The reprieve is only for a year. And the funds will come from money allocated to schools with many more poor students. While it’s a nice win for the parents with kids in the 23 schools, it’s really sad. People are fighting over scraps as Washington and state governments slash school funds. The situation is bleak in many states and California is one of those being hit the hardest.
John E. Deasy, Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent, said the 23 schools would receive a part of the money they would have lost under a Board of Education decision made in December. The money is distributed under Title 1 of the federal aid to education law.
Involved are schools that have been receiving the aid because at least 40 per cent of their students are classified as living in poverty. With federal funds being reduced, the board raised the level of poverty students needed for eligibility to 50 percent, resulting in the proposed cutoff to the 23 students.
“In a time of great economic challenges and uncertainty, this option provides (the) schools with a ‘safety net’ while we transition to the new eligibility threshold,” Deasy said in a letter to the board.
Tamar Galatzan of the San Fernando Valley, the only school board member to vote against the cutoff, said, “ This is a short term solution to help the 23 district schools… It is our duty as a district to try to help them find both short-term and long-term solutions.”
The only long-term solution is giving more money to public education.
One is being proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown, who advocates an initiative for the November ballot that would raise state sales taxes by a half a cent and income taxes on taxpayers earning more than $250,000. The increases would expire in five years.
The proposal would, Louis Freedberg wrote in the EdSource web site, “yield billions of dollars for California schools.”
Brown will have a tough fight. Other well-meaning people are proposing their own tax increase initiatives. Too many initiatives make defeat of all of them likely. The best thing concerned parents can do is pressure all of them to get behind one measure, and then campaign like mad in the fall.
At issue is the school board’s 6-1 vote in December to take federal poverty funds away from 23 schools, a number of them in middle class Valley and Westside neighborhoods. Nevertheless, they have student bodies that include substantial numbers of poor youngsters.
The funds are distributed to school districts under Title 1 of the federal school aid act, a program begun in 1965 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. They are designed to provide schools with additional funds to help students overcome obstacles from impoverished families and neighborhoods. The money pays for more teachers, counseling, instructional material and training for parents.
Washington has reduced Title 1 funding. In the past, with more Title 1 money, the Los Angeles district distributed its share to schools where at least 40 percent of the students are classified as living in poverty.
Now, with less money to allocate, the school board voted to raise the level to 50 percent. This means funds would be cut off to the 23 schools. “We have less Title 1 money to give out,” Los Angeles Superintendent John Deasy told me. He said the district should “concentrate the funds in schools where there is the greatest concentration” of poverty.
The impact would be painful. Los Angeles Times reporter Howard Blume told how the decision would affect Superior Street Elementary in Chatsworth, where 43 per cent of the students are low income. The cut would deprive the school of $200,000 a year, which pays for an instructional coach, intervention teachers, teacher aides, a library aide and a clerical worker, who also acts as an informal nurse. The school’s academic level has risen. “We could not have made these gains without the support of this funding for these children,” said Principal Jerilyn Schubert. “I’m devastated,” said Schubert, “I just want to cry. I really do.”
At the Westside’s Los Angeles Center For Enriched Studies (LACES) Magnet, Principal Harold Boger said the school would lose $460,000, which pays two teachers, a counselor, a three-and-a-half day nurse, math intervention programs, a parents representative, two educational aides and choir assistance. One of my granddaughters is a student there, and through my daughter I have seen the extensive e-mail and organizing campaign being waged by the parents.
“Are the low-income children at LACES and the other affected schools somehow less deserving of intervention services, tutoring and after school programs than a student who attends a school a few blocks away with a slightly higher percentage of Title 1 student?” parent Elizabeth Dennehy wrote to school board member Steve Zimmer, who voted for the cut.
School board member Tamar Galatzan, the only board member to vote against the cuts, said the district, in allocating the money, doesn’t know what programs work. Before cutting, she said, “we need to know what programs are helping. Is it dropout prevention, is it Saturday classes, and is it smaller class size?”
At Galatzan’s town hall recently, many parents asked questions about the Title 1 funds. They had been alerted by calls from Galatzan’s office, and by protest organizers’ e-mails and letters.
An LAUSD source told me the matter still could come up again. Perhaps the protests are working.
In a piece in the Daily News, Beutner noted the weakness of the city’s incomprehensible ethics laws, and pointed out that any attempt to improve them must be approved by the City Council. In my five years on the commission, I watched the council, which hates the commission, kill any of our plans to strengthen the law. The council and the mayor must be pleased now that the commission barely receives any public notice.
I asked Beutner about his Daily News piece when he met with reporters after speaking to Town Hall Thursday. Would he favor going around the city council blockade?
“I would like to see the ethics commission truly empowered to put measures directly on the ballot,” he said. “Let’s take it directly to the voters.”
