As newspapers and television pull back from investigative reporting, foundations and other organizations are beginning to fill the void. One of the most interesting is Accountable California, a project of Local 721 of the Service Employees International Union.

Ted Rohrlich, a veteran investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times, took charge of Accountable California after leaving the paper in the midst of its many staff reductions. His project is part of the local’s Center For Public Accountability.

The organization’s latest work looks into the salaries of executives heading publicly supported Los Angeles County health or human service nonprofits. It turns out six of them receive more than $300,000 a year, $50,000 more than the salary of Ramon Cortines, who heads the huge Los Angeles Unified School District.

I asked Rohrlich why the union, which represents 80,000 city and county employees, has undertaken the effort. “We don’t want public funds going to waste,” he said. “It’s in our self interest to make sure government works well.”

You might wonder about the motives of a public employee union focusing on salaries in nonprofits. After all, these organizations, financed by government, foundations and donations, can and do shrink the pool of public jobs. On the other hand, the nonprofit sector does need investigating.

Money-starved governments are increasingly turning to nonprofits to operate projects they say they can no longer afford to run. The organizations examined by Accountable California provide medical services to the indigent and uninsured, various services for poor children,and help for the mentally ill.

Small nonprofits often do a better job than big government bureaucracies. But they should be examined closely. We don’t want publicly funded jobs and subcontracts passed out to relatives or old buddies.

After Accountable California’s expose was posted, the Los Angeles Times had an even more powerful story. Alan Zarembo revealed that a job training charity for the developmentally disabled paid its executive director an annual salary of $872,311 and his wife, the associate executive director, $606,862. The fact is with newspapers reducing staff, their own efforts will be cut back.

There’s nothing wrong with a union digging up dirt. Reporters have always used tips from unions, business PR people, cops, nonprofits , and many others with a special interest. Now that there are fewer reporters, these special interests are beginning to finance investigations themselves. As long as they’re fair, it’s a good development. Accountable California was fair in its expose, writing in bold face that only “a small minority of nonprofits pay their executives more than $200,000 or more…Many were paid much less.”

We do need more watchdogs. With mainstream media reporters disappearing, someone has to do the job. Here’s the link to the AccountableCalifornia site.

One of the many questions Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s school plan leaves unanswered is whether all students will be allowed to attend their neighborhood schools.

The LAUSD board has approved Villaraigosa’s plan to turn over 250 campuses, including 50 new ones—to charter school organizations and other groups that can meet district qualifications. Charter schools and others run by outsiders are financed by the districts but run their campuses independently.

Many of the campuses, and most of the new ones, are in poor areas where students have been packed into old, overcrowded schools for many years. These neighborhoods supported recent bond issues that financed the new schools.

Ã… friend who knows the poor schools told me that many people are afraid charter school operators will require new students to apply for admission to the schools built with bond issue funds. Neighborhood kids who don’t speak English well or suffer from other learning disabilities might not be accepted. That’s because the charter folks might want to cherry pick the most promising students.

I discussed this recently with new board member Steve Zimmer, who reluctantly voted for the mayor’s plan. “You should be able to go to your neighborhood school,” he said. “If that’s your school, you shouldn’t have to fill out an application.” Neighborhood youngsters should be admitted even “if you have special needs.”

The guidelines from Superintendent Ramon Cortines seem a bit vague on this point. He has told prospective private operators of the new schools that all their proposals “must indicate and, if necessary, receive a waiver (for charters) to guarantee that the school will enroll the requisite number of students from the impacted campuses that the new school is intended to relieve, and that students coming from the attendance areas of the designated, overcrowded schools will be served first and foremost. “

But the details of how students will be admitted are will be worked out by Cortines and his staff, with recommendations given to parents, teachers and others. If past conduct is any indication, the staff process will be opaque. There are so many levels to Cortines’ process and so many people involved that it will be hard to follow. The danger is that well-connected charter school operators could figure out a way to allow them to pick the best and brightest.

