LOS ANGELES

MIRISCH ON ‘M’--In an article on its propaganda website, eerily named “The Source,” Metro boasts: “It’s official: Measure M heads to November ballot.” The subhead makes the spin clearer: “More Mobility, Movement, Motion, Maintenance focus of Metro’s Sales Tax Ballot Measure.”  

Of course, that’s how Metro is going to try to hard-sell the new Forever Tax.  

Quite frankly, it would be more appropriate to have written that the “M” in Measure M stands for: 

More Money, Mismanagement, Malfeasance and Misinformation make up Metro’s Sales Tax Ballot Measure. 

As a transit advocate for a forward-thinking, future-oriented, fully-integrated transit system which democratizes public transportation by providing point-to-point, on demand mobility, I’m going to go into a level of detail which may be a bit of inside baseball for those who basically just want to know whether they should support Metro’s Forever Tax or not. 

For those who just want the down and dirty, I’m going to start this essay with a summary of bullet points.

Metro is claiming the “M” in Measure M stands for “Mobility, Movement, Motion, Maintenance.” It actually stands for: More Money, Mismanagement, Malfeasance and Misinformation.

More Money

• Measure M is a Forever Tax, which will generate hundreds of billions of dollars.

• Measure M effectively doubles (after the expiration of Measure R) our countywide transportation tax. It raises our county sales tax to 10% or more in parts of the county, among the highest in the nation.
  
• Sales tax is a notoriously regressive tax, which disproportionally impacts the poorest and most vulnerable among us.
  
• The way the plan has been put together to garner political support rather than, first and foremost, to advance mobility, Metro seems more concerned with passing the tax than mobility itself.
  Mismanagement
  
• Metro has increased its operating budget successively to $5.6 billion, yet is suffering from a “ridership slump” (LA Times).
  
• Metro offers no viable first/last mile solutions, which are crucial for a first-class mobility system.
  
• Measure M’s proposed projects include politically-motivated projects at the expense of mobility-motivated ones. The proposed Sepulveda Pass Tunnel is the poster-child for wasteful spending.
  
• Metro’s mantra seems to be: “Overpromise and underdeliver.” In attempting to be all things to all people, they are making contradictory promises to various parts of the county in order to try to win support for the Forever Tax.
  
• Measure M’s funding mechanisms are inherently unfair: the measure would make important parts of the county, such as the Gateway Cities and the South Bay, wait decades for much-needed infrastructure upgrades.
  
  Malfeasance 

• Metro continues to act like it is under the Consent Decree, as it was for over a decade, because its Measure M spending plan aggravates social injustice while increasing racial discrimination. This is why the Bus Riders’ Union and other civil rights organizations strongly oppose the measure.
  
• Metro’s safety record is questionable. The Blue Line is one of the most dangerous and deadly commuter light rail lines in the country.
  
• The recently opened Expo Line covers 15.2 miles from Santa Monica to Downtown LA. It takes close to an hour. This is expensive, inefficient, unmodern transportation, which provides questionable value-for-taxpayer-dollars.
  
• A federal judge recent ruled that Metro has acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner in planning transit routes, and has violated federal environmental law. Metro painted the ruling as a “victory,” because the judge did not vacate the record of decision (ROD) and allowed Metro to continue to seek federal grant funding. In other words, Metro only cares about the money.
  
• Metro’s corporate governance is rigged and undemocratic. Residents of 62% of the county are underrepresented on the Metro board, while the city of LA has a bloc which gives it outsized voting power. As the board makes the spending decisions about all funds - including, ultimately, how the Measure M funds would be spent — the principle of “one person/one vote” needs to be adhered to before Metro is given more money.
  
  Misinformation 

• The idea that passing Measure M and giving Metro the proceeds of the Forever Tax will “solve traffic problems” is a myth. Metro’s name for Measure M, “the Los Angeles County Traffic Improvement Plan” is nothing if not deceptive. 
  
• Metro has raised taxes three times, increased spending significantly, yet ridership has not increased. Traffic has not improved.
  
• Measure M is not a “ground up” tax which deserves support from the residents of LA County. It is a cynical political ploy which aims at spreading transit crumbs throughout the County with the primary goal of winning votes, not increasing mobility.
  
• Metro’s plan is backwards-looking rather than forwards-thinking. We need to better take advantage of advances in transportation technology, including the rapid development of autonomous vehicles, to create an integrated transportation system which offers all residents of the county a first-choice for mobility and which democratizes public transportation. 

Who should favor Measure M, the Forever Tax? 

Corporate welfare fans; crony capitalists; politicians who are looking for campaign cash and favors; commuters who are happy with second class service; transportation nostalgiacs who don’t feel advances in transportation technology should be integrated into a modern transit system; people who don’t mind funding agencies who have repeatedly broken past promises.

Who should oppose Measure M, the Forever Tax? 

People concerned with social justice and/or fiscal responsibility; people who want to reduce racial discrimination; those who want a public transportation system for everyone; people who want a forward-thinking, visionary transportation system with the goal of point-to-point on-demand mobility within public transportation; people who doen’t trust massive governmental agencies with a documented record of poor decision-making; those who feel that forever is a long, long time...

Who benefits most?  

• The Transportation/Infrastructure Industrial Complex: politically connected corporations like Parsons Brinckerhoff & Co. ; construction companies; engineering companies; construction unions.
  
• Developers who use transit as an excuse to overdevelop and an alibi to densify.
  
• “Mobility” advocacy and booster organizations, who receive funding from the Transportation/Infrastructure Industrial Complex. 
  
• Empire-building politicians (who then name subway stations after themselves)

Who benefits the least? 

• Everyone else 

What a YES vote means. 

• Among the highest sales tax rates in the nation. Forever.
  
• More construction, more maintenance, not necessarily more transit solutions.
  
• Cities and areas outside of the city of Los Angeles will continue to be second-class transportation citizens and will need to continue to be satisfied with transit crumbs and scraps from Metro’s table.
  
• Wasted opportunities and planned obsolescence, as traditional rail projects, including inefficient light rail, continue to provide expensive transportation alternatives with long commute times.
  
• Politically motivated spending on projects which will do little or nothing to increase mobility in the county.  
  
• The ability of the Metro board to divert funding from all the projects being touted in the Measure M propaganda to other projects which benefit their friends and patrons. And the inability of the citizens of LA County to do anything about it... 

• More broken promises.
  
• NO real solutions to the county’s traffic problems. 

What a NO vote means.

• Sending a message to Metro that we are unwilling to throw good money after bad money. Metro has raised taxes three successive times - and fares numerous times — without an accompanying increase in service, mobility or ridership.
  
• Acknowledgement that future-oriented mobility needs to be at the top of Metro’s agenda. Solutions for the future need to look to disruptive and transformative developments in transit technology, such as autonomous vehicles.
  
• Support for an integrated plan which puts mobility, not politics first.
  
• An unwillingness to pass another regressive tax, which disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable among us.
  
• Recognition that Metro Board governance needs to be changed so that all residents of the county are equitably represented, and that the city of Los Angeles’s leaders need to do more than pay lip service to the 62% of the county’s residents who live in the other 87 cities and unincorporated county.
  
• Support for social, racial and geographical justice.
  
• Acknowledgment that forever is a long, long time, and that a Forever Tax is not the answer.
  #

That’ll do it for the Executive Summary of the Measure M. You don’t really need to know that much more in order to understand just how bad an idea Metro’s Forever Tax is. But for those who like inside baseball, here’s the more detailed breakdown of the Forever Tax, Measure M. Enjoy!

More Money

Metro’s mantra seems to be “Show us the money!” It sometimes seems that the agency’s mission is more sucking up and spending money, rather than mobility itself.

We can see Metro’s addiction to taxpayer dollars by looking at Metro’s operating budget. Metro’s operating budget has increased from some $3 billion to over $5.6 billion in a few short years. 

So to deal with Metro’s jonesing for public dollars, this time it’s a Forever Tax, folks. 

Yep, that’s right: in contrast to Measure R, the new Measure M is a half-cent sales tax increase which has no sunset, no end, and which keeps the faucet of taxpayer dollars running forever. What’s more, Measure M eliminates the sunset date for Measure R, converting it, too, to a Forever Tax. 

Consequently, Measure M, the Forever Tax, effectively doubles the transit tax rate after Measure R expires, and brings the sales tax up to close to 10% throughout the County (and over 10% in certain areas). The Forever Tax would generate literally hundreds of billions of dollars and raise our sales tax to among the highest in the entire nation.

It is a blank check of the highest magnitude, because despite all the assurances of “strict oversight,” it is ultimately the undemocratic Metro board which decides how the money is being spent.

Mismanagement

For all the public funds Metro has taken to satisfy its thirst for money, for all the billions in increased budget, we haven’t seen anything close to the development of an integrated system of public transportation which serves the needs of the entire county. We haven’t seen an increase in ridership. We haven’t seen better service. We haven’t seen better mobility or a decrease in racial discrimination or an increase in social justice. And we haven’t seen a decrease in traffic.

What we’ve seen is pretty simple: a bigger budget.

While it’s clear Metro is not concerned at all with giving the residents of LA County the best mobility value-for-money, we see more evidence of Metro’s mismanagement from some of the projects proposed by Measure M and from some of the lack of projects.

Despite some nice-sounding lip service from certain Metro Board members, first/last mile mobility solutions are almost nowhere to be found either in Measure M or in Metro’s larger, overall transit strategy. First/last mile solutions are extremely important from a transit perspective, because in real life people need to have the ability to access heavy and light rail stations, as well as bus stops. Yet for all Metro’s focus on “shiny new things” aka rail, Metro is singularly dismissive of the need to help commuters get to and from the rail stations.

Cluelessness about “public transportation”

One of my Council colleagues recently posted on Facebook that he and his wife had taken the Expo Line to Santa Monica. Someone asked him how he got to the station, to which he responded that he had parked at Metro’s park-and-ride on Jefferson and La Cienega. A senior Metro executive then seriously suggested that my colleague could have taken Uber to the station.

Think about it. If my colleague was really going to take Uber, then he wouldn’t take it from Beverly Hills to Culver City in order to ride the train to Santa Monica. He would take it directly to Santa Monica. But beyond the cluelessness of the Metro executive’s suggestion, the mere idea that a representative of one of the richest transit agencies in the country would so cheerily offer up a private, profit-driven company as a solution for public transportation goes to show that Metro just doesn’t get the concept of “public transportation.”

In Beverly Hills, we recognize the importance of dealing with the first/last mile challenge, and so we are working on our own solutions, which would also transform mobility within our own city. We are the first city in the country to be actively pursuing the incorporation of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology within a system of public transportation with the vision of developing a Municipal Autonomous Shuttle System. As envisioned, our system would provide on demand, point-to-point mobility within our city which would literally transform public transportation, and would offer a blueprint for hyperlocal mobility solutions for other cities and regions.

Of course, Metro itself should be developing public transportation solutions to the first/last mile challenge rather than recommending Uber, but that’s another story and just one further example of Metro’s mismanagement.

Political Sepulveda Pass Blues

Perhaps the biggest poster child for Metro’s wasteful spending is Measure M’s proposal to build a tunnel through the Sepulveda Pass. It’s a 9-mile tunnel which is currently budgeted at $10 billion, including a connector to the airport. 

Let’s put this in perspective. 

The Swiss just recently completed the longest rail tunnel in the world, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, a 35-mile, twin bore tunnel. Switzerland is a notoriously expensive country. A Big Mac costs something like 60% more in Switzerland than in the US. But the Swiss managed to complete the GBT for some $12 billion, tunneling through some of the roughest mountainous terrain in the world. That’s about $343 million per mile. Contrast with Metro, which is budgeting almost a billion dollars per mile for the Sepulveda Pass Tunnel. And, no, the Sepulveda Pass is hardly the Alps...

But the Sepulveda Pass Tunnel is not only the poster child for Measure M’s wasteful spending because of the inflated costs, even by Swiss standards. The Sepulveda Pass Tunnel is the poster child for Measure M’s wasteful spending because it is a completely superfluous, unnecessary project. Oh, sure, Metro officials describe it as an “ambitious project that could vastly improve mobility.” But it makes no sense at all.

We already have a major piece of infrastructure which connects the Valley with the Westside. It’s called the 405 and Metro just spent a billion dollars widening it. Yes, it’s perpetually jammed, but perhaps before spending $10 billion on a tunnel, it would be better if Metro looked at ways to use this piece of existing infrastructure more efficiently.

Part of Metro’s problem is that it is not taking advances in transportation technology seriously and not integrating them into its Measure M plans.

In justifying the need for the tens of billions of dollars which Measure M would raise, Metro’s CEO Phil Washington has said, “we’re building for the next 100 years.” Yet if Metro is really building for the next hundred years, it should stop focusing on the past hundred years. It should start looking to the future.

Autonomous vehicle technology, for example, could create a significantly more efficient use of the freeways. One or two AV-only lanes, including multi-rider public transit AVs, could increase capacities on the 405 exponentially. There would be no need whatsoever for the porky Sepulveda Pass Tunnel.

But a tunnel is cool. It’s sexy.

And, more importantly, it’s been highlighted by Metro to try to appeal politically to Valley voters who feel they have been shafted in the past by Metro (because they have been shafted in the past by Metro). In short, the project is part of Measure M because Metro feels it will win votes to pass the tax.

The only problem is it could be yet another hollow promise. While Metro’s lackeys are touting the Tunnel to win Valley votes, they’re probably not telling those who would be seduced by the tunnel that it is not fully funded, not even with the Forever Tax. In the words of a top Metro official: “Measure M includes only $2.9 billion for all phases. The ability to achieve state, federal or private funds will determine how this project is finally scoped.” 

Overpromise and underdeliver

Part of Measure M’s unsolvable problem is that Metro is trying to make it all things to all people. The political ploy is to throw transit breadcrumbs and scraps around the county to get the diverse constituencies to vote in favor of the Forever Tax. As such, Measure M is a Frankenstein’s monster constructed of various disparate, non-integrated parts with the primary goal of passing a tax, rather than providing the entire county with the best possible, fully integrated mobility system. In fact, the promise of mobility is simply being used to get more money.

Like with the porky Sepulveda Pass Tunnel, which the Metro bigwig above seems to be selling down the river to elected officials concerned with its porkiness, Metro is telling different things to different groups. To the Valleyites, they are hard-selling the Sepulveda Pass Tunnel (“It will be transformational!”). To the South Bay and Gateway Cities, they are saying that the Sepulveda Pass Tunnel isn’t fully funded by Measure M and implying it might not ever get built.

You get the picture.

