LOS ANGELES

ABRAMS ANALYSIS—1. “It’s the economy, stupid.” Although Hillary ignored Bill’s central truth in American politics, “It’s the economy, Stupid,” Trump made it his raison d'être. Meanwhile, the economic follies of Obama-Geithner, which cost Hillary the White House, were wildly successful in Los Angeles. What are the implications of our overwhelmingly embracing Measures JJJ, HHH, and M?

• The Politics of Revenge. 

The Politics of Revenge arose because the American people had already suffered the economic follies of Obama-Geithner. While the “deplorables” lacked the sophistication to understand what had happened, they had a predatory buffoon to supply a host of bogus answers. “It’s the illegals. It’s ObamaCare. It’s crooked Hillary.” 

As a demagogue, Trump was brilliant since he took Obama’s Hope Campaign from 2008, dusted it off, proclaiming that he’d make America Great Again. “Hope” and “Make America Great” are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. In brief, Trump ran on the concept, “It’s the economy, Stupid,” while Hillary ran on, “Keep the status quo.” 

• Measures JJJ, HHH, Measure M Are More Obama-Geithner Economic Foolishness. 

The essence of Obama-Geithner’s economy policy was to let the working class go bankrupt while giving trillions of dollars to Wall Street. With Measures JJJ, HHH and M, Garcetti adopted the same destructive policies. He will continue the eradication of rent-controlled housing which continues to swell the ranks of the homeless, while diverting hundreds of billions of tax dollars to a handful of wealthy land owners and international construction companies. In other words, in Los Angeles the systematic transfer of wealth from the 99% to the 1% will continue unabated. 

• Measures JJJ, HHH and M Are Based Ignorance and Hubris. 

When any business or any society spends money, those expenses need to increase the overall wealth of that society or business. A major consideration is whether that business or city is incurring significant future liabilities that will gobble up all the benefits. Let’s look at the subway beneath the Sepulveda Pass. 

Leaving aside its construction costs, inherent in any subway or light rail system are never ending maintenance and operational (personnel) costs. When a business sells a product, it does not want to have to spend more money 5, 10, 20, 20 or 50 years from now as a result of that product. Once the bottle of ketchup is sold, Heinz wants to pocket the profit and never, ever spend another penny on that bottle. 

As of this writing, Takata, the manufacturer of the lethal air bags, is preparing to file for bankruptcy. Defective air bags, like defective mass transit, contain the poison pill of economic disaster. Subways and fixed rail systems, unlike products such as ketchup and air bags, are guaranteed to have horrendously huge ongoing liabilities which will mount as time passes. Thus, we could have averted the evil decree had we voted down JJJ, HHH and Measure M. 

• The Forces are Set in Motion and the Clock is Ticking. 

NYC runs an $8 billion deficit each year for its subway-light rail system despite its being the best run system in the nation. In addition, the NYC system grew logically from the nature of NYC’s century old housing pattern and immutable geography. Extraordinarily dense Manhattan, which is the only reason that the system functions, is only 2.5 miles wide with the Hudson River on one side and the East River on the other. That’s the width of Franklin Avenue to Santa Monica Boulevard. Density along the Hollywood-Sunset corridor, in order to reduce the subway deficit, will create a congestion barrier the length of Hollywood. As the nation’s largest circular urban area, it is mathematically impossible for LA to ever have a functional fixed-rail system. 

The bottom line is that a subway-fixed rail system will provide no long-term benefit to the Los Angeles economy, and its future deficits will swallow future city budgets, leaving Los Angeles broke. 

We could try Washington D.C.’s approach and not spend money on maintenance, which will result in the closure of the system. By the time that Angelenos realize that the maintenance and personnel costs exceed the City’s capacity to pay, it will not only have to close significant portions of the system, but it will still have to pay the overbearing Union pensions. While Angelenos are currently screaming that the City’s pension deficit is too high, they have just voted to increase the future deficit by tens of billions of dollars. 

We have not scratched the surface of the economic disaster that Angelenos have brought upon themselves with Measures JJJ, HHH and M. 

• Suppliers Do Not Set Demand. 

Garcetti’s own economic adviser, Christopher Thornberg of Beacon Economics, told Garcetti back in 2013 that he should stop trying to pick winners and looser in business. Garcetti ignored this sound advice. He is completely wedded to the notion that a centralized, politburo style planning agency can make better decisions than a regulated Supply and Demand economy. Garcetti is dedicated to eradicating rent-controlled housing and to dictating to poor people where they shall live. 

We saw this folly in the 1950s and 1960s with Cabrini-Green in Chicago and Pruit-Igoe and Joseph Darst Apartments in St. Louis. (Disclosure: the author lived in Joseph Darst Apartments in the 1960s.) While the great welfare state can shove around poor people as if they had no minds of their own, such hubris results in social degradation, more poverty and high crime. Poor families want to live in nice homes in safe neighborhoods with decent schools. Garcetti, like Chicago and St. Louis, mandates Black Lung Projects near freeways with terrible schools and high crime. 

We know that many poor people accept their fate, but we also know that the smarter and the more enterprising move away. Los Angeles is already experiencing the exodus of the educated, middle class Family Millennials. We also know that significant portions of the poorer Black and Mexican communities have already moved to the Inland Empire. 

Nationally, removing any significant numbers of the undocumented families will further harm the economy. In their haze of racist ignorance, the anti-immigrant yahoos fail to understand that if we could remove even 5% of the population as “illegal,” we will have removed 5% of the consumers. No matter why a consumer base falls, the economic impact is the same. A store that operates on a 5% or less profit margin becomes economically imperiled. It has to cut back its purchases by 5%, but a 5% cut back by retailers can devastate the wholesalers. That touches off a downward spiral, affecting everyone. 

• Population Decrease Results in The Reverse Multiplier Effect. 

Since the City of LA is experiencing the flight of the middle class with its small population increase coming only from the birth rate, LA will suffer from the harmful impacts of the Reverse Multiplier Effect. This threat will be temporarily disguised by increased spending on high rises and subways. However, the mass transit and high rises which will be built are the main factors causing the exodus from Los Angeles. Within a few years, Los Angeles will find that the temporary spending that buoyed the economy also created the conditions which trash our tax base – at the very time we will need a stronger tax base to pay all of our debts. Some people may feel good while incurring heavy debt to live lavishly in Las Vegas for a few weeks, but when they return to Woodland Hills and have no money to pay the mortgage or to keep their SUVs, they won’t be so happy. 

The short-term spending will benefit union workers, but at the same time, the added density will continue to drive the educated middle class away from the Los Angeles. Other workers who do not indirectly benefit from the construction will similarly look for parts of the nation which have more diversified economic bases. Garcetti seems to have selected high rise and mass transit construction to be Los Angeles’ salvation businesses. As shown above, a few years of this type of construction comes with unbearable taxes for maintenance and operations (union payments) in addition to our having to repay the hundreds of dollars we just spent passing JJJ, HHH and M. 

• Why Subways Benefit NYC but Harm LA. 

People ignore why the subway and light rail systems in NYC, Boston and Chicago reduce commute times. When the subways first came to NYC, walking or riding in a carriage were the main means of locomotion. Even today, the subways can be efficient compared to alternatives. No one may walk in LA, but no one drives themselves in Manhattan.

In Los Angeles, the subway or light rail are far slower for the citizens. The subway-light-rail stations are few and far between which means using them requires a significant walk. They are slow, especially the above ground light rail systems, which have to slow for so many street crossings. Generally, taking LA mass transit requires 170% more time than driving. 

Thus, the NYC subway makes people more productive than alternative modes of transportation, while using LA’s subway-light rail system makes people far less productive. In fact, the Urban Institute found that subways and buses do not reduce the poverty rate, but on the contrary, giving the poor cars does reduce the poverty rate. Cars are far superior due to their flexibility, and hence, poor people with cars can actually get to the exact places where the jobs are located. 

As noted in “Driving to Opportunity: Understanding the Links among Transportation Access, Residential Outcome,” published in March 2014 by Urban Institute (p ii), “Over time, households with automobiles experience less exposure to poverty and are less likely to return to high-poverty neighborhoods than those without car access.”