The neighborhood people helped pay for those schools. In school bond campaigns, LAUSD and its supporters gave them lists of planned projects would by school and by region so that parents, families and other school supporters would know what would be done with the money from the bonds, Now the neighborhood people deserve to reap the benefits of the bonds they helped pass.

With mariachis playing and children singing “This Land Is Your Land,” the opening of the new school complex on the old Ambassador Hotel site was perfect except for one terrible mistake—the name.

“Central Los Angeles Learning Center # 1” sounds like something they’d call a school in the old Soviet Union. Where was the name of the man who inspired the construction of the six schools in the complex, Robert F. Kennedy? Kennedy was assassinated in the Ambassador in June 1968 just after he won the California presidential primary. More than that, the New York senator stood for what these schools should accomplish. Why wasn’t the campus named for him?

When the project was developed, it was understood the campus would bear his name, especially after attempts to save the Ambassador as a landmark failed.

Before the opening day festivities began Saturday, I put this question to Monica Garcia, president of the Los Angeles Unified School District board.

Will the completed complex be named for RFK? “I think, yes, “ she said. “That is the name that is coming up and it is a beautiful thing, the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools.”

She said the board will vote on the name at its November meeting. I hope the vote is fast and unanimous. I hope there’s not a hang up, as so often happens at the school board. “Central Los Angeles Learning Center #1” does not evoke hope. Robert F. Kennedy does.

He would be an inspiration to the students in classes from kindergarten through 12th grade. They and their families are people Kennedy spoke for during his brief presidential campaign. They are mostly Latino and poor, living in one of America’s most crowded communities. Kennedy’s story and his words, along with the education the schools will offer, would provide an upward path toward attainment of the American dream. There is no better monument to RFK than that.

The flames of the Station fire will be blamed for the floods that may follow in the denuded San Gabriel Mountains. But let’s place the blame where it belongs, on land development, acquiescent local officials, and a tax structure that subsidizes hillside building.

I was interested to read the Los Angeles Times story on the U.S. Geological Survey’s warning that winter rains may produce huge mudslides and floods in communities just below the San Gabriel Mountain areas hit by the huge blaze.

In 2004, fellow journalist Emmett Berg and I studied this area for the Center for Governmental Studies and wrote a report entitled “Losing Ground: How Taxpayer Subsidies and Balkanized Governance Prop Up Homebuilding in Wildfire and Flood Zones.” We did it after major loss of life and homes in the 2003 wildfires and floods.

Since there was no big fire or flood in 2004, our report was pretty well ignored, as we had predicted: “When fires and floods kill people and destroy residential areas, the disasters bring out heavy television news broadcast and print media coverage. But once the danger has past, the media, always in search of something new, shows little interest in examining systemic or policy-based causes. Those involved in dry and fire-free year discussions of potential danger are treated like Henny Penny, warning the sky is falling.”

Our report showed how taxpayers all over Los Angeles County—from rich to poor—subsidize the high cost of fire protection for subdivisions built on the edge of Angeles National Forest and just below it. In addition, we reported how state forest fire personnel, financed by state revenues are now “suburban firefighters, battling house by house to save homes in suburban areas.”

These subdivisions shouldn’t have been built. But now they are there, let local homeowners and government pay for firefighting costs in areas around and below the forest. Why should working people in Pico Rivera pay for firefighting in affluent and high-risk neighborhoods in the San Gabriel Mountain foothills?

And why should a number of city councils influenced by developers make land use decisions on subdivisions that have regional impact? We proposed regional governing bodies to deal with issues such as land use and taxation.

These are issues for policy wonks. But nobody pays attention to them or their warnings. All the attention is on images of tankers and ground crews fighting fires or homeowners fleeing from mud and rocks roaring down their narrow hillside streets.

Land development continues, regardless of the cost. It is the story of L.A., now and for all time.

The enthusiastic gathering at Barnes & Noble’s Westside Pavilion store honored Norman Corwin, a Los Angeles literary treasure. In turn, he made the event a celebration of writers and writing. Acknowledging the tribute to him, he also called out the names of some of the authors in the crowd and praised them and their work.