Metro board members desperate to get the Forever Tax passed have also been making calls and visits to elected officials from the other 87 cities in LA County (i.e. all cities outside of the City of Los Angeles) with a combination of sweet-talking and arm-twisting (“If you don’t support the measure, I’ll remember; if you do, I promise...”) to try to eliminate any opposition to the Measure. The results have been distinctly mixed, but the effort in itself is remarkable in that elected officials are being contacted by high-level Metro board members who are stunningly silent when they don’t want or need anything (“You never write. You never call...”).

Unfortunately, Metro has overpromised and underdelivered in the past. All the projects promised by Measure R have not been finished and some communities actually feel that the agency should make good its previous promises before holding its hand out again. And, quite frankly, some cities and elected officials are simply unprepared to say “Thank you, Sir, may I have another” or accept that their cities are being royally screwed, in spite of further promises from Metro honchos. 

It is completely understandable that the South Bay and the Gateway Cities Councils of Government, representing 44 — or half — of the 88 cities in the county, have voted to oppose the Forever Tax. This is unprecedented, but at some point, the chalice of Metro’s unfairness bubbled over and the elected officials - and hopefully the residents come November - were unwilling to call the BS they were being served up on the side chocolate mousse.

Because of Measure M’s unfair and inefficient funding scheme, these cities are going to have to wait decades for infrastructure which would serve their residents. What’s even more outrageous is that it’s also infrastructure which could be obsolete before it is even built. In their rapacious zeal to get the tax passed, Metro is ignoring the real opportunities which the future and new technologies open for a truly integrated region-wide transportation system which actually democratizes public transportation by creating a first-choice system of mobility.

Malfeasance

Metro’s Mismanagement and mantra of “Promise and Underdeliver” would be reason enough to reject their Forever Tax. But this is also an agency which in the past has done nothing to inspire the trust which in a best case scenario would justify another tax increase, never mind a Forever Tax.

Metro spent years under a consent decree because its policies created social injustice and increased racial discrimination. The focus on building sexy and expensive rail lines took (and takes) away resources from buses, which remain the backbone of the transit system. What’s more, a sales tax is among the most regressive taxes, disproportionately impacting the most vulnerable among us. This is why the Bus Riders’ Union, representing the interests of those who are most dependent upon good public transportation, as well as other civil rights advocates strongly oppose Metro’s latest Forever Tax.

And while Metro is a world-leader in spending taxpayer dollars, it neither provides the best nor safest public transportation in the country. It should be noted that Metro’s Blue Line light rail is among the deadliest, most dangerous commuter rail lines in the entire country. Over 120 people have died in Blue Line accidents and there have been over 800 collisions on this line alone since 1990.

Yes, Metro loves rail, even when it’s dangerous and even when it’s not the most efficient form of transportation. Metro’s new Expo Line from Santa Monica to Downtown LA is a case in point. It’s a 15.2 mile stretch which takes almost an hour from point-to-point. Not exactly a model of efficiency, though fans of the Toonerville Trolley might get their kicks on the Expo Line.

“Arbitrary and capricious”

What’s more, a federal judge’s recent decision (in a case involving Beverly Hills), describes Metro’s actions as “arbitrary and capricious,” and made the finding that Metro violated NEPA, the federal environmental law. If the IRS or DEA or EPA had been determined by a federal judge to have both violated federal law and acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner, one would think that none of the aforementioned agencies would claim the judge’s decision as a “victory.”

Yet that’s exactly what Metro has done. Metro touted the judge’s decision as a “victory” on “The Source,” because the federal judge did not vacate the ROD (Record of Decision), which allows Metro to continue its process of getting federal grant funding. Clearly, for Metro, it’s all about the money. But, clearly, governmental agencies which don’t care if they violate federal environmental laws and who are unconcerned over a federal judge’s ruling that they have acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner don’t deserve billion dollar blank checks and funding faucets which never get turned off.

Undemocratic and rigged corporate governance

Metro is an equal opportunity blower-offer and its arrogance crosses the board, whether it’s Norwalk, Torrance or Beverly Hills, whether it’s the bus riders or those opposed to using the notion of “Transit Oriented Development” (or TOD) as an excuse for overdevelopment. The cause for Metro’s arrogance and tendency towards misbehavior could very well be the subject of a dissertation of a corporate psychiatrist, but much of it likely has to do with the fact that the residents of LA County are not proportionally represented on the Metro Board. The Metro board was designed and rigged to give the city of LA outsized, bloc voting power, and that means that the other 87 cities in the county, as well as unincorporated areas, can easily get the short end of the stick. 

Metro’s undemocratic corporate governance needs to be fixed, something which the city of LA is bound to resist, but something which it should embrace in the name of fairness and true regional cooperation. Torrance’s Mayor Pat Furey and I wrote an article in the LA Business Journal in detail why Metro board reform is a precondition for truly getting transit on track back in LA County.

Misinformation

Metro’s entire sales pitch on the Forever Tax, Measure M, is that it will “bring traffic relief.” In fact, Metro’s own name for Measure M is “the Los Angeles County Traffic Improvement Plan.” Sounds great, but this is a total myth.

In fact, the viability of the entire ballot measure is predicated upon this myth. It’s why Metro wags are touting that polling shows 75% of the voters are in favor of the tax.

Of course, with polling, it all depends on how you ask the question.

Metro’s pollers: Do you want to alleviate traffic?

You: Yes!

Metro’s pollers: Would you be willing to pay a half-cent more in sales tax to solve the traffic problems?

You: Yes! 

That’s how Metro can get 75% polling in favor of the Forever Tax.

And yet, even the LA Times, which when it comes to Metro often seems like a booster organization rather than an independent, objective organ of journalistic integrity, wrote earlier in the year about Metro’s increasing expenses and ridership slump.  (The headline online now reads, “Billions spent, but fewer people are using public transportation in Southern California.” This headline was softened from talk of a “Ridership Slump,” a phrase which evidently was anathema to Metro. Presumably, Metro’s PR honcho, Steve Hymon, a former LA Times employee was able to get his buddies to change the headline of the online version, though if you look to the URL, it includes the phrase “ridership-slump”).

So, in short, Metro’s equation is: more money=fewer riders.

Which leads us to a number of important questions:

Is pouring more money into the agency - forever - really the solution? Especially considering how Metro seems more concerned with the digging/tunneling/building/spending itself rather than with mobility?

How about demanding an agency which develops a modern, forward-thinking, fully-integrated system which has efficient, point-to-point transportation as its goal?

How about a transportation system which is a first-choice for mobility for the majority of the county’s residents? A transportation system which our residents use because they want to, not because they have to, would be the hallmark of the kind of public transportation system we both need and deserve.

Measure M, Metro’s Forever Tax, is a far cry from anything close to that. For the resources which Metro is now demanding from the taxpayers, we should insist upon no less. Because forever is indeed a long, long time....

(John Mirisch is the Mayor of Beverly Hills. He has, among other things, created the Sunshine Task Force to increase transparency, ethics and public participation in local government. Mayor Mirisch is a CityWatch contributor.)

-cw

EASTSIDER-Much ado has been made over recent corruption involving the Calderon brothers and the Central Basin Water District. First, hats off to CityWatch, which covered their shennanigins in no less than three separate articles back in 2013. 

For all the smoke, not much happened until last year, raising questions as to what the Feds knew and why they didn’t do anything at the time. Now of course everyone seems to be weighing in on the Calderons and the Central Basin Water District with horrified expressions of “oh my god, how can this be?” Please. 

The Calderon brothers have been playing in California politics since the 80s, led by brother Charles (a former LA City Deputy City Attorney) for those who follow politics, they always played dirty and they always played hard. Real hard. For decades they have controlled much of the political life of most of southeastern Los Angeles County -- places like Cerritos, Santa Fe Springs, Norwalk, Montebello, Downey, Pico Rivera, Bell, Huntington Park, and the like. Not to mention the California State Legislature. 

As all the rats desert a sinking ship, what political insiders always knew is now public -- these folks were major league crooks and the Central Basin Water District was their big time slush fund. 

One of the major players in this mess is Robert “call me Bob” Apodaca, who was serving as President of the Water Board when the wheels came off their crooked deals. In one of those “only in Los Angeles” moments, Apodaca then cut a deal for himself to testify against the Calderon brothers -- but only after getting the Board to pay $670,000 to settle a sexual discrimination against himself! 

Fortunately, one case that Bob couldn’t fix was the whistleblower lawsuit against him and the Central Basin Water District filed by Ron Beilke, a former Pico Rivera city councilman. When it became clear that Beilke was poking his nose into fiddled financial transactions and would not go along to get along, he was fired after less than a week on the job. Recently, a superior court judge ruled that Beilke is entitled to a jury trial. Hot damn, that should be interesting. 

For those whose prurient interest in matters Calderon is piqued, the Los Angeles Times has an absolutely cool interactive graphic on the Calderon family and their web of politics. You can find it here.  

Water Districts -- the Structural Story 

If this was simply a story about crooked politics in Los Angeles, most people would yawn and go back to their iPhones or the internet. Maybe it’s just me, but most people I talk to seem to think that most in City Hall are a bunch of crooks, albeit smart enough to insulate themselves by using cutouts like real estate developers, billboard companies, lobbyists and lawyers, not to mention merrily violating the Brown Act public meeting statute through staff, small committee meetings and a default 15-0 Council voting system. God forbid that a Neighborhood Council should emulate them. That NC would find itself in “Exhaustive Efforts” faster than Eric Garcetti can make a deal. 

So let’s take a closer look at water districts, with special emphasis on Central Basin. The graphic header to this piece is a web capture of the Elections page from the current Central Basin Municipal Water District website. Tell me if you can figure out anything about the Board of Directors from the web page. Good luck, unless you’re into the Municipal Water District Law of 1911. 1911 for goodness sake! 

Anyhow, the truth is that the Central Basin Water District is a relatively recent special district, as they go, being voted into existence in 1952 to “help mitigate the over pumping of underground water resources in southeast Los Angeles County.” Sure. So the first thing they really did was join the Metropolitan Water District -- the same huge District that the DWP buys water from. And, greasing the gravy chain, Apodaca got to be on the Board of Directors of the MWD.

Too Many Special Districts 

The problem is that there are way too many special districts, especially water districts, in California. In 2001, after the state’s Little Hoover Commission issued a pretty rough report, AB 38 was passed charging the Legislative Analyst’s Office with examining water special districts. 

The Legislative Analyst’s report, which can be found here, revealed that there are 1286 water districts of one type or another, which is an astoundingly high number of public agencies when you think about it. They ranged from the giant Metropolitan Water District to little teeny ones with few employees. Of those districts, some 326 were controlled by county boards of supervisors, 25 were run by city councils, and some 935 were independent water districts, like the Central Basin Water District that sunk the Calderon brothers and their pals. 

Think about it. Almost no one knows anything about these water districts and, as we have seen, they provide a wonderful opportunity for both graft, as in the recent case of the Central Basin Water District, and for more nuanced behavior like personal aggrandizement, warehousing money, slimy deals, secrecy in general, and all kinds of groovy stuff which could provide lots of plots for episodic television. 

I know, it’s hard for normal folks to keep track of Cities, Counties and the State of California itself without having their eyes glaze over – but there’s a whole subterranean world of California public agencies. Also, buried in the regulatory labyrinth of the state is a group of public entities called “Special Districts.” Within that generic category, “Water Districts” are an even more arcane subset. And since almost no one knows about them, they are easy prey for mischief by members of their Boards. 

Recent Developments 

In 2014, as the events surrounding the Central Basin Water District were starting to gain coverage, the LA County Board of Supervisors asked the State of California to conduct an audit, which they did. The report, released in 2015, was scathing. And Assembly Member Christina Garcia (D-Downey), introduced legislation to clean the mess up. 

But remember, this is California, where nothing is as it seems. Back in 2013, at the same time that everyone was writing about the Central Basin mess, and the drought was coming on strong, our very own governor Jerry Brown appointed a big time water lobbyist as the chief deputy director of the California Department of Water Resources. 

I can’t resist a play on words -- her name is Laura King Moon, reminding us old folks of Jerry’s former moniker, “Governor Moonbeam,” during his first term. (I know, cheap shot.) It’s clear that the governor lost his former ideological frame of mind after becoming mayor of Oakland. 

Further, in 2014, Governor Brown vetoed Christina Garcia’s bill (AB 1728) that would have tightened contribution limits for water board members. Gee, I wonder if Ms. Moon had any input into the veto. 

This year she authored another bill, AB 1794, which is squarely aimed at the Central Basin Water District and would establish an entirely new governance structure for the Board. As of now, I don’t know if the governor has signed it or not. 

Sometime in the future, I’ll get into the overall issue of special districts in California -- their perils and pitfalls -- and what’s happening. Teaser: nothing’s been done since the Little Hoover Commission’s 2000 Report but the Little Hoover Commission is back at it and will be conducting hearings starting this month. 

Stay tuned.

(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.) 

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EDUCATION POLITICS-The charter school under fire for accusations that it used public money for luxury items like first class airfare, a bottle of syrah (not será) and late night charcuterie (and more…much more) defended itself by blaming the school district for failing to provide necessary oversight. 

In Risky Business, did Tom Cruise blame his parents for leaving him home when his entrepreneurial experiment turned into the party of his life? 

El Camino Charter Executive Director David Fehte’s party was the premier topic at LAUSD’s August 23rd board meeting. As has been widely reported and blogged, the board adopted a Notice of Violations for the high achieving, highly segregated -- some might say that’s redundant -- charter school. 

The charter school’s attorney said the problem isn’t unique to El Camino. “Like Charlie Brown kicking a football, charter schools are set up to make compliance mistakes, and then they’re heavily penalized when they actually do,” she complained. 

If she means that, in the five years between renewal hearings, unregulated charter schools can be given enough rope to hang themselves, she may be right. But then she threatened legal action against the rope maker. 

“…Approving this will expose the district to liability,” she said bluntly. 

The testimony of the teachers, though, was emotional. Some had been teaching at El Camino for decades and they had gone through a process to try and discern the best way to serve their students. Eighty-five percent had voted to become independent from the district bureaucracy and convert to a charter. 

One teacher said, “It hurts me personally to see our reputation under scrutiny.” 

The rest of LAUSD and public school districts across the country might have a thing or two to say about the fairness of being scrutinized. 

The teachers touted the accomplishments of the school since they were granted autonomy: Having the highest paid teachers, adding staff to the tune of two dedicated college counselors, another counselor just for the Humanitas program, facilities upgrades, new technology and an administration that is 100% behind their collaborative model. None of them mentioned an enrollment process that allows charters to recruit the most motivated families. 

Every person who testified on behalf of the charter school pointed the finger at LAUSD’s Charter Schools Division (CSD). 