In other words, reliance on subways, fixed rail and buses in Los Angeles traps people into poverty, while owning a car allows them to drive away to better neighborhoods and jobs. A massive system of subways-and fixed-rail light lines will make Angelenos less productive and poorer, but in the meantime it will continue to shift the wealth from the 99% to the 1%.

(Part II will focus on the interplay between “corruptionism” and economic folly.)

(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.

PLATKIN ON PLANNING- The last time Los Angeles tackled mansionization, speculators called the shots. Now amendments to the citywide mansionization ordinances are about to go before the City Council’s PLUM (Planning & Land Use Management) Committee, tentatively on November 22, 2016, and we cannot make the same mistakes again. 

By a very wide margin, Los Angeles residents and homeowners have called for amendments to the Baseline Mansionization Ordinance that reflect the original City Council Motion, not the watered down version drafted and circulated by the Department of City Planning and recently supported by the City Planning Commission.  Councilmembers Paul Koretz and David Ryu, the Los Angeles Conservancy, and dozens of neighborhood councils and homeowner and resident associations have also stressed the need for strong, simple, easily enforceable ordinances. They know that complexity leads to mansionizers dodging the City’s laws and gaming the Department of Building and Safety to flout the law. 

The most recent draft amendments make big improvements from an earlier version, especially in the R1 zones that regulate most of the city’s single-family homes. But the draft amendments that the PLUM Committee will consider have three major flaws:

• Attached garages. The City Planning Commission’s compromises go too far, counting none of the square footage of garages attached at the back of a house and only half of the square footage of garages attached at the front. All attached garages add bulk to a house. But garages attached to the front of a house also clash with the look and feel of many Los Angeles neighborhoods, and they eliminate the buffer that driveway provide between houses. Square footage is square footage, and it should all count when it is part of a house. At an absolute minimum, the final amendments should fully count all front-facing attached garage space. 

• Grading and hauling. Proposed allowances are excessive. The Canyon and Hillside Federation recommendations would cut them down to a tolerable size. 

• Bonuses. In RA, RS, and RE residential zones, The Department of City Planning caved to real estate lobbyists and retained bonuses that add 20% more bulk to house. The City Council should follow the example of the R-1 zone and get rid of these bonuses, as called for in the original Council motion. At best, these bonuses are a flawed architectural gimmick to camouflage extra mass in a house. At worst, they are just another lobbying scam to cram more house onto a lot. 

Above all, do not try to split the difference between reasonable and ridiculous. 

The original Council Motion was fair and reasonable to start with, but the current draft amendments make unwarranted concessions to the lobbyists. It’s time to hold the line and stick to the City Council’s original intent.

You will hear that “one size does not fit all.” True. That is why the City Planning Department is developing detailed zoning options for individual neighborhoods to soon replace Interim Control Ordinances and to later be implemented through Community Plan Updates.

This process should proceed, and the City Council’s PLUM Committee should not undermine it by giving veto power to a vocal minority. Objections to the original Council Motion are concentrated in a few pockets of resistance, where those objecting to the amendments can get the more permissive zoning they want through re:code LA. 

The new baseline must set meaningful limits on mansionization, not find the lowest common denominator to appease a small minority. Houses, after all, should not just be another form of real speculation. They are homes where people raise their families, and they form the fabric of irreplaceable neighborhoods. 

We also need to remember that mansionization decreases the supply of affordable housing, and it reduces the long-term sustainability of Los Angeles.

• McMansions replace affordable homes with pricey showplaces, and they put short-term speculation ahead of stable long-term property values.
• McMansions destroy mature street trees, increase runoff, and turn houses into rubble for landfills.
• McMansions guzzle energy and overload local utilities.
• McMansions degrade livability and violate neighborhood character.
• McMansions increase house cost and size without increasing supply or housing affordability. 
• Through one phony ordinance after another, mansionization has gone on far too long.

It’s time to serve the needs of LA’s communities, not the interests of real estate speculators. 

Angelenos who want to finally stop McMansions need to share their views with the Department of City Planning, the PLUM Committee, and their Councilmembers. When you do, please reference BMO/BHO Amendments, Council File 14-0656. Ideally, your comments should be submitted. 

(Addresses and model letters can be found at www.nomoremcmansionsinlosangeles.org)

(Dick Platkin reports on local planning issues in Los Angeles for City Watch. He welcomes comments and corrections at [email protected]. Shelley Wagers lives in the Beverly Grove neighborhood and has been involved in anti-mansionization campaigns in Los Angeles for over a decade.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He vs. We 

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

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

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

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

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

Boy did we blow it 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Long Will Lies and Myths Deceive Angelenos? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And in Other DWP News. 

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

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

Equity Metrics. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Figueroa Street Plaza’s DWP Lease.

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

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

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

Integrated Resources Plan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Takeaway. 

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

(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.)

MY TURN-I woke up in the middle of the night and thought I was having a bad dream. It took me a few seconds to realize that Donald Trump had been elected the next President of the United States.

So, I pulled the covers over my head and decided to stay in bed for the next four years. 

That lasted till about 8:00 a.m. when I gingerly checked my cell phone, not knowing what other news I was going to receive. My youngest granddaughter, who just turned eleven, had sent me a text (that is how we communicate with this generation) which said, "How are you doing? I am in shock because he has not only been so mean to so many girls that he has already hurt this country. Let's talk more after school?” 

Before I got the chance to call she sent another text later saying, “He is not only rude to women but took away a chance from someone else who actually cares about this country. Best of luck America!" 

I will explain to her that he didn't take away the chance from Hillary Clinton ... the American people voted to have him as our next President. Later on, I received a text from my eldest granddaughter who is a freshman at University in Arizona. It said, "Hi Gram! A bit scared for our country honestly!!! How are you feeling?” 

As the resident politico in the family I am the source of all political information. (At least I have managed to make them believe it.) I was delighted they asked me how I was feeling! This situation occurred all over the country. Many parents and grandparents were in the difficult position of trying to calm fears. 

Wednesday morning I went to my class on Current Events. I find it helpful to see how other people think about issues of the day. If there were any Trump supporters in the room, they were very quiet.   The hundred or more sitting there reminded me of attending a wake without the refreshments. 

I learned that the President and Vice President can't be sued while in office. That means Trump's two trials scheduled for November and December can't be continued. If they are, they will have to wait four years...or maybe eight.

I also learned that if the Republicans and Trump keep their promise about seeking a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton, President Obama can issue a certain kind of pardon before he leaves office. It doesn't mean she has to admit guilt. It will stop those congressional witch hunters from continuing their thirty-year battle with the former Secretary. 

After watching the analysis practically all day, I'm not going to talk about the mechanics of the election. You all must be saturated by it as well. I would like to discuss some of the ramifications of the "First 100 days of the Donald Trump Presidency," especially the international trade part.

We cannot manufacture products for all of our needs. That is the reason we have a global economy. As an example, making a men’s white shirt in the United States would probably cost $40. This means the people making the shirts couldn't afford to buy them. By the time the apparel manufacturer buys American textiles and trim, equipment, and pays a decent wage and benefits, it becomes too expensive. 

That is why thousands of men’s shirts are available for $12.99. We are able to buy something in our budget and we have enabled people in another country to be able to buy necessities. 

How many of you buy clothes because of where they are made? Other than certain items which can be almost completely automated or hand made for the couture fashion labels, we need to manufacture our clothing in another country. 

On the other hand, the United States is a huge exporter of all kinds of products. We are the largest or almost largest agricultural exporters in the world. Our exports provide millions of jobs for Americans. Here’s just a few statistics on our Import/export trade in 2015: 

Overall imports to the U.S. in 2015:     2.307 Trillion Dollars 

Overall exports from the U.S. 2015:     1.504 Trillion Dollars 

U.S. exports to Mexico in 2015:            236.4 Billion dollars or 15.7% of all our exports 

Mexican Exports to U.S 2015:               297.5 Billion dollars or 12.9% of all our imports 

U.S. Exports to China 2015:                  116.2 Billion or 7.7% of total exports 

Chinese Exports to U.S 2015:                02.7 Billion dollars or 21.8 of U.S total imports 

This is apart from the billions of dollars invested in American Real Estate and Manufactured Products from both countries. 