We had assembled recently for a signing of his new book, “Norman Corwin’s One World Flight: The Lost Journal of Radio’s Greatest Writer.” Norman, who is 99, had written the journal during his flight around the world in 1946. He had helped rally the nation during the war with his radio broadcasts and went on to write books and films as well as memorable radio scripts.

The flight was his reward for winning the first Wendell Willkie Award, established by admirers of the 1940 Republican presidential nominee. During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Willkie a special envoy and sent him around world, visiting America’s allies. When he returned, Willkie wrote a best selling book, “One World,” whose goal is still far away.

One of benefits of teaching at USC was the opportunity it gave me and my wife Nancy to get to know Norman, joining a huge army of friends he has accumulated, probably starting shortly after his birth in Boston in 1910.

Norman, now wheelchair bound, couldn’t be heard at first. Barnes & Noble, possibly unaware of his star power, had not provided a microphone. Instead, his words were delivered to the crowd, by Michael C. Keith who, with Mary Ann Watson—both professors of broadcasting history—had brought the long- forgotten journal to publication. After a while, bookstore personnel, sensing the importance of their guest, located a microphone and brought it to the table. Norman took over the remarks.

His voice, while soft, is as clear and as sharp as his mind and wit. He took note of writers in the audience, including his USC faculty colleagues Jack Langguth and Joe Saltzman, and urged another to get working on a book. And he was pleased to note the presence of another L.A. literary treasure, Ray Bradbury, who made his way through the crowd to greet Norman and chat with him briefly. Bradbury also gets around in a wheelchair. Undoubtedly it wasn’t easy for him to get to Norman. When he made it, Bradbury and Norman provided a wonderful moment in Los Angeles literary history, and I hope someone got the picture.

Reading from the book were Norman’s friends Eva Marie Saint, the great actress, and her husband Jeff Hayden, the director. They alternated reading from passages of the book. All their selections were fine. This one about St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow’s Red Square gives a good sense of the great writing and wit that went into the book:

“I saw the church sitting under a distant cumulus cloud of overwhelming magnificence—a mighty towering cauliflower head crowned and studded with white, ivory and golden botryoids, the peaks rouged here and there by the rays of a sinking sun. The trunk of the cloud shaded to blues and purples out of the night that was advancing over the plains to the east. This apocalyptic mass sat, excessively and redundantly, on top of the most grandiloquent cathedral in the world, itself an architectural curiosity. I have seen some great skies in my years of looking up and down at clouds, but there never had been one to match that vision of tufts and battlements, that nest of hail and thunder, rising above the vari-colored, spiraling domes and cupolas built for a mad emperor.”

Afterward, we wanted Norman to autograph the book. The crowd was dense with others headed to Norman’s table on the same mission. But I still had enough of a reporter’s skill—and rudeness—to push my way through.

He wrote, “For Bill and Nancy. The best. Norman Corwin.” Actually he printed it. But his small, careful printing was somewhat similar to the neat cursive with which he wrote the journal. Brief handwritten excerpts begin each chapter.

“There was quite a throng to see us off,” he wrote as the journey began. There was quite a throng to see his book off, too.

Depending on how you look at it, school superintendent Ramon Cortines'̻ schedule for implementing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s school reform plan is either a great way of getting parents involved or a classic example of bureaucratic delay.

Curious about how the mayor’s plans to turn over 250 Los Angeles public schools to charter organizations, I went to the Los Angeles Unified School District web site and found Cortines’ implementation plan, contained in a letter to teachers and staff.
Amid all the criticism of the district from Villaraigosa and others, people forget that Cortines is the mayor’s guy—or at least was. He was Villaraigosa’s education advisor, and then was sent over to take the reins from a failing superintendent.