Melanie Horton, the charter school’s director of marketing, said, “We need feedback and guidance. We pay oversight fees and we expect their support.” 

Another teacher, Susan Freitag, the visual and performing arts department chair, said that since they converted to charter, the school has benefited from facility upgrades and new technology. She asked, “If the thousands of pages of violations sent to [El Camino Charter] hold any validity, I question the Charter School Division as to why these issues were not brought to our school’s attention prior to last year. We have the same administration. We’ve had the same financial team. We’ve had the same board members.” 

Dean Sodek, head of the Humanitas Global Studies Academy at El Camino Charter said financial transparency is something we all want. 

One wonders if these teachers pressed their charter school board for the same thing. For all the recent talk that “all schools are our schools in the LAUSD family,” its charter schools are independently governed by their own boards of directors. Nonprofits are subject to oversight even if they’re not schools because they’re handling public money.

The same administration. The same financial team. The same board members. 

Former LAUSD school board member David Tokofsky quoted a page from history when he testified at the board meeting. 

“I’m reminded, as a social studies teacher, of the phrase ‘What did you know? When did you know it and who did you tell?’ That refers not to you as a board or to the superintendent, but it may refer to your staff and it may refer to the board at this charter school.” 

There will be plenty said, and plenty of people will need to say it, as the volumes of documents are investigated. Which recalls another quote from history: “This is not the end, this is not even the beginning of the end, this is just perhaps the end of the beginning.” 

How much authority does the LAUSD board have over an independent charter school? Will charters start lobbying for more oversight? LOL. What will the California Charter Schools Association say about that? Why did so many public schools in former school board member Tamar Galatzan’s district convert to charter in the first place? 

The discussion and the ramifications will reach far beyond El Camino Charter and the LAUSD.

Qué será, será.

Whatever will be, we'll be -- watching. (With apologies to Doris Day, Jay Livingston and Ray Evans)

(Karen Wolfe is a public school parent, the Executive Director of PS Connect and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

MY TURN-When I heard the anti high speed rail group SAFE calling for a demonstration on Wednesday, I was not particularly excited. That is, until one of my very regular readers pointed out that this was more than just about stopping the High Speed Rail. It was about ordinary people rising up and hopefully forcing the CHSRC group to at least listen. 

This is what the original founders of the Neighborhood Council system imagined LA’s Neighborhood Councils would do.   The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Department of Water and Power stands as a significant and rather lonely achievement of the earlier NC's standing up to power. 

Such potential to make a difference and currently mired in petty infighting.   There were two NC’s, Foothill Trails and Sunland Tujunga involved in the ongoing push against this controversial railroad project, but it was other members of the communities affected who've stayed the course for the last couple of years. 

I attended the demonstration fully prepared to see the usual small turnout of activists and malcontents. Imagine my surprise to see a hundred people, many of whom were carrying signs along with a few of the horse set representing the cavalry. 

David De Pinto, (photo) president of Shadow Hills Home Owners Association, has been carrying the message and shouting it loudly to both the press, politicians and anyone else who would listen. His consistent beef with the CHSRC is they don't talk to anyone other than their own group.   They keep regurgitating the same information. Their last meeting was in Anaheim. This is in spite of the fact that the project would change the environment, create housing and business displacement and may never be properly funded. Some have called it, "The train to nowhere". 

There are legitimate arguments on both sides but it seems the opposition is a lot louder and has more to lose. After all, for some it is only their way of living. They do have political support and the LA County Supervisors came out against the plan as it exists. I was told they keep asking Mayor Garcetti for his opinion and get stonewalled.   Our Mayor doesn't seem to like controversial issues where he may get people angry with him. 

Like many of you ... I look around and get very discouraged about our civic progress. Most of our elected officials are busy planning their run for higher office or making sure that they get re-elected. The appointed staff quickly fall into a COA pattern and know not to make waves. 

So when I see a group of stakeholders give of their time, energy and money to stand up to the entrenched politicians I want to shout hurray!!!! On the whole, I think Governor Brown has done a good job but this ... one of his legacies ... has too many bad consequences for too many people. 

Other parts of the City are facing different problems. I was once told by a very successful politician "everyone greases a squeaky wheel."  But it's not just the noise factor ... it's the organization, it's the facts given without histrionics. It's the structure of the opposition. That is why we have Lobbyists. For the average person, whose life is already stressed with more than they can handle, they are only too happy to leave it to someone else. 

Try driving down Wilshire, Santa Monica Blvd or Sunset anytime between 3 and 7 p.m.?   Food trucks and cots would do a landslide business for the people driving east. Yet more and more developments are being built. There are issues in every corner of our City. 

I thought that the 2020 group laid out a pretty good strategic plan for Los Angeles   Most of it got buried in the bureaucracy. Maybe, if that group had gone to the various districts BEFORE they presented it to the City Council, they would have had more enthusiastic buy in from Angelenos, thus putting pressure on the Mayor and City Council. 

How do you get average citizens to realize there is strength in numbers and they can make change? One of the political commentators today remarked that we had set the lowest civility bar in our history--- this election.   One newspaper columnist suggested we turn off cable news until the debates. I can understand the populace becoming more and more disillusioned. 

One can't expect everyone to be altruistic all the time. It is however in our best interests to have good neighborhoods, safe streets, clean water, reasonable utility bills, and good schools. Fortunately, there are still people who will go beyond their own self interests. We need to back them up. We need to take action in determining our future. 

David De Pinto and his diverse North East San Fernando Valley community have set the bar higher. If they are ultimately successful, it won't be because the politicians achieved it. The politicians who wrote some of the bills were pressured by many of their constituents and that Ladies and Gentlemen is the way it is done! 

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])

-cw

GELFAND’S WORLD--I was having coffee with a friend over in Carson the other day, so I took the opportunity to walk over to Ikea to buy some potato chips. They have good potato chips. Since I hadn't been through Ikea for some time, I rode the escalator to the top and commenced what I call the Ikea journey. That's the part where you walk in great circles around each floor from one section to the next, and then take a downward spiral from floor to floor. For some reason, the trek ordinarily involves getting lost and repeating one floor. I repeated the second floor, because the approach to the stairs wasn't obvious. 

Along the way, I half filled my yellow shopping bag with brightly wrapped bargains. Apparently a bunch of stuff was on sale, because the price cards showed a sale price, which was printed as a Family Price, in big numbers. The signs reminded me of Family Size cereal boxes and Family Size laundry detergent you see in the super markets. Down below in microscopic print was the price you would ordinarily pay. I could see how much money I was saving. 

So after what seemed like a two mile hike through the store, I managed to find the steps down to the cash register level. It was there that I discovered that about half the items I was trying to purchase were going to cost me more than the "sale" prices. 

Ikea has succumbed to temptation, in this case the gimmick of creating a discount club. I was invited to present the cashier with something called the Family card. It turns out that those sale items weren't really on sale at all. In order to get what had appeared to be the going price but in this case turned out to be the Family Price, I would be required to have that card, which means that I would be required to turn over all kinds of personal information, everything from my email address (mandatory) to phone number to home address. 

But the store offered to make it easy for me to divest myself of my personal privacy. I could fill out an application right there. Or not. For me, there were two alternatives. I could either pay higher prices than my fellow shoppers or abandon my pile of goods. To abandon my purchases would be a symbolic gesture at best, considering how much business Ikea does in a day, but I don't like to get conned. I left the pile on the cashier's counter and asked to speak to a manager. 

A polite request to the manager -- to be allowed to purchase my goods at the advertised price -- was to no avail. They claim that the price that the customer sees as he approaches the item really isn't their advertised price. 

It's the standard retail store con. You traipse across acres of floor space, lugging your bag of goodies, and when you finally get to the cash register, the prices have suddenly increased. This system isn't even good enough to be referred to as bait and switch. At least with bait and switch, you get something better for the higher price. Here you just get the higher price. 

Parenthetically, I wonder how safe that Ikea layout is in the event of a fire or an earthquake. I asked the manager, "How do people get out in the event of a fire?" 

His answer: "Follow the arrows." 

I looked down on the floor. I couldn't see any arrows. I should add that this was in a rather complicated part of the store layout, a place where it would have been hard to figure out which direction the fire exit was. 

Here's somebody else who complained about the card, but is a big fan of most things Ikea: The blog that goes by the title of American Genius [https://theamericangenius.com/editorials/ikea-family-card-pretty-much-useless/] argues that the Ikea card is "pretty much useless." 

I'll have to get the potato chips somewhere else. Maybe I'll use my Vons Club card. 

Another loss in the Hollywood preservation community 

Bob Birchard was a pillar of the Cinecon organization, the group that puts on one of the longest running and most respected festivals of classic films. Each year over the labor day weekend, he would join his fellow cinephiles by presiding over the Cinecon festivities. Besides his efforts in the Hollywood preservation community, Bob was a film and video editor and the author of books on Cecil B. DeMille and on Tom Mix. Bob Birchard passed away at the end of June. 

Most of us found out when we clicked on the Cinecon website.  

That website is worth looking at for another reason, the festival itself. One recently rediscovered classic that will be screened on Friday is the 1928 Dolores Del Rio film (set in southern California) Ramona. Another must-see which is one of the great comedies of all time, Girl Shy starring Harold Lloyd, will be screened on Monday. There will of course be a special tribute to Bob Birchard. 

Cinecon doesn't sell tickets to individual movies, but you can get a day pass for $40, which is good for about 12 hours of movies and presentations. 

Colin Kaepernick, neighborhood councils, and the politics of resentment 

The San Francicso 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has been quietly sitting out the playing of the national anthem at preseason games. This has worked out pretty much as you would expect. The idea of a robust society which welcomes divergent viewpoints is lost on a lot of people. According to news accounts, mid-level executives in other NFL cities have been calling him terrible names. You might say that the people who complain about somebody else being unAmerican are themselves the most guilty of that accusation. Some players are simply keeping quiet, presumably based on the reasoning that a quarterback who led his team to the Super Bowl is entitled to some slack. 

Down here in the San Pedro area, we've had a sudden efflorescence of neighborhood councils reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. There is a certain level of quiet grumbling among some folks. The pledge is one of the few officially sanctioned religious statements in this country, with its Under God wording added in the early 1950s as a snub to the officially atheistic Soviet Union. Not everyone feels comfortable with expressing privately held religious sentiments as part of an official government activity. One woman suggested that the local council refrain from reciting the pledge, which bothered her, and do something tangible for veterans instead. One of the proponents of the Pledge referred to her proposal as "disgusting." I like to think that the recitation of the Pledge is a snub to Donald Trump. 

That part about one nation indivisible certainly makes that point, and with liberty and justice for all makes the point even better. I fear that these points are lost on the ones who have been flag waving the most.

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

-cw

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-Big real estate interests, such as developers of shopping centers and high-rise complexes, do not leave things to chance. The only difference between them and Big Pharma, Big Oil, and Big Finance is that Big Real Estate mostly operates at the local and state levels, not the Federal level. 

So what are the many tricks up their sleeve -- all on view in Los Angeles? 

Altering land use laws to grease the wheels of real estate speculation. 

Sometimes Big Real Estate takes the long view to avoid project-by-project battles. These knockdown, drag-out fights force them to waste considerable time and money wooing elected officials and employing land use experts. Instead, they make a concerted effort to work with these same City Hall officials to revamp underlying zoning and planning laws. This long-term approach allows Big Real Estate to later skip lengthy and often costly applications for such discretionary actions as zone changes, as well as associated environmental reviews. 

In Los Angeles this Big Real Estate tactic is proceeding on several fronts. The most advanced program is re:code LA [[[ http://recode.la/about/project-files ]]] since it will ultimately rezone all private parcels in Los Angeles. This program’s approach is called form based zoning. If adopted, it would expand the range of uses permitted for each parcel. These free zone changes, worth many billions in increased property values, then eliminate the need for future zone variances or zone changes to green-light otherwise illegal real estate projects. 

Another similar program is Community Plan Updates. If prepared and adopted correctly, Community Plans are the final step in updating the entire multi-element General Plan. But, in Los Angeles these local updates are prepared first. This is done to append long, intricate land use ordinances that up-zone and up-plan hundreds of local parcels. Once adopted, these ordinances allow developers to quickly march ahead with their otherwise illegal projects. The Update amendments eliminate the future need for developers to legalize their projects, one-by-one, through General Plan Amendments, zone changes, variances, as well as related environmental reviews. 

Another strategy is to gut the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), hidden behind such high-minded words as reforming and streamlining. Current statewide strategies, which are resurrected yearly by Governor Brown and the State of California legislative would reduce EIR appeal periods and grant CEQA exemptions to favored projects, especially sports stadiums and high-rise apartment buildings.  

Sidestepping land use laws to grease the wheels of real estate speculation 

But, if you really want to see how Big Real Estate does not leave things to chance when they dodge local land use laws, just examine such proposed mega-projects as Warner Center, the Palladium, 8150 Sunset, Cumulus, or the Caruso luxury high rise near the Beverly Center. 

In all these cases the developers pull out every stop, beginning with the easiest marks, City Hall’s elected officials. Like the people they appoint to Commissions and hire to manage City departments, they have all drunk deeply from the well of real estate speculation. They live and breathe City Hall’s institutional culture of elevating real estate projects to the municipal pantheon. When it comes to gaining the support of these elected, appointed, and hired officials, Big Real Estate regularly turns to campaign contributions (i.e. legal bribes), polished lobbyists and architects, and ingratiating back slapping and scratching. 

As for the City’s technical staff who review and habitually approve their projects, Big Real Estate relies on expensive land use attorneys, planning and environmental consultants, expeditors, and experienced architects and engineers. Their first job is to identify all discretionary actions and other municipal requirements that must be overcome to approve their projects. After that these pens-for-hire grind out applications, Environmental Impact Reports, and appeals. Their third job is to ensure that all possible bases are covered because a handful of land use lawyers are willing to represent local residents, and they have recently won many land use and environmental cases against the City of Los Angeles. 

The next step is outreach, conducted by either the developer’s staff or by hired consultants, including those who expertise is creating such astroturf organizations, as the Coalition to Protect L.A. Neighborhoods and Jobs. In this case, two kingpins of Big Real Estate, the Palladium and Westfield Shopping Centers, created and funded a “grassroots” organization to oppose the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. For a contact address though, the astroturfers goofed when they listed their own location, that of the Stephan Kaufman Legal Group. Its political clients include LA’s most prominent booster of Big Real Estate, hizzoner Eric Garcetti. 

As they play serious dodge ball, Big Real Estate hires architects to prepare color renderings that never show traffic congestion, and who sometimes join outreach operatives at community meetings. Together they sing a duet of praises for their pet project, and whenever someone raises an objection, they creatively explain how their complaint can be mitigated by minor design changes or off-site improvements. When combined, these off-site amenities are called community benefits. In reality, thought, they are deal-sweeteners to gain community support for projects that depend on quasi-judicial and/or City Council legislative actions to legalize them. 