There is no way that Trump can bring the manufacturing industries back to the rust belt. We have to make the things we do best at a price both American consumers and those in other countries can afford. 

We benefitted from the products made in the Industrial Revolution, but progressed to other industries. We developed some of the finest technology in the world. Manufacturing jobs now and in the future will be so automated that they will need one or two people as opposed to fifty. Why do we no longer manufacture "buggy whips"? Maybe because horse and buggies are not our main mode of transportation. Then again, they may be quicker on the 405 in the morning. 

Last night, as the election returns were coming in, my daughter was at an international meeting of CEO's and top executives taking place in Shanghai. There were around fifty different countries represented, all in the trade exposition industry. They were, as she said, "freaking out.” Since the U.S. election was not a big priority on Chinese TV, I was texting the results as they came in. These fifty countries were afraid of trade wars. 

The only comments from Chinese TV were that Trump was an unknown but they didn't expect any affect on their money, the yuan. 

It is rather ironic that so many other countries are so much more knowledgeable and interested in the United States than we are in the outside world. 

Maybe he can accomplish some good things with a Republican Congress. Infrastructure has been on the table but inactive for the last four years. 

We are waiting nervously, along with the rest of the world, to see what he does. 

As always, comments welcome.

(Denyse Selesnick is a CityWatch columnist. She is a former publisher/journalist/international event organizer. Denyse can be reached at: [email protected]) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

BILLBOARD WATCH-The slow-moving but relentless push for more digital billboards on LA’s commercial streets got a boost last week with the unveiling of a detailed plan for allowing the now-prohibited signs. Presented to the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) committee, the plan would require billboard companies to make payments to the city and remove a certain number of existing billboards in exchange for the right to put up new signs of the highly lucrative digital variety. 

The committee directed city agencies to develop a legal framework to implement the digital billboard plan, even though the City Planning Commission (CPC) last year approved a new citywide sign ordinance that restricts the brightly-lit signs with rapidly changing ads to sign districts in a limited number of high-intensity commercial areas. That action would put those signs off-limits in more than 80 per cent of the city’s commercial zones. 

With certain exceptions, new billboards and alterations to existing billboards have been banned in LA since 2002 and digital billboards have been explicitly prohibited since 2009. However, state law allows cities to enter into relocation agreements with billboard companies, which means that a billboard can be moved from one location to another without running afoul of billboard bans such as LA’s. 

This law, intended to relieve cities from the burden of paying large amounts in compensation if a billboard has to be removed from private property for a street widening or other public works project, has been advocated by billboard giant Clear Channel as a mechanism for not only putting up new digital billboards, but turning on many of the 99 digital billboards that went dark by court order three years ago. 

In the CLA’s plan, the relocation agreements would allow new digital billboards to be put up or the existing digital billboards to be turned on in locations of the companies’ choice without hearings and approvals by zoning officials or local planning commissions. As long as the companies agree to make a specified annual payment to the city, take down a certain number of existing billboards, and meet restrictions regarding location and illumination, permits for the new or re-activated digital billboards would be issued “by right.” 

This, of course, directly contradicts what billboard company representatives and pro-digital billboard politicians have said for several years, which is that communities should be able to choose whether or not they want the signs on their commercial streets. If people in North Hollywood or East LA see the billboards as bringing benefits to their community, the argument went, they should have them; if people in Silverlake or Westwood see them as a detriment, they should be able to say no. 

Be that as it may, here are the details of the CLA’s plan: A billboard company wishing to put up a new digital billboard could choose to remove existing billboards at a ratio ranging from 2:1 to 9:1, based on square footage of sign face. A standard full-sized billboard is 672 sq. ft., so two of those or some other number of signs adding up to 1,300-plus square feet would have to be removed. If a billboard company chose the 2:1 ratio, it would have to pay the city an annual fee of $250,000, but if it took down existing billboards at higher ratios the required fee would incrementally decrease, up to the 9:1 ratio, which would not trigger any fee payment. 

The plan also recommends that companies putting up new digital billboards provide “community benefits” to offset the negative impacts of the new signage. These include streetscape improvements, public art programs, and funding for transit-related services, among others. 

There are some proposed restrictions on where the new digital billboards could be put -- for example, in public parks, along designated scenic highways, in historic preservation zones, and areas zoned neighborhood or limited commercial. The plan also proposes a limit on the light cast by the billboards, although the method of measurement is widely regarded as an inaccurate reflection of the brightness of the signs that employ thousands of LED lights, and many cities, including LA, have begun using a newer, more accurate method that measures the light at its source. 

After listening to these details, along with a related report by the City Administrative Officer (CAO) and comment from members of the public, PLUM committee chairman Jose Huizar closed the discussion by directing the city agencies, with the assistance of the city planning department and City Attorney’s office, to return with additional details needed to implement the plan, which would require ultimate approval by the full City Council. 

Despite the fact that the issue has drawn heated public debate, and the plan represents the first detailed step in the direction of allowing new digital members on most commercial streets, not a single member of the committee other than Huizar had any comment or question for the city officials presenting the reports. 

Before moving on to other items on the committee’s agenda, Huizar also got in a swipe at the City Planning Commission, which he has accused in the past of overstepping its bounds by making changes to the sign ordinance sent to it by the committee. Those changes mean that the City Council will need a supermajority, or 10 votes, to overrule the commission’s approval of an ordinance that restricts new digital signs to sign districts. 

Huizar also raised an issue that has been alluded to but not explicitly discussed by committee members in the past, which is the idea that the less affluent City Council districts have borne the brunt of billboard blight in the past, and are therefore particularly deserving of the relief promised by the takedown provisions of the CLA’s digital billboard plan. 

The councilman, whose district encompasses most of downtown and the majority Latino communities of East LA and Boyle Heights, pointed to statistics in the CAO report showing that his district ranks first among the city’s 15 council districts in number of billboards. The district, along with two South LA districts, have 36% of the total billboards in the city, Huizar said. And while the City Planning Commission’s restriction of new digital billboards to sign districts also includes a requirement that any new signs be offset by the takedown of existing billboards, Huizar said that this would not result in a significant reduction of billboards in those districts. 

But are Huizar’s East LA district and the two predominately Latino and African American districts in South LA he cited really disproportionately blighted by billboards? According to city records, Huizar’s district has 772 billboard faces, which is the highest of any of the 15 council districts. Council districts 8 and 9, represented by council members Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Curren Price, respectively, who also happen to be members of the PLUM committee, each have 719 billboard faces, ranking them second to Huizar’s district. 

However, if those districts are ranked by total square footage of billboard faces, Huizar’s district ranks 7^th, and the other two 11^th and 13^th. In fact, the district ranked first on this scale, councilman Paul Koretz’s predominately Westside district, has 279,000 sq. ft., compared to 165,000 sq. ft. in Huizar’s district and only 97,000 sq. ft. in Price’s district. Which means that Koretz’s more affluent district has fewer billboard structures than those other districts, but the billboards have significantly larger faces and therefore display larger, more prominent advertisements. Thus, the argument over which districts are disproportionately blighted by billboards turns on the question of what is the major source of the blight, the billboard’s structure or the advertising displayed on the face. 

The council districts ranked 2^nd, 3^rd, and 4^th in terms of square footage of billboard space each have more than 200,000 sq. ft. Along with Kortez’s district, those districts represented by Mike Bonin, David Ryu, and Mitch O’Farrell also happen to be the ones in which Clear Channel and Outfront Media put up all but a handful of 101 digital billboards beginning in 2007 and ending with a moratorium at the end of 2008. Those districts not only had more full-sized billboards to convert to digital but are among the most affluent in the city and therefore more attractive to advertisers paying premium rates for the 8-second spots on the signs. 

It’s therefore no mystery why Koretz, Bonin, and Ryu have publicly announced their opposition to allowing digital billboards anywhere outside sign districts, as per the City Planning Commission action. Councilman Paul Krekorian has also publicly opposed plans to allow new digital billboards outside sign districts on private property, although none of the 101 signs went up in his San Fernando Valley district. O’Farrell hasn’t taken as definite a stand as his four colleagues, but has told constituents that he was happy with the planning commission’s action. 

