answerable to no one,) we have this to say: when the VSA reveals the names of its membership, we will make known the names of the many residents, business people, activists and other constituents who make up Publius.

Until then, the election of Mark Ryavec would be a disaster for the 11th District. We urge you to VOTE NO and stop his cynical run for the Los Angeles City Council.

(Publius is a group of Venetian neighbors, business people, property and home owners, renters, political representatives and social activists, as well as constituents of the disenfranchised who up to now have had no united voice.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

STICKING IT TO THE PEOPLE- In 1984, George Orwell called the government’s propaganda division the “Ministry of Truth” but the names “Ethics Commission” or “Public Integrity Division” would have worked just as well. Los Angeles’ two agencies by those names are tasked with holding government officials accountable for violations of the law, and both do just the opposite. By necessity, there are occasional slaps on the wrist of some higher-ups, but the idea that the Commission or DA would ever take someone with power to task over something substantive? It’s inconceivable. 

But for the rest of the public, for those without power, there’s plenty of enforcement to go around. 

In Los Angeles today, if you put up a shed in your backyard to make room for a relative, and your neighbor turns you in, and a Department of Building and Safety inspector comes out, you will have to pay a Code Violation Inspection Fee [CVIF] of $356, which must be paid when you have been issued an Order to Comply.  Late penalties combined with the original CVIF will total more than $1,246. A Non‐Compliance Fee (NCF) of $660 may be assessed if you fail to comply with the order, or don’t get an extension, within 15 days.  

The penalty for paying late is $2,310. An Investigation Fee (IF) is collected when a permit is required to comply with the Code. You will pay double the permit fee, but never less than $400.00.  A Modification Fee (MF) is paid if you need extra time to correct the violation(s). The Cost is $343.44 but varies and must be paid in person. Failure to pay any of these assessed fees may result in the department placing a credit-ruining lien on your property. All of the above comes to at least $5000 plus the possibility of the lien, which if inflicted, will ruin your credit. 

And who decides whether that lien gets inflicted? A judge? A jury? No, your City Councilmember, precisely the person who should be standing by your side, not sitting in judgment over you. The City Council. The Ministry of the People.

1984! Alive and happening … at Los Angeles City Hall.

(Eric Preven and Joshua Preven are public advocates for better transparency in local government. Eric is a Studio City based writer-producer and a candidate for Los Angeles mayor. Joshua is a teacher.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CORRUPTION WATCH-While everyone talks about Measure S in terms of planning, the reality is that Measure S is less about development and planning and writing EIRs than it is about something else: Measure S is about stopping corruption at LA City Hall. 

How Corruption Runs LA City Hall 

The Los Angeles Times has run a few recent articles about corruption at Los Angeles City Hall. This corruption works very simply. 

(1) A developer buys a piece of land on which he wants to build a large project. 

(2) The developer pays money to the Mayor and the councilmember where the project will be located. 

(3) The Mayor and city councilman override all the laws that say the Project is illegal. 

(4) Later, the Mayor and city council usually give the developer millions of tax dollars which can be 10 to 20 times greater than the bribes. 

As the LA Times wrote, developer Samuel Leung gave Garcetti’s “charity,” $60,000 and Garcetti lessened the number of votes necessary for Leung’s project to be approved. Leung also gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the councilmembers. The zoning obstacles disappeared. 

As the LA Times wrote, developer Rick Caruso gave Garcetti’s “charity,” $125,000 and his project got the desired approvals. 

The CIM Group’s project at 5929 Sunset shows the later stages of the corruption dance. The City then gives the developer millions of dollars. As CityWatch  showed, Garcetti gave $17.4 million to a project which violated a court order. 

The many ways to pay bribes exceed the scope of this article. Years ago the bribes seemed smaller. Developers would get employees and relatives to make campaign contributions to the mayors and councilmembers and then the contributors would be paid back by the developer. Try to prove that Larry Bond’s gift to his sister was not a birthday present as opposed to repaying her for her donation to Tom LaBonge? 

Some councilmembers had consulting jobs in foreign countries which they would visit every so often. We know about Swiss banking laws, but few people know that Luxembourg is the money laundering capital of Europe. Many councilmembers and superior court judges are very friendly with Luxembourgers living in Los Angeles. 

A favor today can be paid back via “Citizens United” and no one gets to see who is paying the money. The Citizens United case serves one purpose – to facilitate political corruption. 

How the City Repays the Bribes 

The corruption does have an evil beauty about it. Many developers not only get their illegal projects unanimously approved (which is worth hundreds of millions to them,) but the City then gives them tens of millions of tax dollars. The private Grand Avenue Project in DTLA is getting $197 million from the City. In fact, the corruption is so well known, that China (who is also putting up $290 million,) refers to the Grand Ave project as a “government” project and therefore it cannot fail. 

How Measure S Stops Corruption 

No matter what means a developer uses to buy the Mayor or a city councilmember, there is only one way the Mayor and city council can confer benefits on the developer: Spot Zone his property. If Rick Caruso’s property is not Spot Zoned to what he needs, his project remains illegal. It doesn’t matter how much money he forks over to Garcetti, Koretz or any other councilmember in order to receive unanimous approval. Without the Spot Zoning, his project remains illegal. 

