LOS ANGELES

TRUMPWORLD--A few weeks after I arrived in Lebanon to volunteer with Syrian refugees, I learned that my plan to offer an English class for both Lebanese and Syrian youth in the small town of Bqarzla was so sensitive as to require an audience with the village priest. 

After Sunday mass in the village church, a fellow volunteer, Samer—Syrian, Orthodox Christian—and I were escorted to the high-ceilinged sitting room of the priest’s spacious quarters next door. A group of men wearing suits and smoking cigarettes—village notables and friends of the priest—had been invited to join us. They greeted us amiably and invited us to sit.

The priest, or Abuna—an honorific meaning “Our Father” in Arabic—eventually emerged from an interior room, also in a suit, and bearing a pot of strong coffee, and commenced to smoke a cigarette. After we had dispensed the usual pleasantries, he asked me the “American” question that, prior to the election, I heard frequently. “Inti ma Trump walla Clinton?” (“Are you with Trump or Clinton?”) “Akeed mu ma Trump,” I said. “Huwweh majnoon.” (“Of course not with Trump. He is crazy.”) 

Abuna did not visibly react to my remark, but he and his friends launched into a spirited discussion in Arabic, which I only partially followed. Afterward, Samer told me that they had been opining that immigration was ruining America and that Trump would set things straight. 

The conversation echoed others I had been privy to, focused on tensions around immigration in Akkar, a remote district in northeastern Lebanon on the Syrian border. A common complaint here is that the Syrians are taking jobs and hogging resources provided by the government and international aid organizations. Some Lebanese Christians I spoke with also told me they view the primarily Sunni Muslim refugees as a demographic threat. Lebanon has refused to hold a census since 1932 lest the findings upset the precarious balance in its political system, which parcels out its top leadership posts based on religion. 

Clearly Abuna and his friends saw in Trump someone they believed would be sympathetic to their plight. Fortunately, our political differences did not prevent Abuna from granting my English class his seal of approval. 

Bqarlza is tucked away in the hills of Akkar. The occasional army helicopters overhead are a reminder of the war next door, but the village itself is sleepy, surrounded by the olive groves that drive much of its economy. If you changed its language and the architecture, the Maronite Christian enclave could easily pass for a small Texas town. The streets outside of Bqarzla are littered with shell casings and sometimes bird carcasses left by the local men who go out shooting every morning before dawn. Young people hang out at a couple of pool halls and a pizza shop. The neighbors take note of whether you went to church on Sunday. 

The backdrop of many conversations I’ve had is a contentious history between Lebanon and Syria that dates back at least as far as 1976, the beginning of Syria’s three-decade occupation of Lebanon, shortly after the outbreak of the Lebanese civil war. There remains a complicated and sometimes fluid map of loyalties for and against the Syrian regime in the Lebanese political system and society. 

Perhaps because I am an American, perhaps because there is a sense of recognition across complicated political landscapes, these conversations frequently come back around to the U.S. election. Local Lebanese acquaintances in Akkar told me before the election that they liked Trump because he is a zelameh (real man) or that they didn’t like either Trump or Clinton, but at least Trump would be something different. I might have heard the same things in any number of small towns back home. 

Local Lebanese acquaintances in Akkar told me before the election that they liked Trump because he is a zelameh (real man) or that they didn’t like either Trump or Clinton, but at least Trump would be something different. 

A week before the U.S. presidential election, the Lebanese parliament settled on their own new president after a two-year standoff, and the battery of celebratory gunshots turned the streets of Akkar into a mock war zone. As supporters of Lebanese president-elect Michel Aoun commenced their jarring festivities, I was driving home from teaching a remedial French class to Syrian kids. 

In the olive groves and empty lots in and around Bqarzla, Syrians live in scattered clusters of tents provided by the UNHCR, known in English as the United Nations’ Refugee Agency. Many of them, although registered as refugees, are not legally authorized to be in the country, leaving them in a tenuous position and largely restricted from traveling and working. For a couple of months in the fall most of them work the olive harvest, a brief bright spot before winter comes, the work dries up, and the rainy season tests the soundness of the plywood and plastic sheets reinforcing their makeshift homes. 

From UNHCR, they get basic assistance with food and shelter. From the Lebanese government, they get the right to send their children to the local public school, which is largely abandoned by the Lebanese who send their children to private schools if they can scrape together the funds. NGOs like the one I volunteer with fill in some of the gaps, including supplemental classes to help children who are struggling in Lebanese schools. 

In an English class I was teaching at one of the informal refugee camps the week before the election, we practiced saying what we did and didn’t like. Several of my Syrian students listed Trump among their dislikes, along with flies and traffic. 

Mohammed, a quiet teenager from Aleppo with an easy smile, echoed my assessment of then-candidate Trump: “Huwweh majnoon.” (“He is crazy”). 

The night before the U.S. presidential election, Samer and I dropped by one of the refugee camps in the olive groves outside of Bqarzla. We sat on the floor and drank black tea and mate with a group of young refugees from Hama. 

It was cold and windy outside, but inside the tent, the family had set up their sobia, a wood burning stove, and the small room was soon warm enough that I took off my jacket. We didn’t talk about the election or the war in Syria. The next morning, I stared at the television in a stupor as Trump made his acceptance speech, interrupted briefly by one of Lebanon’s frequent power outages. I suddenly felt very far from home. 

During the next day’s adult English class with the refugees, I joked that I needed to look for a husband from Canada. 

“Why not Syria?” they joked back. “There are no problems there.”

(Abby Sewell is a freelance journalist based in Lebanon. She previously reported for the Los Angeles Times before relocating to Lebanon to volunteer with the NGO Relief & Reconciliation for Syria. This piece first appeared in Zocalo Public Square.  Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

15 CANDLES, 96 POINTS OF LIGHT- (Editor’s Note: This month marks the 15^th anniversary of the certification of Los Angeles’ first Neighborhood Council. CityWatch is celebrating with a multi-month celebration of introspective articles and view points on how LA’s Neighborhood Councils came about, how they’re doing and how their future looks. This perspective by Anastasia Mann is such an effort.)   

When I first read about the concept of Neighborhood Councils in the Los Angeles Times some 15 years ago, my first thought was "finally.”  

In my heart I knew that this idea was likely a direct result of the fervor for secession by the movements in Hollywood, The Valley and San Pedro. I was a secessionist.  

The reason these attempts at secession were defeated is because the entire voting populous of the city was able to vote. Had only the actual communities in question been voting separately, as in elections for city council representatives, etc., it's more likely the splits would have prevailed.  

(The passion for secession was born because the "city fathers" were only focused on Downtown. That still remains as issue for some today.) 

So the NCs were born to give the “stakeholders" in each geographical area more input into local government. More "say so.”  

I first served as Area 5 (Outpost) chair to Hollywood Hills West NC. The following year I was elected president, taking the reins from founder and first president, Dan Bernstein. Dan did the hard work. He had it rough. A bit of an unruly board in a system governed by a new city department barely getting its feet wet: The Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, aka: DONE.  

Our board has 23 elected representatives, which includes nine area chairs and ten issue committees, and five officers on the executive committee. We are the largest geographical NC among the 96 in the Greater LA Area.  

The get-go was slow -- not for lack of interest, but due to lack of training, direction and publicity via the city. And of course the continuous creation and application of rules that made no sense. A bit like kindergarten. An NC member across the opposite end of the city gets his hand in the "funding" cookie jar, then all us kids have to face the wall. Very frustrating. Trying to fund projects is like jumping through hoops on fire with the lion.  

But the good news is that we have indeed come a long way. The system is still riddled with red tape and an excessive number of rules which can be baffling, but today we are actually getting things done. Very good things. HHWNC has one of the finest boards that I have had the pleasure of overseeing in my entire 12 year experience. The resumes of our board members threaten any Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton could muster.  

From at one time having zero stakeholders attending our monthly meetings, we now have numbers ranging from 25+ into the hundreds. Yes. Hundreds.  

We've been blessed to have the cooperation and support over all these years from CD4, under both Tom LaBonge and David Ryu. Also from the deputies for CD13 and previously CD5. Moreover, we now have active participation from our State Assembly members for AD 46 and 50.  

We work closely with LAPD, LAFD and even DWP. We help to get streets repaired, city services improved, support schools, LAPD and Fire Department programs, our library, theatre arts projects.....and play a major role in planning and land use issues, particularly when it comes to density and major developments within our congested boundaries. We've had to battle controversies that include protecting Runyon Canyon from commercialization to controlling the out-of-control situation with the Mini Tour bus issues. We listen to developers as well as those opposed to them. 

We ask questions, request Improvements, meet over and over again until we can find consensus. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But our rate of cooperation is very high. In certain limited cases we cannot beat City Hall, but that's another story. We try to protect historical heritage sites as well.  

Current issues facing and frustrating all our communities include homelessness, traffic, more traffic, party houses, the impacts from Hollywood Blvd on the adjacent residential units, crime (of course,) and more tour bus problems...on and on.  

But we are planting trees in Runyon Canyon, protecting the off leash dog privileges by keeping it a wilderness area and not a sports venue, getting pot holes and street lighting fixed, advising our city council reps on the quality of life issues facing our stakeholders. Every day there seems to be a new issue.  

Our board members each hold their own meetings to bring every imaginable issue to the full board table. That's four to 20 meetings per month! There are hundreds of hours being devoted to our communities every month. Most of the time, these volunteers go unnoticed and under-appreciated. The entire NC system and existence is still a mystery to most Angelenos. This must change.  

Unless the media gets behind what we do and gets the word out, the system may be doomed. The public must demand that we keep these volunteer voices active, loud and clear. Many members of the media have stepped up to the plate, like CityWatch; and KNBC with the Tour Bus Coverage; the LA Times with the 8150 Sunset "Gehry" project and Runyon Canyon; and the Beverly Press. They all have an interest in what we do. 

But our own story about what we do -- how and why -- still needs to be told. We should have everyone -- resident, business owner and employee, property owner or renter, club member and worshipper signed up as stakeholders within every single one of the 96 NC's. Numbers talk.  

We hear rumors that some city officials would love to eliminate the NC system. DONE (now Empower LA) is understaffed and overwhelmed. HHWNC is fortunate to have support from our Council District. But many NCs do not enjoy this sentiment; rather, they are faced with the opposite.  

The more everyone gets involved the better future for us all. Because, frankly, we are all in this together.

(Anastasia Mann is president of the Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ALPERN AT LARGE--At this time, there appears to be two choices for those of us living in the City of the Angels:  Enjoy the Show, and just get used to being lied to while your neighbors either don't vote and/or complain about things while doing nothing ... or leave.  Because telling the truth and spending the taxpayers' money well?  That's just in the movies. 

Much of the problem is that "representative democracy" and "civics" and the like is too often relegated and dismissed as "nerd-talk", and much of the problem is that we're all so exhausted with our jobs, families and personal crises that, well, who has the time to keep up with all the corruption and chicanery of local and state government?  