Since becoming superintendent, of course, he has assumed control of the districts many teachers and bureaucrats and can’t insult them in the media, like the critics do. It’s sort of like being manager of a fractious baseball team while working for a headstrong, know-it-all owner. Joe Torre, formerly of the Yankees and now in charge of the Dodgers, knows all about this.

The school district, non-profit charter organizations, unions, a teacher collaborative or other non-profit groups, said Cortines, can seek to run a charter school. In other words, any group, except for a profit-making organization, can come up with an idea for one of these schools, which are part of the district but are free from many of its rules.

If you want to start one, you first need community support. It’s unclear how such support will be determined, except Cortines speaks of community meetings. I’ve been to enough of those to know they can quickly turn into shouting matches—or worse—between hysterical parents, implacable neighborhood activists, and anyone who just happens to wander in.

After passing this obstacle, a charter school founder must then win approval by department bureaucrats. If that happens—think an IRS audit—then you go back to the community. If the community approves again, the plan goes to Cortines, and if he approves, to the board, which makes the final decision.

“Parents and community members need more information and time,” Cortines said. I agree with him on that. But this process could take years.

Meanwhile, I found a report that sheds some light on charter school performance compared to non-charters. It comes from Ed Source, a non-profit founded in 1977 by the PTA, the League of Women Voters, and the American Association of University Women.
Based on an analysis of various 2009 California test scores, Ed Source said charter high schools score “moderately higher” than non-charters, outscoring them in English but not in math. Middle schools charters beat non-charters but the “differences (are) relatively small.” Charter elementary schools score lower than non-charters.

In addition, there are all sorts of models for charter schools around the state, ranging from home schooling to academic boot camps.

Being a parent is never easy, but figuring out all this out and making the best choice will be really tough.

I received some provocative e-mails from readers after my column urging Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to give a clear explanation of his plan for charter organizations and other private entities to take over many Los Angeles public schools.

One was from David Abel, a public affairs consultant and managing director of New Schools Better Neighborhoods, which promotes construction of smaller and better schools. "You've written another poorly researched column for LA Observed," he wrote. "Your column would benefit from even a cursory review of the 1000's of articles/papers that have been written about charter school pedagogy/results ect."

Abel missed the point. I wasn't saying charter schools were good or bad. I just want the mayor to explain them to parents. I think parents have a lot of questions. One mother, a public school mom, e-mailed my daughter (also a public school mom) that I was expressing what was on a lot of parents' minds. Abel should realize the importance of explaining the complexities of school reform to such families. He should have learned something by watching President Obama damage himself by being too vague on health reform.

I received a much more thoughtful e-mail from Robin Kramer, Mayor Villaraigosa's outgoing chief of staff. She objected to my implication that the mayor was sort of a goof-off and answered some of the school questions I asked. I'll let her speak:

"Hi, Bill. Nice to hear your cybervoice.

"However I believe you've missed some important facts in your recent musings under the headline, 'Mayor, Please Explain This School Reform Thing.'

'The first and most important point - considering the sweep of Los Angeles history that you have observed over these many decades, and given the often desultory pace of progress we have collectively seen in our town on significant challenges ...come on! I disagree strongly with your suggestion that Mayor Villaraigosa has not made definitive strides during his first term to address nagging city problems and serious challenges -- to name four areas of marked success: growing the Los Angeles Police Department and its significant turnaround in community relations and protecting civil rights; creating what is now a national strategy to successfully reduce (yes it is true, not yet end) gang violence through parallel focused efforts on intervention and prevention; securing voter support in the middle of macro-economic meltdown to tax ourselves to provide homegrown funding for mass transit and mobility; and taking definitive action to make public education reform come to life. These tangible realities occurred because of a great deal of hard work by the Mayor, who has brought together people who often disagree to achieve these goals and milestones.

"The public school choice legislation passed by the LA School Board last week was a breathtaking, actual and historic turning point for LA's students and for all of us -- parents and students, along with business, union, education and civic leaders -- who have worked for decades to make our schools beacons of excellence and opportunity. The legislation means that the 50 new schools and the approximately 200 current schools that are most in need of academic improvement will be opened to a competitive process to operate them and turn them around.

