Bill Boyarsky

Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson was cautious Monday when he was asked at a downtown luncheon about the city hall corruption investigation.

Speaking to a packed banquet room at the Palm, Wesson brought up the probe himself at the beginning of his talk. He said. "Everyone here knows there has been some drama at city hall." He said that when the probe, by the FBI, is completed "it will insure the integrity of city hall...will still stand." He appeared at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum, organized by public affairs consultant Emma Schafer.

As for himself, Wesson said, "I personally did not know anything about those things until they were reported in the media." He said, "I have not been contacted" by investigators. "That is all I have to say," he said.

Los Angeles Times reporters Emily Alpert Reyes and David Zahniser wrote that the explosion of high rises in downtown Los Angeles is being financed "in good measure" by Chinese companies and investors. Now, they reported, "some of these projects have become a focus of federal agents seeking evidence of possible bribery, extortion, money laundering and other crimes." They based their story on a warrant issued to federal officers. It showed the feds are seeking records relating to City Councilmen Jose Huizar and Curren Price and current and former aides to Huizar, Wesson, and Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Huizar was chair of the council's powerful Planning and Land Use Management Committee, known for short as the PLUM committee. It earned that nickname because serving on it is a plum job for council members seeking campaign contributions.

With Huizar in charge, PLUM approved big office buildings, hotels, condos and other major projects in downtown L.A. and other parts of the city.

Wesson removed Huizar when news of the FBI probe broke. He was asked at the Current Affairs Forum lunch whether he regretted appointing Huizar chair and why he was removed. Wesson declined to answer.

Whatever the outcome of the investigation, it places those being questioned by the FBI in a certain amount of peril. A lie or an evasive answer to agents can bring down federal charges, as the Trump-Russia investigation has shown. It's probably time for some people around city hall to, as they say in Washington, lawyer up.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:47 PM | Permalink

No matter how the dispute between the teachers union and the Los Angeles school district ends, the root cause of failure in L.A. schools and among their students won't go away.

At the heart of the public schools' troubles in L.A. and other urban areas is income inequality. The number of poor is growing. Poverty shapes schools afflicted with it. Lower class size, higher teacher pay, charter schools, more school nurses and other proposals may help. But they won't reduce the barrier poverty imposes on children and parents, preventing them from rising to the middle class.

Reporter Andrea Castillo [fixed] showed why in a Los Angeles Times story. She told of Merwinn Rojas, 11, and his mother, Angelica Valdovinos. Valdovinos works nights at McDonald's four days a week. She gets home at 5 a.m. She walks her son to and from Foshay Learning Center, his school, to church classes on Friday nights and to Saturday morning college prep classes at USC. She recently separated from Merwinn's father and is worried about paying rent.

Times columnist Steve Lopez, after two months at an elementary school in high-poverty Pacoima, wrote, "We spend a fortune on education, but 80% of L.A. Unified’s several hundred thousand students live in poverty, and schools don’t have enough resources to compensate for a skewed economy and societal challenges beyond their control."

The Public Policy Institute of California, studying figures through 2016, said that about 7.4 million of the state’s 39.7 million residents couldn’t afford to pay for sufficient housing, food, medical care, transportation or other basic needs. A family of four would need an income of $31,000 a year to meet those needs.

Reporter Ricardo Cano noted in CALmatters that California is among the lowest 10 states in per pupil funding although the public schools have received more money in the past few years to make up for Great Recession spending cuts.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget would give substantial help to the Los Angeles Unified School District and others around the state. It offers the union and the LAUSD a path toward settlement. Newsom proposed funds to reduce LAUSD's pension liability; a big increase in state aid for grades ranging from kindergarten to community college; and money to reduce class size, and hire more nurses, counselors and librarians.

This, of course, isn't going to end income disparity or cure poverty. But it would make life a bit easier and more hopeful for Angelica Valdovinos, her son Merwinn Rojas and many thousands of other poor families.

Because of Newsom, the gap between the union and the LAUSD is far from unbridgeable. They shouldn't waste the opportunity, now or in the future.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 11:29 AM | Permalink

I'm always amused by the nickname of the Los Angeles City Council's Planning and Land Use Management Committee, known for short as the PLUM committee. PLUM is perfectly descriptive. Serving on it is a plum job for council members seeking campaign contributions.

Its members approve all the big office buildings, hotels, condos, apartments and other major projects in the city. That is what makes their job such an excellent post. Property owners, builders, architects, engineers and others involved in the construction of these projects are among the leading contributors to council campaigns. PLUM committee members are high on their lists. The donors' names come up frequently in the City Ethics Commission's listing of campaign contributors. In 2017, the anti-developer Coalition To Preserve L.A., whose executive director is former journalist Jill Stewart, reported on the contributors and the meetings they had with council members. The report was entitled "Play To Pay In The City of L.A."

The PLUM committee has been in the news recently. The chairman, Councilman Jose Huizar, was removed after the FBI raided his office and home. The FBI hasn't said why. One of the boxes taken away was labeled "fund raising." And the committee is likely to continue in the spotlight. Pressure is increasing for city hall to allow more development to reduce housing costs in a city afflicted with high homelessness. The PLUM committee will hear the proposals.

City Councilman David Ryu wants to do something about this kind of thing. He proposed an ordinance that would restrict campaign contributions "from applicants for large development projects that require city approval.

"When applicants for large development projects, and others who have business before the city of Los Angeles contribute widely to political campaigns, and in some cases flout campaign finance rules entirely, we lose public trust," Ryu said in a letter to the ethics commission in June. "Unlike the city's restriction on campaign contributions from companies seeking city contracts, no such restriction currently exists for applicants for large development projects seeking city approvals on potentially lucrative projects." He said his proposal "would increase trust in government and reduce the appearance and risk of quid pro quo behavior."

Predictably, the commission tabled Ryu's proposal. Los Angeles Times reporters Emily Alpert Reyes and David Zahniser, who have uncovered much about the developer-contributor-council connection, wrote: "Commissioners did not vote down the proposal but deferred a decision on it, saying they wanted to look more closely at who would be covered by such restrictions. For example, commission staff cautioned that a person who seeks council approval for a new development might not be the one whose financial interests are at stake." Of course, anyone seeking council approval for a big project is enough of a big shot in the proposal to have a financial interest at stake.

I'm not surprised. When I was on the ethics commission several years ago, it was very difficult to toughen the campaign laws and when we tried, a city council committee usually killed our proposals.

I hope this ethics commission gets tough and approves Ryu's proposal. From there, it should be passed by the city council and signed by the mayor. Perhaps then, membership on the Planning and Land Use Management Committee won't be such a PLUM.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 8:25 AM | Permalink

Gov. Jerry Brown's pardon of former State Sen. Rod Wright focuses attention on one of our most useless laws, the one imposing residency requirements on state legislators and city council members.

Wright was convicted in 2014 of felony perjury and voting fraud for living outside his Southwest Los Angeles-Inglewood district. Wright had sworn that he lived in a modest dwelling in Inglewood. A jury believed what the district attorney charged, that Wright actually lived in a large home in upscale Baldwin Hills, outside the district. Brown said Wright had lived a worthwhile life since his conviction and deserved a pardon.

That same year, former Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon and his wife were found guilty of lying about their residence before his race for city council. An appellate court threw out the convictions, saying the trial judge had issued improper jury instructions.

I cheered for Alarcon then just as I did for Wright when he got his pardon last week. The law said they should live in their districts, have a "domicile" within the boundaries. But domicile is too vague of a term for a criminal conviction. I read the law, as related in the Alarcon decision, and couldn't figure it out. Then of course, there is the way city council district boundaries are shifted around during reapportionment to meet the political needs of the lawmakers in charge of drawing the lines.

The argument for the residency requirement is that it assures lawmakers will be responsive to their constituents. If that were true, why are district boundaries moved in such weird, politically motivated ways in reapportionments? A lawmaker's constituents are forever subject to change. The poor constituent doesn't know who to call.

Finally, these cases take up investigatory resources that could be used elsewhere, such as fighting crime and corruption. The appellate court decision in the Alarcon case told a tale of investigators interviewing neighbors, checking out his homes, even questioning workers at his kid's school. It's noteworthy that there are no district residency requirements for members of Congress.

Gov. Brown just signed a bill, introduced by Wright's successor, easing the residency requirements and making it more difficult for prosecutors to go after such cases.

Still, why not just wipe out the residency requirement.

"Not living in the district is fine, as long as people know about it," Joe Matthews wrote on the Fox&Hounds website. Or as UCI law professor Rick Hasen wrote on his Election Law Blog, "The idea that we need to protect voters from carpetbagging outsiders is outdated and patronizing. If voters don’t want the outsider to be the representative, they can vote that way. But does anyone think the quality of Alarcon’s representation of his district depended at all on whether his primary residence was a few miles outside his district? And even if they did, the remedy would be to vote him out of office."

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:01 PM | Permalink

Central Library west entrance. LA Observed photo.

The central library is the intellectual town square of downtown Los Angeles. Authors speak to book lovers gathered in the library's simply designed, elegant Mark Taper Auditorium. Exhibits, such as current "Radical Kinships," honoring 30 years of Homeboy Industries and its work among L.A. youth, tell the story of the city. The library's New Americans Initiative guides immigrants through American life rather than scorning them.

The great facility, itself, is honored in Susan Orlean's excellent "The Library Book," telling the story of the 1986 fire, which all but destroyed the library. It was rebuilt through the efforts of Angelenos--rich, middle class and poor who would not let it die.

Wednesday night, the library continued its community involvement with a deep dive into one of the most important aspects of civic life--the courts. It was serious and detailed. No Trump. No hot speculation on the plans of Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom. Yet the auditorium was almost filled for a conversation between Kathryn Mickle Werdigar, a retired California Supreme Court justice, and Jim Newton, an author, UCLA faculty member and editor of UCLA's public policy magazine Blueprint. The California Supreme Court Historical Society, along with Public Counsel, sponsored the event. Public Counsel is the public interest law firm that defends the city's poor and helpless.

Werdegar is a restrained and modest person and it took all of Newton's journalistic skill to draw her out.

Like most judges, Werdegar is sympathetic to voters confronted by long lists of appellate and other judges on the ballot. With the exception of voters getting information from sources such as the Los Angeles Times and the League of Women Voters, Californians know little about the judges. But she wouldn't do away with such elections. "I don't think lifetime appointments are a good thing," she said.

The most interesting part of the conversation was when Newton asked Werdegar about how the court is dealing with societal and technical change. He mentioned privacy, water, technology and other aspects of science. These issues often end up in court, finding their way to the Supreme Court.

Newton asked if the court was equipped to handle such matters. "Probably not," Werdegar replied. "Science gets ahead of us."

It was a worthwhile evening and lawyer Bob Wolfe, a devoted historian of the courts, deserves much credit for helping put it together.

Susan Orlean's "The Library Book" has made our downtown library a national celebrity. Wednesday night's nuts and bolts discussion of the Supreme Court reminds us of another side of the library, always working to educate and explain L.A. and bring the community together.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 1:37 PM | Permalink

Many Korean Americans, especially the politically active, still resent a 2011 redistricting that split the geographically sprawling Korean community among council districts. The community was divided among non-Asian American candidates who fancied campaign contributions from Koreatown's banks, stores, clubs, restaurants and other prosperous businesses.

L.A. is well known for short memories, especially when it comes to an esoteric subject such as redrawing city council district lines. But among some Korean Americans the hard feelings remain and will be a force when the council engages in another once-a-decade reapportionment in 2021. Their memories go back a long way to the 1992 riot when business people and residents felt the city was too slow in protecting Koreatown from assault.

"We have to step up," City Councilman David Ryu told the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum at the Palm downtown Friday noon. "It's about equity. It's about opportunity." He spoke of "helping all those families get the opportunities I got."

Ryu beat city hall when he first ran for the city council in 2015 and defeated a candidate backed by the powerful council president, Herb Wesson. Wesson then welcomed the newcomer onto his team and rewarded him with speedy approval of street repair and other projects valuable to Ryu's constituents.

But getting there wasn't easy. His Fourth District, reaching from Sherman Oaks through Griffith Park to the Miracle Mile, is 80 per cent Caucasian.

In introducing Ryu to the Current Affairs Forum luncheon, Sergio Rascon, business manager of Laborers' Local 300, told a revealing story of how the councilman succeeded. In the primary election Ryu had asked Rascon for the endorsement of Local 300, a largely Latino labor union which wields considerable power with its endorsements and its grassroots workers. Rascon told him the local was endorsing someone else in the primary. When Ryu got into the runoff, he asked Rascon again. The union leader invited him to speak to the members. What should I say? asked Ryu. Tell them your story, replied Rascon.

His story resonated with the members, immigrants or children of immigrants who have come up the hard way. Ryu came to the United States with his family at the age of five. They were on food stamps and the family of six lived in a two-bedroom 700 square foot apartment. The union members had known that kind of life. They endorsed Ryu and played a major part in his victory.

For now Ryu is immersed in the many projects of his diverse district. But when the maneuvering over redistricting begins in 2021, expect Ryu to step up, as promised.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:26 PM | Permalink

The late 1970s were a revolutionary time for middle class and working class Los Angeles area renters who saw their way of life damaged by inflation and a growing housing shortage. Their anger spread from their apartments and homes on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley and led to the passage of the city's current rent control law.

It was also a force in the voters' approval in 1978 of Proposition 13, the famous property tax limit measure, which had its roots among the homeowners and apartment dwellers of the Valley. Yet despite rent control and Proposition 13, L.A.'s housing shortage and spiraling rents have grown worse.

The story is told in a report by the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. One of the shapers of the report is a veteran of the '70s' conflicts, former Los Angeles County supervisor and Los Angeles city councilman Zev Yaroslavsky. He is a senior fellow at the center and director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and a professor in the history department.

The author of the report is Alisa Belinkoff Katz, a fellow at the history and policy center. UCLA doctoral candidates Peter Chesney, Lindsay Alissa King and Marques Vestal contributed invaluable historical research. It will be discussed at a history department symposium at 7 p.m. Oct. 16 at the UCLA Faculty Center.

The report convincingly links rent increases and the housing shortage to the homelessness which afflicts the LA area today. It declares, "While seniors and other tenants in the 1970s were hard hit by rent increases, they were decidedly middle class. They had something to fall back on - job skills, small savings, or investments. When push came to shove, many could find ways to make do. The victims of today’s housing affordability crisis include the lowest-income renters who make up a much-higher percentage of the city’s population. They have little to fall back on - except the street."

Center director David Myers, a UCLA history professor, said, "Los Angeles is experiencing a perfect storm of affordable housing shortfalls, rising rents, and dropping incomes. It is crushing the poorest citizens of the city, particularly Latinos and blacks, with disproportionate force, and this interplay has exacerbated homelessness--the great social and moral scourge of our time and an epidemic that threatens the life and soul of our city."

One recommendation in the report proposes extending rent control to units that are not currently controlled, such as properties built since 1979 and single-family homes.

As a reporter and bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, I covered the homeowner and renter movements of the 1970s. I particularly remember the storefront volunteer offices in the Valley, first ignored then recognized as birthplaces of the movement. The grandchildren of these movement people should put the same energy toward convincing elected officials to strengthen the rent control law and continuing efforts to increase the availability of affordable housing.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 7:47 AM | Permalink

The San Francisco state senator who wants to build more tall buildings around rail stations and bus stops will have to come up with legislation that is more politically acceptable to cities and suspicious neighborhood groups like those in Los Angeles, says Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon.

Rendon spoke at the Palm in downtown Los Angeles Thursday at a luncheon meeting of the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum, arranged by public affairs consultant Emma Schafer.

I asked Rendon how he felt about the proposal by San Francisco Democratic Sen. Scott Weiner, who provoked a storm in city halls and in neighborhood meetings around the state with his proposal. It would have made it easier to build apartments and condos near subway and light rail stations and bus stops. Buildings of up to four and five stories would be allowed. Weiner and building industry supporters said it would stimulate housing construction in a state that badly needs it. Opponents agree, but "not in my backyard."

"We need more housing stock," Rendon said. But he said Weiner's bill, which failed in a Senate committee, "politically had a lot of problems" and that "a couple of steps were needed."

Rendon's views will be important to Weiner if he wants to revive his plan. They will also be important to Los Angeles, at the center of the housing controversy.

With term limits modified, permitting lawmakers to serve 12 years in a house, Rendon, who became speaker in 2016, could hold on to the powerful office until 2024. This means he would be the most experienced, and potentially powerful man in the Capitol. If the favored Democratic nominee, Gavin Newsom, wins, Rendon will be dealing with a governor whose experience can't compare with the incumbent, Jerry Brown. (Rendon said he had trouble remembering the Republican candidate's name--Cox. He couldn't recall his first name, John.)

On a number of issues, Rendon and his committee chairs will be calling the shots. "The ability to serve up to 12 years will have a tremendous impact," Rendon said, declaring, "There will be a shift of power. The legislature will have more power than before."

Sen. Weiner will have to deal with him as he pursues his goal of more housing density and more tall buildings.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 7:03 PM | Permalink

When my wife Nancy and I drove to downtown Los Angeles recently, we remarked on the changes since she and I retired from Arco and the Los Angeles Times many years ago.

The permanence of those institutions was part of our lives. We figured they would be there forever. But nothing is permanent, especially in L.A. Bigger and newer buildings now overshadow the Arco tower, where she was in charge of political communications. The sign with the oil company name has been replaced by that of a law firm. The Times building, my alma mater, a mile or so to the east, has been emptied of its newspaper connections. The journalists and equipment have moved to new headquarters in El Segundo.

We continued east on the 110, passing the new buildings, making a mental note to dine at Cafe Pinot on her upcoming birthday and perhaps drop in on the adjoining central library, two of our favorite downtown spots. Then off at Fourth Street, through city streets to attend a Sunday afternoon concert by the California Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, one of the new downtown's greatest adornments.

As I often do, I took a moment to look at three civic center area buildings that date back to long before Disney Hall. I worry that they--and the important work done inside them--will be ignored amid the hype over the new downtown, its hotels, restaurants and fading old office buildings from the 1920s and 1930s now converted into expensive residences. The buildings I worry about are the county Hall of Administration, Los Angeles City Hall and the criminal courts building.

The criminal justice system is shaped by decisions made every day in the courthouse--in courtrooms, offices and corridors where attorneys work out deals. The county building and the city hall are home to countless decisions, big and small, that determines many aspects of our lives.

When I was a reporter for the Times, I spent many hours in these buildings, sitting through meetings, waiting outside offices, trying vainly to stay awake through long discussions of transportation. This is called beat reporting and generations of reporters used to do it for a living. From such nose-to-the- grindstone work, government was held accountable on a daily basis. Often, the beat reporters would put the dailies together for big stories, scoops.

This was the heart and soul of local journalism, pretty much lost as advertising, readers and viewers went elsewhere. As I look at the Hall of Administration and think of all the reporters who battled to crack the secretive code of county government, I hope the neglectful days have bottomed out. This is the time for the new owner of the LA Times, the executives of the revitalized KPCC and other new media to step up to the challenge. Disney Hall is inspiring and many of the new restaurants and bars are very good. They are fun to write about but the media shouldn't devote all its attention to them while important, if sometimes dry, business is done elsewhere.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 1:14 PM | Permalink

Hilda Solis at the Board of Supervisors in the Hall of Administration.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis agrees with critics of the Los Angeles County Homeless Services Authority, which is in charge of coordinating the efforts of Los Angeles, other cities, the county and the many non-profit agencies involved in helping the homeless.

Solis spoke Friday at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum luncheon at the Palm downtown. The banquet room was filled with representatives of the airport, the harbor, Metro and law and engineering companies, all wanting to be seen by Solis. As one of five supervisors, she has a say in a variety of programs the audience members are touting.

Solis was asked about a state auditor's report that the homeless authority is too slow and cumbersome in dispersing funds for homeless aid. The criticism is particularly relevant now that Los Angeles city and county voters have approved billions for the homeless.
Do you think things are in order or are "tweaks" are needed? she was asked.

"Many tweaks," she replied, with a tinge of sarcasm in her voice.

Other critics have portrayed the authority as a bureaucracy that has trouble getting things done. Solis said she has taken matters into her hands and found money for instruction for officials of the many small county cities in her First District to teach them how to navigate the bureaucracy as they seek funds for their own homeless programs.

Her district has many homeless. It extends from downtown Los Angeles through the Southeast cities of Huntington Park and South Gate and into the San Gabriel Valley, where she said there are 150 homeless encampments on the riverbed. There are 24 cities in her district, ranging from Los Angeles to suburban Claremont, each with their own take on homelessness.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:15 PM | Permalink

class="mt-image-left" style="float: left; margin: 0 0px 0px 0;" />Los Angeles World Airports rendering.

They are two of the most influential people in Los Angeles, in charge of billions of dollars in construction that is reminiscent of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal when it comes to creation of blue-collar jobs and impact on the economy.

Deborah Flint and Phil Washington could probably walk through L.A. without being recognized by most people. But the women and men who crowded the upstairs banquet room at the Palm Restaurant downtown for a Current Affairs Forum luncheon Friday knew who they were, and the details of their agencies' projects.

Flint, the speaker, is executive director of the Los Angeles World Airports, which runs LAX. Washington is CEO of LA Metro, which runs Los Angeles county bus system and its fast-growing collection of commuter rail lines. He was at the head table, just to her right, and didn't speak.

The audience consisted of representatives of the architects, engineers, construction companies, law firms, lobbyists, public affairs consultants, campaign managers, organized labor and others who hope to profit from the wave of construction initiated by the airport and Metro. As I looked around the room, I thought this is the hidden power of L.A., the well-connected insiders who know where things happen--and often make them happen themselves.

I asked Flint about the impact of the construction by the airport and Metro, some of whose projects are linked. "It's an opportunity to create a new economy," she said. The area, she said, "is very fortunate to have that vision."

The airport is about to begin construction of a $4.9-billion people mover that will take people from a facility away from the airport and bring them to the terminal buildings. Rental car companies will be housed there, and passengers will be picked up at the facility. Most of the funds will come from airport revenues, and the rest from tax-exempt bonds issued by the consortium of construction, engineering and other companies that will operate the system.

Illustrating the importance of the LAX-Metro collaboration, the people mover will connect to a light rail line running from the Expo line at Crenshaw south to a station near the airport. The cost of that project is $1.776 billion. In addition, Metro is planning a light rail line extending from the San Fernando Valley, through the Santa Monica Mountains and possibly to LAX, a multi billion-dollar proposal.

And, at LAX, Flint said at the luncheon, plans are to have all terminals renovated by 2028 plus adding 12 gates to the Tom Bradley international terminal with a tunnel connecting them to the main Bradley building.

She called Metro's Washington "a partner" in the effort and aid with him LAX had "found ways to minimize disruption on all our projects."

Flint acknowledged complaints about service at LAX and said they are discussed weekly by airport staff meeting as a "Guest Experience Council."

Having spent the last few years writing about the collapse and now the slow rise of the blue-collar economy in the Los Angeles area, I thought her most important message was about jobs. And the most interesting news was the job producing collaboration between LAX and Metro.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:39 PM | Permalink

Mayor Eric Garcetti, facing one of the toughest decisions of his career, is being urged to consider a Latino to replace Police Chief Charlie Beck, who is retiring.

Garcetti press secretary Alex Comisar told me in an email that the "police chief selection process is underway. The Personnel Department posted its position advertisement on March 1, marking the beginning of the open application period. Once that phase ends, the Police Commission will review the applications and ultimately give Mayor Garcetti a shortlist for his consideration."

Alan Clayton, a redistricting expert who works to increase Latino representation, had told me of the effort to persuade Garcetti to add a Latino to the list of potential chiefs.

He showed me a list of Latino police executives around the country he said deserve consideration. Santa Monica City Councilman Tony Vazquez and Estefania Zavala, a UCLA public policy student and a Santa Monica city government intern, put the list together.

"This shows we have a very strong pool of extremely qualified candidates and we have never had a Latino chief of police," Clayton told me. "Los Angeles has extremely few Latino department heads and this would be an excellent chance to reach out to the Latino community and demonstrate there are employment opportunities in the city of Los Angeles."

Here's the list. More details on each police executive are available on the Internet. Councilman Vazquez and Zavala deserve a lot of credit for assembling the names and putting them out for public discussion.

----

Al Venegas, deputy chief, Santa Monica Police Department.

Anthony Trevino, assistant chief, San Antonio Police Department.

Robert N. Arcos, deputy chief, Los Angeles Police Department.

Carlos Rojas, chief, Bay Area Rapid Transit District police.

Art Acevedo, chief, Houston Police Department.

David Reynoso, chief, El Monte Police Department.

Eddie Romero, officer, Bergen County Sheriff's Office, New Jersey.

Edgardo (Eddie) Garcia, chief, San Jose Police Department.

George Gascón, district attorney and former police chief San Francisco, former Los Angeles Police Department assistant chief.

Hector Sainez , assistant chief, San Francisco Police Department.

Hector Velez assistant chief, Prince George's County, Maryland, police.

Jackie Gomez-Whiteley, program director at the California Police Chiefs Executive Leadership Institute

Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar, sheriff, Bexar County, Texas.

Jerry Gutierrez, assistant sheriff, Riverside County Sheriff's Department.

Juan J. Perez, director, Miami-Dade Police Department.

Kelly Martinez, assistant sheriff, San Diego County Sheriff's Department.

Kevin Navarro, first deputy superintendent, Chicago Police Department

Lisa G.Rosales, chief, Glendora Police Department.

Lupe Valdez, sheriff, Dallas County, Texas.

Martha Montalvo, executive assistant chief at Houston Police Department

Phillip L. Sanchez, chief, Pasadena Police Department.

Raul Quezada, chief, Anaheim Police Department.

Robert Luna, chief, Long Beach Police Department.

Roberto L. Hylton, senior law enforcement advisor for the Federal
Emergency Management Agency and former Prince George's County police chief.

Ruby Flores, commander, Los Angeles Police Department Hollenbeck Division.

Sergio Diaz, Riverside police chief, formerly Los Angeles Police Department operations chief.
.
Tina Nieto, chief of police, city of Marina, formerly commanding officer of Los Angeles Police Department's West Los Angeles area.

Ed Gonzalez, sheriff of Harris County, Texas.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 2:56 PM | Permalink

Many public officials are already enthusiastically counting the tax dollars that legalization of marijuana will bring into their public treasuries, but not Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas.

In contrast to the enthusiasm in political circles, the media and among voters over legalization, approved in 2016, the supervisor offered a cautious, even gloomy, vision. He spoke Wednesday to a packed banquet room at a Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum luncheon at the Palm, downtown, organized by public affairs consultant Emma Schafer.

"A full 30 percent of those who are homeless suffer from substance abuse disorders and the like," he said. "The legalization of cannabis will impact this homeless crisis in a way that we ought to be honest with each other about."

Ridley-Thomas said the appearance of marijuana shops would hurt neighborhoods. Plans to revitalize the Crenshaw area with completion of a light rail line could be damaged by such enterprises, he said.

Nor did he agree that the marijuana industry would create many jobs. He noted scornfully that marijuana business people call this vision of more jobs "social equity." He said, "This term has been co-opted by those who think they are going to democratize the cannabis industry, cause those communities that are underdeveloped with a high rate of unemployment to suddenly be free at last. I beg to differ. "

He compared the shops to the liquor stores that proliferate in poor parts of his African American and Latino South Los Angeles district. He warned against "a concentration of unhealthy businesses like liquor stores and the like."

He also warned that neurologists are finding that cannabis induces adolescent psychosis, which "is increasing at an alarming rate."

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:53 PM | Permalink

Pressure will be heavy in the coming year on Mayor Eric Garcetti and county supervisors board chairman Mark Ridley-Thomas to show much more progress with the so-far insoluble housing-homeless problem.

They are the two most powerful and prominent elected officials in our tangle of local government, which consists of Los Angeles County, the city of Los Angeles and 87 other cities within the county boundaries.

Garcetti was the prime backer of the city's $1.2 billion Los Angeles city bond, Measure HHH, to build housing for the homeless. Ridley-Thomas was the most vocal and active of the five supervisors campaigning for a separate measure, the quarter-cent sales tax that voters approved in March to provide mental health, substance abuse counseling and other services for the homeless. The way it is supposed to work is that the bond will finance apartments and county funds will provide for social workers, nurses, doctors and counselors for the residents. Help and housing, all in the same building.

The other four supervisors will hate this column for singling out Ridley-Thomas. They all think they are queens and kings of their sprawling districts. The Los Angeles City Council members will hate it too. They are under the impression they are royalty in their districts. To them, the mayor is an annoyance, detracting from their glory.

But Garcetti is the political leader of the city, with great appointive and budget power. Of the county supes, Ridley-Thomas has more political smarts than his colleagues, with connections they can only dream of. And he is the most influential African American lawmaker in local government.

Right now, the homeless-housing situation is a mess. So many agencies are involved that I have found it impossible to get my arms around it. Their bosses speak in a bureaucratese that even I, well acquainted with the issue, find completely confusing.

City Atty. Mike Feuer says Los Angeles needs hire someone to lead the effort. We already did that when we elected Garcetti to another term. Garcetti should get a daily report on what's being done with the bond money to provide housing--and for constructing shelters in the short term. And he should share the information with us.

As for Ridley-Thomas, he should use his power and smarts to hammer county mental officials to provide the services the homeless need. I've seen the pages of questions that homeless people must answer to get into the system that is supposed to provide them help. Believe me, this bureaucratic approach makes it almost hopeless.

Everyone who walks by the growing number of homeless encampments wants to know who is to blame. Well-meaning and industrious reporters offer explanations. But journalists get lost in the weeds of the homeless-housing issue. I know. I've been lost in those weeds, too.

Let's make it simple and bring it down to two people with the power to clean up the mess--Mayor Garcetti and Supervisor Ridley-Thomas.

As City Atty. Feuer and Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Bonin said, this is an emergency. It's as bad as flood or fire. Garcetti and Ridley-Thomas should meet every week on it, and give joint public progress reports on their web sites, Twitter and Facebook and in press conferences. Hopefully, the local media will cover them. A shaken-up housing-homeless bureaucracy may start acting as first responders instead of desk jockeys.

It won't happen without Ridley-Thomas and Garcetti. Nothing will work unless they work together.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 2:16 PM | Permalink

I met Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Bonin last week outside of his West Los Angeles office for a tour of homeless housing in his 11th District.

No council member takes more heat on the homeless issue than Bonin, whose district extends from around the Pacific Palisades through Brentwood, Mar Vista, Del Rey and Venice. Venice, in particular, is a hothouse of homeless controversy. Homeless live on the beach and sidewalks, infuriating the owners and tenants of increasingly upscale homes.

I had written in LA Observed how Councilman Jose Huizar had been working to facilitate construction of homeless housing outside the Skid Row part of his district. I noted there were no plans to build such housing in rich Brentwood or upscale Mar Vista.

I had a point, Bonin emailed, but was incomplete. My column, Bonin said, "is certainly missing a lot of stuff on the Westside." He said, "The cost of land has made building homeless or permanent supportive housing prohibitively difficult in parts of the city, especially mine, so I have been a very big advocate of using city owned properties for homeless and affordable housing." We agreed he'd drive me around the districts and show me some projects.

We looked at the old West LA animal shelter at Missouri and Bundy; a big city parking lot in Venice and an abandoned maintenance yard where housing has been proposed but neighbors object. Residents also worry about the loss of parking spaces in Venice but Bonin said the spaces would be replaced in the proposed new development.

He concedes that his efforts, like those of other councilmembers and Mayor Eric Garcetti, have fallen short.

"There is no emergency-like response, " he said as we looked at the Missouri and Bundy site. "There is no FEMA-like response, " he said, referring to the federal relief agency which steps in with aid for disasters such as hurricanes. "Yet it is a FEMA-like emergency that requires a FEMA-like response." The last homeless census showed more than 34,000 in the city of Los Angeles, part of the 57,000-plus in the entire county, a 23 percent increase from the year before.