So let's go over two big lies, shall we?  And not just, "That's life in the big city" but real whoppers that will really affect the lives of many Angelenos: 

1) The LAUSD Board, flush with last November's financial surge, just gave the middle finger to LAUSD students and their families. 

That big change in the school year to move the end of the summer break closer to Labor Day? The nice compromise that saves energy bills and the quality of life for the school district, students and parents?  The reasonable preservation of the school year that starts the week before Labor Day and allows most of August (and its high air-conditioning bills) to be part of "summer"? 

Gone. 

In the dead of night, the LAUSD Board showed they lied to us when they said they would listen and that they cared about the needs of parents and students. 

Yep, we all now know that the LAUSD Board, who clearly did NOT promote this vote, did a nice whipsaw and punked the daylights out of their paying constituents ... and didja notice this unannounced change in schedule occurred AFTER the November elections, and AFTER they got their money from the trusting voters? 

But perhaps this is what happens when you give those with a history of lying and misspending our money a blank check ... they realize they can punk you, hurt you, slap you, kick you in the crotch, punch you in the nose ... and yet they know you'll come back for more. 

And for those who, like the lying and treacherous LAUSD Board member Scott Schmerelson, changed their minds because they were "concerned" that kids would be pulled out of district-run schools and enrolled in charter schools that started earlier, lemme give you a hint (and my kids go to charter schools): 

This move will only encourage a GREATER exodus of parents who truly LOVE their kids to go to charter schools, because charter schools want to give parents a choice--and these parents will do what it takes to both have a summer with their families and make them study hard during the summer to be prepared for their AP and honors classes. 

It's creeps like the LAUSD Board that truly, sincerely, brazenly, makes us all wonder if a new Trump-led federal Department of Education is just the thing we need to slap down these insulated miscreants who would take our money and then slam us with this treasonous move.   

School choice has just made a great leap forward, because this can and should be "Exhibit A" as to why more money, and more centralized power, is the last thing that families and societies should do for their school boards. 

2) The Pension Crisis--it ain't going away! 

Oh, how those of us who don't read CityWatch, or listen to the radio, or read a newspaper, or go online to find out what's really happening in local and state politics, really wish we would just SHUT UP and GO AWAY about this whole "pension issue". 

I mean...just LOOK!  The sun is still rising and setting, the roads are usually working OK, and things are still all fine in the big picture, so what is this doom and gloom about "pensions". 

Well, maybe if enough middle-class families have their utility bills go up enough, they'll start ignoring this pension issue as mere "blah, blah, blah" and realize that maybe there's some relevance to this issue, after all.  

As fellow CityWatch contributor Jack Humphreville recently noted the LADWP retirement plans are both expensive to maintain and underfunded. 

So we should all just FORGET about funding of old/unrepaired infrastructure unless we pay even higher utility bills. Because those bills are going to folks who stand to enjoy virtually the same amount of retirement income that they got while they were working. 

Nice deal--those retire earlier than the rest of us, and will live life richer and happier than the rest of us.  Fair, right? 

And this pension thing is hardly limited to the LADWP. All over this City and State, we're seeing this problem at the city, county, and statewide levels.   

Occasionally, we see cities going bankrupt.  Occasionally, we see projects and first-responder funding get halted. And sometimes, we see exposes in other states (like in Dallas, TX) when the police/fire pension plans achieve critical mass. 

Perhaps we'll see massive walkouts of public sector employees.  Perhaps we'll see elections won or lost based on these issues. 

But so long as we keep feeding the fire with our tax/ratepayer dollars, and so long as we keep re-electing the insulated leaders who know that--in the end--we'll just continue to "take it" then these lies will just keep happening. 

So maybe we shouldn't worry so much, or scream about so much, Trump the anti-Christ and last November's election results. 

Because the real horror story is that last month we threw away all evidence that Californians, and particularly Angelenos, have any fiscal sense whatsoever. 

And the politicians and public sector union leaders all know it...and will act accordingly.

(Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D. is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties.  He is also a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at  [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.)

-cw 

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-It should not be so hard, really, to finally stop the mansionization of Los Angeles neighborhoods. On paper it should be a snap for the four precedents I describe below. Yet, time after time, whenever City Hall decision makers close the front door to mansionization through motions and ordinances, they open up the backdoor through bonuses and exemptions. These lethal loopholes have so undermined every anti-mansionization ordinance that they end up allowing the very McMansions that they purport to stop. 

Four anti-mansionization precedents. 

First, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission approved a set of guidelines called Do Real Planning. One of its principles is explicitly anti-McMansion. 

NEUTRALIZE MANSIONIZATION: Neighborhoods zoned single-family deserve our protection. The most pervasive threat they face is the replacement of existing homes with residences whose bulk and mass is significantly larger than the street’s current character -- sacrificing greenery, breathing room, light, and air. Let’s be the champions of a citywide solution to prevent out-of-scale residences. 

Second, the Los Angeles City Council has legally adopted many official planning policies that protect residential neighborhoods from mansionization. For example, Objective 3.5 of the General Plan Framework Element states: “Ensure that the character and scale of stable single-family residential neighborhood is maintained, allowing for infill development provided that it is compatible with and maintains the scale and character of existing development.” 

Third, when City Council offices have conducted constituent surveys or when they tally communications from the public regarding mansionization, a whopping majority of these comments consistently call for stronger regulations to stop McMansions. Furthermore, at City Planning Commission and City Council public hearings on ordinances to restrict mansionization, most of those who offer testimony call for stronger ordinances, especially to count garages as part of a house’s overall square footage. 

Fourth, a May 2014 City Council motion directed the Department of City Planning to cleanup the Baseline Mansionization Ordinance by removing the bonuses and exemptions that allowed mansionization to continue. The intent of this Council motion could not have been clearer: 

“The by-right FAR for the smaller lots should be reduced to .45 to ensure that all R-1 lots are covered by the same zoning regulations… Exemptions for attached garages appear to result in out of scale and out of character development. They should, therefore, be removed from the Baseline Mansionization Ordinance.” 

Despite all of these precedents, the City Council has one again opened up the backdoor to mansionization by re-inserting the exact loopholes that their own Council motion instructed them to remove. Despite compelling testimony from community advocates -- who easily outnumbered boosters of loopholes three to one -- the Chair of the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Committee, Jose Huizar, reinstated two important loopholes. 

Without any debate or discussion, he simply announced that attached garages would again be excluded from floor area calculations and that houses on lots smaller than 7,000 square feet could be built out to 50 percent of lot area, not 45 percent. In one barely audible sentence he added back 700 feet to the size of houses that the Department of City Planning had removed in response to many community meetings and endless emails, phone calls, and letters. 

But, this Councilmember’s action then triggered a citywide push by anti-mansionization groups from many Los Angeles neighborhoods, as well as the Conservancy. Their last minute lobbying did pay off, and the full City Council again removed the loopholes. Nevertheless, no one knows the final action of the City Council when the amended Baseline Mansionization Ordinance and Hillside Baseline Ordinance have their second reading in January 2017. Will the mansionization lobbyists again prevail through their backdoor deals? Or, will the community groups and the Conservancy maintain sufficient pressure to prevent the City Council from, once again, backsliding by opening up the back door? 

Trappings of democracy.

The outcome apparently depends on intense counter-lobbying from those who support the guidelines of the City Planning Commission, the legally adopted planning policies of the City Council, the motions of the City Council, and the super-majority of Los Angeles residents who have supported anti-mansionization legislation.

While we certainly have the appearance of democracy in Los Angeles, as long as some elected officials reject their own adopted motions, guidelines, and policies to help a small group of real estate speculators, support for the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative will grow. If voters adopt this legislation in March 2017, it can foil these repeated corrupt backroom deals that undermine local democracy. These shady deals not only turn this country into a dollarocracy, but they cement the very collusion between the public sector and private commercial interests that now seamlessly stretches from City Hall to the White House. 

(Dick Platkin is a former Los Angele city planner who reports on local planning issues for City Watch. Please send any comments or corrections to [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

EASTSIDER-If you are a residential customer of the City of Los Angeles, you are familiar with the Black, Blue and Green trash containers that we use on a weekly basis. God bless the Department of Sanitation, which charges us a pretty penny on our DWP Bill for their services. Yes, that’s right, our DWP bill -- even though the DWP has nothing to do with the Department of Sanitation. 

Anyhow, if you are a commercial entity or large apartment complex, you are exempt from these charges. They can hire whoever they want to pick up their trash and dispose of it. I hesitate to mention that this is essentially a rare “free-market” solution in our City of Angels. 

Well, full disclosure, there was one little hiccup where the Department of Sanitation got caught charging apartment dwellers the fee even though they didn’t receive Sanitation Department services. But what the hey, right? 

Well, that’s about to change. Huizar and the Sanitation folks are in cahoots over commercial and apartment building waste removal. 

Hello, Jose Huizar. 

Only in the City of “the Angles” do the politicians simultaneously pick our pockets and praise themselves for the act. Recently, I have been giving our very own “God’s Gift to the East side,” Jose Huizar, a break. I don’t know why, maybe I am just numb from the number of humongous land use projects he’s slammed through his PLUM Committee. 

However, last week, in his weekly email blast, there was a whopper that even I couldn’t let go. Here’s the quote from the Councilmember’s very own “dual” Newsletter: 

“Today the L.A. City Council unanimously approved our game-changing Zero Waste L.A. program, which will implement a complete overhaul of commercial and multi-family waste collection and dramatically increase recycling throughout the city. 

The program, which Councilmembers Paul Koretz and José Huizar introduced as a motion in 2010 and worked on during Huizar’s time as Chair of the Energy & Environment committee, will also ensure fair pricing, improve service and working conditions and help us meet our zero waste goals for Los Angeles. Councilmember Nury Martinez helped usher this long-working policy as an advocate and the recently appointed chair of the E&E committee. 

While 70% of L.A.'s waste comes from commercial and apartment buildings, this new program aims to reduce landfill disposal by 1 million tons per year by 2025 and reduce waste by 65% in all 11 of the City’s new service zones! 

The program will also decrease food waste and provide all Angelenos with Blue Bin access, no matter where they live or work. The City of Los Angeles has the number one curbside single-family home recycling program in the nation, and now our commercial and multifamily recycling program is well on its way to becoming its equal. Thank you, Don’t Waste LA and all our partners!” 

Holy moly, what a crock! 

A Solution in Search of a Problem. 

This issue goes all the way back to the days of Tony V colluding with the Department of Sanitation in an attempt to extort tax money from us under the guise of being “green.” In one of those PR flack’s poster dreams, the Sanitation Department printed up a Fact Sheet, with pretty green colors and a logo about “Green Love is In the Air.” Of course, buried in the pretty paper was an admission that the City had already met its mandate for solid waste diversion -- in 2002! 

