LOS ANGELES

CALWATCHDOG--California doesn’t have nearly the reputation of, say, New Jersey or Maryland when it comes to a history of public corruption. Studies that measure corruption with metrics tend to give most corrupt honors to less populated, poorer southern states like Louisiana and Mississippi or big, relatively wealthy Midwest and Eastern states like Illinois and Pennsylvania.

But when it comes to the most corrupt counties, few if any can top the recent run that Los Angeles County is on — specifically, the cities and agencies in south and central LA County.

The latest example came last week when Luis Aguinaga resigned as mayor of South El Monte after admitting to taking bribes for seven years from a contractor paid by the city for engineering and construction services.

A Nexis search of stories by the Southern California News Group, the Los Angeles Times and Southern California Public Radio shows Aguinaga has plenty of corrupt company in neighboring communities.

Bell--In 2010, a  Los Angeles Times investigation found that the city was being run like a criminal enterprise to the benefit of city officials and City Council members who received huge salaries and relied on illegal taxes and deceptive accounting. Former City Manager Robert Rizzo was found guilty of 69 corruption charges. Five City Council members also were convicted over city schemes.

Carson--Mayor Al Robles is now under siege from Los Angeles County prosecutors for simultaneously serving on the board of the Water Replenishment District of Southern California and as Carson mayor. He faced a county grand jury rebuke over the water board’s move to pay his legal bills. He has also faced years of campaign finance allegations over his water board and Carson election campaigns.

Central Basin Municipal Water District--Political and legal fallout continues from a scandal involving an alleged $2.75 million slush fund created by the district to pay politically connected consultants such as former Assemblyman Tom Calderon, D-Montebello. Central Basin board member Art Chacon was allowed to collect car allowance and mileage reimbursements from the district from 2006 to 2014, an eight-year span in which he didn’t have a driver’s license. To avoid a potentially huge payout at trial, in 2014, the district settled sexual harassment allegations made by a female contractor against district Director Robert Apodaca for $670,000.

City of Commerce--In 2012, Councilman Robert Fierro resigned after he pleaded guilty to a felony conspiracy charge related to his attempts to dupe investigators looking into the financing of his 2005 campaign. In 2010, Councilman Hugo Argumedo resigned after he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. Argumedo concocted evidence to help an attorney sue his city for allegedly unpaid legal fees.

Cudahy--In 2012, City Manager Angel Perales, Mayor David Silva and Councilman Osvaldo Conde were arrested by the FBI after being caught seeking bribes from the owner of a marijuana dispensary. In 2014, then-state Controller John Chiang released a scathing report about city finances that found city credit cards were used improperly for meals, travel and entertainment; pay raises were awarded without explanation or justification; and that employees regularly received paid leave that they were not entitled to get.

Lynwood--In 2012, former City Council members Louis Byrd and Fernando Pedroza were convicted of illegally boosting their pay — by $330,000 and $160,000, respectively — by taking stipends for working on city commissions without any responsibilities, a crime with parallels to what happened in Bell. There were also reports that city officials used city credit cards to pay for entertainment, including “a $1,500 night out at a Guadalajara strip club, where dancers allegedly performed sexual favors” for two city officials, the Los Angeles Times reported. In 2007, Mayor Paul H. Richards II received a 16-year sentence for a long-running embezzlement scheme.

Maywood--County prosecutor are now investigating alleged illegal collusion to get around state open-government laws that may be related to questionable zoning changes made without proper scrutiny. There are also reports that the FBI is investigating possible bribery in the awarding of city contracts.

Montebello--In 2011, state Controller John Chiang issued a report showing that officials had improperly spent more than $31 million, helping prompt a city budget crisis. Redevelopment funds were used for many non-government purposes, including meals in Las Vegas.

South Gate--Former city councilman, city manager, mayor and treasurer Albert Robles was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison in 2005 for public corruption, money laundering and bribery. Though several of the convictions were thrown out in 2013, Robles’ sentence was not reduced because of the seriousness of the bribery counts that remained.

Vernon--The tax-rich industrial city which long controlled who voted in the city by controlling who stayed in its very limited housing was nearly disbanded by the Legislature in 2011 after Donal O’Callaghan became the third city administrator since 2006 to face criminal charges. Mayor Leonis Malburg and his wife Dominica were convicted of voter fraud and conspiracy in 2009. The Malburgs lied for years about living in Vernon while actually residing at a Hancock Park mansion.

(Chris Reed is an editorial writer for U-T San Diego and a regular contributor to Cal Watchdog … where this perspective was first posted.)

-cw

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-If you want to dive into critical discussions about the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s (LACMA’s) makeover, designed by Peter Zumthor, the world is your oyster. Just Google it, and for hours you can immerse yourself in renderings, panel discussions, and well-written articles, many by LA Times architecture critic, Christopher Hawthorne.  

But most of what you unearth will miss the big picture, the context of LACMA’s costly project on Wilshire Boulevard, where two other nearby museum projects have already been abruptly plopped into place. Like Zumthor’s edgy design, they, too, are totally disconnected from the surrounding mid-Wilshire area. 

This section of Wilshire is called the Miracle Mile and it extends from Highland Avenue on the east to San Vicente Boulevard on the west. It began as LA’s premier shopping destination, and it still has some notable gems. But, with or without Zumthors’s inkblot, this area’s many rough edges require far-reaching up-grades. 

The question is how the future of this charming, centrally located region of Los Angeles will evolve over the next several decades, especially when the Purple Line Subway Extension opens in 2023. By the time it is completed, this transit project will have cost over $3 billion, a tidy investment of local and Federal money. 

The Miracle Mile’s amenities include Page Park (also called Hancock Park), the LaBrea Tar Pits, and the adjacent complex of museums near Wilshire and Fairfax. Together they have reversed some of the corridor’s economic decline after the Beverly Center and Grove shopping centers forced its old department stores to meet their maker. 

Unlike the transit improvements, which are publicly financed, the museums are dependent on private philanthropy; the bulk of it coming from a small coterie of extremely well off patrons, such as Eli Broad. More specifically, LACMA’s project will cost over $650 million, and the adjacent Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science museum and major event center will cost at least $300 million. Across the street, the renovation of the Peterson museum cost $125 million. 

Given cost overruns and inflation, we can assume that the final museum price tags will easily surpass $1 billion in private donations from LA’s one-percenters. 

Corridor’s shortcomings: Considering that over $4 billion in public and private investments is flowing into the Miracle Mile corridor, it is truly amazing that so many obvious shortcomings in appearance and public services persist. Sitting in plain view, they remain unexamined and unaddressed by City Hall, METRO, and the big-givers impatient for their names to be chiseled in marble on museum entranceways. 

Like most of Los Angeles, this blight is pervasive, and it is inexcusable that $4 billion in public and quasi-public projects have ignored the following: 

• City Planning has yet to undertake any actual neighborhood planning for the Purple Line Extension. The many questions of how pedestrians, bicycles, cars, busses, and cabs/ubers will interface with the subway stations at LaBrea, Wilshire, and LaCienega have not yet been examined, much less planned and paid for. Likewise, the land use and design impacts of the Purple Line subway on surrounding areas have, so far, not been considered, even though old file cabinets have detailed plans, land use ordinances, and EIR’s from the early 1980s, when the original MetroRail alignment included the Wilshire/LaBrea and Wilshire/Fairfax stations. 
• Furthermore, based on station area planning for the new METRO Exposition light-rail line stations, there is not much to look forward to if the Purple Line planning process is implemented before 2023. In the Expo cases, the plans consist of the up-zoning of private parcels and a streetscape design manual. The City’s budget does not yet include any money for public improvements to support the new light rail stations. 
• The boulevard trees along the entire Miracle Mile corridor are a hodge-podge of different species, with some odd choices and notable gaps. In fact, on the half-mile stretch of Wilshire Boulevard between Fairfax and San Vicente, there are hardly any street trees at all.
• Billboards and super-graphics can be found in many parts of the Miracle Mile, a major form of visual pollution that would only get worse if the City’s new billboard ordinance designates the Miracle Mile corridor as a sign district suitable for electronic billboards.
• Large metal fences fortify local landmarks, especially LACMA, Hancock Park, and the adjacent Park LaBrea housing complex. These block pedestrian flow, and if anyone wants to walk from Hancock Park to Park LaBrea, they must swerve two blocks out of their way just to cross the street.
• Other than the famous Urban Light installation at LACMA, the corridor is gloomy at night. It urgently needs enhanced street and pedestrian lighting along Wilshire Boulevard, not just a public art installation on LACMA’s grounds.
• Building signs include many questionable and outright illegal signs that should be cited and removed through the Department of Building and Safety and office of the City Attorney.
• Missing street furniture, such as visually consistent newspaper racks, bus shelters, and trash cans, are the low hanging urban design fruit that could quickly spiff up this area, especially the bleak section west of Fairfax Avenue.

Why is context so ignored? How can we explain LACMA’s failure to consider the Miracle Mile’s context in its expansion plans? Why have the other two major museums in this area also been so resistant to local design guidelines and so unconcerned about the extraordinary lack of sufficient services, infrastructure, and planning for this corridor? 

My working explanation is that LA’s movers and shakers, who are the guiding light and deep-pocketed funders of these museum projects, are quite unaware of the city they live in. Cloistered in protected estates and penthouses, their lives consist of private services, private infrastructure, and tinted windows blocking out both sunlight and the urban blight of most LA neighborhoods. Instead, they only peak out of limo windows to view iconic buildings, such as the Getty Museum, Disney Concert Hall, and now LACMA, all designed by celebrity architects appreciative of accolades and handsome commissions. 

LA’s hundreds of miles of congested, unadorned streets, with their endless overhead wires, mini-malls, strip malls, billboards, super-graphics, bootlegged commercial signs, treeless parkways, dumped couches, broken sidewalks, pot holes, McMansions, ragged building lines, and dingbat apartments are apparently well hidden by a Star Trek-type cloaking device. It miraculously makes this visual pollution invisible to those patrons of the arts whose tastes gravitate to Frank Gehry and his ilk. 

In their wake, elected officials and City staff have absorbed this blinkered view of Los Angeles, and it is our task to peel the tinting off the windows so they can see and attend to the real Los Angeles. 

(Dick Platkin lives in the Fairfax area, several blocks from LACMA and the Purple Line Extension. A veteran city planner, he reports on local planning issues for CityWatchLA, and he welcomes comments and questions at [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

THE GUSS REPORT-(Editor’s Note: This Daniel Guss piece was posted on CityWatch on August 9. We offer this in-case-you-missed-it ‘replay’ because David Zahniser’s excellent column in Thursday’s LA Times flushed the financial struggles of City Council president Herb Wesson the top the LA politics conversation again. It’s worth a second read.) Herb Wesson is one of the most influential and talented local lawmakers in the United States. As President of the Los Angeles City Council, former Speaker of the California Assembly, and recipient of a consistent and generous government paycheck and perks since 1982, the irony of his potentially losing the homes he and his wife Fabian own is immense. Yet that is the dangerous dance they have narrowly sidestepped as far back as 2002 and as recently as a few weeks ago.  

Their former residence in Ladera Heights, which sits on an earthquake fault line, was first in default 14 years ago this month. But as recently as a few weeks ago, the Wessons were notified that the million dollar house would be sold at auction for just $382,229.50 in July if their obligations were not immediately satisfied. They have received similarly ominous warnings virtually every year since 2011. 