Because Measure S makes Spot Zoning illegal, there will be no reason for any developer to pay Garcetti one cent in bribes. Measure S prevents Garcetti and the councilmembers from doing jack for the developer. 

Gail Goldberg Tried to Stop Spot Zoning 

The corruption behind Spot Zoning is not new. In 2006, former Director of Planning Gail Goldberg tried to stop it. She told then Councilmember Eric Garcetti that allowing developers to set the zoning they wanted was bringing disaster to Los Angeles. Gail Goldberg is out of her job as Planning Director, but Spot Zoning is alive and well. 

Spot Zoning has wreaked havoc on LA because there is no planning. Garcetti and the LA City Council seem to have no regard for our Quality of Life. All that matters is how much loot they can pull in from developers. As a result, Los Angeles has fallen to the very bottom of the list of livable urban areas. The middle class is fleeing and employers are following them to other places in the country with less corruption. Even Chicago, the Windy City, has less corruption and is attracting new businesses. 

Any Candidate Who Opposes Measure S Supports Bribery 

Garcetti opposes Measure S because he supports bribery. And each councilmember who opposes Measure S also supports bribery. How do we know this? Measure S only stops projects based on Spot Zoning, and Spot Zoning rests on bribery. 

This is why the Garcetti Lie Machine is operating overtime to deceive people into believing that Measure S stops all construction. Garcetti does not want voters to understand that Measure S only stops projects based on the bribery for Spot Zoning. 

The Courts Have Found Garcetti Uses Lies and Myths to Subvert the Law 

In January 2014, Judge Allan Goodman found that Eric Garcetti’s Hollywood Community Plan Update was based on Lies and Myths which subverted the law. Speaking in moderate legalese terms, Judge Goodman used the words “fatally flawed data” and “wishful thinking.” In everyday language, that means Lies and Myths. Judge Goodman used the actual word “subvert” when he ruled that Garcetti’s Lies and Myths subverted the law (CEQA - the environmental protection statute.) 

City Hall is desperate to prevent the voters from passing Measure S because it would kill the bribery at Los Angeles City Hall at a time when Garcetti needs to gather up as much cash as possible to run for CA Governor or U.S. Senator. Not only will passage of Measure S cut off the endless bribery, it will harm Garcetti politically. As long as his extortion-bribery racket runs, he is the hero who shovels billions of dollars to his buddies. But if Measure S passes, Garcetti will become political poison. 

A Yes Vote on S stops City Hall Corruption!

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch. He is not connected with the Yes on Measure S campaign.)  Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

MALL CULTURE REVISITED-When regional shopping centers first appeared in the mid 1950s, they were considered by most Americans to be the wave of the future. As a radical new type of commercial land use, the shiny new malls with their up-to-date modernist architecture, free parking and good access roads were a refreshing contrast to the increasingly tired looking and deteriorating downtowns and main street business districts, which had little or no new construction during the Great Depression, World War II and the initial postwar years. The malls were immediately popular with consumers. They provided the convenience of having retail stores placed together in one location along an automobile free, internal mall “anchored” by at least two major department stores at either ends of the mall. And there was plenty of free parking. 

However, as the decades went by it became increasingly evident that there were undesirable side effects accompanying the widespread development of regional malls:

CBD Deterioration 

Most evident was the stagnation and deterioration of downtowns and main street business districts as customers and then retailers abandoned them for the new regional malls. When developers proposed the malls, most elected officials and planning officials saw them as progress, as forces for economic growth and additions to the local tax base. It occurred to very few officials that, because retail demand is fixed and based on demographics such as population, income levels and the purchasing patterns of different ethnic and racial groups, consumer demand that would be met by the regional malls would come from reduced retail sales in the existing downtowns and main street business districts. So increases in property tax and sales tax revenues from the new malls were at least partly offset by reductions in or a stagnation of property tax and sales tax revenues from the downtowns and the main street business districts. The only way to avoid business district stagnation and deterioration would be for the mall to be located in a city with a growing population and/or with increasing per capita incomes.   

As the downtowns and main streets deteriorated, local governments enacted programs to revitalize them. This resulted in the expenditure of tax dollars to subsidize redevelopment projects, dollars that could have been spent on other basic government services, such as maintaining streets, water mains, sewers and other infrastructure and providing more parks and open space. The only exception to this pattern of business district deterioration are the business districts in elite, upscale communities that have the purchasing power to both support their local business districts and patronize nearby regional malls.

The sharp contrast of shiny new malls and deteriorating business districts could have been avoided with better planning, by adopting a strategy for the location and form of retail development in a city. 

Industrial Land Removed 

Some regional malls, such as the Northridge Fashion Square and Topanga Plaza, are located on land zoned industrial, which otherwise would have been developed with light industrial and other similar uses that would add to a city’s economic base. Industrial zoned land was likely used for those malls because it was less expensive per square foot than commercially zoned land. And the Century City Mall is located on land that was formerly part of a movie studio and the city’s economic base. 