The issue really got going when our very own PLUM Committee, Jose Huizar and that master of persiflage, Paul Koretz, made their motion in 2010 (CF 10-1797 and a bunch of sub-motions.) This would be the motion Huizar proudly declaims in his recent newsletter, the one that got me all revved up. 

Depending on who you believe, the impetus of all this was the Bureau of Sanitation making a power grab to bring in money, or a benign City Council trying to regulate the “wild west” of those nasty free enterprise waste hauling companies. You choose. 

The Sanitation Bureau Proposal. 

Sanitation’s proposal had two basic concepts -- first, dividing the City into 11 collection areas, and second, setting up one exclusive waste hauler per collection area by way of franchises. To make the idea attractive for bidders , these franchises would be for 10 years with two additional five-year extension options, for a total of 20 years of exclusivity. 

In case you didn’t think it was all about the money, the Sanitation proposal included two elements: 

1) “Establishment of a Franchise Administrative Fee (in addition to or supplementing the existing AB 939 Compliance fee) to provide full funding for the administration and operation of the new system, including development of a Franchise Section in Sanitation” 

2) “Potential for an ongoing franchise fee and one-time payments as General Fund revenues.” 

Of course the City can’t simply be that honest, so their stated reason for all of these major changes was “combining multi-family and commercial waste collection with the goal of maximizing diversion, routing efficiencies and improved air quality.” Note that nowhere in here is any mention of law changes or other external mandates to change the way trash hauling for commercial and large apartment complexes had always worked. 

The CAO Fights Back. 

In an unheard of bit of pushback, the City’s CAO argued against this power grab for money. Instead, he proposed a “non-exclusive Franchise” method of regulating the commercial and multi-family refuse collection market. 

Their main objection to Sanitation’s proposal was that “it significantly reduces the City’s leverage over the waste handling market, negatively impacts haulers and customers as expressed by various stakeholders, and is not timely in generating much needed revenue for the City.” 

Digging into the weeds, in a couple of amazingly honest reports by CAO Miguel Santana, there was a detailed analysis done of the legal hurdles and practical alternatives to regulation. His first report, an 80 page document, is a great read. 

OMG, Huizar and Koretz freaked out -- how can you extract big bucks if there’s no exclusivity? After a pretty good food fight, there was even a minority report that went along with the CAO’s recommendation. 

While everyone had a good time arguing, the CAO issued a second report, this time a succinct 17 pages. He didn’t back down at all, and still recommended a non-exclusive system.

So Why Did It Take So Long for this ‘Victory’? 

You will note that the date of the CAO’s second report was November 2012. That’s right, four years ago! Just as Miguel Santana noted, the City had to go through a five year notice period to implement their exclusive franchise system. That’s right, five years that the City was deprived of money which could have helped offset the general fund deficits and/or helped to pay for unfunded pension plan liabilities. 

That’s why I am saying that Huizar’s declaration of victory is nonsense -- notwithstanding the fact that the LA Times was too kind in their coverage of the City Council’s adoption of the plan. 

So we’re left with higher costs, more regulation, bigger fees, and a whole new bureaucracy for Sanitation. Way to go, Jose!

(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

WHAT LA CAN LEARN FROM PORTLAND--If you thought Wells Fargo’s fake account scandal was bad, get a load of this. Wells Fargo is one of six banks keeping the private prison industry in business. 

We know a lot about the private prison industry. We’ve found that private prisons increase the chances of people returning to prison and encourage mass incarceration. But we’ve always wanted to follow the money—so that’s what we did.  

Our new report, The Banks That Finance Private Prison Companies, uncovers the banks that provide financing to the two largest private prison companies, GEO Group and CoreCivic (formerly CCA). The companies rely on Wells Fargo and other Wall Street banks for money to build new prisons, get huge tax breaks and expand their control of the criminal justice system. All the while, the banks profit from charging interest and fees. 

Private prison companies are licking their lips after Donald Trump’s victory. So are investors. Fortune magazine called CoreCivic “the biggest winner of the election,” since the company’s stock shot up more than 40 percent the next day. 

Now we know who else would profit from Trump’s “law and order” policies and plans to deport millions of immigrants. 

By providing loans, credit and bonds to private prison companies, Wells Fargo and banks like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America have been complicit in mass incarceration and the criminalization of immigration, and they stand to profit even more. 

But we’re fighting back. 

The Portland City Council is currently considering a plan to stop borrowing money from banks like Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase that do business with private prison companies. Nationally, the #ForgoWells campaign is urging cities to cut ties with Wells Fargo because of the recent scandal and the bank’s involvement in the private prison industry and the Dakota Access Pipeline. 

Support these campaigns and push your city to divest from the banks that keep the private prison industry in business. We need to be innovative in the Trump era, but even more importantly, we need to work together.

(Donald Cohen is the founder and executive director of In the Public Interest, a national resource and policy center focusing on privatization and responsible contracting. This piece was posted first at Capital and Main.) 

-cw

YOUR BUDGET VOICE--The Budget Advocates (NCBA) are a committee of concerned citizens that represent the voice of LA’s citizens. Co-chaired by Jay Handal and Liz Amsden, the main goal of the NCBA is to amplify stake holder concerns by bringing them to the attention of the City Council, Committees and Departments to encourage approaches that will both balance the City’s budget and improve communication between City departments and the best interests of the people of Los Angeles. 

As a taxpayer and upstanding resident of our City, your input is vital and we want to hear from you. 

Please take our Surveys and sign up for our mailing list at www.NCBALA.com;  ‘Like’ us on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/LABudgetAdvocates; and Follow us on Twitter at @BudgetAdvocates. 

We need your active participation because you … every one of you … are the heartbeat of the City and we are your voice. 

If there is a Budget Issue you would like us to look into, please send your question and/or suggestion to Adrienne Nicole Edwards at [email protected] or Jacqueline Kennedy at [email protected].  

Participate in our weekly surveys and checkout our blog 'Money Mondays' and "Budget Thursdays" starting this January right here on www.CityWatchLa.com. 

(This article was provided by the Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates. For questions or comments … or, for more info: [email protected] or [email protected].)

-cw

LA COUNTY WATCH--So crammed with hypocrisy is the motion by LA County Supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Hilda Solis to create a five-year Countywide Initiative on Women and Girls (“WGI”) that it will be a miracle if a lightning bolt doesn’t shoot down from the Heavens upon the motion’s passing. (Photo: Diana Zuniga above left.) 

For months, literally thousands of women and girls have been grieving openly about the proposed Women’s Detention Center in Mira Loma, which is opposed by more than seventy organizations, including NOW and the Women’s International League for Peace; CHIRLA and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center; the ACLU and National Lawyers’ League, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and on and on.  

Concerned citizens have been working day and night to stop a prison which, apart from being so far away that it will break apart families, will also endanger the lives of girls and women and other vulnerable populations because of its location in a region with a high incidence of valley fever.   

When the director of Californians for a Responsible Budget, (CURB), who in her capacity represents seventy organizations opposed to the proposed detention center, tried to be heard on the topic of Mira Loma, Supervisors Kuehl and Solis couldn’t be bothered to listen. (Photo left: Diana Zuniga addressing County Supervisors Sept, 2015) 

“Board of Supervisors?" the CURB director said 90-seconds into her testimony.  “All of you all that are talking to each other right now instead of listening to our call to action. Supervisor Solis, Supervisor Kuehl, can we listen just for one second. Thank you.”   

A few sentences later she had to call out Supervisors Kuehl and Solis again for carrying on a side conversation. (Lest that kind of conversation be considered an anomaly, watch this clip).  

“The Mira Loma jail will be a four-hour one-way trip for a family that lives in Lynwood,” Supervisor Solis said, in a posting on her website on September 4, 2015. “It is hard to see how these women will have sufficient access to visitors, programs and medical care.” 

Unless the first action of the Countywide Initiative on Women and Girls is to kill Mira Loma, it will exist as a monument to hypocrisy.

(Eric Preven is a CityWatch contributor and a Studio City based writer-producer and public advocate for better transparency in local government. He was a candidate in the 2015 election for Los Angeles City Council, 2nd District. Joshua Preven is a CityWatch contributor and teacher who lives in Los Angeles.)

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DEEGAN ON LA-A few days ago at a County Board of Supervisors hearing where the supervisors unanimously voted on two motions designed to provide support to the homeless, Mitchell Katz, head of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, declared, “I can actually cure homelessness -- the cure is a house.” But neither motion included a house. 

Realistically, the top priority in approaching the issue of homelessness is to diligently and relentlessly address the plight of the mentally ill homeless. Housing will not be their cure. Nor will knowing that a “state of emergency” has been declared. Those are exterior remedies. An internal restructuring is the only way to fix the suffering of the mentally ill homeless. Their “home” is what goes on inside their heads and their “cure” must be medical attention that opens the door to helping them achieve some balance. 

This is something the County Department of Health Services attempts to do in programs like HOME which addresses the needs of the homeless mentally ill using teams of professionals that go out searching for the mentally ill homeless. 

Would the Supervisors like to make a motion to triple the number of deliverables from the HOME program? Clients can be found on any street in the city, sheltering in place beneath a tent or in the open, visibly ignored. Who knows how many of them are mentally ill? 

For the broader population of homeless, newly elected Supervisors Janice Hahn and Kathryn Barger joined Hilda Solis, Sheila Kuehl and Mark Ridley-Thomas in a unanimous vote, declareing homelessness a “state of emergency.”   

They also unanimously moved to put a quarter-cent sales tax on the March ballot to support homeless social services that would raise about $355 million annually over a decade. The Supervisors’ expectation is that this tax will fund rental assistance, subsidized health care, mental health and substance abuse treatments, and other services to help people get off and stay off the streets. It would complement the $1.2-billion general obligation bond measure approved by Los Angeles city voters last month. Two-thirds of voters must approve the new county sales tax in March. 

These two moves, the Prop HHH housing bond measure, approved by 77% of LA City voters in November, and the County Supervisors’ Approved Strategies to Combat Homelessness could make 2016 a landmark year, a turning point for helping the homeless in Los Angeles. 

Finally, we have a plan with funding and a future. In 2016, Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas fought all year, failing in his attempts to get Governor Brown and legislators in Sacramento to help. Instead there was a defeat of the “Robin Hood tax” requiring millionaires to provide funding for homeless programs, no unlocking of the state’s Rainy Day Fund to provide program financing, and a gubernatorial veto of a request for declaring a statewide “state of emergency” to provide emergency relief for the homeless. However, Ridley-Thomas did have some success advocating for the city’s homeless housing bond measure, the countywide declaration of a state of emergency on the homeless, as well as the placement of the March 2017 ballot of a 1/4 per-cent sales tax to help pay for social services.

“All around us, we find human beings living in utter squalor – a shocking number of them families with children,” Supervisor Ridley-Thomas said. “With this historic vote, we are taking a bold step towards ending this humanitarian crisis, the defining civic issue of our time.” 