That house, according to the Council President’s filings, provides the Wessons between $10,000 and $100,000 in rental income per year by leasing it to a Pasadena-based business that uses it as a for-profit assisted living facility. (That company was cited this summer by the Department of Social Services for having broken appliances, indoor furniture and exposed trash in the yard, and poor maintenance of patient records.) 

Wesson’s office did not respond to a request for an interview regarding why that revenue was not used to satisfy the latest mortgage default, what conditions presently exist in the house, what is its current ownership status and the condition of its residents. 

Things are more worrisome for the city’s leading lawmaker when it comes to the home in which he and his wife reside. Earlier in 2016, they were in default by $33,248.24, an amount similar to earlier default notices and more than double those from earlier years at the other property.

One mortgage executive, who estimates that that figure represents roughly eight months of missed payments, says that it makes no sense that the properties have not yet been seized and sold. “With their hefty income, significant equity and one property being a revenue-generating, non-owner occupied home, no lender would knowingly say that is a hardship worthy of a refi[nance]. I would want to see their loan docs [to determine among other things] whether they have represented to their lenders that they are the occupants of the home they’re leasing out … A refi in that type of situation would be a big no-no.” The executive also points out that the Wessons may have cured their defaults with money from a source other than a refi. 

According to Wesson’s Ethics Commission filings, their combined household income in recent years ranges between $200,000 and $500,000 per year. They enjoy the city’s Cadillac-level health insurance plan and free automobiles that the taxpayers also fuel, maintain and insure at no cost to them, leading to the question: how is it they are able to hold foreclosure at-bay? 

Perhaps it is because some of the defaults are in Wesson’s legal first name, Herman; others are in his more familiar name, Herb, with and without his Junior suffix; and others are in his wife’s name. It should be noted that one of his sons is similarly named Herb Wesson III who, like one of his brothers, is also employed in a City Council staff position. 

Complicating matters even more, Wesson has not recused himself from voting on City Council agenda items that relate to the rotation of lenders who hold and hand-off their defaulting mortgages like a hot potato. Wesson’s office, in response to multiple public records requests, says no records exist regarding those votes. 

While some of the Wesson’s problems stem from a massive federal tax lien, as well as a state tax lien, their mortgage woes predate those liens by at least six years. 

At an event last year, Wesson told a sidebar of constituents concerned about their personal and community’s economic woes that their “suffering is God’s way of testing your faith.” But by that measure, Wesson’s own faith is being mightily tested, as well. The question is, since Wesson has the ability, authority and talent to do something about their situations and his own, why hasn’t he? 

While this may explain a bit why Sacramento and the City of Los Angeles are in a perpetual fiscal morass, it might be time for Wesson to offer a confession of his own … or at least an explanation.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a contributor to CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Business Journal, Los Angeles Magazine and others. He blogs on humane issues at http://ericgarcetti.blogspot.com/. Daniel Guss opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

MY TURN-This political year has been like an addiction … a very bad drug for those of us who are political junkies. You don't want to watch the events on TV, but you don't want to miss anything either. And as if it wasn't bad enough to be counting down the days to November 8 … we now have a local election issue that won't be resolved until next March. 

I’m sure most of you have heard that Felipe Fuentes, Councilmember for District 7, is leaving his post in September. Social media and the mainstream press have covered his resignation extensively. He has accepted a position with the legislative advocate The Apex Group in Sacramento. 

He assured everyone that he did not entertain new job opportunities until after he announced his intention not to seek re-election back in January of this year. His current term of office doesn’t expire until June 30, 2017. 

District 7, which extends from east of the 405 to the border with Glendale, sometimes reminds me of poor Job in the Old Testament. They have fires, homeless encampments, poor roads, speeding problems with constant accident fatalities, increased crime, floods (unless we have a drought), NYMBYism, and in some areas, the need for economic and job development. 

District 7 is a microcosm of Los Angeles. The stakeholders there represent all economic levels, and cover the entire political spectrum -- which can make for interesting discussions. Beautiful rural areas, including animal preserves and hiking trails in the San Gabriel Mountains, are mixed in with industrial parks and car repair blight. Developers want to increase the density. High Speed Rail threatens to split some communities in half. Residents there are multi ethnic, multilingual and care deeply about their neighborhoods. 

I became familiar with Felipe Fuentes last year when he evicted the Sunland Tujunga Neighborhood Council and a police substation from the designated City Hall in this part of the Northern San Fernando Valley. Ostensibly, his reason was to give the space to a couple of non-profits that were working on homeless projects. 

I covered that rather ugly event in a CityWatch article in October. I had tried to get some explanation from either him or his offices to no avail. Apparently, his typical response was no response. This is something his constituents faced most of the time. I again questioned his motives in a CityWatch piece in January called "Felipe Fuentes: The Long Farewell." It seemed strange that he would cloak himself in the "lame duck" attire eighteen months ahead of time. 

Of course he and his fellow Councilmember Nury Martinez had been questioned as to why, on City time, their respective staffs helped with Raul Bocanegra's recount for the 39th Assembly district when he was defeated by Patty Lopez. There has been no further news on that lately.   

Scouring the internet, I couldn’t find a single post from anyone who is sorry to see him leave. This is pretty remarkable since he did manage to raise a lot of money for his council campaign in 2012. His biggest donors were building trades associations. Coincidently, his new position with The Apex Group will be with their construction and building trade sectors. 

I asked Darren Martinez in the City Attorney's office if there is any rule against an elected official becoming a lobbyist immediately after leaving office or it there is a waiting period, which is standard in Federal and State ethics rules. As of now, I’ve had no response from the City Attorney. I guess they are too busy defending the City against lawsuits. Someone knowledgeable in LA ethics law told me that the City has the same ethics rule but since he is going to work for a lobbying group outside of Los Angeles, it doesn't apply. 

He should have resigned in January which could have allowed a new councilmember for District 7 to be elected. Doing it now is like making a farewell obscene gesture to his constituents: He’s leaving them without a representative for another year. Council President Herb Wesson will appoint a "caretaker" from the Legislative Analyst’s department. 

Some of Fuentes constituents told me that they will be better off with him gone because he wasn't doing anything for them anyway. While this may be true, he did, after all, make a commitment to serve for four years. It seems that he managed to do the minimum amount of work just to set himself up to take a much higher paying position when leaving office. 

He managed to spearhead the new Charter amendment on the November ballot which restructures the DWP. But what did he accomplish for his constituents? Aside from telling some of the NCs in his district that he didn't need them and helping with some cleanup and playing favorites...not much. 

The LA Times grudgingly endorsed him in 2012 with the caveat that he could do a great job or a poor one. Yesterday they concluded it was poor. 

Now, at least 21 people have filed papers for the vacancy. It looks like representatives from the entrenched SVF political machine will try to use their considerable influence and power. There are also political staff members from other Council offices who are getting a head start on fundraising. Don't forget…this primary election isn't until March 2017. There are quite a few civic activists and some ordinary citizens also looking at this job. 

I urge the stakeholders in District 7 to vet all these candidates carefully. You are at a crossroads and you need someone who will commit to doing his or her best 24/7. Hold their feet to the fire! Make them give you more than a glimpse of their visions and how they plan to achieve their goals. The term of office will be five plus years, so make them promise publicly that they will fulfill the whole term of office. 

Felipe Fuentes will serve as a great example of what you don't want in your next councilmember! 

As always ... comments welcome.

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

DEVELOPERS’ DREAMS-After a six-hour, emotional hearing at LA City Hall on Thursday, the City Planning Commission approved the billion-dollar mega-project known as “The Reef” for Historic South-Central, even though scores of local residents testified that the high-end residential development would force them out of their neighborhood and create widespread displacement. 

“This is modern ethnic cleansing,” a young man told the planning commissioners at the packed meeting. 

Neighborhood activists and working-class residents have long been wary about The Reef, also known as SoLA Village. 

The 1.6 million-square-foot mega-project, pushed by developer Kanon Ventures, is located near the Santa Monica Freeway at 1933 S. Broadway features a 19-story hotel and two luxury housing skyscrapers (32 stories and 35 stories each) with more than 1,000 units. Abandoning its Historic South-Central heritage, Kanon Ventures markets The Reef as a “creative habitat in downtown LA,” an obvious attempt to grab the attention of artists, hipsters and techies. 

In a 2014 Los Angeles Times article, LA City Council member Curren Price, who represents Historic South-Central in District 9, also made clear that the mega-project was part of an expansion of downtown LA, which has been rapidly gentrifying. “This is a wonderful opportunity to show what the future of downtown is going to be as it migrates southward,” he told the newspaper.  

Perhaps most tellingly, Kanon Ventures offered no affordable housing at The Reef, but agreed to contribute $15 million to the Council District 9 Affordable Housing Trust Fund to “facilitate development of affordable housing within CD 9 and towards the purchase of expiring restricted affordable housing covenants,” according to a city document. 

Each council member maintains a number of trust funds that are essentially slush funds, with money often going to the politician’s favorite pet projects and organizations. The slush funds are difficult to track and receive little public oversight. 

Kanon Ventures and its executives have long been deep-pocketed players at City Hall. Between 2001 and 2015, the developer shelled out $12,450 to the campaign war chests of LA politicians, according to the city’s Ethics Commission. 

In pursuit of building The Reef, the developer poured $357,325 into super-connected lobbying firm Marathon Communications to win over LA pols and city agencies, according to the Ethics Commission. For The Reef, Kanon Ventures operates through a limited liability corporation known as PHR LA Mart. 

That’s a whopping total of $369,775 — more than 10 times the median household income in Historic South-Central. 

During Thursday’s meeting, many city planning commissioners, who are appointed by Mayor Eric Garcetti, revealed that they had previously talked with the Mayor’s Office about The Reef -- a sign that in addition to Councilman Price, Garcetti was deeply involved with the mega-project. 

At the City Hall hearing, where more than 140 people testified, local residents brought up a number of serious concerns with planning commissioners David Ambroz, Renee Dake Wilson, Veronica Padilla, Caroline Choe, Samantha Millman, John Mack, Robert Ahn and Dana Perlman, including: 

• Local residents can’t afford the market-rate housing at The Reef. 

• The residential towers are next to the 10 Freeway, the kind of freeway-adjacent housing that USC and UCLA scientific studies show is dangerous to the health of children, seniors and pregnant women. 

• Apartment rents around the The Reef will rise and force people out of their homes and cause displacement. 

• Numerous large billboards at the site will overwhelm the neighborhood. 

• The developer and City Council member did not properly reach out to the community. 

The planning commission, however, decided against super-graphic and digital billboards at The Reef, and proposed that the developer offer some affordable housing -- a paltry 50 rental units for low- and moderate-income tenants. The commissioners did approve spot-zoning favors such as a General Plan amendment and zone change. 

Community activist Damien Goodmon of Crenshaw Subway Coalition, who opposed The Reef, said about the City Hall-approved favors that push forward over-sized, luxury development in LA, “Spot zoning for mega-projects is facilitating gentrification. People who live in these neighborhoods are longtime residents, and they will be pushed out. Who are these projects for?” 

It was a question that the planning commissioners never asked developer Kanon Ventures.

(Patrick Range McDonald writes for the Coalition to Preserve LA where this piece was first posted.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

MIDDLE EAST POLITICS-The California State legislature is about to adopt a bill heavily promoted by Santa Monica’s Assemblymember Richard Bloom to penalize criticism of Israel. Based on the false allegation that criticisms of the Israeli government are anti-Semitic (i.e. anti-Jewish), Bloom’s bill would forbid State of California contracts to private companies that subscribe to any tenets of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Bloom’s opponents have pointed out these criticisms, such as Israel’s construction of apartheid in occupied territories, are commonplace among Israeli Jews. They also point out that many American Jews criticize the Israeli government’s racist practices and support various consumer boycotts. 

