Editor’s Memo: When What’s Right is Wrong

CITYWATCH TODAY—Navigating City Hall is a bit like trying to make sense of Alice’s adventures in the rabbit hole. What seems obvious, rarely is. 

LA’s City Council just approved $3 million for a rabbi who suffers from brain damage … the result of being struck by a car from behind while riding in a posted bike lane in the Valley. The City argued that the street was not safe for riding and shouldn’t have been posted as a bike lane. But it was, so why the dispute? Why not just do the right thing? 

Because doing the right thing is not the goal of a politician. Building political capital is what a politician’s life is about. That and keeping her job. 

Richard Risemberg offers a present-day example. There is a deadly strip along 6^th Street in the Miracle Mile that has cost a number of bikers their lives in the last few years. It needs to be made safe. A road diet would do that, but it would also … some say … slow traffic a tad. We all know what the right thing is to do. Not to be confused with the politically expedient thing to do. Richard discusses the dilemma, the risk, the weary exasperation … in Today’s CityWatch. Check it out. Let me know what you think. 

Ken Draper-Editor, CityWatch

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