Since most voters, readers, viewers or Angelenos don’t care about ethics laws, I wouldn’t recommend Beutner make this a major part of his campaign. But the fact he tackled it at all is noteworthy--and indicative of serious tone he might bring to the mayoral campaign trail.
Beutner is a multi-millionaire retired investment banker who impressed former Mayor Richard Riordan and other old white guys who like to throw their weight around. They persuaded Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to put him on as a $1-a-year top deputy. Beutner supervised several departments, including the messy Department of Water and Power before leaving to seek the top job himself.
He’s the un-Villaraigosa, with a spare, matter-of-fact speaking style, showing none of the mayoral emotion that has captivated, appalled and annoyed us for so long. The somewhat slight and slender Beutner sounds like another ex Wall Streeter, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and he looks a bit like him too.
Some people say he is boring. Gene Maddaus wrote in the LA Weekly that Riordan fell asleep during Beutner’s Town Hall speech. “Hey, Beutner can have that effect on people,” Maddaus wrote.
But I stayed awake and enjoyed the way he dug into details. He was right about the miserable conditions at LAX and the MTA’s refusal to buy electric buses. In the Daily News, he wrote about the sad ethical conditions at city hall. He didn’t, however, connect ethics to the airport, although there is a connection. The food is lousy and the shops inadequate and overpriced because concessionaires—using campaign contributions and an influential gang of city hall lobbyists—call the shots with the council and mayor when it comes to the airport. Bad ethics produces bad food.
Even so I congratulate Beutner for taking on the ethics laws and the commission that administers them. When then City Controller Laura Chick, a great reformer, appointed me to the commission she told me to raise hell. I tried as but my friend Tim Rutten pointed out at the time, I was “treated like the drunken uncle at a Seder.”
Even more than anything I learned as a reporter, that experience taught me that it will take someone tough and smart to change the culture of city hall and shake up the intertwined politicians, lobbyists and campaign contributors who dominate it.
Of course, whether he would be a mayoral candidate in 2013 was the first question asked by designated questioner Dave Bryan of Channel 9 at a luncheon of the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum at the downtown Palm Monday.
The supervisor, a former city council member, drew an unusually large crowd to the forum luncheon, hosted by public affairs consultant Emma Schafer. Crowd size is important when discussing the forum, which is attended by people who, in one way or another, make their livings from government contracts and contacts. When this group figures a guest lacks clout, the crowd is small. Perceived clout equals a big turnout, and Yaroslavsky, as potentially strong mayoral candidate, got one.
“I will let you know in due course,” he said of his decision, adding that “it won’t be long…I’ll keep you posted.”
What was most interesting was the way he ripped apart city government on subjects ranging from redevelopment to potholes.
He said city streets are in bad shape compared to those maintained by the county in unincorporated areas, he said. He sarcastically compared the streets in East Los Angeles, run by the county, to those in neighboring Boyle Heights, in city territory. Boyle Heights streets are filled with potholes, a condition ranging from there to Wilshire and Sunset Boulevards, from the center and south of the city to the Westside. Yaroslavsky said the gap between East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights street maintenance is as wide as the Grand Canyon.
Yaroslavsky blasted the city hall plan to float bonds for street repairs, saying there is plenty available money from various transportation programs. And he said there was no need for the city to furlough employees, Good management would have prevented it, as it did with the county. “Where did all the money go?” he asked. If he ever gets back to city government, Yaroslavsky said, he would find out.
The question is whether he wants to undertake the difficult task of returning to city hall and trying to get a straight answer to such questions.
]]>When I got there about 3 p.m., the plaza was pretty well filled with occupiers, onlookers and the media. Tents and demonstrators were in the grassy portion of the plaza. There were probably a few hundred people in all. About an hour later, Beck showed up, accompanied by a couple of command officers and someone from the departmental press office. He stood on Hope Street, which had been blocked and was crowded with police cars. He looked relaxed as he took in the scene.
There was no command post, which had been the heart of the military style approach the old LAPD anti-demonstration strategy. Nor was there the old police hostility. Several clergy—rabbis, ministers, and priests—walked from the plaza to talk to the chief. I followed them. He spoke quietly, and they did too. So I wasn’t sure what was said. But I sensed the conversation was calm, polite and probably reasonable.
The media then gathered around the chief, and Beck was just as calm. He said the demonstrators had a point to make, and they had a right to make it. But the owners of the plaza and other businesses had a point, too. Negotiations between the police and demonstrators were continuing. Then he walked over to the plaza to talk to the demonstrators as if it were no big deal.