The site at Missouri and Bundy offered hope. A total of 81 units for the working poor and homeless are expected to be built. The neighbors are pretty much on board, and permits are being expedited because the site is on a "transit corridor," near the Bundy metro station. But construction won't start until 2019. "We need to put the financing together," Bonin said.

That's a matter that bugs Angelenos who voted for a $1.2 billion bond, Measure HHH, to build housing for the homeless. A ponderous regulatory bureaucracy stands between the money and actual construction. In addition, a provision in the controversial tax bill in Congress threatens to eliminate some of the federal aid needed to put together the public-private packages that will finance this and similar projects.

Meanwhile the number of homeless continues to grow. "There is much more of a demand than there is supply," Bonin said. I saw this Sunday, as my wife Nancy and I walked to the market. Three large tents had gone up on Olympic Boulevard, under the 405 Freeway. More encampments are in other places along the freeway. Bonin was right when he said this is an emergency.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 2:29 PM | Permalink

From the Space To Lead report.

Los Angeles, both forgetful and ignorant of its past, is constantly worrying about the future. The past, however, shapes the future, and that was the theme of a report released Thursday, Space To Lead: A Century of Civic Leadership In Los Angeles.

The report was done by Future of Cities: Los Angeles," an organization founded and headed by civic and political activist Donna Bojarsky. I went to its unveiling, well attended by academics, politicians and others who worry about LA. It was held appropriately at La Plaza de Cultura Y Artes “ near where Los Angeles had been created by Spain.

The report noted the good and the bad. "If necessity is the mother of invention, the diffuse power structure of Los Angeles has necessitated an experimental aesthetic and sense of innovation often revered," the report said. "Yet there is a danger in such reverence because Los Angeles has a history of erasing or forgetting the past in pursuit of the reinvention of civic identity unmoored from historical precedents or ties. The destruction of Chavez Ravine and Bunker Hill are the best-known examples of this amnesia."

By chance--or through my own stupidity--I got a good view of the immensity of the task facing the futurists. I had made the usual male mistake of not reading directions. So I got off Metro at Seventh Street and walked to what I thought was the address, 501 Main Street. I ended up at Fifth and South Main, the gateway to Skid Row. I looked at the directions. The address was Fifth and North Main.

As I walked the 10 blocks to my destination, I saw the immense amount of work confronting those trying to build a better L.A. The revived downtown, increasingly beloved by millennials, is a few blocks south, in the Staples Center area. But I was on a neglected, uninviting portion of Main Street. The Los Angeles Theater, once one of America's great movie palaces, was gated. The single room occupancy hotels looked grim. Sad looking homeless people walked the streets.

Once I reached the "Space to Lead" event, I heard some of the speakers talk of the earlier L.A. when rich white male bosses build the old downtown but also created the conditions that led to its demise. The complex causes of homelessness--mental illness, substance abuse, racism, unaffordable rents and more--are rooted in the past of a city run by those who pretty much didn't look beyond their country clubs and mansions.

"A diverse city but not an inclusive city," Bojarsky said of today’s Los Angeles.

Hopefully, the city will blend its past with the far-different present. One of the speakers was Los Angeles City Councilman David Ryu, a Korean American, who noted he was elected by a coalition of voters. City Councilman Bob Blumenfeld said his family "is a coalition." His wife is African America and they are raising their kids as Jews.

The report is useful, as was the gathering celebrating its release. It doesn't have definite answers but gives perspective to today's problems. "History matters, " said William Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:11 PM | Permalink

Get off a train at a London underground station or similar facilities in many of the world's big cities and you can stop for coffee, pick up your laundry or shop in a small market for something to take home for dinner.

With Metro expanding at a fairly rapid clip, why can't we do that here? Banks, ATMs, retail and restaurants would produce revenue for the huge system of trains and buses and be a great convenience for riders. About the only commercial development I've seen are condos across the street from a couple of light rail stations.

I asked Phil Washington, Metro's CEO, about this when he spoke Monday at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum, which is arranged by public affairs consultant Emma Schafer.

"We would like to look at those things," Washington replied. He said he'd like to see some companies make proposals to Metro for such enterprises in the stations.

After lunch, one of his aides told me that the Century City station of the Purple Line Wilshire subway may be the first to offer rider-friendly commercial enterprises. More stations, above and below ground, will be built in the future and they could also have shops and stores.

As usual, Washington was full of ideas. In fact, he has established a department to sift through unsolicited ideas to expand Metro's imagination and vision. As it expands, Metro will have a tremendous impact on Los Angeles and its environs. Metro, Washington said, has authority over much land around its stations, and is developing housing there, 35 percent of which will be classified as affordable.

With all these plans, Metro should provide a place for a quick cup of coffee and a bagel for a commuter scurrying off to work.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:15 PM | Permalink

LA Observed file photo

Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon counts construction cranes as he heads for downtown Los Angeles. It helps him compare booming downtown to his economically depressed and neglected district in Southeast Los Angeles County.

“I lost track at 17,” he said recently at a luncheon of the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum, hosted by public affairs consultant Emma Schafer.

Such cranes are rare in Rendon’s 63rd Assembly District, which includes the working class cities of Bell, Cudahy, Hawaiian Gardens, Lakewood, Lynwood, Maywood, Paramount, South Gate and a northern portion of Long Beach. The Westside and the San Fernando Valley get the construction, both private and public.

The dining room at the Palm restaurant downtown was packed with the Current Affairs Forum’s usual crowd of lawyers, lobbyists, engineers, government officials and others whose livelihoods depend on construction, much of it related to mass transit. Not many of them, I thought, had been to Paramount recently. Rendon and his Southeast colleagues will have to use all their political smarts, plus mobilize a growing number of younger voters, to attract the attention of the downtown and Westside crowd.

Paramount and the rest of Rendon’s district was farm country early in the last century. Homes filled the farm fields over the years, as did some industry. Population and economic power moved west. So did the political clout and the projects that are built to satisfy high turnout voters.

“Zero court houses” said Rendon, talking about public works in his district. “Zero community colleges…one light rail station in my entire district.” The area badly needs mass transit. Five of the nation’s densest cities are located there.

Metro’s spending plan for funds from the transit tax approved by the voters tell the story. Millions will go for transit on the I-405 route over the Sepulveda Pass, conversion of the San Fernando Valley’s rapid bus line to rail and other projects far west of Rendon’s district.

“This disparity of resources is why I started to run,” Rendon said.

He is in the first class of state lawmakers to be elected after term limits were eased. He was elected six years ago, and if he keeps winning elections, he can serve in the Assembly six more years and possibly continue in his influential job, speaker of the house.

That’s plenty of time and power to put some of the construction cranes and their crews to work in Southeast Los Angeles County.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:22 PM | Permalink

Why should a voter in Butte County, deep in the northern part of the state, have a say in how Los Angeles County is governed?

Common sense says no. Residents of largely rural Butte County are happy they don’t have to deal with problems of L.A. County. It doesn’t make sense for these people, or those in California’s other counties, to tell us how we should run our affairs. Or does it?

That’s the issue with a proposed constitutional amendment by Sen. Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia) edging its way through the legislature, having already passed two committees. It would, through a statewide vote, add two members to the five-member Los Angeles County board of supervisors and create a new office, county chief executive. It would apply to counties with 5 million or more residents, and Los Angeles is the only one that fits the description. There are other laws on the books written this manner.

I’ve been in favor of expanding the board for years. County voters have consistently turned down the idea.

The Los Angeles board is unreflective of the county’s population. As Alan Clayton, a reapportionment expert and Latino activist, told Patrick McGreevy of the Los Angeles Times, Latinos, with 48 percent of the county’s almost 10 million residents, have only one supervisor, Hilda Solis. Board chairman Mark Ridley Thomas is African American. Janice Hahn, Kathryn Barger and Sheila Kuehl are white. Clayton and others have fought for a redistricting plan that would help elect another Latino and hopefully an Asian American but have always been defeated by incumbent supervisors who don’t want to dilute their considerable power.

The idea of a county chief executive, also rejected by county voters in the past, is worthwhile. A single executive, setting priorities in a budget and appointing department heads and commissioners, would be a big improvement over the current opaque system where the five supervisors, isolated on the top floor of the Civic Center county building, make deals and set priorities among themselves in an opaque way. I want someone in charge, not five supervisors who hide from responsibility and blame.

But there’s certain sneakiness about the plan, and voters should question the motives of the sponsors. Creation of two more supervisorial seats would open up two more elected offices for politicians who, because of term limits, are always looking for a new job. And a county mayor would be one of the most visible and powerful elected offices in the state—a stepping stone to the governor’s office and who knows what else.

Another sneaky aspect of the proposal by Mendoza is the statewide vote. He and his supporters know Los Angeles County voters might again turn down board expansion and the county mayor, fearing the cost and too much government.

Backers of the plan would rather put it on a statewide ballot; give it a confusing title: get their legislative contributors to finance an expensive, simplistic, misleading campaign; and sneak their plan into law. I can see the promo ads now: “Clean Up Government, Vote Yes on Measure 12.” That’s why the voters in Butte County might vote yes on something that is none of their business.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 3:07 PM | Permalink

It’s an increasingly common occurrence in Los Angeles County. A homeless encampment appears under a freeway or in a park near your house. The inhabitants, probably substance-addicted, mentally ill or just hostile, look as though they need help. You’re a public spirited Angeleno. Who do you call to deal with the situation?

I put the question to Los Angeles County Board of Supervisor Chairman Mark Ridley-Thomas, a leader in the effort to find housing and treatment for the more than 47,000 homeless in the county. I told him that I, as a Los Angeles resident don’t want these people put in jail. I want them to get help. But if I call the city or county, my inquiry will be lost in their huge bureaucracies.

Ridley-Thomas said a special service line would be set up this summer to handle such calls. A campaign to end homelessness will head the effort. “We’ll have signs to call this number,” he said. The campaign will plaster the city with signs with the phone number. “They'll be on trains and buses and the county homeless website, homeless.lacounty.gov.” he said.

A resident’s call on the hot line will go to a trained homeless worker who will dispatch a team to consisting of a social worker, a substance abuse specialist, a public health nurse and a formerly homeless person. The team would try to persuade the homeless people to move into housing created by county tax increase funds and a related city of Los Angeles homeless bond measure. The team would stick with homeless foks until they are persuaded to abandon their shelters.

This process is part of the plans being made on how to spend the $356 million from proceeds of the quarter-cent sales tax increase approved by the voters in March. Unless homelessness is reduced, residents may wonder if their votes have been wasted.

The Los Angeles Times’ Doug Smith reported that a citizens advisory group has recommended spending $216 million for short-term rental subsidies and services to homeless people who have the capacity to become self-sufficient. A total of $356 million a year would be raised by the tax increase. Added to this are proceeds of a $1.2 billion city bond issue, which would finance 10,000 more units of homeless housing.

It all sounds good. But anyone familiar with the county and city bureaucracies knows the difficulty of bringing these two levels of government together.

By mid summer, the plans should be in place, Ridley-Thomas said. If they succeed, Ridley-Thomas, other local officials and the news media will have to keep a close watch on the process.

Homeless camp on Wilshire Boulevard sidewalk within MacArthur Park. LA Observed photo.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:05 PM | Permalink

Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn says it’s “not the county sheriff’s job to be involved in immigration issues.”

Hahn’s comment, made during a talk to the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum, is a contrast to what Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell has said about his department’s treatment of undocumented immigrants, especially since President Donald Trump has begun cracking down on them. “We will not be involved in immigration issues,” Hahn said.

McDonnell is a central figure in the undocumented immigrant controversy. He is in charge of the county’s huge jail system. Sheriff’s deputies send the names and fingerprints of those booked into jail to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which identifies those it would like to pick up. These are usually undocumented workers with a record of arrests for offenses ranging rom major to minor. At ICE’s request, the sheriff hands over undocumented inmates who have been arrested for what the federal government considers major crimes or who have prior convictions.

McDonnell told the Los Angeles Times that if immigration officers can’t pick up people in jails, the ICE officers will scour the streets for them, disrupting immigrant communities. He and other sheriffs around the state oppose a bill by State Sen. President Kevin deLeon restricting sheriffs’ ability to cooperate with ICE. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck have said they don’t want LAPD officers acting as immigration cops.

While McDonnell is nominally supervised by the Board of Supervisors, the supes generally keep hands off his department unless a scandal explodes. So it’s not known whether Hahn’s remarks will impact his policies.

The question, from Current Affairs Forum director Emma Schafer, first brought a chuckle from Hahn, who said she had been assured it would be a friendly, intimate gathering and now she found herself hit with controversy with a table full of reporters in front of her. But she answered the question in depth and with good-natured openness. She treated other questions the same way, showing her years of experience as a Los Angeles city council member and congresswoman—and as the daughter of the famed late Supervisor Kenneth Hahn.
Her position reflects the strongly liberal tilt of the five-member board with four Democrats and a moderate Republican, Kathryn Barger.

Like her father, Hahn favors expansion of the board to nine members. Having one supervisor represent 2 million people, as she does, is too much, Hahn said.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:58 PM | Permalink

After the surprising victory of Measure H, the homeless assistance sales tax increase, in the last election, county and city officials and non-profit organizations are planning to move quickly to put its money to work.

I talked to Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chairman Mark Ridley-Thomas about implementing the measure, which will raise about $355 million annually to provide services for the growing number of homeless on the streets. Combined with a city bond issue, passed by voters last year, the combined city-county strategy envisions moving homeless from the streets into rental housing. They will also be treated be for addiction, mental illness and other ailments that bedevil that population,

“Rapid rehousing” will be the goal, he said. The supervisors should approve the plan June 15 and “we’ll be rocking and rolling by July 1,” he said.

Teams of outreach workers will visit the rapidly increasing tent encampments to persuade the inhabitants to move into rental housing. Teams will be doubled to more than 30. They will include a public health nurse, a social worker, and a formerly homeless person. Treatment facilities will be set up around the county. Hopefully, landlords will accept homeless tenants, whose rent will be paid by the government, if treatment is available nearby.

“We’ll make an assessment of existing housing units,” he said. Meanwhile, the city bond issue will begin to finance construction of new housing for the homeless.
Obstacles remain. The Trump administration could reduce funds that pay the rent for homeless housing.

Officials will be under pressure to perform. “The people did something extraordinary” in approving Measure H,’ Ridley-Thomas said. “We have to show results.”

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 8:14 AM | Permalink

It’s something of a miracle that Measure H, the Los Angeles County tax increase to improve services for the homeless, may be near voter approval.

True, some votes remain to be counted. Still, the Los Angeles countywide measure, raising the sales tax by a quarter of a cent, just made it above the two thirds vote required for victory in Tuesday’s election. Absentee and provisional ballots could defeat the tax increase. But as Doug Smith wrote in the Los Angeles Times, if the majority holds up, a victory “would constitute a wave of generosity by city and county voters—giving homeless services organizations the funds they say they need.”

It would to add about $355 million annually for homeless programs over 10 years. The money would provide support services for the new housing in Los Angeles as well as rental subsidies and services for thousands more units around the county. The housing would be financed by a bond measure approved by Los Angeles city voters last November.

Even with victory not clinched, the results are still noteworthy and offer lessons to be learned. This is especially in the Trump era, where all we hear about are Republican efforts to wipe out government services they consider worthless. Among the lessons:

-People want results and self-interest is important. Looking at a Los Angeles Times map of the vote, it’s possible to trace support through a widespread area, many of whose residents once gave little thought to homelessness but now see encampments on sidewalks, parks and under freeways as a daily presence.

-Government can work. Measure H was the second element of a two- part Los Angeles city and county attack on homelessness that has zoomed out of control. The housing bond issue was the first. The county’s Measure H would finance the hiring of social workers and mental health staff to go out on the streets and persuade the homeless to accept help and possibly move into the housing provided by the city bond issue. The city and county governments have been notorious for their feuding. The crisis brought together leaders in city hall and the county to come up with a solution that offers a chance of success but no guarantee. It took many meetings, immersion in detail and putting ego aside to agree on the plan.

-Unsung heroes deserve praise. While Angelenos watched in horror as homeless encampments sprung up on their neighborhood streets, social workers and volunteers went from tent to tent, talking to people afflicted with mental illness and substance abuse. Others worked in social service programs across the basin, seeking housing, finding space in overcrowded care facilities. Their numbers were small given the size of the problem. But the workers haven’t given up and Measure H would greatly increase their number.

-Newspapers still count. Most news media have focused in on homelessness, but the Los Angeles Times deserves special praise. Its reporting team, including columnist Steve Lopez, prowled the streets and talked to countless people to get the story. The Times’ powerful coverage was a great help in getting out the Measure H vote.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 12:50 PM | Permalink

In this time of instant news, fake news and superficial tweets, it’s good to recall a couple of recent newspaper stories that are likely to last a while and make a difference.

Last October, Los Angeles Times reporters David Zahniser and Emily Alpert Reyes stuck a knife deep into the Los Angeles city hall collective of politicians and big developer campaign contributors with their story about developer Samuel Leung’s contributions to local politicians and his subsequent winning approval of a 352 unit apartment that needed a city zoning change to be built. In December, Zahniser struck again with his story of major contributor Rick Caruso getting zoning changes for a 20-story building near the Beverly Center. Now with the city preparing for an election on March 7 their journalism could help determine the fate of the most controversial measure on the ballot, Measure S, limiting such developments.

Reyes and Zahniser engaged in shoe-leather reporting in chasing down the more than 100 contributors connected to Leung—relatives, friends, employees and other associates. They gave a total of $600,000 to politicians who could help Leung’s development. The reporters were suspicious. "I am looking at these donors, and some of them looked odd to me. They’re folks who are working class and yet giving quite a big (amount) of money. As we kept knocking on doors, my colleague Emily Alpert Reyes and I, we found some of them who said they don’t remember giving, or they denied giving,” Zahniser told KPCC.

In December, Zahniser wrote about how Caruso, developer of The Grove and other big projects, along with employees and family members, have donated more than $476,000 to city officials and their causes, including Mayor Eric Garcetti and city council members. They backed rezoning the property near the Beverly Center for a 20-story building. After neighborhood protests and Zahniser’s story, Caruso agreed to reduce the size of his building by almost 25 percent.

His contributions, he said, don’t matter. “I’ve never believed for one minute that any contributions I’ve given has changed the opinion of any elected official,” Caruso told Zahniser.

Measure S is directed against big projects and their contributor developers. It would impose a two-year moratorium on construction that increases density and ban the general plan zoning changes that have made the Leung and Caruso projects possible.
The reporting by Zahniser and Reyes elevated the issue to the front page, up from the ranks of boring neighborhood-zoning beefs. Now it’s the subject of a major citywide debate. That’s what the media should do with city hall news. As the media flounders, these kinds of stories show a way for it to survive and even prosper.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:18 PM | Permalink

The new proposal by local government and charitable institutions for a $10 million legal defense fund for immigrants threatened with deportation by President-elect Donald Trump offers them a helping hand as they enter the labyrinth of arrests, detention and hearings that await them.

Congratulations to Mayor Eric Garcetti, City Atty. Michael Feuer and Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis, along with the California Endowment and other philanthropic groups, for putting together the money.

Dakota Smith and Cindy Carcamo reported in the Los Angeles Times that city and county governments would contribute at least $5 million to an L.A Justice Fund. Among the charities, the California Endowment, the state’s largest healthcare foundation, plans to give $2 million. The county supervisors voted 4 to 1 Tuesday to earmark $3 million over two years. Republican Kathryn Barger, a newly elected supervisor, was the lone dissenter. City Council approval is expected.

Public radio station KPCC noted on its website the money is unlikely to be enough to help all of the undocumented immigrants living in the county, a number estimated by the Public Policy Institute to be nearly 815,000 people. But supporters hope it will slow attempts to send immigrants out of the country, many of whom have lived in the state for much of their lives. Garcetti said the funds would help the most vulnerable, including minors, refugees and military families.

Whether intentionally or not, the donors picked a symbolic day to announce their plan—the day electors in every state cast their votes for president. For if Trump keeps his campaign promises, he’ll encourage the anti-immigrant feelings of his attorney general, hire many more immigration cops and increase the number of courts through which immigrants are sent as they begin their forced departure for the countries they fled.

The task that will face the L.A. Justice Fund lawyers is immense. Their work begins when immigrants are stopped and asked for papers. A traffic violation could trigger that. Or, and more likely, it would be a raid on a workplace. First there is a “master calendar” immigration court hearing, sort of an introduction to the system, followed by a hearing on the merits of the case. These are often subject to delays because of bureaucratic failures or overcrowded immigration courts. Sometimes, major criminals are caught up in the web, but mostly these are people with no violations or minor ones—or people who have been picked up by mistake. A lawyer is needed at every step and most of the immigrants can’t afford them. Sometimes, they are put in detention as long as a year.

The justice fund is part of a resistance movement developing against Trump in big cities—New York, Chicago, San Francisco and many others. Garcetti and the others are also standing up for underdog constituents who could be lost in the Trump revolution.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 3:54 PM | Permalink

They say anyone can be replaced, but it will be most difficult for the city of Los Angeles to fill the job of Miguel A. Santana, the city administrative officer who accomplished the impossible task of taming a stubborn bureaucracy and egotistic elected officials.

Santana quit to head the Los Angeles County Fair Assn., which runs the county fair and other enterprises on the fairgrounds in Pomona. If you think Los Angeles city finances were a mess when Santana became the city’s chief fiscal officer seven years ago, Google L.A. County Fair and read about its toxic combination of bad administration and high administrative salaries.

He was appointed to his job by then Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. He had been a top aide to Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina. At city hall, he guided Villaraigosa, the city council and the bureaucracy through the tough steps that helped sharply reduce a $485 million budget deficit.

In addition to being in charge of the budget, he also supervises city departments. Rather than being a quiet numbers guy, Santana has been an activist, not content with old hidebound practices. As Jon Regardie wrote in the Downtown News, “he redefined the CAO’s job, regularly inserting himself into matters of public importance, with reports on issues such as the city’s worsening homelessness crisis.”

That’s when I got to know Santana. I was writing about homelessness and could make no sense of the maze of city and county agencies trying vainly to deal with the growing number on the streets.

I interviewed him in his office. He saw homelessness in human terms.

“Homelessness is a problem that involves thousands of people and requires a massive response, but it’s really about one person at a time,” he said. And at the heart of it was finding housing for the homeless and making treatment available with those afflicted with substance abuse and mental illness.

He knew the players in the county hall of administration and city hall from working in both places, He constantly brought them together in phone calls and meetings, making sure everybody got credit for their hard work. He took charge in a way that offended no one, and made the participants feel good about their efforts. He told me, “for the longest time, our homeless strategy has been one looking at the other and saying ‘you’re in charge. And at the end of the day, nobody was really in charge.”

County and city officials began cooperating in an unprecedented way. Their attitude was credited with overwhelming voter approval of the city bond measure HHH on the November ballot, raising $1.2 billion for housing for the homeless, with county-run treatment facilities readily available. Now the city must replace this unsung hero.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 2:25 PM | Permalink

Subway construction at Wilshire and LaBrea. LA Observed photo.

I thought that taking the Expo Line downtown would be an appropriate way to hear Metro chief Phillip Washington speak. But as I settled into my seat, one of the crew announced that our train would go no further than the Crenshaw station and we would presumably have to transfer to buses. It turned out a man had stepped in front of a train, killing him and delaying trains.

So I walked home, got my car, and drove to the Palm, where Washington was speaking. Afterward, I encountered him while we were waiting for our cars and told him my troubles. He knew all about my experience that morning.

I was impressed. Here was someone who could talk big picture at his luncheon speech and, in a knowledgeable and pleasant manner, listen to a train rider’s complaint.

The big picture and the small picture occupied Washington during a talk and question-and-answer session at public affairs consultant Emma Schafer’s Current Affairs Forum Monday.

His main goal was to promote Measure M on the November ballot. It would increase the sales tax to raise $860 million the first year, and more in later years, to fund construction of more transit rail lines and other transportation infrastructure projects. The sales tax would go up by a half-cent at first, and more in future years. It has no expiration date, prompting critics to call it a forever tax.

“This is like God’s work,” Washington said. With so much construction for Metro, and for roads and highways and for development around the transit lines, a half million jobs will be created. “Unemployment will be cut in half,” he said. And with the sales tax increase becoming permanent, the areas served by Metro will have transportation needs met permanently. In the audience were representatives of building, engineering and law firms, along with unions and others who will benefit from the construction and who are expected to help raise $4.5 million for the M campaign.

That was a big picture point. But small picture questions could sink Measure M.

A member of the audience, legislative aide Saeed Ali, who is president of his West Los Angeles-Santa Monica area homeowners association, raised one such question. Traffic changes from the Expo lines resulted in buses running along a quiet residential street in his area. Repeated complaints to Metro have gone unanswered, he said. The Metro governing board, a relatively unknown group of local politicians, is “untouchable,” he said. Washington asked if the offending buses were Santa Monica Big Blue Buses. They were, Ali said. Washington said Metro would try to work something out with Santa Monica.

Such bureaucratic messes and a confusing bunch of local transit operators drive transit users and residents nuts. Who do you call when there’s a problem? Angry consumers add up to no votes for Measure M.

Washington and his supporters have three weeks to make their sale, a tough job with so many measures on the ballot plus all the attention centered on the presidential campaign.

Measure M’s fate will turn on issues as big as a proposed train tunnel though the Sepulveda Pass and as small as homeowners angered by a bus on their usually quiet street.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 1:31 PM | Permalink

When Dodger Stadium opened in 1962, it was perfect for the auto age, surrounded by parking lots and near the freeway, not unlike the suburban malls so popular in those days.

Dodger Stadium could have been built anywhere in the suburbs. It had little relation to the city around it, even though Chinatown was nearby and downtown not far away. But public rail transit and the development that is accompanying it may change that.

Heading up to the stadium by car for a playoff game, I saw how urban Los Angeles is creeping up to the stadium.

The Gold Line train from Union Station through the San Gabriel Valley is giving a new look to Chinatown. College Station, a development planned for Spring and College streets, will have 770 residential units, plus a big grocery store and other retail. Another is a 355-unit development on North Broadway in the Hill, Broadway and Spring areas. These aren’t far from the stadium.

Farther north, the Gold Line station at Avenue 57, near Figueroa Street, is one reason for proposed housing and commercial development, and gentrification in Highland Park, just a few miles from the stadium.

Here’s how such development could change the Dodger Stadium scene: The 1.9-mile regional connector, a rail line underneath downtown, will link various transit lines to the Gold Line. Bus shuttles to the stadium, now limited, could be expanded, bringing many fans directly from the Gold Line station in Chinatown to the ball park. Urban life would be expanded even more if the Dodgers develop the land on the edge of the parking lots for residences, stores and restaurants and bars. The formerly isolated stadium would be in the heart of the city.

These development plans, and others around the Southland, are one reason for the support for Measure M, a proposed sales tax increase on the November ballot that would raise $860 million the first year and more in later years to fund construction of more transit rail lines and other transportation infrastructure projects. It would raise the sales tax by a half-cent at first, and then double it in future years. It has no expiration date, prompting critics to call it a forever tax.

The construction industry can’t wait. Laura J. Nelson reported in the Los Angeles Times that supporters have contributed more than $4.5 million this year for the pro-tax campaign. “More than three-quarters of that amount came from developers, organized labor, engineering firms and other firms that could see financial gains from the Southern California building boom that Measure M would create, a Times analysis found,” Nelson wrote.

Over the years, the rail lines, along with bus improvements, will help Southlanders to get around without the help of motor vehicles. That’s good. But as the campaign unfolds, remember Measure M is as much about putting up big buildings as building railroads.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:21 PM | Permalink

Mayor Eric Garcetti didn’t mention Donald Trump by name in his luncheon talk. Still, he managed a subtle rebuke to the Republican presidential nominee.

“We are in a place,” he said, referring to Los Angeles, “where inclusiveness” is part of life. He briefly contrasted that to the presidential campaign, marked by negativity and Trump’s assault on immigrants, so important a part of the city’s population.

He spoke Tuesday to a crowd of business, labor and political people at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum, arranged by Emma Schafer, a public affairs consultant who also compiles the website Emma’s Memos. I hadn’t seen the mayor for some time. He’s evolved into a more interesting speaker, framing his accomplishments as stories rather than bureaucratic recitations. He talked of “stitching a story” and creating “a narrative.” That’s the style he used talking about the airport, street repairs and tree trimmings, turning the routine into something interesting.

Looking at the reporters in the audience, he conceded he wasn’t making hot news. “I know it’s not as sexy as a bloody nose,” he said, but added that a bloody nose doesn’t get you anywhere.

I was interested about what Garcetti said about his plan for a year of free community college tuition. Community colleges, he said, offer those who didn’t do well in high school or ended up in jail “a second chance.” After lunch, I had planned to walk to Los Angeles Trade Tech College, a community college famed for giving young men and women a second chance and for the inclusiveness mentioned by Garcetti in his talk. The student body is 56 percent Hispanic, 27 percent African American, 6 percent Asian American and 6 percent white.

I was headed for the school to begin work on my column for Truthdig.com. The Palm, site of the luncheon, is close to Staples and LA Live and the big buildings of L.A.’s new downtown, several blocks from the college. I left the big money district and walked south on Flower Street toward Trade Tech. As the neighborhood changed, I passed a body repair shop. Across Flower was a payday loan company. I peered through an open door into a large, dark room where women were sewing and sorting clothes. On the campus I walked among the ethnically mixed students and joined a bunch of them on the train when I took the Expo Line home.

I had passed immigrants sewing clothes; working class students determined to have a prosperous future; rich people eating the Palm’s big steaks near the glitter of Staples and L.A. Live. This was the L.A. Garcetti was talking about at lunch. The scene, with its contrasts, was a vibrant answer to the narrow, anti-immigrant campaigning of Donald Trump.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:05 PM | Permalink

Awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature is legislation that could make election day really confusing for many Californians.

In its final days, the legislature passed a bill eliminating the traditional polling places and replacing them with a much smaller number of “voting centers,” scattered around each county. It will be like a neighborhood pharmacy, deli or family owned market being replaced by a Target.

The familiar polling places are run by volunteers and usually are in the same location at each election. We walk to a nearby DWP facility, discuss last minute voting decisions on the way and are rewarded by a nice sticker for shirt or jacket. According to one estimate I received, there would be just 645 voting centers in all of Los Angeles County. At present, there is about one polling place for every thousand of the county’s 4.3 million voters.

Under the legislation, by Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica), ballots would be cast at the voting center or by mail. If you don’t trust the mail, you could hand deliver your ballot to a voting center, put it in a secure drop box or fill out your ballot in person at the voting center. I don’t know if you would get a nice red, white and blue sticker.
They would be staffed by trained county employees. They would begin operating 10 days before election. You could register to vote at them, even on election day. They would be connected electronically to a county list of voters, hopefully eliminating the hassle when the polling place volunteer can’t find your name. Counties would begin installing the new system in 2018 and 2020.

Allen said it would make voting easier and increase the turnout. I think it would make voting harder. You’d have to find a center on a list provided by the county, and then drive there, fighting traffic. I hope you have GPS. The county promises parking. Good luck. Have you ever been stuck in a Trader Joe’s lot? Or, county officials say, you can take transit. I love public transit but getting somewhere involves time, transfers and walking. Good luck if you are even slightly disabled.

Eventually, backers of this scheme see everyone voting by mail. In Los Angeles County, this requires voters to apply for a vote -by -mail ballot, which has not proved especially popular. Just over 30 percent of Los Angeles County voters cast their ballots by mail. Most counties will enclose a vote-by-mail ballot with election material. Los Angeles County, with the state’s largest number of voters, has been given more time to comply with this requirement.