If the plan presented this week to allow digital billboards beyond those limited sign districts is eventually approved, Clear Channel could turn on most of the 84 billboards it put up in 2007-2008. Likewise, Outfront Media. And the city’s third major billboard company, Lamar Advertising, which owns some 3,000 small billboards in mostly lower-income neighborhoods, could erect new digital billboards on commercial thoroughfares in areas with the more affluent consumers valued by advertisers. 

For example, the plan would allow Clear Channel to turn on a now-dark digital billboard on Santa Monica Blvd. in West LA in exchange for removing two or three old, rundown billboards in Council District 8 in south LA and paying the city an annual fee of $250,000. That might seem a great deal for Harris-Dawson, who represents that district and has complained of billboard blight there, but what of people in the residential neighborhood adjacent to that Santa Monica Blvd. billboard who repeatedly complained of constantly changing light cast into their homes and brilliantly lit ads for products and services looming beyond their roofs in the night sky. 

A fourth member of the PLUM committee, Gil Cedillo, whose district west and north of downtown includes some of the city’s poorest areas, could also benefit from the removal of old, blighted billboards, especially since Clear Channel and company are not likely to look at most of the district as fertile ground for new digital billboards. The fifth member, Mitchell Englander, represents a much more affluent district in the northwest San Fernando Valley, but the predominately residential district has by far the fewest number of billboards in the city and probably wouldn’t be a major target for companies wanting to put up new digital signs. 

As mentioned above, the plan would require votes from 10 of the 15 city council members since it conflicts with the ordinance approved by the planning commission. If council members Bonin, Koretz, Ryu, and Krekorian maintain their current stands, and are joined by O’Farrell, they could block that action since one council seat is currently vacant. However, that vacancy will be filled in the upcoming city election and a new council member will be seated on July 1 of next year. 

There are some other hurdles as well. A Clear Channel representative has written a letter to the committee criticizing the takedown ratios as too high, and arguing that instead of a set annual fee the companies and city should negotiate a fee for each relocation agreement. Regency Advertising and Summit Media, two of the city’s small billboard companies, have also argued for lower takedown ratios and fees on the grounds that the proposed plan would shut them out of the process.

And City Attorney Mike Feuer, who unsuccessfully sponsored a statewide moratorium on digital billboards when he was a state assembly member, has not weighed in on the possible legal ramifications of the billboard relocation scheme. Feuer has already poured cold water on one of the PLUM committee’s earlier proposals, which was to grant “amnesty” to all unpermitted and non-compliant billboards in the city. 

To read the CLA and CAO reports in the city’s council files, click here.

(Dennis Hathaway is the president of the Ban Billboard Blight Coalition and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ANALYSIS--California voters once again proved they cherish their role in direct democracy, running through the entire statewide list of 17 measures with no apparent drop off in voting. With 100% of the precincts ‘partially’ reporting according to the Secretary of State’s site, 8.6 million votes were cast for Proposition 51, the school bond, at the head of the ballot; and 8.6 million votes were cast for the plastic bag referendum, Proposition 67, at the tail end of the ballot. 

The fear that voters would give up as they worked down the long list of state propositions did not come to pass. There were variations in the proposition vote totals as usual with a low count for the fairly meaningless advisory measure to overturn the Citizen’s United decision (Proposition 59) tallying 8.2 million votes to a top total of 8.84 million votes cast for the marijuana legalization measure, Proposition 64. Also attracting attention from voters were the tobacco tax, Proposition 56 totaling 8.82 million votes and the anti-gun Proposition 63 that received 8.7 million votes.

In fact, with Proposition 63 and 64 near the end of the ballot piling up votes, some voters apparently looked for those measures adding to the totals compiled by the many voters who ran the entire 17 measure gauntlet.

Money didn’t guarantee a win with the ballot initiatives either, although it was better to have the most money on your side. Twelve of the 17 measures that had the largest war chest were victorious. Opponents of the tobacco tax outspent supporters but lost. The Proposition 60 condoms measure had the most money on the yes side but lost. The plastic bag industry outspent opponents on two measures, Proposition 65 and the Proposition 67 referendum but lost both.

The death penalty procedural reform issue, Proposition 66 is still close with votes to count but it is currently passing. Money was about even on both sides of that measure, although a large chunk of the yes money went to qualifying the initiative.

While the initiative battles have been decided, there may be little rest for those who follow direct democracy in California. Qualifying an initiative still depends on collecting signatures determined by the low gubernatorial voter turnout of 2014. Interests and individuals who want to ask voters to support their issues will take advantage of the low signature requirement to push their proposals for the 2018 ballot.

Proponents are also aware that waiting to qualify a measure closer to the next ballot could mean competition for signatures with other ballot measure advocates. To avoid paying increased signature costs when there are many measures in circulation, don’t be surprised to see some potential initiatives circulating early next year.

(Joel Fox is Editor of Fox & Hounds … where this piece originated … and President of the Small Business Action Committee.)

-cw

CIVIL RIGHTS--In a move hailed by civil rights groups, California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) announced Sunday that he’d signed a bill meant to counter the widespread bullying of Muslim and Sikh students in the state. 

The Safe Place To Learn Act requires the California Department of Education to ensure that school districts “provide information on existing school site and community resources to educate teachers, administrators, and other school staff on the support of Muslim, Sikh, and other pupils who may face anti-Muslim bias and bullying.”

According to a November 2015 report from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, 55 percent of Muslim students aged 11 to 18 in California reported being bullied or discriminated against due to their faith. That’s double the national average of kids, including non-Muslims, who report being bullied at school. 

Twenty-nine percent of California students who wear hijabs said they’d experienced “offensive touching or pulling of their hijab.” Ten percent said they’d been physically harmed or harassed for being Muslim. Almost 20 percent said their fellow students had made offensive comments to them online. And nearly 20 percent of students said they’d experienced discrimination from a school staff member.

“Having school site and community resources available to students experiencing bullying is a big step forward to ensuring a safer environment for our kids,” said Hussam Ayloush, executive director at CAIR-Los Angeles, which co-sponsored the bill. “We welcome the support from our governor and legislators in addressing this serious issue.” 

Sikh students, meanwhile, faced similar rates of bullying. A recent study conducted by the Sikh Coalition found that more than half of Sikh children in four states, including California, experience bullying at school. That number jumps to 67 percent for Sikh students who wear turbans. In Fresno, according to the study, over half of the students surveyed said school officials didn’t respond adequately to bullying incidents.

Americans of the Sikh faith ― a religion distinct from Islam ― are often the targets of anti-Muslim violence, harassment and prejudice. 

“Every child has the right to a safe and nurturing learning environment,” said Harjit Kaur, community development manager for the Sikh Coalition, another co-sponsor of the legislation. “This bill provides educators, students and parents with resources to help ensure that right.”

The bullying in California of Muslim students and students perceived to be Muslim came into focus earlier this year when Bayan Zehlif, a senior about to graduate from Los Osos High School in Rancho Cucamonga, discovered that someone had changed her name to “ISIS” in the school’s yearbook. Once a popular girl’s name, “ISIS” these days is more commonly associated with the terror group that calls itself the Islamic State. It’s also become a slur commonly hurled at American Muslims. 

After Zehlif spoke out about against her representation in the yearbook, she says, she was subjected to harassment and bullying. 

“A poster was put up of ‘We Support Bayan,’” she said, “and it was ripped down and students started to cheer.” 

The pervasiveness of anti-Muslim bullying reflects a growing wave of Islamophobic hostility and hate crimes in California and across the nation.  

A report from the California State San Bernardino Center on Hate And Extremism found that anti-Muslim hate crimes increased 122 percent in California between 2014 and 2015. The same report documented at least 260 hate crimes against Muslims nationwide in 2015 ― nearly an 80 percent rise from 2014 and the highest annual number of such crimes since 2001.

The Huffington Post has recorded at least 260 instances this year of anti-Muslim violence, harassment, discrimination and political speech. 

According to CAIR, the Safe Place to Learn Act is the “first and only bill directly addressing the issue of Islamophobia in California. The negative tone in our national politics has enflamed a disturbing trend of scapegoating and fear-mongering targeting American Muslims.”

The bill, which also requires the state superintendent of public instruction to publicly post anti-bullying resources related to Muslim and Sikh students, goes into effect on Jan. 1.  