The purpose of these community meetings – often recommended by City Council offices — is to identify and disarm potential community critics who might submit damaging testimony, appeal a discretionary action and its related Environmental Impact Report, or even resort to law suits. 

Of course, sometimes developers are so dedicated to their project’s bottom line that they will not budge to adequately respond to community critics. In these cases, such as the Hollywood Community Plan update, the staff planners and private supporters glibly told the City Planning Commission and the City Council that a project had substantial community input prior to its final form. This deceptive answer was enough to get a thumbs up from the City Planning Commission and City Council. 

Another purpose of community outreach is to convince local residents that either they personally or their community will benefit from a project. In cases where charm, good looks, expensive suits, and car-free renderings are not up to this task, developers will then offer a “community benefits” package, but usually with a clause that acceptance forfeits the right to future public criticism of a project. 

Once these supporters are lassoed, they are then offered talking points for public hearings, and in a few cases, act as trolls on websites. For example, last week I received about two dozen comments, many critical, in response to my article about the Caruso Affiliated project at 333 S. La Cienega. This is in sharp contrast to my previous CityWatch article. It leveled similar complaints against three Miracle Mile museum projects, and that column hardly generated any comments. Since the comments supporting the Caruso project parroted the developer’s own talking points, this is a powerful demonstration of how sophisticated developers leave nothing to chance. In this case, they made sure there would be a group of neighbors who would publicly support their project. They knew that without an advanced full court press, that few nearby residents would voluntarily step up to a microphone or keyboard to defend a project which violates zoning and planning laws, clashes with community character and scale (in direct violation of the General Plan) and taxes existing public services and infrastructure. 

Finally, in almost all of these cases, there is no shortage of opportunistic academic and journalistic cheerleaders who cheer for “business-friendly” planning legislation and speculative mega-projects because of their alleged benefits. Regardless of a project’s actual specifics, rest assured that they just know it will produce a cornucopia of affordable housing, transit ridership, employment, sustainability, and a sense of community. 

In all of these cases, though, there is a catch. There is no requirement to monitor approved projects to determine if their predictions materialized. And, there are no consequences if the promises are not kept, such as the revocation of building permits or the demolition of improperly approved structures. Once built, Big Real Estate projects are here to stay, at least until the next real estate bubble leads to their demolition and replacement with yet another 8^th Wonder of the World.  

But, they can’t always get what they want. 

Despite their deep pockets and access to expensive lawyers, planning and environmental consultants, and public relations and outreach operatives, Big Real Estate continually drops the ball in Los Angeles. Why? It is because so many community groups oppose their projects, have a fast learning curve, and sometimes manage to out-organize and out-litigate them. 

It is a hard job, but not an impossible job, to beat the house. Furthermore, the struggles over land use are escalating in Los Angeles. On one side are outside investors especially from China, who regularly outbid their local Big Real Estate frenemies. 

But, on the other side is the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. If passed by LA voters in March 2017, it would force the City of Los Angeles to properly plan and to stop dishing out parcel-level approvals for Big Real Estate projects that conflict with zoning laws and with the General Plan. 

(Dick Platkin is a veteran city planner. He reports on local planning issues for CityWatch, and he welcomes comments and questions at [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

TRANSPORTATION POLITICS--It's no secret that taxpayers want their transportation, energy, communications and other infrastructure paid for, and built ASAP.  It's probably also no secret that the era of bipartisan discord on infrastructure prioritization is coming to an end.  But the 800-pound gorilla in the room is how spending will occur, and whether it'll lead to solutions or new problems. 

Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have proposed dramatic new spending proposals on infrastructure.  Matt Bai has opined on Yahoo that Clinton is a champion of infrastructure, but wishes she would be more specific about her vision on how to best spend that money.  Americans need that specificity. 

On the other side of the political aisle, Republicans wisely (if not decades too late!) chose to shed their reticence to spend on infrastructure--and much of Trump's appeal in the primaries to GOP voters was his unabashed desire to spend big (nearly twice that of Sect. Clinton) on infrastructure.  Whether his willingness to take on new debt to do that is acceptable is another thing altogether. 

But for years, we've had the problem of consensus over what a good investment in infrastructure is, and how best to pay for it.  President Obama had the opportunity to spend well in his stimulus package, but despite some modest victories spent much (arguably most) on feel-good and politically-connected projects. 

To his credit, President Obama has gained his footing on transportation/infrastructure spending.  His current Transportation Secretary, Anthony Foxx, was approved unanimously by the Senate and (if he so chooses) would be a great holdover for the next Administration, be it a Clinton or Trump Administration.  Transportation spending is both higher and smarter than when Mr. Obama took office. 

But there are a few "inconvenient truths" to transportation/infrastructure spending.   

Like it or not, fossil fuels aren't going away, and while our need to modernize the safety and efficiency of the use of fossil fuels is paramount, it is foolish to think that "the era of fossil fuels is over".   

While there are those who want fully electric cars everywhere NOW, it's more realistic to think that such a dream is years to decades away--only the very rich can afford those cars (no matter how some will spin things to the opposite), and if the misanthropes on the Far Left can be brought to bear, the need for the middle class and poor to have affordable utility bills is also a priority worth bringing back into our political debates. 

Speaking of affordability, we're so much into "affordable housing" that we've allowed the liars and enablers among our political elites to encourage overdevelopment that is neither environmentally smart nor geared towards the middle class.  Gigantic and mega-tall projects are geared to the upper crust of our society, favoring ocean views for the wealthy over truly affordable housing. 

Even when we've a surplus of housing both Downtown and elsewhere in the City of Los Angeles. Perhaps when capitalism catches up to the rental industry, we'll publish and encourage those looking for cheap rent to go to where it actually exists. 

Transforming neighborhoods and overdevelopment were NEVER goals of the movement that created the Expo Line and other light rail corridors, and hence the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative is in full swing to restore democracy and livability in the City of the Angels. 

So while transit-oriented development has both its opportunities and its challenges, those advocating for an end to parking altogether look more like radicals and lunatics than true visionaries. 

Roads aren't going away, and cars aren't going away, and the need to treat the suburbs differently than rural or urban cores isn't going away.  File that under "common sense", or "growing up" and "confronting reality". 

And placing more burdens on communities, while denying basic governmental services, will NOT help bring us all together r... unless it's the desire to have a new wave of pro-succession movements, such as that we're seeing in Venice. 

And what's going on in Los Angeles is certainly going on in other major cities throughout the nation. 

Utilities, infrastructure, "big vision projects" and the like are supposed to enhance faith in our government and its leaders, not the opposite.  The Expo Line's chief complaint by its users is its lack of cars and trains--riders can't get enough of them.  Overdevelopment and neighborhood destruction to make a few people rich, however, are not going to help this line's benefits. 

We will, as a nation, or as a state, or as a city, come together in major transportation and other infrastructure spending initiatives.  But bad spending, and enabling those who seek to financially benefit at the expense of the majority, will do nothing but turn people off to transportation and infrastructure spending ... 

... and, by extension, turn people off to what government and its taxes can do for them.

(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

DEEGAN ON LA-Is it a tactic that will pay off or a “Hail Mary” to breathe a last breath of life into a dire situation? Whichever it turns out to be, it’s smart and that’s what anti-development activists have been showing lately: their smarts. No longer willing to automatically accept developers’ plans for incursions into their neighborhoods, or rely on threats of litigation or lawsuits, activists are “weaponizing” social media to mobilize their communities.

CITY HALL-Looking at a potentially close vote at the City Council’s August 23^rd meeting, City Council members who favor the Planning Department’s proposed repeal of Los Angeles City’s existing regulations for development of second dwelling units (sometimes called “granny flats”) succeeded in getting the Council’s vote postponed until Wednesday August 31st.   

Many repeal opponents left the August 23^rd meeting angry and frustrated that the Council, without public testimony or debate, had pushed the vote back another week. But with momentum strongly favoring the many homeowner groups and neighborhood councils who vigorously oppose the repeal efforts, the last-minute continuance apparently reflected concerns by some Councilmembers that the Council’s balance is now tipping against the Department’s proposal. 

The Superior Court had ordered City planning and building officials to stop their unlawful policy refusing to enforce the City’s adopted second unit standards. The Planning Department responded by proposing that the Council should repeal the existing ordinance’s protective standards. This would mean the City “defaults” to very permissive state standards allowing 1,200 square foot second units (as large as many primary residences) to be built “by right” throughout the City’s single family residential zones, including sensitive hillside locations. 

The Department marshaled public support for its repeal proposal principally from developers who were “stranded” in the midst of constructing second units that had been permitted under the LADBS’s unlawful policy of disregarding the City’s protective standards. To date, the Department has refused to consider the obvious alternative of “grandfathering” most of these stranded permit holders, while at the same time preserving and enforcing the current adopted protective standards for future permits. 

Seeking to avoid opposition to its repeal proposal, the Department put it on a “fast track,” infuriating homeowner representatives. One typical homeowner recently wrote the Council: 

Repealing this ordinance will have lasting negative impacts on the character and infrastructure of our neighborhoods.  Abandoning the city's local control of second dwelling units will leave us at the mercy of incredibly weak state standards, and throw open the gates to developers to further fuel real estate speculation in our neighborhoods.  

You have several options at your disposal to bring the City into compliance with state law on second units. There is simply no reason to discard our protective local standards. If revisions to the Second Dwelling Unit ordinance are necessary, at the very least they must be considered with adequate public outreach, not on the current “fast track” basis, so that all stakeholders have the opportunity to consider proposed changes and express their opinion.  

The homeowner coalition that opposes the Department’s repeal proposal stressed the positive aspects of the Council’s postponement of the second unit vote until August 31st.   Pointing out that the postponement meant opponents would have “one more week to make our voices heard on this issue,” the coalition urged: 

The vote is shaping up to be very close. We have come so far since the PLUM Committee voted in favor of the repeal at the end of June, and we must keep the momentum going.  It is critical for the City Council to continue to hear how the proposed repeal would harm neighborhoods. We cannot simply abandon our local standards for the development of second units in single-family residential zones. 

We have built a terrific coalition that has been active and engaged on this issue. Our efforts have not gone unnoticed, and we are in the final stretch. 

There are three ways that you can help in advance of Wednesday’s vote: 

• Send an email to the City Council
• Place a call to your Councilmember’s office
• Attend the Council meeting on the 31^st 

CityWatch readers should consider doing the same.

(Carlyle Hall is an environmental and land use lawyer in Los Angeles who founded the Center for Law in the Public Interest and litigated the well-known AB 283 litigation, in which the Superior Court ordered the City to rezone about one third of the properties within its territorial boundaries (an area the size of Chicago) to bring them into consistency with its 35 community plans. He also co-founded LA Neighbors in Action, which has recently been litigating with the City over its second dwelling unit policies and practices.)

-cw

THE GUSS REPORT-A week ago, the Los Angeles Times followed-up on a story I broke a week earlier in CityWatch regarding the severe personal financial troubles of Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson. 

David Zahniser, the Times’ veteran City Hall reporter, indicated in his article that Wesson refused to be interviewed but instead submitted a prepared statement via his media flack, who wrote, “Wesson attributed the problems to the home he and his wife bought for $759,000 …” 

The home he refers to was purchased by Wesson and his wife, Fabian, in 2007. It is located on Virginia Road in the City of Los Angeles’ Council District 10 that Wesson has represented since his 2005 election. For clarity, let’s refer to that property as “Virginia Road / LA City.” 

While Wesson may attribute his current multiple mortgage defaults and other financial problems to that purchase, his money troubles go back not years, but decades, even though he earned a consistent and generous government paycheck in various managerial and elected positions: 

• In 1993, the Wessons defaulted on a mortgage for their house on Roberts Avenue in Culver City (“Roberts Ave / Culver City”.) The loan was from Avco Financial Services, a high risk, high interest rate lender that has since become a leader in the payday loan industry. 

Coincidentally, a senior Avco executive described the company to me as, at that time, a “lender of last resort for people who cannot get a loan elsewhere,” meaning that by borrowing from Avco, Wesson’s money problems are traceable to at least the 1980s.

Wesson had bought Roberts Ave/Culver City for $153,000 in 1988, but took a huge loss in 1993 when it sold for just $60,000. A year and a half later it got flipped for $168,000. Today it is valued at nearly $850,000. What does that tell you? 

And that isn’t the biggest red flag here. 

The default that triggered Wesson’s costly loss took place on the same day as its sale, November 24, 1993, which is also the day that he purchased a much pricier ($425,000) home on Bedford Avenue in Ladera Heights, an unincorporated area of LA County. Let’s call that property “Bedford Ave / LA County” so it is understood that it, like the property on Roberts Avenue, is not within the City of Los Angeles. 

• In 1995, the Wessons defaulted on Bedford Ave / LA County, but narrowly avoided a scheduled foreclosure sale. Their overdue $21,086.06 indicates that payments were rarely, if ever, made to that point. 

During the years of these first two defaults, Wesson earned a comfortable living as the chief-of-staff for Los Angeles City Councilmember Nate Holden and as chief-of-staff for Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Burke. This is according to Wesson’s unreliable Wikipedia page which, in one section, incorrectly says he was elected to LA City Council on July 1, 2005, while in another section it correctly says he was elected on November 8, 2005 in a special election to replace future felon Councilmember Martin Ludlow who suddenly resigned after only two years in office. 

• In 2002, the Wessons defaulted once more on Bedford Avenue / LA County, but again avoided a foreclosure sale for being in arrears to the tune of $34,619.45. This is while serving as an elected member of the California State Assembly, where he later became its powerful Speaker, holding great sway over the state’s budget and economic health. 

None of these earlier defaults were mentioned in Zahniser’s article, which focused exclusively on the Wessons’ defaults that took place after their late-2007 purchase of Virginia Road / LA City.

Also missing from his Times article are the massive federal and state tax liens that hit the Wessons after their purchase of Virginia Road / LA City in 2008-2009 and 2011-2012 totaling nearly $100,000 in taxes, interest and penalties for income earned during Wesson’s first four years (2005-2008) on City Council, either from salaries or other sources of income. 

Still, Wesson is a deft politician who now rakes in a combined annual household income in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, while sidestepping mortgage foreclosures that continue to hound him as recently as a few weeks ago, as detailed in Zahniser’s and my articles. And last year, he finagled a 17-month extension of his final term on City Council (and those of some of his colleagues) which also pads their public pensions by thousands of dollars, with a voter-turnout maneuver described by his former Council rival and fiscal hawk Bernie Parks as “a gimmick.” 