Los Angeles will continue to be a mecca for the homeless, attracted by the climate and easy lifestyle that is the envy of most of the world. We will never have the capacity to house all of those who come. However, these new measures passed by the City and County of Los Angeles may provide some important help to at least stabilize the homeless issue. 

The first priority must be to bring the mentally ill homeless into a state of stability. It is the weakest link in a whole chain of actions needed to provide essential help for the homeless that surround us. It must happen now if we want to claim any real success or call what we have done a “cure.” 

(Tim Deegan is a long-time resident and community leader in the Miracle Mile, who has served as board chair at the Mid City West Community Council and on the board of the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition. Tim can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

EDUCATION POLITICS--At Tuesday’s LAUSD board meeting, the school board will take on public school destroyer Betsy DeVos (Photo above: Betsy DeVos with Donald Trump), Trump’s nominee for US Education Secretary.

Board President Steve Zimmer will introduce a resolution, which reads in part:
 
“…the Board of Education calls on the President-elect and his Nominee for Secretary of Education to re-affirm the role of public schools to serve every student that comes to the school house door, acknowledge that our public school[s] are an essential foundation [of] our democracy and indicate that they will support policies, initiatives and investments that serve all students and not some students and that they will support and invest in policies and initiatives that support equity, achievement and excellence while stabilizing instead of destabilizing our public school systems…”
It's sure to be popular in blue, blue California. And it will keep board members, including those running for re-election, in the news.
 
But at some point, the press conferences will be over and we will begin to navigate our new reality in real situations.
 
Turns out “at some point” is already upon us.
 
On the very same agenda, Board President Steve Zimmer is proposing a school that contradicts this lofty resolution. The $10 million (to start) Playa Vista Middle School, which didn’t even face a quorum to be vetted at the Bond Oversight Committee, is on the Board’s consent calendar. So, no discussion necessary. (Although, we’ve discussed it in the blogosphere.)   
 
The Playa Vista Middle School that caters to certain Westside families cannot be described as a policy, initiative and investment that serves *all students*. It specifically serves *some students*. It does not *support equity*, but gives greater resources to a more affluent and less diverse population than at any of the surrounding schools. It specifically *destabilizes our public school system* because the district is doing nothing to enhance the existing middle schools in the area as it creates the shiny new school for a select few.
 
So when the rhetorical flourishes fade away, are LAUSD’s board members committed to implementing policies that reject the new Trumpian reality they keep declaring is so objectionable? Or are they caving to the worst parts of ourselves that his campaign revealed to be more prevalent than any of us dreamed?
 
We’ll find out on Tuesday.

To be the public in public education

Last week, the LA School Board held a Committee of the Whole meeting at a special location. The address was not announced on the school district’s website, but it was revealed if you drilled down into the supporting documents, or if you were in the know.
 
I showed up at the District board room, the usual venue, after paying $8 to park. A security officer told me the meeting must be somewhere else because his boss was off campus.
 
Once I drilled down on the web, I got the new address and drove to the special location. No street parking was available in the bustling downtown Los Angeles location. I re-parked in the garage of the building, and found the meeting room on a plaza shared by a few popular restaurants.
 
The meeting was in full swing with board members and Superintendent Michelle King discussing the revised Strategic Plan, which was not posted with the board materials for the public. Some people in the room had printed copies, but I didn’t see a stack of them anywhere. So I listened and figured I’d get a copy later, off the web.
 
An hour and a half later, I left to pick up my daughter from school. The parking attendant told me I had chalked up a $38 parking tab!
 
That's a Betsy DeVos price tag! And it wasn't even for valet! Joking aside, that hefty price would be impossible for the many Title I moms whose children attend LAUSD schools.
 
As I fumed on the way home about the $38, I got to thinking about how hard it is to be the public in the 2^nd largest school district in the country.
 
I already wrote about the Bond Oversight Committee voting to lighten its load, public disclosure be damned. That was just one example of the public being less and less a part of our public school district. 
 
There are other challenges. We, the public, see the board agendas three days in advance. We have 72 hours to sift through upwards of 400 pages of documents to see if there is something of particular relevance. Important expenditures are stuffed into voluminous reports, so much goes unnoticed. Policy changes are sometimes disguised as innocuous actions. In three days, we are usually only able to react rather than thoughtfully participate in the issues of the district. Hence, the bug eyed looks and breathless comments sometimes seen and heard at those meetings.
 
Even if we were prepared to provide input on various agenda items, we would not be permitted to.
 
California has a good public meetings law and a strong FOIA-type public records act. But different agencies handle the public differently. While the Los Angeles City Council and the State Coastal Commission, for example, encourage public input by providing time for comment on each agenda item, parents attending five- or ten-hour long school board meetings with upwards of 50 items on the agenda are only permitted to make one comment during the entire meeting. That, of course, is absurd for a public school district. 

To add insult to injury, labor union representatives, on the other hand, may comment on every single agenda item they wish to. When the unions don’t bother to comment, that’s sometimes a sure sign that they’ve had internal meetings with District and Board staff to hash out concerns before the Board votes—and before the public weighs in.
 
It isn’t that employees should be prevented from participating in District business, of course. But public school parents shouldn’t be kept out either.

Some parents are accommodated, such as parents whose kids attend charters. Charter petitions are now heard at their own separate meetings with a “time certain”.  According to an article in the LA School Report, Steve Zimmer, Monica Ratliff and Monica Garcia worked to ensure charter parents do not sit for hours waiting to make their case for a charter renewal amidst 50 other agenda items.
 
So, old school, public school parents, it seems all we need is a labor leader, a lobbyist or a lawyer to lead us so that we might be accommodated once in a while, too.
 
This is more than an exercise in alliteration.

It might be more efficient to run a public school district without the public. But before we start advocating for that, let’s remember that it’s precisely what Betsy DeVos has largely achieved in her state of Michigan. It’s what we are sure to see more of coming out of Washington, DC soon.

Will LAUSD resist that? 

• NEED TO KNOW 

E-mail, call or write your school board member:

[email protected]  213-241-8333
[email protected]  213-241-6180
[email protected]  213-241-5555
[email protected]  213-241-6382
[email protected]  213-241-6388
[email protected]  213-241-6385
[email protected]  213-241-6387

And the Superintendent:
[email protected] 
213-241-7000

Find your state legislator:
http://bit.ly/dqFdq2 

Mayor Eric Garcetti  
[email protected] 
213.978.0600

Governor Jerry Brown:
213-897-0322 
http://www.govmail.ca.gov/

Write a letter to the LA Times editor.
http://lat.ms/2bynXZy

(Karen Wolfe is a public school parent, the Executive Director of PS Connect and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.)

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THIS IS WHAT I KNOW-December 2 would have been a typical Friday for West Hills high school student Jordan Peisner. The 14-year old had gone to the local Wendy’s, a popular spot for students at El Camino High School in Woodland Hills. 

As Peisner exited the fast food restaurant, a teenager he had never before met approached him from behind and punched him as the assailant’s friend captured the attack on her phone to post on SnapChat. The punch fractured Jordan’s skull, ruptured his eardrum, and caused both swelling and bleeding in his brain. The teen spent days at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and is now recovering at home. 

“Last Friday at 4:30 pm, my life was shattered,” shares Jordan’s father, Ed Peisner. “I was a broken man. And although we have a long road ahead of us, the invisible injury, I know I will have the strength and courage to help my son navigate the changes that lie ahead.”

The random attack of violence unleashed support from both friends and strangers, locals and those far away who had heard of the incident on the local news and through social media, the very same tool the assailant and his friend allegedly aimed to use for their “fifteen minutes” of exposure. A Go Fund Me account to help with Jordan’s medical bills has surpassed the $20,000 goal. 

When we hear of bullying, senseless violence, and a disrespect for others, it’s easy to lose faith in both people and in social media. It’s hard to accept that a teenager would choose to harm another person and that his friend would video the incident on her phone as casually as one might take a selfie. At the same time, social media creates a world that is so much smaller, as indicated by the number of people from across the country who have been supporting Jordan in his recovery. 

Each challenge can be a learning experience if we choose. “I once thought that you find your path in life but now I know my path has been placed in front of me,” says Ed Peisner. “Parents need to be involved in their children’s lives. And that includes their social media lives. I am not blaming any parents or passing judgement. I am a single father with three kids. I have made plenty of mistakes and I will make a few more but I am involved. I ask questions. I go to their school. I volunteer. I engage. I hear people saying that is helicopter parenting and ‘when they were kids…’ But times are different now. The world is a much smaller place because of the internet. Bullying happens on the airways. All I want to do is make a difference in the life of a child… not just mine – as any as I can.” 

Parents, teachers, anyone involved in the lives of children should take this as a learning experience to model empathy, to set limits and to further the discussion about bullying, whether hidden behind a computer screen or in real life. 

Thankfully, Jordan is recovering from his brain injury. Recovery is a long process. He has the support of his family, friends, and the greater community. 

Social media, like many tools, can be used for evil as well as good. Let’s work to ensure the latter. 

To donate to Jordan Peisner’s Go Fund Me Account, visit https://www.gofundme.com/pray-for-jordan.

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

@THE GUSS REPORT-Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and the Herb Wesson-led LA City Council exist in a delusional bubble of courtesy claps and trite aphorisms that face existential challenges in 2017 when the federal government and state legislatures across the U.S. turn even more Republican red now that this weekend’s Senatorial runoff in Louisiana is over.

How Los Angeles fares in this new world depends a lot on whether these city officials (accompanied by the supportively delusional City Controller Ron Galperin, City Attorney Mike Feuer, and the forces influencing them all) see LA’s challenges with clear, fresh eyes. But if last week and this week at LA City Hall are any indication, they won’t. 

On Tuesday, the day after the FBI warned of an overseas terror threat to LA’s subway system, Garcetti told the assembled media (protected by an abundance of militarized police nearby) that he is riding the subway to “let people know I'm not asking them to do anything that I wouldn't do myself." 

Garcetti was also accompanied by a contingent of (hardly) undercover LAPD, each identifiable by their untucked golf shirts with the outline of a gun underneath. Only when the Mayor by himself rides the train system, at night, from say MacArthur Park station, or on the Blue Line, will he experience subway dangers as does the public. As PBS’s David Nazar shows in this recent video, the MTA (where Garcetti is First Vice Chair) has an appalling lack of security that can’t even stop turnstile cheats. 

Despite the media circus, which garnered national television coverage, the LA City Council had nothing to say about the threat in its meetings which, on Wednesday, instead squandered 41 minutes of its 3-hour meeting kissing the ring of firefighter union rep Frank Lima, as he left his dual-salaried LAFD and union gig for a role with the national firefighter’s union. The city officials have all along been silent on Lima’s role in removing LAFD fraud whistleblower John Vidovich (as first exposed in my CityWatch articles and subsequently by LA Weekly and on KCBS) but each expressed profound love for Lima, who facilitated $350,000 in precisely timed campaign donations to Garcetti and themselves. Most ironic in the presentation was Jose Huizar, City Council’s unofficial in-house playboy, saying at the 1:05 minute mark of the meeting how he is going to miss “hanging out…and joking around” with Lima, and about…wait for it…character building. Even Vin Scully didn’t get this degree of love in City Hall. 