Incoherent Urban Form 

A more subtle, undesirable effect is the erosion of a coherent urban form. Prior to the end of World War II, cities in the United States had prominent downtowns and a series of pedestrian oriented, main street business districts and commercial intersections to serve the individual communities and neighborhoods that make up a city. Each community and neighborhood had a business district that was the center of a community or a neighborhood and was a major part of their identities.   

But, as the regional malls and other shopping centers overlayed this pattern, it became harder to identify community centers. Is the center of Sherman Oaks along a half mile of Ventura Boulevard or is it in the nearby Sherman Oaks Fashion Square mall? Is the center of North Hollywood along a quarter mile section of Lankershim Boulevard or is it in the ValleyPlaza/Laurel Plaza shopping centers near the intersection of Victory and Laurel Canyon Boulevards? Is the center of the Wilshire District in the Miracle Mile along Wilshire Boulevard or is it at the Beverly Center, Beverly Connection, and the Grove shopping centers seven blocks to the north?   

The following shopping centers are properly located within a larger, existing business district: the Seventh Street Marketplace, Hollywood/Highland, Century City, Westside Pavilion, Santa Monica Place, Crenshaw Mall, Promenade Mall, Sherman Oaks Galleria and the Panorama City Mall. The following malls are not located within an existing business district and draw retail sales away from other nearby businesses: The Beverly Center, the Grove, Westfield Mall in Culver City, Fallbrook Square, Topanga Plaza (on the outer edge of Warner Center), Sherman Oaks Fashion Square and Valley Plaza/Laurel Plaza.

Random Locations 

The regional malls are often randomly located, wherever a developer can find large tract of land zoned either commercial or industrial, which also permits commercial development. They were also not evenly distributed throughout Los Angeles. For example, the Promenade, Topanga Plaza and Fallbrook Square shopping centers are clustered together in Woodland Hills on the west side of the San Fernando Valley. Meanwhile, there are no regional malls to the east in Reseda.   

Location by Income Levels 

The regional malls, of course, are not evenly located with regards to income levels in a city. Rather, they are placed in the affluent and middle income sections of a city where there is substantial retail demand. It is no surprise then that there are no malls in poor communities. An example of this is the west side of the Los Angeles. Six regional malls serve it, while less affluent central Los Angeles has only three; the Seventh Street Marketplace downtown, Hollywood/Highland and the Crenshaw Mall. 

And none of the three can really be considered inner city shopping malls because the Seventh Street Marketplace gets a substantial portion of its sales from more affluent customers working downtown and Hollywood/Highland derives some of its sales from tourists and is near the west side of Los Angeles and Hancock Park. Finally, Crenshaw Plaza is near Baldwin Hills, with its higher incomes. 

Incomplete Centers 

While the regional malls are designated “regional centers” on the City of Los Angeles’ community plans, most lack the wide range of commercial and non-commercial uses found in traditional downtowns, such as office buildings, hotels, institutional uses and government buildings. At best, they are only half of a center, lacking the rich mix and diversity of uses in a traditional downtown. This has contributed to the monotony and dullness of suburban communities, where most of the malls are located. If one has seen one suburban regional shopping center, one has seen them all. 

No Pedestrian Orientation 

A clear defect of almost all of the shopping malls is their lack of a pedestrian orientation to the surrounding streets, such as The Grove which faces inward to a lively private pedestrian street. Nearly all of LA’s shopping centers face inward to their interior malls. Most are surrounded by a sea of surface parking and the urban malls have either blank walls or parking structures facing the surrounding streets. 

While the retail buildings in the Grove Shopping Center in the Wilshire district have picturesque architecture, the center has the typical pattern with blank walls facing Third Street and a massive parking structure looming over and facing the adjacent Pan Pacific Park. Rather than just facing inward, stores in a shopping center should also face the street in order to “activate” the street, to make it interesting for pedestrians to encourage pedestrian activity. The new urbanist movement in planning and architecture, which favors downtowns and traditional, pedestrian oriented main street business districts, has been critical of shopping centers due to their lack of orientation to the surrounding streets. 

Traffic 

A final undesirable impact is traffic. Because most shoppers arrive in their cars, regional shopping centers are major traffic draws, creating localized congestion and the need for street widenings as part of their construction. Connecting the malls to Los Angeles’ expanding rail transit system would reduce the amount of traffic congestion. However, less than half of the existing malls will eventually be served by the rail transit lines. They are the Seventh Street Marketplace downtown, Hollywood/Highland, Century City Shopping Center, Santa Monica Place, Crenshaw Mall, the Panorama City Mall and the Promenade Mall in Warner Center. 

The malls that will not have rail transit connections are the Beverly Center, the Grove and Fallbrook Square, Topanga Plaza, Northridge Fashion Square, Sherman Oaks Fashion Square and Valley Plaza/Laurel Plaza in the San Fernando Valley. The Sherman Oaks Galleria, the Westside Pavilion and the Westfield Plaza in Culver City may or may not have a transit connection depending on the route of the subway line between Van Nuys and Westwood that will eventually be built under the Santa Monica Mountains and later extended south to LAX.