What Bloom is promoting in Sacramento mirrors similar actions in many other states and in Washington DC. In fact, U.S. government policy toward Israel will swerve further to the right on January 20, 2017, when either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump is inaugurated President of the United States. Massive military aid and unquestioning diplomatic support of Israel will continue, and relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will become more cordial as Israeli and American policies become more closely aligned. 

Israel’s Likud political party and its American proxy, AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), will still be in the driver’s seat. As the greater Middle East further unravels, Israel and its U.S. advocates will argue that Israel deserves still more U.S. government support because it is a rock solid, stable U.S. ally in a region filled with shaky authoritarian regimes. 

But, for the reasons we outline below, either presidential administration will eventually discover that its pro-Likud position – similar to Richard Bloom’s -- is extremely counterproductive. President Clinton or President Trump will reap few benefits and many setbacks by doubling down on U.S. government support for the continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, including the construction of an apartheid state in these areas. This is because the U.S. government has little to gain and much to lose from this continued approach. 

As of 2016-17, AIPAC can still sway U.S. policy toward Israel, including in the California legislature, but AIPAC, like its Israeli puppet master, is a 97-pound weakling when it comes to stopping many long-term trends in the Middle East at odds with perceived U.S. and Israeli government interests. This is, in part, because Israel’s enormous military power, much of built through U.S. aid, has become irrelevant to U.S. concerns in the greater Middle East. For example:

• In Syria, Israel cannot directly attack the Assad regime or its enemies from the Islamic State (IS). Its participation would only sharpen the conflict and expose rifts within Israel and between Israel and the United States. This is because Israel discreetly supports jihadists in Syria to cement its backdoor alliance with Saudi Arabia, while the U.S., in contrast, is bombing these same jihadists. 

• In Iraq, Israel cannot attack the IS for the same reasons. If it were to do so, it would jeopardize its hush-hush relationship with the Gulf monarchies and find itself in an awkward alliance with Iran, whose goal is to attack IS in order to prop up the pro-Iranian Shiite regime of Iraq. 

• In the Sinai Peninsula, a hotbed of IS activity on Israel’s southern flank, the situation is no different. Even though IS is a sworn enemy of the U.S., Israel, and Egypt, another Israeli invasion of the Sinai Peninsula would undermine, not strengthen, Egypt’s pro-U.S. autocrat, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. An Israeli attack in Sinai could also draw in Hamas from the adjacent Gaza strip, resulting in a level of Israeli casualties that would again undermine the Netanyahu government. 

• In Lebanon, another enemy of the U.S. and Israel, Hezbollah, has 50,000 missiles aimed at Israel. Even though Hezbollah has moved the bulk of its forces into neighboring Syria to fight jihadists and U.S.-supported secular forces attacking the Assad regime, it could still fire its missiles at Israel. While Israel has the military power to again attack Hezbollah in Lebanon, it does not have the military technology to block all Hezbollah rockets fired at Israel, or the political strength to absorb the many dozens of Israelis who would be killed in combat or by rockets destroying civilian targets. 

• Yemen, Sudan, Libya, and Somalia are other Middle East hotspots where U.S. interests are militarily challenged and where Israel has the military power to intercede, but could not tolerate the blowback. Israeli intervention in those conflicts would inflame local jihadists and increase the flow of refugees northward, some of who would breach border fences to join other “infiltrators” already living in Israel. Furthermore, any casualties from these military adventures would jeopardize Netanyahu’s Knesset alliance. 

If it were not initially clear, either Presidential administration would slowly realize that U.S. military aid and diplomatic support for Israel was restricted to the following: 

• Quell Palestinian opposition to the construction of an apartheid state in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, including potential future Palestinian expulsions under the cover of a regional war. 

• “Mow the lawn” in Gaza to periodically hobble a Palestinian force that could, at some distant point, challenge an apartheid state by going off their reservation/open-air prison. 

• Attack Iran using F-35 stealth and other first-strike weapons the U.S. is supplying Israel. While such a neo-con inspired attack would unleash a tsunami of counterattacks against the U.S. and its regional protectorates, including Israel, such unintended consequences are of little concern to neo-cons, whether they reside in Washington, Riyadh, or Jerusalem.     

Future U.S. Government Role in the Israel-Palestinian Conflict 

With so many local conflicts weakening the overall U.S. military position in the Middle East, and with Israel of no help in these conflicts, we have a vantage point to foresee the future U.S. role in this critical geo-political region. Although we can expect more rounds of neo-con inspired military interventions throughout the Middle East, such as confrontations with Iran, they will not improve the situation of U.S., only drain the country’s economic and political resources further. It has already happened in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, where there is no light at the end of these tunnels. Furthermore, the one-sided U.S. alliance with Israel can only jeopardize its declining position throughout the greater Middle East. 

This is one of reasons we can predict how, but not when, the Israeli government experiment to construct an apartheid state will eventually collapse. At some point the United States government either cannot or will not shield Israel from further international pressure, including sanctions, as well as local mass movements. This loss of critical external support from the U.S. will usher in swift changes, for either the better or worse. 

That moment is now on the horizon due to three other political trends that are converging with declining U.S. military and political influence in the Middle East.

Foreign protection: The first trend is Israel’s increasing need for direct military support and diplomatic protection, especially at international forums, like the United Nations Security Council. 

Israel’s transformation of its 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem into a full-on apartheid state requires greater, not less, shoring up from the United States to deflect growing domestic and international opposition. Despite one public relations offensive after another, Israel is increasingly isolated. It has now reached the point where the country has becoming a pariah state in many parts of the world.

Israel’s frantic pushback against this growing resistance now appears on a daily basis, such as ever more draconian undemocratic laws aimed at weakening Israeli, Palestinian, and foreign anti-occupation movements, even non-violent middle class ones, like Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). 

American Jewish Disenchantment with Israel: The second trend is the weakening of the organized American Jewish community’s dedication to Israel. As a younger generation of Jewish American leaders comes to power, unlike Assemblymember Bloom, they are repulsed by Israel’s never-ending occupation, religious fanaticism, extreme nationalism, overt racism, repressive political climate, and alliance with the U.S. Republican Party. Furthermore, unlike Bloom, they do not easily confuse opposition to Israeli racism with opposition to Jews as Jews. 

As the Jewish American community gets further removed from its immigrant roots, which directly witnessed the fate of powerless Jews during the Holocaust, and it becomes more integrated into the American intellectual, political, and financial elite, the more Jews question the need for a refuge in one of the most dangerous corners of the world. 

In fact, Jewish elites have become well integrated into this American academic, economic, and political circles. In this process, anti-Semitism has effectively disappeared, and the need for a hasty mass exodus from the United States to Israel strikes most of them as ludicrous. 

Weakening Israel Lobby: The stranglehold that the Israeli lobby has had on the U.S. government is weakening. Congress and all Presidential administrations since the 1960s complied with nearly all of Israel’s requests. But the cumulative efforts of the Israel government and the Israel lobby could not stop the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran, finalized in 2015 and already mostly implemented. Recently, the Bernie Sanders Presidential campaign brought the plight of Palestinians and Israel’s 50-year occupation into the national spotlight for the first time. 

These three political trends together mean that Israel’s need for protection from accountability and opposition, such as BDS, will eventually exceed the United States’ capacity or commitment. 

Like the nationalist government in South Africa, Israel will then have to adjust to a new reality, and that will usher in dramatic political changes. There are more and less desirable possibilities. The most likely non-violent path is that moribund Israeli peace forces regain strength and, together with Palestinian movements, find a way to end the occupation and establish a viable, sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The other options almost surely will involve violence. On one side, the formation of a South African-style, single democratic state with equal rights for all or a bi-national state could trigger a Jewish civil war. On the other side, if an American exit nevertheless leads to a full apartheid state and/or a massive expulsion of Palestinians, it will further isolate Israel, confront it with a massive Intifada, and finally trigger a regional war that could involve nuclear weapons.

A non-violent response to the fallout from an eventual U.S. departure must be the international goal.

(Victor Rothman is a California-based political analyst. Jeff Warner is the Action Coordinator of LA Jews for Peace. Please send any comments to i[email protected].  Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GELFAND’S WORLD--When Donald Trump argued that the only way he could lose Pennsylvania was by being cheated out of it, he was essentially conceding defeat in the presidential election. Competitive candidates try to turn the tide. Losers make excuses. It's not even a good excuse. We are barely into the middle of August, and Trump is already explaining away his eventual loss. 

Trump has been building the excuse for the past couple of weeks. Think of all the whiney statements he has been making about the election being rigged. This is a substantial reversal from when he bragged incessantly about how well he was going to do (remember even 3 months ago?). 

Usually, the candidate who goes into the middle of August down by 7 points is introduced at his rallies as "the next president of the United States." Leaders in the polls and second placers alike are supposed to keep up a brave front, particularly because there are occasional turnarounds. But Trump doesn't seem to understand either history or how to play the game. 

When it looks like you're about to lose in historic proportions, likely giving up Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida -- a solid bloc of once-confederate states -- it must really smart. Over the past 16 presidential elections (starting with 1952) Florida voted for the Republican 11 times, taking time off to vote against Goldwater and to vote for Bill Clinton's reelection before the modern realignment as a swing state. Virginia has a similar history. and North Carolina has voted for the Republican candidate 10 times out of the past 12 elections. 

The post-convention polling must have been devastating to The Donald. He gave a flamboyant speech at the RNC that has been compared to some of Mussolini's best efforts, and he even got to celebrate a short bounce in the polls. But two weeks later, his lead in the polls evaporated, and suddenly Hillary Clinton is leading by historic percentages. 

It must be frustrating beyond belief to Trump that his message is not only being ignored, it is being laughed at. 

The part that I find interesting is that Trump has become boring. Like really, really boring. 

Trump made his mark by taking a series of outrageous positions. He started his campaign by challenging the president's birthplace. It was a shameful display of racism, but it got him recognized. He continued with his attacks on immigrants, Moslems, and all of his primary opponents. His approach was fairly unique in our modern presidential history. Most candidates try to create at least an image of adulthood, but Trump turned it all over by throwing infantile tantrums. 

The more outrageous he got, the more attention he drew. But neither Trump nor the media seemed to sense that eventually this approach would get old. 

Perhaps it's the fact that Trump is using his patented approach of calling names (crooked Hillary) but didn't see that when the victim is not on stage with him, the name calling falls flat. 

Perhaps it's the fact that in the post-convention period, the press finally has time to practice the craft of the high school essay: compare and contrast. They have a lot of material and the comparison has become easy. 

But did we predict that the press and most voters would suddenly get bored with Trump? If the rest of the reporters haven't yet caught on, allow me to state the obvious fact. 

A few days ago, an increasingly desperate Trump accused the president of founding Isis. You know, Isis, the terrorist organization that took over a large part of Iraq? It's interesting to look at the media's reactions. Yes, there were the obligatory attempts to ask if Trump meant something else, and there were the now reflexive attempts by his staff and supporters to make his statement into something else. In response to the question -- "Did you mean that?" -- Trump said Yes, then he said No (it was sarcasm) and then he went back to a qualified Yes. 

The press and the public just yawned. 

It wasn't new and entertaining anymore. Everyone was wondering what Trump would come up with next. The reaction was, in essence, Is that all you've got? 