A day earlier at the LAFD Commission meeting, statistics regarding the backlog of thousands of fire inspections (a critical subject just days after the deadly Oakland inferno) were provided verbally, but not in writing. Department spokesperson Jeremy Oberstein said that it was done this way “at the request of a city official,” but could not explain which official requested it, why and when they will be available in writing. 

Robert Cherno, a land use expert who has long-followed the subject, wrote to Sue Stengel, the Garcetti-appointed LAFD Inspector General, according to her LinkedIn page: 

“Your failure to provide me with (updated fire inspection statistics)…leaves me wondering if said documents indicate that a large majority of inspections are still not being performed by your Department as required? The lack of any mention of said inspections during the presentation by staff yesterday at the Fire Commission public hearing has me very concerned, especially after the fire in Oakland the other day, which killed quite a few people.  No doubt that tragedy could have been prevented had inspections been done prior to the fire.” 

Then there was the City Council’s Wednesday discussion on Councilmembers Paul Koretz’s and David Ryu’s years-in-the-making mansionization cessation effort. It’s likely to ultimately fail because it has many of the same flaws as the City Council’s recent moratorium on these oversized houses on lots previously occupied by smaller mid-century homes. Here are just two of the many recently started “McMansions” in my own neighborhood. Paging Council District 5 candidate and Koretz opponent, Jesse Creed! 

And that’s just the damage City Hall did by mid-week. This coming week will be no different. 

On Sunday, San Pedro’s Councilmember Joe Buscaino called into The KFI Sunday Morning News with Elizabeth Espinosa on KFI AM-640 to talk about this week’s effort to decriminalize street vending, comparing entrepreneurial selling of unregulated street food and bootleg DVDs to LA’s high tech Silicon Beach. Nice try. Perhaps City Hall figures that since it hasn’t been able to stop the rampant illegal driver’s license and passport industry in places like MacArthur Park, they might find it easier to deal with the conundrum of homemade empanadas and socks. The problem, as is often the case in LA, is that it is a feel-good effort that makes for happy headlines without genuine public input – or the resources – to do it right. 

And therein is LA’s problem. It is almost always pits the feel good against doing things wisely and with proportionality the things that need to be done the most. 

Whether and how much longer that delusional bubble survives is anyone’s guess.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a contributor to CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640 and Huffington Post. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CORRUPTION WATCH-In by-gone eras, people would come from miles around to stand in the hot sun to listen to long political debates. The seven Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 were held in each of Illinois’ Congressional districts. People came from hundreds of miles to listen to the two men set forth their political philosophies concerning the role of slavery and the nature of the federal union. 

Today, we would get a tweet. “Crooked Lincoln has a family of mice living in his beard.” 

It’s not that current day Americans in general and Angelenos in particular are dumb -- hmm, wait, a minute. That is the problem! The public is grossly ignorant of virtually everything. Let’s be real, it is much more fun to see what the Mad-Tweeter-in-Chief has tweeted about SNL than it is learn the principles of macro-economics. 

The Government’s Responsibility for Macro-economics. 

We know that Macro-Economics is the government’s duty because that is what Macro-Economics means -- the realm of economics where the government provides the sound parameters for the economy to function. 

There are two basic areas where the government’s parameters are indispensable: (1) The Price System and (2) The Business Cycle. Macro-Economics actually dates back to 1776 when Adam Smith wrote Wealth of Nations, which ended the Mercantile Era of economics – a fact unknown to Donald Trump because he has not read it on Twitter. 

Local Government’s Responsibility for The Price System. 

All governments are responsible for the Price System because at all levels of the economy everyone needs accurate information. The purpose of Supply and Demand is to set the proper value of everything. Unless buyers and sellers have accurate information, there is no way to know how much to pay for anything. Since the American public is a grand consumer of Fake News, it loves fake news about prices. 

LA City Attorney Mike Feuer Attempts to Save the Price System from the Xmas Grinch. 

Los Angeles City Attorney Michael Feuer is the spoilsport of our mass obsession to have false information fed to us about everything all the time. The City Attorney has sued four national retail chains for lying to the public. The City Attorney exposed that a gaggle of Grinches in the form of JC Penney, Sears, Kohl’s and Macy’s have been shoveling false advertising down our throats.

Retailers have known for years that people love a bargain. Thus, it’s a proven sales strategy to tell the public that some necklace used to sell for an exorbitant price but now they can get a great bargain at 75% off. Since most people cannot tell fake news or fake advertisements from real ones, the deceit operates wonderfully.   

The Macro-economic Role of the City Government. 

City Attorney Feuer realizes that he has not only a political and legal duty but also a moral duty to use his office to protect the Price System. I guess the voters didn’t realize when they elected the former executive director of Bet Tzedek Legal Services to be the City Attorney that he would care about human beings and justice rather than the profits of billionaires. 

As members of the public, however, we need to grasp the true significance of Michael Feuer’s lawsuit against deceptive advertising. Mike Feuer’s lawsuit goes to the essence of a government’s legitimacy to govern. In America, the power to govern derives from the consent of the governed. When an elite seizes control of the government and abuses that power to deceive and mislead everyone else, the government destroys its legitimacy. The government was formed to “promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and Posterity.” [Preamble US Constitution] 

The well-being of every Angeleno rests upon the soundness of the economy, and the economy’s health rests upon a Price System which accurately transmits to everyone all the time true and correct information. Mike Feuer’s lawsuit is not only to prevent a few people from being ripped off by over-paying for a washing machine or a diamond necklace. Competitors who did not lie lost customers, and the longer the government allows the crooks and thieves to make greater profits, the harder it is for the honest businessman to stay in business. After a while, the honest are driven out of business by the crooked so that no one knows how much of a product’s “value” is real or how much is based on a pack of lies. In a city, state or nation where Fake News and fraudulent advertising rule the roost, the decent person suffers. 

That is why Attorney Mike Feuer was performing a Constitutional and moral duty when he stepped forward to bring honesty and justice to the Price System as the Xmas shopping season begins. Mike Feuer’s seasonal gift to us is not just a few honest prices, but it’s defending the integrity of the Price System itself. 

LA City Attorney Feuer is the Exception. 

City Attorney Michael Feuer is the exception for Los Angeles. The Price System for housing has been riddled with fraud, deception and manipulation for years with devastating impacts on the city. The bad news is that there is no prospect that the trend will be reversed. The good news is…well, there is no good news -- unless you’re a home builder in Texas or outside Nashville. Those are two of the places where new homes for Angeleno Millennials are being built. The destruction of the LA Price System for housing has driven employers away from Los Angeles. No one should be surprised that Family Millennials looking for decent jobs, a detached home which they can afford and quality education for the children are leaving LA. 

Distortion and Manipulation in the Value of LA Housing. 

The manipulation of the housing market in Los Angeles over the last 15 years has created a crisis. The two most visible features are homelessness and terrible traffic. Both are a reflection of the housing patterns which have been imposed on Angelenos through years of lies and misinformation. 

Because the housing market has many segments, discussion of housing prices is complex. For example, Garcetti’s policy to eradicate rent-controlled housing results in higher rents. With over 22,000 rent controlled houses destroyed, the lowest end of the housing market, except for card board boxes next to the freeways, is significantly reduced. Whenever the lowest prices are removed, the average price increases. This should be obvious to a 3^rd grader. The average of 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (avg. 7) will be lower than the average of 6,7,8,9 (avg. 7.5). Thus, the mere destruction of rent-controlled houses raises the mathematical average. 

Since all the evicted people do not end up on the street, those who do search for housing tend to increase the cost of housing just above the rent control level so that data becomes 7,7,8,9 (avg. 7.75). 

Then if we construct 150% more high-end apartments than we need, those putative rents are added to the averages so that the average rental increases. 7,7,8,9,9 (avg 8). However, with a 12% vacancy rate for the higher end apartments, we know that inflated rental prices are being added to the statistics. [source: HCIDLA 11-17-2015 report] 

These simple calculations show how just the destruction of rent controlled apartments and the construction of a glut of higher end apartments can result in a mathematical 15% increase in housing costs. The problem is that people pay what they believe is the correct price. That’s why it has been vital for years for the City to have been publishing accurate data about housing. Instead, the public has been receiving a constant stream of false information. 

Other polices have been pushing residential houses prices upwards based on speculation and not based on the value of a home for “living space.” The Spot Zoning, which a developer can purchase from his councilmember, means that residential properties are worth far more to a developer than to someone who wants to start a family. Likewise, Granny Flats increase the commercial value of an R-1 home, thereby escalating the prices of detached homes beyond their value as living space for a family. If the City had never allowed Spot Zoning, TODs, InFill projects, or encouraged Granny Flats, LA residential properties would be significantly lower, but Garcetti’s developer buddies would be less wealthy. 

The illicit distortion of housing values in Los Angeles has been both more complicated and more drastic than can be explained in a CityWatch article, but the underlying problem has been the manipulation of housing prices and a serious mis-allocation of housing resources to the extent that Los Angeles has made itself one of the least attractive urban areas in the entire nation for the emerging middle class. The professional and business service sector of the middle class rank Los Angeles as #60 on their list of desirable places to live. 

Due to the sustained attack on the detached single family home and the squandering of literally billions of construction dollars on Transit Oriented Districts (TODs like Bunker Hill and Century City) along with mixed-use projects, Los Angeles has foolishly made itself extraordinarily undesirable for the new middle class. The City has a net exodus of people over those who come here. Yet, LA continues to manufacture the myth that Los Angeles is still a Destination City. While Hollywood will lure thousands of youngsters to the Walk of Fame, the middle class is being driven out. 

Perhaps the most egregious attack on the Price System for housing came from Eric Garcetti when he ran for LA mayor by falsely claiming that he had “revitalized Hollywood.” As readers of CityWatch should already know, in January 2014, Judge Alan Goodman found that Garcetti’s claims for Hollywood were based on Lies and Myths, i.e., “fatally flawed data” and “wishful thinking.” 

If Los Angeles had a daily newspaper devoted to journalism, Los Angeles never would have deteriorated to this condition where it ranks at the top of the lists of bad urban areas and at the bottom of the lists of good urban areas. Instead, the LA Times’s objectives have been the promotion and protection of the elite, and everyone else be damned. In that environment, it has been relatively easy to destroy the Price System for LA housing.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

A FIRST PERSON REPORT--As some of you know, I have filed papers to run for the Los Angeles City Council in the 15th District. Those who know me best have asked, “What took you so long?” (Photo above: this article’s author, James Preston Allen.) 