Planning Non-Policies 

Despite their major impacts, there are no policies and regulations concerning the location and design of regional shopping centers in LA’s General Plan and in the zoning regulations of the City of Los Angeles. For these planning documents, regional malls do not exist. If a regional shopping center meets all the requirements of the commercial or industrial zoning for a site, then they are deemed to be ministerial projects that need only a building permit for approval. If they do require zone changes, zone variances or conditional use permits, then the final decision on whether to approve a new shopping center is not made by the Planning Department staff or by the Planning Commission. 

Instead the councilmember representing the area in which the mall is to be located makes the decision. These politicians and their deputies usually have no background in city planning, and they will almost always approve new malls within their district due to the promise of more jobs and property and sales tax revenues. The new malls get approved regardless of whether they fit in with surrounding development, whether they have a pedestrian orientation and despite their economic impacts on nearby business districts.

For many decades, market forces rather than sound planning principles have mostly determined the patterns of land use, density and height in Los Angeles. The development community, rather than the Planning Department staff, has done most of the planning in Los Angeles and in most other cities, with most elected officials ratifying decisions made by the developers. 

If approved, Proposition S on the March, 2017 ballot will curb the spot upzones and General Plan amendments which have been used to approve some of the regional malls and expansions of existing malls. 

Policies Needed 

Rather than prohibit regional shopping centers as a land use, policies and regulations on the design and location of new or expanded regional malls are needed in order to improve the quality of the built environment in Los Angeles and avoid their harmful impacts. If the City Council were to finally enact policies and regulations for regional shopping centers, they should have these provisions: 

1. Regional shopping centers should be located within existing business districts, to strengthen      them, rather than draw retail business away from them. The only exceptions to this policy should be for planned communities built on vacant lands that to not have an existing business district and poor communities not served by any existing regional malls. 

In order for a regional mall to be approved, an economic impact study should be prepared with a study verifying that there is unmet retail demand that the mall would satisfy and that the mall would not have an adverse economic impact on existing business districts within a three mile radius.  

2. Regional shopping centers should not be located on tracts of land zoned and planned for industrial development, in order to preserve the City’s economic base and because vacancy rates for industrial buildings are lower than those for commercial land uses. 

Regional shopping centers should be designed so that there are stores facing existing commercial streets next to the mall in order so those streets will have a pedestrian orientation. 

3. So that they are in scale with their surroundings, the height of urban malls should not substantially exceed the height of surrounding commercial buildings. 

4. The exteriors of the regional centers should have detailing, articulation and façade variations so they are not dull looking, modernist boxes. 

5. Parking structures serving urban malls should have exterior facades matching the main buildings they serve, so that the structure does not look like a parking structure and the parked cars are not visible from the outside. An example of a parking structure not having exterior facades and appearing very functional is the structure for The Grove. 

6. Bright digital signs should not be permitted on the exterior facades of shopping centers. 

7. Overhead utilities along the streets surrounding a new shopping center should be placed  underground. 

8. Trees and landscaping within the shopping center should be coordinated and compatible with trees and landscaping along surrounding streets. 

Because the regional malls are under unified ownership and thus are easier to manage, they are more likely to be redeveloped and expanded every 20 to 30 years. Policies and regulations are also needed to address existing malls proposed for expansion. Those policies should be:

1. Stand-alone malls that are not located within an existing business district should not be permitted to expand.   

2. Stand-alone malls should be encouraged to redevelop with non-commercial uses or mixed use town centers when they reach the end of their economic lives. Such non-commercial uses should be residential or industrial. 

Endangered Malls 

With the era of regional shopping centers now over 60 years old, the malls that competed so successfully with the downtowns and the main street business districts are now themselves facing competition from big box retail stores, factory outlet centers, E-commerce, and other newer malls. With more retail sales now occurring online, there is less need for retail space in the United States. 

Even with unified ownership and management, there are some malls in Los Angeles and other cities in the United States that have declined and lost customers and tenants. Increasingly, “dead” malls are being redeveloped with mixed use, pedestrian oriented town centers favored by new urbanism. In addition, declines in income levels in sections of some cities also mean that the regional malls serving them have had to be redeveloped, with upscale department stores being replaced with discount stores, as with the Panorama City Shopping Center. 

With the changes in the retail environment that the regional malls are facing, the continued success of regional shopping centers in the United States is uncertain and regional malls may increasingly be the wave of the past.

(John Issakson is a planning activist living in Los Angeles.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

WHAT THE RESISTANCE LOOK’S LIKE-- More than 120 companies have joined a legal brief rebuking President Donald Trump and his executive order barring refugees and immigrants from Muslim-majority countries from entering the country, Reuters reports. Among those companies are some of America’s biggest players  --

 California’s Apple, Google, and Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX -- who argued in an amicus curiae brief that the Trump administration’s ban “inflicts significant harm on American business.” 

According to Reuters, the brief continued: 

Highly skilled immigrants will be more interested in working abroad, in places where they and their colleagues can travel freely and with assurance that their immigration status will not suddenly be revoked. Multinational companies will have strong incentives … to base operations outside the United States or to move or hire employees and make investments abroad. 

So much for Trump’s technology summit last December. The tech sector wants reform, and it’s willing to flex its muscle to get it. 