(Christopher Mathias is National Reporter for Huff Post … where this piece was fist posted.)

-cw

GELFAND’S WORLD--I had a cute opening line for this piece -- Crow doesn't taste very good -- but I'm not going to use it. By now, a couple of thousand people have published their shock, grief, and fear about the electoral tsunami that hit us on Tuesday. Further revelations will keep us on edge for the next several weeks. For example, an infamous climate change denier is being proposed to run the EPA. As recently as Richard Nixon's presidency, Republicans supported pro-environmental policies at least some of the time. The modern party has moved away from that posture in horrific fashion. It will remain the responsibility of the rest of us to refer to the fact of climate change from now on, the same way that Steven Jay Gould began referring to the fact of evolution. 

With all the explanations now being published online about why Trump won, we may run short of electrons. There is no need to repeat all that stuff here. Instead, I will limit myself to comments I heard the night of the election, offered to me by a veteran political activist and observer. He said that he had become concerned during his phone calling for Hillary because, as he explained, "I talked to the voters." He was calling people who were listed as committed to a Clinton vote. They hadn't changed their minds, but there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm. 

He also mentioned watching tapes of several speeches that Trump gave in the upper midwest battleground states. He explained further: Trump didn't talk about immigration to those audiences. He talked about foreign trade. This approach allowed Trump to play on widespread frustrations about job insecurity and the loss of manufacturing jobs. 

I'll insert my own small summary to the why discussion. The generation that came back from WWII lived in a world where European and Asian manufacturing had been turned to rubble. Significant parts of that postwar world lived under American and Russian occupation. Our industrial heartland was unblemished and the world was our market. We had our own oil supplies along with coal, iron ore, and that era's version of the technology sector. Add some of the world's top scientists who came here as refugees, and we were all alone, atop the world economy. 

The 1974 oil embargo meant the end of our independence. We were exposed as dependent on foreign petroleum. The fact that Europe and Asia were likewise dependent didn't seem to help the national psyche. We've been struggling over energy ever since. The Asians and Europeans also struggled, and one strategy they employed with success was to continually increase their exports. Somehow, the U.S. didn't get the memo. 

Today's adult generation were raised in a country where dad and granddad could get work at the steel mills or on the assembly line. Pop could make good money and feel secure about his career. Remember when the U.S. built televisions and radios? Remember when we had three major corporations competing to sell passenger jets? There was a time when the term Made in USA was a major positive. The modern economy involves a lot of innovation from right here, but the products (the iphone, for example) are made overseas. 

Our people have gotten tired of being in a perpetually stagnant economy. Modern America is hard on most of the working class. Employers take advantage -- because they can. Whole sectors of the economy have imploded. People have much to be frustrated about. Still, the most recent Democratic presidents have done much better as economic stewards than the Republicans who served before and after them. Just consider the job creation numbers during the past four or five administrations to see that this is true. 

The take home lesson here is that the working class person's real enemy is Republican policy, not a Democratic president. The corollary is that Democratic candidates and lawmakers have utterly failed to make this point clear to the voters. Michael Moore takes a stab at this failure in his prescription that we take over the Democratic Party. People have to understand that the real choice is between the parties, not whether you happen to find the Republican candidate suitable to have a beer with. 

But enough about economics. The people who voted for Trump may have had some reason to believe that they were voting for economic change, but they were not only factually wrong, they were immoral to do so. Their votes are a collective indictment of their gross moral failure. 

Trump took advantage of the question of Obama's birthplace starting half a decade ago. Everything about that attack on a sitting president was repugnant. Was Trump as racist as the attacks suggested? Maybe so. But if not, then Trump was opportunistically appealing to the most racist elements of the American population. Whether it was direct racism or just the equally evil intent to take advantage of other peoples' racism, Trump should have been disqualified on that basis alone. 

There is also Trump's misogyny. He's a guy who didn't bother to keep his feelings to himself. 

In casting nearly half our ballots for Donald Trump, we have failed the moral test as a nation. It is a bitter disappointment that 150 years after the Civil War, the racist appeals of Donald Trump were met with acceptance. It is a disappointment that in a modern world where women do equal work alongside men, this level of misogyny should be tolerated. 

There was a moral duty to disavow Trump in the voting booth, and we have failed that test as a people. 

One issue has already been raised, particularly in the pages of the Daily Kos website. Hillary Clinton will be the second Democratic candidate in 16 years to win the election in terms of total votes, but lose the presidency because we use the electoral college method of selection. There are a couple of ways of looking at this. The first is that both sides understood the rules going into the contest. The other side is that the rules are intentionally rigged to give an advantage to states with smaller populations. As one blogger explained more directly, the electoral college (unique among modern democracies) was designed to give an advantage to white southern men in an age of slavery. 

Trying to replace the electoral college by Constitutional amendment is obviously a lost cause, but there is a work-around. It is possible for states to enter into an agreement that they will cast their electoral votes for the winner of the popular vote. Imagine for example that such a compact existed already, and that Trump had managed to win the popular vote. California -- in spite of its overwhelming vote for Clinton -- would be obligated to cast its electoral votes for Trump. Or consider what really happened in the vote count. The result would be that California would join enough other states to elect Clinton the next president when the electoral college assembles. It's a way to deal with a harmful anachronism. 

Interestingly, 10 states and the District of Columbia have already agreed to enter the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC), and that includes California. So far, the compact includes 165 electoral votes, so it's up to us, if we want it, to bring another 105 electoral votes into the group. It would be something for furious Democrats and independents to sink their teeth into over the next few years. 

In a system where the popular vote takes the win, we Californians would see and meet candidates, because we have a lot of votes to give. In a system where the total vote counts, can you imagine the competing campaigns spending so much of their time in North Carolina the week before the election?

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected]) 

-cw

NY TIMES--All the dazzling technology, the big data and the sophisticated modeling that American newsrooms bring to the fundamentally human endeavor of presidential politics could not save American journalism from yet again being behind the story, behind the rest of the country.

PERSPECTIVE--I have been wrong every step of the way in this campaign.

I thought Trump would be defeated in the primaries or taken down at the Republican convention. And certainly there was no way he could win a national election after alienating large segments of the population.

Wrong, wrong, wrong … but so were the pollsters.

ALPERN AT LARGE--Let's summarize this piece in one sentence:  After all the haranguing, polling, mind-abuse, debating, screaming and lecturing, it comes down to your vote (or your decision NOT to vote) … so figure out which battles you need to  fight on November 8, 2016, and figure out which battles need to be fought on November 9, 2016. And there are battles to fight on both days. 

What, you thought that the world ended on November 8, 2016? They've been predicting the end of the world for many millennia. But this election will end. There will be a new elected President, and a host of new decisions in the City and County of LA, and in our state. We will have a "new reality" to contend with, just as we have had new realities for many eras in our history. And there will be new battles to fight on November 9, 2016. 

Some will be rehashes of old battles: spending, budgeting, health and welfare priorities. Some will be new battles--in particular, the City of Los Angeles will have a few City Councilmember races, and the Big One ... the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. It’s a daunting scenario.   

That the fight isn't over? Of course. But has the fight ever been over? And what say we all about spending a moment or two on those in the military who did and arefighting to allow us to have the  privilege of fighting here at home? 

And what say we all about spending a moment or two on those who've fought for efforts that will be addressed long after they are dead and buried? 

And what say we all about spending a moment or two trying to educate our kids (and their kids) about the privilege of voting, debating, fighting for causes that are worth that struggle. 

Through my years of civic involvement, I've only really feared one thing:  APATHY. There is nothing that will destroy a society more than apathy. So perhaps some of us who fought the good fight for the past election cycle will need to "change gears". As in ... form a committee, or end a committee.  Start a movement, or end a movement. Write a book.  Spend more time with family. Run for office, or DON'T run for office. But the sun will rise, and set, on November 8, 2016, just like it has for billions of years. As the old expression goes:  "Man makes plans, and God laughs". 

God might not be laughing right now, what with all the rage going on in the world, but He does have a plan to make  November 9, 2016 a reality.  And maybe your new plan, starting on November 9, 2016, is part of His plan. But for now, let's just make November 8, 2016 the best November 8, 2016 we can. Make your stand to vote (or NOT to vote, if that is your solemn conclusion, and one by which you'll make your stand). But there WILL be a brand new day come November 9, 2016.  And the opportunity to make a brand new YOU. And that is "hope and change" to which we can all look forward to.