This is a man who is confident with himself and with a department that was reformed by his predecessor, Bill Bratton. Before Bratton, the chiefs and the cops treated a demonstration as if it were the start of a revolution. Unlike them, Beck didn’t fume and fret because the demonstrators are liberal. His attitude seemed to have seeped down to the SWAT officers on the plaza, and the cops on Hope Street.
The SWAT officers on the plaza generally were unsmiling, although I saw a couple of them chat in a friendly manner with the demonstrators. Some demonstrators yelled “This is what a police state is like.” Having recently returned from China, I thought, “No, China is what a police state is like.” One demonstrator handed a bottle of water to a cop, who said thank you. The demonstrators applauded the police officer’s courtesy.
Beck or some other police officer had given them a deadline. By 4:30 p.m. the arrival of motorcycle cops and a bus big enough for those arrested heralded action. Finally, around 5 pm, the cops started arresting people. But the arrests were done pretty peacefully. Maybe the two sides had worked out the procedure.
Beck exhibited the same abilities last year when the Latino community around MacArthur Park protested over a police officer's shooting of a man with a knife, He showed up at community meetings, listened and answered in a direct style, understanding and not defensive.
A word on Occupied LA’s expansion to the Bank of America plaza: It was a good idea. The choice of the bank gave Occupied LA more focus than it has had at city hall. The bank is relevant to our national economic crisis. Not that our lobbyist-campaign- contributor- dominated city hall is innocent of wrongdoing. But its offenses are local. The Bank of America, saved by the bailout, has wrecked the lives of people across the nation, if not the world.
The mainstream media whines about the Occupied movement having no specific goals. I talked to Elise Whitaker, an organizer. She was specific: “No bank money in politics, publicly funded elections. Once we get our democracy back, we the people will be empowered to make decisions again.”
My afternoon at Bank of America plaza and two previous visits to the Occupied LA city hall site doesn’t make me an expert on the movement. But I like what it’s doing. And an afternoon of watching Charlie Beck and his cops doesn’t make me an expert on them. But so far, they have handled things better than their counterparts in New York and Oakland.
A couple of people wanted to post serving hours for the free food. There was intense discussion of varieties of food. One person was a vegan, another, wanting protein, was not. And, naturally, there was the question of who would cook or serve, and whether their assignments should be posted.
“Interesting, isn’t it?” said my friend Art Goldberg, a lawyer who has been protesting since his Berkeley Free Speech Movement days and probably even when he was in elementary school. Goldberg had just finished talking to the group on the best and most humane way to treat the mentally ill in the encampment. He said he stops by Occupy LA every day during breaks in a trial in the nearby courthouse.
“If you’re interested in food service,” I replied, rather sarcastically, indicating that the group’s discussion hadn’t grabbed my attention. He said he thought if I had concentrated more, I would have seen the dialogue wasn’t just about serving food .If I had listened carefully, I would have heard the dynamics of Occupy LA played out on a few levels.
I saw what he meant a few minutes later when a young woman came over to us to thank Goldberg for his remarks on the mentally ill. She had been one of those discussing food. Goldberg talked to her about the need to post schedules and to work out differences that had been evident in the discussion.
The problem, she said, was that there were two very strong women involved in food—one cooking and the other serving. The young woman said she both cooks and serves. It sounded as though she was trying to mediate, to understand both sides. As she explained the food situation, I saw that the discussion at the meeting was really about leadership and bringing people together. She was intelligent, personable and mature. I could see her in a few years leading a movement in the neighborhood, city, state or national level, mediating, compromising, and building coalitions.
That’s one of the important points about the Occupy movements. Leaders will emerge from them, just as Art Goldberg’s sister, Jackie Goldberg, emerged from the Free Speech Movement to become a teacher, a school board member, a legislator and a Los Angeles City Council member.
What looks like a disorganized mess is, in many respects, a training ground for those who will join the next generation of leaders. They are receiving practical lessons in subjects ranging from getting agreement on a food-serving schedule to dealing with difficult people to organizing protests against what originally brought them together—income inequality and rapacious financial institutions.
]]>Last week, Tracy Westen, CEO of the political reform think tank, and Bob Stern, the president, sent out an e-mail saying “With some sadness, but with considerable pride in our accomplishments, we are closing the Center for Governmental Studies’ offices after 28 years of service in the public interest. The recession has depleted our funding, and we cannot continue to operate CGS in its present form.“
The center, mostly financed by contributions from foundations, brought something new to the political reform movement. In addition to advocating electoral reform, the center dug into the policies that too often are shaped by campaign contributions to elected officials. It proposed major changes to a sick state budgeting system that has been heavily influenced by corporate and labor contributors as well as right wing anti tax forces. It also studied one of the great victims of these forces, California’s education system, and proposed reforms. When I retired from the Times, I was employed as a CGS consultant for two years. I worked with another journalist, Emmett Berg, on a project showing how land developers and their government allies put through land use laws weakening flood and fire protection.