Quite simply, I’ve been busy serving as an interested observer of this political circus for the past 35 years. 

In that role, I kept a sharp eye out for those with enough fire-in-the-belly or enough patience for the nonsense to pursue careers at City Hall. 

My frustrations with the current occupant of the 15th District council seat comes down to a laundry list of complaints that I share with many community members with whom I have spoken over the past few weeks while gathering nominating signatures. I will share that list once my nominating petition is qualified and I’m placed on the ballot. 

In the meantime, I’ll share some of the impediments that are set up to discourage any actual participation in the exercise of participatory governance. 

First is the remote and obscure location of the Elections Division of the Los Angeles City Clerk’s office, which is not at Los Angeles City Hall. 

The Election Division is in a nondescript industrial building off the 101 freeway east of downtown hidden behind Union Station on Ramirez Street at space # 300. Without MapQuest, you might not ever find it! 

It is beyond my comprehension why there isn’t a City Clerk’s office in every district of the city. But this is just one of many hurdles to actually running for public office. 

Another hurdle is the ethics commission’s myriad of conflict of interest forms -- forms that once completed makes you feel naked and completely circumspect about running for public office.

When you are done with the forms, they hand you 100 blank nominating petition forms with instructions in 12 languages on three sheets that must be kept stapled together. You have less than 30 days (depending on when you filed) to gather a minimum of 500 signatures. At the time, I thought, “What could be simpler?” 

After getting the nominating petition forms, I raced back to the Los Angeles Harbor to round up everyone I know to sign my petition only to find that a good half of the people in our district who could be registered to vote are not. 

Around 40 percent of property and business owners here are registered to vote someplace else like Palos Verdes, Carson or Long Beach -- not in of Los Angeles. 

It begins to sink in that a lot of those who have financial interests in the city are not of the city, but have great influence over it. 

The hunt for qualified registered voters is less daunting than Diogenes looking for an honest man in Athens. But it’s still a bit like searching for Waldo. The other option is using verified voter registration lists and going door-to-door like a Fuller Brush man. 

Still, as the petition sheets are filled up and the confusion of who is and who is not a Los Angeles registered voter is sorted out, one of my canvassers informed me that the librarian at the local library stopped him from collecting signatures on that property. 

Then, he hands me the Los Angeles Public Library’s “Rules of Conduct.” There are 15 rules in all. Number 12 on the list prohibits “petitioning…without the express permission of the City Librarian.”

I was appalled by the Library Commission’s edict as it totally flies in the face of common sense. So, I called the local librarian and complained. I was then told that only “the top dog City Librarian” can grant me dispensation, like the Pope, to petition outside a city library for the privilege of running for a city office. 

“Are you kidding me? What part of the First Amendment don’t you understand?” I asked incredulously. 

This is the very public institution that is dedicated to support free speech, free press and that inherently supports the right to petition our government and yet they have a policy prohibiting it.

I made five phone calls -- one to the head librarian, one to the city clerk’s office, another to the city attorney’s office, and lastly to the ethic commission. 

Ultimately, I got special permission from the main library to gather petitions outside a city owned public library. But it was only after I made a very impassioned plea for some sanity to the Los Angeles Public Library that was I granted permission to canvas for nominating signatures on public property. 

I will once again state my case. This was a First Amendment matter with free political speech, the right to petition our government and the free expression of these rights in the public domain at stake.

This matter is not just about my personal campaign. It’s about how the city itself stands in the way of public participation in our most cherished tradition of self-governance. That I, as an individual, have to “ask permission” from some distant bureaucrat to exercise our right of suffrage on public property is a fundamental abridgment of this right. 

The real hypocrisy is that this is being done by an institution whose very mandate is the conveyance of free speech through literary offerings. Consider this a formal protest that must be addressed immediately. 

These, my fellow citizens, are just some of the many issues that keep one from running for public office instead of sitting on the fence and watching the circus go by.

(James Preston Allen is the Publisher of Random Lengths News, the Los Angeles Harbor Area's only independent newspaper. He is also a guest columnist for the California Courts Monitor and is the author of "Silence Is Not Democracy - Don't listen to that man with the white cap - he might say something that you agree with!" He has been engaged in the civic affairs of CD 15 for more than 35 years. More of Allen…and other views and news at: randomlengthsnews.com.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

LATINO PERSPECTIVE--Latinos who are born in this country are hardworking folks, and perhaps those who come here without papers take work as a family duty to them and their families. Work for Latinos is no joke, It’s how they survive, thrive and prosper. 

It’s also true that Latinos three times as likely as the general population to start their own business. In an interesting article in thehill.com Mike Lillis and Rafael Bernal confirmed this assessment. However, there is a report by the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative (SLEI) that found that cultural and economic factors have hampered the growth of Latino-owned businesses at a cost of trillions of dollars. 

The lost growth amounted to a $1.38 trillion “opportunity gap” in 2012 alone. “Latinos tend to open businesses with “personal motivations” rather than as a result of identifying market opportunities.” And that because of this, Latinos are less likely to pursue capitalization opportunities that put full ownership at risk, limiting their prospects for growth, the SLEI found. 

The Hill reported that Hispanic business leaders say the lack of access to capital was accentuated by President Obama's regulatory measures in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. 

“Hispanic businesses have it twice as bad. Under the Obama administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was so draconian that they over-regulated the financial services industry,” said Javier Palomarez, president of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (USHCC). 

Republicans in Congress have vowed to repeal the majority of Obama's economically significant regulations once President-elect Donald Trump takes office.  

Despite their limitations, Latino-owned businesses are still the fastest-growing segment of small businesses in the country, generating around $400 billion in annual revenue, according to the Congressional Hispanic Conference. What is also interesting is that Latina-owned businesses have led the charge. 

The number of businesses owned by Hispanic women grew 206 percent between 1997 and 2014, compared to 68 percent growth of women-owned businesses in general, according to a report by American Express. 

This all makes sense because many Latinos open businesses based on personal needs not business trends, that is why I say that for Latinos business is very personal. 

President-elect Trump has promised that he will create an environment in which those who want to open or grow a business will be able to do so, and those who want a job will be able to find it. Last week he said that Japanese tech billionaire Masayoshi Son will invest $50 billion in new start-ups in the United States. 

The businessman has pledged to create 50,000 new jobs in the Unites States over an unspecified period of time. Son, who is the founder and chief executive of SoftBank, one of Japan’s largest tech companies, owns the US the mobile carrier Sprint. 

Maybe what Mr. Trump can also do is to find a Latin American billionaire and convince him or her to do the same but focusing on Latino businesses. Or perhaps, deregulating the financial industry as Republicans have promised to do will do the trick. – Only time will tell.

(Fred Mariscal writes Latino Perspective for CityWatch. He came to Los Angeles from Mexico City in 1992 to study at the University of Southern California and has been in LA ever since. He can be reached at [email protected].)

-cw

IMMIGRATION POLITICS--"If cities have to make a stand for basic human decency, then we're going to make that stand," wrote Somerville, Mass. Mayor Joseph Curtatone.

With Donald Trump's inauguration just over a month away, it will soon become clear whether he intends on using beginning days in the White House to try to follow through on his promise to end federal funding for sanctuary cities. Scores of such cities, however, are standing resolute, with officials from over three dozen of them publicly reaffirming their commitment to "basic human decency."

Sanctuary cities, like Los Angeles, sometimes called Fourth Amendment cities, as The Atlantic's CityLab has described, offer some protection to undocumented immigrants because they "keep local policing and federal immigration enforcement separate by asking local police to decline 'detainers'—non-binding requests from ICE asking for extended detention of inmates they suspect are deportable." 

In contrast to claims made by proponents of harsh immigrant crackdowns, research has shown that "designating a city as a sanctuary has no statistically significant effect on crime." In fact, it is harsh immigration policing that can negatively impact the whole community.

According to a new tally by Politico, out of a total of 47 sanctuary cities, "officials in at least 37 cities (listed below) have doubled down since Trump's election, reaffirming their current policies or practices in public statements, despite the threat of pushback from the incoming administration, and at least four cities have newly declared themselves sanctuary cities since Trump's win."

"There is no definitive list of U.S. sanctuary cities because of the term's flexible definition," the publication notes, and that itself may make it more problematic for Trump to ban the federal funds.

As Kica Matos, director of immigrant rights and racial justice at the Center for Community Change, explained to Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting last month, "sanctuary cities are understood as places that protect the undocumented immigrant and provide a haven for them and provide the opportunity for immigrants, irrespective of their status, to be welcomed, to be productive citizens in their respective communities, and to engage in the civic life of the cities."

So if you look at some of the anti-immigrant organizations, Center for Immigrant Studies has a broader definition of sanctuary city, where they define sanctuary cities as any city that is friendly towards immigrants. So where I live, for example, New Haven, Connecticut, it's considered a sanctuary city under their definition, because the city implemented a program to offer city identification cards to any resident of the city, irrespective of their status.

So if you go by that broader definition, there are hundreds of sanctuary cities in the United States, and many of them are already engaged in acts of defiance, publicly letting the federal government know that they will do absolutely everything they can to protect immigrants in their communities.

That broader definition seems to apply to Boulder, Colo., where city leaders are hoping to pass an ordinance before inauguration day to make it a sanctuary city—though whether or not the term 'sanctuary' actually ends up in the ordinance is unclear at this point.

Santa Ana, Calif., as Politico writes, is like the Vermont cities of Burlington, Montpelier, and Winooski in that it declared itself a sanctuary city post-election.

"The day after Donald Trump got elected, our kids were falling apart emotionally. They thought their parents would be deported," the Los Angeles Times quotes said Sal Tinajero, a Santa Ana City Council member and local high school teacher, as saying. 

"The reason you're seeing this push now is that us leaders ... want to tell them they are going to be protected. If they are going to come for them, they have to come through us first," Tinajero said.

Somerville, Mass., meanwhile, is among the cities on Politico's tally that have reaffirmed their commitments. In an open letter published last month, Somerville Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone wrote, "We will not turn our back on our neighbors. Our diversity is our strength. Since we became a sanctuary city [in 1987], our crime rate has dropped more than 50%."

So "for anyone who claims that cracking down on sanctuary cities has something to do with high crime or a stagnant economy, Somerville stands as a flashing, neon billboard for how wrong that thinking is," he continued.

"If cities have to make a stand for basic human decency, then we're going to make that stand. We saw a presidential campaign based on fear and a desire to ostracize anyone who could be categorized as different. That may have swung an election, but it provides us with no roadmap forward. Tearing communities apart only serves to tear them down. We're going to keep bringing people together, making sure we remain a sanctuary for all. We are one community. We've got values that work. We know what makes America great," Curtatone concludes.

Also among Trump's anti-immigrant promises is a pledge to deport "more than two million criminal illegal immigrants from the country"—which he clarified to mean people who haven't actually been convicted of a crime.