Allen and Dean Logan, Los Angeles County registrar-recorder-county clerk, said the legislation would increase voter turnout. There are many reasons for low turnout, including widespread disillusionment with politics and government. I don’t see that reducing the number of polling places would help that situation.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 3:47 PM | Permalink

Two proposed commuter rail lines explain much about race, economic class and political clout in Los Angeles County.

One would tunnel under the Santa Monica Mountains, following the route of Intestate 405 through the Sepulveda Pass. It would connect two largely white and prosperous areas—the west San Fernando Valley and the Westside—to Los Angeles International Airport. It would connect with the planned Wilshire subway near UCLA. The second would run from Artesia to Union Station, serving the working class, mostly Latino population in the flatlands of southeast Los Angeles County.

The two proposed lines are part of a great number of projects that the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) board approved June 23 to be financed with a countywide half cent sales tax increase on the November ballot. It needs approval by two thirds of the voters—a tough sell on a ballot that will be crowded with tax increase and bond proposals.

It would increase the sales tax in Los Angeles County to 9.5 percent—up to 10 percent in Santa Monica and some other cities. The measure comes on top of voter approval in 2008 of another transit sales tax increase, Proposition R.

But while that measure will eventually expire, there is no expiration date for the new plan. Backers of the measure say that the no-time-limit provision is necessary to pay for all the proposed projects. But Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe protested that “This is a forever tax.”

In the months ahead, the tax and many of the projects throughout the county will hopefully be subjected to the intense debate they deserve. What first struck me about the Metro proposal were the economic, political and ethnic differences of future passengers on the Sepulveda Pass and Southeast Los Angeles county commuter lines.

The Southeast line would begin at Artesia and head northward through working class Bellflower, Bell, Huntington Park and then into similar areas in the city of Los Angeles, ending at Union Station. The working people who live there, mostly Latino, depend on public transit and high ridership is predicted. The route follows an existing but abandoned Red Car rail right of way and construction seems to offer few obstacles. But the Metro board, in assembling its list of projects, put completion date off to 2041, a substantial and inexplicable delay from the original plans.

“Imagine there are several Los Angeles County cities that make up one of the densest urban areas in the country, where much of the young, transit-dependent, ethnically mixed population commutes daily to jobs in other parts of the county. This would be one of the first areas to get a new rail line to the region wide transit hub at L.A. Union Station, right?” Huntington Park City Council member Karina Macias wrote in the Los Angeles Times last month.

Macias was wrong. Macias’ strong argument lost out to the politics of transit and the love of transportation engineers for really big projects.

The Sepulveda Pass has it all. The valley and the Westside are leaded with high voting residents, all of them needed for passage of the tax increase. Voter turnout in Southeast Los Angeles County is usually low.

And the Sepulveda Pass project is big enough to satisfy the most grandiose engineering ambitions, requiring a seven-mile tunnel under the Santa Monica Mountains offering engineers and construction people many challenging problems.

Then there’s another aspect of the politics. The difficulty of tunneling under the Sepulveda Pass would provide work and big contracts for the engineering and construction firms that wield considerable influence with some Metro board members. These firms would also provide much of the financing of the campaign to get the tax increase approved. Construction worker unions would also support the project as it would provide thousands of badly needed jobs.

The Southeast cities are trying to fight this, demanding an expansion of the Metro board to include more of their representatives. They say Metro officials have not given the Southeast line a high enough priority. But longtime Metro supporters former county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and Richard Katz, who, as a state legislator helped create the Metro board, argued in a piece in the Los Angeles Times, that a bigger board would diminish the influence of the biggest city, Los Angeles. In addition, they fear, it could doom the tax increase proposal and threaten all the transit projects by alienating Los Angeles city voters.

Much is at stake. Metro expansion is changing Los Angeles. If you don’t think so, consider the proposed high-rise development near the Expo Line station at La Cienega and Jefferson boulevards. Without the Expo train, there would be no development. The small cities of southeast Los Angeles County want their share of such prospective riches, as well as the convenience and mobility offered by the commuter trains.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 6:25 AM | Permalink

Absence makes the heart grow fonder as I found Tuesday when I returned to an old haunt, Los Angeles City Hall.

I had spent several years there, off and on, for the Los Angeles Times and was happy when new assignments—columnist, city editor—took me elsewhere. How many budgets and planning beefs can a person cover? Five years as a post retirement city ethics commissioner gave me a real inside look and strengthened my resolve to stay away from city hall as much as possible.

But I needed to return to gather material for a profile I am doing for the UCLA magazine Blueprint on City Council President Herb Wesson. I realized I couldn’t understand Wesson without observing the council and the committees he controls.

I sat down toward the back of the chamber, behind the five or six gadflies who annoy the council members by haranguing them on many isssues. One wore a Batman mask. Another’s face was covered by strips of cloth that looked like bandages, as if he had suffered a serious injury. One, a ventriloquist, carried a small teddy bear up to the podium. He let the bear speak in a squeaky voice. I had known the dean of the gadfly corps, John Walsh, for years and used to receive many angry critiques from him. John looked older and walked slower than the last time I saw him. But so do I.

The big issue before the council was a $1.2 billion bond proposal for the November ballot designed to help build housing for the homeless. It passed 14-0 and I thought the council members were a bit too self congratulatory about their action. Another council vote would be needed. Left unanswered was how to finance to treatment, rehabilitation and education services for those in the housing. And who would build the housing? But some congratulations are in order. City hall is rousing itself from years of inaction and beginning to do something about homelessness.

At lunchtime, I checked out the Grand Central Market on Broadway, another old haunt. I’ve heard and read how the old place has been transformed into a foodie heaven. It’s not heaven but vendors sell oysters, fish and chips, craft beer gourmet-sounding hamburgers, McConnell’s Fine Ice Cream, and deli from Wexlers. Being a traditionalist, I had a beef torta and diet Coke at Roast to Go, in business there since 1952. Quite good. On the way out, I passed up the Press Brothers one-day juice hybrid cleanse for a mere $30.

I encountered my friend Patt Morrison near the Times and chatted briefly. I had no desire to visit the paper, now under the corporate name Tronc, and didn’t feel any emotion walking past a place where I had spent so many years. In this particular case, absence hasn’t made the heart grow fonder.

Back in city hall, I attended a meeting of the council’s Planning and Land Use Committee. In my day, it was known as the PLUM committee, because the council members were assured of plum campaign contributions from developers. I’m sure such crude behavior is scorned by this generation of lawmakers.

By chance, housing was the main item on the PLUM agenda. Hollywood residents unsuccessfully appealed the council decision to allow a boutique hotel to be built on the site of an old apartment house on Cherokee Avenue near Franklin.
Protesters objected that the action was symbolic of city government’s allowing the loss of affordable apartments, thus worsening the affordable housing shortage.

In the morning, I had seen the big picture, with discussion of the big housing bond issue to build housing In the afternoon, I had seen the flip side from the ground up in Hollywood, with the council permitting badly needed apartments to be eliminated.
As expected, there are no magic solutions. Still, It was an interesting, enlightening day and I’ll make it a point to come back.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:07 PM | Permalink

In one of his first appearances before the lobbyists, lawyers, consultants and others who live by their ability to influence city hall, Los Angeles City Councilman David Ryu didn’t make it easy for his audience. He tackled some of the big issues confronting city hall and dug into them deeply, more deeply and even more deeply.

Ryu, elected last year, is definitely a policy guy. This wasn’t a bad thing since there were plenty of wonkish people at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum luncheon at the Palm Thursday. Usually, the speakers give a policy once over and let the audience return fairly quickly to their jobs of influencing public officials. This time, they got an urban affairs seminar. From their questions, they seemed to be interested.

His presentation reflected his background. As a senior deputy to then Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Burke, Ryu handled a wide range of social and economic problems, including two of the most intractable--homelessness and mental illness. Now, as a councilman, he’s in the middle of the development controversy as the representative of the 4th District, a center in battles over high rises in Hollywood, Koreatown and other areas. And as a Korean American, he is part of the increasing Asian American influence in politics and government.

He said that cooperation in the past few months between the historically feuding county and city governments have produced some good ideas and useful programs for the homeless. Ryu said, however, “Money alone isn’t going to solve homelessness.” The more than $100 million in Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s new budget, he said, is “like a scratch on a window.”

Then he tackled a controversial aspect in the discussion of treatment of the mentally ill, who made up a large segment of the homeless. He spoke of the hard work of outreach workers who try to persuade the mentally ill to accept treatment or apply for housing. “It takes 10 outreach attempts to convince a (homeless) person to have a cup of coffee with them (the workers),” he said.

Ryu moved on to the problem of mentally ill young people who leave parental supervision at 18 and then refuse their parents’ orders or advice to be treated. He said “now, it is almost impossible get a conservatorship over the mentally ill,” a status that would permit relatives or guardian to order them into care. For the young mentally ill, he said, the answer might be to extend parental authority to order treatment to the age of 26—the age children are eligible for care under Obamacare.

He appeared to be thinking of giving government more power to impose care on the mentally ill, a stand that would put him in conflict with civil libertarians who oppose such steps.

On development, Ryu, elected on a platform of helping neighborhoods who feel oppressed by over-development, said he is spending time with developer and neighborhood advocates and his “top priority is to rebuild the community’s trust.” He said he opposed an initiative, scheduled for next year’s ballot, that would impose a moratorium on some housing developments. “I’m not supporting governing by initiative,” he said.

When we chatted afterward, he said he hoped his remarks hadn’t been too long and complicated. Not at all, I said. I’m interested in all that stuff. And I thought the audience was, too.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:45 PM | Permalink

At last! After several years of watching and waiting, I joined the many confused but fascinated Angelenos who boarded our newest toy, the Expo Line train to the beach. Metro helpers were in abundance, guiding us through crowds at the stations, especially at downtown Santa Monica, where airport-like lines of people waited to get on the train.

This was all new for people whose Los Angeles transportation experience has been limited to driving and finding a parking place. Free rides Friday and Saturday brought them there, plus curiosity and the search for a new experience. Personally, I’m a veteran Expo fan, often taking it to downtown Los Angeles. But I’ve had to drive to the nearest station and park my car. The weekend brought the opening of new stations, including one at Sepulveda and Exposition, within walking distance of my house.

It’s exciting for a public transportation geek like me. Friday, I rode to Santa Monica, stopped on way my home to explore Bergamot Station, where I had a beer at the café then continued on my ride home. Saturday, the train took me to Palms station, where there was a community celebration. My granddaughter, Lila Doliner, performed with her dance troupe there.

It’s tempting to be awe-struck about a rail line that reaches the beach for the first time in 63 years. But it’s more enlightening to look at it as if I were a real estate developer, a class of businessperson who dominates city government when it comes to planning, zoning and other measures that shape LA.

We rode through miles of low-rise industrial developments, and, as we crossed into Santa Monica, new apartments and condos near the tracks, projects spurred by Expo. In West Los Angeles, there were small businesses, apartment houses and, a few blocks from the tracks, the single family homes that made the area one of the centers of middle class LA.

The Los Angeles city planning department has outlined a somewhat different future for the area in a series of planning documents. The department proposes increased density near transit stations. New buildings in the area would have to be “pedestrian oriented.” Presumably, that means fewer parking spaces. And city planners envision wider sidewalks, a reduction in vehicle lanes and more room for bicycles. In addition, the planning department sees more residents and jobs around the new Expo stations in LA--Palms, Westwood-Rancho Park, Sepulveda and Bundy. There would be housing for 4,000 to 6,000 more residents by 2035 and 12,000 to 17,000 more jobs.

This will provoke intense debate on the Westside, just as it is doing in Koreatown, Hollywood, East Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, all areas where developers are seeking opportunity as Metro expands.

Critics are decrying the Manhattanization of LA. Others say Manhattan isn’t too bad of a place. I could see the debate developing as I rode Expo to the beach.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:06 AM | Permalink

Mayor Eric Garcetti and several city council members have decided that the issue of a high-rise Los Angeles is too hot to handle and want to throw it into the bottomless pit that is the city hall bureaucracy, which is much akin to the Department of Circumlocution in Charles Dickens “Little Dorrit.” That’s why they favor delaying until 2026 new city plans regulating the big buildings.

Risk adverse is a kindly way of describing these officials. Gutless is more appropriate.

Development in Los Angeles is supposedly regulated by 35 neighborhood plans developed over many years by the city planning department and approved by mayors and the city council.

Here’s what it means: Whether those shops on your nearby shopping street are replaced by a 10-story apartment building is regulated by your neighborhood plan. Most of these plans are more than 15 years old.

But as someone who spent years hanging around city hall as a reporter and an ethics commissioner, I saw that these plans are worthless. Development in Los Angeles is actually controlled by a web of incomprehensible zoning laws that are regularly avoided by campaign-contributing real estate magnates and their city hall supporters. If developers want to put up a tall building, they go to the council member representing the area. Council members control zoning laws and developments in their districts. Their colleagues, no matter what a neighborhood plan says, routinely grant approval. Residents are left in the dark unless they happen to follow their neighborhood association website.

Market forces, not city laws and regulations, shape this process. Completion of the Metro subway through Hollywood into the San Fernando Valley helped sparked construction of high rises for apartments, condos, offices and retail in Hollywood. The backlash was an anti-development-limiting measure that is scheduled to be on the March, 2017 ballot. The Hollywood-inspired measure is likely to stir up enthusiasm in other parts of the city worried about gentrification, high rise construction and other changes that could come with new transit lines.

After the limit proposal surfaced, Mayor Garcetti and council members rushed into action with an odd plan that would delay a decision on regulating development, requiring the city planning to update the 35 existing plans by, believe it or not, 2026. It would require 28 more city planners to do the work at a cost of $4.2 million a year, which seems like a lot of money for a decade-long approach to rewriting existing plans.

Garcetti told David Zahniser of the Los Angeles Times that he wasn’t reacting to the limitation ballot measure. All he wanted to do, he said, is update. Actually, what he and the council members really want to do is delay action for a decade, hoping that protesters have short attention spans.

But we should have this debate next year, when the initiative is on the ballot, rather than letting the issue disappear in the city hall bureaucracy. Personally, I like the idea of residences, offices and retail around train and subway stops. But a lot of people worry about their neighborhoods being wrecked. And most everybody wants planning regulations with teeth, not the present laws that are easily avoided by developers and their city hall allies.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 10:21 AM | Permalink

As a television moderator and a city councilman, the late Bill Rosendahl was fiercely dedicated to good government and clean politics. Even more important, he was dedicated to bringing people together to work for those laudable but frequently scorned goals.

It was notable that after he died Wednesday, among those paying tribute were two public spirited Angelenos of widely disparate political philosophies.

“At six foot three, with a bright, bursting smile and a bear hug the span of a 747, Rosendahl was an imposing force, unwavering in his principles…the kind of person you never meet among the elected class,” wrote liberal Harvey Rosenfield, founder of Consumer Watchdog, which fights business and government abuse. “Bill was a passionate supporter of Democratic candidates and liberal causes but he was open to discussion and arguments from all sides,” said conservative Joel Fox, a founder of the web site Fox & Hounds and a strong advocate for business, smaller government and lower taxes.

Both wrote of being frequent guests on Rosendahl’s Week In Review on what was then Century Communications cable. Shown on Century’s public access channel, it featured Rosendahl and four or five guests—politicians, academics, activists like Fox and Rosenfield and journalists.

I was on his first show, with Mayor Tom Bradley, and on his last, as he was leaving Century for the city council. He had been elected to represent the district that includes Mar Vista, Venice and the airport.

Rosendahl liked controversy on the show, giving the guests time to argue, but always making sure it was done in an intelligent, civilized way, so unlike the mindless shouting matches of today’s cable news channels and the Republican presidential debates. I’d try to get to Century’s unpretentious headquarters in an industrial section of Santa Monica early so I could gossip with him about politics. Another reason to arrive early was to talk to the other guests. I knew some but others were strangers and, through Rosendahl’s show, I became acquainted with a wide range of people.

As a councilman, Rosendahl was as forthright as he was as a TV host—a quality not especially appreciated by his council colleagues, whose guiding principle is “Go Along To Get Along.” Rosendahl had won many journalism awards by not going along, and he certainly didn’t follow that cautionary advice when he worked on Sen. George McGovern’s presidential campaign in 1972.

Rather than ducking controversy, Rosendahl sought it out, driven by his desire to let Los Angeles speak. I remember a Saturday afternoon meeting of the Westside Progressives at a church in Mar Vista. The earnest, well-intentioned Progressives had invited members of Occupy LA and Rosendahl. Occupy held elected officials—and journalists—in contempt. The Occupy people bawled me out for some offense I didn’t understand. But they really gave it to Rosendahl. He sat there while the electoral system was assailed “We don’t want to join with any group affiliated with the electoral system,” said one Occupy person. Rosendahl told how he had helped create housing for homeless veterans and was working on providing more facilities for them and other vets at the Sawtelle Veterans Administration hospital. “Not everyone is corrupt, not all politics are corrupt,” he said. They would have none of it. Rosendahl’s patience finally ran out and he answered them in kind. I admired him for going there and arguing. That’s what an elected official is supposed to do.

When his council colleagues rushed to support a subsequently abandoned proposal for a downtown football stadium, requiring a city appropriation, Rosendahl said go slow. He tried to rip away the secret curtain raised by council powers who favored the plan. He went public.

Such behavior on the council does not go unpunished. The other council members ignored him on the stadium and other matters. He was marginalized for insisting on open and honest government.

Marginalized by council members, maybe, but not by us veterans of the Week In Review cable show, its audience of city political junkies, and by thousands who still want a fair chance to be heard in city hall.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:34 PM | Permalink

Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson says neither he nor other elected officials are to blame for the troubles of the Department of Water and Power.

“Now, I’m an elected official and I would say without pause don’t blame the shortcomings on us,” Wesson said. “Maybe we had something to do with it. But the way the department is set up now, it is set up to fail.”

The council president offered his views Wednesday on the controversial leadership of the municipal utility at a luncheon of the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum, organized by public affairs consultant Emma Schafer, who also compiles the web site Emma’s Memos.

The audience of mostly city hall lobbyists and other insiders who filled the upstairs dining room at the Palm restaurant downtown has a deep interest in the big public utility, as do their clients. They, like the general public, are unhappy with the way the department muddles through everything from maintaining water pipes to handling routine consumer complaints. But they didn’t come away with any inside information about how Mayor Eric Garcetti and the council will fix the department. All Wesson would say is “we have to have a serious conversation about how do we make this department work more efficiently.”

City hall is slowly trying to agree on a DWP shakeup. The mayor said any change should continue his power to hire and fire board members and the department general manager. City Councilman Felipe Fuentes has his own proposal, supported by Wesson. It would create a new full time board to run the department, replacing the present board, which is appointed by the mayor, according to the Los Angeles Times’ Peter Jamison. Fuentes heads the council’s Energy Environmental Committee.

All these players have a lot of power and it’s hard to take Wesson seriously when he asks us not to blame elected officials. As veteran city hall observer Jack Humphreville wrote in CityWatch, “ These reforms are Management 101 that should have been implemented years ago instead of continuing to kick the can down the road.”

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:55 PM | Permalink

The recent history of Los Angeles can be told by a tour of its malls from the sprawling shopping centers designed for the car-mad post-World War II years to the present where retailers are competing for affluent shoppers, battling online merchants, and trying to figure out the future of a city flirting with alternate means of transportation such as Uber and expanded public transit.

Those problems no doubt are behind plans to remodel the monster eight-story Beverly Center at Beverly and La Cienega boulevards into something that might catch the eye of Angelenos. Beverly Center, ponderous when it was new in the 1980s, now must compete with such flashy attractions as the Third Street Promenade, Old Town Pasadena, the Grove and the revamped Century City. All of them offer customers daylight and sunshine, major ingredients of a Southern California lifestyle that was missed by Beverly Center designers.

I’m writing about malls because of a combination of journalistic curiosity and self interest. The new Century City mall has poached Nordstrom’s, the best store in our neighborhood mall, the Westside Pavilion at Pico and Westwood Boulevards. With Nordstrom’s going and only Macy’s remaining—along with a number of marginal shops—the future of the Pavilion, opened in 1985, seems dim with the exception of the Landmark theaters and a couple of restaurants in the building across Westwood Boulevard.

What makes this more than a neighborhood story is opening of the Expo rail line. The final stretch from Culver City into Santa Monica is almost completed. There are stations at Westwood and Sepulveda boulevards, and the prospect of train service is heating up interest in L.A.’s favorite business, land speculation and development. The Westside Pavilion, minus Nordstrom’s, is headed for big change, and all of us in the neighborhood are curious about what will happen.

I asked the Pavilion’s owner, Macerich. I was referred to Karen Maurer, a company official, who asked me to email my questions. I did, but she never replied. I got the story anyway from Barbara Broide, a longtime leader of the Westwood South of Santa Monica Blvd. Homeowners Assn. She said Macerich Vice President for Development Bob Aptaker told a meeting of our homeowners’ group in November the company plans to empty the mall of its remaining tenants once Nordstrom’s leaves. The interior will be gutted. An ugly wall on Pico will be torn down and new shops, bigger than the old, will be open to Pico, with plenty of glass. Whole Foods is being mentioned as a possible tenant, as is Dick’s Sporting Goods. Macerich hopes the Expo line will provide some customers.

But nobody has seen a final plan and some are speculating that the main Pavilion structure will be torn down and replaced by something more profitable. Will Macerich, now talking about a fairly modest project, go for a multi use development—retail, offices and housing--that would require a change in city zoning laws and regulations? That sort of thing is happening all over the city, particularly along the route of the new transit lines. Resentment of such plans in Hollywood has led to an anti-development proposal to put a restrictive measure on the city ballot in November.

The Coalition to Preserve L.A. is pushing a ballot measure that would impose a moratorium of up to two years on new development projects including housing that would require City Council approval. The proposal would also make it difficult to amend the city general plan to permit more development.

Development plans from the Westside to Hollywood and into the San Fernando Valley will be at the center of political controversy as developers and property owners maneuver to profit in the changing L.A.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:38 PM | Permalink

Secretary of State Alex Padilla conceded that the five Los Angeles County Board of Supervisor districts are big. But he declined to say whether he still favors plans that would increase the number of districts to boost Latino representation and to possibly help the election of an Asian American.

“A district of 2 million people is a lot,” he said. “Those are big districts.” But when I pressed him about how he felt about the proposal, he wouldn’t say.

Padilla spoke at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum, presided over by public affairs consultant Emma Schafer, who also compiles the web site Emma’s Memos. He is a former Los Angeles city councilman and state senator from the San Fernando Valley.

I wondered about Padilla’s feelings on board expansion for a couple of reasons. As the top elected Latino official in the state—and a prospect for future office—his opinions are important. And as a state senator, he introduced legislation that would have given judges the power to expand boards of supervisors if they found minorities were being denied representation. It was part of a bill to strengthen the state voting rights act. Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the legislation. He did not touch on the board expansion issue. He said the present voting rights act is sufficient.

But the expansion issue remains. There is a Latino on the five person county board, but Hilda Solis’ presence doesn’t disguise the fact that Los Angeles County’s Latinos should be better represented. Same with Asian Americans.

Latinos comprise about half of Los Angeles County’s population but the board has opposed proposals to draw new districts or to add two more districts to give them a better chance on election day. That is why Padilla and other Latino politicians and activists pushed for giving judges the power to expand boards. No doubt board expansion advocates will be back at Padilla for help again.

Mine wasn’t the only question Padilla ducked. Peter Jamison of the Los Angeles Times asked Padilla if he would run against Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti next year. “I am not running for mayor,” Padilla replied, without letting on whether he might run in the future.

But I left in a good mood. Padilla gave a ringing endorsement to my favorite section of the secretary of state’s office, the archives. My wife Nancy and I spent many days in the state archives doing research for my biography of Jesse Unruh. It’s a great place and if you’ve got some spare time in Sacramento, make sure to visit.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:05 PM | Permalink

When I talked to Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar, I got the feeling that the city may be moving away from its punitive approach to homelessness and considering something more humane and practical.

Huizar, whose 14th District includes Skid Row and its almost 2,000 homeless, is co-chair of the council Homeless and Poverty Committee, sharing the duty with Councilman Marqueece-Harris Dawson. I was interested in the committee’s final report, which is expected to be released at its January 27 meeting.

Huizar said there would be “a fundamental change from where we have been in the past. This report goes in the direction of decriminalizing homelessness.”
Huizar referred to a city policy of sweeping the streets of homeless, along with their possessions, tents and tarpaulins and jailing those who won’t move on. Court decisions have halted the sweeps for the most part, leaving the city with its present policy of neglect.

He said he thought the committee would recommend a “housing first” approach. Housing first, supported by many homeless advocates, envisions placing the homeless in apartments or other housing and then providing them with counseling, substance abuse rehabilitation, care for physical and mental ailments and other services. That’s in contrast to the practice of getting the homeless to pledge sobriety and begin treatment before they are admitted to a shelter.

Housing, of course, remains the biggest obstacle in helping the homeless. It will take a combination of county, city, state and federal funds, along with private investment. And, it will require neighborhoods that won’t protest affordable housing nearby.

As Huizar noted, housing first also requires an intensive effort to reach out to homeless people and persuade them to buy into the program. The council homeless committee will recommend increased outreach teams. The teams of about four people are made up of social service workers from Los Angeles County health, social welfare, and rehabilitation departments. County workers run almost all homeless services, but the city has a hand with policing, street (and sidewalk) sweeping and refuse removal as well as and operating parks, where many homeless now live. Thus coordination between the county and city is essential.

Huizar said he “was shocked to see” there was so little city-county cooperation when Skid Row, along with the rest of downtown, was placed in his district in the last reapportionment. Actually, a pilot program conceived by then-Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky had pioneered the effort but nobody followed up on it. Huizar said his city-county-community program has already put a limited number of outreach workers in Skid Row. The homeless committee will recommend a big increase, putting 20 to 24 workers on the streets five days a week, This will require unprecedented cooperation between city and county departments, but Huizar said he was sure it would happen.

He said the committee would also recommend appointment of a homeless coordinator to oversee the city’s efforts and work with the county. Other recommendations will be for more storage facilities, where the homeless can store their possessions and more mobile showers and provisional housing until permanent housing is found.

Nobody says putting all this together will be easy. But the fact that these ideas are on the table may mean a future for the homeless that doesn’t include streets, tents and jail.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 3:19 PM | Permalink

A missing ingredient in Wednesday’s Los Angeles County town-hall style meeting on homelessness was a frank discussion of the difficulties in filling the homeless’ great need for affordable housing.

I watched the afternoon-long session online and was impressed with the sincerity of the people in the homeless aid field. They’d come to express their opinions on a draft of a plan that will be presented to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. The ideas in the draft are good, but they are the same ideas that have been batted around for years by those providing services to the growing numbers of homeless.

Afterward, I called John Maceri, executive director of OPCC (formerly known as the Ocean Park Community Center) and the Lamp Community. The combined organization assists the homeless in a wide area of Los Angeles, reaching beyond city limits up to Malibu.

“I very much appreciated that the county and the city are working toward a fully integrated strategy,” Maceri said. But he said the ideas offered by the county staff “have been recommended before. That’s not a criticism. It is a recognition that the county and the city are catching up to what the providers have been saying for a long time…now they are working together, or beginning to, in a focused way.”

Finding housing for the homeless—and providing them with care for physical and mental illness and with substance abuse rehabilitation—is a first priority for many advocates for the homeless. They favor a policy known as “housing first”—settling people in apartments and then providing the care and job training they need. The county draft proposals noted that homeless people couldn’t afford rent in high-cost Los Angeles County. And, the Republican Congress has drastically reduced funds to subsidize rents for the poor. The county staff failed to single out the Republicans for the blame they deserve. Nor did they say where the funds should come from.

The county staff also failed to mention another stumbling block. Los Angeles and the other 87 cities in the county control zoning in their areas, and residents have long been opposed to building affordable housing in their neighborhoods or encouraging landlords to open their properties to subsidized housing for the poor.

Los Angeles County runs services for the poor—mental health, drug rehabilitation, county hospitals, foster children programs, general relief aid and, of course, the jail, where too many end up because of punitive city laws. But it has no control over the city zoning laws and regulations that permit or deny construction of low cost housing.

Maceri noted the obstacles, including Nimbyism (not in my backyard) among residents who exert pressure on elected officials. “There will have to be compromise,” he said. “Residents will have to have affordable housing in their neighborhoods.”

There is more, of course, to this complicated issue, and more talks will no doubt be held. Fresh ideas, anyone?

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 1:46 PM | Permalink

“No one should expect the problem to be solved overnight,” cautioned former Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky when I asked him about the latest and most promising aid proposal for a homeless population now suffering through El Nino’s driving rain.

Senate President pro tem Kevin de Leon, a Los Angeles Democrat, along with Democratic and Republican colleagues, has proposed the state issue $2 billion in bonds. Money from the sale of bonds, combined with federal and state funds, officials said, could pay for construction of 10,000 to 14,000 housing units over a several year period. The bonds would be repaid from funds from a state tax levied by the voters in 2004, to provide services and housing for the mentally ill, many of whom are homeless. In addition, de Leon and the others would allocate $200 million for rent subsidies to provide shelter while the new housing is built.

Yaroslavsky likes the proposal but noted it has a long way to go. I called him because, while supervisor, he was behind the most creative solution for the county’s homeless crisis, worst in the state and probably the nation. It was a pilot project giving some of the most chronic homeless apartments. Then, safely housed, they were treated for mental illness, addiction or whatever else pushed them into homelessness. Success rate, Yaroslavsky said, has been 90 percent. This approach, called “housing first,” is in contrast to the more traditional approach of big homeless shelters. Critics say that in such shelters homeless are separated from family, friends and possessions and required to pledge sobriety and to accept treatment before they are given a bed-- an approach that doesn’t work as well as housing first.

“It takes time, but we know it works,” said Yaroslavsky, who was term limited out of office and now teaches at UCLA. He told me the story of a chronically homeless man, once a UCLA engineering student, who had been on the streets for years. A social worker for a non-profit homeless agency worked for many months to persuade him to move into an apartment, where he settled into a safe life and then accepted treatment for his ailments. Such efforts would have to be multiplied, Yaroslavsky said.

The de Leon proposal must be approved by Gov. Jerry Brown and the State Assembly, in addition to passing the Senate. Also pending are proposals by the city and the county to put money into homeless programs.

If all these proposals get beyond the talking stage—which would be somewhat of a miracle—the funds would be administered by a little known agency, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, whose members are appointed by Mayor Eric Garcetti and the county Board of Supervisors.

The agency, Yaroslavsky said, should direct its efforts toward housing first programs. Money should go to “people who give the homeless homes.” He said there “should be an unconditional commitment for housing first.”

As Yaroslavsky said, there is a long way to go before something is put together. With the El Nino rains, the homeless issue has become big news. With sunshine it will recede. What is needed is someone to take hold of the matter and focus all attention on plans as they lumber through government agencies. Sounds like a job for Mayor Garcetti, the most visible and potentially influential elected official in the county.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 8:44 AM | Permalink

“Homelessness is a problem that involves thousands of people and requires a massive response but at the end of the day it’s really about one person at a time,“ said Miguel A. Santana, Los Angeles’ city administrative officer.

I visited Santana in his City Hall East office this week for guidance on the homeless relief plans that come in confusing number almost weekly from city hall and the county hall of administration.

Santana is the key person in the city’s efforts to deal with the fast growing number of homeless and the encampments that house them. Answering to Mayor Eric Garcetti and the 15-member city council, he has direct oversight for the city budget and departments, including those dealing with homelessness. He must also mesh the city’s efforts with those of county government, which operates welfare, foster care, emergency hospitals, jails, health clinics and other units that provide care for the homeless. In addition, both the city and the county are seeking federal funds to supplement local money for emergency and long term housing for the homeless.