And those tech executives aren’t wrong. Restrictions on worker visas like the H1-B program would deprive American tech companies of essential talent. While computer-related jobs are the largest source of new wages in the country (per Code.org), American colleges barely graduate enough skilled workers to tackle the more than 50,000 computing jobs currently open; about 70 percent of tech jobs may go unfilled in 2020, according to the Department of Labor. 

Beyond tech workers, Trump’s travel order has prohibited hundreds of brilliant scientists and academics and nearly 16,000 university students from re-entering the country. Seven founders and CEOs of the tech sector’s most successful companies are the children of immigrants; Trump’s executive order could create a brain drain that the ever-innovative Silicon Valley obviously doesn’t need. 

It would not be churlish to regard tech companies’ benevolence with suspicion. The brief includes Uber, whose CEO Travis Kalanick was a member of Trump’s business advisory council until last week, and his ride-sharing app hemorrhaged users after breaking a New York Taxi Workers Alliance work stoppage at the city’s John F. Kennedy International Airport in protest of Trump’s travel ban. It’s worth noting that Lyft, which enjoyed a corresponding boost in users as a result, is also a signatory -- and a beneficiary of Trump adviser Peter Thiel’s timely investment.  

Tech companies are, at their core, capitalistic enterprises: If business interests happen to overlap with human interests, that’s a happy coincidence that can help a company’s bottom line. This fact is very clear to liberal critics of major corporations, but it’s often lost when the political agenda coincides with left-wing justice. That was certainly the case when corporations boycotted North Carolina businesses last year as a response to the state’s anti-LGBT “religious freedom” legislation. As I asked then: Is it hypocritical for liberals to rail against money-in-politics measures like Citizens United and corporate lobbyists while lauding tech conglomerates for effectively strong-arming elected officials with their economic clout? 

In the case of the Trump order, the will of a corporation isn’t just the will of an executive board with fiduciary responsibilities -- it’s actually the will of people too. That’s according to reporting in the New York Times on Monday that detailed how organizers and activists like the group Tech Solidarity are pushing back on corporate management from within, holding executives accountable for their dealings with the Trump administration and, occasionally, staging internal protests of their own companies. “I want pressure from below to counterbalance the pressure management is already feeling from above,” organizer Maciej Ceglowski told the Times. “We have to make sure we’re pushing at least as hard as Trump is.” 

In the aftermath of the Women’s March on Washington, Jamelle Bouie made a curious observation: Protests actually do work, if only by force of sheer annoyance. This notion that a little complaint, no matter how small, can mushroom into a massive moment on social media has transformed corporate crisis communications in recent years, and these recent events only serve to reiterate how a focused jeremiad of dissent can change the course of those old, impenetrable institutions. 

Conservatives have been using corporate power for years to raise money and reinforce ideological battle lines. And while tech companies and their figurehead billionaires have a history of aiding liberal causes, the mobilization of corporate power from the worker up could be a game-changer. Should the tech industry’s response to Trump’s travel ban solider on as a genuine movement, corporate activism may become a new province of resistance in the Trump age.

(Jared Keller, Writer for Hire, is contributing editor at Pacific Standard where this piece first appeared.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

STAND FOR SOMETHING--It’s hard to believe just two weeks ago, three-quarters of a million women, men and children gathered in LA’s Pershing Square to raise our collective voices to send a bold message to the incoming administration. Worldwide, estimates place the number who marched at just under 5 million. The mission and vision of the marches in DC, LA, cities and towns all over the planet, were to “stand in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families – recognizing our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country.” (Photo above: Eleanor Roosevelt. ‘Pussy Hat’ provided by a marcher.)

Many who marched are new to activism, frightened by the rhetoric on the campaign trail and by President Trump’s Twitter rampages. Now that this ground swell of activism and empowerment has been released, what next?

All over Los Angeles – as well as in cities, suburbs, and towns throughout the country and the world – newly minted and experienced activists are planning and participating in “Next Up Huddles,” part of the “10 Actions for the First 100 Days” campaign that was launched at the Women’s March. These groups gather in private homes, at neighborhood bars and restaurants, in parks with the goal of mobilizing millions to “win back the country and the world we want.”

According to the website, groups will “visualize what a more equitable, just, safer, and freer world could look like four years from now— and work backwards to figure out what to do to get there. Huddles are meant to be positive, inclusive, action-oriented and grounded in the tradition of nonviolent resistance.”

Resistance is most effective when organized with specific actions, which is the intent of the Next Up Huddles, gathering Angelenos throughout the city, from downtown to the Westside, from Long Beach to the Valley.

In addition to in-person gatherings, many women throughout Los Angeles have been tapping into social media and texting to spread action lists along with contact information for Senators Feinstein and Harris, as well as congressional representatives to voice opinions about cabinet confirmations and executive orders.

Before November 8, I wrote my column about the election as a referendum for women. As the electoral map unrolled on election evening, many of us were disappointed. In the end, perhaps we have a different type of referendum – showing that women can gather together to make a difference.

To find a Next Up Huddle near you, visit WomensMarch.com.

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

-cw

THERE’S MORE TO IMMIGRATION THAN LAWS-In late 2012, I got a call from a church member. “Seth, Harry’s picking his daughter up from school? Is Sanctuary over?” he asked me. It wasn’t, and Harry -- an undocumented Indonesian immigrant we were sheltering in our church -- wasn’t supposed to be out and about. 