At this point, Trump has become predictable. Oh so predictable. We've come to understand that he will make up just about anything. We're not sure whether it's carefully crafted deception by a master of the craft, or whether it's done on the fly. But the notable point is that the press and the public don't buy into the game anymore. We're not paying much attention because it's been sooooo overdone. 

"Hey, did you hear what Trump did today?" 

"No (stifling yawning noises). "What did he do this time? 

While Trump was in the ascendancy during the primaries, he was considered to be an object of fascination by political scientists and reporters alike. It was a truly unexpected win streak. But now that his numbers are falling and Hillary Clinton has been pronounced 89% likely to win the presidency, he is just one more loser. Reporters and editors are a lot less likely to get all worked up about the desperate gyrations of the guy coming in second.

●●

Short Takes -Is it the end of a sporting era? Women's Soccer became an Olympic sport in 1996. The U.S. women's team finished second in 2000, and took the gold every other time. That's four golds out of five Olympics. This year's team came into the Olympics as Women's World Cup champions. And then the floor collapsed under them. It's true that they won their opening two games in the group round, but showed worrisome instability in the final group game against Colombia. The two-time loser Colombia managed to tie the game in what was literally the last second. Then the U.S. went to the knockout round and lost in the quarterfinals to Sweden. Sweden is good, but the U.S. is supposed to defeat them when it counts. 

After the game, the American goalie Hope Solo created a small international incident when she referred to the Swedish strategy as cowardly, referring to the Swede's tactics of playing defense well. Nobody took it too seriously, but one wonders whether Solo is on the downswing of a once spectacular career. 

It was certainly the end of the Michael Phelps era in swimming, unless it isn't. He says he's retiring (skipping out with a mere 23 gold medals?). 

The U.S. men's rugby team beat Brazil and Spain in the Olympics, while suffering close losses to Argentina and to eventual Olympic champion Fiji (by a score of 24-19). Think of rugby scores as fairly analogous to scores in American football. In the championship game, Fiji beat Great Britain by 43-7. With its 9th place finish, the U.S. team showed that it can play world-class rugby, but not necessarily championship level rugby. 

Save the Olympics-- Kevin Drum has been floating a pretty good idea for saving the Olympics. Why do they need saving? Because most modern Olympic games have been budget busters for the host countries. Greece and Brazil are particularly good examples of the bad effects of hosting the games. 

Some people have suggested that there be a permanent site for the games in Greece, the country of their origin. Drum took the idea and changed Greece to Los Angeles. It makes sense in a way, because Los Angeles has hosted the games twice and avoided bankruptcy. Most of the facilities are in place. I suspect that the one negative would be air quality, but we've survived it before. Drum points out that he didn't get a lot of support for making Los Angeles the permanent home (I think it's still a reasonable idea) and now suggests that the games could be spread among several countries in each Olympics. 

May I suggest that Drum combine the two suggestions to include Los Angeles as the main host with negotiated subordinate hosts for various sports. How about Chicago or Boston for basketball, England for rugby, and India for cricket? 

NCEPA--The neighborhood council emergency preparedness alliance (NCEPA): The group has been meeting and has developed a committee structure to recommend communications methodology (this refers to the use of radios in emergency situations rather than putting out a newsletter), outreach, and an overall plan. We will keep everyone in the loop using City Watch. 

What's with Scott Adams?--Adams is the creator of the Dilbert cartoons, author of lots of books, and self-proclaimed expert on what motivates people. He also writes a blog.  At the start of the presidential campaign season, he talked about Trump as the master persuader. In recent months, he predicted that Trump would win the presidency in a landslide. His argument seems to come down to the assertion that people make decisions based less on reason, and more on emotion. OK so far, but it is a bit presumptuous to think that the majority of voters share the same emotions as Trump voters. 

More recently, he stated that he was endorsing Hillary Clinton, but not because he supports either candidate; rather, he says he is making the endorsement because in Northern California, where he lives, it would be personally dangerous to do otherwise. Ignoring the huge insult to the people in his region, this is also one of the stupidest arguments I've heard in a long time. Perhaps this is Adams' attempt to make himself into a real-life version of a Dilbert cartoon, or perhaps his lampoon of Trump himself. 

Whatever the reality, people seem to be noticing the Adams touch and becoming irritated. Recently, Adams is hedging his bets by arguing that Hillary has learned to use Trump's own measures against him.

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

BILLBOARD WATCH-Earlier this summer, the bus shelter pictured above displayed an ad for the movie, “Central Intelligence,” which depicted two men brandishing and blasting away with guns. But after complaints were raised about the bus shelter’s proximity to nearby schools, the ad was changed to a public service message featuring Smokey the Bear. 

It’s probable that the city’s street furniture contractor, a joint venture of billboard giants Outfront Media and JC Decaux, gets considerably more revenue from movie ads than public service messages. That may explain the very temporary hiatus between the offending “Central Intelligence” ad and the gun-displaying ad for the movie, “Suicide Squad” in the bus shelter less than 300 ft. from the grounds of an elementary school and charter high school. 

In fact, despite an ongoing debate about gun violence in the U.S., it’s business as usual for billboard companies and the marketing departments of companies like Warner Bros., which produced Suicide Squad.  Bus shelters, billboards and other forms of outdoor advertising display often-menacing figures armed to the teeth with pistols, assault rifles, and even more extreme forms of weaponry. These displays of violence, both explicit and implied, can be found near schools, libraries, playgrounds, and other places children and young people congregate. 

Violence, and especially, gun violence, obviously sells tickets, or so media companies like Warner Bros. and Universal apparently believe. However, not everyone in the entertainment business agrees that such ad campaigns are appropriate. Lena Dunham, creator and star of the popular HBO series, “Girls”, recently objected to ads for the movie, “Jason Bourne,” calling on people to alter the ads in New York City subways. And closer to home, Venice neighbors and their children recently altered a construction fence plastered with “Jason Bourne” ads by covering the gun images with flowers. 

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

CALIFORNIA FORWARD--Lawyers, public servants, students, academics, good government reform groups, and concerned citizens made Los Angeles City Hall on Thursday the center of a statewide discussion to modernize California's landmark political ethics law and encourage more people to participate in the political process.

They joined the Fair Political Practices Commission, California Forward and the University of California Berkeley School of Law yesterday for the first of three small discussions being held throughout the state regarding the Political Reform Act Revision Project.

"This is our best shot at cleaning up the law after 40 years," said Jodi Remke, Chair of the FPPC. "We’re trying to get the act into a shape where it’s easier to read, easier to understand and easier for you to make further suggestions and comments."

The Political Reform Act was approved by voters in 1974 and governs political activity in California like campaign finance, lobbying, and governmental ethics. Since then it has been amended numerous times. That's made the rules harder to understand and navigate, placing a hurdle in front of people who might want to seek public office and making it more time-consuming to enforce.

To give act more clarity, the FPPC has partnered with CA Fwd and the law schools at UC Berkeley and UC Davis for a comprehensive revision of the law. 

One of the co-authors of the original version of the Act, Robert Stern, participated in the discussion and congratulated the project's partners on taking on such an important task.

"This [act] should not be locked in stone," said Stern, former president at the Center for Governmental Studies and former General Counsel of the FPPC. "We thought it was very important for this act to be a living act. Clearly it needs to be easier and consolidated."

The gathering served to call attention to the first of two public comment periods and to empower interested individuals to voice their perspectives regarding updating the more than four-decade-old act.

"If we can encourage and empower the public to understand how to engage in this process we will end up with a better product," said Jim Mayer, president and CEO of CA Fwd.

Before beginning the project, the FPPC and CA Fwd recognized four important goals in order to achieve a robust public process: 1) to provide practitioners, public servants and citizens an opportunity to understand the vitality of the law, 2) to incorporate and include parties who deal with the law on a regular basis, as their feedback would only serve to strengthen the revision, 3) to model what an inclusive and transparent process is, and 4) to apply a high level of rigor to the comments received.  

"We wanted some qualitative understanding -- how are people feeling about the law and the project so that when we look at these comments we have context," said Mayer.

The first phase of the project spanning nearly eight months was for the UC Berkeley and UC Davis Law Schools to clean, re-organize and simplify the language without making substantive changes and create a revised draft for review. According to Remke, this is only the first of multiple steps to engage the public and only the beginning of a process that will take several months.

To help with the process, Remke said additional tools to assist the public with understanding proposed revisions will be made available on the FPPC website soon. 

There are two more discussions scheduled for August. To register, visit the event registration page.

NEED TO KNOW

Tuesday, August 16 at 1-2:30 p.m.
Fair Political Practices Commission, 8th floor hearing room
428 J Street
Sacramento, CA 95814

Thursday, August 25 at 1-2:30 p.m.
Oakland City Hall, Hearing Room 4 (2nd floor)
1 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza
Oakland, CA 94612

For more information about the project including an introductory webinar, a packet of materials with the latest draft of the act, and to learn how to submit a comment, please visit www.cafwd.org/pra. 

The California Political Reform Act Revision project is supported by a grant from The James Irvine Foundation.

(Jania Palacios writes for California Forward whose mission is to restore the California Dream, we must create more middle class jobs, promote cost effective public services and encourage accountability for results.)

-cw

LA WATCHDOG--If approved by a majority of the voters, Proposition 53, the Stop Blank Checks Initiative, “all revenue bonds issued or sold by the State in an amount singly or in the aggregate over $2 billion for any single project owned, operated, or managed by the State must first be approved by the voters at a statewide election.” 

ALPERN AT LARGE--Whether it involves initiatives ranging from the Expo Line to the Green Line/LAX connection to local Planning and Transportation issues, being fair and honest and credible is everything.  When someone does good, they deserve credit...and vice versa.  Hence, for the benefit of all Angelenos, we have to pass a Neighborhood Integrity Initiative (LINK: http://2preservela.org/) this spring. 

All ethnicities, all regions, and all socioeconomic groups of fair-minded, open-minded, and civic-minded Angelenos are being attacked.  Our services are lower than ever, our economy is producing a two-tiered rich/poor divide that no minimum wage diversion can prevent, and a wealthy and connected few are thriving while most of us who (gasp!) want to play by the rules and laws of LA are being told that WE are the problem. 

Maybe it's "affordable housing", and maybe it's "transit-oriented development", or maybe it's "urban infill", but Los Angeles has the ability to perform the "elegant densification" of Former-Mayor Villaraigosa without shredding environmental laws that were passed for a reason (actually a lot of reasons, but livability is at the center of them all). 

Angelenos are all about REAL affordable housing, transit-oriented development and urban infill--but they're also into sustainable, neighborhood-preserving and neighborhood-enhancing rules that are the hallmark of a modern, civilized, and kind-hearted society. 

The former mayor of Los Angeles, by the end of his tenure, was rightfully-perceived as bought out, a sell-out, and corrupt to the core.  Our current mayor is more affable and friendly...but Mayor Eric Garcetti and his Planning Politburo are killing Los Angeles in the same way his predecessor is doing, and it gives me no joy in saying that. 

As a human being, I kind of like Mr. Garcetti--but his actions are really turning LA into a Wild Wild West, whether they were under his watch as LA City Council President or under his watch as a man who really has the ability to rev up the City Bylaws and the Community Plan effort.   

As fellow CityWatch editor and transit advocate Damien Goodmon posted recently, there is just NO reason why we need a Cumulus skyscraper at Jefferson/La Cienega. 

Damien Goodmon and the Crenshaw Subway Coalition are rightfully, along with the Friends of the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, filing a lawsuit to stop this 320-foot skyscraper...which raises a host of issues and talking points that are as timely as we could ever hope for. 

