Morning Buzz: Friday 5.11.07

A Times reporter was barred from Locke yesterday after trying to report further on Thursday's news that the principal had been relived of his duties and escorted from campus because a majority of teachers signed a petition to support Green Dot's plan to take over Locke. Meanwhile, many LAUSD staffers are still not getting paid due to a computer snafu.

The public is not likely to ever know whether LAPD officers will be held to account for their actions in the May Day melee at MacArthur Park, says former police commission special counsel Merrick Bobb. LAT Op-ed

Wendy Greuel will run for City Controller rather than a third term on the city council, with Laura Chick being termed out. Greuel filed papers so she can raise money. DN

City Controller Laura Chick will try to find out where all the money has gone with construction due to halt from lack of payment to the contractor. New councilman Richard Alarcon is getting heat for not being as helpful as his predecessor, State Sen. Alex Padilla, who saw the Lake View Terrace museum as a pet project. DN

Plan to cover Pasadena with cheap reporters in India isn't a hoax, says the editor, even if it reads like something out of The Onion. LAT, Star-News, LAO yesterday

Westfield dropped plans to sue for a referendum last week, but the community group Arcadia First now says it will go to court to challenge the environmental review process for the outdoor shopping center on the Santa Anita racetrack parking lot by Rick Caruso. Westfield last week said it would sue under CEQA. Star-News

Critic Christopher Hawthorne writes in the LAT: "An urban fire doesn't really exist, as such, until it burns a building: until it uses architecture as fuel. At least that's how politicians and news anchors chose to reassure us Tuesday night as flames raced across Griffith Park....Still, because the fire roared so close to the newly expanded Griffith Observatory, and because its drama grew as it threatened to jump out of the park and into residential neighborhoods, it produced a number of memorable images combining architecture and flames. They join a very long list of such pictures — some artistic, some journalistic — already fixed in our collective consciousness. You remember Joan Didion's line: 'The city burning is Los Angeles' deepest image of itself.'"

Heston founded the Eastern Sierra News Service with Benett Kessler in 1976 and together they did the most aggressive local reporting on the Department of Water and Power's presence in the Owens Valley. A former newspaperman in Texas and Tennessee, Heston died April 30 at South Inyo Hospital in Lone Pine. LAT

The only road into Yosemite National Park from the Eastern Sierra will reopen after the winter closure. Sonora Pass also opens today.