“We were one of the few organizations emphasizing improving government,” Westen told me. “We were trying to fix the process …we tried to figure out what were the best solutions for the public.”
The center was born during the post Watergate era, extending from the mid-‘70s to possibly the early ‘90s. Reformers were heroes then, but as my wife Nancy Boyarsky had predicted in a Los Angeles Times op ed piece in the mid-70s, the big contributors would eventually use their money and influence to figure out ways around them. The fat cats and their sharp lawyers found loopholes in reform laws. They created political campaign committees that operated outside the laws. The U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, giving these shadowy committees carte blanche, was a mortal blow to campaign reform. Today, contributors call the shots at every level of government, mocking an intricate web of reform laws.
This was never clearer to me than during my five-year term on the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission. We commissioners nailed a few big contributors. But contributors and their lobbyists and lawyers had reached so deeply into city government that I thought our job as reformers was hopeless.
So, apparently, did the foundations that supported CGS. Steve Rountree, chairman of the CGS board, said in an e-mail obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle, “In my view this is the result of the impact of the recession on foundation but, more than that, the consequence of our dramatically polarized political environment and court rulings that have tended to gut laws and regulations aimed at making the democratic process fairer. I believe that foundations have given up hope of meaningful reform in this climate.”
Westen agreed. “ As Steve said, some foundations that have supported our governance reforms may have become dispirited by court rulings and legislative gridlock, feeling not much could be accomplished through the legislative or judicial processes,” he said. “And there's some truth to that -- witness Congress and the California Legislature. But, in my view, that's just when organizations like CGS are needed.”
The CGS office was a few blocks from our house, and Nancy and I often passed it on our morning walks. Last week, it was silent and empty, a perfect symbol of the present state of campaign reform.
* Fixed misspelling of Westen's name
]]>Now filmmakers, equipped with visual and story telling skills, are tackling the job of exploring the personalities, issues and politics that have made the Capitol and Los Angeles City Hall so important to the state.
I’ve already written about one in LA Observed, “California State of Mind: The Legacy of Pat Brown,” an excellent documentary done by the late governor’s granddaughters, executive producer Hilary Armstrong and director Sascha Rice. It will be shown at MOCA Nov. 10 after screenings in October in Mill Valley, Carmel and Manhattan.
A work in progress is “Bridging The Divide: Tom Bradley and the Politics of Race,” by documentarians Lyn Goldfarb and Alison Sotomayor. They are filming, raising money for the documentary and interviewing the remaining veterans of the Bradley era. Recently, they announced a “very generous grant” from the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation.
I don’t envy, Goldfarb and Sotomayor. Pat Brown was an open, talkative, warm pol, qualities that blended with idealism, a sense of purpose and a love of California to make him one of the state’s great governors. Bradley was also a good politician with idealism, purpose and love of Los Angeles. He was one of the city’s greatest mayors. But he wasn’t talkative, nor did he open up to many people.
His guarded personality was partially shaped, no doubt, by his difficult rise from black police officer in a bigoted police department to becoming African American mayor of a city without a black majority—and one of the country’s most respected public officials of his era.
He was a tough interview. Once, desperate for something interesting, I asked him to tell me about his day. He was surprised by my approach but I made him go through the whole thing, from the time he left the house to what he did in city hall. He checked potholes, streetlights and traffic on his way to work. He went over every detail of the budget. He knew the boring procedures of almost every department. I found it fascinating. Here was a great national symbol of African American progress who, at heart, was an incredible city government wonk, which was one of the reasons for his success.
I’ve always tried to think of the political life I covered as having a dramatic arc, like a movie or a play but it’s difficult to translate this onto the printed page. Now it’s the documentarians' turn to tell the incredible and dramatic story of California through the lives of two of its heroes.
The veteran Westside congressman was talking about how to avoid a battle in the San Fernando Valley between his friend Rep. Howard Berman and Rep, Brad Sherman for the 30th congressional district created by the state reapportionment commission. The commission gave Berman’s old district a Latino majority to create a Latino seat in the Valley. The commissioners moved Berman into the new 30th with Sherman. The percentage of Latino voters in that district is 16 percent.
Waxman had called me to complain about my Jewish Journal column on the race in which I wrote that the only way a Berman-Sherman fight could be avoided was “if one or the other made the suicidal choice of moving to another nearby district, which neither would have much of a chance of winning.”
It so happens that the choice I termed as “suicidal” was precisely the choice Waxman has in mind—Sherman pulling out of the 30th District race and running in a Ventura County district, some of which he has represented in the past. The new district, with no incumbent, is 42 percent Democratic and 35 percent Republican.
