Running with the story

The Los Angeles Business Journal continues to give bigger play than other media to the various official investigations keeping the denizens of L.A. City Hall gossiping these days. In this week's issue, the lead story focuses on the allegations of inflated billing by Hahn-friendly PR agency Fleishman-Hillard. Several current and past employees have been interviewed by county or federal prosecutors, the story says. The former head of the Los Angeles office, Doug Dowie, along with vice president John Stodder and former exec Monique Moret—who oversaw the disputed Department of Water and Power contract, and who resigned several months ago—have retained personal attorneys, according to the LABJ. In addition to the DA and the feds asking questions, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo has filed a civil suit against Fleishman, and City Controller Laura Chick is pursuing an audit of Fleishman's entire DWP contract.

There are also the ongoing county and federal grand juries looking into whether there has been "pay to play" corruption in the awarding of city contracts by Hahn commissioners. For now, of course, we don't know if anyone has, in fact, done anything wrong. But it may take DA Steve Cooley and U.S. Attorney Debra Yang to figure out the interlocking City Hall-Fleishman connections. Revisit my post from July for a reminder on the overlapping relationships between Fleishman, City Hall, Jim Hahn, Bob Hertzberg, etc. There's also this post from September about the Delgadillo connection—not to mention that, according to several sources, Delgadillo had previously dated Moret.

Also in the LABJ: Howard Fine talks about Carol Butler signing on as day-to-day campaign manager of the Bernard Parks for mayor effort. She has run U.S. Senate races in Michigan, Oregon and Texas, and joins Parks consultants Chris Lehane (the former adviser to John Kerry and Wesley Clark) and Eric Jaye, who had been a campaign strategist for San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom. Fine summarizes the campaign manager lineup in the race so far: Bill Carrick for Hahn, John Shallman for Hertzberg, Parke Skelton for Antonio Villaraigosa and Richie Ross for Richard Alarcon.