And here the story takes an odd, possibly perjurious turn. To be continued.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a writer who contributes to CityWatch, Huffington Post, KFI-AM 640 and elsewhere. He blogs on humane issues at http://ericgarcetti.blogspot.com/. The opinions he expresses are not necessarily those of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL--On August 31, 2016, the LA City Council could make a huge mistake that will have lasting impacts on our community. 

Once upon a time, the city of Los Angeles created regulations that protected the characteristics of single family home zones. 

In essence, some of these regulations prevented homeowners from building big second homes on a single family home property. Makes sense, right? Because that’s what “single family home zone” means. 

So, in LA, a wide variety of different neighborhoods are zoned R-01. And these R-01 neighborhoods are really a great place to live, partly because our city’s zoning regulations have helped to keep them that way. 

These regulations did allow homeowners in those zones to build another detached home on the property. But that structure had to be small, low profile, and it couldn’t have a separate address. According to LA’s regulations, homeowners were free to build “granny flats” for their relatives to live in. And remember, they are always free to add an addition to their home. That was never in question. 

This worked, for the most part, to protect the character of the neighborhood. It guarded against overdevelopment. 

But one day, in 2010, the Planning Department made a mistake, based on incorrect legal advice, instructing officials to ignore the City’s standards, and instead, to follow the state standards, which are much more lenient. For the next six years, the City issued about 75 permits each year for second units in these single family home neighborhoods. Almost all of the permits were for structures that exceeded the City’s adopted standards. 

Earlier this year, a judge determined that the Planning Department’s “ZA Memo 120” was not legal. Since then, permitting for these structures (even the small ones that would have met the city’s regulations) has been halted. 

But instead of amending the City’s regulations, City Council is now considering throwing out the regulations entirely and defaulting to the considerably more lenient state’s standards. In essence, this would mean returning to ZA Memo 120, which a Judge has already revoked. 

Why does LA have different zoning standards than the state of California? Because LA has specific needs. Just like every other major metropolitan city in this country, our city has adopted regulations to protect against overdevelopment and against negative impacts on the environment, infrastructure, and the character of neighborhoods. 

All of this may seem silly to Angelenos who live on larger parcels of land or in apartment buildings. They might say, what’s the point? If it is your land, you should be allowed to use it any way you want. Right? 

I can see why some may think that. But imagine if you lived in my neighborhood: 

Welcome to the quintessential San Fernando Valley single family neighborhood. Our houses are very close together. In my cute, quiet little neighborhood known as “Kester Ridge” in Van Nuys, our mostly small houses sit on mostly small lots. Our fences (which cannot exceed eight feet in our backyard) create the barriers which afford us some visual, if not acoustic, privacy. 

Our backyards aren’t huge, but they offer a great place to relax; most of them are big enough to accommodate a small pool or a nice little garden. Most of the lots are approximately 50 feet wide and average about 6,000 square feet. Almost every house in the neighborhood is only one story high. 

So imagine you've just bought your dream home, right here in this cute little neighborhood. It took every penny you had. But you've worked hard, you turned it into a beautiful home, and you’ve promised yourself that you are finally going to relax and lay out by the pool in your lovely backyard. 

A few months later, the property right behind you goes up for sale. And the guy who buys it is a developer. He tells you that he doesn’t have any intention of actually moving to your little neighborhood. His car, an Aston Martin, gives you an idea of where he calls home. 

He’s going use the property to generate rental income. His plan is to rent out the main property, and, thanks to ZA Memo 120, he's also going to rent out a second house which he plans to build in the backyard! It’s going to be two stories high with just as much square footage as the main house. 

The backyard isn’t very big, so he’s going to have to build as close to your back fence as the law allows. He tells you that he's got properties like this all over LA. 

This developer has started an LLC for the property, and between the two homes on a single lot, he will be generating $6,000 a month in rental income. He doesn’t care one bit about the fact that your ability to enjoy your yard (to say nothing of your property value) just went down as a result of his actions. 

He says: “This isn’t my first rodeo.” 

So, you take a moment. You try to process this: A large, two-story tall, very visible structure in the small backyard -- even though the very concept of a single family neighborhood means that this sort of thing isn't supposed to happen. 

But he gets the permit. And no one in the City even notifies you that this was happening. You live right next to the property, well within the 500-foot range. How is this possible? If there had been a particular time to voice your opinion on the matter, no one in the government told you when it was. 

You try to talk to your political representative in City Council. They keep calling it a “granny flat.” But it’s not a granny flat. It's huge. It’s a fully functioning second home, with its own house number, mailbox, and soon, a whole bunch of tenants. 

You do some research online. Even California’s Legislative Analyst has determined that this type of “urban infill” in single family home zones is not going to solve the affordable housing crisis. In fact, this type of new structure isn’t even going to make a dent in the affordable housing crisis, because there is no requirement to price it affordably. They’ll be renting at market rates. But the politicians keep throwing around the term “affordable housing” when they discuss this issue. Strange, isn't it? 

So this developer builds -- full steam ahead. The framing goes up. It’s big. And tall. And man, it’s close! You think, well, maybe we’ll get used to it. And then one day you come home to see the framing for the second story window: it looks right down onto your pool, your yard and into your bedroom! 

The building is so close to its own property line that the people living in it won’t be able to see their own yard from the window. But yours? Well, they’ll be thrilled that you've given them such a lovely view. Too bad that you can’t say the same about your new view. (See photo above.) 

This is how it happens. And because this unfair and previously illegal thing has happened to you, you decide to sell your dream home. And the winning bidder? Well, wouldn’t you know it -- a developer. If this process continues ad infinitum, say goodbye to the very notion of a single-family neighborhood. 

Wealthy developers will have a huge opportunity to make a lot of money for themselves if the SDU ordinance is repealed. They will be able to outbid the average homebuyer and will overdevelop every property they can get their hands on. 

I have read a few misinformed articles that frame this issue differently. The politicians who are in favor of the repeal of the SDU Ordinance are likely in the pockets of wealthy developers whose projects have been put on hold. These smart politicians are smart to hold actual, legitimate granny flats hostage: they know all too well that if you create a crisis that arouses public sympathy, you can exploit it. 

This is all about greed. It opens the door to rampant overdevelopment…not granny. 

Here’s what I’m hoping my City Councilmembers will do: 

Investigate the environmental impacts of any possible changes to zoning laws before they make those changes. For instance, more “urban infill” means more concrete, therefore less groundwater is absorbed, making both the drought and the flooding, due to the lack of storm drains in my neighborhood, even worse.

Discuss this issue with the public, and do it in a way that is intellectually honest. Don’t tie this repeal to the creation of affordable housing. And that includes you, Mr. Mayor! California’s Legislative Analyst's Office has determined that urban infill will not solve the affordable housing shortage in Los Angeles. In fact, the LAO has determined that this repeal won't even offer a small supply of "affordable" housing for another twenty-five years. Our politicians need to stop spinning this issue. It's unethical to confuse constituents into submission. We deserve better. 

Remember, this isn't about granny flats. While I strongly oppose the repeal, I support the public’s right to build granny flats that are appropriate for the size of one’s immediate community. We just need our politicians to create the right laws -- or common-sense amendments to existing regs -- to make that happen. 

Our politicians have a number of potential solutions that don’t involve repealing the Second Dwelling Unit Ordinance, leaving us vulnerable to overdevelopment. They should do their due diligence and behave with integrity. If revisions to the Second Dwelling Unit ordinance are necessary, at the very least they must be considered with adequate public outreach. It is not in LA's best interest to discard our protective local standards.  

I repeat: the politicians have several options at their disposal. Those options should not include throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Please contact your LA City Councilmember before Wednesday, August 31 about this important issue. We need a lot more support because the developers have been lobbying the City Council hard for the past six months.

(Dannielle Langlois is film and television actress who lives in Van Nuys, next door to the above “second unit dwelling.”) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ANIMAL WATCH-Los Angeles Animal Services has issued a media release announcing, "Non-profit Law Firm Partners with Local Dog Rescue and LA Animal Services." It explained that the Inner City Law Center (ICLC), Downtown Dog Rescue (DDR) and Los Angeles Animal Services (LAAS) are launching an "easily accessible" Pet Resource Center on Skid Row. (No physical address was provided.) 

Here are some of the highlights of the program, which has very noble -- albeit idealistic -- goals: 

"Pets and homelessness are linked in many ways," we are told. “People living on the streets often rely on their pets for emotional support and companionship. Low-income families struggling to pay rent often also struggle to care for their beloved family pets." Thus, resources and services will be provided "to enable more people and their pets to stay housed. Fewer pets will enter the Los Angeles shelter system and fewer unwanted litters will be produced. 

“ICLC, DDR and LAAS want to make it known that no matter what a person's housing or financial situation there are ways [to] keep pets with their people.” 

This statement is a little unsettling because, although it does not directly say so, it implies this is always advisable. 

It is unclear what legal services Inner City Law Center will be providing to homeless pet owners -- but it is hoped there will be an emphasis on legal responsibilities of pet ownership, including public health and safety and humane care. The only description is that, “ICLC will provide space at its office on Skid Row.” (The Inner City Law Center website lists only one office at 1307 East Seventh Street.) 

The Pet Resource Center will be open one day per week and will be run by volunteers for Downtown Dog Rescue, a highly respected organization headed by Lori Weise, who has dedicated over 20 years to providing assistance -- with an emphasis on spay/neuter -- to the pets on Skid Row, in all downtown LA areas, and also in Compton. 

Here is the list of services offered by the Pet Resource Center: 

• Free spay/neuter vouchers
• Assistance with animal registration
• Vaccinations
• Microchips
• ID tags
• Collars
• Leashes
• Crates
• Access to emergency boarding and short-term foster care.
• Medical care at approved partner veterinarian clinics.
• Assistance with transportation to animal hospitals.
• Short-term motel stays for persons who do not have a permanent residence when their pet is      undergoing a non-outpatient medical procedure.
• Trained, volunteer counselors to provide the necessary services and offer support. 

This program will only reach a few of the thousands of homeless persons in LA with pets, but it promises tremendous benefits. 

It also poses important questions to residents and taxpayers of Los Angeles. 

Do you think homeless people should have dogs/pets? 

This question was posted recently on the Weddingbee.com site by a woman in NYC, who explained: 

“I don’t think homeless people should have dogs. I live in NYC, and there are a lot of homeless people, and a number of them have dogs. While most of their dogs are very well behaved, my dog and I got attacked by an unleashed pit bull owned by a homeless person. I sustained a bite. The homeless person didn’t have any vaccination records for the dog. Of course the dog didn’t have any rabies shot tag. He didn’t have a cell phone that we could reach him on. I asked the police to help us, but they said they couldn’t do anything. We called center for disease control and reported the incidence. I couldn’t give them any information about the dog, except for its name and the owner’s name, no known address. I had no health insurance at the time (working a contract job and not married), so I couldn’t afford the $10,000 rabies shot. The CDC told me that the dog had to be observed 10 days after the bite to make sure it didn’t know any symptoms of rabies, and if it didn’t, I would be fine. . . .What happened is probably an anomaly, but that’s the main reason why I don’t like seeing homeless people with dogs. What do you bees think about this?” 

Most responders felt that the value to the homeless person of having a pet far outweighed any occasional transgression that affected a human or another animal. 

However, most also had the opinion that the homeless owner is “saved” by the pet, that the pet has a great life of attention, is often “fed before its owner eats,” and/or that having a pet causes a homeless person to be more responsible because of he or she has someone to love. 

Is a dog/pet’s life with a homeless person humane? 

In his photo series, Skid Row Stories,” a vignette by John Huang describes a homeless woman whose life included tragic physical and emotional abuse since childhood. He wrote,“‘I thank God for everything,’” she told me as she shared her dog food with other Skid Row residents who couldn’t afford to feed their pets today. She leaned forward from her wheelchair and bent down to kiss her dog. 'I love animals,' she said. 'They're always there for you.'" 

He later added: “Update: I visited Cheryl to give her some supplies. Sadly I found out her dog was stolen. Part of the reality of being homeless.” 

Cheryl’s dog (a mid-size terrier) may have been stolen. Or, it may it have been left unleashed and unattended and wandered or run away. The presumption that it was stolen relieves her of any responsibility or guilt for the loss. Homeless people often have a series of dogs. 

One of the issues that MUST be addressed in any program involving the City issuing microchips and “registrations” for the homeless is that the dog is often someone’s lost pet which was found and not reported or taken to the shelter, as required by law, to be redeemed by a grieving owner. 

Will any pet discovered to have a prior microchip or license be impounded for the legal notification period (to allow transfer of title) before LAAS issues a new “registration” to the homeless person? 

Does anyone want to think of their lost pet tied in -- or to -- a shopping cart being pushed down a trash-filled street by someone who may be unable to care for him/herself? 

Los Angeles Almanac reports that in 2015 the homeless demographic in the City of Los Angeles showed the following characteristics:

(Source: Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority]

Will the Inner City Law Center's attorneys assure that animals whose legal ownership is being given to a homeless person through their program receives the same standard of treatment required of other pet owners?

If the homeless pet owner neglects the animal, abuses it or beats it during a fit of rage, will ICLC take action to have the helpless creature removed and the owner prosecuted or banned from having another animal? Or, will their duty be to the person who was 'temporarily out of control' and should be allowed to keep his/her pet? 

An LA Times article, “Hounding a Homeless Man into Giving up his Dogs,” portrayed the 2014 struggle by compassionate and concerned animal rescuers to have a Pit Bull and her ten puppies removed from a homeless man, Gerrick Williams, who was keeping them in a cardboard box on the sidewalk.

Even though City officials were inundated with emails alleging that Miller was operating a puppy mill for profit, General Manager Brenda Barnette said LAAS could not seize the dog and her 10 puppies because they were not “illegal.” 

A few days after agreeing to allow the shelter to temporarily hold the dogs for him, Miller was arrested on a drug possession charge and sentenced to a year in a rehabilitation program. He told the Times reporter by phone, "This is a lot better than the streets." 

A shelter employee described the mother Pit Bull as “shy and her belly and teats sagging from having litters.” 

"If people are struggling, homeless and have addictions, another responsibility is not appropriate," Whitney Hope Smith, a rescuer who videotaped Miller's camp, told the Times. "It's very easy to give a sob story for homeless, but the endgame for the animals isn't pretty." 

What Do You Think? 

There is no question it is good to have spay/neuter, vaccinations, micro-chipping and licensing easily available for pets of the homeless. But how will these voiceless animals be protected, if necessary, from the actions or inactions of those who are mentally unstable, irresponsible or cruel after they are granted legal possession by the City and their whereabouts is unknown? 

Another serious concern is who would be held liable if dogs the City assists in placing and "registering" with the homeless attack, injure or kill other animals or a human?