Santana is well equipped for the job. Before he became city administrative officer in 2009, he was a deputy county administrative officer, supervising the departments that provide social services to the homeless and other poor.

Too many people see the homeless as a pitiful, disgusting or scary mass of unfortunates, all pretty much the same. It’s much more complicated, Santana said, and so are the solutions. “Each person who is out on the street today is there for a different set of reasons,” he said. Those helping them must tailor solutions to the widely varying needs of people who range from addicts and mentally ill to families thrust onto the streets by job loss or illness. It calls, he said, for “intensive case management.”

I asked Santana how he is getting disparate city and county bureaucracies together on the complex program of creating low cost housing while persuading the homeless to give up the street life for an apartment.

“I was on a conference call today with my counterparts in the county,“he said. “It helps that the majority of the people in the county working on this I worked with when I was there several years ago.” That would be a departure from years of feuding and non-cooperation between the city and county.

I asked a county supervisorial aide working on homeless about this. “We are in constant communication with city council offices, mayor's office, the city attorney,“ the aide said. “There is unprecedented cooperation, and the elected officials in office today understand the need for this. They have learned from the past,”

Mayor Garcetti recently met with Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who with Supervisor Sheila Kuehl authored the supervisors’ plan to allocate more money for low-income housing. Garcetti and Ridley-Thomas’ goals coincide—higher wages, more housing and a plan to persuade the homeless to use it. Their exchange of letters following the meeting had the careful, formal sound of statements made by heads of state after they get together and paper over differences—sort of Putin and Obama. But they each concluded their letters with pledges to work together.

For it to work, they and other elected officials will have to answer a central question posed by Miguel Santana during our conversation—who will assume command of the effort. The mayor? Fifteen council members? The five supervisors?

“Because for the longest time, our homeless strategy has been one looking at the other and saying you’re in charge,” he said. “ And at the end of the day nobody was really in charge. “

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:50 PM | Permalink

The negatives and positives of a changing Los Angeles were on display Monday when the chairman of the city council’s budget and finance committee spoke to lawyers, lobbyists, union leaders and other city hall aficionados at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum.

City Councilman Paul Krekorian, who represents the 2nd District in the San Fernando Valley, gave a generally rosy picture of city hall at the forum, which is organized by public affairs consultant Emma Schafer, who also edits the Emma’s Memos web site.
“We’re seeing the dark days of the recession through a rear view mirror,” Krekorian said.

Better business conditions have increased city revenues, he said, and the municipal work force has been reduced by 5,000. The deficit is going down and reserve funds are going up.

What was most interesting was Kerkorian’s reaction to two serious about two issues confronting Los Angeles, the problems of traffic and immigrants making a living.

He was asked about a proposal called Mobility Plan 2035. Now being discussed at city hall, it calls for adding hundreds of miles of bus and bike-only lanes. Faced with lawsuits attacking the plan for causing even more traffic jams, council members, who already approved the plan earlier, are now talking about making revisions to forestall legal action by homeowner and business groups who complain of the loss of motor vehicle lanes. Times reporter David Zahniser wrote that council members are expected to approve a revised plan.

Krekorian called the plan “a vision for the future,” and said “the status quo doesn’t work in Los Angeles.” He didn’t say how he stood on a final plan, but noted that he was sure any solution would cause pain. “It will and always does,” he said.

Immigration was in the background when he was asked about the controversy over regulating street vendors. The issue, wrote Times reporter Emily Alpert Reyes, is “whether to legalize and regulate the bustling trade that is already widespread on many sidewalks, an idea that has heartened throngs of street vendors who make their living selling ice cream, hot dogs wrapped in bacon, and a slew of other goods.”

A large number of the vendors are immigrants and their presence downtown, around MacArthur Park, and in other areas give the streets and sidewalks a lively urban feel, and provide Angelenos a convenient place to buy an ice cream. But those who own ice cream parlors, hot dog stands and t-shirt shops say they pay taxes, rent and have insurance, costs not borne by street vendors.

Krekorian said it’s an “issue where there are different needs in different parts of the city.” He said he was concerned about the impact on bricks and mortar merchants if there are too many street vendors.

The dispute is a sign of the changing city and the needs of poor people trying to start their own businesses with little or no capital, and the desires of people like me who like a little life on the street. The bike lane controversy is another sign of change, this one of the LA where the motor vehicle may no longer be allowed to rule.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:01 PM | Permalink

After many months of embracing some of the most punitive anti-homeless laws in the country, Los Angeles city hall has unexpectedly shown a measure of compassion toward the many thousands of homeless women, men and children living on our sidewalks, in parks, under freeways or in cars and vans.

I was surprised when Mayor Eric Garcetti and seven members of the city council announced on Tuesday they would declare “a state of emergency” to try to attack homelessness and promised to spend up to $100 million on some sort of a program. In my weeks of reporting for a three-part series on homelessness for the web site Truthdig, I found only one member of the council who completely opposed laws that generally ban the homeless from leaving their possessions on the street. That was Gil Cedillo, the only vote against the punitive legislation.

It may have been a coincidence, but the official’s announcement came a few days after Truthdig completed running my series. However, as I blogged on Truthdig today, “The public officials, of course, didn’t need our web site to alert them. All they had to do is look down the street, or better yet, walk there to see the tents and tarpaulins of the homeless encampments on Skid Row sidewalks or to check them out in parks and under freeways throughout the city. There is hardly any place in this rich city without women, men and children living on the streets or in cars and recreational vehicles.”

It will be up to Garcetti to pull the many elements of the government together to have a program that will succeed. Finding $100 million is a first priority. He’ll have to work with the numbers guy, City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana, who has warned that at least $100 million goes down the drain, wasted on jailing the homeless and treating them at public hospitals.

Only seven of the 15 council members joined Garcetti in his announcement. Some members of the council seen to wish the homeless “would die and decrease the surplus population,” in the words of Ebenezer Scrooge. The mayor will need more votes. Garcetti will have to make sure that the city and county umbrella agency for homeless care, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, finds housing and care in a faster and more efficient way than it has been doing. Garcetti will have to get the county supervisors on board. The county has a large number of homeless. Finally, he will have to work with state legislators for measures that will help finance construction of housing for the homeless. It will do no good to ask Congress. The Republican majority has sharply reduced the amount of federal funds for homeless housing.

“It’s getting people into housing with support services,” Garcetti told me. “We went to …a 95 percent success rate with Hollywood Forward (a housing program). We know how to do this successfully.”

“A lot of people say don’t talk about homelessness and don’t talk about ending homelessness because there is no political upside, the problem is intractable even if somebody cares about it,” he said as we talked in his city hall office. “But I have worked on this issue ever since I was 14 or 15, when I was in junior high school. I used to come down and volunteer on Skid Row… That’s one of the reasons I’m mayor.”

He told me about what’s being considered for the homeless program he is expected to unveil, hopefully soon.

“We first have to start with outreach workers, “ he said. “We have eight teams, 16 people for the entire county of Los Angeles. In the budget, I doubled this. The city has never done this before. I put another 10 teams or 20 people out. If we are going to be serious about housing about 10,000 people a year, we probably need 500 outreach workers over the next two or three years.” Then housing and medical and mental care must be found for those contacted by the workers.

I asked him about the punitive legislation passed by the city council. “You’re a liberal, progressive, humanistic person,” I said. “How do you feel about presiding over a city hall that has all of these repressive homeless laws? Does that bother you?”
“Yes,” he said, “that is the reason why we won’t be implementing the the new ordinance,” he said. “(We) need to keep the sidewalks clean, no question. But until they change the penalty and the type of property seized… we won’t prioritize that enforcement, we won’t do it. I want to change the debate from how are we going to enforce to how are we going to house. That is something the city has not done particularly well.”

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:19 PM | Permalink

The excellent new documentary, “Bridging the Divide: Tom Bradley and the Politics of Race,” tells the terrible story of race relations in Los Angeles, particularly the way a racist police department brutalized African Americans and white property owners kept blacks, Latinos, Asian Americans and sometimes Jews out of segregated neighborhoods.

It relates this through the life of Bradley, the five-term African American mayor who brought the city together, as King Arthur sang in Camelot, “for one brief shining moment,” and then saw it crumble in fire and death during the 1992 riot.

The documentary will be shown at 8 p.m. August 18 on PBS SoCal.

Anyone who cares about L.A.’s past and future should see it. Among those who care the most are the two filmmakers, Lyn Goldfarb, an Academy Award nominee, and Emmy winner Alison Sotomayor. I watched them with admiration as they spent several years researching Bradley’s life. They interviewed many people, and wrote and rewrote the script, shaping it into a compelling story. And all the while, they had to scrape up the money needed to finish the project. I never could understand why it would be so hard in such a rich town. But nothing stopped them and now we can all benefit from their success.

Goldfarb and Sotomayor take Bradley from his early childhood on a Texas sharecropper’s farm to Poly high and UCLA, where he was a top athlete, to the LAPD, where he rose to lieutenant despite bigoted superiors and colleagues. Defeated by Mayor Sam Yorty’s racist campaign in 1969, he came back to win in 1973. He served until 1993. He laid the groundwork for the new downtown and for rail transit. He brought the 1984 Olympic games here, his personal Camelot. Most important, he forged a coalition of blacks, Jews, Latinos and Asians that ushered in an era of multi-ethnic politics that lasted until the early 1990s. Years later, Barack Obama followed that path.

From the start, I thought the two filmmakers had a tough job. Bradley was a reticent man who didn’t enjoy talking about himself. No introspective or self-promoting interviews ever came from him, as I found out in my years covering him. Pulling a revealing anecdote from him was exhausting.

I admired Bradley. He was intelligent, courageous, tough, forthright and challenging. One day, Ali Webb, his press secretary, called. “The boss wants to see you,” she said. That meant now.

With another politician, I would have fallen into a defiant, “you can’t push the press around” mode. Not with the mayor. I quickly walked across the street to city hall. He was waiting at his desk with a pile of my stories, a number of paragraphs marked in red pencil. He didn’t agree with them. He told me why, as specific as a teacher grading papers. We discussed, and argued each point. Sometimes I held my ground and on a couple of paragraphs I agreed with him. He didn’t yell or insult me. He was calm and determined. That must have been what it was like when he was showing an errant cop or politician the error of their ways. When we were done, he thanked me for coming over. I told him I respected him for talking to me man to man about my work instead of whining to my publisher or editor.

Goldfarb and Sotomayor caught his quiet and determined manner when they told of his experiences as a police officer and his purchase of a home in a white, segregated neighborhood. The LAPD and housing segregation were racial ills that poisoned the city and they came together when the cops were called in to investigate firebombing by white neighbors against African American neighbors. Bradley took them both on without raising his voice.

He kept the city fairly calm as long as possible. But as this documentary shows, bigotry remains LA’s burden, just as it is across the United States.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 3:25 PM | Permalink

This is an interesting time for politics in the African American community. The names of two black elected officials are being thrown about as possible rivals to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti. And, up the hill from city hall, fears are being expressed that demographic trends threaten African American representation on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

This may sound like the most inside kind of speculation. Garcetti isn’t up for re-election until 2017, and demography won’t make itself felt until even later in the decade. Drought, earthquake or an unbelievable El Nino could make LA politics irrelevant by then. But the speculation tells something about the current state of Los Angeles.

First, there are Mayor Garcetti and the two African American officials, Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas and City Council President Herb Wesson.

Garcetti is receiving increasing scrutiny and criticism by the news media. While favored to win a second term, he is working hard to assure it, accumulating funds for the campaign. A fund-raising stop in Washington, reported by Peter Jamison of the Los Angeles Times, drew some of the criticism.

Wesson, whose control of the legislative body gives him clout approaching that of Garcetti, has been speaking out on major issues such as neighborhood representation, homelessness and race. Wesson, wrote the Times’ David Zahniser, “spent the last 10 days sounding like a mayor.” Just doing my job, said Wesson, who reminded Zahniser that he has already endorsed Garcetti for another term. Not so shy was Ridley-Thomas, who also sounded like a mayoral candidate at a recent event, when he spoke out about municipal failures on homelessness, excessive police force and income inequality. Has he ruled out a run for mayor in 2017? “No,” he told Zahniser.

Some African American political activists, who are concerned about a drop in the African American population, might greet a candidacy by either of them with enthusiasm. For a steady decline in African American population could mean a loss of black representation on the city council and board of supervisors.

Alan Clayton, a longtime expert on minority representation and redistricting, analyzed the demographic threat. In an article for the San Gabriel Valley Tribune and the Daily News, Clayton noted how in a recent Los Angeles City Council race an unsung Latina, Ana Cubas, finished a surprising close second to the winner, State Sen. Curren Price, an African American who was backed by elected officials, unions and other power players in the South Los Angeles 9th District. Cubas’ showing reflected the fast growing Latino population in an area that was once heavily black.

Clayton said the vote could be a sign of the difficulties African Americans may face in holding the 2nd supervisorial seat now occupied by Ridley Thomas, whose term expires in 2020.

The district, which includes South Los Angeles, Compton and Inglewood, has a declining black population. In 2011, Clayton said, 36 percent of the voting age population was black, 34 percent Latino, 17.5 percent white and 10.4 percent Asian American. By the 2020 election, Clayton said, the voting age Latino population will reach 38 percent and the black population will drop to about 32 percent.

For African Americans, a solution to this dilemma is to expand the five-member board of supervisors to seven members, as envisioned by a state constitutional amendment proposed by State Sen. Tony Mendoza, an Artesia Democrat.

But, as is the case with county supervisors around the state, the Los Angeles board has opposed it, the supervisors fearing their power would be diluted. Better, they said, to be one of five than one of seven. The white majority voted against it while Ridley-Thomas and Hilda Solis, a Latina, abstained.

Expansion of the board would do much to make it more representative of the county’s population, perhaps making possible the election of another Latino, retention of a black and a chance for an Asian American to be elected. Accomplishing this would likely touch off a multi-ethnic election battle but it probably would give the county a more diverse board than we have today.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:25 PM | Permalink

Marcie Edwards, Los Angeles' water boss, gives an audience no sense of the calamitous nature of the drought. But maybe that’s as it should be. The drought is being fought in increments, one lawn and one repaired water pipe at a time. The task doesn’t lend itself to dramatic words.

Edwards, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, told a Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum luncheon Wednesday that the solution was reducing landscape watering, fixing and replacing old pipes, increasing storage capacity, recycling water and capturing storm water instead of allowing it to flow into the Pacific.

Mostly, she said, it’s all about infrastructure, not interesting to read about but necessary.

It was interesting to me. I’ve been writing about water since when there was plenty of it—or in some years far more than we could handle. The water bosses of that time thought of expansion. Los Angeles had plenty of water from the Owens Valley, supplemented by allocations from the Metropolitan Water District, which imports water from the Colorado River and Northern California and supplies it to the DWP and many other Southern California water agencies. Everyone thought big.

Now we think small. Los Angeles, Edwards said, has reduced water consumption by 16 percent. “Los Angeles has been trying very hard to cut water use,” she said. Much of the reduction is coming from cutting down water use for lawns, gardens and other landscaping. And, she said, there is “an increased focus on water pipe breaks.”

She made an interesting point about the difficulties of fixing things. As Edwards described it, the Department of Water Power is having trouble finding people with the craft skills and teamwork abilities needed to respond to emergencies, such as a big water pipe break. City hiring rules and union contracts also slow the process. And other city rules make it difficult to hire outside contractors to do the work.

I guess I was hoping for a stirring call to action from the water boss, but that’s probably inappropriate for someone who will be judged, in the long run, by how many pipes she fixes and how much water she recycles.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:50 PM | Permalink

With David Ryu, a Korean American, just elected to the Los Angeles City Council, attention should now turn to putting an Asian American on the county board of supervisors. Doing that, and increasing the number of Latino supervisors, would result in a board that truly represents the county’s diverse population.

The best chance of increasing such representation lies with the state legislature and the voters. A proposal by Sen. Tony Mendoza (D-Artesia) would increase the size of the supervisorial boards in Los Angeles and four other counties with two million or more residents—San Diego, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino--from five to seven. To counter arguments that adding two or more supervisors to the boards would cost too much money, the measure would limit spending on the boards to what it would have been before expansion. The measure, a proposed constitutional amendment, would have to be approved by a two thirds majority of the Senate and the Assembly before it goes on the 2016 ballot, where it needs a majority of voters to pass.

Mendoza is the latest Latino lawmaker trying to increase Latino representation on the Los Angeles board. All have failed since a court-ordered redistricting in 1990 resulted in the creation of a district with enough Latino residents to permit election of a Latino lawmaker. Gloria Molina was the first, succeeded by the Latina incumbent, Hilda Solis. But the supervisors have declined to redraw district lines to help elect another Latino. Three members of the board—Mike Antonovich, Sheila Kuehl and Don Knabe—are white and Mark Ridley-Thomas is African American.

Mendoza’s proposal is more significant than past proposals because it affects Asian Americans as well as Latinos.

Enlarging the board would create space for another Latino to be elected. Most of the discussion of the issue has revolved around this issue. But the Mendoza plan could also help an Asian American candidate. Alan Clayton, who is a redistricting consultant, told me that such a result is possible in a potential district centered in the heavily Asian American San Gabriel Valley, reaching from South Pasadena and San Marino through Arcadia, Monterey Park and east to Claremont, Walnut and Diamond Bar.

The election could be an ethnic free for all. Clayton estimated the district would have almost 600,000 Asian Americans, more than 600,000 Latinos, less than 100,000 whites and the rest African American and other ethnicities. The Census Bureau lists Los Angeles County’s ethnic population as 48.3 percent Latino, 27.2 percent white, 14.4 percent Asian American and 9.2 percent African American.

A 2013 report of the Asian Americans Advancing Justice said Asian Americans grew faster than any other ethnic group in Los Angeles County between 2000 and 2010. In 2000, the report said, there were seven communities in the county that were majority Asian American. Now there are 13, all but one of them in the San Gabriel Valley.

The organization also noted that the Asian American community, which has a large number of poor, needs the kind of help government can provide. For example, the report said, Asian Americans and Native Hawaiian-Pacific Islanders “are less likely than Blacks or African Americans and Whites to have health insurance; over one in three Korean Americans in Los Angeles County are uninsured, a rate highest among racial or ethnic groups. Government, foundation, and private funding are needed to support culturally and linguistically appropriate outreach and education to Asian American and NHPI communities around available health coverage options.”

Those are among the reasons why Asian Americans need representation on the board of supervisors. And It would be good if the board of supervisors finally reflected the ethnicity of Los Angeles County.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 8:42 AM | Permalink

The best place to watch baseball in Los Angeles is not Dodger Stadium. It’s Jackie Robinson Stadium, the small, elegant home of the UCLA baseball Bruins.

Unfortunately for the university, the ballpark occupies 10 acres of the 387-acre Veterans Administration health facility in West Los Angeles, land reserved for housing and treating veterans. Los Angeles has more homeless vets than any other city, most if not all suffering from mental illness, substance abuse and other ailments resulting from service in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, other wars.

Only the ignorant or the heartless would deny them the medical care, counseling, housing and other help. But the bumbling, bureaucratic VA instead leased part of the property to companies and institutions that had nothing to do with veterans. Despite the property-rich West L.A. location, the VA leased land, at bargain prices, to UCLA for baseball, to Brentwood School for an athletic complex, to an oil drilling company, to a hotel laundry and to a car rental firm and a charter bus company for vehicle storage. In addition, 10 acres were given to a conservation organization for a park.

A class action suit filed on behalf of four homeless vets demanded that the VA kick out these interlopers, whose leases violated the terms of the 1888 deed giving the property to the federal government as a home for veterans. The VA fought the suit as did UCLA. Acting like a dog, or a Bruin, in the manger, UCLA, in an unbelievably insensitive reference to homelessness, told the court that losing the stadium, "would render UCLA's championship-winning team homeless by the start of its next season."

Fiery Bobby Shriver, then a Santa Monica city councilman, went after the university. A top legal team, featuring the ACLU and prominent Los Angeles lawyer Ron Olson, working pro bono, represented the vets. The Bruins and the other leaseholders were routed in court when a federal judge struck down the leases in 2013.

With the Veterans Administration buried in patient treatment scandals, President Barack Obama appointed a new Veterans Administration secretary, Robert A. McDonald and told him to do something about the homeless veterans. McDonald met with Olson and they settled the case.

They each signed an agreement which requires that the VA site will give full care to veterans, “particularly homeless veterans, including underserved populations, such as female veterans, aging veterans, and those who are severely physically or mentally disabled,” Housing will be provided. As for UCLA and the other lessees, the settlement calls for an “exit strategy” for those who don’t have anything to do with veterans.

UCLA, in an admirable about face, has embraced the settlement.

I talked to Norm Abrams, a former acting chancellor and longtime UCLA law professor, who was asked by Chancellor Gene Block to take charge of the university’s efforts to comply with the settlement. He said the university could provide legal services for veterans, support the housing moves and build a social service center, where vets and their families could come for a variety of services.

As for Jackie Robinson Stadium, UCLA hopes it can continue to play there. Abrams said, “now we pay an under market rent… We certainly recognize the necessity and obligation to pay a fair market rent.” He said the stadium could be much more useful to the veterans than it is now. He noted that the VA wants public events, beyond Bruin baseball, there. And it could be home to a vets' baseball league or a place for veteran’s families.

“I am reasonably sure we can reach an agreement with the VA without much difficulty,” he said. "I do see with the new secretary an energy we hope to match…historically it was not (there). The litigation was a catalyst for us and for the VA and we hope we are in a post litigation phase.”

Another well-known UCLA law school faculty member, Gary Blasi, who was working with the homeless veterans, told me that “It’s not crazy that there be a sports facility on the VA site…My view is that there are a lot of ways the UCLA and the VA could collaborate, but it has to be honest and open and real."

That could be good news for Jackie Robinson Stadium patrons. The best ballpark in L.A. is just a 10-minute drive from my house. I could even walk. We baseball fans would miss the place if it’s gone.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:42 PM | Permalink

Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis danced cautiously around some controversial topics when she spoke to a downtown crowd of political insiders and power brokers Wednesday.

She was the speaker at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum luncheon, run by public affairs consultant Emma Schafer, who also compiles the political blog Emma’s Memos. Lawyers, transportation business executives and engineering firm representative were in the audience at The Palm. Solis is a good person for them to know. Most have business with either the county or the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Solis is not only a member of the five- person Board of Supervisors, which has influence on projects throughout the county, but she is also on the MTA board, in charge of building and running transit lines.

I’d never heard Solis, who was elected to succeed Gloria Molina last year after serving as U.S. labor secretary and a member of Congress. She had little opposition and few campaign appearances. I had a much clearer take on Sheila Kuehl, who was speaking all over the place in her intense race with Bobby Shriver. So I was curious. Solis is sharp, pleasant and has a practiced technique of smiling her way through troublesome questions without giving much of an answer.

I asked her about her stand on future negotiations with the unions, which represent county workers. The county unions supported Kuehl in that election and previously enthusiastically helped elect Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. That gives the unions three friendly seats on the board. Molina and then Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, while liberal Democrats, often tangled the unions.

She said she’d approach the matter “very diligently." What’s she going to do in negotiations? Determine costs of proposals to see what the county can support. She said it would be a challenge. The only light she shed on the subject was to say she’d be “a big change from being antagonistic.” The blunt Molina was famous for not getting along with people, some of them union leaders.

Solis was also cautious in discussing two projects—approval of a big hotel-apartment-retail development on Bunker Hill downtown and completion of the 710 Freeway. The freeway project would have to be environmentally sound and the Bunker Hill development would have to serve more than rich people, she said. She is chair of the Grand Avenue Authority, the city- county body overseeing Bunker Hill development.

A laborers’ union executive was at the head table and his members build freeways, office buildings, hotels and much more. So Solis made it clear that her comments on the projects doesn’t mean she’s hostile to construction. She talked positively about the MTA transit projects underway, words pleasing to the union leaders and transportation engineers and lobbyists in the room. They came to lunch for that kind of reassurance.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:26 PM | Permalink

The National Football League is a heartless, unreliable lover, as the star- struck city councils of Carson and Inglewood will no doubt find out.

The Carson City Council Tuesday night approved a vague proposal for a stadium that, local dreamers hope, will provide a home for transplanted Oakland Raiders and San Diego Charger teams. With just as little debate, the Inglewood council earlier approved a stadium plan for the St. Louis Rams on the Hollywood Park racetrack site.

The three teams are trying to bludgeon their home cities into providing them with new stadiums. It’s a reprise of an act that has been done in past years by other teams hoping for a better deal.

The Los Angeles Times’ Tim Logan and Nathan Fenno wrote how the Carson proposal, approved 3-0, lacked details and quoted a city-funded report saying, “As of the date completion of this report, no official project design documents have been provided by the stadium developer.” All that is really known is that the proposal includes a three-way land deal involving the Chargers, Carson and the property’s current owner.

Anyone who has covered a city hall knows that a three-way land deal is so full of loopholes, twists and turns, unfathomable clauses, and escape hatches that it usually amounts to a give away to one or more of the parties.

I learned about sports contracts when I wrote about the long, secretive negotiations that preceded the construction of the Staples arena in Los Angeles—secret until opened up by then-Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs with some help from me and my column.

My colleague Henry Weinstein and I dealt with the NFL and the Raiders on a daily basis when the Raiders were moving to LA. The hard-nosed and slick league officials and team owners stonewalled us until we found an executive who, because he liked the Times, told us pretty much the truth.

Secret deals by Carson and Inglewood officials are shaping this. The NFL likes the secrecy. The league uses it to attain its only goal, stadiums financed by taxpayers one way or another. On its way, the NFL may leave a trail of broken hearts in Carson and Inglewood, which is already mourning the losses of professional teams that played in the Forum and the horses that used to run at Hollywood Park.

More LA Observed posts on the NFL
LA Observed politics
LA Observed sports

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:46 PM | Permalink

When politicians publish their memoirs, they too often bore readers with safe accounts of their triumphs, skimming or ignoring the bad stuff. Not Richard J. Riordan. In his enlightening book, “The Mayor”, he tells of the tragedies in his life and of his extra-marital affairs, divorces and drinking. These details add a very human touch to his story of the eight successful years he served as mayor of Los Angeles.

Riordan and I will talk about the book, written with Los Angeles Weekly journalist Patrick Range McDonald, and his years as mayor on Saturday at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at USC. It will be at 1:30 p.m. at the Norris Auditorium and given our prickly, friendly and volatile relationship over the years, it should be fun.

Two of his children died—a son in a scuba diving accident, a daughter of illness related to anorexia. A brother was killed in a storm-induced landslide while reading in his Los Angeles home. A sister died of burns after her nightgown caught fire from a fireplace. “Too many martinis which led to flirtations at the bar” doomed his marriage to his first wife, Genie. Alcohol led to two arrests for driving under the influence and another for interfering with cops trying to arrest a friend in a bar. And that’s just by page 59.

Beyond that, Riordan provides an interesting look at his time as mayor. His first big crisis was the earthquake early in the morning of Jan.17, 1994. He tells how “The Bel Air home of my future wife, Nancy Daly, shook so violently that I was jolted out of bed and found myself lying on my back on the carpeted bedroom floor,” he wrote. The phones were dead. He headed for city hall, dropping Daly off at her mother’s retirement home, maneuvered onto the Santa Monica Freeway, was sidetracked by the collapsed La Cienega overpass. He finally made his way downtown on city streets, taking charge of the city’s emergency command center.

That established him as mayor. He also reveals details of his efforts to take over the Los Angeles Unified School District, his successful campaign for a charter revision that increased the power of the mayor and his efforts to increase the size of the Los Angeles Police Department. Unfortunately, he is a staunch defender of the department under his administration and of its then secretive, micromanaging chief, Bernard Parks. He, like Parks, treated the Rampart scandal as if it were an annoying station house screw-up instead being an example of major corruption. He still hates the federal decree that forced LAPD reform.

Riordan reminds us of other accomplishments—the Alameda rail corridor, which promoted harbor growth, and his part in the Staples Center and Disney Hall projects, major components of the downtown revival.

When he was mayor, he was a perfect subject for my Los Angeles Times column and I followed him around L.A. in search of anecdotes. Occasionally, he’d invite me to breakfast at his downtown diner, the Original Pantry, and berate me about the Times’ shortcomings over deliciously unhealthy breakfasts. Afterward, we’d walk around the block, while he puffed on a cigar and continued his negative thoughts on the paper. When I criticized him in a column, he’d call my home early in the morning to complain and I would argue back. During a huge fire, I blasted him for praising Los Angeles firefighters and ignoring the many others who had come from all over the state to fight the flames. I said he was acting as if he were a provincial small town hack. The next morning, the phone rang. “I read your column this morning,” Riordan said. “Oh,” I said, preparing for a fight. “You were right,” he said.

He was and is a quirky, unconventional character and hopefully he’ll show some of this when we talk at the book festival Saturday.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:20 PM | Permalink

“The time to act is now,” said the LA 2020 Commission in its report last year urging big changes for Los Angeles city government. Not so fast, said City Council President Herb Wesson, who created the commission.

Wesson told me Wednesday that he wants the recommendations to go through the council’s labrynthian (my characterization, not his) committee hearing process before big decisions are made. “I have asked the chairs to come up with a timeline to begin the process,” he said when we talked on the phone. “Once it goes through the committee process I will chat with the chairs and what to bring to council and when.”

Wesson created the commission in 2013, telling it to come up with ways to improve Los Angeles’ economy and its slow-moving, financially troubled city government. Attorney Mickey Kantor, a former U.S. commerce secretary and Democratic political power, and Austin Beutner, a top advisor in the administration of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and now publisher of the Los Angeles Times, headed it. Its proposals, while they wouldn’t blow the roof off of city hall, would substantially change how business is done there.

I asked Kantor how he thought things were going. He said he was pleased there was “some movement” on the report. “I only hope that we make progress,” he said tactfully.

Knowing the leisurely manner of city government, I decided to find out what happened to the commission proposals after Kantor and Beutner submitted them to the council. I learned they had been turned over to committees that vote on proposals before the council gets them. I called the councilman who counts most, council president Wesson, who runs everything in the legislative body.

Wesson noted that one of the commission’s recommendations, changing the date of Los Angeles elections, so they will coincide with national and state elections, is on next Tuesday’s ballot. These elections are now in March and April. And he wants to go ahead with recommendations to speed up revisions in community plans and to create a regional body to promote tourism.

But he was in a go- slow mood when I asked him about two of the most important and controversial proposals. One would be to create an Office of Transparency and Accountability. It would analyze the city budget and legislation that would affect jobs and city revenue. Since the city administrative officer, who reports to the mayor, and the legislative analyst, who reports to the council, already do this, they probably hate the idea of giving up power to a new body, as would the mayor and the council. The second would be to set up a Los Angeles Utility Rate Commission, to set water and power rates. Elected officials, who now approve rates, would really hate that.

On the office of transparency, Wesson said, “Is that a good thing to do, is it a duplication of services? Is it going to cost more money? Are you spending money on this and not trimming trees?” Regarding a commission to set utility rates, he said, “I wouldn’t want to say yes or no until this conversation (with committee chairs) takes place. I am not against it, I am not for it but it has to be properly vetted.”

I talked to Councilman Curren Price, whose economic development committee, will study a proposal for economic development zones and Tom LaBonge, head of the committee taking on regional tourism promotion. They said their committees would study the proposals. Paul Krekorian, who heads the budget committee, didn’t call me back but an aide said he’s awaiting a report on the 2020 commission recommendations from city budget officials.