"This process will be overseen by the Superintendent and will be open, transparent, and inclusive. As I type, the Superintendent is creating criteria for potential operators to apply to run the new schools. He will then share this criteria with the School Board, parents, and other community members for public scrutiny and review. Following this, potential operators (which include charters, teacher collaboratives, pilot schools, university sponsors, current operators, and other civic icons such as organizations like the Urban League) will submit plans to run the schools. After plans are submitted, the Superintendent will recommend to the School Board the operator he found with a proven record of success and metrics-based plan for the new school. (We could and should spend a lot of time discussing what measures matter and are meaningful.)

"The operators chosen to run the schools will be held accountable for results. If after a period of time, they do not succeed in meeting the goals articulated in their plans, the Superintendent and district should change operators.

"The measure passed last week is a prologue, aimed at improvement; ultimately, it will be the human enterprise and systems brought into existence, including bright light review, sharp accountability and our collective voice, to ensure there is follow-through and smart execution. The ultimate goal here is a more educated citizenry, workforce and community -- with the very future of our city bound up in the futures of these students and their families.

"Education has always been a top priority for the Mayor. Your questions have not fallen on deaf ears and I hope I've answered many of them here.

Kind regards.
Robin Kramer"

If Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wants parents to support his plan to convert 250 Los Angeles schools into charter schools, he needs to explain why he thinks this would be an improvement.

I sort of understand charter schools. Basically, private organizations—Green Dot is the best known—take over public schools and, using public funds and donations, run them free of many of the LAUSD rules and restrictions. But I can't tell you how they work and I have a lot of questions about them. More important, most parents do too.

The mayor has to answer these questions. He got the school board to approve the scheme. Here are some questions parents—or grandparents like me—want answered:

Why are charter schools better? Education scholar Diane Ravitch wrote in the Times that "Charter schools vary in quality from excellent to abysmal." You told Patt Morrison on KPCC that the schools would "meet a metrics driven plan" on making improvements. That's no answer.

Will parents have anything say in running the schools? Be specific, without all the clichés about consultation.

What if parents like their elementary, middle or high school and don't want a high- powered operator like Green Dot to take it over?

What if some of the private operators are know-it-alls who ignore parents or are ideological or religious fanatics?

There are many other questions, and I am sure the mayor can answer them—if he devotes serious time, energy and concentration to the project. This means working many days and nights, talking to worried parents. No more time with glamour friends, no more fine meals with Brentwood foodie pals. He needs to spend his evenings in school auditoriums with parents worried about the biggest decision of their current lives, the education of their children.

The mayor has a new team. Robin Kramer, who stepped down as chief of staff, is one of the best-organized people I know. But she couldn't keep Villaraigosa on a serious path. Her successor's last job was solving the gang problem, but the gangs remain.

Villaraigosa's new media chief is a veteran of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and of all its infamous backstabbing feuds. I hope the two newcomers don't spend their time arguing and fighting for power while the mayor slips out the side door for dinner at the newest hot restaurant.

In the small world of Westside politics, activists hold certain truths to be self-evident. Jack Weiss is a sellout. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is a sellout and a goof-off. Development is bad because it increases traffic. Billboards are bad because they’re…billboards.

And Proposition B, the solar initiative on the March 3 ballot, is so awful that there are no words to describe it, not even the powerful words of Ron Kaye. He’s the former Daily News editor who is now an angry populist blogger and community activist.

Aware of these deeply held, but not necessarily rational, beliefs, I drove a mile or so from my Westside house to Webster Middle School to hear Kaye and others debate Proposition B. The measure would authorize the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to install solar panels on commercial, industrial and other buildings and in parking lots. The power would flow into the DPW system, I like Proposition B but I thought the debate might give me some reason to vote against it.