It’s not suicidal at all, Waxman said. President Barack Obama carried the area by double digits, he said, and Gov. Jerry Brown lost it by just one point in his election campaign, He estimated Sherman’s campaign war chest at $4 million. Rather than have Sherman and Berman spend up to $10 million between them Waxman would like Sherman to use his money to win the Ventura County seat and give the Democrats another seat in the House. “He would be doing a great service to the Democrats,” Waxman said. He conceded it is “not a great Democratic district, but the well-funded Sherman could win it.
“If we have this race between two Jewish Democrats, it is not because of Howard, it is because Brad chooses it,” Waxman said Sherman, he said, “could do the party a favor, he could do the Jewish community a favor and keep himself in Congress without this unnecessary battle.” He said, “I would like to see both of them returned to Congress”, but if there is a contest, he supports Berman.
Sherman doesn’t seem to value such advice. He is lining up endorsements, distributing polling results that he says show him ahead, working the grassroots and energetically communicating news of all this to the media.
Meanwhile, Sherman found himself under heavy fire for recommending that President Barack Obama appoint former Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante ambassador to India. The criticism came from journalists ranging from my LA Observed colleague John Schwada to the Sacramento Bee editorial board. The Bee in an editorial said Sherman ‘just earned himself place in the Pandering Politician Hall of Fame” by backing Bustamante in an effort to influence “large numbers” of Latino voters in the district. Actually, the Bee overstated the numbers of Latinos in the district,
Sherman told me “he proposed Bustamante on the suggestion of “Indo-American organizations in my district.” He said he “did this early in the spring” before he knew he would be in such a tight race. Sherman said he supported Bustamante when he ran for governor, and Bustamante is backing him over Berman. Traditionally, he said, the ambassador to India is a not a diplomat, but someone important in the political or business world.
“I suppose Brad feels it will help him with Hispanics,” commented Waxman.
In 1991, a federal court ruled that the Los Angeles County supervisors denied Latinos a chance to be elected to the board. The court found that supervisors, all white, purposefully gerrymandered districts so that Latinos were a minority in each of them, a Voting Rights Act violation. As a result, district lines were redrawn, a constituency with a Latino majority was created, and Gloria Molina was elected to the board of supervisors.
Over the years, the Latino population has increased. Latinos now constitute 48 percent of the county’s 9.8 million residents, with whites 28 percent, Asian Americans 14 percent and African Americans 8 percent. With the growth of that population, Latino groups, supported by Supervisor Mark Ridley Thomas, who is African American, are pressing for the creation of a second supervisorial district where more than 50 percent of the population would be Latinos eligible to vote.
Creation of such a district would come at the expense of veteran Supervisor Don Knabe, who is white. It would do this by removing from his district largely white areas along the coast where he has strong support and give him more Latinos.
Advocates for a second Latino majority district have produced studies of many elections in which whites vote for whites and Latinos for Latinos. “The data and election results make clear that, when given a chance in a primary or non-partisan election, non-Latinos tend to vote against Latino candidates in all reaches of Los Angeles County, while Latinos vote strongly in favor,” University of Washington Professor Matt A. Barreto said in a study submitted to the county.
Those on the other side note the election of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Sheriff Lee Baca, Latinos. “Frankly, the notion that non-minorities won’t vote for a minority candidate in L.A. County is antiquated. Los Angeles in 2011 is not the same as the Los Angeles of forty, thirty or even twenty years ago. Our county is politically and socially far more mature and broad-minded.” said Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.
Are voters color blind? Or do the supervisors, knowing Latinos vote for Latinos, want to continue splitting up the Hispanic vote to protect Knabe and others who might face a Latino challenge?
]]>The conversation turned immediately to his firing—or layoff as it’s called—from the Los Angeles Times after four decades. It was stupid, wrong and unfair, another sign of how the paper was destroying itself so fast that soon there would be little left. Rutten, of course, agreed.
I told him I wanted to write about his firing but hesitated because we had been great friends for a long time. If it was too complimentary, I said, everyone would think it was a puff piece. If you do write it, he said, just don’t insult me.
Saturday, I read Jim Rainey’s well-justified tribute to another victim of journalism’s greed, John Schwada, who was fired from Channel 11. I figured if Schwada gets a tribute, Rutten deserves one, too.
Rutten wrote an op ed column that appeared on Wednesdays and Saturdays and, until his bosses ended it, a weekly book review. He has served as editor of the Opinion section, editorial writer, deputy national editor, city county bureau chief and columnist,
Rutten’s columns were well informed and opinionated, just as a column should be. He was ahead of the pack on important issues. His columns on the Los Angeles Police Department and his moving interview with retiring Cardinal Roger Mahony were outstanding examples of his work. So were his columns on civil liberties.