As they say in city hall, not so fast.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:17 PM | Permalink

I’m a big fan of Jon Regardie, executive editor and columnist for the Los Angeles Downtown News, but I don’t agree with his recent column criticizing former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

The perceptive Regardie made some good points. And he gave Villaraigosa and his supporters something to worry about as the ex-mayor decides whether to run for the Senate next year. I’ll get to that, but first Regardie’s analysis of Villaraigosa’s two terms as mayor.

“The fact that some people are seriously discussing a Villaraigosa candidacy is wacky,” Regardie wrote. “It raises the possibility that they suffered an NFL style concussion and developed collective amnesia. I mean, how else to explain the idea that such an underperforming mayor might be a worthy heir to Boxer, one of the most important California politicians of the last 50 years.”

Regardie gives Villaraigosa credit for his greatest achievement as mayor, leading the fight for Measure R, the 2008 ballot proposal that increased the sales tax by a half cent for 30 years and will raise $40 billion for transit projects. He adds that the mayor had a few smaller successes but will be remembered as “kind of a political one-hit wonder” who “should have had a least a half a dozen big wins.”

Actually, that one hit—the transit ballot measure---was a game changing homerun, even more important than the one Dodger Kirk Gibson hit in the 1988 World Series. It resulted in transit lines being started or completed on the Westside, South Los Angeles, downtown Los Angeles, East L.A. and deep into the San Gabriel Valley. It took a lot of guts for Villaraigosa to raise money for the tax-increase campaign and be its public face as we were entering the Great Recession. That victory was supplemented by Villaraigosa’s deal, laboriously worked out with Boxer, to use the local tax revenues to leverage billions more in federal dollars to finish the lines.

It was also gutty of Villaraigosa to try to improve neglected schools in poor minority areas, an effort mocked by Regardie. Villaraigosa challenged the school district and the teachers union in that fight, following the example of former Mayor Richard Riordan, who also took on the school board and the union. They both understood that the mayor of Los Angeles has a special obligation to speak up for kids and parents in the city.

Villaraigosa will have to deal with some points raised by Regardie. Girl friends and the ex mayor giving the impression of a playboy lifestyle may be the most damaging. I teach a politics class at the Pasadena Senior Center. I asked my students what they didn’t like about Villaraigosa. They didn’t respond to the broad question but when I got specific and mentioned lifestyle and girl friends, they nodded. He’s going to have to convince people that he’s a serious person. But if he can do that and run on his accomplishments, he would be in pretty good shape for a Senate race against fellow Democrat Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 9:49 AM | Permalink

One of the most fascinating elections of the year is still going on in the northeast San Fernando Valley's 39th Assembly district where unknown, unsung Patty Lopez is holding a narrow lead over Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, who has been considered a future candidate for lower house speaker.

Dakota Smith, covering the race for the Los Angeles Daily News, wrote on election night “it was a stunning takedown of an entrenched politician.” Bocanegra had collected more than $600,000 compared to Lopez’ $10,000, reported Smith. Both are Democrats. The district includes Sylmar, Pacoima and the city of San Fernando.

By Friday night, with 6,000 or more ballots to be counted, Lopez held a 46-vote lead over her opponent. Brad Hertz, the lawyer representing her in the count proceedings, told me it may take days to officially complete the tally.

Nobody seems quite clear how Lopez did so well. The Daily News’ Smith noted that Lopez has been a representative for the North Valley Occupational Center and a Los Angeles Unified School District volunteer. “I’m just a humble little housewife, “ Lopez told Matt Thacker of the Post-Periodical web site. “I didn’t expect it. My main purpose was to raise my voice high enough to the government so they could hear our needs.” Professor Fernando Guerra, a well-known Loyola Marymount politics expert, “struggled to recall Lopez’ first name” after the election and called the election results ‘one of those freak things,’” Smith wrote.

Bocanegra’s team told Smith that Lopez was helped by Republicans.

What may be most significant is that the race was shaped to some extent by two new California election laws. One requires a runoff between the top two finishers in the primary. Lopez had 23.6 percent of the vote compared to Bocanegra’s 62.5 percent. The second law put the drawing of legislative district lines in the hands of an independent commission. That ended the old practice of districts that favored incumbents. We may be seeing more of these unexpected results in the future.

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Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:58 AM | Permalink

There was something admirably contrarian about the way Sheila Kuehl successfully campaigned for Los Angeles County supervisor against her more dynamic, sometimes explosive opponent Bobby Shriver.

Shriver was eager to overwhelm audiences, opponents and reporters with his points, delivered in a bang-bang manner. During an interview, he was so eager to convince me of his accomplishments that he pointed a finger at my nose, stopping just short of touching it. “That’s raising ‘in your face to a new level,’” commented a colleague.

Kuehl also wanted to sell herself to journalists and audiences. But her real interest was digging into complex issues—foster children, mental illness and others. I could imagine her saying, “the hell with sound bites and entertaining audiences. Let them eat statistics.”

In the end, their styles and personalities--on display at candidate forums, debates and editorial boards--weren’t the most important factor in the campaign. As Maloy Moore reported in the Los Angeles Times Friday, smart, end-of-the-campaign spending was what mattered. Overall, Shriver outraised Kuehl $4,888,760 to $4,717,904. But as a fascinating graphic accompanying Moore’s story showed, a rush of contributions from union-affiliated donors brought Kuehl almost even with Shriver and financed a final days wave of mailers, television and other advertising.

Now the big question is this: Did all that money put her in the county employee unions’ pockets? The same goes for the other new supervisor, Hilda Solis, the only Latino on the board. Solis has been invisible during the campaign. Anointed by the local labor chiefs to be the successor to outgoing Supervisor Gloria Molina, she cruised to victory in the primary and hasn’t been heard from since. Before that, she was in Washington in the low- profile cabinet post of labor secretary. Solis, a former state legislator, has offered no idea of what she’ll do in county government. What kind of leadership, for example, will she provide in increasing Latino representation on the board, such as enlarging it?

As is always the case with the secretive county government, finding out what the new board is doing will be a challenging job for the only watchdogs around, the news media. It’s a great challenge to the Los Angeles Times, with its revived California section, to lead the way.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 1:08 PM | Permalink

Perhaps they were inspired by their distinguished predecessors on Santa Monica College’s Broad Stage, which have included the Shakespeare’s Globe Theater actors. Maybe it was the large and attentive audience. Whatever the reason, Sheila Kuehl and Bobby Shriver gave sharp and articulate performances in last Friday night’s debate, showing clear differences between the candidates for the Third District supervisorial seat.

They covered much ground in their hour-long debate, sponsored by Cal State LA’s Pat Brown Institute of Politics, the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles, and KABC. Shriver was his usual bouncy self, smiling, mugging and waving to friends in the audience when he arrived on stage. When he came up with a zinger against Kuehl, he smiled in appreciation of his own wit. Kuehl was her usual serious self, although she smiled occasionally, as if aware of her need to overcome a reputation of being a policy drudge. After she accomplished a good verbal hit against Shriver, she, too, flashed a look of appreciation at her wit.

The most significant difference was over an issue that hasn’t received much media attention, but illustrates the wide gulf between the business community and organized labor—and Kuehl and Shriver. It is about pay, pensions, and other benefits for the county’s approximately 100,000 employees. Business fears the county could be irreparably damaged by overly generous pay and benefits. The unions disagree.

A board known as the Employee Relations Commission is supposed to settle labor-management disputes. In the past labor and management had to agree on the three board members. Feeling that the arrangement gave labor veto power over the three seats, permitting it to win most cases, the supervisors changed the rules. They decided to allow labor to appoint one commissioner, the county chief executive another with the third member named jointly. Business groups cheered, feeling the new arrangement would weaken labor. The furious unions fought back, trying to undo the action with a state legislative bill by Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer, but Governor Jerry Brown vetoed it.

The dialogue between Kuehl and Shriver about the commission provided a good look on how they would vote on labor-management issues that will be contentious in county government over the next several years.

“The way it was, the unions supporting Sheila won 90 percent of the time,” said Shriver, taking the side of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and other business groups. Kuehl, backed by labor unions, said supervisors “don’t need to be at war with our employees.” She objected to Shriver’s use of the word “win,”, saying the reason the commission has upheld employees in disputes is because the commissioners believed their stories.

If Kuehl defeats Shriver in the November 4 election, it would give labor a 3-2 edge on the board of supervisors, which would be crucial in future debates over pensions, wages and other big employee expenses. Kuehl would be aligned with Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who was heavily backed by labor when he was elected, and union favorite Hilda Solis, who was elected in the primary. If Shriver defeats Kuehl, it would give business three friendly supervisors—him, Mike Antonovich and Don Knabe. On the present board, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky tends to be a swing vote on such issues.

This issue, hardly known or understood by the public, is another reason why the outcome of the election is so important.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:25 PM | Permalink

A conversation with City Atty. Mike Feuer is a trip through the nitty gritty of city government, starting with dangerous sidewalks and including graffiti prevention. medical marijuana regulation and aid to prostitutes who want a better life.

I visited Feuer last week in his office in city hall east, the 16-story annex across Main Street from city hall. We had run into each other at a party, and he invited me to stop by and chat. I’ve known him since he was a young attorney running Beth Tzedek, a community organization, which provides legal aid to low-income older people. Later, I followed his career as a member of the state assembly and the city council. I was interested in his view of his current job.

He was energetic, enthusiastic and immersed in the details of policy. He wanted to sell me on his agenda and made sure he got through his points in the 45-minute interview.

Close to Feuer’s heart are his neighborhood prosecutors, deputy city attorneys who are stationed full time around the city. He aims to increase the number from the eight under his predecessor, Carmen Trutanich, to 21, with one in every police division. They go after quality- of- life offenses, small crimes that, when added up, drive people crazy.

With the prosecutors guiding them, police, residents and business people try to work things out at the neighborhood level with a goal, Feuer said, of “restorative justice” rather than jail time. A vandal might be given a choice of cleaning up his or her mess rather than being prosecuted. “If you complete the program, we won’t prosecute you, if you don’t we will,” Feuer said. The prosecutor arranges the terms helped by possibly the property owner, cops as well as neighborhood residents who have volunteered to assist.

Another example is prostitution. In the San Fernando Valley, repeat offenders were given a choice of jail or participating in a program run by the Mary Magdalene Project, which is dedicated to helping women leave the street life. “We’ve had 121 prostitutes enter the program and 108 completed it,” Feuer said.

Feuer is also in charge of enforcing the city medical marijuana law, enacted by the voters in 2013. It limits marijuana dispensaries to those operating since 2007, keeps them away from schools, parks and residential areas and closes them between 8 p.m. and 10 a.m. There were hundreds of them operating before Proposition D passed, and the measure’s goal was to reduce the number to less than 140. Given the dispensaries’ determination to fight back in court, and their tendency to move around, that may be difficult to attain. But Feuer said the city has closed 386 in the past year.

Not even his enthusiasm could provide much comfort to me on the broken sidewalk issue. My wife and I weave our way through cracks and hillocks created by tree roots on our morning walks while ducking self-involved, texting Westside drivers. Making it home is a miracle. Nothing can be done about the situation, Feuer said, until a suit against the city is settled, an action brought by disabled people unable to navigate the obstacles. Until then, city money set aside for repairs remains unspent.

The interview over, we shook hands and I left. Maybe what Feuer told me wouldn’t have been hot news for city hall regulars. But as an infrequent visitor, observing the place from the outside, I found the session illuminating, a feeling I bet many Angelinos would share.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 10:30 AM | Permalink

The drive to increase Latino representation on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has taken a fascinating turn. In an audacious move to bypass the supervisors, Latino leaders, public policy reformers and civil libertarians are backing state legislation that would give a judge the power to expand the five-member board.

An increase in the size of the board has been long sought by Latino leaders wanting more representation and by county government critics who say five supervisors aren’t enough to lead such a big county. Most of the supervisors have opposed this.

Judicial expansion of the board to nine members would make possible the drawing of more supervisorial districts with substantial numbers of Hispanic voters, giving Latino candidates a good chance of winning. Now Gloria Molina is the only one in a county where 48 percent of the 10 million residents are Latino. A judge could also clear the way for a new district where an Asian American could win election to the board for the first time. Asian Americans amount to 14.6 percent of the county’s population.

The proposal is part of a bill, SB1365, by State Sen. Alex Padilla of Los Angeles, designed to strengthen state laws protecting minority voting rights by toughening the California Voting Rights Act. Padilla and his supporters focused on this after the U.S. Supreme Court weakened the federal Voting Rights Act. Padilla, who is running for secretary of state, California’s chief election officer , said the measure was designed to protect the state from the Supreme Court Voting Rights Act decision.

The bill makes it easier for civil rights groups and others to go to court and sue local governments for denying voter rights to minorities. This has been an issue in Santa Barbara, Palmdale, Whittier, Bellflower and some school districts

Under the Padilla bill, a superior court judge, seeking ways to increase minority representation, can issue an order “increasing the size of the governing body.” It applies to the entire state but is particularly relevant to Los Angeles County because of the long redistricting dispute.

Bardis Vakilli, attorney for the American Civil Liberties of Southern California, supporting Padilla’s bill, told me a judge would have authority to order such a Los Angeles County board expansion. The judge, he explained, would have to find county has drawn the districts in a way that diluted minority votes. If a judge decided such discriminatory conduct could be fixed by enlargement of the board, “the bill would give the judge authority to do that.”

Two redistricting experts who have long been active in trying to get more Latino representation on the board criticized Padilla’s bill. Alan Clayton and Saeed Ali wrote Padilla and members of the Latino Legislative Caucus that the bill violates the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act decision, and could result in the high court eventually overturning the entire California voting rights law.

But with the supervisors so recalcitrant, going to court may be the only way to assure fair representation. Democracy is strengthened when everyone—all ethnic groups—have a chance to participate.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 9:42 AM | Permalink

The journalists have weighed in on Mayor Eric Garcetti’s first year in office, cautiously and safely concluding his record had been acceptable but wishing it could have been better. The mayor showed no such ambivalence. “As we think about the future, let's take a moment to celebrate, not just our world champion Los Angeles Kings, but so much more,” he said in an e-mail addressed to me and, I assume, thousands of others.

But thanks to Garcetti, we can do without the journalists’ spin. Nor do we need his somewhat self-serving assessment.

The latest version of the mayoral web site, DataLA, greatly improved from its shaky first edition, is beginning to provide even modestly computer-savvy Angelenos enough information to come to their own conclusions about the mayor and the rest of city government. Combine that with Controller Ron Galperin’s web site, Control Panel, which provides city salaries and other expenditures. With these online tools, muckrakers, activists, policy wonks, academics and others are on their way to being as well informed as journalists, lobbyists, City Hall aides and other local government insiders.

I went to a section called “Back To Basics: Performance Metrics”, since the mayor has been bragging about his back to basics approach. Windows, or tiles, lead you to various city functions. To try it out, I hit building permits and came upon a map of every building permit in the city. That’s useful information for neighborhood councils, homeowner associations and snoops.

I settled on a major controversy—jobs. Is Los Angeles a job killer, as opponents of business taxes and a minimum wage claim? And is it a city divided between the influential rich and the many poor? Too often these questions are handled in the news media by quoting so-called experts on either side and on the campaign trail with either diatribes or vague speeches.

DataLA gives two measurements. The state puts Los Angeles unemployment at 8.4 percent and the UCLA Anderson forecast says it is 8.2 percent. That’s sharply down from last July when it was 14.5 percent, according to the state and 13.8 percent by Anderson’s estimates. But state unemployment has dropped to 7.6 percent. So, to some extent, L.A. is a job killer. In the future, the debate can be conducted with hard numbers. These were always available to determined searchers but now they are easily accessible.

So are figures on poverty. Another tile leads you to the fact that 62 percent of Angelenos spend 30 percent of their gross income on rent. That means their pay is small and their rent too high. It’s much worse than San Jose (54 percent) and San Francisco (45 percent). In fact, 33 percent of Los Angeles residents spend more than half of their monthly income on rent.

The site still needs work. I find the maps a bit hard to navigate, and I would like them to be clearer. But the site also provides tools for computer smart people to refine the data, to sort it by several categories. This is tremendous for activists and dissenters who want to fight city hall but are usually brushed off by officials who claim to have all the information. Political campaigners, usually out spent and out maneuvered, will be able to blast their foes with facts on social media, web sites and e-mails.

Mayor Garcetti deserves credit for setting up and improving the site, giving Los Angeles a better way to judge his first year.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:18 PM | Permalink

An irony of Los Angeles politics is the way homeowner groups on the Westside—that bastion of open government advocates—sign confidential agreements with developers to support controversial projects in exchange for large amounts of money. Because of the confidentiality, there’s no public accountability required of how the money is used.

These payments, although long a dubious part of the developer-homeowner association relationship, are legal. Nobody is alleging wrongdoing. But they have become an issue in a fight over JMB Realty’s proposed 37-story Century City office building at Constellation Boulevard and Avenue of the Stars. Attorney Benjamin Reznik, who represents rival Century City property owner J.P. Morgan and the Beverlywood Homeowners Association, complained to the City Planning Commission of the conduct of four other homeowner groups who support the high rise.

He’s unhappy with JMB paying, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, $7.25 million to an organization, Friends of West L.A. for distribution to local civic institutions. Friends of West L.A. is composed of the Tract 7260 organization, California Country Club Homes Assn. Cheviot Hills Homeowners Assn. and Westwood Homeowners Assn. The associations have dropped their opposition to the project, angering homeowner groups that still oppose it.

Reznik said “it appears that the public process of planning has been hijacked by shadow planning process” in which the Friends of West L.A association have made a private deal with the developer, the details of which are confidential. “They have taken it upon themselves to secure their own benefits to the detriment of the remaining surrounding communities,” Reznik told the planning commission.

I’m not especially concerned about another big building in the Century City high-rise heaven. What struck me was the $7.25 million reported in the Times. That’s a lot of money. I asked Mike Eveloff, spokesman for Friends of West L.A., for the details.

He said they were “confidential.” He said the $7.25 million figure was inaccurate. Noting the story had been published in 2008, I wondered why it hadn’t been corrected. He was vague on that point. He said let’s call it an “x” amount of money. Fine, I said, you call it “x” and I’ll call it $7.25 million. Now, let’s talk about what happens to the money. We talked on the phone for well over an hour.

It’s paid in increments, he said. The Friends will get a portion when the City Council planning committee approves the project. More will come when the council approves and the rest of the money, Eveloff said, when Mayor Eric Garcetti signs the ordinance authorizing the building.

Where does the money go? In a bank account, Eveloff said, supervised by the Friends board. There, it is invested in stocks, bonds and other investments by a money manager. The interest is used to give financial assistance to various civic organizations in amounts listed on the Friends of West L.A. web site. They are: Fairburn and Overland elementary schools; Westwood Charter; Rancho Park, Palms Park and Westwood recreation centers; the West L.A. police station and four firehouses, plus projects such as tree maintenance on Pico Boulevard. As an example, Fairburn used its recent $37,975 gift for technical supplies, hiring a library assistant and substitute teachers and for teaching material.

Eveloff defends the deal as a way of gaining concessions from JMB without engaging in a lengthy and possibly losing court fight. But Barbara Broide, president of the Westwood South of Santa Monica Homeowners Association, which opposes the JMB high rise, said the project would violate traffic restrictions that are part of Century City planning rules and the whole matter should be subject to public debate.

However, Broide said her homeowner group had entered into confidential agreements with two other Century City developers, and she couldn’t tell me how much money was involved. Confidential, she said. It would be used for hiring engineers, other technical experts and attorneys, all needed with fights with the city over traffic and planning issues.

Recently, attorney Reznik’s client, the Beverlywood association, reached an agreement with JMB over the high rise. It wasn’t confidential, Reznik told me. JMB agreed to provide $1.75 million for traffic improvements helping the Beverlywood neighborhood.

I guess this is a way for neighborhood groups to get around a hide-bound, slow-moving city bureaucracy and win needed concessions from developers. But giving them the money to spend on their choice of institutions and projects—without being held accountable to the public—reminds me of the backroom deals that were supposed to end with all the talk of transparency in government.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 3:16 PM | Permalink

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors election will bring new faces to the powerful body. But it’s unlikely to change the board’s opposition to creating a district where a second Latino could be elected to the board.

Although Latinos comprise more than 48 percent of Los Angeles County’s 10 million residents, there is only one Hispanic on the five-person board. Yet the five supervisors oversee services important to the Latino community, including health care, child welfare and other social services heavily used by the poor. Latinos and African Americans have a much higher poverty rate than whites.

Over the years, county supervisors have steadfastly refused to grant Latinos a chance for greater voting power on the board. They are being challenged by Latino lawyers, reapportionment experts and academics, who say the supervisors have violated the federal Voting Rights Act.

The recent elections didn’t improve the challengers’ situation. Gloria Molina, a Latina who represents the heavily Hispanic 1st District, is being replaced by another Latina, Hilda Solis. In the 3rd District, including largely white areas extending from the San Fernando Valley through West Los Angeles and part of the coast, there will be a November runoff between the top two candidates, former state legislator Sheila Kuehl and Bobby Shriver, who was a member of the Santa Monica City Council and mayor of the city. The winner replaces Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, forced out of office by term limits. Yaroslavsky joined with other supervisors in supporting the current district boundaries. But even if the winner of the Kuehl-Shriver contest favors creating another Latino district, backers of such a move would still likely be short a majority on the five member board because they probably wouldn’t have the support of Supervisors Don Knabe and Mike Antonovich. It takes four of the five votes to adopt new district boundary lines.

That is why Latino redistricting activists, with the election behind them, are stepping up their efforts. They want the U.S. Justice Department to take the supervisors to court and force the county to draw new lines. Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who is the only African American on the board, favors such a move. He proposed a plan that would have made possible the election of a Latino in the 4th, coastal, district now represented by Knabe. It would have also realigned Antonovich’s district to improve chances of an Asian American being elected to the board.

The Latino reapportionment experts who are pushing for the new district rely on a concept known as “polarized voting.” In this case, it means that Latinos generally vote for Latinos and whites vote for whites. By looking at voting patterns, they intend to prove that present lines put most Latinos on one district—Molina’s—and a majority of whites everywhere else. Latinos not in the Molina district, they said, are a scattered minority in the majority white districts.

Saaed Ali, a retired city and state legislative aide working with Latino redistricting advocates, said he thinks voting patterns in the last election will reinforce the idea that polarized voting is hurting Latinos. He is especially interested in the vote for Latino John Duran, the West Hollywood city council member and former mayor, who finished third in the supervisorial race. "Based on analyses of actual voting patterns in LA County in the past twelve years, the race will support our case (for another Latino-heavy district) because we will most likely show that Duran's votes are mostly Latino votes," he told me in e-mail.

Although reading and writing about this issue is often heavy going, even for politics fanatics like me, it is one of the most important matters facing the county and other local governments around the state. The final result could mean a more representative Board of Supervisors and better care for the county’s needy.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 11:35 AM | Permalink

Antonio Villaraigosa was a man of the moment. Mayor Eric Garcetti fancies himself more a man of the decade or even of the years beyond.

I thought of the differences between the two as I listened to the mayor being interviewed Monday by Patt Morrison at Town Hall, which puts on public affairs programs for its political and business oriented membership.

During his two terms in office, Villaraigosa exploded with ideas, plans and schemes in an exasperating, exhausting and occasionally impressive manner. Garcetti at Town Hall was more like a personable CEO being interviewed on CNBC, earnestly pitching his company’s products and bright long-range future, brushing off a more immediate and less pleasant matter.

In Garcetti’s case, unpleasantness was the pension and benefit issue. The city, according to many experts, is not putting aside enough to pay for future employee benefits. The Los Angeles 2020 Commission said that the city figures the pension fund investments would return more than 7 per cent a year. Too high, the commission said, noting that investment king Warren Buffett said the projection should be around 6 percent. That means the city should put more taxpayers money into the pension funds to support them. Garcetti came down on the side of a lower investment return projection.

But he quickly moved on to a subject he obviously finds more enjoyable—the “remarketing” of L.A. into a place that is the world’s first choice for business people, vacationers, convention goers and most anyone else. He cited a story in the British newspaper The Guardian, which touted L.A. as the top brand in the world of municipal marketing.

Building on that, he saw his goals as promoting L.A. as “a place where creativity lives”; a place international investors “think of as their second home”; a place where the world will come for music and other events rather than to Coachella or Austin. In describing the “second home” concept, he told how he made coffee for a Chinese investor he was trying to lure to L.A. The man, he said, was impressed.

Back to the CEO analogy, Garcetti seemed to be trying to convince skeptical investors that the long-range prospects for his company (Los Angeles) were great and that they shouldn’t get bogged down in all the details.

This was in contrast to the Town Hall appearance last month of Austin Beutner, co chair of the Los Angeles 2020 Commission and David Fleming, a commission member. They presented a much more grim and detailed vision of Los Angeles’ future than did Garcetti. They were definitely skeptical investors.

It will take more than a cup of coffee—even one brewed by the mayor—to convince people like that.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 2:47 PM | Permalink

Town Hall's thoughtful discussion of Los Angeles' future Tuesday was a refreshing contrast to Mayor Eric Garcetti's vague talk about going back to basics.

Austin Beutner, co chair of the Los Angeles 2020 Commission, and commission member David Fleming talked about whether L.A. is at “the tipping point” and is on its way to becoming “the next Detroit.” Los Angeles Times editor at large Jim Newton moderated the event at the City Club, part of Town Hall’s efforts to shed light on the city’s politics, culture and other aspects of public life. On May 12, Garcetti gets his turn when he is interviewed at Town Hall by Patt Morrison.

The Beutner-Fleming appearance couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. It’s the anniversary of the 1992 Los Angeles riot. And Toyota announced it is moving 3,000 jobs from its Torrance headquarters to Texas, a blow to the Los Angeles area economy. Garcetti, the most visible and powerful mayor in the area, should have been on top of that one, leading a regional effort to save the Toyota jobs.

Beutner and Fleming were part of a group formed by City Council President Herb Wesson to figure out ways of improving Los Angeles. In their presentations and answers to questions, they were often as vague as the 2020 Commission’s reports, but hit the big issues in a way that Garcetti has so far avoided.

What I liked about it was the way they dug deeply into the city’s budget process, explaining in detail why nobody is sure how much money the city has, spends and owes. It was impossible for the commission to find certain answers to these questions, Beutner said. He noted that the federal government, with its Office of Management and Budget, and the State Capitol, with the legislative analyst provides such information about their levels of government.

Garcetti has put up two web sites, one for the city budget and the other for departmental performance, but neither have enough information to satisfy the questions raised by Beutner.

One member of the audience told Beutner and Fleming that Los Angeles has a “weak mayor” system, and that is handicapping Garcetti.

“People confuse a weak mayor with a weak mayor’s system,” Beutner replied. What the mayor does have, he said, is “a bully pulpit.” He noted that Garcetti’s predecessor, Antonio Villaraigosa, used that pulpit to promote change in the Los Angeles Unified School District and while he fell short of his goals, “he tilted the discussion toward” reform.

Fleming recalled Mayor Tom Bradley. “He worked together with people, and they got things done, and he had much less power than the present mayor.”

The current mayor, said Beutner, has “plenty of power” if he wants to use it.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:46 PM | Permalink

It’s not easy to figure out Mayor Eric Garcetti’s grand plan for Los Angeles, or even if he has one. His state of the city speech Thursday didn’t help. It was filled with short-range ideas such as no water and power rate increases this year and a construction speedup of the 405 Freeway carpool lanes on the Westside.

Where was the vision? "It starts with modern technology,” the mayor said, and then sort of left us hanging.

I had figured Garcetti, who fancies himself a citizen of the tech world, might mention technology in his speech. So I decided beforehand to look at the two web sites he plans to use to explain his administration and its goals. I talked to the man in charge of putting them together, Rick Cole, deputy mayor for budget and innovation.

I had been scheduled for a 15-minute telephone interview. But we talked for 45 minutes, Cole living up to his reputation as a real policy wonk, something I had realized several years ago when I interviewed him on planning issues. At that time, he was Ventura city manager and a well-known expert on such matters. He has also been mayor of Pasadena and city manager of Asuza.

One of Garcetti’s sites, lamayor.org/performance is designed to track the performance of city departments in picking up garbage, running parks, putting out fires, fixing streets and sidewalks.

The other web site, lamayor.org/openbudget, offers a graphically interesting summary of the mayor’s proposed city budget.

“You can compare what we are doing now to what we spent in the past,” Cole said.

Together, Cole told me, they will give a picture of what city government is spending in every area, compared to spending in the past, and whether the departments are meeting the goals set by the major. “You should be able to figure out what our policies are compared to previous years,” Cole said. More details on salaries, payments to contractors and other specific information is available on Controller Ron Galperin’s web site, controllerdata.lacity.org, an operation separate from Garcetti’s.

So far, the mayoral web sites fall short of Garcetti’s hopes. I know the sites are in an early stage and that creating a web site is expensive, a problem for a city facing a $242 million projected budget deficit. But since Garcetti is touting the sites, they deserve examination.

The most important site is lamayor.org/performance. It should where we can measure whether Garcetti is keeping the pledge he made in his state of the city speech: “We’ll saturate your street with services.” It is still in the beta or test mode. Cole said it would graduate to usable status May 31. At present it’s not much help. For example, the site reports that pothole repairs have increased by 54,000 in the past year. To be meaningful, a web site would permit the consumer to break down repairs by city council district, zip code or even street. This would answer the longtime complaint of poor area residents that affluent areas get better street repair service.

The Garcetti budget web site is better, but still short of details. Take the police department portion of his budget. It’s easy to see priorities. A big one is crime prevention. Patrol, a major component of crime prevention, has had its budget increased from $626 million in the 2011-2012 fiscal year to $665 million in 2012-2013. Specialized crime suppression and investigation has increased from $205 million to $239 million in that period. The total allocation to the police department has gone up from $1.16 billion in 2011-2012 to $1.25 billion in 2012-2013.

But people want to know more. What’s the spending for policing in Van Nuys? How does affluent West Los Angeles compare with poorer South Los Angeles? The same goes for parks, garbage collection and all the other city services.

An even bigger question is this: Will Garcetti allow the public to have complete access to the data in city departments? Data isn’t much use unless you do something with it. Most people won’t care about the budget. When I worked at the Times, I struggled with editors who didn’t care—and they were supposed to be civic minded.

But tech-smart activists care and they would know how to dig through the data, beyond what is on the web sites. Among them would be neighborhood council people, community group members, homeowner organizations, civil rights and tenant groups, tax reduction activists, business people and many others, including academic researchers. All the data should be open to them when they fight city hall.

Making that happen would be a real accomplishment for the mayor.I

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 12:49 PM | Permalink

The story behind the Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas’ garage-home-office controversy is one familiar to millions---a beef over home remodeling.

For those who have not been following the Los Angeles Times investigation into the garage caper, here’s a summary: Last month, reporters Jack Leonard and Paul Pringle reported that the county installed a home security system for the garage, which was being turned into an office. The reporters portrayed the project as a boondoggle, with a wall torn down for the installation of the wiring, which also required a trench dug adjacent to the garage. This work, they implied, might not have been needed. They also maintain the county has only grudgingly and slowly given them information and Ridley-Thomas has refused to talk to them.

Friday, Nancy Sullivan, Times vice president for communications called to say that four garage walls, not one, were involved in the job.

Overcoming these obstacles, the reporters found out that a contractor charged the county $6,239 for the project. Then Ridley-Thomas reimbursed the county $3,759 for an air conditioner, refrigerator and a flat screen television installed at the same time.

Beyond that, the story of the wall, or walls I should say, becomes muddy, like neighbors telling of remodeling their kitchen.

Ridley-Thomas told me that when he notified county officials he intended to move his home office, including his county computer, into the garage, they said they would have to revamp his county-supplied home security system. In addition, they said they, themselves, would have to move his county computer, with its high-speed Internet connection, into the new office. They had to do this, they said, to protect the county computer system from hackers.