It's no secret that Mr. Goodmon and myself (and a host of others) had different visions of the Expo Line--he wanted more of it to be a subway, while others (like myself) recognized the costs and need for the Expo Line to be at-grade or elevated for a light-rail trolley of 100,000 passengers maximum.  

But we both wanted an Expo Line. 

And neither of us wanted bad planning and neighborhood destruction throughout Los Angeles as a result of the transportation initiatives we fought for.  Adhering to the law is something that African-Americans in the Mid-City, Latinos in the Eastside, and Whites in the Westside all want.  And it's pretty darned tough to be pro-transit when there's all sorts of people who will use that effort, and other venerable ideas like affordable housing to ... 

... BREAK ... THE ... LAW! 

There are plenty of ways we can have lower and slightly-densifying building throughout the City, but if we create Downtowns here, and there, and everywhere, we'll end up with the same disjointed traffic problem that the Expo Line and other lines were built to mitigate. 

There already IS a Downtown, and the Downtown Light Rail Connector offers a host of new options for high-rise residential and business endeavours.  Another "Downtown" is Wilshire Blvd., and maybe another is Century Blvd.   

There ARE places for high-rises, but otherwise it's just it's just a battle against Common Sense, Common Decency, and Common Cause, as I recently opined to make Los Angeles one big Downtown and a new, 21st-Century traffic hellhole.

But let's be honest, Mr. Mayor--you may smile while the rest of us rule-abiding taxpayers are getting hurt, and threatened, and name-called when we call out law-breaking for what it is--we're still being hurt.  If you're going to be Antonio Villariagosa with a smile and kind-hearted face, then why wouldn't threatened citizens push back? 

Hence we have the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, with all sorts of volunteer neighborhood advocates like Dick Platkin and others weighing in. 

I also again call for a new part of LA City government where LA citizens can go to inquire as to whether they can take legal action against any Downtown efforts that violate the bylaws and policies of our City.  My guess is that it should be part of the Neighborhood Councils, or a change in the rules of what the City Attorney is with respect to the job description of that office. 

There is no legal office to protect citizens against their elected officials when that latter group goes rogue--the City Attorney is for the City Council, and NOT for the rest of us ... especially those of us who don't have tons of money and time to sue for our rights. 

But for now, we've got a City to take back.  And if THIS Mayor is going to behave like our LAST Mayor, then we've got no choice but to slam through a Neighborhood Integrity Initiative.

(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

GUEST COMMENTARY--One has to wonder whether the adults in charge of the LA Times Editorial Board were part of the recent mass exodus from the Times. The question is raised because of a most recent rambling editorial concerning the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, demonstrating yet again the Times’ antipathy towards law enforcement. 

In an editorial ostensibly concerning a delay in the Board of Supervisor's implementation of a "Civilian Oversight Commission", the Times took a bizarre turn and pontificated about several recent shootings involving Los Angeles County Sheriff deputies. The Times questioned the "training" and "fitness" of the deputies involved, wondered aloud whether they were "trigger-happy deputies" whose "tactical training" may have been lacking, and for good measure threw in a random sentence asking if the Sheriff's Department disproportionately targets African Americans. 

That the Times editorial writer didn't know the complete facts of the three shootings it questioned was no hindrance to making accusations against the hard working deputies involved and the Sheriff's Department as a whole. 

Of course, the Times is hardly a supporter of law enforcement, and it clearly pains them to say anything positive about law enforcement officers. Witness, for example, the July editorials following the assassinations of five police officers in Dallas and three officers in Baton Rouge.  

Following the Dallas cold blooded murders that shook the nation, the Times wrote a nine-paragraph, 836-word editorial. Exactly one paragraph and 81 perfunctory words were devoted to officers brutally murdered before the Times segued into what it would rather discuss: "police brutality", "police shootings" and "racial disparities" in the criminal justice system. 

The reporting of the ambush murder of three law officers and wounding of three others in Baton Rouge illustrated how difficult it continues to be for the Times Editorial Board to express concern over the killing of law enforcement officers. This time, the Times could only muster up a scant four paragraphs concerning the killing, with a mere three sentences devoted to the death of the officers before the Times editorial once again turned to what it would rather discuss, devoting the majority of the editorial to pontificate on "accountability" for law enforcement and the "friction" between police and the community they serve.  

The Times view as summed up by the repulsive headline "Cops killing civilians, civilians killing cops.  How do we fix this" -- suggesting some moral equivalence between police shootings and the cold-blooded and calculated murders of multiple law enforcement officers! 

Finally, as to the Editorial Board's belief that accountability will only come from "Oversight Commissions" filled with political appointees, it conveniently ignores the fundamental way citizens of this great country determine the direction of their public agencies, including the Office of the Sheriff. It is called elections. Every four years, elected Sheriffs  must justify their performance and that of the department they lead, with anybody who has a different view with law enforcement experience free to run against the incumbent Sheriff in support of a different vision. That is real accountability!

(George Hofstetter is President of the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs. ALADS is the collective bargaining agent and represents more than 8,200 deputy sheriffs and district attorney investigators working in Los Angeles County.  He can be contacted at [email protected]. Mr. Hofstetter’s views do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

DEEGAN ON LA-A mega-development on Sunset Boulevard and a big project on Wilshire Boulevard are being erected in what could be seen as northern and southern anchors for the “towering” of Crescent Heights Boulevard, a secondary highway that runs through the heart of well-established, charming neighborhoods west of Fairfax Avenue. Will these two projects, UDR at Wilshire Crescent Heights (photo rendering above) and 8150 Sunset Blvd become bookends, making the 2.5 mile stretch of Crescent Heights Boulevard between them the next “canyon of towers”? 

Lots of people in the neighborhoods surrounding these two projects are uneasy. Is it possible that more of Crescent Heights Boulevard will be dotted with similar mixed-use towers? Will there be a north-south canyon of tall buildings strategically placed at key intersections like Wilshire, Third, Beverly, Melrose, Santa Monica, and Sunset? The upside could be that these major east-west major streets intersecting with north-south Crescent Heights could become the spokes connected to the Crescent Heights spine, helping to create a pocket of hubs for “new urbanism” communities in Beverly Grove, West Fairfax and parts of West Hollywood. 

The goal of “new urbanism” is to live, work, shop and play all within the same neighborhood, enabling residents to rely less on cars and use alternative forms of transportation, like walking, biking and mass transit to get around. Considering its central location, these attributes could make the increased development along Crescent Heights attractive. 

Some very good north-south rapid transit lines (the 780 express, the 217 local and the DASH Fairfax) run on Fairfax, just a couple blocks east of Crescent Heights. And each of the major intersecting boulevards has its own rapid transit routes, providing east-west mobility. 

That kind of mass transit access is one of the criteria for Transit Oriented Development (TOD), the development model for creating a mixed-use tower of residential and retail close to a transit route, reducing reliance on automobiles. 

The twenty-four possible corners of Crescent Heights on six major cross streets that can be targeted as ideal spots for towers could have great allure for developers. That would provide lots of mixed use housing, retail and gentrification for the thirty streets between glamorous Sunset Strip and commercial Wilshire Boulevard. The fact that most TOD projects offer minimal affordable housing, with tenants still relying on their cars, has not stopped planners and politicos from approving these projects. They continue to justify them by pointing to the convenience of adjacent mass transit, a useful fiction to keep the buildings coming. 

Right now, Koreatown, Silver Lake, Boyle Heights, Highland Park and South Los Angeles are receiving a lot of gentrifying, towering attention. Vermont, La Cienega, La Brea, Vine, Highland, and Western are some of the major north-South streets that are currently being “towered.” Add on to that Crescent Heights? 

In an era when no community is an island it’s open season for developers. Can it be long before Fairfax, one of the really badly traffic-snarled transportation corridors on the west side of town, is skipped over in favor of Crescent Heights? Are the developers already mapping this out? Only those that protect themselves with Historic Preservation Overlay Zone (HPOZ) status can feel safe. 

Of these tracts, Beverly Grove (with boundaries of Wilshire-San Vicente on the South, West Hollywood on the north and northwest, Beverly Hills on the west and Fairfax on the east) may be at risk. With the exception of a few protected residences and small apartment buildings, it has very little city-backed historic cultural monument status, or HPOZ protection, that would block tearing down houses. 

However, neighborhood activists have been successful at modifying what goes up by using other measures to control development, implementing solutions like Interim Control Ordinances, the Baseline Mansionization Ordinance, Floor Area Ratio (FAR) ranges, and the prospective Neighborhood Conservation Initiative. While these efforts may affect what might go up, it does not stop the wrecking ball from bringing structures down the way historic cultural monument status does. 

If there is to be growth in this area of town, coveted for its central location and attractive housing and close-by amenities, Crescent Heights and adjacent neighborhoods may be a sleeping giant waiting to be woken by developers. The neighborhoods along Crescent Heights could be caught by surprise, with cranes and work crews arriving sooner than anyone expects. The city’s out-the-window zoning codes are no match for aggressive developers who see enterprise potential where others see charm and community. 

Ideally situated in old neighborhoods with lots of 1920’s era Spanish-Mediterranean houses, this tract of less than two square miles along Crescent Heights could be transformed into clusters of “new urbanism” that are easily accessible to the clubs, shopping, restaurants and the nightlife of West Hollywood and the Sunset Strip; to the historic Farmers Market; to the Grove dining, shopping and entertainment complex; and to the multiple cultural offerings of Museum Row, which itself is undergoing a huge transformation. Having a Metro Purple Line Subway stop at Wilshire and Fairfax will add to the allure of living in the Crescent Heights pocket. You could live here as a “new urbanist” and not have to go very far for most everything you desire. It might be just what a future, younger demographic will want. It could easily be styled as the Echo Park or Silver Lake of the west side. 

The two and a half mile distance between 8150 Sunset and UDR at Wilshire Crescent Heights is very low-density right now. Is that a good thing? Or, rather, is it a good sign that the area is ripe for growth into “new urbanism communities” that will be anchored by mixed use towers and all the amenities that drive transformation? 

(Tim Deegan is a long-time resident and community leader in the Miracle Mile, who has served as board chair at the Mid City West Community Council and on the board of the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition. Tim can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

NEW GEOGRAPHY--“Old in error,” writes historian Kevin Starr, “California remains an American hope.” Historically, our state has been a beacon to outsiders seeking a main chance: from gold miners and former Confederates to Midwesterners displaced by hardship, Jews seeking opportunity denied elsewhere, African Americans escaping southern apartheid, Asians fleeing communism and societal repression, Mexicans looking for a way out of poverty, counter-culture émigrés looking for a place where creation can overcome repression.

Yet, this notion of California as a land of outsiders is being turned on its head, our state’s dream repackaged — often with the approval of its ruling hegemons — as something more like a medieval city, expelling the poor and the young, while keeping the state’s blessings to the well-educated, well-heeled, and generally older population.

Some boosters of the current order, such Gov. Jerry Brown, contend that the affluent and the educated are still coming, while the less educated and well-heeled, are leaving. They cite this as evidence that the “declinists” are wrong. Yet, the reality remains that California is losing its allure as a place of opportunity for most.

COMING AND GOING--California has been “bleeding” people to other states for more than two decades. Even after the state’s “comeback,” net domestic out-migration since 2010 has exceeded 250,000. Moreover, the latest Internal Revenue Service migration data, for 2013-2014, does not support the view that those who leave are so dominated by the flight of younger and poorer people. Of course, younger people tend to move more than older people, and people seeking better job opportunities are more likely to move than those who have made it. But, according to the IRS, nearly 60,000 more Californians left the state than moved in between 2013 and 2014. In each of the seven income categories and each of the five age categories, the IRS found California lost net domestic migrants.

