Follow LA Observed on Twitter here
Mayor Villaraigosa summoned the three finalists for chief of the LAPD to Getty House for a second round of conversations and photo ops, then put out the word that he will announce his choice on Tuesday. That's a day later than first planned. On Sunday morning, the Times ran an opinion piece in which editorial writer Robert Greene said that the mayor's tenure so far has not gone much differently than one could have expected from Jim Hahn, and correctly observes that the first day of the rest of Villaraigosa's political life begins with his appointment of a chief. Excerpt:
Villaraigosa's first term largely failed to deliver real change. The mayor's plan to improve schools sputtered; his housing initiatives ran aground in court; his (remarkable) achievement in securing funding for a "subway to the sea" has yet to result in new track; his anti-gang program never demonstrated much success. His achievements came primarily in the areas where he followed in Hahn's footsteps....Hahn II has now concluded. With Bratton on his way back to the East Coast, the real Villaraigosa era now gets underway.
My KCRW segment on Friday also talked about the pressure on Villaraigosa to get this one right.
Meanwhile: Mark Lacter read about the $100 million shortfall in City Hall's budget, and Villaraigosa asking people to trust that he'll come up money for the subway, and concludes: "I can't tell you how depressing it was to hear those comments...For more than a year it's been clear that L.A. officials hadn't the vaguest notion of how to cope with this terrible economy - and guess what? They still don't."