Besides linking up with the Internet, the high-speed connection reaches the sheriff’s office and other security agencies, Ridley-Thomas said. Each task requires wiring. In addition, the alarm system needs a wire to draw power from the home supply. So there must be wiring for a few purposes—high-speed Internet connection, law enforcement notification for emergencies and power for the computer and the security alarm system, Ridley-Thomas explained.

County employees and the contractors looked at the garage and said they wouldn’t be able to install so much wiring behind the walls without ripping them out. Since the garage was 30 years old, they said they couldn’t find replacements for the old wooden walls. Let’s hang dry wall over the wiring and paint it, they said. They preferred that solution to hanging the wires on outside of the old wall and covering them with molding. Fine, replied Ridley-Thomas.

Reporters Leonard and Pringle quoted a number of home security experts who said there was no need to rip out the wall to install wiring for the security system. “Ripping the walls out? That’s absolutely ridiculous,” said Nigel Smithers, Southern California general for Absolute Security Alarms. Ridley-Thomas is angry about the coverage and called me at home, hoping I would look into it. He said it was always clear that he would pay for the air conditioner, television and refrigerator. “This was above board, there was no attempt to hide anything, it was completely appropriate and legitimate,” he said.

The real dispute is over the amount of wiring needed and whether the wall should have been replaced. Was so much wiring required that the contractors had to rip down the wall? Would a cord from Home Depot sufficed? Was taxpayer money wasted? In that situation, if a contractor told me this about my home office, I might call in a contractor for a second opinion. But Ridley-Thomas, required to use the county for the job, didn’t have that option.

As a final note, I asked the Times for comment and received this e mail from Times Vice President Sullivan:

“The Times’ reporting on the installation of a taxpayer-funded security system at the home of Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas has been precise and fair. Although Ridley-Thomas declined repeated requests for comment and information, the articles have reflected his side of the story as fully as possible, based on information from other county officials and Ridley-Thomas’ own statements to other media. The Times has consistently reported that Ridley-Thomas reimbursed the county for part of the cost of the project. No factual error in our reporting has been brought to our attention. We continue to seek a complete accounting of taxpayer expenditures on the project and will report on the controversy as new information becomes available.”

I replied, “Thank you for your statement, which I will include in my column for LA Observed...

“But I'm not satisfied with it and I don't think readers would be either. The Times is the foremost public-private institution in our community. Its reporters and editors should answer questions from the public and other journalists about their news gathering--allowing, of course, for the need to protect confidential sources. With its great influence, the paper and its journalists should be accountable to its many readers. Saying merely that the reporting has been precise and fair does not meet this standard…”

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 7:05 PM | Permalink

Editorial writer Kerry Cavanaugh raised serious questions on latimes.com about Mayor Eric Garcetti’s appointment of former Department of Water and Power General Manager David Wiggs as assistant general manager in charge of the public utility’s electric system.

In a Feb. 1 post, Cavanaugh wrote “it’s so odd that Garcetti, who has made transparency and DWP reform his signature issues, would bring back a guy who ran the utility during a scandal involving financial shenanigans and ethical lapses.”.

She was referring to an intense period in the administration of then-Mayor Jim Hahn, who served from 2001 until Antonio Villaraigosa defeated him in 2005. It was a time of rough politics that helped shape the Los Angeles of today. Hahn dumped Police Chief Bernard Parks and brought in Bill Bratton, who reformed the department, doing much to ease racial tensions. And Hahn successfully opposed secession of the San Fernando Valley, preserving the present city boundaries.

It took great amounts of money to defeat secession. Hahn was also raising money for his re-election campaign. It was a fevered time and one of the mainstays of the pressured Hahn political operation was a public relations firm, Fleishman Hillard. Doug Dowie, former managing editor of the Daily News, headed the firm’s Los Angeles office. Fleishman, Cavanaugh notes, received $3 million a year from the DWP “and the firm worked closely with (then General Manager) Wiggs, even writing his talking points when he spoke to the city council.” Ultimately,Dowie was sentenced to 3 ½ years in federal prison for defrauding taxpayers by overcharging the DWP. Wiggs wrote a letter to the court praising Dowie, saying, “I had complete trust in Doug, and if I were to run a company again I would not hesitate to seek out and hire Doug.”

Wiggs was involved in another controversial matter while general manager, according to DWP watchdog Jack Humphreville, a neighborhood council activist. He blogged on the CityWatch web site that Wiggs signed off on the deal that has sent $40 million in DWP public funds to two shadowy organizations run by the DWP and the union representing most department workers. Union chief Brian D’Arcy has refused Garcetti’s demand to tell how the money is spent.

Why would Garcetti give a job to Wiggs if he knew his background? Another oddity is how Wiggs’ appointment was announced—in a sentence at the very end of a press release on Anaheim city manager Marcie Edwards’ nomination for DWP general manager. Possibly Garcetti didn’t want anyone to notice. And did he consult Edwards before giving the important job to Wiggs?

This may seem like small time stuff to the many people not obsessed with city hall. But nitty gritty politics and the bureaucracy are what run the place. That’s why this is important—and why it is distressing that Garcetti, a big picture guy, seems to have been indifferent to these very important details.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:20 PM | Permalink

It was interesting—maybe even enlightening—to hear how City Controller Ron Galperin arranged to have Mayor Eric Garcetti and City Atty. Mike Feuer join him for a press conference last month blasting the head of the big union representing Department of Water and Power employees.

None of them are known as flamethrowers. On the contrary, it’s hard to get the three to say anything that would make a headline, even on page 3 of the Times LATEXTRA section. So it was noteworthy that the mild-mannered trio stood together to challenge the ferocious Brian D’Arcy, who runs the DWP’s largest employee union, Local 18 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical workers. He also influences big decisions at city hall with his combative personality and his union’s campaign contributions.

The cooperation between Garcetti, Galperin and Feuer is unusual at city hall, where elected officials tend to guard their turf and don’t like to share glory.

At the news conference, Galperin announced he had issued subpoenas to force D’Arcy to account for the spending of $40 million given by the union and the department to two nonprofit organizations created a decade ago to improve worker-management relations after years of turmoil.

D’Arcy co-manages the organizations—the Joint Training Institute and the Joint Safety Institute--with Ron Nichols, the DWP general manager, who recently resigned. The money comes from rates paid by DWP customers. Despite the efforts of the Los Angeles Times and the commissioners in charge of the department, neither Nichols nor D’Arcy has explained how the money has been spent. Nichols has given Galperin a box of documents but D’Arcy has declined to cooperate.

Just how this money is spent is one of city hall’s great mysteries.

At stake, Galperin told me, was the principle “that if you spend money that comes from the people, you should know how it is spent. And the performance, what did we get for the money? Did we see improvements in safety? Did we see improvements in training?”

Galperin asked City Attorney Feuer how much power he had to issue subpoenas for the records. Plenty, replied Feuer, and, he added that the Police Department is authorized to deliver the subpoenas to D’Arcy.

“I talked to the mayor, “ Galperin said. “We have a regular meeting, there was a long list of agenda items and this happened to be one of them.”

After getting Feuer’s opinion, “ we were not intending to do a press conference but we got so many calls from media,” Galperin said that he decided quickly to hold one. His staff talked to Garcetti and Feuer aides and the joint session was quickly arranged.

Galperin said it was important “for the three of us have a unified front on this, (to say) just trying to stonewall the city is not acceptable. A real change in city hall, three officers collaborating…”

Garcetti, Feuer, and Galperin are the only city officers elected citywide. It will be interesting and enlightening to see what will happen if they continue to work together.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 9:08 AM | Permalink

Waiting for a train at Metro Center Station in downtown Los Angeles—the platform full of Blue Line and Expo Line riders--I wondered at the Los Angeles 2020 Commission’s cool dismissal of a mass transit system that is growing into a real asset .

Lack of enthusiasm dripped from the report of the commission, headed by former U.S. Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor and former Deputy Mayor Austin Beutner, who were appointed by City Council President Herb Wesson: “Even if all the ambitious and expensive mass transit projects underway are successfully completed, they will simply keep things from getting any worse. In the meantime, the economic and human costs of unchecked congestion compound on a daily basis.” I looked around at my many fellow riders. Without the Blue Line to Long Beach and the Expo Line to the Westside, they would be driving or riding buses on circuitous routes, causing more of the congestion that the commission decries.

Living in the heart of congestion country, near Olympic Boulevard and Veteran Avenue—Wilshire Boulevard and Veteran is the city’s busiest intersection--I think I know a major reason for the congestion---job growth, which the commission says isn’t happening. High tech and the entertainment business have created a job-producing corridor along Olympic. Same thing is happening along Culver Boulevard and in the Playa del Rey area. Job-heavy UCLA and the airport also bring in residents and traffic. With jobs come population growth. This pokes a hole in the commission’s contention that L.A. is a job-killing city.

I jumped on this small part of the report because I’m a big transit booster and know something about the subject, having written about public buses and trains for many years. I was disappointed that the commission took such a superficial and wrong-headed look at so important a subject.

The most important part of the commission report concerned city employee pensions. The commission said city employment has dropped 12 percent since 2004, yet spending on pensions is up 250 percent and health care spending is up almost 80 percent. The implication is that L.A. is on the way to becoming another Detroit.

Interestingly, the commission embraced the analysis of blogger Jack Humphreville, a fiscally conservative Neighborhood Council budget activist. Humphreville, who writes the LA Watchdog blog for Citywatch LA, has long maintained that the city is not putting aside enough money to fund these benefits. He supports a proposed state ballot measure that would give local governments more power to take away benefits. Unions oppose it

In the next 90 days, the commission will make recommendations after meetings and hearings—in public, I hope—to decide what to do about the employee benefits—reduce them, maintain them or gradually revise them through collective bargaining. Will commissioners follow the blood-sweat-and-tears path recommended by pension cutters? And what will Mayor Eric Garcetti do about it?

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:42 PM | Permalink

Pity Mayor Eric Garcetti. Judging from the news coverage, Bill de Blasio of New York, inaugurated on New Year’s Day, is now America’s most famous mayor. But what is happening to the mayor of the second most populous city, toiling away for months with dwindling attention from the news media?

Maybe Mayor Garcetti likes it that way. As Rick Orlov wrote in the Daily News last month, “In his first six months in office, Mayor Eric Garcetti has brought a low-key cool to the job that presents a sharp contrast to the heat and flash of his predecessor, Antonio Villaraigosa.”

Villaraigosa had major accomplishments in his eight years, notably winning financial support for a mass transit system that is expanding, getting people out of their cars and creating jobs. But included in the “heat and flash” he generated was an affinity for publicity and the spotlight, an embrace of celebrities, and his romances. The cautious Garcetti probably doesn’t want to be another Antonio, always swinging for homeruns and sometimes striking out.

Still, many of us are curious to know what’s happening in city hall, especially with our tax dollars. Looking for information, I checked in with Garcetti’s web site, which is designed to give residents the straight story on what’s going on the administration. The web site says, “ The priority areas represented in the tiles below are key to the success of Mayor Garcetti's "Back to Basics" agenda.…This website tracks City Hall performance in key areas. “ He announced the web site in October and I find it as vague as it was when it was introduced.

Tourism is slightly up. But where are the tourists spending and staying? How much are the taxpayer- subsidized luxury hotels at LA Live contributing to the economy? Shipping is down at the port. Why? Furthermore, traffic on the web site was down from 332,959 in August to 301,915 in September. Perhaps Los Angeles is giving up on it as a source of information.

One thing that might explain the difference between New York and Los Angeles city halls is the news coverage. The Los Angeles press corps is smaller than the New York contingent. I got a rundown from Orlov of the Daily News and David Zahniser of the Los Angeles Times: Zahniser and Catherine Saillant cover for the Times from inside city hall while Michael Finnegan, working across the street in the Times building, watches the mayor; Orlov, covering news and writing a weekly column, and Dakota Smith, report for the Daily News; City News Service, supplying news to media around the area, is on the scene; Alice Walton of KPCC and Claudia Peschiutta of KNX cover for radio, as do a few other reporters.

But that’s a small band of journalists for a city government that is sprawling, intricate and packed with secretive politicians and bureaucrats. The newspapers also have been hurt by a cost-cutting major reduction of space for news. And the Times, usually squeezing city hall news into the odd and truncated LATEXTRA section or putting it only on the web site, has taken much impact out of the coverage.

In contrast, New York Mayor de Blasio is confronted with three reporters each from the Times, the Daily News and the Post, according to the web site Capital New York. In addition, the Associated Press, Reuters, Newsday and the Wall Street Journal have journalists in city hall, as do some web sites. Fiercely competing against each other, they aren’t likely to give the new mayor the luxury of the kind of laid-back first few months Garcetti has enjoyed.

But that’s exactly what we need in Los Angeles city hall. Without such coverage and more visible activity by the mayor, those who want to know what’s going on are kept in ignorance and democracy suffers.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 9:37 AM | Permalink

The many ethnic currents of Los Angeles County politics continue to reach from the suburbs through the heart of Los Angeles, piercing the forbidding walls of the downtown county building.

The latest twist in this fascinating story involves continued maneuvering for county supervisorial seats as term limits force out four of the five supervisors. Zev Yaroslavsky and Gloria Molina must give their farewell speeches next year. Don Knabe and Mike Antonovich will have more time to refine their parting words. Their terms are up in 2016.

One angle to the story is why no Jewish candidate has yet emerged to succeed Yaroslavsky, a respected leader in the Jewish community, who replaced Ed Edelman, another important Jewish leader. Some political activists have wondered whether Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Koretz, who is Jewish, might be a possibility, but so far he hasn’t shown any interest.

It’s an important matter because the Board of Supervisors are responsible for every program and project involving social justice issues in the county, ranging from abused children, the mentally ill, the homeless and other peoples badly in need of help. These matters have long occupied Jewish community welfare organizations.

Edelman embraced these issues as a mission, most notably creating a children’s court for troubled youths. Yaroslavsky has been concerned, too, telling Seema Mehta of the Los Angeles Times, "I have had many a sleepless night, literally and figuratively, on some of the decisions we've had to make over the years." With the Los Angeles Jewish community’s historic interest in social justice problems, it will be interesting to see whether its leaders feel it’s important to come up with another Edelman or Yaroslavsky.

The second angle to the story centers on the effort of Latino activists to persuade the U.S. Justice Department to sue the county to force a reapportionment that will create another Latino seat. The supervisors oppose this. One way for them to prevent it is to persuade their political donors to get behind Latinos to run for the soon-to-be vacant seats. Latino victories would take the steam out of demands for a reapportionment. The supervisors and their lawyers would say there is plenty of Latino representation.

Opponents of Justice Department intervention may be putting on a big campaign for West Hollywood City Councilman John Duran, who is interested in succeeding Yaroslavsky. Another would be to support Downey City Councilman Mario Guerra, who just finished a term as mayor, to run for the Knabe seat in 2016, Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters wrote that “there is some buzz” about Guerra doing it, although he has announced he is running for the State Senate next year.

Such maneuvering recalls the case of John Noguez, an official in the county assessor’s office. Suddenly, with huge county establishment backing, he ran for assesor and won. That gave the county supervisors the chance to counter demands for more Latino representation by noting that two Latinos, Noguez and Sheriff Lee Baca, held countywide offices, evidence that Latinos were well represented.

Unfortunately this hasn’t ended well. Noguez is now facing many corruption charges. Still, the chance of putting Guerra and/or Duran on the board may prove irresistible to county leaders opposed to Justice Department intervention. They can call it Noguez II.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:35 PM | Permalink

When Mayor Eric Garcetti was interviewing department heads—deciding which ones would be dumped or retained—he noticed how they reacted when he talked about introducing new technology to stodgy old city hall.

He said he could tell who “resisted data and those who didn’t.” That, he said, “was one of the strongest measures” he used to determine “whether they would have the skills,” he thought were needed for his new administration.

Some, he said, were enthusiastic. Others seemed to think that it was just another idea from an inexperienced new mayor and could soon be forgotten.

I was interviewing him on the phone about how city government could increase use of Internet-based technology, taking advantage of computers’ great ability to engage in tasks as varied as sorting through masses of data to using a mobile phone app to fetch a cab.

Garcetti, the new mayor who had been a veteran city councilman, and Controller Ron Galperin, a newcomer to city hall, have put up information-producing web sites. Garcetti has a web site reporting on the performance of various departments while Galperin’s aims to disclose salaries and spending.

The sites are works in progress. I find them difficult to navigate, with limited information. But, as Washington has learned with Obamacare, it’s best to go slow when building a web site. “We got it going through my own staff,” Garcetti said. “We’re just getting our feet wet.”

For Angelenos, the most visible form of technology-driven service is the new alternative cab. You can now summon a cab through an app on your mobile phone. Taxi Magic gets cabs from traditional cab companies as does a similar operation, Flywheel. SideCar. Lyft, Zimride and Uber have vehicles usually driven by car owners.

City cab regulators, long close to traditional cab companies, fought the idea. But Garcetti was a strong advocate, and the plan was narrowly backed by the city council.

“Times are changing,” Garcetti said. “Many young people don’t own a car.” Protected bike lanes, ride sharing, working at home and mass transit will grow, along with alternative cabs, he said. “We won’t be double decking or widening our freeways anymore.” Technology, he said, “will be a huge part of the transition.”

Writing about city hall has always seemed an exercise in recording slightly different versions of the same thing year after year. Data hounds Garcetti and Controller Galperin are determined to change this, and it is one of the most interesting developments in Los Angeles city government in many years.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:49 PM | Permalink

The Los Angeles cab controversy is much more than a fight between old-line cabbies and alternative newcomers armed with apps, their own cars and an entrepreneurial spirit.

It’s a sign of how Los Angeles slowly is changing from a one-person, one-car city of sprawling suburbs to one where an increasing number of residents use trains, buses, bicycles, their own feet and cabs. Going hand in hand with this are multi- story apartments, condos and retail stores around new transit stations.

I discussed this with University of Southern California Professor Maged Dessouky, an expert on ride sharing and other aspects of urban transportation. He said we’re in the midst of a big change in how we get around the streets, freeways and neighborhoods of Los Angeles. But the transformation is occurring slowly, and it’s difficult for a driver, caught in gridlock, to notice.

“Driving alone is becoming more costly in terms of time and dollars,” he said. Over the years, he said, developments such as better connected Metro lines, an increased use of charging for use of congestion free lanes on freeways (now in use on the 110), higher gas and parking prices and more accessible cab and ride sharing will change ingrained Los Angeles habits. “We will see people driving alone but that will not be the dominant mode,” he said. “People are shifting away from it now.”

My interest in the subject was piqued by e-mail from the big public relations firm Edelman. No, it wasn’t Edelman’s new employee, former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a senior adviser. Rather the pitch came from a persuasive man named Andrew Flick. He talked me into interviewing a client, Sanders Partee, who heads a company called Taxi Magic.

With Taxi Magic, you download an app and, with it, order a traditional cab and watch its progress on your mobile phone screen as it heads your way. At present, Yellow and Beverly Hills cabs are on the list but Partee is planning to expand. Other app-connected alternatives have vehicles usually driven by the car owners. Among them are SideCar, Lyft, Zimride and Uber. Taxi companies, regulated by cities, have fought them. But the State Public Utilities Commission approved them under a category called “transportation network companies” and permits them to operate if they obey a number of regulations, including carrying a minimum $1 million insurance, have a zero tolerance of drugs or alcohol and criminal background checks for drivers. Taxi companies wanted the Los Angeles City Council to appeal the ruling, but the council declined. Mayor Eric Garcetti, an app and technology guy, agreed.

Partee supports the traditional cab companies, which Taxi Magic serves. But he said the trend to a variety of options for riders “is irreversible. The sharing economy is real; the changes in attitudes toward one car, one person is irreversible. People will use alternative means like buses, trains, short-term rentals, and the traditional taxis will play a significant role.”

I can see it a few blocks from where I live. The Casden development—that’s a whole other column—will be built at the Metro train station at Sepulveda and Pico. Apartments and retail will flood the area with more people and shoppers. They’ll need an alternative to the packed streets and jammed 405 and 10 freeways. Alternative companies, competing for riders, will hopefully bring prices down from the present rates. I’ll take the train downtown or to Santa Monica, and a cab home if it’s too late. The new L.A. sounds good to me.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 2:31 PM | Permalink

Latino civil rights advocates have so far run into a stone wall of indifference in trying to create a Los Angeles County supervisorial district where a second Latino could be elected to the board. They have vainly tried to persuade the U.S. Justice Department to file a Voting Rights Act lawsuit forcing the supervisors to draw new lines.

But now an influential supervisor, Mark Ridley-Thomas, who is African American, has taken their side, strongly advocating Justice Department intervention.

Still, the Latino advocates face a tough fight. I talked to Cruz Reynoso, a former State Supreme Court justice, about the Justice Department’s attitude. He had made his case personally with Justice Department attorneys.

“My sense is that unless they feel some pressure to do so, they would not,” he said. “This matter has been pending so long, I don’t see a lot of interest. The facts are overwhelmingly favorable to a Justice Department action if they should take one. It seems to me that Los Angeles County with millions (in population) would be a high priority. So my impression is they need some outside pressure to practically embarrass them to act.”

He said that the department is now occupied with Voting Rights Act cases in Texas and North Carolina. “Maybe they would rather go into the South…where they are fighting a Republican governor and legislature (rather than) Los Angeles County where they are dealing with a Board of Supervisors that has been friendly (to the Obama administration).”

Ridley-Thomas told me that the Justice Department should file a lawsuit charging that the county Board of Supervisors violated the Voting Rights Act when it drew the current district lines. “The (best) likelihood it will be accomplished is through the courts,” he said. The act is designed to assure equal representation for minorities.

Ridley-Thomas was even stronger in a written statement. “So let’s cut to the chase,” he said. “What is the likeliest way to achieve adherence to the Voting Rights Act? Unfortunately, it won’t be through the action of this board…I know the Latino community will once again have to look to the courts for protection of their voting rights.”

His comments are a major development in the important dispute over realigning the five supervisorial district boundaries. He is the board’s only African American, and his support of the Latino effort makes it a multi-racial campaign. And he is a prominent Democrat, which means he may have some influence with the Obama administration’s Justice Department.

In the last redistricting, he proposed a plan that would have made possible the election of a Latino in the 4th, coastal, district now represented by Don Knabe. The Ridley-Thomas proposal also would have realigned Mike Antonovich’s district to improve chances of an Asian American being elected to the board there. Although Knabe and Antonovich are lame ducks that will lose their jobs through term limits, they opposed Ridley-Thomas’ proposal. There are two other supervisors on the board, Zev Yaroslavsky and Gloria Molina, a Latina and the first of her ethnicity to be elected to the board. She represents a district that was created in 1990 only after the Justice Department went to court and forced the county to obey the Voting Rights Act.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 2:07 PM | Permalink

The fight over increasing Latino representation on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors offers great insights into the thinking, maneuverings and power plays deep within the inscrutable body.

For example, one reader asked me why the supervisors should care about the issue when four out of five of them will be forced out by term limits by the time new district lines are drawn? These new lines could make it possible to elect more Latinos on the board. The lame ducks will be long gone, the reader said. It doesn’t make sense.

Actually it does, if you understand the long standing relationships the supervisors have with small city politicians, chambers of commerce and other business organizations, religious groups and others. These organizations comprise crucial support networks, greased by funds controlled by the supervisors and crucial to the operations of cities, local bus lines, schools, water districts and the many other political entities that make Los Angeles County run—or not run.

All five supervisors have such support networks, but the best example of how the system works is Supervisor Don Knabe, who represents the 4th District, extending from Venice south along the coast to Long Beach and then inland to Diamond Bar. He was elected supervisor in 1996. Before that, he was chief aide to the district’s long-time supervisor, Deane Dana. And before that, he was a councilman in the city of Cerritos for eight years, part of that time as mayor. Exemplifying the term “county family”—much used in the hall of administration-- his son Matt is a former Knabe staff member, now an influential lobbyist in the hall. No supervisor is more beloved by small city mayors, council members and other officials than Don Knabe.

As is the case with all the supervisors, much of Knabe’s power comes from his supervisorial role as a distributor of state and federal funds.

Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at CSU Los Angeles, noted the county’s role as an administrative division of the state. The supervisors pass out state funds and carry out state policies. They also deal with federal funds, which usually go through Sacramento to local governments.

“They’re like old fashioned colonial governors,” Sonenshein said.

Such governors took orders from London, Paris or whatever other national capital that employed them. They were the men to see when colonial New York or Boston businessmen wanted money from London to improve such things as harbors. In the same way, when the city manager or a council of a small city in the 4th District needs extra state or federal funds for a park, street repair or to repair a breakwater, they call up their old pal Knabe or one of his assistants. Knabe or his aides call Sacramento or Washington and take care of the problem.

A reapportionment plan designed to elect a second Latino supervisor to the board would have taken coastal and some inland cities away from Knabe’s 4th District. Mayors, council members, chamber officials, school leaders and others, fearing a strange new supervisor, packed the supervisorial chamber in protest and the plan was defeated.

Even thought Knabe’s term expires in 2016, before a new redistricting plan would take effect, he no doubt is concerned about his legacy. He may be able to anoint a successor and the new supervisor and staff would be as helpful as Knabe. Secondly, said Sonenshein, supervisors don’t want to antagonize old supporters. “When they leave, they want to be honored,” he said.

Saeed Ali, who has served as a legislative and local expert on redistricting, said this “chain of connections is what politicians keep alive.” The supervisors’ supporters “feel betrayed” when the chain is broken. Who would they call?

The importance of these connections was shown when Supervisor Gloria Molina, the only Hispanic on the board, proposed a reapportionment plan that would have deprived Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky of key Jewish neighborhoods in a complicated proposal to create another possible Latino district.

Both their terms expire next year. Even so, community leaders were furious about the possibility of losing their connection to Yaroslavsky. Actually, political observers figured it was a ploy by Molina to hurt Yaroslavsky—no friend of hers. The plan died.

What the fight between the two lame ducks showed was the impossibility of getting the five supervisors to do the right thing—create another Latino district, reflecting big Latino population gains.

That is why the U.S. Department of Justice should step in with a lawsuit alleging violations of the Voting Rights Act. It has done that in the past when confronted with recalcitrant LA officials who can’t see beyond their old boy and old girl alliances and petty feuds.

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Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 12:38 PM | Permalink

One of the more interesting stories in Los Angeles city hall is unfolding in the office of Controller Ron Galperin.

Galperin, a lawyer and an ex-journalist, is determined to use computers to analyze the massive amounts of data in City Hall. It’s called Big Data analysis and is common with sports teams, retail marketers, political campaigns, the National Security Agency and cutting edge political and sports analysts like Nate Silver.

Thursday, Galperin got started. He did it by stepping into the biggest controversy now raging around city hall, the pay and benefits given to Department of Water and Power employees.

He put online a database comparing the salaries of DWP workers to the generally lower pay given to other city workers.

The Galperin team had to dig through a DWP salary system that listed at least 616 pay codes used by the department to boost salaries over base pay, including money for overtime, hazardous work, meals, and bonuses for working in inclement weather, working with cement and operating special equipment.

Even without this supplemental pay, Galperin found that DWP employees generally earn 20.8 percent more in base pay than other city workers. The controller’s detailed analysis unearthed such details as: DWP tree surgeons are paid 30 per cent more than those in the Bureau of Street Services; DWP custodians get 26 percent more than those cleaning up in city hall; DWP garage attendants receive 20 percent more than those in other city garages. There’s much more, available at http://controller.lacity.org/Salary_Information/index.htm.

Galperin wanted to create a database that compares salaries side by side. But the city’s technological infrastructure was so backward that he had to use a free outside website that is more user friendly, http://controllergalperin.wix.com/controlpanel.

I’m not saying that people are going to immediately rush to their computers and pour through the database. Furthermore, the political power of the DWP employee union pitted against that of Mayor Eric Garcetti, rather than data will probably determine the outcome of the Water and Power salary and benefits fight.

But Galperin’s initial effort shows what can be done in the future if the city had one big, easily accessible city database. The data could be a powerful weapon in the hands of insurgent bloggers and protesting citizens organizing with social media. However, it’s been my experience that politicians and city officials don’t want you to have it.

How does your local park fare in obtaining city funding compared with parks in other parts of the city? Same with street and sidewalk repairs. With one database you could quickly find out about traffic counts, police deployment, public salaries and levels of employment, number of complaints to the DWP and how they are handled? That’s just a quick sample.

All this information is available somewhere in city hall and its outlying offices. If Galperin can fight his way through city hall resistance and put it together, we’ll all be winners.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 1:30 PM | Permalink

Without much public notice, something important is happening in Los Angeles County’s fascinating ethnic politics and it could result in greater Latino and Asian American representation on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in the next few years.

A group of Latino demographers, lawyers and others are trying to persuade the U.S Department of Justice to sue Los Angeles County to force the county board of supervisors to realign the five supervisorial districts. They would change the boundaries to create another district where a Latino could be elected to the board.

At present, there is only one district with enough eligible Latino voters to elect a Hispanic supervisor, the First, represented by Supervisor Gloria Molina. Plans for a second such district were rejected by the board in 2011 because they would have hurt the re-election plans of Supervisor Don Knabe by depriving him of a large number of loyal constituents.

The plan also proposes a district that would improve an Asian American’s chances of being elected to the board for the first time.

The effort faces a long and challenging path. The Justice Department would have to agree to file the suit and then win its case in federal court.

But the number of Latinos eligible to vote is increasing rapidly, strengthening arguments for a second potentially Hispanic district, according to Alan Clayton, an expert in political representation who is coordinating the Latino effort to persuade the Justice Department to sue.

Clayton said the Latino leaders are supporting a plan proposed in 2011 by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who is African American.

It would assure Ridley-Thomas of a district much like his present one, with a large number of African American voters. But the proposal—if it were adopted—would not affect incumbents Molina, Zev Yaroslavsky, Knabe and Mike Antonovich. They are serving their last four-year terms under the county’s three -term limit law. Ridley-Thomas, first elected in 2008 and re-elected in 2012 can run one more time.

The one district now favorable to Latinos, the First, would be redrawn to include heavily Hispanic Southeast Los Angeles as well as Central Los Angeles, and strongly Latino communities in the San Fernando Valley, including Canoga Park, Reseda, North Hollywood and Sun Valley.

The second potential Latino district would be the Fourth, which Knabe now represents. Its present boundaries would be extended into Latino areas of the San Gabriel Valley. These two districts would be adjoining in some areas. Thus if Latinos were elected from each in a future election, they, their constituents and campaign contributors could form a powerful bloc.

The present Third District would be extended down the coast and also include West Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisades, Brentwood, Studio City and Encino, making it sort of a Gold Coast of local politics and giving Yaroslavsky’s successor a huge fund raising base.

The proposed realignment could also increase the chances of the board having its first Asian American member. The boundaries of the Fifth District, now represented by Antonovich, would be extended deep into the San Gabriel Valley to include heavily Asian communities such as Monterey Park and Rosemead. In the next election, with the termed-out Antonovich out of the picture, the seat would open up to some well known Asian American contender. One possibility is Rep. Judy Chu, a former Monterey Park mayor who also represented the area in the state Assembly.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 2:05 PM | Permalink

There was much unspoken drama when incoming Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Bonin spoke at the Current Affairs Forum luncheon Thursday.

The lawyers and lobbyists who packed the upstairs room at the Palm for public affairs consultant Emma Schafer's event were keenly interested in how the new councilman would perform. Most of them knew him previously as top aide to outgoing Councilman Bill Rosendahl and his predecessor, Ruth Galanter. But being an elected official is different.