(Ken Alpern is 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 Mr. Alpern.)

-cw

SNAPCHAT SNAFU-When former Playboy playmate Dani Mathers “snapchatted” a photo last July of an unsuspecting 70-year old in the shower area of an LA Fitness center, social media observers set Facebook and other sites abuzz with angry comments. Mathers fired off a lukewarm apology for the “mean girl” act, claiming the photo, which she captioned, “If I can’t unsee this then you can’t either,” was meant as a private message on her Snapchat account. (If a tree falls in the woods and only one person is supposed to see it on social media, does it still make a sound?) 

The LA City Attorney seems to think so. Last Friday, Mike Feuer filed a misdemeanor count of invasion of privacy against the 29-year old, alleging she furtively pointed her smartphone to snap an image of the naked woman. This case could have far-reaching implications as prosecution for “body shaming.” Invasion of privacy charges aren’t at all uncommon for voyeurs and those who hide cameras to take sexually suggestive images of unsuspecting women. However, legal experts note that these charges are rarely used for body shaming, especially on social media, where it has become a hot button issue.

Mather’s attorney, Thomas Mesereau, commented, “I am disappointed that Dani Mathers was charged with any violation. She never tried to invade anyone’s privacy and she never tried to violate any laws.” Unless, of course, we consider snapping nude photos of an unaware stranger to share on social media to be a violation of privacy. 

Holding people accountable for social media bullying and invasion of privacy is a move in the right direction. Ms. Mathers attempted to shame a woman who should have an expectation that she would not be photographed naked in a gym locker room, whether there’s a lascivious motive or not.

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

On Thursday, October 26, Budget Advocate Barbara Ringuette from Silver Lake Neighborhood Council (NC) with members of her Housing Committee met with the Los Angeles Housing and Community Investment Department (HCIDLA) to inquire about the outlook on revenue for affordable housing for fiscal year 2017-18. The following is an excerpt of the meeting: 

“Nationally, Los Angeles is the most rent-burdened place to live in the country,” commented HCIDLA Executive Officer, Laura K. Guglielmo. “There’s a mismatch between what people earn and what they spend for rent in this city; they’re paying more than 50% of their earnings for rent. At some time, it will restrict the workforce. We have to make a choice to improve the problem.” 

Housing Development Bureau
Assistant General Manager Helmi Hisserich said that she doesn’t want to view development as a “piggy bank.” On the other hand, Ms. Hisserich finds that when development creates an impact causing the need of affordable housing, “it’s only appropriate for it to help support that need.” 

“We want to be mindful that every time the city puts a fee on development, it affects the cost of development,” said Hisserich. 

Linkage Fee 

The linkage fee will contribute about $30 million or less to affordable housing, and the benefit of that will vary upon the amount of development since it’s tied to the market trend, said Hisserich. “It’s a revenue stream that has the potential of growing through time.” 

Guglielmo elaborated that large development that has a housing impact will pay a Linkage Fee. Say, in the case of a developer building a skyscraper or stadium and employing many workers at minimum wage who cannot afford to live in Los Angeles. Then that developer is creating a demand for affordable housing, and development now has to create a resource, even though, normally, the people [taxpayers] would be paying for it [through public subsidies]. 

Guglielmo re-stated that it's a link between development and affordable housing. If a developer is employing workers who are earning at or below the area’s median income, such as a household of four earning $50,000 or less, the developer is contributing to the need for affordable housing. 

“With a linkage fee we create affordable housing,” she said. 

Assistant general manager Luz Santiago said that HCIDLA is presently working on a study with the Department of City Planning. “The team is looking at the various types of developments, their relative contributions to affordable housing and trying to find a balance. Perhaps they’ll consider the square footage of a development to calculate the fee.” Soon the team will present a proposal to the Mayor regarding the Linkage Fee, she said. 

Cap-and-Trade Program 

The Affordable Housing Sustainable Communities (AHSC) Program is statewide under the cap-and-trade spending plan which provides revenue generated from the permits sold to industrial polluters in California. Proposals for funding must be used solely for projects that reduce carbon emissions. 

HCIDLA, with a group of developers, submitted a funding proposal for the competitive grant, requesting about $75 million to be used for affordable housing linked to transportation. “We were awarded $64 million. We’ll continue to apply for affordable housing grants though the total cap-and-trade fund seems to be declining,” said Guglielmo. 

“Affordable housing is linked to transportation. Getting people out of their cars, reducing vehicle-miles traveled is the single biggest way to decrease carbon emissions,” said Guglielmo. “Lower income families tend to eliminate cars when living near public transit, resulting in a higher reduction of carbon emissions.” 

Ms. Santiago said that HCIDLA is getting ready to submit a proposal requesting a position for fiscal year 2017-2018 to coordinate the application of the cap-and-trade grant with multiple city departments -- Department of Transportation, Department of City Planning, LA County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro), and Bureau of Street Services. 

Preserving Affordable Housing 

“The objective of the HCIDLA Recapitalization policy is to preserve affordable housing through the extension of the time period of affordability covenants,” as per CF 16-0085 adopted 2/03/16. 

Affordable housing is linked to a covenant “where the occupancy is restricted to households with income equal to or less than a specific income level,” said Hisserich. A covenant may fall into one of two categories. The first category “is a big concern to us,” she said. “There are 13,000 existing affordable units with covenants that will be expiring in the next five years. A lot of these units we inherited from the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles (CRA) that closed down. HCID has a proactive team of two who are doing outreach to owners to extend the affordability. When the covenants on the units expire they could be rented at market rate.” HCID offers assistance with refinancing or rehabilitation of the physical building. Covenants are legal bindings that are tied to the property for 50 years. 

The second category of affordable housing is less of a focus for HCID. Presently the department has 20-Recaps (affordable housing projects with loans for capital improvements) in the queue, explained Hisserich. “These are not at risk of converting into market rate anytime soon. Through a needs assessment, review, and evaluation of certain affordable housing developments, we offer financial assistance with city funds and tax exempt bonds. It varies from project to project.” Then if a property owner needs funding to renovate or repair units, we provide them with the capital to renovate resulting in a capital cost, she said. “Every time we do substantial capital improvements we extend the covenant another 50 years to provide affordable housing. We become financial partners, using public funds and bonds.” 

Guglielmo explained that housing under the Rent Stabilized Ordinance (RSO) is rent stabilized housing and not necessarily affordable because an RSO property might not be under the restrictions of a covenant. RSO units could be renting at market rate. 

LAUSD Partnership 

HCIDLA manages 13 Family Source Centers in the city. It’s a 50/50 dollar-partnership with LAUSD where $1 million comes out of the city’s general fund. Through LAUSD-PSA, teachers work with students whose families are at risk. “We address the family side,” said Guglielmo. She added that HCID is broadening their relationship with LA County to increase the funding for the Family Source Centers with social workers and mental health services, including domestic violence. In summary, she said our Family Resource Centers are “a one stop shop.” 

Health Department Vouchers 

According to Guglielmo, the County Health Department has recently put millions of dollars into a new voucher program to assist the homeless that are in county hospitals or facilities, stating, “It’s been very valuable.” The vouchers are worth a $1,000 a month in rental subsidy as long as the rental unit is in an area with access to a healthcare facility. 

This reduces the cost of “keeping them [the homeless] in a county hospital costing a $1,000 per day,” said Hisserich. “There have been a lot of people who are benefiting from this program. We’re coordinating with the use of these vouchers … Vouchers alone aren’t the solution. They are only part of the solution because a person may have a voucher but have no place to go.” 

Budget Advocate Barbara Ringuette commented that she is hopeful substantial additional affordable housing will be built in Los Angeles and that existing resources will be maintained. 

Ms. Ringuette added, “My concerns are the enforceability of existing and new housing covenants and mitigating the impacts that increased density, height, and parking can bring to our neighborhoods.”