Politico's list of 37 cities that have reaffirmed their commitments to being sanctuaries is below:

Appleton, Wisconsin
Ashland, Oregon
Aurora, Chicago
Aurora, Colorado
Austin, Texas
Berkeley, California
Boston, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Chicago, Illinois
Denver, Colorado
Detroit, Michigan
Evanston, Illinois
Hartford, Connecticut
Jersey City, New Jersey
Los Angeles, California
Madison, Wisconsin
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Nashville, Tennessee
New Haven, Connecticut
New York, New York
Newark, New Jersey
Newton, Massachusetts
Oakland, California
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Phoenix, Arizona
Portland, Oregon
Providence, Rhode Island
Richmond, California
San Francisco, California
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Seattle, Washington
Somerville, Massachusetts
St. Paul, Minnesota
Syracuse, New York
Takoma Park, Maryland
Tucson, Arizona
Washington, D.C.

(Andrea Germanos writes for Common Dreams … where this piece was first posted.)

-cw

PERSPECTIVE--Accounting topics usually do not show up on the radar, especially in times when other news topics are red hot. There is, however, a conceptual transition worth noting with wide ramifications.

Good accounting is not just desirable; it is vital. Business and the general public require the best possible financial information in order to transact and invest in confidence.

Regardless, it makes sense for the cost of accounting changes to favorably correlate with the benefits.  For example, spending a fortune to analyze or report on an obscure, immaterial activity is hardly a sound course of action.  A cost vs. benefits standard should be applied when a widespread accounting change is entertained.

The largest accounting change in the last 10 years (perhaps one of the largest ever) is underway. It’s ASC 606. ASC stands for Accounting Standards Codification and is the source for what is commonly known as Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).  666 might be a more appropriate code number.

The key objective of 606 is to create consistency for reporting revenue across all industries for customer contracts. Current GAAP is more industry specific. This amounts to a transition to  a one-size-fits-all approach from one which recognizes unique business practices.

There is much to say about the benefits of consistency, but plain vanilla does not necessarily deliver the disclosure the public needs in an increasingly complex world.

If anything, ASC 606 increases the complexity of evaluating customer contracts by requiring revenue determination at various points in time. Basically, the economic substance of the affected contracts remains the same, so it is mainly a matter of timing of when the revenue hits the books.

OK, not so bad, but the current method has been working well for a long time. (A side note: the Enron-type disasters of the past were due to lax compliance with internal controls.  No change in revenue recognition principles will prevent a recurrence. The objectives of ASC 606, as well as any other accounting change, are not intended to address fraud, abuse or lack of due diligence).

Is 606 worth it? The benefits are arguable. And for all the talk about consistency, some industries are exempt from the scope! Eventually, it is likely other exemptions will be made.  After all, industries and products are not static.

Companies have and will incur significant costs to implement it.  The sad part is no one really knows how much. There is no national tracking tool in place.

My guesstimate of the price tag is based on the ratio of accounting, IT and auditing costs to revenue, roughly 5%.  The aggregate revenue for S&P 1500 companies is $13 Trillion, so it works out to around $65 Billion, or about $43 Million per company, if you figure that major conversion efforts require an equivalent of around 10% of the  5%.  The cost will be disproportionately worse for smaller companies, and probably even worse for nonpublic firms.

Companies can make substantial improvements to reporting and control systems for that kind of money, improvements which can provide greater protection and quality of information to the shareholders and stakeholders than playing with the timeline for revenue recognition.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) purports to consider the cost to the private sector of its decisions, but it missed the boat here. One author even suggested that ASC 606 was pushed forward to justify FASB’s efforts in the wake of its failed attempt to converge US GAAP with International Financial Reporting Standards – an objective that grew out of the Norwalk Agreement of 2002, the inspiration for 606. 

Fourteen years of futility comes at a pretty high price…and difficult to explain when you have little to show for it!  Reminds me of DWP’s decision to implement its new billing system rather than man up to the public and admit it would be a disaster.

The conversion, which for the largest companies started ramping up in earnest a couple of years ago, will run through 2017.  The implementation date is in 2018 (2019 for nonpublic companies).

Afterwards, addressing post-implementation glitches will undoubtedly cost a bundle. As cousin Eddy told Clark Griswald in Christmas Vacation about the Jelly-of-the-Month Club, “Clark, it’s the gift that keeps on giving the whole year through.”

In this case, years to come … and as useful a gift as fruit cake.

(Paul Hatfield is a CPA and serves as President of the Valley Village Homeowners Association. He blogs at Village to Village and contributes to CityWatch. The views presented are those of Mr. Hatfield and his alone and do not represent the opinions of Valley Village Homeowners Association or CityWatch. He can be reached at: [email protected].)

-cw

CORRUPTION WATCH-A grand assemblage of knaves, fools and moral Lilliputians rule the city Los Angeles. Do not expect that to change. 

Recently, a few Americans have shown concern for Fake News. They realize that Fake News has real consequences as when a fool shows up at a pizza shop with an automatic weapon to “self-investigate” Hillary Clinton’s role in a child abuse ring in Washington D.C. 

In Los Angeles, Judge Alan Goodman warned the public about our own form of Fake News: Information from the City of Los Angeles. In January 2014, Judge Goodman ruled that Eric Garcetti’s update to the Hollywood Community Plan was based on lies and myths, which Judge Goodman described in polite legalese, saying that the city’s planning was based on “fatally flawed data” and “wishful thinking.” 

When the City published stories about how Hollywood has been revitalized and that its population is growing at a robust rate, when in fact is was deteriorating and rapidly shrinking, this was Fake News. Based on the continuing Fake News that Hollywood is still the center of the universe and hordes of people are descending up the town, one huge mega-project after another is being unanimously approved the LA City Council. And the approvals are justified by the endless Fake News emanating from City Hall. 

Hollywood’s “official” population fluctuates as frequently as Donald Trump tweets. Just as no one can find the millions of illegal votes that were cast for Hillary Clinton to disguise the “fact” that Trump won the popular vote, no one can find the real Hollywood population. In its April 2006 Notice of Preparation for its latest Update to the Hollywood Community Plan, the Garcetti Administration claimed that the population was 206,000 people, citing “SCAG’s 2016 RTP” (that is, the 2016 Southern California Association of Government’s Regional Transportation Plan.) Fake News. The SCAG 2016 RTP has no data at all for Hollywood. The only “Hollywood” which the RTP mentioned is West Hollywood. 

Upon investigation, we discovered that SCAG had done some other demographic analysis for Hollywood’s population, but never found that Hollywood’s population was as high as 206,000 people. The highest number that can be extrapolated from the SCAG data was 204,700. When this Fake News was shared with the City, the Garcetti Administration chose to stick with the fake numbers. We know the reason. This Fake News supports the false need to construct all the mega-projects. 

Then in November 2016, mirabile dictu, the Garcetti Administration announced that Hollywood’s 2015 population was 210,511 people. Does that mean that the April 2016 NOP had missed 4,500 people or that between December 2015 and April 2016, Hollywood’s population had declined by 4,500? Don’t bother asking…it’s all Fake News! 

People are accustomed to Fake News. In fact, people prefer it. Megyn Kelley hit the nail on the head in 2012, when she doubted Karl Rove’s insistence that Mitt Romney was winning the presidential election by asking, "Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better, or is this real?" 

Megyn Kelley’s diagnosis was correct – people invent the news that makes them feel better, or in the case of Los Angeles, justifies the perpetuation of a criminal enterprise which we call the Los Angeles City Council. Oh, that LA had Megyn Kelly instead of the LA Times, whose motto is “All the news that the elite wants you to believe.” 

Poor Edgar Maddison Welch from Salisbury, North Carolina, who drove all the way to Washington to self-investigate the pizza parlor. At least Mr. Welch’s “self-investigation” placed him far ahead of the Angelenos who merely accept whatever Fake News gushes forth from City Hall. 

Fake News Has Real Consequences. 

While the false story about child-molesting at the pizza parlor was an extreme aggravation for its owner, the Fake News from LA City Hall has had a devastating impact on all of Los Angeles. In a report the Garcetti Administration never thought the public would find, the City admitted in November 2015, that in 2013, the last year for which it had data (why the 2 year lag?), it had constructed “150% [of the] units needed by above moderate income earners,” adding to the 12% vacancy rate of such apartments constructed in the last decade. The City said that a 5% vacancy rate was equilibrium. Generally, when the vacancy is 2.5 times equilibrium, one does not push ahead with plans to construct even more vacant housing. 

Why is LA City Hall so committed to Fake News? The main reason is that the City is run as a criminal enterprise whose function is to siphon off public money to make a few landowners very wealthy while everyone else suffers. 

This phenomenon is not new. Over 100 years ago in its 1915 Study of Street Traffic Conditions in the City of Los Angeles, civil engineers warned that a few land owners would want to restrict office and industrial usage to the core of the city in order to make themselves wealthy. But the engineers explained, with sound mathematics related to Los Angeles geography, that the city had to allow all segments of the community, offices, homes, industry, community and civic center to expand outwards in unison. In other words, decentralization was essential. 

Restricting the distribution of all segments of the community, however, resulted in massive projects to be built in areas like Bunker Hill, Century City, and Westwood while at the same time turning the Valleys into bedroom communities. Separating those dense office areas from the residential communities would then require expensive transportation projects to convey so many people from the 5,000 square mile county to a few tenths of square miles of the Bunker Hills, Century, City, Westwood, and now to DTLA and Hollywood. 

Like the serfs of the 1400s, Angelenos have come to accept this arrangement as the natural order of life. Should it be brought to the attention of Angelenos that their city leads in all the negative indicators and lags in all the positive indicators for quality of urban life, we have endless Fake News from City Hall to falsely assure us that we’re still the premier destination city. 

Will Angelenos Act Before it is too late? 

No. It already is too late. Besides, the criminal enterprise is firmly established and everyone wants it to continue. Look at the people throwing their hats in the ring to run of City Council in March 2017. How many are willing to give up the chance to become the Lord of their Council Fiefdom? None. 

Is there any City Council candidate who will relinquish the power to have each and every item he or she places on the City Council agenda unanimously passed? If so, please step forward. 

Nor is there any danger that the criminal enterprise where every developer gets unanimous approval for projects will go away soon. Judge David Fruin has declared that the City is above the law. 

According to this learned jurist, Penal Code 86, which criminalized the vote trading agreement that is the glue that holds the LA City Council together, is Non-Justiciable – beyond the power of the courts. It does not matter what laws the California State Legislature passes; the Los Angeles City Council does not have to follow any law unless it voluntarily chooses to do so. 

The Law May be Pernicious, but it is not Fake. 

The problem with placing the City Council above the law is more serious than a lone self-investigator showing up with an automatic rifle. Our infrastructure has crumbled, the homeless rate has escalated, the crime rate is out of control no matter how much Garcetti tries to have the LAPD fudge the data, the Family Millennials and the high-end employers are fleeing the city for places like the Texas Triangle. 