Would he conform, for example, to the city council’s basic rule: Do what Herb tells you, Herb being Council President Herb Wesson, who tries to run the council in what he perceives was the style of legendary State Assembly speakers Willie Brown and Jesse Unruh. How will the experienced, Harvard-educated Bonin react to the Wesson rule of “my way or oblivion?”

And what about Gina Marie Lindsey, executive director of the airport? Bonin and the incoming mayor Eric Garcetti opposed moving a key runway closer to Westchester homes and Lindsey favored it. Now, Lindsey, who gave Bonin a rousing introduction at the lunch, wants to be re-appointed by Garcetti. Bonin, who represents the airport area along with much of West Los Angeles, will have a lot to say about her appointment. But there were no answers at the lunch, except Bonin saying people “who oppose each other on issues can work together.” Much of the luncheon crowd does business with the airport and those folks hung on every inconclusive word.

To me, the most interesting question was how Bonin will deal with the Wesson regime. I didn’t think Rosendahl, the outgoing councilman, was treated well by Wesson or by the previous council president, Eric Garcetti. Rosendahl’s showy but valuable way of spotlighting issues he cared about didn’t go over well in a council where disagreements are settled in backrooms before they get to the bland public council meetings. His colleagues were polite enough, but they marginalized him, making some big decisions without him.

David Zahniser of the Los Angeles Times obliquely brought up the Wesson style when he asked if Bonin favored the president pro tem’s rushing through a $25 million tax break for shopping mall developer Westfield’s Topanga project. The deal is a perfect example of the Wesson-city council style. Bonin ducked, saying he didn’t know enough about it.

In his talk, and in answer to questions, Bonin was sharp and seemed on top of things. I liked what he sarcastically said about some of the developers he’s met, who tell him they want leadership from him when they really mean is “screw your constituents.” He wants developments around transit stops to be designed intelligently instead of being thrown-together housing blocks.

He’s soft spoken and relaxed on the podium in contrast to the frenetic Rosendahl. He’ll get along better with his colleagues. The unanswered question is what he will do when confronted with the backroom power plays over housing and development, the council’s bread and butter.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 8:12 PM | Permalink

Of all the complaints about Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the dumbest one is that he is leaving office broke and looking for a job.

The most vivid example of this was an LA Weekly article making fun of the fact that the mayor doesn’t have money and is seeking work.

If that’s true, thank you, mayor. Thank you for spending much of your life in public service and not profiting from it.

As is the case with most of Villaraigosa’s critics, the Weekly covered his pursuit of women, his divorce, his hanging out with Charlie Sheen in Mexico and accepting free tickets for events he had to attend as mayor. These were troubles he brought on himself. But they shouldn’t define his two terms as mayor. Nor will they after a few years have passed.

That’s how it is with mayors. Jim Hahn was scorned as boring when he left office and criticized for political fund raising. Looking back, it’s clear Hahn was a mayor of great courage who had the guts to get rid of then Police Chief Bernard Parks.

Dumping the African American chief probably cost Hahn his re-election bid, as he may have known it would, but it cleared the way for the appointment of Chief Bill Bratton and a police department reform that has made Los Angeles a better place. And his fund raising—which I criticized while on the Ethics Commission—was for the worthwhile campaign that defeated Valley secession. Secession would have fragmented the city. By defeating it, Hahn helped save L.A.

Tom Bradley’s long tenure—with accomplishments too numerous to list here—was dimmed by his fifth term, his decision to stick around too long and to associate with some financial types who dealt with the city. Those are forgotten now as the Bradley years are recalled as an iconic period in the city’s history.

Mayor Richard Riordan was criticized for not getting along with the City Council, which I thought was an admirable trait. That is being forgotten and he will be remembered for the sense of stability he brought to the city after the 1992 riot and the charter reform that greatly strengthened the power of the mayor.

So it will be with Villaraigosa. His legacies are the growing network of commuter rail lines and other transportation projects that are slowly changing the city and his continued support of the reform police administration that Hahn made possible.

So good luck mayor in your search. You deserve a good job.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 11:09 AM | Permalink

The latest poll, which finds Dennis Zine ahead in the controller’s race and Mike Feuer leading for city attorney, also shows that half the voters don’t think Los Angeles is heading in the right direction. Such negativity could affect the most important factor in the election, turnout.

A poll of 674 likely voters by the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State University, Los Angeles, shows Councilman Zine leading Ron Galperin 33 percent to 18 percent and Feuer ahead of Carmen Trutanich, the incumbent, 35 percent to 24 percent.

What’s really interesting about the poll is its breakdown of voters’ attitudes. These will be crucial in the days before the May 21 election. With a turnout expected to be somewhere around 25 percent, above the primary but still low, the campaigns are targeting their appeals to various ethnic groups and geographical areas—and to specific voters. With today’s technology, campaigns know the voting history, consumer preferences, gender, viewing habits and much more about voters. In fact, they probably know what voters had for Mother’s Day brunch. Such information shapes campaigning by telephone, mail and visits to homes.

A total of 45 percent of whites say the city is headed in the wrong direction. Blacks are even more pessimistic. Latinos, on the other hand, said the city is going in the right direction by 44 percent to 23 percent. Latinos also gave Latino Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa a 62 percent favorable job approval rating, above that of other groups. The survey did not count enough members of other ethnic groups for them to be included in the survey.

Perhaps the positive feelings about L.A. among Latinos will help mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti, who was leading City Controller Wendy Greuel among Latinos, 48 percent to 36 percent in the mayoral portion of the survey released last week. He’s no doubt hoping that such good feelings add up to good turnout of Latino voters. Greuel and Garcetti were even in the mayoral survey.

Garcetti is also leading Greuel among voters making $40,000 a year or more. With voting increasing as income goes up, these working class, middle class and affluent voters probably are also on the Garcetti list of voters to target.

Also interesting were the voters’ take on the most important issues facing the city, which no doubt will shape the candidates’ political messages. Crime, 19 percent, ranked highest, followed by the city budget, 17 percent, education, 16 percent and traffic, 11 percent.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:44 PM | Permalink

Only someone intrigued by the finer points of the politics of education could have figured out the differences between the overly cautious mayoral candidates Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel at their debate Tuesday.

The debate, at the Petersen Automotive Museum in mid-Wilshire, was presented by public radio station KCRW and Zocalo, the non-profit group that, among other projects, encourages discussion of public policy matters. Moderator Warren Olney of KCRW did a fine job of moving the debate along and keeping the competitors on point.

Education was a top issue on the agenda. As Olney pointed out, neither the mayor nor the city council have jurisdiction over the public schools. That task belongs to the Los Angeles Unified School District and its elected board. But there are few matters more important to L.A. Mayors Richard Riordan and Antonio Villaraigosa tried to shape policy by raising money to elect school board candidates who favor charter schools, making public teacher evaluations and relaxing teacher seniority protections. They considered themselves reformers, a description denounced by the teachers union, the United Teachers of Los Angeles. Each of them found themselves deeply involved in public school controversy.

Greuel said she endorsed Antonio Sanchez, Villaraigosa’s choice, for the school board on Election Day, May 21. Garcetti said he hasn’t endorsed and won’t until he talks to the candidates. Assuming Sanchez favors the Villaraigosa agenda, Greuel has put herself in the so-called reform camp. But as Hillel Aaron wrote on the LA School Report website, “in general, both candidates sounded closer to the ‘school reform’ end of the ideological spectrum. Garcetti, who has been endorsed by UTLA, came out perhaps a millimeter or so more towards the pro-teacher end of the spectrum, if only in tone.”

The afternoon seemed to leave spectators unsatisfied. The reporters, after covering so many of these debates, seem sick of them. But I, as an occasional visitor, remain intrigued by this face-to-face part of the contest.

It was interesting, for example, to see how Greuel has improved. She speaks with more clarity and force than when she started her campaign for mayor and has ditched her city hall jargon. Garcetti is even smoother than when he began, more practiced, better able to insert at least a small amount of humor. On the down side, both of them annoyingly talk about their kids at great length as if they think parenthood makes them more human and appealing to voters.

Talking about their kids also gives them cover to duck tough questions about education. Still unknown is whether they will take the political risks and forcefully inject themselves in the controversial details of the debate over L.A. schools as did Riordan and Villaraigosa. That’s high-risk behavior, foreign to two decidedly low-risk candidates.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:40 PM | Permalink

Having watched filmmakers Lyn Goldfarb and Alison Sotomayor scramble so hard for funding for a documentary on the late Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, I was glad to see, as I returned from vacation, that they have received a $500,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant that will allow them to finish the project by next January.

They certainly exemplified the Bradley motto of “Never Give Up” as they approached foundations, surviving members of the old Bradley crew, rich people, any one or any organization potentially willing to get behind the documentary, “Bridging the Divide: Tom Bradley and the Politics of Race.”

After talking to them and being interviewed for the documentary, I think the project will delve into aspects of Bradley’s career that are being forgotten as the years pass.

Bradley, who served from 1973 to 1993, was Los Angeles’ only African American mayor. He had many accomplishments in those 20 years, including the start of the revival of downtown Los Angeles, beginning the rail transit system and bringing the 1984 Olympics to Los Angeles. Perhaps his most important achievement was including Los Angeles’ minority residents in a city government and political system that had pretty much dominated by white politicians and bureaucrats.

Now that we have elected and re-elected America’s first black president, an examination of just how Bradley accomplished the integration of Los Angeles politics is particularly instructive and relevant.

When I talked to them, Goldfarb and Sotomayor were deeply interested in Bradley’s process of building an interracial coalition on his way to becoming mayor. Like President Barack Obama, Bradley knew that he could not be elected without white votes. After an initial defeat in 1969, he worked diligently to win them. I spent many days following him through white areas such as the Pacific Palisades and the San Fernando Valley, watching as his reception became warmer with each visit.

It’s a great story and I’m glad Goldfarb and Sotomayor have finally collected enough money to tell it.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 2:39 PM | Permalink

On my way to the courthouse for some interviews Tuesday, I glanced across the plaza at the county administration building and thought of two terrific county supervisors, Edmund D. Edelman and Kenneth Hahn.

Edelman came to mind because Steve Lopez had called me about him the night before for his column, which appeared Wednesday, on the affectionate and informative documentary made by the retired supervisor’s wife Mari Edelman. The documentary, “The Passion and Politics of Ed Edelman,” will be shown on KOCE’ PBS SoCal at 7 p.m. Thursday.

Thinking about Hahn is unavoidable. The county building was named for him after his death in 1997, the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration.

The hall reflects the secretive nature of country government. A Mussolini architect in Fascist Italy or one of Stalin’s favorites could have designed it. It is severe, unimaginative and massive, with long hallways inside that make it hard to find public officials. And when I reported from there about a quarter century ago, it was all but impossible to get those officials to share information with reporters or the public.

Hahn was different. He loved publicity. His agenda was often set by hot stories on page one of the Los Angeles Times. When his colleagues, who didn’t much like him, were doing something he considered wrong, he ignored secrecy customs and told reporters of the foul deeds. I was the beneficiary of a couple of instances of his defiant sharing.

He accomplished much for his south LA district, where he was a white politician beloved by his black constituents. In an area without hospitals, he built Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital, a jewel when it opened even though it has been degraded by later generations. And in an area without adequate public transit, he sparked the building of the Blue Line light rail.

Edelman also accomplished great things but he was different than Hahn. He accepted the county tradition of secrecy and personally did not seem to enjoy publicity. I disagreed with him on a secrecy issue, when he and the other supervisors met behind closed doors to draw up a reapportionment plan that would drastically change the boundaries of Edelman’s district to make it easier for a Latino to win. One of our reporters was thrown out of a meeting room where, as he had discovered, the supervisors were plotting.

But Edelman, now seriously ill, got a lot done behind those closed doors. Patiently working with his supervisorial colleagues, some of whom were incredibly bull headed and backward, he pushed through one of the most important reforms in county history, the children’s court, where children, caught in the juvenile justice system, face the judges in surroundings that are much more child friendly and humane than they were in the past. It’s named after him.

And today, as the U. S. Supreme Court ponders same-sex marriage, it’s timely to remember how he stood up for gays and lesbians in a time when they hovered in the shadows. A great civil libertarian, he forced the West Hollywood sheriff’s personnel to stop their overbearing, often brutal treatment of gays and lesbians, who were scorned or ignored by most political leaders.

All that’s part of the dynamic, often tense social history of Los Angeles County and Mari Edelman captured it well in her documentary.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:00 PM | Permalink

In the months before the recession struck, I spent a lot of time covering “condomania,” an L.A. affliction marked by conversion of affordable apartment houses into expensive condos. Many tenants, facing eviction, told me their stories. Then the economy collapsed and the condo developers disappeared, along with their plans to tear down the apartments.

Now they’ve returned. Construction of transit stations has focused developers back to the job of turning lower rent apartment houses into high-end rentals and condos, according to tenant advocate Larry Gross, executive director of Coalition For Economic Survival. He told me it’s happening in Hollywood, Koreatown, Studio City, Sherman Oaks and Valley Village. “And on the Gold Line into East L.A. we will see gentrification expanding,” he said, as well as along the Expo Line from downtown into West L.A. and eventually Santa Monica.

Affordable housing is generally defined as housing that costs no more than 30 percent of a low-income family’s pay. Gross said 58 percent of L.A. renters are paying more than 30 percent and a third are paying about 50 percent.

Yet the fate of tenants has not been a major issue in the election for mayor. That is until recently when the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, the city’s major landlord group, announced its support for candidates Controller Wendy Greuel and City Councilwoman Jan Perry.

It’s not known whether this will help or hurt the recipients. As the L.A. Times’ Michael Finnegan wrote, “landlord endorsements are not entirely a badge of honor in a city where about 60 percent of the housing is occupied by tenants.”

Greuel said it was a sign of her support among business and labor. But tenant advocate Gross said the apartment house owners “have fought us for years, they have fought rent control and they are coalescing behind Wendy Greuel. Tenants need to know this when they go to the ballot box.”

He was kinder to City Councilman Eric Garcetti. Garcetti, Gross said, “has a mixed record. He hasn’t been with us on every issue, such as supporting a rent freeze. He voted against it. But on the other hand, he has provided leadership and support on some other key issues.”

Actually, Gross’ constituency of low income and middle-income renters have few, if any friends in city hall. If they had an enemies’ list it should start with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and include the city council and high-level building and planning bureaucrats. The big campaign-contributing construction unions and developers who have great power in city hall have always favored condo conversion. Before the recession, Mayor Villaraigosa, beaming at all the construction, said the crane—a construction crane—should be the city’s official bird.

The council and the mayor support big construction around transit stops. As Dakota Smith noted in the Daily News, Villaraigosa, Perry, Garcetti and Greuel favor a Hollywood community plan that would allow pockets of high rises in the area, with its Metro station..
The trouble with such developments is that they sharply increase the value of buildings for many blocks around the station, totally changing neighborhoods and driving out low-rent dwellings.

Gross and the Coalition For Economic Survival want to keep these neighborhoods as they are, many heavily rent controlled and affordable. They are asking the candidates to “stand behind any attempt to weaken rent control” and to preserve rent-controlled buildings or at least require developers to replace the housing lost when they are leveled.

Good luck. With condomania taking hold, there’s not much chance of the tenants’ platform being adopted.

(an earlier version of this column incorrectly quoted Smith as writing Villaraigosa, Perry, Garcetti and Gruel favor the Millenium twin high rise development in Hollywood. Actually, she wrote they favor the Hollywood Community Plan, which allows more high rises in Hollywood).

LA Observed photo of downtown units

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 2:36 PM | Permalink

The winner of Tuesday night’s mayoral debate was the moderator, Professor Fernando J. Guerra, director of Loyola Marymount University’s Center for the Study of Los Angeles and a longtime analyst of local politics.

Like a professor trying to keep an early morning class awake, Guerra worked hard to breath life into an event where the five candidates gamely fought their way through another of the many forums that are the major public events of the campaign. This one at LMU occurred exactly a month before the March 5 primary election. It was hard to tell who is doing best. They all looked as though they were on a marathon, exhausted and praying the finish line was near.

The room was packed; warm and dark, for the benefit of cameras live streaming the forum. Guerra’s finest few minutes in the two hours was when underdog candidate Emanuel Pleitez revealed his plan to solve the city employee pension crisis. It was very complicated, involving borrowing money from Wall Street to buy out the pension obligations of city workers, who would then use it to build their own retirement accounts.

“It sounds good, but I don’t understand it,” Guerra said, turning a moment that could have been really boring into something amusing. He interrupted the debate, scorning a rigid format, and asked the other candidates if they understood it. None of them did. Neither did I. Afterward, I asked Pleitez aide John Hill to explain it. He did, sort of. Then Pleitez came up and offered to explain it more but I asked him not to. Hill, I said, told me all I had to know.

Pleitez, considered a sure loser by the experts, is actually could be a contender if he gets more campaign contributions. He has a good biography—poor in El Sereno, top student and athlete at Wilson High School, Stanford graduate, Obama transition team official, tech company executive. He’s Latino in a city where the Latino vote could decide the election. But so far, he’s been on display only in debates and before small audiences and may get lost among the television barrage in the final days.

Some other thoughts:

Councilman Eric Garcetti continues to describe Hollywood, in his district, as a crime-free, homeless-free, graffiti-free, low-unemployment island of prosperity in a city that has unfortunately not benefited from his leadership. Hollywood has improved in recent years but it’s definitely not free of the ills that afflict the rest of L.A.

Controller Wendy Greuel, considered, along with Garcetti a front-runner, has stopped talking so much about her audits. I can see why. The subject is uninteresting and the Times raised good questions about how much money they would actually save. Instead, she offered a more lively speaking style and promised to be tough as mayor.

Ex-talk-show host Kevin James remained the best with one-liners. The auditing Greuel, he said, boasts “she knows where the bodies are buried” He said “that’s because she buried the bodies,” presumably meaning city hall secrets.

Councilwoman Jan Perry, asked along with the others what she would like to do if she loses, said she’d study to be a rabbi, and when ordained would work outside temple walls to help society’s unfortunate. Politician turned rabbi—that might be a first.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 9:08 AM | Permalink

In their many forums, the five mayoral candidates resemble a traveling troupe of actors performing the same roles at each performance, always pretty good but never noteworthy. Tuesday night at Sinai Temple, however, City Councilwoman Jan Perry broke out of the pack with a star turn that made her the evening’s clear winner.

The moderator, Rabbi David Wolpe, asked questions “intended to put the mayoral hopefuls off of their pre-scripted stump speeches,” Jonah Lowenfeld observed in his Jewish Journal story.

One late in the forum certainly did. Wolpe said, “Let’s say you had in front of you the top 500 Hollywood executives. What is it you want to say to them about the movies they make, the city they live in and about the image they give our city and our country to the world? And is it the mayor’s job to monitor, lecture, to uplift, to help shape Los Angeles’ most important industry?”

City Councilman Eric Garcetti offered his usual pitch about giving the industry more tax breaks and other incentives to film in Los Angeles. Similar economic solutions were offered by Controller Wendy Greuel, attorney and former radio talk show host Kevin James and Obama administration transition official Emanuel Pleitez.

Councilwoman Perry seemed to understand that the rabbi had something deeper in mind. She said she had supported legislation to make it easier to make feature film in California, but she quickly moved on: “If we had a room full of executives…from the film industry, I would say this: I would encourage your creativity. I would encourage you to put people in Los Angeles back to work. We have unchecked potential here and I would encourage you to create more apprenticeships, more internships, more opportunities to reach out to young people who may not have the connections or the wherewithal to have a career in the industry and to pull them along with you.

“I’d also say this: ‘Let’s go to the schools, let’s talk to families about the portrayal of violence in movies and how it does desensitize younger people who spend too much time playing violent games on line and then go see it in the movies and remember how it does affect the growth of the next generation.”

She made a good point. City hall is obligated to help Hollywood but it’s not a one-way street. Hollywood has an obligation to the city, to the women and men trying to break into the notoriously closed industry and to the young people who support its films.
It was gutty for a candidate to talk like that to an industry which brooks no criticism. I thought her clear, plain language—without the city hall jargon of her earlier appearances—distinguished her from her opponents, and showed growing skill on the campaign trail.

Interestingly when Wolpe asked the candidates whom they would vote for if they couldn’t vote for themselves, Perry’s four opponents said they’d cast a ballot for her. Perry said she’d vote for Pleitez.

A word about the crowd. It was big, almost filling a large room at the temple. Cars were lined up for a block on Beverly Glen Boulevard, waiting to get into the garage. I had to park two long blocks away on Wellworth Avenue and when I reached the temple the entrance was packed with people waiting to be admitted. You needed to have sent in an RSVP, but the frustrated crowd was too big for the system . I had not submitted an RSVP and was barred by the overwhelmed security guards until a man who had recognized me as a journalist googled a bio with a picture, showed it to the guards and escorted me inside just in time. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t take down his name so I could thank him here.

There are supposed to be 18 more of these forums until the March 5 primary election. Let’s hope the forums turn into debates and the moderators are as sharp and provocative as Rabbi Wolpe.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 3:18 PM | Permalink

The fact that homelessness occupied just a few minutes at the end of a recent mayoral election debate is evidence of how low one of the city’s most serious problems ranks on the civic agenda.

With homeless encamped from Skid Row to South Los Angeles to the Westside and over the mountains deep into the San Fernando Valley, the matter certainly deserves more time and attention.

The candidates were limited to a minute each on the subject at the Temple Beth Israel debate earlier this month. But each gave it a shot. City Controller Wendy Greuel said she would end homelessness but was vague about how she would do it. Attorney Kevin James said he would convert unused city buildings to shelter the homeless. City Councilwoman Jan Perry said she would fight for more county funds for Los Angeles, where large numbers of the homeless are found. Councilman Eric Garcetti pointed to his efforts to create housing for the homeless in his Hollywood district. Emanuel Pleitez spoke of harnessing private capital.

An extended discussion of homelessness would have revealed much about the candidates’ philosophies, knowledge and politics. For the subject touches many societal troubles—mental illness, substance abuse, recession-caused unemployment and the needs of veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On veterans, Katharine Russ called attention on the CityWatch web site to the frustratingly slow efforts of the Veterans Administration to provide housing and rehabilitation facilities on the largely empty VA hospital grounds in West L.A. She noted that Santa Monica City Councilman Bobby Shriver in 2004 proposed that three buildings be used for housing and therapy but work has started on only one and it won’t be completed until after 2014.

As for the VA hospital grounds, I want to know how the next mayor is going to lead us through a stubborn VA bureaucracy, and how she or he will overcome the opposition of Brentwood homeowners afraid of having more vets as neighbors.

So far, help throughout the city is provided by non-profits that know how to corral funding for housing. Ground was broken for a project that will house 46 homeless and mentally ill people in the Sunland-Tujunga area of the Valley. Speaking at the event, the Daily News reported, was Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon, whose 35-year-old schizophrenic son lives on Valley streets. “He is lost in mental illness,and we don’t know if he is taking his meds,” he said at the event.

There are many families like his, a number growing with the return of veterans suffering from brain injuries and post traumatic stress disorder. Certainly, the problem is too big and complex for the next mayor to cure. The city-county Los Angeles Homeless Authority reported there were more than 23,000 homeless in the city and more than 51,000 outside city limits in the county—an estimate considered far too low by other homeless experts. But that’s a huge problem worthy of a big place high on the next mayor’s agenda.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 2:50 PM | Permalink

The super PAC supporting Rep. Howard Berman is prepared to spend $1.2 million on mailings and cable TV advertising in the final weeks of his intense campaign against Rep. Brad Sherman in the San Fernando Valley.

“We’re moving forward, raising money and doing fine,” said Marc Nathanson, the financier and cable TV executive who heads the PAC, the Committee to Elect an Effective Valley Congressman. He said John Shallman, a well-known local political consultant, is shaping the advertisements.

I talked to Nathanson on the telephone after receiving e-mail from Stephanie Daily, a veteran political fundraiser now working for the pro-Berman PAC asking prospective donors for $1 million in the next two weeks.

Nathanson said the advertising campaign would highlight Sherman’s acceptance of financial support from super PACs run by the Carpenters Union and the National Assn. of Realtors. A taste of that was in the Daily e-mail: “Millions have been spent by special interest super PACS attacking Howard.”

At the outset of the campaign, Sherman criticized Berman for the super PAC, and said the two candidates should refuse such support. Parke Skelton, who is running the Sherman campaign, confirmed that Sherman is accepting support from the union and realtors PACs. “We tried repeatedly to forego super PACs and he (Berman) laughed us off the stage. This is bound to be what happens,” Skelton said. He said the carpenters supported Sherman for his stand on trade and the realtors for the congressman’s efforts to revise loan limits, which helped Valley residents buy homes.

Nathanson said the PAC would spend a total of $2 million by the time the campaign is over, counting both the primary and general election campaigns.

One message, he said, would be that “Brad has terribly inflated his record” and that he is a “very weak, unimportant player who does very little legislatively.” He said that record would be compared with Berman’s on matters such as Israel, a major issue in a district with many Jewish constituents. The advertisements will also counter Sherman’s criticisms of Berman’s trips abroad, which Nathanson said were part of Berman’s job as chair and now ranking member of the House foreign affairs committee.

And, Nathanson said, other ads will remind voters of the debate that turned somewhat physical last Thursday. The candidates argued over Sherman’s contention that Berman did not author the Dream Act, which would have permitted young immigrants here without documents to stay in the country legally. Sherman insisted another congressman was the author. This angered Berman and the two had a disagreement that ultimately saw Sherman putting his arm around Berman—not in a friendly manner—and a sheriff’s deputy separating them.

Jonah Lowenfeld reported in the Jewish Journal that a group of immigration reform advocates said Berman, indeed, was the Dream Act author and that Sherman was slow to back it.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:00 PM | Permalink

We in the Berman-Sherman press corps waited on hold for the beginning of the conference call that would bring us the latest bombshell in the contest between the two San Fernando Valley congressmen. Finally, it landed—a charge by Rep. Howard Berman that Rep. Brad Sherman had loaned himself money for political campaigns and charged his campaign organization interest.

It wasn’t exactly a bunker buster. I’ve often encountered this practice in covering political campaigns. A candidate needs money in a hurry to get the campaign going. She dips into the family treasury and makes a loan to the campaign with interest. Later, contributors dump money into the campaign, and the candidate is repaid. This is legal but I’ve always felt there is something questionable about it. The practice permits money to be constantly shifted back and forth in campaigns, and government political enforcement officials, seeking full disclosure, have trouble keeping track of it. In addition, winning candidates hold fundraisers to repay the loan after the election, using their power to squeeze contributors who may have government business before them.

In the conference call and in an e-mail sent out earlier in the day, Brandon Hall, Berman’s senior strategist, said Sherman had loaned his campaign money over several years, and charged interest that totaled $461,000. Hall said the Berman campaign was “not alleging he (Sherman) had done anything illegal” but said he “had crossed over ethical lines” and was “unethical” by using his campaign for “personal enrichment.”

He said Sherman left money in campaign bank accounts for years, charging the campaign interest. Then when he paid the money back, Hall said, “he had to raise money from special interests.”

Parke Skelton, Sherman’s campaign manager, said Sherman charged interest lower than the bank rate. He said Hall’s $461,000 figure was correct. Sherman, he said, would repay part of a loan with contributions. But some of the debt remained after a campaign, and sometimes grew as Sherman loaned his political operation more money for the next campaign—charging interest on the unpaid balance.

Skelton said the Berman effort, to be featured on television and radio ads and mailing, as well as on the Internet, was designed to “distract voters from his own astonishing record of abusing public office” by using a government car for private trips and employing his brother, Michael Berman, as a campaign consultant.

This is pretty complicated stuff but the Berman campaign has reduced it to a simple ad on a new website.

Sherman is leading in the polls, largely because he had previously represented most of the new district, created by a reapportionment that combined the Berman and Sherman districts. Now, Berman strategist Hall said Berman will use the advertising to “draw a contrast with Brad Sherman” in the parts of the old district Sherman represented.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:43 PM | Permalink

Back to the past. We’re returning to the old days when a few rich guys shaped Los Angeles in secret while a bewildered and captive city hall stood by.

The L.A. that General Harrison Gray Otis and his son-in-law Harry Chandler and their rich friends created turned out pretty well—San Fernando Valley subdivisions, a plentiful water supply, a harbor, the beginnings of the aircraft-aerospace industry. It wasn’t democratic. It wasn’t pretty. The fat cats got rich. Chandler’s Los Angeles Times boosted the projects and turned a blind eye to corruption. But in a crude way, it worked.

The prospective sale of the Anschutz Entertainment Group, which owns or controls a substantial part of downtown L.A., to some unknown super-rich person or company, raises the possibility of such a modern robber baron taking charge of AEG’s L.A. Live, including the Staples Center and expanding it with a football stadium, more hotels and real estate developments in the surrounding area.

That would come on top of Guggenheim Baseball Management’s purchase of the Los Angeles Dodgers, the baseball stadium and the surrounding parking lot and other real estate just north of downtown for $2 billion.

What these deals have in common with the old days is that they are largely being done in secret and they could have a huge impact on development. I’m glad, I think, that Guggenheim Baseball Management owns the Dodgers, even though ex-owner Frank McCourt still has part of the parking lot. That parking lot could be the site of condos, apartments, office buildings, restaurants and bars, connected to nearby downtown by an MTA line. Those plans would undoubtedly be done in secret, sprung on us quickly and approved without much examination in city hall.

A $300-millionplus city bond issue will help pay for the crown jewel in an expanded L.A. Live project, the football stadium for an NFL team, if one comes here. But we won’t know who is buying AEG until it’s a done deal. Will the new owners make new demands on the city for zoning changes, street expansion, and hotel and building tax breaks that would make L.A. Live really profitable?

Whatever happens, the future of L.A. Live and Dodger Stadium are public matters. .An expanded L.A. Live will undoubtedly further change the entire southern part of downtown L.A., just as Dodger Stadium development will change the north end.

The cheerleading that greeted the Dodgers sale and the secrecy surrounding the AEG sale sounds like the boosterish attitude and secret government of the old days. Like then, today’s Angelenos don’t know what will happen. Hopefully, it will work out as well as the secret and often shady deals of the past.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:30 PM | Permalink

Michael Berman, a fiercely combative political consultant, has always been a secretive sort, especially when it comes to talking to reporters. I can testify to that. He hasn’t spoken to me since August 1988.

That’s when he was running Zev Yaroslavsky’s campaign for Los Angeles mayor. Someone had obtained a memo Berman and his partner Carl D’Agostino had written to Yaroslavsky and leaked it to the Times. Although I wasn’t the recipient of the leak my editor had me do the story. I called Berman, and read him some of the more inflammatory parts of the memo. He got mad, and said I was receiving stolen property, like a fence. But he confirmed the memo was authentic, and I wrote, “Two political consultants have told Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky that he will lose to Tom Bradley in the mayoral election next year unless he becomes an uncompromising foe of overdevelopment, learns to smile more and improves his fund raising, especially among his fellow Jews.” The Jewish part really got Berman in trouble, and that was the end of our relationship.

He can now forget his privacy. Berman is involved in the re-election campaign of his brother, Rep. Howard Berman, who is locked in a hot race against the aggressive Rep. Brad Sherman in the San Fernando Valley. On Thursday, the Sherman campaign unleashed a blast accusing Howard of paying Michael $741,500 from 1992 to 2010 to manage campaigns where there was little or no opposition. The campaign reform group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington cited four years of Berman expenditures in a report on congressional nepotism issued in March, the Sherman campaign said. Sherman campaign researchers then looked up campaign spending reports dating back to 1992

Sherman’s campaign manager, Scott Abrams, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission declaring,” There is an overwhelming amount of evidence to show that Howard Berman has used campaign funds to Michael Berman well in excess of market value for ‘services’ in non competitive races.” What the commission will do with the complaint is uncertain. It is divided 3-3 between Democrats and Republicans and that is how the vote often ends up on controversial matters—if the staff even refers it to the commission. And the amount of money paid to consultants for writing and distributing advertisements and devising strategy is a murky area. It’s like paying a lawyer for billable hours or an auto repair place for fixing your car. It’s often unclear how much is too much.