(Connie Acosta is a member of the Budget Advocates Housing Committee and often reports on the neighborhood council system and other topics.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

LATINO PERSPECTIVE-For the past 16 years pundits have been saying that Latinos will decide the Presidential election. But I think that, for the first time, and for real, Latinos will decide the 2016 election. 

Not only are Latino voters set for record turnout this year, but a new poll on Sunday shows Latino support for Donald Trump may be lower than for any Republican presidential candidate in more than 30 years. 

According to the latest Noticias Telemundo/Latino Decisions /NALEO Educational Fund poll, Hillary Clinton has support from 76% of the Latino electorate. 

That's a higher level of support than President Obama won in both of his elections. Latino Decisions' survey showed 75% of Latinos backed Obama in 2012. Exit polling put his support at 71%. 

Just 14% of Latino voters backed Trump, the survey found, That's about half of Mitt Romney's 27% showing with Latinos and fewer than the GOP's low-point when Bob Dole won 21% of the Latino vote in 1996. 

Polling in California found similar results, according to the final statewide USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times survey. Clinton was winning 73% of Latino registered voters compared with 17% for Trump in a two-way match up, the poll found.  

Exit data compiled by the Pew Hispanic Center shows no Republican candidate faring worse with Latinos in presidential elections dating to 1980. 

This past year there has been a surge in Latinos with permanent residency applying for citizenship, and a surge in voter registration as well. Almost 15 million Latinos could vote this year and many of them so worry that Donald Trump could become President that these new citizens are already voting early in Nevada, Florida, California, Texas, and other states. 

Our country is going through a transformation; according to the U.S. census the white majority will be gone by 2043. It’s the latest in a series of reports that have signaled a major, long-term shift in the demographics of the United States, as non-Hispanic white Americans are expected to become a minority group over the next three decades. 

For years, Americans of Asian, black and Hispanic descent have stood poised to topple the demographic hegemony historically held by whites. 

I think this is a good thing for our country, but adaptation will not be easy as we have already seen with all the turmoil surrounding this 2016 election. The Republican Party’s future will greatly depend on what it does when the voting is over on Tuesday. 

The United States is better and stronger when it has two great parties shaping our country. For the Democrats, they have to make sure they don’t take Latinos and other minorities for granted. Hopefully for the GOP, it will adapt, learn and become once again the party of Lincoln.

(Fred Mariscal came to Los Angeles from Mexico City in 1992 to study at the University of Southern California and has been in LA ever since. He is a community leader and was a candidate for Los Angeles City Council in District 4. Fred writes Latino Perspective for CityWatch and can be reached at: [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CORRUPTION WATCH-While Eric Garcetti is largely responsible for the criminogenic nature of Los Angeles City Hall, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office has also been complicit by ignoring City Hall crimes. 

At the outset, one needs to distinguish between the City Attorney’s Office and the County District Attorney’s Office. The City Attorney’s Office is forbidden to investigate criminal charges against the mayor or any City Councilmember no matter how criminal their behavior may be. The City Attorney is just that, the City’s attorney, and thus, owes confidentiality to the Mayor and City Councilmembers.   

The Los Angeles County’s District Attorney’s Office is an entirely different animal. The District Attorney is under an affirmative duty to investigate possible criminal behavior and then to prosecute people if and when he or she finds probable cause that criminal behavior has occurred. The D.A.’s duty to prosecute extends to the Mayor of the City of Los Angeles and to all City Councilmembers.   

For years, the Los Angeles County’s District Office has failed to prosecute any of the criminal behavior in the Mayor’s office or that of any City Councilmember, with the exception of City Councilmember Alarcon who allegedly had his residence in the wrong part of the San Fernando Valley. It is interesting to note in passing that after Councilmember’s Alarcon’s conviction was set aside, the District Attorney has decided to re-try him rather than use her leverage over his dubious residency record, in order to obtain his cooperation regarding the various criminal behaviors of the mayor and other councilmembers when Alarcon was councilmember for District 7. It is also interesting that the D.A. has been silent about Council President Herb Wesson’s decision to declare himself temporary councilmember for District 7 due to the resignation of former CD7 Councilman Felipe Fuentes – even though Wesson owns no home anywhere in the Valley. 

Long Standing Public Complaints about the Criminogenic Nature of City Hall 

On June 26, 2012, CityWatch published an article on the criminogenic nature of Los Angeles City Hall, especially in Garcetti’s Council District 13. CityWatch also ran a series of articles on the criminogenic nature of Garcetti’s “Cesspool” on Vine. 

What did the LA County District Attorney know or should have known since 2001, when Eric Garcetti first took office? Any law enforcement agency has powers far greater than any citizen or any news organization. The D.A. can convene a grand jury to question possible witnesses. If they lie during an investigation, witnesses can be criminally charged. I call this the Martha Stewart Rule. Her prison term was for lying to the SEC, not for insider trading. 

Also, anyone who watches Law and Order or any other TV crime show knows that law enforcement “flips” underlings to testify against the bigwigs. There are hundreds of staffers for Garcetti and for the various councilmembers over the last decade who have enough information to criminally prosecute virtually every single one of them. 

We will only focus on a few of many instances in which enough information has seeped out to the public and the various District Attorneys looked the other way, to show that the inaction by the LA County District Attorney’s Office is a major reason that Los Angeles City Hall is a Temple to Criminogenics. 

1. Garcetti’s Appraisal Fraud at Cesspool on Vine 

CityWatch and other news sources covered much of this story. Due to his use of developer appraisals, Steve Ullman, friend of CM Eric Garcetti, was not a favored person at the Community Redevelopment Agency [CRA/LA]. When he wanted to sell his property at 1601 N. Vine to the CRA/LA, which is part of the City of Los Angeles, it was decided that Hal Katersky would front as the property’s owner. (When later questioned about who actually owned 1601 N. Vine, CRA/LA said, “Steve Ullman” and not Hal Katersky or his business Pacifica Ventures.) 

On May 25, 2006, the developer got an appraisal for 1601 N. Vine at $5.4 million, but on May 23, 2016, the CRA/LA itself had obtained an appraisal for only $4 million. Eric Garcetti presented the $5.4 million developer appraisal to the City Council as the only appraisal and then duped the City Council into unanimously agreeing to purchase the property for $1.4 million more than the CRA/LA’s own appraisal. Of course, Garcetti was under an affirmative legal duty to disclose that the City’s own $4 million appraisal was $1.4 million lower that of the developer’s appraisal. 

This appraisal fraud was brought to the attention of the District Attorney and was the subject of hearings at City Hall in 2010 and 2011 when Garcetti wanted the City to re-sell the property to the developer for only $825,000. People had made a Government Code § 6250 Request for Public documents to the CRA/LA, which did not disclose the lower $4 million appraisal. One day, however, while a person was at the CRA/LA building, someone from CRA/LA came to this person and said, “Here, you want this. Leave now.” Once outside, this person opened the envelope that contained an unknown appraisal for 1601 N. Vine for only $4 million. 

The public widely publicized the fraud, but the DA did nothing. On October 21, 2010, Ron Kay LA published “UPDATED: Demand for a Criminal Investigation of the CRA Deal for 1601 N. Vine St. It was also mentioned in CityWatch on June 25, 2010, “CRA Has LA’s Council in a Mind Wrap.” 

In 2010, the City said that no one who knew anything about the transactions back in 2006 was still around. That was a bold lie. There was Eric Garcetti, CRA/LA’s Tom Breezy (who seemed to have gone into hiding,) CRA/LA’s John Prefitt (who was then working for the City of Downey,) the owner Steve Ullman, Garcetti’s aid and then CRA/LA employee Allison Becker, and project front man Hal Katersky. Since other workers at the CRA/LA knew enough to slip the hidden $4 million appraisal to the public, there had to be a host of other CRA/LA employees as well as other members of Garcetti’s council staff who knew. Did the District Attorney bother to question a single person? There was far more than probable cause to indict those people who committed appraisal fraud on the City of LA. Yet, nothing was done. 

2. Garcetti-La Bonge, Hollywood Sign Bait and Switch Scam 

From all evidence, this $12 million “Bait and Switch Scam” over the Hollywood Sign’s imminent destruction was run out of Tom LaBonge’s Office (CD 4), while Garcetti was CD 13’s councilmember and City Council President. 