Alea jacta est.  The die has been cast for our future tax base which, for a generation going forward, will have lower skilled wage earners and a higher percent of children and elderly retired. Just as Julius Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon sealed the fate of the Roman Republic, Judge Fruin is sealing LA’s fate of being ruled by a criminal enterprise.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GUEST WORDS--Under Lee Baca’s leadership people were racially profiled, women were molested, immigrants were deported, and there were many walls built to keep specific people away. Sound like a certain President-Elect? He also married someone who emigrated from Asia, had a self-proclaimed law-and-order reputation, gave celebrities special treatment, served with a second-in-command who was just as corrupt, and condoned a historically violent, racist organization without specifically admitting to personal acts of violence or racism. This organization was not the Ku Klux Klan, but the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. 

So how did Los Angeles topple the oppressive power of former Sheriff Lee Baca after electing him to hold it? And how were we able to simultaneously form a Civilian Oversight Commission to put power in the hands of the people? Leaders emerged. 

On December 6, 2016, exactly 151 years to the day the 13th Amendment was ratified, former Sheriff Lee Baca is scheduled to face a federal judge and the prospect of 20 years in prison for obstruction of justice. Organizations like Dignity and Power Now are largely responsible for this, due to their uplifting the dialogue of formerly incarcerated people and building social and political pressure. 

Five years ago, a year before I put a hashtag in front of Black Lives Matter and sparked a global movement, I began leading a movement in Los Angeles. My brother had suffered a concussion after being severely beaten by deputies in the county jail, so I developed a performance art piece that sparked a coalition that shaped an organization, called Dignity and Power Now (DPN.) We would stand for hours outside the county jails and talk to people, a majority of them Black and Brown. Their stories of abuse were not being reported on the news, so we held press conferences. Solutions were not on the politicians’ agendas, so we showed up until they were. People wanted to end sheriff violence and implement accountability, so we demanded civilian oversight of the sheriff’s department. 

The first time the county supervisors voted on implementing a civilian oversight commission we showed up with 300 formerly incarcerated people who shared their stories of oppression and resilience. The supervisors voted 3-2 against it. We didn’t stop. We continued organizing, holding events, and meeting with supervisors and candidates. Four months later, on December 9, 2014, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted in favor of civilian oversight. 

The commission will be functional by January, and although it’s a huge step in the right direction, it is not perfect. They still need the power to subpoena the sheriff’s department and other agencies involved in custody operations. That would require a change to the county charter and a public vote.

The fact that there is former law enforcement, including a former LA County sheriff’s lieutenant, appointed to the commission raises serious concerns about whether it will protect incarcerated Black and Brown people, which is what the community and I have urgently fought for. And while we succeeded in electing a new sheriff, last year use of force in the jails went up 40%. We just elected Janice Hahn and Kathryn Barger to the LA County Board of Supervisors, giving it its first female majority and democratic supermajority, but just before that the board approved a new women’s jail and a new mental health jail, ignoring the research that has proven that jails can never be effective sites of care. 

There is more ground to cover that could have grave impacts for those criminalized and incarcerated under a law-and-order presidency. Every day the choices that Donald Trump makes stirs the country’s attention, but the leadership worth looking to isn’t that of high-ranking political figures -- it’s that of the people on the ground. If you look to Los Angeles you will find leaders creating law enforcement accountability and fighting for Black lives. If you look to Oakland, Minneapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, Baltimore, and Toronto you will find the same. 

This year people can associate December 6 as the day Lee Baca will go to trial, or the anniversary of the 13th Amendment, or as another day closer to when we will be subjected to a Trump presidency. Or, collectively, as a movement, we can choose to see it as another day that we will show up in our communities and we will lead.

(Patrisse Cullors is a Los Angeles-based artist, organizer, and freedom fighter. She is also the co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter. This piece first appeared at HuffingtonPost.com. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ANIMAL WATCH--A marauding California mountain lion has clawed his way back from almost certain execution thanks to a kind-hearted alpaca owner. (See CityWatch story: ‘America’s Favorite Cat’.) [[

Los Angeles wildlife authorities suspect that the big cat, known as P-45, killed 11 alpacas and injured others in an attack near Mulholland Highway in Malibu in November. The beast ate only one of the animals.

“It seems to enjoy killing things,” noted alpaca owner Victoria Vaughn-Perling.

Neighbors believe P-45 may be responsible for the death of up to 65 pets and other domesticated animals in the area over the past year.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the National Park Service had granted her permission to kill the 5-year-old mountain lion. 

But word of the permit angered environmentalists and triggered heartfelt appeals from animal lovers across the nation.

“Eliminating P-45 does not solve the problem, especially given there are at least four mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains that have killed livestock over the past year,” said Kate Kuykendall, acting deputy superintendent for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. “Nor is P-45’s behavior abnormal or aberrant in any way. If animals are stuck in an unsecured pen, a mountain lion’s natural response can be to prey upon all available animals.”

Vaughn-Perling has now changed her mind about killing P-45 and agreed to let wildlife officials capture the male animal. They will decide whether to relocate the cat to a more remote location in the Santa Monica mountains or place him in captivity, her attorney told the Los Angeles Times.

Relocation may not be successful, however, because P-45 could seek out his old territory especially now that he “knows where the restaurant is,” said one of Vaughn-Perling’s neighbors.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl issued a statement thanking Vaughn-Perling for her decision to “spare the life of one of the precious few mountain lions left in our Santa Monica Mountains.”

But the clash between area residents and the cats won’t likely disappear any time soon.

Up to 15 mountain lions live in the Santa Monica Mountains between Highway 101 and the Pacific Ocean, according to a federal study.

The state Wildlife Commission approved a $7.1 million expenditure last month to purchase land in the area to provide a safe habitat for the animals. Some environmental activists are also hoping to raise funds for a bridge that wildlife could use to travel safely over the highway.

• See also, CityWatch story: ‘P-22-The Cat That Changed America’ 

(Mary Papenfuss writes for Huffington Post … where this piece originated.)

-cw

GUEST WORDS--When the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power made its case to its 1.4 million customers for its latest rate proposal, staff made more than 80 presentations to many customers in Los Angeles. In these discussions, LADWP emphasized its commitment to providing clean and reliable water and power to all customers while maintaining competitive rates. LADWP leaders and staff explained – with transparency – the Department’s goals and its need for funding to accelerate the replacement of rapidly aging infrastructure, meet mandates to green our grid and expand local water supplies, and improve customer service. In the process, LADWP also received useful and important feedback from ratepayers of all customer sectors. Ultimately, the rate proposal was approved in March 2016, strongly supported by many elected officials and customers. 

But the work only began there. Approval of the rate proposal comes with several expectations, including meeting specific milestones and benchmarks that clearly define LADWP’s organizational goals and objectives. These key performance indicators will increase LADWP’s efficiency and goals of transparency with the ratepayers. While reporting on benchmarks and achievements is common among many public agencies and utilities, LADWP is going a step further by establishing the Equity Metrics Data Initiative (EMDI) -- a first for any utility in the nation. 

The EMDI is consistent with the Mayor’s various executive directives on gender equity, workforce and affordable housing as well as the City Council’s recently-adopted instructions on LADWP reform related to low income seniors, equitable clean energy solutions and low income customer response. The initiative will also enable the Department to weave Equity throughout the enterprise, and embed it as a cornerstone of LADWP management and Board best practices. 

“Equity,” which is defined as “fairness, impartiality and justice,” is essential in all of LADWP’s operations. As a core component of this principle, the Department adopted data-driven metrics that track, measure and report on how LADWP’s programs and services are provided to all of its customers. As the largest municipal utility in the nation, LADWP has made a firm commitment to ensure that LADWP’s services and operations reach all customers fairly and to vastly enhance customer engagement and service. 

The Board of Water and Commissioners, where I serve as Vice President, adopted this initiative in August 2016, following many discussions with stakeholders and a preliminary community meeting in July. In October, staff hosted another meeting with a broad range of community stakeholders to fine-tune the metrics. In November the DWP Advocacy group, which consists of Neighborhood Council leaders, was briefed. Further Neighborhood Council briefings are expected. At the December 6 Board meeting, the Board adopted the four major categories of the Equity Metrics, covering 15 key specific metrics that will be benchmarked and monitored. LADWP derived these 15 equity metrics from a menu of 50 equity metrics, the balance of which may be addressed in the next several years by the Commission. 

1. Water and Power Infrastructure Investment. LADWP already collects considerable data on service reliability. However, to assure every customer and community in Los Angeles that LADWP is providing them with a safe, consistent supply of water and power, geographic data must be collected about water and power reliability, infrastructure improvement projects, and maintenance services. This category of metrics will track: the Power System Reliability Program, which details the replacement of critical power infrastructure like power poles, transformers and cables; the Water System and the replacement of mainlines, trunk lines and other water infrastructure; the likelihood of power failure and the duration of outages that occur, which will ensure that LADWP remains among the most reliable; and feedback about the quality of drinking water. 
2. Customer Incentive Programs and Services. LADWP offers many programs to customers to help them save on their bills. The Equity Metrics Data Initiative will collect data and evaluate the equity of impacts of the following programs in geographic regions of the city, among socioeconomic subgroups and among multi family, affordable and single family housing ratepayers: Commercial Direct Install Program, Low Income and Lifeline Programs, Electric Vehicle infrastructure, Refrigerator Exchange Program, Home Energy Improvement Program, Turf Removal Rebates, Tree Canopy Program, and the Rain Barrel, Cistern and Water Tank Rebates. 
3. LADWP will expand its existing data collection process for contracts and contractors to include more granular data that will provide information about the equity of contract allocation according to several metrics including: the number and dollar value of contracts awarded to women-owned, minority-owned, disabled veteran-owned and LGBT-owned businesses; business locations; industry category, etc. Equity in procurement can increase LADWP’s efficiency by encouraging increased competition among vendors.
4. LADWP will expand its existing data collection framework to include information that will evaluate the equity of training and hiring practices according to the following metrics: gender, ethnic background, disabled veteran status, date of hire, residential location, educational level, etc.

When dynamics are observed that disproportionately or adversely affect particular communities or groups of ratepayers, LADWP will be able to make adjustments that improve fairness and equity throughout its service area for everyone they serve.

LADWP will report on the first set of EMDI findings in February 2017. The Department will continue to fine-tune the metrics and later add more to be monitored, to help ensure equitable service delivery and access to its programs and services. We should all stay engaged and supportive of LADWP’s commitment to transparency and accountability as it advances equity for all of its customers and communities. This is a vital and transformative initiative that will be achieved amidst LADWP’s consistent success in keeping our water running and our lights on, safely and reliably, for all of us.

(William Funderburk is Vice President of the Los Angeles Board of Water & Power Commissioners.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.