In conversations with the media and our neighbors we had claimed, over and over, that the men we were protecting stayed put inside the walls of the church. It didn’t look good, my parishioner reminded me, for Harry to be walking around our tiny borough of Highland Park, New Jersey, the kind of place where the townsfolk know one another and can spot an outsider on sight. I knew he was right, but I also knew that from Harry’s point of view, picking up his daughter must have outweighed safety that day. I’d rather have bad optics than kill Harry’s soul, I told the church member. 

We had been experiencing many of these uncomfortable moments. For 11 months -- from the beginning of March in 2012, until mid-February in 2013 -- my congregation, the Reformed Church of Highland Park, offered sanctuary to nine Indonesians at risk of deportation. We offered it to keep families together and to keep the government from ruining lives and community, and because of our faith commitment to siding with the oppressed. 

But we learned that while our sanctuary offered freedom from persecution and deportation, it was also a kind of jail. We were locking up free people -- hindering the movement of men who had previously had at least the degree of “freedom” required to make a living, to cover the rent, pay for food, and otherwise contribute to their families’ well-being. They had the freedom to embrace -- and be embraced -- by their wives, to soothe their children, to be comforted by the feeling of family and community. Our friends might have been safe, but they were trapped, dependent on us for pretty much all of their material and emotional needs. Sanctuary turned out to be a perfect storm for depression and despair. 

The refugees’ stories were tragic. Indonesians of Chinese descent, including many Christians, had first fled to the U.S. during the 1990s, targeted as scapegoats during the collapse of the Suharto regime. Saul, who was the first Indonesian refugee we sheltered, told us that his brother-in-law, a priest, was attacked in his own pulpit. Militants cut off his head and then torched his church. Saul’s story was not an anomaly. More than 1,000 churches in Jakarta and beyond were burned to the ground. 

Many people fled, and thousands entered the U.S. on tourist visas. At least 3,000 came to New Jersey, where they got factory jobs. It was the late ‘90s, companies needed low-wage workers, and nobody was asking for work permits. The refugees overstayed their visas, with few consequences. Most opted not to file for asylum, in some cases for fear of government reprisal, or for lack of the language skills perceived to be necessary to make a successful case. But also, some later told me, Indonesians were surrounded by many other undocumented workers from many other lands. It seemed to be the American norm. 

After 9/11, things changed, and by 2006, deportations were in full swing. The first people targeted were often the upstanding ones who had tried to work together with immigration authorities. One night in May of that year, in a town near mine, 35 Indonesian men were rounded up in a predawn raid. None were criminals. Almost all were fathers, with undocumented wives and some combination of older Indonesian and younger American children. We watched in horror as the men were all deported within a month. That was when our church vowed not to let the government abuse immigrant families anymore. 

At first we took things slow, engaging in what I call “sanctuary behavior,” all within the law. After the raid, we invited the families of those who were taken -- and who had fled their homes for fear that they, too, would be deported -- to camp out at the church until they found new housing. We collaborated with immigration advocacy groups and supported pro-immigrant legislation. We visited detention centers, and held vigils. We forged a special relationship with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Newark that lasted for 11 months and brought temporary protection to many people. 

It was only after that relationship broke down and agents started again coming -- this time for Saul and others -- that we began to wonder if it was time to take more drastic action. Our church board prayerfully and methodically considered the implications of going against the government. Ultimately we decided that the only way to help these men that would be truly useful, that might provide some protection from deportation, would be to lock them in the church. 

Saul came first. In a few weeks, the others followed. By April we had transformed almost every Sunday School room into a bedroom, setting up futons that could be folded up during the day, so classes could still take place. At first, the sanctuary-seekers bathed in a kiddie pool; after a month, we installed two showers. We set aside a special section of the church kitchen for “sanctuary tenants.” Area churches brought food. One congregation donated a badminton net, which was put to frequent and appreciative use. 

Our close-knit community rallied to the Indonesians’ aid. We worked to lift the men’s spirits, with games and hymn sings, and hosted dinners for their families on the weekend. Doctors provided free medical clinics. We kept watch for undercover ICE agents, who patrolled in unmarked cars, scouting for “fugitive refugees.” When a town manager expressed concerns about the church not being zoned for housing, we assembled a cadre of volunteers to stand sentry and conduct a daily “fire walk” to ensure everyone’s safety. 

Sanctuary is beautiful, but messy. The narrative is written through real human lives. Those sheltered must have a voice, and the possibility to rewrite the narrative in ways that protect their hearts, minds and souls. 

There were interviews: with CNN, with the New York Daily News, and with The New York Times. People were noticing what we were doing. It was exhilarating, for the Indonesians and for us. The media attention, the ICE sightings, the local support (and anger): all of it felt like important elements in the fight for justice. 

But before long, the reality of what we were doing set in. Our guests were trapped, mere steps down the road from where their children played Little League and went to school -- because of ICE, which would pick them up if they left, and because of us. I was putting myself and the church on the line, and they loved and respected us for it. They felt obligated to abide by sanctuary at its strictest definition, but, over time, the accumulated emotional weight of being shut off from free life was too much to take. People like Harry (photos above) began to slip out to see their families. 