Berman campaign spokesman Jason Levin said, "The Sherman campaign's allegations only tell one side of the story. When you average together the amount paid to Michael Berman as alleged in Sherman's complaint (between 1991 and 2010), that totals out to $39,026.31 per year. In an examination of salaries paid to Scott Abrams, Brad Sherman's permanent political staffer during the period between 2006 and 2010, his yearly salary averages out to $40,895.60. Sherman's claim that Michael Berman is overpaid is ludicrous."

I can imagine how much Michael hates this. For years he was a backroom legend in Los Angeles politics. He and partner D’Agostino were pioneers in the selective mailings that are now part of political campaigns, each mailing targeted a specific group of people connected by ethnicity or ideology.

Times changed. The Internet began to replace postal delivery. Campaign managers had to talk to reporters, giving them quick quotable responses in e-mails, twitters and instant messages. The secretive campaign chief was giving way to a new, public relations oriented breed. In a sign of the times, Michael has either relinquished or has been forced to share his campaign boss duties with the more communicative Brandon Hall, who managed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s surprising victory in 2010 in Nevada.

I’ve always felt sort of bad about Michael cutting me off for the past 24 years. I thought he was interesting and often amusing. But, as another political consultant told me, “You have to admire a guy who can hold a grudge that long.”

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:01 PM | Permalink

You’ve heard of the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan ticket. But I bet the idea of a Ryan-Brad Sherman ticket never occurred to you. It didn’t occur to me until I covered the debate Wednesday night between Reps. Sherman and Howard Berman.

Amazingly—actually unbelievably—Sherman bragged about his cooperation with Rep. Paul Ryan, the designated Republican vice presidential nominee who wants to convert Medicare to a voucher system. He did this in a packed multi-purpose room at Sherman Oaks Notre Dame High School where a majority of the audience appeared to be Medicare eligible.

Sherman was talking about his ability to get things done behind the scenes, even though he has authored few successful bills. He boasted how he had worked with Ryan—and with Democrat Nancy Pelosi—on legislation that would have given President Barack Obama the right to veto individual items in the budget, the so-called line-item veto. Then, in response to Berman’s criticism of his bill-passing skill, Sherman noted that Ryan had been criticized as a “back bencher” because only two of his bills became law. The implication was that Ryan and Sherman shared the same work ethic that Sherman described as “I’m a work horse, not a show horse.”

Berman sarcastically remarked that perhaps Sherman, in comparing himself to Ryan, was hoping President Obama would name him vice presidential nominee to replace Joe Biden.

The audience applauded that remark and there were few cheers when Sherman boasted of his work with Ryan.

Mostly, however, fans of both men, battling for a San Fernando Valley congressional seat, cheered their favorites in a spirited debate that featured the usually reserved Berman in a new combative mode.

I was most interested in their differences over the Wall Street bailout. Sherman has been critical of it and boasted he forced major changes. Berman noted that the bailout prevented the recession from becoming a depression. “The financial situation was so unsettled that at the time we had to do something, “ replied Berman. He said “we had to move fast” and that bill “became the basis of the automobile bailout.”

It was a hot debate, almost as hot as the room, and the two congressmen were unrelenting in their assaults. Berman called Sherman’s record “meager and sparse.” Sherman said “if the San Fernando Valley elects me for 90 years I would not miss as many votes as Howard Berman has.” For people in my business, it was terrific battle.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 10:11 PM | Permalink

As mid morning traffic on I-405 built up, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa stood amid the construction work on the Mulholland Bridge Thursday and celebrated his biggest accomplishment: congressional approval of the America Fast Forward program, which will create hundreds of thousands of jobs in a weak economy by speeding up transit and highway projects. At his side was Sen. Barbara Boxer, largely responsible for getting the measure through a Congress stalemated on most everything else.

Although most of the news media and the local political community have treated this effort with great indifference, approval of America Fast Forward is one of the most important transportation developments in recent local history. It is a huge triumph for a mayor dogged by bad press, some of it his own making, some of it by media fixation on a phony narrative of a failing Villaraigosa administration.

America Fast Forward, part of the transportation bill just passed by Congress, permits Metro, the regional transportation agency, to use revenue from the Measure R sales tax as collateral for long-term bonds and federal loans. This will allow Metro to build 12 major mass transit projects in 10 years, rather than 30. Accelerating construction would put people to work with comparative speed, get traffic-easing projects going faster and save construction costs. It means, Villaraigosa said, $546 million for the Crenshaw rail line and $600 million for the Wilshire subway.

Job creation in this area alone would be substantial, according to Richard Katz, a Metro board member who helped write the plan and lobby for it. Katz cited figures from the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. which estimated the number of jobs directly created from the projects themselves and indirectly from money flowing to suppliers, subcontractors, and businesses patronized by workers. Total local employment gains, direct and indirect, would be 177,700 from highway projects and 83,280 from transit projects. Some examples of such job creation:

Westside subway, 30,000; Eastside transit corridor, 15,400; Sepulveda Pass Transit Corridor, 14,000; Alameda Corridor Grade Separation, 12,800; I-5 High Occupancy Vehicle Lanes, 30,240.

“A game changer,” Villaraigosa said of the transportation bill. He called it “the most important job creating bill Congress has passed to date.” Boxer, noting the heavy odds against passage in this Congress, said it required “very heavy lifting up to the last moment.”

There was also heavy lifting in getting the news media to give the effort much coverage. The Los Angeles Times had a complete story on the passage of the transportation bill but played it inside LA Extra. There wasn’t enough on the measure’s tortuous path through Congress, Boxer’s crucial role or the lobbying effort of the mayor and other local officials. The only Times journalist writing about it in depth from the start was Tim Rutten, the former op-ed columnist.

Villaraigosa, of course, makes things hard for himself because his personal story steps on his work-related story. As his America Fast Forward was passing, his lover of three years, television reporter Lu Parker, broke up with him. Two girl friends and a broken marriage catch public attention.

His legacy, however, will be the construction projects—and jobs in a region hard hit by the recession. These will be feeding the economy and easing traffic long after he leaves office.

Photo: Gary Leonard

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 12:43 PM | Permalink

Rep. Howard Berman figures a substantial turnout in November—more than doubling the size of the paltry June primary vote--will push him ahead of Rep. Brad Sherman, who outpolled him in that San Fernando Valley election.

Sherman, of course, doesn’t agree. A compilation by Sherman’s campaign consultant, Parke Skelton, shows the size of the task facing Berman, the 29-year Democratic congressman in his race against Sherman, who has served in the House for 15 years. Reapportionment put them in the same district, the newly created 30th.

In the primary, Sherman finished ahead of Berman 42.4 percent to 32.4 percent. Voters from the old Sherman district are now a majority in the new one, and his support from them put him ahead of Berman. Voters from Berman’s old district who were placed in the new constituency continued to support him. But Sherman carried the neutral voters who had not been represented by either him or Berman.

“In all a very good result for Sherman,” Skelton said in e-mail. “He won his district by more than Berman won his, and Sherman won the neutral territory handily.”

Brandon Hall, Berman’s campaign consultant, placed a different interpretation on the numbers. He told me that the turnout in the primary was “exceptionally low.” Just 88,605 of 369,067 registered voters cast ballots. That means 280,462 voters are in play, more than three times the number of the primary electorate. In other words, this is a new campaign.

Hall said the non-voters, far outnumbering the voters, “will be a more favorable electorate” for Berman, aiming at more centrist or independent voters. It could also be more favorable to a Berman campaign that is trying to look almost bipartisan, with support from Republican big names as well as Democratic office holders who have worked with him in Congress and his previous years in the state legislature.

In addition, the Berman side promises a hard-hitting campaign. That would be a change from the primary where Berman, rusty after years of no-competition elections, didn’t seem to know how handle Sherman’s aggressiveness. He improved as the primary campaign went on. Now, he’s taking direct aim at Sherman’s record. “He’s only passed three pieces of legislation, two of them naming post offices,” Hall said.

When I passed this on to the Sherman camp, the congressman called me to defend his record and assault Berman’s. Berman, he said, passed no bills in his first 12 years, not uncommon in Congress where legislation is cooperative. “Based on his own standards, he should have resigned,” Sherman said. “This is an insane, ridiculous, malevolent way to judge a congressman.”

He said he shaped and improved important legislation. “I had more to do with Dodd-Frank (the financial reform law) than anyone except Dodd and Frank,” he said. “I took the bad stuff out.” He followed up with an e-mail listing the successful bills on which he’s worked. “I believe in working with other members of Congress no matter who gets the credit. That's why I've cosponsored 140 bills that are now law,” he said.

That’s just one of the issues that will be explored in the next few months of rough campaigning. Democratic insiders have decried the two Democrats opposing each other in an expensive campaign. But I’m looking forward to the next few months. Isn’t this what democracy is about?

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 8:11 AM | Permalink

One of the best examples of why government doesn’t work is the $7.5 billion in fines and penalties for traffic and criminal offenses that remain uncollected while courtrooms are closed and employees fired.

This hasn’t gotten much notice except for stories by California Watch, the non-profit investigative news gathering organization, and the Los Angeles Metropolitan News-Enterprise, which covers legal affairs.

I heard about it from Lloyd W. Pellman, former Los Angeles county counsel who is now in private practice. Pellman and another lawyer, David Farrar, have asked the Judicial Council, policy body for the state courts, to do something about collecting the money and using it for financially strapped trial courts around the state. Farrar’s firm collects debts for government agencies. Pellman’s firm, Nossaman LLP, represents Farrar. As the county’s chief legal officer from 1998 to 2004, Pellman knows plenty about county and court financing.

In a letter to the Judicial Council, Pellman warned that the closing of courts is depriving California access to the justice system unless they can afford to pay lawyers who would finance, through fees, expenses usually paid by government. “If the current trend continues, this state is headed for a two-tier system of justice,” Pellman wrote. “Only those whose attorneys can afford to underwrite the costs of court reporters and increased filing fees or who can afford to pay such expenses themselves will be able to proceed with litigation with a record for appeal. “I don’t want to see that happen in my personal or professional lifetime.”

In other words, unless you can afford a well connected lawyer with clout, don’t hold your breath until your divorce, civil suit or criminal prosecution is decided.

Pellman and Farrar urged the Judicial Council to use some muscle and get the courts to wring the money from the scofflaws. The money would be split between cities and counties, which make the arrests, and the courts but under the Pellman-Farrar proposal, the courts would get 40 percent of it.

Other lawyers familiar with the system say the money is hard to collect. Much of it is owed by poor people. It’s all but impossible to get money from many of them and costly to jail the non-payers.

I can see the obstacles. In addition, the courts, run by judges and other lawyers, make everything complicated and hard to change. You ought to read the procedures for dividing the fines between the various levels of government.

But courtrooms are being closed in downtown Los Angeles, Hollywood, Pomona, the Antelope Valley, San Fernando, Inglewood and other places in Los Angeles County. With $7.5 billion out there uncollected, these legal minds and their political allies ought to be able to figure out a solution.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:15 PM | Permalink

Far from Los Angeles’ centers of power, the harbor seldom gets the attention it deserves as a driving force in the Southland’s economy. Yet decisions big and small made there have an impact on businesses and workers as far away as the Inland Empire.

That’s why a vote by a relatively few harbor truck drivers to join the Teamsters Union is worth some notice. Drivers for the Toll Group, which transports goods in and out of the harbor, voted 46-15 to join the Teamsters Union, reported Coral Itzcalli, spokesperson for Change To Win, a Teamsters-backed coalition of organizations supporting the union drive.

They are a small percentage of the some 10,000 truck drivers working at the harbor. The vast majority of the drivers work as independent contractors who lease their trucks from trucking companies. The Toll drivers are unusual in that they are on a company payroll.

What makes this vote significant, Itzcalli said, is that it is “a big step” in union efforts to organize the independent contractor drivers and negotiate more money and better working conditions for them. This would impact drivers whose routes range from the harbor though the Inland Empire and beyond the state’s eastern boundaries.

The organizing drive began when drivers couldn’t persuade Toll to provide clean bathrooms, cold drinking water and remedy other working conditions the union characterized as “inhumane and unsanitary.” The next step is for the Teamsters to negotiate a contract with Toll.

With this victory, the Teamsters are energized to extend their drive to other trucking companies serving the harbor, possibly triggering disputes that will impact business and workers throughout the Southland.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 2:19 PM | Permalink

The conflicts of the left were on display at the Westside Progressives' forum on Occupy LA, featuring occupiers, other activists and Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl.

The Progressives’ Lillian Laskin deserves much credit for assembling such a disparate, lively and argumentative bunch Saturday at St. Bede’s Episcopal Church in Mar Vista. The idea was for Occupy LA to update the Westside Progressives on what’s been going on with the movement.

The church’s beautiful stained glass windows had a welcoming look, as did the garden, visible through the big window at the end of the room. Before the program, I chatted with a fellow panelist, Bill Gallegos, executive director of Communities for a Better Environment, about how peaceful everything looked.

That changed once the program started. I got in trouble. I discussed the tricky relations between Occupy in the media. I then went to make what I thought were complimentary observations about Occupy, which I think is a positive movement that has shaped much of the dialogue of the current political campaign. Another panelist said that while she appreciated much of what I said, she objected strongly to describing Occupy in the past tense. I should have used the present tense because it is a living, breathing, active movement. Guilty as charged of using the wrong tense. Being an insensitive journalist, such shadings were beyond me.

As she and others said, Occupy has been busy since the high profile days of its occupation of the Los Angeles city hall lawn. Occupy holds General Assembly gatherings during the week in East Los Angeles and has joined in support of a number of demonstrations and rallies around town. Occupy will be part of the May 1 general strike in favor of immigrant rights and against foreclosures, corporate malfeasance, unemployment, low wages and unfair taxes. Students will be urged to stay away from school and workers from their jobs.

What was striking was the distance between Occupy and anyone who holds elective office. Rosendahl was that person Saturday.

He sat there while the electoral system was assailed “We don’t want to join with any group affiliated with the electoral system,” said one Occupy person. “You can’t change anything through the electoral system. Another said, “The Occupy movement doesn’t believe the system can be reformed.” Filmmaker Jehuda Mayaan, part of Occupy, said, “You can’t change anything through the electoral system.”

Rosendahl told how he had helped create housing for homeless veterans and was working on providing more facilities for them and other vets at the Sawtelle Veterans Administration hospital.. “Not everyone is corrupt, not all politics are corrupt,” he said.

Occupy folks gave him a hard time about the police and the fence installed around city hall after the occupation. Someone else complained about police stopping people from sleeping in mobile homes in Venice. The mercurial Rosendahl answered in kind. The discussion got heated. Voices were raised. The garden outside the window looked inviting.

I was impressed with the energy of the meeting but I thought the hostility toward the end was bad news for progressives. Unless they love conservative rule., they had better get together. The Westside Progressives were the most positive sign. Believers in retail, person-to-person politics, they had accomplished a lot in a small way by getting these people together in the same room.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:29 PM | Permalink

An overlooked aspect of Los Angeles’ fight over drawing new City Council district lines is whether the city power brokers—Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and council members—will stir up racial animosity and discriminate against Latinos with their redistricting proposal.

There are other issues involved in the redistricting fight. But none of them are more important to L.A. in the long run as this dispute over ethnic representation, which touches on the racial tension that is always part of politics—and life—in this city.

The ethnicity issue a has been raised in a letter to the Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Commission by Steven Ochoa, national redistricting coordinator of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. It has also been brought up by Alan Clayton, a noted redistricting expert and advocate for Latino representation in several conversations with commission and City Council officials.

At issue is a plan drawing new boundaries for the 15 City Council districts as required every 10 years to account for population changes. The lines were drawn by a citizens commission appointed by the mayor, council members and other city elected officials. Villaraigosa and his council allies, who include Council President Herb Wesson, an African American, plus Latinos, seem to be calling the shots.

The redistricting commission plan, Ochoa said, would reduce Latino representation and “will directly put Latino and African American communities in electoral conflict throughout the coming decade.” If Latino representation is reduced, the city could conceivably be found in violation of the Voting Rights Act, which is designed to assure equal representation for minorities.

A perceptive reader might ask why a Latino mayor and his multi-ethnic allies favor a plan that could discriminate against Latinos and heat up always-delicate race relations. There are many theories but as of now I’ll write it off as another example of the murkiness of Los Angeles politics.

Ochoa and Clayton have particularly objected to the lines the commission has drawn for the 9th and 13th Districts. The 9th District is represented by Jan Perry, who is African American, as have been her immediate predecessors. She is also Jewish. The 13th is represented by Eric Garcetti, whose ancestry is a rich L.A. mix of Latino, Jewish and Italian forebears. Both are candidates for mayor in 2013.

The Perry 9th District would include much of South Los Angeles, as it does now, but would lose a big business portion of downtown, source of major campaign contributions. The Garcetti 13th District would continue to be Hollywood based but would lose Latino constituents while gaining more affluent white residents in parts of Silver Lake and around Griffith Park and Atwater.

Clayton said the commission plan, to be considered by the City Council, would reduce Latino representation on the council, from the present five to four because of the new boundaries in the 13th District, The new district could be whiter and with a demographic mix more favorable to an Asian or a gay or lesbian candidate than it is now under Garcetti.

Advocates of the commission plan disagree. While conceding that the proposed lines for the 13th District would make it harder for a Latino to win there, they say that the new boundaries for Perry’s 9th District would make up for this by giving a Latino a better chance to win in that constituency.

Ochoa denied this. Instead, he said, the commission has recommended a 9th District that is 46.3 percent Latino and 45.8 percent African America. This is not enough to help assure election of a Latino candidate and would create strife between the two ethnic groups fighting it out in an election.

His organization, MALDEF, recommends making the 9th District solidly African American while drawing lines for the l3th District that would include 50 percent Latino registered voters, enough for a Latino to win. In that way, there would be no ethnic battles, he said, while continuing the present number of five Latino council members and three African Americans.

Years ago, the city government was found guilty of violating the Voting Rights Act by denying Latinos representation on the City Council. As a result, Gloria Molina, now a county supervisor, won a council seat. If MALDEF feels the current commission plan violates the Voting Rights Act by costing Latinos a council seat, this one could also end up in court.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 7:59 PM | Permalink

If the last few days are any indication, the Jewish Journal debate starring Reps. Howard Berman and Brad Sherman at Temple Judea in Tarzana Tuesday night should be pretty intense.

A third debater in the contest for the West San Fernando Valley congressional seat is Republican Mark Reed.

So far, attention has been focused on Berman vs. Sherman. At the Democratic state convention in San Diego last weekend, Berman supporter Betty Yee, a member of the State Board of Equalization, made waves with a blast at Sherman.

Yee, who was a veteran Sacramento legislative staffer before her election to the board, handed out a letter to delegates saying: “It would be insane, self-destructive and wrong—horribly wrong for the Democratic Party to support Brad Sherman against Howard Berman….Somebody has to say this—and I guess it’s going to be me, And I just did.
“Oh, you want your back slapped, Brad may be your guy,” she wrote. “But if you want someone to protect impoverished farm workers…women’s rights…immigrant rights, Howard Berman is your man.”

In the end, Sherman fell short of getting the convention endorsement. His campaign manager, Parke Skelton, told me he didn’t think the blast from Northern Californian Yee would hurt Sherman,. “She’s a good person, a great policy person but I don’t think her endorsement means much to voters in the district,” Skelton said.

Skelton, meanwhile, attacked Berman for telling MSNBC’s Chuck Todd he had no Super PACs in the race. These political committees can accept unlimited corporate contributions under the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and Skelton noted reports that one supporting Berman had accepted a $10,000 contribution from PG&E. Actually, after telling Todd “I have no Super PACs, “ Berman backtracked and said “I have done everything I can to discourage any Super PAC creation and I have done nothing to encourage them.”

This is pretty small time stuff and candidates in one of the nation’s highest profile congressional races should be capable of rising above it and talking policy. Whether they do or not is up to the questioners, That would be Rob Eshman, publisher and editor-in-chief of Tribe Media Corp., publisher of the Journal; Journal reporter Jonah Lowenfeld and me. It should be a good show,

CONTROVERSY OVER PANEL

Another Republican candidate, Susan Shelley, was not included in the debate and has protested vigorously.

Eshman said, “Susan Shelley simply didn't meet our debate criteria. She didn’t file a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission. She didn't have any significant support, endorsements, didn't show up in the polls. She simply didn’t meet our criteria." Shelley said in an e-mail to me, “As you know, I'm Jewish, and a Republican, and socially moderate. It's my belief that Rob Eshman is trying to hide my candidacy from Jewish voters who might be inclined to cast a protest vote against the Democrats.”

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:20 PM | Permalink

Parents have won partial restoration of federal poverty funds for 23 schools in the San Fernando Valley and the Westside. Many of the schools are in middle class neighborhoods but have substantial numbers of poor students.

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.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 3:35 PM | Permalink

A big parental revolt is shaping up in the San Fernando Valley and the Westside as federal budget cuts reach deep into the Los Angeles Unified School District.

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.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:18 PM | Permalink

To some of us disillusioned alums of the weak and failing City Ethics Commission, mayoral candidate Austin Beutner is saying the right things.

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.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:20 PM | Permalink

Although Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky didn’t shed much light on whether he will run for mayor, he gave a scathing and knowledgeable critique of L.A. city hall and indicated what he might do if he ran the place.

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.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:23 PM | Permalink

Watching Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck deal with Occupy LA at the Bank of America plaza Thursday, I was struck by how much the police department has changed for the better.

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.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 7:51 PM | Permalink

Walking through the Occupy LA encampment the other day, I stopped to listen to a small meeting being held on the north side of city hall. A dozen or more occupiers were discussing how and when to serve food.

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.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:45 PM | Permalink

The closing of the Center for Governmental Studies is another setback to the dying cause of cleaning up elections and taking them out of the hands of big contributors.

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

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 2:52 PM | Permalink

During my days as a newspaper and wire service reporter, I did my best to hype up stories about the State Capitol or city hall. But it wasn’t easy to get editors or readers interested. Put personalities and conflict in your stories, advised my Associated Press boss Morrie Landsberg. Even so, I found it hard work, a sentiment I am sure is shared by the current generation of reporters.

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.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:16 PM | Permalink

“So I ask myself,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, “how do you get out of this?”

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.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 8:57 AM | Permalink

Do Latinos tend to vote only for Latinos? Do non-Latinos generally vote against Hispanic political candidates? Those racially charged questions are behind the current struggle over drawing new districts for Los Angeles County’s five supervisors.

The supervisors are required to change the boundaries of their districts every 10 years to take into account population changes. The federal Voting Rights Act requires the district lines to be drawn so they do not deny minorities a chance of winning elections. Those protected by the act include African Americans, Asian Americans and Latinos.

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?

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 3:39 PM | Permalink

Tim Rutten and I settled into our booth at Langers and ordered. He chose the number 19—pastrami, cole slaw, Swiss cheese and Russian-style dressing, Being a traditionalist, I picked a simple pastrami sandwich. We both called for Heinekens, the first of our usual two.

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.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 4:31 PM | Permalink

Greg Nelson was chief aide to then City Councilman Joel Wachs, who stiffened the city’s back during negotiations over Staples Center in the mid 1990s and improved the deal. I asked Nelson what was difference between then and now, when the city is negotiating a much bigger deal with the Staples Center developer. AEG, for a downtown Los Angeles National Football League stadium.

“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.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 2:16 PM | Permalink

So many questions, so little time. That just about describes the situation when the Los Angeles City Council meets July 29 to finally look behind the curtain of secrecy surrounding the downtown National Football League stadium proposal.

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."

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 5:03 PM | Permalink

By the time I reached the Mar Vista Recreation Center Monday night, the placed was overcrowded with Westside neighborhood activists and union people braving a hot, stuffy room to have their say on the proposed downtown National Football League stadium.

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?

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 11:05 AM | Permalink

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas used an interesting telephone town meeting to build support for putting more of the Crenshaw Boulevard light rail line below street level and to have a station at Leimert Park Village. Robo calls from the popular Tavis Smiley were placed to residents in the Leimert Park area urging them to stay on the line and talk to the supervisor about the light rail route, to be completed sometime between 2016 and 2018. It would run from Exposition Boulevard to LAX.

I watched Wednesday night as calls came into town meeting central at the Los Angeles Urban League headquarters on Mount Vernon Drive, at the edge of Leimert Park.

I arrived early and walked around Leimert Park Village, the cultural and political heart of L.A.’s African American community, located off Crenshaw Boulevard a few miles south of the Santa Monica Freeway. A few vacant stores told me the village could use the economic boost the light rail might provide. I went into the well-known Eso Won bookstore on Degnan Boulevard, and looked at the books. I had wanted to visit the store for a long time but never got around to it. I bought “The Most Famous Woman In Baseball: Effa Manley and the Negro Leagues” by Bob Luke. Then I headed south on Crenshaw toward where Ridley-Thomas wants to put the trains below street level. I passed a casket store, but didn’t want to buy one. It and the rest of the businesses were closed for the evening. There were still people on the street, however, as MTA buses unloaded passengers returning home from work, all potential light rail customers.

At the Urban League, I joined Ridley-Thomas, league CEO Blair H. Taylor, Our Weekly publisher Natalie Cole and a few others seated around a table fielding calls. A supervisorial aide told me 410 people called in, certainly many more than would attend a midweek town meeting in person. This is a terrific method of political communication.

Ridley-Thomas answered questions from telephone callers and a few from publisher Cole. Most of the callers favored below-street level construction of the stretch near Crenshaw High School and another school, as well as the Leimert Village station. They expressed concerns about safety and cost.

A strong critic of Ridley-Thomas' plan is his fellow supervisor, Zev Yaroslavsky. Yaroslavsky sides with a report by CEO Art Leahy of the MTA saying the Ridley-Thomas proposals would add more than $400 million to the $1.7 billion project. Yaroslavsky opposes cost increases. Ridley-Thomas, who puts the additional cost at $339 million, said the money could be taken from future projects and other sources.

Ridley-Thomas could use Yaroslavsky’s support. Both are members of the MTA board, which will make the final decision, possibly at a meeting next week. But on the day of the telephone town meeting, Yaroslavsky and Ridley-Thomas had a sharp exchange on KCRW's ’s “Which Way, L.A."” over another issue, the power of the county chief executive officer. From their tone on the show, these two strong-minded politicians aren’t getting along.

Ridley-Thomas also needs the support of Mayor Antonio Villairgosa. He controls four votes on the MTA board. Ridley-Thomas said the mayor is undecided. The supervisor is hoping the Leimert Park residents who participated in the telephone town meeting will persuade the mayor to join him.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 7:22 PM | Permalink

I moderated a 36th Congressional District candidate forum that shed light on the complexities of a leading domestic issue and on the politics of coastal California.

The event Tuesday night, at Harbor UCLA Medical Center, was for candidates in the May 17 election to replace Jane Harman in the 36th Congressional District seat, which runs from Venice through the South Bay. The subject was health care and the event was sponsored by organizations involved in the issue.

These candidate events are crapshoots, as I have learned during years of covering them. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when only three of the 16 candidates showed up. They were Mayor Mike Gin of Redondo Beach and businessman Stephen Eisle, who are Republicans, and liberal activist Marcy Winograd, who is a Democrat. Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who was ill, sent a representative. Nor should I have been surprised by the size of the crowd—small.

I didn’t use the format I’d been given as moderator—to allow two minute replies, rebuttals, summing-ups. I let the three talk and talk. With just three candidates and a small audience, I liked the idea of a long discussion, sort of like an old-fashioned candidates’ night in someone’s front room.

The district is heavily Democratic and one of the Democrats is favored to win. As evidence of how liberal the district is, even among many Republicans, Gin, Eisle and Winograd, in answer to a question from the audience, all said they favored stem cell research. You’d probably get the same answer in most places in Coastal California, the most liberal part of the state. Maybe not, however, in Inland California.

Elizabeth Forer, who heads the Venice Family Clinic, asked the candidates how they thought institutions such as hers can continue to deliver health care to the needy in view of shrinking state and federal appropriations. Dr. Gail Anderson, medical director at Harbor-UCLA, wanted to know how the new health care law would affect public hospitals. Dr. David Meyer, who heads LA BioMed, a non-profit research institution, wondered about federal funding for institutions such as his, which has made many important medical discoveries.

In their answers, the three candidates revealed much about themselves and their philosophies. Eisle replied to all the questions by talking about using a business approach, taking pages from the Republican playbook, which didn’t seem to have much relevance to the daunting problems of the Venice Family clinic or Harbor-UCLA’s emergency ward. Gin was the pragmatic South Bay pol, talking about convening citizens committees to come up with solutions to problems that have long stumped politicians and academics. Winograd favors Medicare for all, which might solve the problem but is politically impossible at this time.

The discussion gave me a sense of these candidates as people. The audience, which seemed to be composed mostly of health professionals, appeared to be paying attention. At least nobody left. Some of the time it was boring, like a seminar. But campaigns need more such seminars when the issue is as complicated as this one. I wish there had been more candidates and a bigger audience.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 2:22 PM | Permalink

In a time when the smart money has written off the state, an excellent and timely documentary, “California State of Mind—the Legacy of Pat Brown,” recalls the prosperous past and gives us a bit of hope for the problems confronting the late governor’s son, Jerry Brown.

I saw it last weekend at the Newport Beach Film Festival. For my wife Nancy and I, it was a welcome reunion with the Brown family and friends, including Kathleen, his daughter. The documentary was made by her daughters, writer director Sascha Rice and executive producer Hilary Armstrong. Rice and Julia Mintz are producers.

As the writer, Sascha Rice faced two challenges. One was that while her grandfather, Edmund G. Brown, was one of California’s greatest governors, he is a remote or even unknown figure to generations born after he served, from 1959 to 1967. Secondly, how could she, a family member, accurately show the real Pat Brown who was both an idealistic visionary and a cynical, cunning politician?

Rice doesn’t entirely capture the latter quality. Sometimes, the film is too nice, those being interviewed too admiring of Brown. Weren’t any of his detractors still alive? But Rice did solve the family problem by giving the film an interesting plot, her own effort to discover her grandfather who, to her, was the fun-filled, loving, undemanding grandpa. It was a pleasant side of the old governor but didn’t tell the grandkids much about their aging playmate. Rice returned to Pat Brown’s San Francisco roots, to his gambler father’s cigar store with an illegal card room in back and to his inability to attend college because dad was broke. She traced his rise through San Francisco’s rough politics, driven by ambition and political instinct. The film also tells of his courtship and lifelong romance with his wife, Bernice, who had his love letters under her pillow when she died. This was one of the most touching moments in the film.

Sascha visited the projects the visionary Pat built and loved—the state water system, the freeways and the public universities. There is also a glimpse of the cynical Pat, talking of the Northern California water he wanted to ship south. Those mountain counties, he scoffed, don’t need all that water, implying they were greedy. He wouldn’t have said that at a meeting in Redding or other northern cities and towns.

Sascha interviewed me for the film. I was the journalistic vet, an admirer of her grandfather but one who appreciated how he got things done. I explained the governor had to bargain and cajole to accomplish his aims, how every mile of the freeways and the water project, every university campus was built deal by deal with politicians who didn’t meet the impossibly high standards demanded by today’s ethicists.

It was a rich state then, far different than the one governed by his son Jerry. Today, we are short of money and the electorate is much more cynical. We’ll see if the Brown genes that took Pat from his father’s cigar store-gambling parlor to the governorship are still strong enough to steer Jerry through problems much more difficult than those faced by his dad.

Posted by Bill Boyarsky at 3:17 PM | Permalink