Nor, viewed over the long term, is California getting “smarter” than its rivals. Since 2000, California’s cache of 25- to 34-year-olds with college, postgraduate and professional degrees grew by 36 percent, below the national average of 42 percent, and Texas’ 47 percent. If we look at the metropolitan regions, the growth of 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees since 2000 has been more than 1.5 to nearly 3 times as fast in Houston and Austin as in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. Even New York, with its high costs, is doing better.

In fact, the only large California metropolitan area which has seen anything like Texas growth has been the most unlikely, the Inland Empire. The coastal areas, so alluring to the media and venture capitalists, are losing out in terms of growing their educated workforces, most likely a product of high housing prices and, outside of the Bay Area, weak high-wage job growth.

The location of migrants tells us something about where the allure of California remains the strongest, and where it has been supplanted. Almost all of the leading states sending net migrants here are also high-tax, high-regulation places that have been losing domestic migrants for years — New York, Illinois, Michigan and New Jersey. In contrast, the net outflow has been largely to lower-cost states, notably Texas, as well as neighboring Western states, all of which have lower housing prices.

And, finally, there is the issue of age. Historically, California has been a youth magnet, but that appeal is fading. In 2014, according to the IRS data, more than two-thirds of the net domestic out-migrants were reported on returns filed by persons aged from 35 to 64. These are the people who are most likely to be in the workforce and be parents.

CLASS AND ETHNIC PATTERNS--Upward mobility has long been a signature of California society. Yet, 22 of the state’s large metro areas have seen a decline in their middle class, according to a recent Pew Research Center study. Los Angeles, in particular, has suffered among the largest hollowing out of the middle-income population in the country. In places like the Bay Area, there’s a growing upper class, while in less glamorous places like Sacramento, it’s the low end that is expanding at the expense of the middle echelons.

The economy, too, has been tending toward ever more bifurcation, with some growth in tech and business services, largely in the Bay Area. Elsewhere, the overwhelming majority of jobs created since 2007 have come from lower-paying professions, such as health and education and hospitality, or, recently, from real estate-related activities. Overall, traditional, higher-paying, blue-collar jobs – such as construction and durable goods manufacturing – have continued to lose ground. Most California metropolitan areas, most notably Los Angeles, lag most key national competitors — including Texas metro areas, Phoenix, Nashville, Tenn., Charlotte, N.C., and Orlando, Fla. — in higher-paid new jobs in business services and finance.

But the biggest losers of egalitarian aspirations have been the constituencies most loudly embraced by the state’s progressive establishment: black and brown Californians. Nowhere is this disparity greater than in home ownership, the signature measure of upward mobility and entrance into the middle class. Overall, Latino homeownership in California is 41.9 percent; nationally, it’s 45 percent, and in Texas it’s 55 percent. Similarly, among African Americans, homeownership is down to 34 percent in California, compared to 41 percent nationally and 40.8 percent in Texas. In Los Angeles, which has the lowest overall homeownership percentage among the nation’s largest metro areas, only 37 percent of Hispanics own their own homes, compared to 50 percent in Dallas-Fort Worth.

CALIFORNIA’S ROAD FORWARD--One popular progressive theory for how to address the economy lies in trying to emulate places like Massachusetts, a state whose per-capita income ranks among the highest in the country. Yet, this approach fails to confront the huge demographic differences between the states.

Let’s start with ethnicity. Eighty percent of Massachusetts’ population is comprised of non-Hispanic whites or Asians, who traditionally have higher incomes, while in California whites and Asians constitute only 52 percent. Some 80 percent of the Boston metropolitan area is non-Hispanic white or Asian, compared to only 46 percent the population in the Los Angeles-Orange County area, and 40 percent in the Inland Empire. California has a poverty rate, adjusted for housing costs, of 23.4 percent, while Massachusetts, with its lower share of more heavily disadvantaged minority populations, registers just 13.8 percent.

California could only resemble Massachusetts if it successfully unloaded much of its disadvantaged minority and working-class population. Although some might celebrate the movement of poorer people out of the state, our poverty rate is unlikely to decrease, since historically disadvantaged ethnicities (African Americans and Hispanics) account for 58 percent of the under-18 population in California, and only 25 percent in Massachusetts.

Simply put, California faces a gargantuan challenge of generating a better standard of living for a huge proportion of its population. To be sure, both the San Francisco and San Jose metropolitan areas can thrive, like Massachusetts, in a highly education-driven economy. But states like California, Texas and Florida are too diverse, in class and race, to follow the “Massachusetts model.” We need good blue-collar and white-collar, middle-income jobs to keep a more diverse, and somewhat less well-educated, population adequately housed and fed.

This should be the primary concern of our state. But the governor and legislators seem more interested today in re-engineering our way of life than improving outcomes. True, if you drive up housing and energy prices, some of the poor will leave, but so, too, will young people, the future middle class. Though our largest coastal metropolitan counties — Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and San Francisco — have long been younger than the rest of country, soon they will be more gray than the nation.

The demographic future of California seems increasingly at odds with the broad “dream” that Starr and others evoke so powerfully. We are headed ever more toward a state of divided realities, of poorer, downwardly mobile people, largely in the interior and in inner-city Los Angeles or Oakland, and a rapidly aging, wealthier, whiter enclave hugging the coast. For those with the right education, inheritance and a large enough salary, the California dream still shines bright, but for the majority it seems like a dying light.

(Joel Kotkin is executive editor of NewGeography.com. Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international pubilc policy and demographics firm. This piece was was posted first by the LA Daily News and most recently by New Geography.)

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THIS IS WHAT I KNOW--As “religious freedom” (or a pass to discriminate under the guise of religious convictions) continues to be a hot-button issue on the national stage, Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) is eliminating provisions from a California senate bill that would have made it more challenging for faith-based institutions to receive Title IX exemptions. 

“The goal for me has always been to shed the light on the appalling and unacceptable discrimination against LGBT students at these private religious institutions throughout California,” Lara told the Los Angeles Times. 

The bill as drafted faced strong opposition from religious colleges and some schools joined to create the Association of Faith Based Institutions and the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities to lobby against its passage. MassResistance and other protest groups also encouraged people to petition their local assembly members. 

Religious institutions had objected to the initial bill because many believed the provisions would leave them vulnerable to lawsuits and would infringe upon their right to follow their religious values. Lara has amended the bill to remove restrictions, which would allow colleges to maintain their faith-based standards. The institutions would be required to notify the public of their exemption status and provide information about disciplinary actions based on their sexual orientation. 

The bill as originally drafted would have placed obstacles on schools that include sexual orientation in decisions about admission, accommodation, or housing. Colleges would need to advertise their Title IX exempt status. When religious institutions claimed the bill would force them to act against their standards of conduct and would also leave them open to lawsuits, Lara revisited the bill. 

The amended bill, which now has support of many California colleges, has been approved in the state Senate and will be heard by the Assembly Appropriations Committee on Thursday. 

Accommodating institutions and businesses that would practice religious-sanctioned discrimination, typically against LGBT and women, is a slippery slope. As the American Civil Liberties Union position states, “While the situations may differ, one thing remains the same; religion is being used as an excuse to discriminate against and harm others.” 

During the sixties, institutions opposed integration laws, stating their religious beliefs promoted separation of races. Colleges and universities affiliated with religious institutions would refuse to admit students in interracial relationships. 

Freedom of religion means protecting one’s right to practice religion without providing the right to discriminate against and impose beliefs on others who do not share those beliefs. While this bill does place some limits on religious colleges, it allows discriminatory practices under the guise of religion. Balancing the rights of institutions to operate under their religious moral code with protecting others from discriminatory practices is a slippery slope.

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

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PERSPECTIVE--State Senator Bob Hertzberg is a smart man; smart enough to know the power of language. According to his bio, as an undergraduate English major, he wrote a 400-page handbook titled A Commonsense Approach to English.

To paraphrase a quote attributed to the late US Senator Everett Dirksen: A deft turn of a definition here, and a subtle re-characterization there, the next thing you know, we are dealing with some serious money!

And that has been Hertzberg’s game plan since he returned to the legislature in December 2014.

He introduced SB 8, a bill cloaked by a seemingly harmless name – the Upward Mobility Act. The senator described it as a tool to “modernize” the state’s tax structure. He admitted it would be designed to yield another $10B in tax revenue.   

The bill died, but that did not stop Bob from reintroducing a replacement: SB 1445.  

As SB 8 proposed, this new bill would extend the application of sales tax to services, a direct hit to all segments of society – the middle class, most notably. As he did with SB 8, he is characterizing it as “modernization.”

The only thing being modernized is the state’s access to our wallets.

But the “serial hugger” is not stopping there.  He again whipped out his English to Taxation dictionary to conjure up SB 1298.

His objective is to do an end run around Prop 218’s requirement for voter approval of tax increases by redefining “sewer service” to include storm water projects. Perhaps “serial wordsmith” would serve as a better moniker for him. Please read the excellent editorial concerning 1298 in the Daily News. 

The bill has a worthwhile objective.  It is designed to encourage recovery of storm water. No one is arguing with the benefits it offers to our drought-stricken state.

But it is dangerous to override the benefits of government transparency and the legislative process.

Californians are being asked to pony up more cash to fund a growing list of expensive projects.  In Los Angeles alone, we are being asked to pass a permanent increase in the sales tax for the MTA. The city and county are considering spending over a billion dollars to provide housing to the homeless.  There is also the trainwreck of HSR absorbing funds that could be used to enhance the state’s water capacity.

Our state and local governments have no grasp of prioritization.  Capital budgeting is completely absent in the minds of Hertzberg, his colleagues in Sacramento and counterparts at the local level.

Taxpayers have a right to weigh in on what needs attention and the means of paying.  To do so requires presenting the big picture of competing needs. Let the people decide what is most important and authorize appropriate funding levels.

We do not have unlimited funds; we can only afford what can be sustained without breaking the bank.

Sneaking around the voters and playing word games, as Hertzberg has been doing, is disrespectful to all of us.

(Paul Hatfield is a CPA and serves as President of the Valley Village Homeowners Association. He blogs at Village to Village and contributes to CityWatch. The views presented are those of Mr. Hatfield and his alone and do not represent the opinions of Valley Village Homeowners Association or CityWatch. He can be reached at: [email protected].)

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MAKE A REPORT--There is no room for illegal and unethical behavior in politics – especially local politics. Yet, it looks like there is a continuing trend of campaign property being stolen over in LA County in the race for 4^th District Supervisor. This is a much watched contest that could change the direction of the LA County Board of Supervisors for years to come.  The race is between Steve Napolitano and Janice Hahn. 

We’re asking for your help identifying the person seen here in this video.

If you recognize this person or have information regarding this theft, send an email to [email protected].  

Napolitano staff and volunteers noticed that a large number of Napolitano for Supervisor campaign yard signs went missing after their opponent’s signs went up during the primary.  

This disturbing trend of thefts and vandalism appears to be continuing now into the general election. 

This past week, the staff and volunteers saw another big spike in the number of missing campaign signs, especially in the San Pedro area.  

But we now have a video that shows someone in the act of stealing a Napolitano campaign sign. 

I am hoping CityWatch readers will take a close look and let me know who this is.   DO YOU RECOGNIZE THIS PERSON? Send an email to [email protected].  

