Good piece of enterprise reporting by Copley's David Zahniser, who found that 19 employees of Miami-based Travel Traders, which operates hotel gift shops, are listed as giving $1000 each to Villaraigosa's runoff campaign. The donors included top executives and less well-paid staff such as a help desk manager and an executive assistant. When Zahniser called, most refused to say anything or seemed surprised their names were listed. Most, he found, also had been listed as contributors under a separate company name on the disclosure reports Villaraigosa filed during the primary. As Zahniser points out, if the firms actually made the contributions then put them in the names of employees to get around L.A.'s $1,000 limit — or reimbursed workers for pouring cash into a mayor's race 3,000 miles from Florida — it's against the law here and even gets prosecuted these days. Ask Pierce O'Donnell or Alan Casden. Villaraigosa campaign manager Ace Smith says the workers who didn't answer are entitled to their privacy, but Hahn consultant Kam Kuwata quipped, "If I wrote a $1,000 check, I would know, I would remember."

More: Politics
© 2003-2009   •  About LA Observed  •  Email the editor
LA Biz Observed
4:03 PM Fri | CBS and ABC have far bigger fish to fry - namely whether their stations can get back the auto and retail advertising that fell off a cliff in 2009.
Native Intelligence
Phil Wallace | Searching for answers after a third loss this year.
Deanne Stillman | Jihad and cash offers meet American soldiers during the Gulf War, and beyond.
Iris Schneider | After a tough year financially, the Museum of Contemporary Art put on a gala party to celebrate with 1,000 of its closest friends.
Bill Boyarsky
One of the last of Doug Ring’s many good deeds was a visit to the Los Angeles Times editorial board with members of Housing LA, an organization advocating affordable housing for the thousands of residents being forced out of the city by high rents.
Jenny Burman
Thinking more about buying less.
Here in Malibu
The close-up.
Sponsors
Jewish Journal logo
The California Wellness Foundation
Playa Vista ad
Blogads

Blogads Los Angeles network

Get RSS Feeds
of LA Observed
LA Observed publishes several Real Simple Syndication feeds for easy scanning of headlines. If you wish to subscribe to a feed, most popular RSS readers will do it for you. You can also enter the web address from the XML button below or click on a specific feed. For more help with RSS, try here or here.




Add to Google