I became friends with Rutten when I was a general assignment reporter assigned to cover the streets and schoolyards during a huge desegregation crisis in the late 1970s. He was the editor of the Opinion section. He came over to my desk in the news room, and we talked about how the desegregation story was another chapter in the long history of racism in Los Angeles. He had me write a piece for Sunday Opinon along those lines, which he played at the top of the front page.
I continued to write for Opinion after I became city county bureau chief, in charge of covering local government and politics. A new generation of bosses tried to stop me on the grounds that reporters shouldn’t express opinions. Rutten and I fought back. The battle grew intense. We had a showdown in one of the executive dining rooms, presided over by the editor, Bill Thomas. My editors presented their case against me. A high-ranked editor, Narda Zacchino, replied it was a freedom of speech issue. Bill, she said, had a right to express his opinions. Thomas listened, and then gave his permission for me to continue writing for Opinon.
Later on, I became a columnist. During the O.J. Simpson trial, my column was devoted to that epic event and Rutten joined the trial coverage, writing legal analyses as part of our team. His newsroom pod was next to mine.
Rutten then became city county bureau chief. Coverage immediately improved as he assembled a team of good reporters and motivated them.
One day, I was unexpectedly appointed city editor. It was during a tumultuous period, and I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone until the move was announced the next day. “You have to tell Tim,” my wife Nancy said when I got home that night. I called. Tim’s wife Leslie Abramson anwered the phone. She put him on, and I said I was his new boss.
Boss-worker didn’t exactly describe our relationship. I’d tell him something. He’d sometimes disagree. We argued, a couple of times so loudly that heads turned in the newsroom. But in the end, he always did what I said. It could be exhausting. But I patterned my style after that of Joe Torre, the great manager of the Dodgers and Yankees baseball teams. Torre understood that managing involved assembling talented, occasionally difficult individuals, harnessing the rebels and molding them all into a team.
As bureau chief, Tim was hands-on editor of our coverage of the Rampart police scandal. Two of his reporters, Scott Glover and Matt Lait, uncovered the first signs of it. Tim guided them and gave them all the time they needed. He brought in other reporters. Their coverage was to a large extent responsible for the remaking of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Years before, Rutten and I talked about how the Times covered such stories, wrapping up developments in one, long complete story, maybe too long for readers to handle. In the unlikely event we ever were in charge, we said, we’d try to splash the daily developments on page one every day, like the Herald did. That would have impact. That was our goal with Rampart and I thought it worked. We couldn’t have done it without the support and guidance of editor Michael Parks and our other editors. It was the old Times at its best.
Anyone who knows Rutten understands why his current editors, told to cut costs, would cast their frightened eyes in his well-paid direction. He isn’t an easy, compliant employee. He dismisses people he doesn’t think are as smart as he is, and this encompasses a pretty big universe. Also, they had something on him—a mistake in a column. For that, they had taken away his book beat. I bet he didn’t react to that and other events with the humility demanded by bosses who never studied the Joe Torre manual of managing.
But he was one of the many terrific Times journalists—some calm and straight arrow, others edgy and mercurial—who created a great newspaper. Torre would have played him every day.
]]>“The Staples deal opened with AEG wanting to float $70 million in bonds to buy up the land that would later be used for L.A. Live,’ Nelson said in an e-mail. “It offered no guaranty that the bond payments would be made. It asked the city to take a chance with them. After Joel threatened an initiative, a guaranty was accepted by the city and the developers.”
Substantially more city bonds are required for this project, which involves tearing down a convention center building to make way for the stadium and putting up another one. The bonds would total $275 million, with 73 percent to be repaid by AEG and 27 percent by the city. The city’s share would come from AEG lease payments and taxes generated by the stadium, such as parking taxes.
The kind of concern Wachs expressed over bond repayment in the Staples deal is now being voiced by city officials and a private consultant to the city in the current project
The consultant, Convention Sports and Leisure International, said that the profitability of a National Football League team “may fall short of expectations.” The CSL report urged the city to protect itself from shortfalls by insisting the AEG share of repaying the bonds is guaranteed by a company “with stronger assets not tied directly to the stadium.” That would be AEG’s big guy, Phil Anschutz, a billionaire whose web of holdings could more than guarantee repayment. AEG is just part of his empire and the consultant indicated that other holdings should back up bond repayment.
City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana and Legislative Analyst Gerry Miller in a report to the council said a NFL team might face financial difficulties. They said the National Football League might impose a relocation fee to any team, such as the San Diego Chargers, that wants to move into a new Los Angeles stadium. “The fee could exceed $500 million,” they said. “If such a fee is assessed, the team could be forced to operate at a loss for a number of years. “ AEG would be a part owner of the team, so the relocation fee could be another threat to its ability to pay off the bonds.