One could say that this scheme exemplified how the road to hell is paved with good intentions. On the flip side, LaBonge involved Hollywood school children. Is it wise to teach children that a criminal Bait and Switch scam is an OK way to make money? 

LaBonge wanted to purchase the 140 acres of Cahuenga Peak, a barren peak to the west of Mt. Lee. As Hollywoodians know, Mt. Lee’s south slope is the home of the Hollywood Sign. For reasons which are not pertinent for this story, in 2001, shortly after 9/11, LaBonge had allowed Fox River Financial from Chicago to purchase Cahuenga Peak for $1.67 million despite the fact it overlooked the LAPD communications installation on top of Mt. Lee.   

In 2010, LaBonge decided that it would be nice to spend $12 million to buy Cahuenga Peak as an addition to Griffith Park. The Peak still overlooked Mt. Lee’s telecommunications center and for Home Land Security reasons, it was non-buildable. No one has explained why property worth $1.67 million in 2001 was worth almost ten times as much in 2010, when we were in the depths of the real estate crash. 

When LaBonge could not raise the $12 million to buy the property, the Save the Peak Campaign was born. The H Sign was draped with huge letters saying SAVE THE PEAK. The worldwide news story was that developers were about to destroy the famed Hollywood Sign and people had to donate money to Save The Peak as the only way to save the H Sign. 

Even the Hollywood school children whom La Bonge enlisted in his Save the Peak campaign knew that the H Sign is not on Cahuenga Peak and that it was in no type of danger. People living in South Africa, Europe and Australia, however, did not know that this was a Bait and Switch fraud. The District Attorney knew about the fraud since it was well publicized and members of the public expressly complained to the DA about this scam. 

La Bonge had photo-ops in front of the H Sign and Governor Schwarzenegger came and gave a speech about how much the Hollywood Sign meant to him and what an honor it was to help save it. 

3. Garcetti’s Millennium Earthquake Towers and Raymond Chan’s Money Laundering 

During the fiasco of Garcetti’s attempting to construct the Millennium Towers over the Hollywood Earthquake Fault Line, the key person at Los Angeles’ Department of Building and Safety was Raymond Chan. During this time, The Millennium’s law firm hired Raymond Chan’s son, who was a law student, to work as a “law clerk.” Hiring the son of the mucky-muck in charge of the Millennium’s earthquake assessment seemed a tad shady. Of course, the City found no earthquake threat. But, wait, it gets worse. 

When the LA Times found that the law student son had made thousands of dollars of contributions to Garcetti’s campaign, people started asking where the kid got all that money. People suspected that since the law student son worked for the law firm, he was an illegal conduit from Millennium to its lawyers to the son to Garcetti. 

At that point, Raymond Chan announced that he had given his son the money to make the campaign contributions to Garcetti. That diverted suspicion away from The Millennium. As we learned in the LA Times Sea Breeze article, relatives funneling money to politicos is as illegal as developers funneling money. Raymond Chan was later promoted by Garcetti. All the District Attorney had to do was walk into the Grand Jury room, slap down the LA Times and the other news article and say, “Indict this ham sandwich.” But oh no, nothing that might tarnish golden boy Garcetti. 

4. The Missing Half Billion Loss at the Hollywood-Highland Project 

It cost $625 million to construct the Hollywood-Highland Project and in 2004, the project was sold to CIM Group for only $201 million. That was a loss of $424 million; then the City made some sort of $30 million deal with CIM to subsidize the transformation of the new Kodak Theater, which had been expressly designed for the Academy Awards, so that it would be appropriate of Cirque du Soleil. Thus, the overall loss on the Project approached $500 million. 

From the District Attorney’s perspective, the important element was not whether the original developer lost close to half a billion dollars, but how much money did the City of Los Angeles (including its Community Redevelopment Agency, CRA/LA) lose in the transfer of Hollywood-Highland to one of Garcetti’s most favored developers? There is good reason to believe that this deal cost the City $100 million. Who really knows, when the public is left to reading the tea leaves? 

(5) Corruption Kills, LA County D.A.’s Own June 2013 Findings 

In June 2013, the Los Angeles County Civil Grand Jury found that when the LA City Council under the leadership of council President Eric Garcetti took millions of dollars away from the Los Angeles Paramedics, they knew that people would die and that people did in fact dies as a result of those budget cuts. As others proved, Garcetti based the under-funding of the paramedics on a false deployment report. Taking money away from paramedics with knowledge that people will die as a result is criminal fraud. It is no different than hiding peanut butter in food in a school cafeteria knowing that some kids have lethal peanut allergies. At the same time, the City was giving hundreds of millions of dollars to developers. 

Has Garcetti fixed the situation? On November 3, 2016 a toddler choked on a grape at the LA Zoo and it took the paramedics 14 minutes to arrive. Six minutes of the delay seems due to the LA Zoo’s unwillingness to call 911, but it took the paramedics eight minutes to reach the zoo after the 911 call was made. Why doesn’t LA have paramedics stationed at the zoo like other cities? Although Garcetti and others know that the downsized paramedic workforce is causing needless death and this child has been turned into a “vegetable,” giving money to developers like the $17 million Garcetti gave to CIM Group for its project at 5929 Sunset is more important. 

The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office has likewise shown a conscious disregard for the life and safety of Angelenos. The District Attorney’s own June 2013 Grand Jury report shows that it knew that the “corruptionism” at LA City Hall was killing people and it did nothing.

(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.

DIVIDED LA--The Los Angeles Police Department is investigating three incidents of vandalism at art galleries in Boyle Heights as possible hate crimes. In at least one instance, "187" and "Fuck White Art" were painted on a building in Boyle Heights, according to police. The number 187 is the California penal code for murder.

The heavily Mexican-American Eastside community has been a cauldron of tension between locals and a handful of mostly newer art galleries, which are seen by critics as the leading flank of a wave of white gentrification. In September protesters gathered outside the opening of a new gallery, Artist Space, created by Beverly Hills–based United Talent Agency, which represents A-list actors and, now, up-and-coming artists.

And earlier in the summer the group Defend Boyle Heights demanded that "all art galleries in Boyle Heights ... leave immediately." Anti-gentrification activists say the galleries, new restaurants and new housing serve as tools to displace Boyle Heights residents who, in a market where median rents exceed median income, will have nowhere else to go. 

The vandalism took place between Oct. 8 and 11 and again on Oct. 15, according to LAPD Capt. Rick Stabile. Seeing the "187" marking as a threat, and noting that the graffiti targets white people, police started a hate-crime investigation, he says.

"We are so neutral on the gentrification part of this stuff," he says. "But to me there's a way to protest legally, especially in LA, and that doesn't mean you can vandalize people's property."

City Councilman José Huizar, who represents the community, described the graffiti as particularly out of order given the history of Boyle Heights as a kind of Ellis Island of L.A. — where generations of immigrants of Jewish, Japanese and Mexican backgrounds have found a landing place.

"As Americans, we all have the right to peacefully assemble and express our opinions," Huizar said in a statement. "However, hate speech graffiti, property damage or other illegal acts are crimes and cannot be tolerated.

"I think the issue of gentrification is something that the Boyle Heights community should address, given what’s happening throughout the city of LA. But at the same time, there’s a way of doing that. I really don’t support the tactics that some of the anti-gentrification groups have used in Boyle Heights. To have this kind of racially based exclusion of people is not right, given the history of Boyle Heights. It’s not right on its own, but it’s even worse when you think about the history of Boyle Heights."

Defend Boyle Heights denied responsibility for the vandalism — but it didn't condemn it. "We don’t know who tagged up these galleries, but we certainly don’t condemn it," according to a statement from the group. "It is right to rebel! We are glad to see the community rise up to resist displacement, art washing and gentrification — however they see fit! Your anger is justified."

The statement described the possible hate-crime designation as ironic because police have fatally shot "men, women, boys and girls in our community."

LAPD's Stabile says he wants gallery owners and critics to talk it out, and he's asked the city Human Relations Commission to set up community meetings where both sides can air their issues. 

• READ ALSO: Gentrification Protesters in Los Angeles Target Art Galleries (NY Times) 

(Dennis Romero writes for LA Weekly … where this piece was first posted.) Photo credit: LA Weekly-Timo Saarelma

-cw