Important basic questions that have not been debated by the public are whether the homeless should be held to the same or lesser standards of care and responsibility for pets, and who will speak for these animals’ legal rights to safety and humane treatment?

(Animal activist Phyllis M. Daugherty writes for CityWatch and is a contributing writer to opposingviews.com.  She lives in Los Angeles.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

VOX POP--The Coalition to Preserve LA announced Wednesday that the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative is heading for the March 2017 ballot, marking an unprecedented push by residents to take control from for-profit developers who are wielding far too much power over what Los Angeles becomes.

Backers of the citizen initiative today delivered just shy of 104,000 signatures to Los Angeles City Hall, nearly double the number required, and predicted that their measure will easily qualify for the ballot.

At a press conference in South Los Angeles at the site of the illegally approved mega-development known as the Cumulus Skyscraper, residents of Baldwin Hills, West Adams and nearby areas condemned City Hall’s rigged development system.

Dove Pinkney, a member of the Crenshaw Subway Coalition and the longstanding New Frontier Democratic Club, said of Cumulus, “The community should not be overwhelmed by people who are just in it for the money.” Veteran Los Angeles Sentinel columnist Larry Aubry warned, “There’s a corporate takeover of Los Angeles,” underway by developers. Aubry said that City Hall’s rigged system is hurting residents not just in South L.A., but citywide.

Damien Goodmon, a key supporter of the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative and executive director of the Crenshaw Subway Coalition, said, “Development should be for us. Development should not displace us. Folk are getting pushed out because the City Council is busy building luxury housing.”

The March 2017 measure directly targets the City Council’s failure to plan for the city’s infrastructure, parks, and housing needs, and its severe bending of the rules to approve mega-developments that overwhelm local streets and destroy neighborhood character.

The Council’s failure to create and follow a modern “General Plan” common in well-run cities, and the City Council’s back-room dealmaking with wealthy luxury housing developers, have led to widespread destruction of affordable housing — while creating a massive luxury housing glut in Los Angeles.

According to the city Housing Department’s own data, L.A. has a staggering 15% to 20% vacancy rate in the thousands of luxury units built in the past 10 years. Yet overall rental vacancy rates are just 2.7%, and even people with good jobs can’t afford a place to live.

The City Council and city planners have allowed the demolition or conversion to condos of 22,000 affordable housing units since 2000, the city’s data show, much of it standing in the way of luxury housing developments. The real estate industry has showered the City Council and mayor with money — including $6 million in campaign contributions since 2000.

Each of the lost 22,000 affordable units would cost $300,000 to $450,000 to replace, leaving L.A. unable to catch up.

Opal Young, a member of the Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw Homeowners Coalition, said of the planned Cumulus skyscraper, which does not include any affordable housing, “The building that is proposed to be built totally overwhelms the community.” It would soar 320 feet in a neighborhood of single-story homes and two- to four-story businesses and apartments. The skyscraper would be surrounded by a fortress-like complex of 10-story luxury office towers.

Nearby resident Nadine Angele said that allowing developers to radically alter a community’s character is no way to create a livable city. Angele said the Los Angeles City Council and mayor hold “a trusted position. They should be ashamed for approving a 320-foot tower. It’s going to push local diversity out.”

Darren Starks, president of the Baldwin Neighborhood Homeowners Association, and Clint Simmons, a member of Expo Communities United, both touched on the massive gridlock the skyscraper will bring to already overwhelmed streets including La Cienega, Venice, Jefferson and Washington boulevards.

Yet, Starks said, “When this project was initiated, we residents were never contacted.” Simmons, an engineer, slammed the project as “a community wrecker” filled with luxury housing — some place the future rents at $4,000 per unit — not intended for people in the community.

Residents from other parts of Los Angeles spoke in solidarity with local residents, including Luis Saldivar, a member of the Hollywood United Neighborhood Council.

Saldivar said, “We’re displacing people in Los Angeles [ranging] from South Central to the San Fernando Valley. You need to plan before you build. You can’t build, build, build.”

The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative has attracted donations from more than 200 small givers citywide averaging about $25 each, as well as $20,000 from former Mayor Richard Riordan, who calls the current City Hall planning system “a train wreck.” The organized opposition to the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, led by the Chamber of Commerce, has attracted a handful of donors — two of them billionaire developers.

About 30 of the measure’s supporters last week met with Mayor Eric Garcetti to provide him an opportunity to announce his own long-promised reforms of the broken system at City Hall.

Jill Stewart, campaign director for the Coalition to Preserve LA, said Wednesday, “We appreciated the meeting with the mayor, but since April, Mayor Garcetti has not announced any notable reforms that would alter the Wild West system that’s destroying neighborhood character, displacing thousands of people, and wiping out precious older affordable housing.”

The March ballot measure requires the City Council to immediately begin writing a “General Plan,” and to include the communities in creating 35 Community Plans that address and create a plan for the city’s aging infrastructure, overtaxed safety services, sewers, water supplies, parks and housing needs. It would ban developers from choosing the consultants who write the Environmental Impact Reports for their own proposed projects, an obvious conflict of interest. The measure would place a two-year timeout on City Council back-room deals that let a small cadre of developers get around the rules.

(Patrick Range McDonald writes for the Coalition to Preserve LA)

-cw

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CORRUPTION WATCH-Los Angeles has significantly more people leave each year than move here. We now know who is leaving the City – the Millennials starting families. Los Angeles has become a city to avoid as we are #60 on places where the professional and business service class want to live. That attitude holds true for all the middle class. Some older middle class citizens are stuck in LA since they bought their homes decades ago and their children are finished school. However, the Millennials who are deciding to start a family are moving away in droves. 

When tens of thousands more people leave the City than chose to come here, the supply of vacant housing increases. For several years, Los Angeles has seen its vacancy rate climb, except for one segment – rent controlled housing. Mayor Eric Garcetti has been tearing down poor people’s homes with a vengeance, swelling the ranks of the homeless. 

How does Garcetti get away with both the massive destruction of poor people’s homes and the construction of luxury units which show an ever increasing vacancy rate? Building more luxury units in Los Angeles is like stocking a kosher butcher shop with pigs’ feet. You know something isn’t right. 

Why would the kosher shop load up on pork products, when no one is buying them? And why is Los Angeles constructing more luxury condos and single family homes which are eight inches apart? Yes, I said eight inches! 

The answer to both questions is the same – the butcher shop no longer cares about being kosher and is catering to a different clientele; so too with the City of Los Angeles. Its housing policies have nothing to do with the housing desires or needs of Angelenos. 

Corruption Destroys 

While power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolute, “corruptionism” destroys. With the blessings of the courts and law enforcement, the Los Angeles City Council has become a bona fide criminal enterprise. I do not mean this metaphorically; I mean it literally. The Los Angeles City Council is a criminal enterprise. 

I do not suggest that it caters to criminals, nor do I merely imply that councilmembers are crooks. I mean that the City Council itself is The Criminal Enterprise. In the olden days of Al Capone and Elliot Ness, Chicago had corrupt judges and a plethora of city officials on the take. In Los Angeles, however, the City Council itself operates according to Mutual Bribery. 

The term Mutual Bribery is used because the State of California amended Penal Code § 86 in 2006 to forbid any councilmember to trade his or her vote in return for a vote by another councilmember. Penal Code § 86 is one of the California’s anti-bribery statutes. In the Los Angeles City Council, Mutual Bribery operates very efficiently. Each councilmember agrees to never vote No on a construction project in another council district. The reciprocal nature of their agreement is why it is called Mutual Bribery. 

The Los Angeles City Council unanimously approves each construction project in the City 99.9% of the time. The courts see nothing wrong with this practice. The likelihood that this unanimous voting occurs “by chance” is less than one in one thousand billion, billion, billion. I think the number is written 1/1,000 followed by 18 zeros. Yes, ten years of unanimous voting is merely a statistical coincidence! 

But what is wrong with the system? After all, it is very efficient. All a developer needs to do to have his project unanimously approved is to have a kindly councilmember place it on the City Council agenda. It will be unanimously approved. And here’s the great part of the Los Angeles City Council: even if not a single councilmember actually votes for the project, it gets unanimous approval. 

Gee whiz, what could go wrong with a system in which a developer is guaranteed his project, no matter how many laws it violates and will get unanimous approval -- even if not a single councilmember leans forward to press his Yes button? The City Council has rigged its vote tabulator so the machine automatically votes “Yes” – a quirky reflection of the corruption at City Council. So let’s look at the impact of corruptionism. 

Ramifications of City Council’s Mutual Bribery 

When a city retains a construction company to build something, it is supposed to use competitive bidding. When the developer is chosen in secret with zero public oversight, there is great potential for pay offs, bribes, shoddy construction, skimming, etc. The unanimous vote trading at City Council allows a single councilmember to meet in private with a developer to construct whatever he wants, and then the City is compelled to pay for a substantial portion of the project. 

For example, look at Grand Ave Project across from Eli Broad’s Museum in DTLA. The City Council unanimously voted to give the developer $198 million. Where was the competitive bidding to see if this developer was the best one for the job? There was none. There never is any. 

Look at 5929 Sunset where the City gave the developer over $17 million. Was there any competitive bid to see if this developer was the best one for the project? Nope. 

Unanimous voting in City Council is habitually used to circumvent the requirement that all City- sponsored projects are subject to competitive bidding. Instead, one councilmember and one developer make a secret deal, and then, after that, the City Council unanimously approves millions of dollars for that project. CIM Midtown in Council President Herb Wesson’s CD 10 reportedly got $42 million plus all the sale taxes earned by retailers at the project site. 

Across LA, we see the City as “co-sponsor” of project after project based upon secret deals between one councilmember and one developer. Never is there any competitive bidding. That’s because the developer is selected before the city money is donated. 

As a result, billions of tax dollars are funneled to developers who are destroying LA neighborhoods and looting the public treasury with zero oversight. The courts see nothing wrong with this system. 

But wait, it gets worse! 

The construction mania continues and City Hall is in a panic over the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative [NII]. Why is that? As everyone knows, the middle class is deserting Los Angeles. There is an increasing glut of these luxury condos and yet the City wants to construct more and more of them. Yes, that brings us back to: why would a kosher butcher shop stock pigs’ feet? 

There Are a Couple Scams 

(1) The City will borrow the money and give it to the developers, who then will bankrupt their LLCs and LLPs, leaving the City’s taxpayers to repay Wall Street. The tax dollars that flow to Wall Street will then not be available to pay for our infrastructure improvements. The decaying infrastructure will then cause more businesses and more of the middle class to flee the City. None of that matters as long as the developers can siphon off hundreds of millions of tax dollars. 

(2) The newest angle is money laundering. Since Putin has made moving money out of the Russia illegal, the desire of Russians to move money to other countries has naturally increased. (Putin does not understand that his own massive corruptionism is the major reason so many Russians are devising schemes to get their cash out of their country. 

In order to cut down on not only Russians but also Chinese who are looking to stash their money overseas, the United States has a new rule requiring the reporting of real estate investments by foreigners. More specifically, in Manhattan and Miami-Dade real estate transactions of more than $3 million in NY and more than $1 million in Miami have to be reported. The purpose is to stop money laundering not only by Russian oligarchs but also by drug traffickers, Blood Diamond traders, weapons dealers and a host of other international criminals. 

So far, Los Angeles is not on the list of locales where reporting is required. Thus, some thug who made his money by the child labor and mutilations in Central Africa can still secretly buy up Los Angeles condos and small lot subdivisions (the new single family homes separated by 8 inches.) LA developers do not care who buys their units.  

Looking ahead, one can anticipate the Feds placing the same reporting requirements on LLCs and LLPs in Los Angeles real estate market and this is why condos and small lot subdivisions are so important. If a Russian oligarch buys a 12-unit apartment house for $10 million, his identity cannot be kept secret. But if he buys 12 condos or 12 small lot subdivisions, each one will be less than the reporting requirement. Secrecy is very important, especially if you’re hiding your money from Vladimir Putin. 

Why the Los Angeles Power Structure Circles the Wagons to Protect the Mutual Bribery at City Council 

We see why the entire Los Angeles power structure does not want anything to interfere with the Mutual Bribery running City Council. It is an extremely efficient system to get in on the international money laundering craze. In a year or two, it will probably be some other criminal venture that will become all the rage. 

With Mutual Bribery, there is never any disclosure of who is paying whom and how much is being paid. Each councilmember is the petty dictator in his or her district. All we Angelenos know is that our infrastructure has decayed, our taxes are increasing and our quality of life is deteriorating.

(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.

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GETTING THERE FROM HERE--What happens when the citizenry of all political stripes organize and the politicians actually listen to and work with them?  Progress.  Even in the City of Los Angeles.

(Plane lands on north runway at LAX-photo above) 

Actually, especially in the City of LA, considering how there's a persistent pro-grassroots movement that consistently fights against political oppression (like the Coalition to Preserve LA). 

Republican Richard Riordan came up with the concept of Neighborhood Councils, and Democratic LA City Councilmember Bill Rosendahl championed both citizen outreach and empowerment, in ways that were both scorned and which are now increasingly in vogue in the City of the Angels. 

And because of this adherence to grassroots empowerment, and because of both of civic heroes like Riordan, Rosendahl, Friends4Expo Transit, and the Coalition to Preserve LA, the goal was and is for civilized discussion, debate, compromise...and, most of all, for reasonable and realistic SOLUTIONS. 

Enter Councilmember Mike Bonin and Mayor Eric Garcetti, who both learned from and continued the efforts of their respective predecessors Bill Rosendahl and Antonio Villaraigosa to modernize LAX. 

And they've just made major progress!  After years of ferocious attacks and belittling by the LA Times and even the majority of the LA City Council, LAX will be modernized for a much cheaper cost, and with a much less invasive footprint, then the plan which LA World Airports tried to ram down our throats … and yet that which a NASA study concluded was not necessary. 

And after years of grief and lawsuits that Westchester was pushed into, those who stood up for Westchester (and, by extension, the rest of the Westside and even the City) are now vindicated. 

I still have concerns about how Mayor Garcetti's approach to Planning is entirely unsustainable, both economically and environmentally, but I will give the Mayor his props here:   

Mayor Garcetti kept his word and avoided and unnecessary push of LAX into Westchester that would have both cut off the vital north-south arteries of Lincoln and Sepulveda Blvds and that would have also threatened the viability of rail line from LAX to the Westside and the San Fernando Valley. 

In other words, in addition to avoiding the coziness of Wendy Greuel with the DWP, Eric Garcetti's election guaranteed a defense against a costly and devastating LAX expansion into the Westside.  I well remember how Mr. Garcetti put his foot down during the last mayoral campaign, and he's earned as much cred in stopping LAX expansion as he's done in promoting better balance at Metro. 