As Nelson pointed out to me, “This is something being discussed behind closed doors in the negotiations.”
In the original Staples deal, Councilman Wachs, an intelligent, skeptical former tax attorney, pried opens the secrecy doors that had enveloped the negotiations. I was writing a column for the Times during this period, crusaded against the secrecy and followed Wachs’ efforts every step of the way. We need some of his smart skepticism now.
]]>This large number of jobs in the midst of a deep recession and high unemployment is one of the generally unnoticed benefits of a project that has drawn many complaints from motorists furious at any interruption of their driving.
“This is very important in creating jobs,” Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told me Saturday morning. The 405 project, he noted, would complete the high occupancy vehicle lane system around the metropolitan area.
I talked to the mayor on the phone as he was headed south on the Harbor Freeway to the funeral of Ramona Hahn, widow of County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn. Traffic was pretty clear, he said, although he expected it to get worse later in the day as crowds arrive for the big soccer game at the Coliseum. By that time, he’ll be at the city’s emergency operation center.
I live in the heart of Carmageddon country, near Olympic Boulevard and Veteran Avenue, one of the designated detour routes. I rose at 6 a.m., went outside to pick up the newspapers and looked at an empty Olympic Boulevard. Around 7:30 a.m., my wife Nancy and I walked south on Veteran to Pico Boulevard to have breakfast at the Colony. There were hardly any cars on Veteran. Most of the houses we passed had cars parked in driveways and it was unusually quiet. That was because, we realized, there was no sound from the nearby 405, whose constant hum is a presence in our lives. The only noise came from news copters circling above.
Pico was quiet, too. After breakfast, we walked east to Prosser Avenue, noticing several motorcycle cops and police cars. We headed back home, stopping to show two non-English speaking tourists how to get to Macy’s.
Villaraigosa returned my phone call late in the morning. We discussed how Carmageddon related to the big transportation picture in Los Angeles County, which involves construction of two more light rail lines, the Westside subway and the high occupancy freeway lanes.
Construction of all these projects will be speeded up, he said, if Congress passes and President Barack Obama signs the America Fast Forward legislation, which would provide immediate loans to local governments for transportation projects, as well as give them power to issue bonds with a federal tax break. These would be repaid with local revenue. In Los Angeles, the money to speed up transportation projects would be repaid by revenue from a one half-cent sales tax approved by the voters in 2008.
Villaraigosa proposed this a while back to finance completion of the projects in 10 years rather than the 30 that had been originally plan. It’s called the 30-10 plan. “It will create 106,000 jobs in 10 years,” said Villaraigosa, who is going to Washington again to lobby for the plan.
I asked him how it could pass a House of Representatives run by conservative Republicans who hate government spending. He said since the program consists of loans, it actually doesn’t increase spending. More important it’s backed by the Republican chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, John Mica.
Without much media emphasis on the job aspect, these projects are already putting people to work in a county where unemployment is almost 12 per cent. While construction crews worked on the 405, many miles away, workers had started on the Gold Line light rail extension through the San Gabriel Valley, which business interests there said will create 2,630 construction jobs plus 4,270 more in businesses related to the project.
I looked out the door. At noon, Olympic Boulevard was still quiet. The news copters had gone away. It may get much worse during the weekend but I’ll let others report the bad news.
Councilman Bill Rosendahl faced scorn and insults from his colleagues when he got the council to hold the meeting. Accomplishing this took all the talking talent and thick skin he had developed in his years as a television discussion show moderator and executive for cable television companies usually run by brutal bosses.
Councilwoman Jan Perry, chief backer of the stadium deal, and her allies were noticeably hostile to Rosendahl’s efforts to open up the process. All Rosendahl wanted was for Perry’s special stadium committee to obey the Brown Open Meeting Act and that the council have a meeting, open to all, on the proposal. He lost on both counts but Council President Eric Garcetti, using his presidential powers, did schedule the July 29 open council meeting on the stadium.
Blogger Ron Kaye saw Rosendahl’s efforts this way: “What Rosendahl has done is to turn this into a litmus test for City Hall: They are either going to look after the public interest in this stadium deal or they are going to be exposed as nothing but stooges for special interests.”
Here are some questions for the council to consider:
Anschutz Entertainment Group, which wants to build the stadium, has promised to repay the almost $300 million in bonds the city would float for the project. The money would be used to tear down an existing convention center building to make room for the stadium and to build a larger exhibition facility nearby. Could we see this promise in writing, please?
What would happen if Anschutz Entertainment Group can’t or won’t repay the bonds? Would the money then come from the city General Fund, dollars that should go for police, firefighters, libraries and other city services?
And who is actually negotiating with the Anschutz Entertainment Group sharpies? I hope it’s not the members of the council special stadium committee.