Sanctuary proved psychologically draining for us, too. The hardest part was that there was no obvious end in sight. I felt very guilty about this, and struggled with extreme fatigue (I was also trying to keep up with my church responsibilities). When the men started to leave the premises, I had to unlearn sanctuary a bit. This could only work, I began to realize, if these men could escape from time to time to their true sanctuaries -- their homes and wives and children. I had to learn to accept a possible accusation of fraud, as I publicly staked my reputation and the reputation of my congregation on the sanctity of physical sanctuary while privately knowing that those in my care were buckling under the rigidity of the claim. 

As time dragged on we found ourselves not only supporting the men but also providing major rental assistance to their families, who were on the verge of losing their housing. One church couple renewed their vows to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary and raised $5,000 to help with rent. That got us through a particularly difficult month. In all, we put at least $15,000 toward rental assistance. 

I struggled to take things one day at a time. To be honest, it was way too scary to look into the horizon and not be sure how this would all end. In the end, I finally got through to Gary Mead, the head of Enforcement and Removal Operations for ICE, in Washington. He heard us out and instructed the ERO director in Newark to offer Stays of Removal to the refugees in our church. Our dilemma ended. 

Now, nearly four years later, the Indonesians’ families are intact -- a relief and a blessing -- and life has returned to “normal.” Still, none have been granted citizenship. They would have benefited from Deferred Action for Parents of Americans, which never happened, or from other immigration reform efforts. I see them regularly. Some worship here. Some just stop by, to remember the blessings, and trials, of living here. 

In recent months, with talk of renewed deportations, increasing numbers of congregations, colleges, and municipalities have said they want to extend sanctuary to their undocumented neighbors. I hope they do—whether that means providing physical sanctuary or engaging in creative, combative, and sustained “sanctuary behavior” such as protesting, advocating with officials, or vigils of support. I hope that as communities make this choice they’ll remember that sanctuary is beautiful, but messy. The narrative is written through real human lives. Those sheltered must have a voice, and the possibility to rewrite the narrative in ways that protect their hearts, minds, and souls. 

And also, would-be sanctuary providers: Relish the moments of hope and possibility. Sanctuary can feel like jail sometimes, for those inside and for those offering protection. Thank God, for us, in the end, it felt like Shalom.

(Reverend Seth Kaper-Dale is pastor of the Reformed Church of Highland Park in Highland Park, New Jersey. He is running for governor of New Jersey on the Green Party ticket. This essay is part of a Zócalo Inquiry, Do Sanctuaries Really Bring Peace?  Photos courtesy of Reformed Church of Highland Park. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

HE DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH-President Trump gave his informed testimony this week that people were registered to vote and had voted in multiple states in this last election. It seems for once he knew what he was talking about.

As it turns out, members of Trump’s own family, Tiffany Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner are both registered to vote in two different states. The difference is that, unlike most of the rest of us, they are rich enough to jet set from state to state on Election Day, to vote in more than one state at once.

In fact, he is surrounded by such double registering fraudsters, including Steve Bannon, his radical alt right top adviser, Sean Spicer, his press secretary, and Steve Mnuchin, his mortgage document forger nominee for treasury secretary.

His big expert on voting fraud, Gregg Phillips -- who was Trump's source when he retweeted the lie that three million people had voted illegally -- is registered to vote in three, count them, three separate states.

So when Kellyanne Conway asked rhetorically what everyone is afraid of from an investigation of voting fraud, the most fearful would seem to be Trump himself.

In the meantime, the abuses of power continue to escalate. Sally Q. Yates was required to promise, by no less than Trump's now nominee for U.S. Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, she would be independent, as a condition of being approved for the position in the Justice Department. After approval, Acting Attorney General Yates was summarily canned for refusing to defend Trump's unconstitutional ban on Muslim immigrants.

It didn't work for Nixon, when he executed his Saturday Night Massacre, but then of course he had not already stacked the judiciary with pliable quislings.

This dramatically raises the stakes on all judicial appointments going forward, especially the Supreme Court nominees. The Democrats have already vowed to filibuster anyone Trump nominates, justifiably presuming it will be someone from the far right.

We will thoughtfully hold our fire until the nomination is announced. There will be plenty of time for strong opposition, and we will no doubt oppose.

In particular we will require that whoever is nominated must forcefully and unequivocally repudiate both torture and the blanket discrimination against people based solely on their country of origin. We have no doubt that Trump is in the market for torture and prejudice-happy judges, who will do his authoritarian will. We may be seeing just the beginning of more decisions as bad as the Dred Scott case.

Let us remember that in Nazi Germany there were many judges without the basic integrity to resist Hitler's mounting crimes against humanity, who, to their eternal shame, went along with the will of the dictator. This was sold to them as a Christian theocracy too, you know.

It will not happen here because we held our tongues. 

In the meantime, please continue to protest the extreme ignorance of Trump's so-called extreme vetting.