And shame on you, to those in the Times and the City Council for ignoring the "Group-Think" at LA World Airports about the northern airport expansion, and for pushing around and demonizing the Alliance for a Regional Solution to Airport Congestion (ARSAC) as selfish NIMBY's. 

So LA World Airports (LAWA), which runs LAX, will NOT be sued, but WILL be able to modernize, and WILL save a lot of money and disruption in its short- and long-term operations. 

As with the Crenshaw/LAX Light Rail Line effort, where Westchester saved the county a lot of grief by allowing that line's maintenance yard to be built within its borders when other regions were truly playing the NIMBY card, Westchester will remain a devoted partner to LAX, and will seek to encourage light rail and local modernization when it makes environmental and economic sense. 

ARSAC had a lot of similarities with Friends4Expo Transit, in that grassroots/volunteer members of all political stripes came together and pushed for modernization that made sense...and saved money!  Civic leaders like Denny Schneider, Sheila Mickelson, Robert Acherman, and Marta Evry come from all over the political spectrum, and they all banded together and made a stand. 

It was truly David vs. Goliath...but I remember when Friends4Expo Transit was in the role of David, and yet persevered.  And to the memory of the late Nan Schneider...your hopes and efforts in defending Westchester against an overreaching political tidal wave were not and will not ever be forgotten or lost. 

When Democrats, Republicans, Progressives, and Tea Partiers all come together to make a stand, there must be a good cause behind that stand. 

Perhaps the biggest hero of all is someone who just doesn't get enough credit: City Councilmember Mike Bonin, whose transportation/planning efforts have focused on both credibility and compromise, on both idealism and pragmatism.  LAX modernization is something that Mr. Bonin has played a role in for decades ... decades! 

And I'm sure that Mr. Bonin's predecessor, Bill Rosendahl, is smiling from Heaven knowing that--as with runaway overdevelopment in Los Angeles, we don't always have to put up with that. 

Two other big Thank You's are in order: one goes to Argonaut writer Gary Walker.  Westsiders who read the Argonaut have known for many years that when the Times is off writing and opining about what the Times thinks will get its next Pulitzer Prize, they can always rely on Mr. Walker to factually and fairly write on issues that are most relevant to them. 

And then there's newly-appointed Director of LA World Airports Deborah Flint, and a host of amazing planners and LAWA officials who worked with the City of LA and Metro to change its obstructionist working paradigms to becoming a true partner, and a good neighbor, and of focusing on goals rather than fighting the wrong battles at LAX (which LAWA used to deem was its own personal property). 

Pinch me, somebody!  LAX modernization will actually occur without thrashing the Westside! 

Pinch me, somebody!  Metro Rail will be connecting to LAX! 

Pinch me, somebody!  The Expo Line IS a success, and LA is moving towards becoming an efficient and economically-viable city with respect to transportation alternatives. 

Now if we can only fix that overdevelopment/neighborhood transformation problem over at the L.A. City Planning Politburo, my cup would runneth over. 

But for all you heroes in Westchester, at LAWA, in the LADOT and Metro, and especially Mayor Eric Garcetti and Councilmember Mike Bonin...take a bow. 

Lord knows you've earned it!

(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

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW--The iconic beachfront Gladstone’s may be serving its last oysters by October 2017. County officials aim to entice a new restaurateur or developer by expanding the maximum concession terms, which would give the new developer time to recoup investments. 

A vote by the County Board of Supervisors has doubled the long-term lease for the Pacific Palisades property to forty years from its current twenty-year term and would require a redevelopment plan for the facility in hope that a new establishment would be constructed from the ground up. 

Supervisor Sheila Kuehl wrote in a motion to the board, “Because the existing facility is seriously deteriorated and outdated, the Department desires the successful bidder to construct an entirely new facility.” 

Angelenos and tourists have been ordering chowder, crab cakes and the like at Gladstone’s since 1972. The eatery pays about $1.7 million in rent each year to occupy the state-owned property, which is operated by the county. The county discounted the rent to $875 K this year to accommodate the restaurant’s financial setbacks, according to the LA Daily News. 

How would the lease expansion bring in a bidding war? Kuehl’s motion would give new facility owners or developers forty years to recoup the cost of renovations or redevelopment instead of the existing twenty. The current owners of Gladstone’s would be eligible to rebid on the property. 

Carol Baker, spokesperson for the LA County Beach and Harbors said, “This isn’t some, ‘Let’s do this to Gladstone’s.’ This lease was coming to an end. We need to think about what’s the best way to move forward on this iconic property. It’s a harsh environment, right on the ocean. That property experiences a lot of wear and tear. An operator will need to address that – while you’re at it, what is your concept?” 

Former Mayor and current majority stakes holder of Gladstone’s Richard Riordan has some ideas, including a possible museum with a restaurant. He’s not officially tied with any redevelopment plans but favors the idea. “I think it’s a good idea if they can put the pieces together,” he said. 

The benefits of the proposed amendment include minimizing loss of revenue for the county when Gladstone’s closes, as well as making maintenance and security costs more affordable for a new operator. According to The Daily News, the restaurant has been running at a deficit of $100,000 per month. 

Currently, Gladstone’s website assures guests that there is no set closure date for the beachside restaurant. 

ATTENTION GUESTS:

Despite what you may have heard throughout the media, at this present time, there is no set closure date for Gladstone’s Malibu. We are happy to continue taking your reservations and event inquiries over the phone or via email/website submission. Thank you for your continued support and patronage to an iconic beach landmark!-Management.

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

-cw

BILLBOARD WATCH--Dear Councilman Englander … At the August 23 meeting of the City Council’s PLUM committee, you publicly accused me of putting out false information in the articles I write about billboard and signage issues. Specifically, in asking a city official for clarification of a point under discussion, you said, “Because I want to make sure that when Mr. Hathaway writes about this, since he gets it wrong most of the time, that he hears it clearly.”

I consider this an attack on my personal integrity, because I always strive to be factually accurate and avoid taking things out of context or otherwise trafficking in misinformation. For example, before writing about PLUM committee meetings I almost always listen to the meeting audio, to make sure that I heard things correctly and that I accurately quote committee members and other speakers. I have a definite point of view about the signage issues the PLUM committee deals with, but that doesn’t mean I believe in using less than ethical and honest means to promote that view.

But your accusation was more than just an attack on me, it was an attack on the very idea that LA residents are entitled to be fully informed on the issues that affect them, in this case issues of billboard and signage regulation. That’s because the large majority of those residents can’t come to PLUM committee meetings to hear the discussion firsthand. Unlike lobbyists, billboard company representatives, and others who are paid to attend these meetings, most community people can’t take time off work, arrange child care, and make the necessary adjustments needed to attend a weekday meeting at City Hall. So, without someone reporting on the details of those meetings, they are denied the knowledge they need and deserve to form opinions and make decisions about the issues at hand.

I’m not paid, either, but I’m fortunate enough to be at a stage of my life that I can devote a significant amount of time to a cause I consider very important to the mental and physical health of communities throughout LA And an important part of that effort is to inform those citizens who want to know what their elected representatives are doing about billboards and signage but don’t have time to attend the many meetings held on the topic or read the many lengthy reports issued at various points in the deliberative process.

Unfortunately, your public statement at the Aug. 24 PLUM committee meeting tells those citizens, in essence, that the information they read online at the BanBillboardBlight [[banbillboardblight.org ]] website or in CityWatch or hear in public service programs on local radio stations is “wrong most of the time.” Doubly unfortunate is the fact that you didn’t specify a single instance of what you considered wrong, so it’s just an accusation put out there, deliberately or otherwise, to create doubt in some people’s minds that what they’re reading and hearing is factually accurate.

I have been writing articles about PLUM committee actions and deliberations, as well as those of the City Planning Commission and other government agencies, for almost nine years. In that time, not a single billboard company lobbyist or billboard company executive or employee has approached me and said that something I wrote was false. Not a single member of the PLUM committee, present or past, has contacted me to make that complaint. Not a single City Councilmember, not a single city planner or member of the city attorney’s staff or any other city official involved with billboard and signage issues has told me that something I wrote was inaccurate.

You surely understand that people come to meetings and otherwise involve themselves in community affairs, not because they are paid to, but because they believe in a vision of a better community and a better city. Those people deserve the respect and even the encouragement of their elected representatives, regardless of where they happen to stand on a particular project or issue. Those people deserve access to as much information as possible, so that they can make the kind of informed decisions that are in important part of the bedrock of a democratic system.

I hope you will take that into consideration before making unsupported accusations against someone who has volunteered his time and energy to disseminate that information as widely as possible and help make the system work the way it was intended.

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

-cw

BUTCHER ON LA-“Reform” of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is on the November ballot as Charter Amendment Measure RRR and it’s just (w)Rong, (w)Rong, (w)Rong! Wrong for the ratepayers of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. 

Remember Gene Maddaus’ clear, uncontested explanation in the LA Weekly about how the current “reform” proposal is really a guise for future rate increases that will be easier to accomplish without even a hint of public oversight or accountability? Maddaus noted that, "Board actions -- including ratemaking -- would no longer require City Council approval unless the City Council asserts jurisdiction." (Emphasis added.) 

“It's hard to overstate the importance of this provision,” Maddaus continued. “Under the current system -- the product of more than 100 years of governance reform -- the City Council must approve any rate increases. This exerts a downward pressure on rates. No politician wants to approve an increase and face the wrath of voters. (In his first State of the City address, Garcetti made a big deal of delaying any rate increases for a year.) 

“If you give ratemaking authority to an independent body, you remove that downward pressure. The result: Rates will go up. Fuentes, of course, has no incentive to spell this out, and neither does D'Arcy. (Both declined interview requests.) If you're campaigning for a ballot measure, you wouldn't want to tout the prospect of higher utility bills. It's much better to say, as Fuentes does, that the measure will ‘take the politics out of the DWP.’” 

Charter Amendment RRR will make future rate increases easier to just slide through, further away from the public eye than now. 

DWP rates too high? Secret future rate hikes? Who you gonna call? Your Councilmember? Good luck with that! 

No on RRR! 

It is wrong, wrong, wrong for workers! 

Kevin Walker of KPCC/89.3 explains in “5 things to know about the Los Angeles DWP reform plan,”  in his point #4, “Civil Service Exemption:” 

If the ballot measure passes, the DWP might be exempted from LA’s civil service rules, which dictate how city workers are hired, promoted and fired. 

Supporters of the changes say it would make the department more nimble. They also argue the DWP should be able to manage its workforce more independently because of the specialized nature of their employees.  

Organized labor defends the civil service rules as a protection against corruption and nepotism. 

"We are deeply troubled by the City’s refusal to recognize the long-term consequences that this ballot measure will have," wrote Cheryl Parisi, chair of the Coalition of LA City Unions.  

The measure also leaves the council the option to delegate its salary setting authority to the DWP’s board of commissioners. 

For many years, some public sector union leaders have argued that the protections of a merit-based civil service system are redundant and even unnecessary if strong due-process provisions and other assurances are negotiated into the collective bargaining agreement. That hypothetical argument continues: when workplace protections come from “the employer,” the work of the union is undermined; workers see their rights and benefits arriving because of the beneficence of the boss, the law, the government rather than stemming from the contract and the historical struggles that led to a strong, enforceable agreement. 

Civil service protections for the workers of the DWP are as important today as ever; the DWP has a long, strong history of advancing white men who already work for “the company,” and/or those with family already working there. Currently, hiring, promotions, testing, and disciplinary procedures are all administered by the City’s Personnel Department, and the DWP is treated as one of 40+ city departments. It may be slow and tedious but it’s slow and tedious in the very same way for every single person. It’s fundamentally a fair and open system that has helped build a diverse, competent city workforce. 

Acceding to the elitist isolationism of the current DWP workforce and leadership is a terrible idea. Instead, the City’s utility should step right into the nascent local hiring program aimed at training city residents to fill critical immediate job openings all across the City.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Irvine School of Law, chair of the elected Los Angeles Charter Reform Commission, advocates for the continued inclusion of civil service protections for DWP workers in an op-ed in the LA Times originally titled “A plan to make DWP even worse”: 

“Separating DWP’s hiring from the city’s Civil Service system is problematic too. The city of Los Angeles is a single employer and the DWP just one of its many departments. Employees can transfer among departments, depending on their skills and the city’s needs, through the city’s Civil Service system. This gives workers access to new opportunities throughout city government and helps the city deploy its talented employees to maximum benefit. 

“The Civil Service also provides objective procedures for hiring and promotion so that city jobs aren’t handed out as patronage. It was introduced in the city of Los Angeles in 1903 to counter a flagrant system of political spoils. In 1939, after the recall of Mayor Frank L. Shaw for corruption, the Civil Service system was overhauled and strengthened into a nationally recognized model of honesty and professionalism. 

“The Civil Service system has served Los Angeles well for decades, which is why the charter reform commissions insisted on keeping it in 1999. This merit-based, competitive method of hiring and promotion limits exposure to claims of discrimination, because the city must prove its testing practices are job-related and skills-based according to accepted legal models. This good government measure is as necessary now as ever.” 

The DWP works best as an integral part of a vibrant city. Open, fair, and transparent labor practices at Water & Power impact workers throughout the City as well as potential city employees, potentially benefit seniors in local LA high schools who are heading towards their futures. Who will get these great jobs? Will the department participate in the City’s local hiring outreach and put qualified Angelenos to work right now to start replacing the 40% of the current workforce soon eligible to retire? Or will the DWP kowtow to the crusty, inbred, nepotistic-leaning voices urging a private personnel system all their own? 

The Coalition of LA City Unions points out the myriad legal issues in one of its numerous legal briefings: 

“The proposed wholesale exemption of DWP from Civil Service violates the civil service mandate principle. If broad authorization of contracting out undermines civil service (Los Angeles Charter section 1022 narrowly limits contracting out to work that can be performed more economically or feasibly by independent contractors than by City employees), then surely exempting approximately one quarter of the civil service workforce subverts the entire system. Although the Motion - which has no specifics - cites an inability to hire quickly, there is no claim that the current DWP workforce does not perform DWP work efficiently, as the civil service rules seek to ensure. There is no basis to violate the civil service mandate as to existing City employees.” 

Perhaps most significantly, Charter Amendment Measure RRR is bad for the environment, for anyone committed to cleaner energy choices.

It is wrong for lovers of open, transparent, accountable government, and horrible for enthusiasts of public power. 

That’s why a broad new coalition is growing to oppose Measure RRR. Neighborhoods Against the DWP Power Grab recently announced its organizing efforts DWP ballot battle: Power grab or good government?               