Please help identify whoever is in this video.  This is a very important election and taking down campaign signs shouldn’t be a part of it.

(This video and this story were provided by a San Pedro resident who has asked to remain anonymous.)

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NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL WATCH-Saturday morning July 30, Budget Day was indeed “on” at City Hall. Breakfast started at 7:30 a.m. as LA Neighborhood Council (NC) members co-mingled in the Art Deco style chambers. An hour later at the City Council chambers, a plenary session of speakers, namely City Officials and NC Budget Advocates shined the light on past and present city budget matters. In the second and final session NC Budget Representatives by regions elected new Budget Advocates for fiscal year 2016-17. 

Empower-LA Administrator for Budget Day Mike Fong said that about 200 people registered electronically. At the event, Jay Handal counted about 200 attendees. “I did a head count while standing there,” he said. 

Liz Amsden, BA Co-Chair, opened the ceremony with, “…we provide role models in our communities and for our leaders, and see positive outcomes. That’s why we’re here today to learn a little more to be able to give our neighbors a hand, not to make money but to develop and nurture human capital.” 

Then, BA Co-Chair Terrence Gomes reminded the NC members that the purpose of NCs is to be a conduit between our stakeholders and City Hall. Gomes said, “… for some of you in the valley, it’s a long way for your stakeholders to yell over here for us to hear, that’s why the neighborhood council system was started.” 

Four years ago, the Budget Advocates started interviewing departments and saw ways of saving money for the city. Gomes elaborated, “We saw what needed to be done and saw a vision for the city. We wrote the White Papers, to give guidance to the City.” 

General Manager of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE), Grayce Liu, announced that this budget year her Department started with 26 employees to work with the 96 NCs. City has added 10 staffers with an additional four coming in from the Office of the City Clerk, she reported. On the field side, six new staffers will soon be hired and trained to attend NC meetings. Liu asked for a show of hands of first timers in the audience and 50% raised their hands. She welcomed them as she closed. 

In succession, City Council President Herb Wesson introduced himself as the chair of the committee that oversees the NC system. He said, “We have accomplished a lot with you as my partners and equal participants. We have increased the budget by $5,000 for each NC, so you can deliver the services that your NC areas need.” 

As a result of the partnership, Councilman Wesson assisted in putting in place a new policy: NC members can speak during public comment time at City Council and Committee Meetings for up to five minutes at the discretion of the presiding officer.

In addition, Wesson said that, as he visited NCs throughout the City, he met many members with concerns related to accounting issues, specifically, “not getting reimbursements in time or a lot of rules shifting and things of this nature.” In January, as a tentative solution, the accounting functions of DONE will be moved to the Office of the City Clerk. Wesson added, “It has expertise in making payments. I believe it will be better and if it doesn’t work we’ll change it again. Let’s don’t be afraid to fail. And if we do, we’ll fix it.” 

Next, City Controller Ron Galperin briefly discussed the LA City Controller homepage that links to four distinct panels: ControlPanel LA, Utility/Panel LA, GeoPanel LA, and EconomyPanel LA. Galperin said that these tools are to be used to make government spending decisions that are data driven and wise. 

“For example, the Economy Panel shows in what districts people are using the most public transportation; displays the income levels across the City per District; and includes which districts have the highest and lowest number of renters verses homeowners. Also a search is available for neighborhood council expenditures by NC name. “The more this tool is used, the more aspects you’ll find,” Galperin said. 

Then, Chief Administrator Officer (CAO) Miguel Santana provided a detailed overview on how the City of Los Angeles manages its budget. 

Santana said that the total budget for any department with a seal of the City is $25 million; this includes the LA Airport, LA Harbor, and LADWP. The total number of City employees is 48,000. 

Santana oversees the City’s $8.7 billion budget, including: 

• $5.5 Billion are discretionary, general funds with no restriction on how they can be spent
• $3.2 billion are nondiscretionary, special funds with specific purposes. 

Some of the City Reserve Accounts coming out of the General Fund include these percentages: 2.5% for an emergency reserve; 5% covers two reserves contingency and emergency; 1.6% is set aside for capital improvements to repair sidewalks, streets, facilities, etc. Included is a rainy day fund for an emergency crisis. In addition, the city has “a one-time use fund that we use for one-time things,” Santana said. This is the second year this money category has been used, as in, for capital improvements, he said. 

Most of the money from the Discretionary Fund (over 70%) goes for public safety to pay for Police and Fire Departments; 4.6% goes to libraries; 5.8% to recreation and parks; 8.5% for Street Services, Transportation, Engineering, Contract Administration, Capital Improvements, Building and Safety, and Planning; and, 3% for the City Attorney. 

“Most of our revenue comes from property taxes; this is the most stable of all of our funding sources, it is the stability of the city,” Santana said. “Most of our sales tax does not come to the city; it goes to state and county.” 

In prior years, the city “was banking overtime to police officers at time and a half” with collection at retirement. Santana said that the most responsible way to do it is to budget $90 million. “This is about the amount necessary to keep the public safety capacity at the existing level,” he said. 

“It’s in the City Charter that at the end of the year the budget is balanced,” Santana said. “This year it is balanced.” 

Budget Advocate Jay Handal has been working with homeless issues for 28 years. He opposes the $1 billion bond that will be on the ballot this November. It would provide funds to be spent over the next 10 years for the homeless. 

Handal said that the city finds money to build brand new animal shelters for stray animals, yet “we walk over the homeless on the streets who have to defecate on the streets because they have no place to live and no place to shower.” 

Presently there are 27, 000 homeless living on the streets of Los Angeles. “And that number will grow, not stay the same in the next 10 years,” Handal said. 

Living on the streets exacerbates illness and leads to the use of a variety of public systems that taxpayers fund. This is very inefficient and costly. It's the responsibility of the government and not the taxpayers to provide money to create permanent supportive housing for the homeless. 

Jay Handal (left) opposes the $1 billion bond because there are too many unanswered questions, such as: 

Where is the real plan written? 

How many supportive units will fit in the seven proposed properties? 

Over what period of time will these 10,000 units be built? 

How many units per year? When will construction begin? 

Who picks the developers? How would developers get their financing? 

Who picks the nonprofits to run this type of project? 

How much money will be used to persuade neighborhoods to accept these projects? 

How much money will be spent when people oppose the projects? 

Who will pick the community expediters to go out to negotiate for the construction of these buildings? 

How much money will go for litigation costs for CEQA and EIRS when environmental issues arise?

Does the Planning Department have the personnel for these activities? 

The next speaker was Councilman Paul Krekorian from CD 2 who is the Chair of the City Council Budget and Finance Committee. 

Krekorian recounted how a former Mayor of Los Angeles once wrote an editorial for the Wall Street Journal, predicting it was inevitable that Los Angeles would be bankrupt within three years. Krekorian said, “In 2010 the challenge that we were facing was monumental, we couldn’t figure out where the bottom was.” 

He specified that the City had projected a $1 billion deficit, with a general funds budget of 4.75 billion. “Since then, in the last two years, we’ve rebuilt our reserve funds by far more than we’ve ever had in history.” 

Krekorian said allowing Budget Advocates to have a seat at the table for budget discussions with general managers and the mayor’s budget office has created a collaborative effort contributing to the process of recovery. 

Krekorian noted that over the last three years, the City has appropriated $30 million a year for infrastructure costs, including the repair of city sidewalks to offer better mobility for our four million residents. He added, “We’ve cut unemployment in half. We hired 15,000 people in summer youth jobs this year so they can build a better future for themselves.” 

Councilman Krekorian thanked the NC members for being engaged and staying involved. He said, “Government is an ongoing process that never stops.”

(Connie Acosta writes about Los Angeles neighborhood councils for CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GUEST WORDS--Hopefully, in the next week or two the Los Angeles City Council will take action to correct a technical defect in its current policy for permitting second dwelling units. This action is both critical and necessary for the city to comply with state housing laws, and to give relief to hundreds of homeowners whose permits have become vulnerable due to a court's ruling against the city. 

The City Council's action on this issue is the right thing to do for a city dealing with one of the worst housing situations in the nation, a situation that makes it nearly impossible for kids to live near their parents, or elderly parents near their children.

While this action will not solve the housing crisis by any means, it is an important step forward toward giving people options to use their current homes to accommodate growing families in a difficult housing market.

For some background, the story of how the Los Angeles's second unit policy became newsworthy in 2016 is not significantly different from many other hot-button urban planning and housing related issues: a NIMBY lawsuit originating in a wealthy neighborhood.

Since 2010, after working for a better part of a decade to catch up to state mandated standards, the city has been permitting second units without controversy. The permitting scheme applied, as guided by state standards, were extremely conservative in that they only allowed for second units that comply with all "height, setback, lot coverage, architectural review, site plan review, fees, charges and other zoning requirements generally applicable to… the zone."

They were also restricted in size to be less than 1,200 square feet. Given these restrictions, and the array of other complications involved in constructing anything sizable on a single family lot, only a modest 50 to 60 second units have been permitted annually over the last five years in a city of almost four million people.

The city's second unit policy was working, and it was helping to keep families together while providing new housing opportunities in otherwise fully built-out single-family residential zones.

Last year however, after a Cheviot Hills family attempted to build an 850-square-foot "granny flat" for their elderly grandfather, a litigious neighbor objected and made it clear that he would stop at nothing to kill this relatively small addition to their home. The neighbor, an experienced attorney himself, went ahead and hired additional lawyers and began to lay siege against the city and the family to stop the second unit.

In doing so, the neighbor was able to get a court to find that the city's latest second unit permitting policy, which has been in flux for more than three decades in response to state legislation, had a technical deficiency that made it invalid.

That court decision meant that not only was the Cheviot Hills family's second unit potentially permitted improperly, but so to were hundreds of others permitted before it and dozens since. Now, with an invalid second unit ordinance and a team of NIMBY lawyers demanding a quarter of a million dollars in attorney's fees, the city is doing the right thing to clear up the technical defect and re-adopt the second unit policy. Doing so will not only fix hundreds of permits that are currently hanging in the balance, but it will help quell the costly litigation on this issue once and for all.

To stop the city from fixing the situation, however, the same team of NIMBY lawyers has been spreading misinformation to community groups and homeowners in an attempt create controversy and debate.

In order to strike fear in homeowners groups, they continue to make baseless and unsupported claims that the city's second unit policy provides for unrestricted and "weak" regulations of second units, and that the city has an "existing ordinance" that should be preserved. These claims however, are completely detached from reality.

Firstly, as noted above, any second unit addition must comply with the basic requirements of the underlying zone. There is no unfettered right to build a second unit as opponents contend. Second, the opposition's call to preserve the existing restrictions in the municipal code is both absurd and dangerous. There is no question that the municipal code provisions on second units are not only antiquated, but also unquestionably in violation of state law as written. 

If the city seeks to preserve or "reinterpret" these antiquated standards, as certain groups have called for, not only will the city be subjected to more and more litigation by all those homeowners that have relied on city permits, but it will leave hundreds stranded with potentially unpermitted second units. It will also mean the continuation of the city's costly and never-ending struggle to comply with the state's second unit mandates. This is not a reasonable pathway forward for a city in a housing crisis, and the City should not attempt to avoid taking necessary legislative actions because of NIMBY pressure.

Accordingly, the city cannot kick this can down the road any longer, and must act now to correct its second unit policy. Not only will this action assure that the city's standards comply with state law, but it will help avoid future litigation expenses, while also protecting those people that have relied on the city's second unit permitting programs for the past decade.