What about the city’s precarious finances? The new bonds would balloon the city’s total indebtedness for the combined stadium-convention center expansion project to almost $800 million. What impact would this have on the city’s credit, recently downgraded by Moody’s Investor Services?
What about the possibility of a stadium fiasco, such as the one in Cincinnati reported this week by the Wall Street Journal: The paper described it as “…one of the worst professional sports deals ever struck by a local government, soaking up unprecedented tax dollars and county resources while returning little economic benefit.”
What’s the rush? Tim Leiweke, in charge of the project for Anschutz Entertainment Group, insists the council act by July 31, a deadline that won’t be met because the council’s meeting is July 29. Can’t the council and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a big stadium backer, take some time to explore and explain this deal?
“We can vote sometime in August,” Rosendahl said. “If the numbers make sense, if these opportunities make sense, it could be a great deal.”
Thursday, I heard from Councilwoman Perry, who is council president pro tem. In response to my comment that I hoped council members weren't negotiating with AEG, she said talks are in the hands of the chief legislative analyst. He works for the council, by the way.
While her committee is part of a "streamlined process," she said it had "never committed to a deadline" and that the council had agreed only to make a "good faith effort" to finish a draft agreement by the July 31 date sought by AEG.
"There are no secrets here," she said. "To insinuate otherwise only diminishes the process that has been established to take the politics out of the negotiations and protect the city and its taxpayers."
The crowd extended outside the rec center. Neighborhood representatives hammered Tim Leiweke, the stadium developer, with questions so painfully detailed that they could have only come from veterans of many neighborhood council meetings. The union members, one by one, hailed the stadium as a sure cure for unemployment in Los Angeles. Alice Walton, who runs the City Hall Maven blog, twittered furiously, reporting on the proceedings for those fortunate enough not to be there.
In any case, we all could have stayed home. There was no need for comments. The meeting showed this deal is wired for City Hall approval. As the late broadcaster Chick Hearn used to say when the Lakers clinched a victory, ''You can put this one in the refrigerator. The door's closed, the light's out, the eggs are cooling, the butter's getting hard and the Jell-O is jiggling.''
Leiweke, president of the Anschutz Entertainment Group, which wants to build the stadium, pretty well tied up the deal when he told the town meeting at the rec center that he is reducing the amount of the bonds he is requesting from the city from $350 million to somewhere in “the high 200s.” This would reduce the city’s interest payment on the bonds, which should give the few City Hall doubters reason to vote for the deal. AEG can do this, he said, by paying for two parking structures for the stadium, rather than using city bond funds.
Two potential city council skeptics told me it sounded pretty good to them. Bill Rosendahl, who convened the town meeting in his district, said Leiweke’s revised proposal was “a very great plus.” Paul Koretz, who represents a neighboring Westside district, said, “the project keeps improving. Anything that reduces the city’s cost is a real positive.”
Leiweke dominated the show. Coat off but still wearing a vest, he was a star salesman as he touted the stadium, which would be located at the convention center, near AEG’s Staples Center and its LA Live development. As it should be with a great salesman, he didn’t dwell on a potential obstacle—the clout of Ed Roski and his Majestic Realty Co., promoters of an NFL stadium in the city of Industry.
As Victor Valle reported in his excellent book “City of Industry: Genealogies of Power in Southern California,” Roski all but runs Industry, a San Gabriel Valley city with few residents, many industries and warehouses and a huge redevelopment agency. This agency could finance the stadium with bonds and Roski doesn’t have to worry about city council approval. Roski got the state legislature to waive a pesky requirement for an environmental impact report. He can bedevil Leiweke with lawsuits, probably claiming violations of the environmental requirements Roski had lifted for his own stadium plan. He is a master of the Southland’s low-life politics.
With all this facing him, Leiweke has to move fast. He told me that he must have a deal with Los Angeles completed by the end of July so he can go to the NFL with evidence that he and his boss, Phil Anschutz, are ready to procure an NFL team for his stadium. He’s got to do this before the NFL prepares its 2016 schedule, which he hopes would include an LA team. If there’s a delay at LA City Hall, Roski, with his Industry redevelopment financing in place, could grab the prize.
Roski, however, must deal with another factor, the three guiding principles of the real estate business--location, location, location.
To succeed, an NFL team would need the kind of free spending big shot fans—some rich, others faux rich—who buy the high-priced Lakers tickets, except many more of them. You find them in the most affluent parts of the Westside and the West Valley. in the entertainment industry complexes, as well as in downtown businesses and law firms. Would they rather go downtown, now Jack Nicholson country, thanks to the Lakers and their most famous fan? Or could Roski lure them many miles over the freeways to the San Gabriel Valley and the city of Industry, a rich but plain place with its warehouses and political power?
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