It notes the involvement of former City Controller Laura Chick, actor/environmentalist Ed Begley Jr., former City Councilmembers Nate Holden, Robert Farrell, Hal Bernson, and Dennis Zine. The coalition also includes the unions of the Coalition of LA City Unions, UCI law professor Erwin Chemerinsky, William D. Smart Jr. of the Fix L.A. Coalition, and National Organization for Women California President Jerilyn Stapleton. In addition, it has support from Food and Water Watch, Consumer Watchdog, the Southern California Watershed Alliance, and Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association President Richard Close. 

According to the organization, “Chick, Begley and Holden are among the members of Neighborhoods Against DWP Power Grab, which is fighting Los Angeles Charter Amendment RRR.  Opponents say the measure will give DWP officials and the board overseeing the utility too much power, and makes the utility less transparent and accountable to voters.” 

Here is part of the organization’s argument against RRR: 

"Don't believe the false claims that this measure is ‘reform.’ Charter Amendment RRR is a power-grab by the DWP that gives voters less oversight over the DWP— not more. 

"This measure takes away voters' decision-making powers and accountability over the DWP by enabling unelected bureaucrats to run the department and determine rate hikes. 

"This measure gives the DWP Board the extraordinary power to spend millions of ratepayer dollars on contracts, rate hikes, and salaries without preserving currently existing oversight and approvals from voters and elected officials. 

"The DWP needs serious overhaul and reform, but this reckless proposal takes us backwards and does not reflect the good-government changes that ratepayers want and need. 

"In fact, this measure limits scrutiny over the DWP and decreases transparency by eliminating existing checks and balances. 

"This measure severely restricts voters’ power over DWP operations and rate hikes, and gives voters less of a say on clean water and renewable energy policies. 

"Making matters worse, this measure gives the DWP Commissioners, currently appointed citizen volunteers, ratepayer funded pay that could total as much as $2 million throughout the next decade. 

"This measure also opens the door to corruption and unethical hiring of friends and family by allowing the department to opt out of the civil service system. 

"This proposal could easily lead to mismanagement of our most precious resource: our water.

"If this misleading measure passes, the Mayor won’t have final authority to fire unelected and unaccountable DWP Board Members, who will have unprecedented power and control over rate hikes. 

"Vote NO on Charter Amendment RRR— the DWP power-grab. It’s misleading, worse than the status quo, and doesn’t represent the real change we need at DWP." 

Wrong, wrong, wrong! Vote No on RRR on November 8! Get involved in the campaign! Contact your Union! Watch this spot!

(Julie Butcher writes for CityWatch, is a retired union leader and is now enjoying Riverside and her first grandchild. She can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GELFAND’S WORLD--The editor of CityWatch sent me a news clip along with a question, "Is this a column?" Translated, that editorial question refers to whether the story of Israel Stinson provides important public policy questions, the kind that CityWatch covers. Israel Stinson was a two year old boy who had been kept barely alive through life support. Machines kept his lungs moving artificially. At the order of a judge, the life support was disconnected and the boy passed away almost immediately. 

The grieving parents are asking why their baby couldn't have been kept alive. The lawyers are asking why the hospital was in such a rush to pull the plug without bringing in the parents for one last visit. Members of the public commenting on internet sites are split as to whether life support should have been continued. 

There are numerous public policy questions. There is also a question of simple humanity that doesn't seem to be getting any play. That's because, sadly, it goes against the grieving parents, the pro-life organization that was representing them, and members of the public who donated money. 

Israel Stinson was barely two years old when he suffered a serious asthma attack. There are many children who get asthma, but luckily only a few get it badly enough for it to be a risk to life. Israel was one of the unlucky ones. His ability to take in oxygen became so limited that his heart stopped. News stories indicate that doctors worked on him for about an hour, using CPR while trying to get the heart to restart. Eventually the heart restarted, but the question remained, how much damage had been done? In retrospect, he had probably suffered widespread, irreversible brain damage in the first few minutes of his heart stoppage, but the doctors couldn't know this for sure at the time. All they could do is wait and watch. 

Faced with an uncertain outcome, the medical profession understands that there is nothing to do but provide supportive care and then just wait and see. So that's what they did. But eventually, after appropriate testing, they recognized that Israel Stinson was truly gone. They could keep his lungs moving and stimulate his heart to beat, but faced with evidence of his widespread, massive loss of brain tissue, they concluded that Israel was brain dead. 

Parts of our bodies can withstand the loss of oxygen for a substantial period of time. People get freezing injuries, yet somehow not lose all their toes. But the brain is an exception. Brain cells die rather quickly, and as far as medical science knows, once lost they stay lost. The cases where stroke victims recover function are generally attributed to the fact that other parts of the brain can learn to take over where the original tissue has failed. But when there is widespread, massive loss of brain cells, there isn't much to provide recovery. 

The case of Israel Stinson, as described in the Los Angeles Times by Erica Evans, establishes the simple facts, and then delves into the competing legal claims. Videos on YouTube provide the pro- and con arguments. There are numerous legal issues that are left hanging. Does a hospital have the duty to provide life support to a person that is brain dead? As the hospital sees it, they are being asked to tend to what is little more than a corpse. To the parents, things are different. They have the opportunity to spend time with their baby, whether or not he is responding in the way they would like. They have memories of his birth and subsequent life. They try to maintain hope. 

To the cold blooded rationalist, all hope for Israel was false hope. This may be, but the most cold blooded of rationalists has to concede that the choice being thrust upon the parents was horrifying beyond belief. They desperately wanted to believe that their child would get better, and doctors were telling them that this would never happen. In the meanwhile, they were getting some comfort by visiting with him, hugging him, tickling him to try to evoke some response. 

Some people are able to make the decision to pull the plug. Others are not. Sometimes it's because they can't bring themselves to make a decision that is so painful. Other people won't accept the fact that when brain function is irreversibly lost, their loved one is -- for all intents and purposes -- gone. They can see the chest moving in and out, and the occasional twitch, and for some, this is hope. 

The parents were advised to take him off life support. This is a polite way of saying that his breathing would no longer be created artificially, and he would almost immediately die, in body as well as brain. 

The parents refused. They kept the body of their son alive, going so far as to take him to Guatemala for interim treatment, then bringing him back to California. There is some question as to why the local hospital here in Los Angeles accepted Israel as a patient, but they did. But finally, recognizing his brain dead condition, the hospital petitioned the courts to allow them to pull the plug. The parents had the help of pro bono legal support and won a few days and a little false hope. Then a local judge pulled the plug judicially, and the hospital performed the physical act of turning off life support. 

The Los Angeles Times reporter Erica Evans began the account of Israel's last moments by describing him as "angelic-looking." It's true. The pictures look like a sleeping baby. It's only when you see the YouTube videos that you realize that there is almost no response to continued prodding and poking, in spite of the parents' desperate belief that they are seeing something going on. 

I am going to make a conjecture here. The parents saw Israel as injured, but somehow still with us. In photos, he looks like a sleeping baby. The parents refer to their strong religious beliefs, and felt (I think sincerely) that God was telling them to keep going. That's how they describe their beliefs on video. Perhaps they hoped that some day, this sleeping baby would awake to some level of normality. In brief, the parents were viewing their baby as comatose, and capable of recovery. It's true that some people in comas eventually wake up, sometimes years later. But they have to have intact brains for this to happen. 

These beliefs were opposed by members of the medical profession. There were several neurologists who did the standard, accepted tests, and concluded that brain death had occurred. The news story says that the doctors "declared the boy brain dead," as if it were an arbitrary ruling rather than a careful judgment based on the evidence of physical examination and lab tests. 

One YouTube discussion involved the legal definition of death. The attorney pointed out that in some states, death is defined as the cessation of heart beat rather than brain death. It was kind of irrelevant in the context, but it is part of the wider public policy question. 

Another public policy question that is of utmost importance but was avoided almost entirely, involves whether there is any obligation for any entity, public or private, to continue providing long term care. Lack of payment in a system which avoids government funded of national health care is just one element in the discussion. The other question is whether an entity, public or private, can be compelled to continue treating a person that is, in their judgment, already dead at the level of the brain. It's a legitimate question. 

I'm going to change the subject just a little, and make a serious comment that is not meant to be morbid or rude, but is based on a real life experience. It's a comment that I don't see very often in these debates over heroic measures and prolonged life support. 

The context of this comment involves the shooting death of a friend that happened a little more than 19 years ago. I can remember looking down on the body, which had a gunshot wound where his right eye had been just a few minutes earlier. The bullet had obviously gone through the eye and into the brain. 

I remember staring for perhaps 15 seconds, watching carefully to make sure that he was really dead. My thought in the stress of the moment was this: Why would anyone want to survive that kind of wound? He would be blind, probably mostly paralyzed, and severely damaged in his ability to form any thoughts. I don't think he would have chosen to survive that level of destruction if he had had any say in the matter. 

How could you want anything like that for your friend or spouse or for your own child? Obviously the parents had a different sort of hope. They tried to believe that Israel would come back to life and live normally. 

But in trying to keep their child alive, they were also ignoring the fact that getting a little better would be the worst thing that could have happened to their baby, because there wasn't the surviving brain tissue for him to get truly better. 

I truly believe that from the moment of his cardiac arrest, Israel felt no pain and endured no suffering. It's not a lot, but it's the best we have. 

Addendum: The Epi Pen 

Whether Israel Stinson's story is a legitimate part of the national healthcare debate, the Epi Pen scandal certainly is. As almost everyone knows by now, the number of pharmaceutical companies making automatically injectable epinephrin dwindled to one. Given their newfound monopoly status, the company raised rates, and raised them again, and yet again. This is what private companies do when faced with a chance to make serious money. 

It's almost amusing to see members of congress complaining. Isn't the congress the organization that refuses to allow Medicare the chance to negotiate drug pricing? Isn't this the organization that could have invented some federal agency to oversee drug pricing, the same way that the state of California has some regulation over automobile insurance rates? They didn't, but they are complaining.

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

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CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--Members of state commissions are dumb enough when they talk to people. Keeping them apart from conversations won’t make them any smarter.

That basic insight is why efforts to “reform” the Coastal Commission and various other commissions don’t make much sense. The idea should be to encourage more conversation—public conversation—from which commissioners and everyone else can learn. And legislation shouldn’t pick and choose—making conversations with some people permissible, and conversations with other people impermissible.

So discard any reform that limits conversations. And adopt simpler reforms that encourage more conversation.

What does that mean in practice? It means adopting two categories.

If there’s a conversation between a commissioner and anyone whose work involves talking to commissioners, then that conversation needs to be disclosed the very day it happens. Not just the fact of the conversation, but some details – the subjects covered, the amount of time, the location. And that disclosure must come from both sides – the commissioner and the people approaching the commissioner. If people take notes, they should share their notes.

The teeth of the matter is this: if there are private conversations that go undisclosed, those are illegal—and both commission members and the lobbyist or lawyer involved in the conversation should be subject to fines and other penalties.

Such rapidly disclosed conversations should be the norm—and the only path to conversation. There can’t be another secret path, or some exemption, or some way to go off-the-record. If you don’t want to have a public conversation with commission members, great, but the world gets to know about it.

Otherwise, the only other path is to go to a meeting and talk to the commission in public.

Of course, three minutes at the microphone isn’t a great way to have conversations. If people want to throw energy into reform in this area, they should devise new kinds of public meetings ( there are many people that have thought about such things) that allows for real conversations, not just speaking. There are many models for such things, all of which drive lawyers for commissions crazy.

Which is another good argument for approaching this problem differently.

(Joe Mathews writes Connecting California and is an editor for Zocalo Public Square.This column was posted most recently at Fox and Hounds.) 

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CHAPMAN REPORT-A 17-year-old boy attending the Boys and Girls Club College Bound program in San Pedro won a $10,000 college scholarship this month from the Taco Bell Foundation for his personal anti-bullying video.    

Stephen Lee took the stance after struggling with bullying for years. He made the video with his own art work and the club staff helped him put it together. He received the good news call from the Live Mas team with the Taco Bell foundation while visiting his grandmother in Vietnam in July.  

“I was very grateful when I heard from a Skype call with the (scholarship) team early in the morning that I won $10K. I burst into tears. I am so grateful.”  

Taryn McNamara, the Taco Bell Foundation coordinator, said the Live Mas scholarship team gives out 220 scholarships across the country to students each year totaling $1 million. The scholarships range between $2,500 and $25,000 and are awarded to those who seem the most passionate about their future dreams and careers.  

“We’re looking at videos for kids with the most passion and desire,” she said. “We’re looking for the next generation of creators and innovators. We really like Stephen’s video and how he had so much passion for computer science.”  

Lee said the club at the Cabrillo Avenue site gave him the safe haven he needed to explore his dreams and passions. He was able to enhance his skills in art, animation, graphical design, game design and video editing. He was tutored, guided to prep for college and he even played ping pong. 

It was the first time he felt accepted despite “my quiet nature,” he said. Middle school and high school were filled with years of dealing with bullying. Students would attack him “verbally” he said and began making fake posts on social media using his name. His grades suffered horribly in those early years and he later spent much of his time feeling lost about his future. 

Once he attended the club, however, his life began to change for the better. His parents, Hudson and Sylvia who came from Vietnam and are U.S. citizens, were so delighted he felt at home there that they drove and picked him up from the club nearly every day and on the weekends.  

His father, Hudson, said when his son called “and told me he had won a 10k scholarship during work, I was so shocked and speechless I didn’t know what to say to him. I am very proud of him.”  

Eventually, the younger Lee said he found the courage at last to go to administrators at South Torrance High school where he attended and officials there acted on his concerns.  

But the club, he said, is where he made his discoveries that he enjoyed computer science. Family members in the field also taught him about coding and he was able to design three computer games at the club.  

“The Boys and Girls club…helped me calm down whenever I was stressed,” Lee said. “I have a lot of friends over there that I talked to. However, I talk to the staff a lot as well. I felt very comfortable talking to every single one of them. Even when I had a personal problem, they were there to hear me out and give me advice without judging.”  

His suggestions to other children who are bullied is to understand that no one else can solve “your problems” and to look to the people who do support you, a family member, a friend. “There’s always at least one person who is there for you.” 

“I feel every single situation is different and I feel that some people had it even worse than me,” he explained. “All I can say is what I learned. Learn to laugh at yourself, but don’t put yourself down. Don’t take actual constructive criticism as an attack, but learn from it. Lastly, don’t expect anyone else to solve your problems.” 

His future plans, he said, include making an app that will help school teachers and administrators determine whether students are being bullied.

See Steven’s video.

(Diana Chapman has been a writer/journalist for nearly thirty years. She has written for magazines, newspapers and the best-seller series, “Chicken Soup for the Soul.” You can reach her at: [email protected].)