(Daniel Freedman is a land use attorney and environmental advocate focused on regional planning issues and sustainable development. This article was posted most recently at Planetizen.) 

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CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--Ventura County is the most glorious and verdant of California kingdoms.

Just ask its princes and princesses—those fortunate enough to be able to afford to live and vote there. Most of the time, the nearly 900,000 residents can pretend that they live in the country, even though they’re part of greater Los Angeles. Parks or open space or farmland is almost always within easy walking or biking distance. The Santa Clara River, the least developed of Southern California’s waterways, is being protected. The Kingdom of Ventura’s cities remain separate and distinct developments on the landscape—they haven’t sprawled and melted into each other, like cities do elsewhere in Southern California.

Their secret? “No other county in the United States has more effective protections against urban sprawl,” says the web site of SOAR, aka Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources, a family of growth-controlling ballot measures.

Those SOAR protections have been fixed in the laws of the county and its cities for two decades. SOAR permits development only within certain urban cores in the county and makes no allowances for population growth. And if a developer wants to change the boundaries or develop open space outside the areas where growth is permitted, that developer can’t buy off the county supervisors or a city council. SOAR requires any development in protected open space be approved by the voters.

Ventura voters like the results so much they are moving to make them all but permanent this November, when they vote on county and city measures that would extend SOAR protections through 2050.

In practice, this has made the Kingdom a mighty fortress. Those sprawling suburban housing developments that fill up the San Fernando Valley to the east and the Santa Clarita Valley to the north? They stop at the county’s edge. It’s almost as if Ventura County has built a wall against growth along its border—and made neighboring Los Angeles pay for it.

All of which makes SOAR worth celebrating. But there is a problem with those walls, and within the Kingdom. And that problem is not the wonderful things that growth restrictions have done. It’s what the princes and princesses of the Kingdom have failed to do. (Photo left:A group of SOAR volunteers in Ventura County)

Smart growth strategies like SOAR are not merely supposed to preserve open space. At their best, they are designed to promote smart growth—to drive more creative, dense, multi-family, and transit-oriented development in the urban cores where growth is still permitted. But the Kingdom has been far from welcoming to this type of development.

Yes, you can find smart, denser growth in the city of Ventura, particularly around its downtown. But infill development in Ventura County has lagged far behind what’s needed to serve the Kingdom’s growing population and its housing needs. The same citizens of the Kingdom who back SOAR also have opposed multifamily and denser developments (Thousand Oaks even passed a ballot measure limiting density), and resisted investments in public transit to connect their urban cores.

The results are as obvious as the choking traffic on the 101 Freeway and the astronomical housing prices. Ventura County is one of the 10 least affordable places to live in the United States. It’s been very difficult for middle-class people, much less lower-income people, to make their homes there, and that makes it hard for companies to locate there. Many service workers have to commute from outside the county.

“We need to understand that there is an uncertain capacity within our urban boundaries to accommodate job growth,” Bruce Stenslie, president of the Economic Development Collaborative of Ventura County, said during a public conference earlier this year on SOAR. “Which doesn’t mean that we should tear down the urban boundaries, it means we need to be a little more mature about questions concerning in-fill development and higher density.”

Of course such immaturity about growth—and high housing prices and inequality and traffic—is not limited to Ventura County. What’s frustrating is that after 20 years, the Kingdom doesn’t seem to have learned its lesson. The current proposed renewal of SOAR doesn’t include any new flexibility to account for population growth—and it’s not linked to any broader effort to do more infill development in the cores.

This represents at best a missed opportunity—and at worst an example of mass public selfishness.

Matthew Fienup, an economist with Cal Lutheran University’s Center for Economic Research and Forecasting (who likes to talk about how much he loves living across the street from orchards), points out that there are myriad ways to require more regular analysis and adjustments of the boundaries, and to put management of the boundaries in the hands of planners, instead of the hands of people with the money to put questions to voters. Fienup suggests that the county would be better off establishing tradable development rights that would protect the same amount of land while bringing some flexibility to the boundaries.

… it’s great if your community wants to protect open space from development, but then you don’t get to block denser development, housing, and transit in your already developed spaces.

But in its intransigence, Ventura is an example of the California disease—grab your piece of the Kingdom, and then keep out anyone who might come in after you. And few in Ventura seem to care that the county, like other urban coastal places in California, has seen such a decline in its number of children and young families that it might eventually resemble a well-off senior living community.

In California, local growth restrictions are only one small part of how the old block the young. State laws make housing development slow and costly. Prop 13 provisions keep their property taxes low, encouraging people to stay in their homes longer, which reduces the supply of homes on the market.

This local anti-growth bias is now a major statewide issue as California faces a crisis in housing affordability and availability—for anyone but the most affluent. To push back against anti-growth local communities, Gov. Brown is championing legislation that would exempt many urban housing developments from environmental or local government review.

Many localities have responded to this statewide push defiantly, via local ballot measures that block growth and housing, as the Voice of San Diego documented recently. The least responsible cities are going beyond growth boundaries to impose anti-density restrictions. The most reactionary of these ballot initiatives comes from Santa Monica, which was just connected to the LA rail system by LA county taxpayers. That rail connection should inspire denser, transit-oriented development. But anti-growth Santa Monicans want to derail all this by requiring a vote of the people on most developments taller than two stories.

The defense of those backing anti-growth measures is disingenuous: If you don’t like restrictions, you can go to the ballot. But that argument is an invitation for development to be determined by a showdown between NIMBY demagoguery and self-interested political money, as opposed to any rational long-range planning.

One lesson from Ventura County is that growth boundaries like SOAR shouldn’t be pursued in isolation. They need to be tied to rock-solid requirements for creating more housing, both for low-income and middle-income people. To put it another way, it’s great if your community wants to protect open space from development, but then you don’t get to block denser development, housing, and transit in your already developed spaces.

If Ventura County wants to wall off growth in its open areas until the end of time, fine. But it must be compelled to open gates in its walls big enough to bring much more progressive development into the Kingdom.

(Joe Mathews writes the Connecting California column for Zócalo Public Square … where this piece was originally posted.)

-cw

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-In Los Angeles there are now so many programs and proposals to deregulate zoning and environmental regulations, all hiding behind a “business friendly” cover story of promoting affordable housing, that it can make your head spin. The real story, though, promoting real estate speculation, is always kept deep in the shadows. 

Along with other CityWatch writers, I have frequently tried to shine a light on these programs, including rebuttals of their unsubstantiated claims that the deregulation of zoning and environmental laws magically produces affordable housing for an impending population boom. 

By now, City Watch readers have read about many of these sand castles, including Community Plan Update land use ordinances, Community Plan Implementation Ordinances (CPIO), SB 1818/Density bonuses, Value Capture policies, Transit Oriented Districts (TOD), re:code LA, Second Units, Home Sharing and Short-term rentals, Transit Neighborhood Plans, Small Lot Subdivisions, and Baseline Mansionization Ordinance loopholes. 

Furthermore, year-in and year-out, Governor Jerry Brown and the California State Legislature pitch similar proposals. If adopted, they would exempt an expanding range of local real estate projects from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and local discretionary reviews. These statewide proposals, too, are based on the same bogus claim: deregulation increases the supply of affordable housing. 

While all of these programs are different, the same threads run through them. They neglect to consider the following in their pursuit of a quick buck: 

Public Services and Infrastructure: The politicians, planners, and publicists pushing these programs never bring up the increased public services and public infrastructure that these new buildings and their occupants require. Even though this concern is clearly spelled out in LA’s legally adopted General Plan Framework’s policy 3.3, it is always ignored. Policy 3.3 should: 

Accommodate projected population and employment growth within the City and each community plan area and plan for the provision of adequate supporting transportation and utility infrastructure and public services. 

The increases in building mass, traffic, and population resulting from this laundry list of real estate schemes are totally disconnected from daily life in Los Angeles. Will the new buildings, cars, and people need more street capacity? More street parking? More sidewalks? More bicycle lanes? More schools? Parks? Playgrounds? Animal Shelters? Electricity? Water? Fire and police protection? Garbage collection? Libraries? Street cleaning and garbage collection? In the blinkered world of the deregulators, their fevered predictions of soaring population only head down one path: sparking a building boom by eviscerating zoning and environmental laws. They never lead to expanded public services and upgraded public infrastructure. 

By also separating out the consequences of building permits from the legally required General Plan, these many real estate hustles also lead to a cascade of other municipal failures. They not only divorce zoning from the General Plan, but also the City’s Capital Improvement (CIP), which is another essential (but ignored) General Plan implementation program. Likewise, another overlooked plan implementation program, the City’s budget, which folds in the staffing levels and work programs of all City departments, is severed from the willy-nilly granting of otherwise illegal building permits. 

Urban Design: The deregulators’ version of the “urban growth machine” also ignores the design implications of their real estate investments. Even though the City Council unanimously adopted the General Plan Framework Element, which has an entire chapter on Urban Form and Neighborhood Design, as well as appended design guidelines for residential, commercial, and industrial projects, the visual impact of these helter-skelter projects flies below the decision makers’ radar. In some cases there are even local design guidelines, such as Miracle Mile’s Community Design Overlay District, that deep-pocketed political muscle easily dispenses with, approving such hideous buildings as the Peterson Museum and currently-under-construction Museum of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. (rendering photo above) 

Deemed consistent with the Miracle Mile Community Design Overlay District! 

Likewise, the City’s official planning documents all indicate that new projects must be consistent with the character and scale of existing neighborhoods. For example, this is standard language in all Community Plans. 

1-3.1 Promote architectural compatibility and landscaping for new Multiple Family residential development to protect the character and scale of existing residential neighborhoods. 

Great words, but they have absolutely no bearing on the luxury mega-projects supposedly offering affordable housing. Such high-rise structures are at least three times the height of surrounding buildings, like the upscale residential complexes proposed for 333 LaCienega, 8150 Sunset, and the Cumulus Project at the corner of Jefferson and Fairfax. 

As a result, LA’s residents not only have to endure such pervasive visual blight as bootlegged signs, billboards, super-graphics, overhead wires, and streets barren of trees, but also new, over-sized projects that clash with neighborhood character and scale. 

Monitoring: These out-of-character, out-of-scale, under-supported projects typically make pie-in-the-sky claims to obtain their official approvals. Promises of transit use, sustainability, and jobs flow like the first flush of wastewater into Santa Monica Bay after an early autumn deluge. But, there is no requirement that developers verify any of their wild-eyed claims. There are no consequences if they don’t pan out, even when they are the basis for City Council decisions, such as Statements of Overriding considerations to sideline Environmental Impact Reports. Likewise, no building permits or Certificates of Occupancy are ever revoked since no one at City Hall ever double-checks the developers’ crystal balls. 

Next Steps: The pell-mell efforts of real estate speculators to deregulate zoning and CEQA means the planning process and its implementation through zoning, environmental reviews, Capital Improvement Programs, and the City’s Budget are all being thrown under the bus. The resulting mishmash of unrestrained market-driven projects is fraught with dire consequences that surpass their plug ugliness. They endlessly degrade the physical environment and quality of life for LA’s residents, employees, and visitors. Despite their short-term profits quickly whisked away to offshore bank accounts in the Caribbean and Panama, LA’s persistent economic decline will speed up and possibly enter free fall. 

From my perspective, the only local solution in sight is the coalescence of many isolated movements separately opposing numerous local projects. At this point this means the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative and its sponsor, the Coalition for Preserve LA, and its supporters, such as United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles. 

(Dick Platkin reports on city planning issues for City Watch. He welcomes comments, criticisms, and corrections at [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.