(Michael N. Cohen is a former board member of the Reseda Neighborhood Council, founding member of the LADWP Neighborhood Council Oversight Committee, founding member of LA Clean Sweep and occasional contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

RIGHT WING POWER GRAB--President Donald Trump reportedly did not realize he was promoting chief strategist Steve Bannon to the National Security Council (NSC) Principals Committee when he signed the executive order dropping intelligence and defense officials from the top government panel and elevating the former Breitbart News chair in their place.

The New York Times reported over the weekend that Trump had not been fully briefed on his own executive order, which became "a greater source of frustration to the president" than the protests and legal actions over his travel ban blocking immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries.

Reporters Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman depicted an administration that's just barely keeping a lid on its internal crises, turf wars, and lack of preparation—and a scheming chief strategist that's successfully taken advantage of it all.

They wrote:

[White House chief of staff Reince] Priebus told Mr. Trump and Mr. Bannon that the administration needs to rethink its policy and communications operation in the wake of embarrassing revelations that key details of the orders were withheld from agencies, White House staff, and Republican congressional leaders like Speaker Paul D. Ryan.

Mr. Priebus has also created a 10-point checklist for the release of any new initiatives that includes signoff from the communications department and the White House staff secretary, Robert Porter, according to several aides familiar with the process.

Mr. Priebus bristles at the perception that he occupies a diminished perch in the West Wing pecking order compared with previous chiefs. But for the moment, Mr. Bannon remains the president's dominant adviser, despite Mr. Trump's anger that he was not fully briefed on details of the executive order he signed giving his chief strategist a seat on the National Security Council, a greater source of frustration to the president than the fallout from the travel ban.

Trump seemingly clarified on Twitter that he calls his own shots, "largely based on an accumulation of data, and everyone knows it." He also accused the Times of writing "total fiction" about him.

The executive order promoted Bannon, a white nationalist with no foreign policy or government experience, to a regular seat at some of the most sensitive meetings at the highest levels of government, along with other NSC meetings. Meanwhile, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—who need to be confirmed by the Senate—were directed to only attend meetings when discussions pertain to their "responsibilities and expertise."

The memo led to speculation that the right-wing power grab in the executive branch could be setting the stage for a coup d'état.

(Nadia Prupis writes for Common Dreams  … where this report was first posted.)

-cw

APLERN AT LARGE--In my last CityWatch article, I emphasized what the Measure S supporters are FOR.  A few key questions are in order for those opposing Measure S, particularly because those of us supporting the measure are virtually all volunteers, and virtually all opposing Measure S are getting PAID. 

PAID as in "Primarily Associated In Development", and who are getting either direct or indirect support from developers, either through their salary/job or the promise of new jobs if we continue our out-of-control development policies--er, I mean practices, because we HAVE no coherent policies with respect to Planning, despite it being illegal to not follow our City Charter and Bylaws. 

A few questions are in order for those who oppose Measure S--particularly for the benefit of Angelenos on the fence on this measure, and particularly aimed at those who recognize why the measure is being pushed but fear any "unintended consequences": 

1) How will you address the concerns and needs of those who have--either enthusiastically or with the resigned determination that we now have no choice to save our City--supported Measure S? 

2) Why is the recent "reform in financing City Hall campaigns" and "getting developer money out of politics" something we didn't see before Measure S, and are these talking points from City Hall to be believed at this time, and under these circumstances? 

3) Have more affordable housing and sustainable development been occurring under Mayor Garcetti and the City Council, or have these problems been sharply worsening under their "leadership"? 

4) If Measure S limits OVER-development, but allows legal development that could virtually double our supply of homes and apartments within five years, HOW does Measure S prevent sustainable development and affordable housing? 

5) Do our current development practices at Planning really favoring the average Angeleno, or just the wealthy and connected...and why are so many homeowners groups and affordable housing/homeless advocacy groups supporting Measure S? 

6) Are their enough parks and open space being created by our current development practices in Los Angeles? 

7) What's wrong with City staff, and not "hired guns" paid and influenced by contractors, performing legally-mandated EIR's to ensure their accuracy and impartiality? 

8) If we're to allow decreased parking for developers on certain products, how are we to protect these developments' neighbors from being impacted by cars parked on/next to their private properties, and how we will demand and ensure alternative legal and financial mitigations to secure the transportation/mobility/infrastructure of our City? 

9) How much of these projects are being approved for the financial betterment and welfare of overdevelopers, and why are City residents and neighborhood councils routinely ignored if not demeaned by our City Planning Department? 

10) How DO we prevent spot-zoning, and how DO we expedite the updating of our City Charter and Community Plans? 

Measure S remains supported by a growing number of volunteers and grassroots/non-profit groups who want an accountable and sustainable and environmentally-friendly City, and remains opposed by those getting PAID (Primarily Associated In Development). 

And those who oppose Measure S?  What are they FOR?  Do they want laws to even exist in City Planning and associated with our Community Plans? 

Beyond the platitudes by those opposing Measure S, what are THEIR ideas to ensure the rule of environmental law and rights of individuals living in the City of Los Angeles?   

And is continuing down our current path something we're OK with? 

Vote YES on Measure S on March 7th--a happier, healthier, and more representative City is closer than you think!

(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 is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at   [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.) 

-cw