Nobody beat up on Weiss, the city councilman who is running for city attorney. Any criticism of the mayor was mild. Nobody took on the Expo line although a couple of people blasted the flashing electronic billboards illuminating buildings and intersections. A couple of people from Venice complained about permit parking around their houses. The subject had nothing to do with Proposition B. But self -involved Los Angeles Venetians have their own agenda, no matter where the rest of the world is going.

There were some mild fireworks. Nick Patsouras, a former DWP commissioner now running for city controller, read from detailed reports he felt showed the DWP in a bad light. Patsouras opposes Proposition B. Sneering at Patsouras’ insistence in reading the reports, Brian D'Arcy, the union business manager and an author of Proposition B, said, “Can I get the phone book and read it?” When Kaye renewed his attack on B, D’Arcy said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about, as usual.”

Kaye made a strong case for the “no” side He noted that all the work on the proposition was done far from public scrutiny, in the union hall and Mayor Villaraigosa’s office. Kaye hates secret government and the clique of lawmakers, business people and union leaders who run L.A. He said the proposal should have been the subject of extensive council hearings and discussion by the neighborhood councils as well as detailed and public examination by experts.

He and other opponents also objected to the fact that DWP union workers will do the solar panel installations. “Union power grabbing,” he said, drawing cheers from many in the crowd but not from the union members who were there.

I agree with Kaye that the process stinks, although I doubt if the city council would have been capable of holding intelligent hearings on the matter. But that isn’t a reason to vote against Proposition B. Solar panels on building roofs and vacant land are a good idea. We need solar. And what’s wrong with union labor, anyway. My wages up when we organized the American Newspaper Guild at the Oakland Tribune years ago.

Most of the crowd stuck around until the end. With a hot primary race for the Westside Fifth Council District seat, and Weiss running for city attorney, this area may have a comparatively high turnout for a low turnout city election. The activist, fussy Westside is tough territory for the Proposition B campaigners but they may have to carry it to win the election.

A dispute over light rail cars is testing whether Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is up to the job of shepherding the federal recession relief coming this way.

I know that it is widely believed that the mayor doesn’t have power, except to show up at events and smile. But he has plenty of power especially when it comes to distributing the money from Washington, and he should be held accountable for the way he does it.

As reported by the Times' Steve Hymon in the L.A. Now blog Feb. 10, a light rail manufacturing firm, AnsaldoBreda, has offered to move manufacturing facilities here from Pittsburg, Calif. and Italy if the Metropolitan Transportation Authority buys 300 rail cars at a cost of more than $300 million. The company said the plant and company headquarters would “generate approximately 5,000 jobs.”

Sounds like a good deal in an area where unemployment is rising above 10 per cent. But here comes the MTA bureaucracy. The MTA has reopened bidding on the cars rather than giving AnsaldoBreda the go ahead. The MTA staff said the AnsaldoBreda cars didn’t meet specifications, and the company was late in delivering a previous order of cars due by May 2007. Mike Cannell, MTA general manager for rail, said train doors opened too soon. Others complained the seats are too narrow.

Fabio Ficano, AnsaldoBreda’s director of government affairs, told the New York Times that Cannell’s attitude was influenced by the fact that his son works for Siemens, which is competing for the car contract. Nonsense, replied Cannell, who said his son works for a Siemens Energy, unconnected to the light rail car division.

The mayor is head of the MTA board and appoints a few other members. He’ll have a lot of clout when it comes to deciding which company wins, and he knows there are a lot of jobs at stake. Richard Katz, a Villaraigosa appointee to the MTA board, told me the mayor’s office is now trying to determine whether “the (car manufacturing) jobs are real or permanent and can the company fulfill its obligations.”

A total of $8.5 billion in the recovery bill has been allocated to mass transit around the country and a good-sized portion should be coming here. Combined with funds from the passage of the half-cent sales tax increase last year, mass transit should be getting a boost for improving service and creating jobs.

This is Villaraigosa’s first big chance to show whether he’s tough and skillful enough to cut through the bureaucracy and put the recovery money to work quickly on the light rail cars and the many other projects to come.