LOS ANGELES

EASTSIDER-The smart money crowd (Democrat insiders, lobbyists, developers and their progeny) have already basically claimed victory for incumbent Gil Cedillo. You can tell by the fact that they are warehousing campaign funds and, so far, are not going to engage in any debates. 

As I have written before in CityWatch, the political math is all in their favor. Less than 10% of the voters in CD1 even bother to vote in municipal elections, and these days a majority of them are vote-by-mail voters. With a few hundred thousand in the war chest (and bags more available if needed), Gil has the hip, slick and cool mainstream dems/political consultants and democratic party insiders all already lined up. They’ve got the machine, the incredibly detailed voter databases, and we can look for the usual postcard deluge just prior to the vote-by-mail start date in February. 

In terms of deep-pocket backing, they are secure in the belief that Giovany Hernandez, Jesse Rosas, and Joe Bray-Ali won’t be able to make the race competitive and Gil will cruise to victory in March with over 50% of the vote. 

I say this because the last race for CD1 was a doozy. Ed Reyes was termed out, and it was a race between his Chief of Staff Jose Gardea and Gil Cedillo, recently termed out from the California legislature. Between the primary and runoff elections, they spent close to $2 million dollars in the race! The final margin was 52% for Cedillo vs. 48% for Gardea. 

Of interest here is the fact that the only reason we had a runoff was because Jesse Rosas got 7.2% of the vote, forcing it to happen. There’s a message there. 

So Who is Joe Bray-Ali? 

I have met Joe Bray-Ali (photo above) three times. The first time was during what I call the “Bicycle Wars” in CD1. And I do mean war. To give you a taste of how bad it was, here’s a quote from my CityWatch article from last year: “These 2014 meetings were ugly -- somewhere between the Jerry Springer Show and a really bad hair day meeting of the Echo Park Neighborhood Council. For example, at the Highland Park NC meeting, they voted to cancel advertising in the Boulevard Sentinel (our local newspaper) on the grounds that the editor, Tom Topping, was anti-bike. There were a number of comments casting aspersions on his person and character. Public comments were simply a litany of “pro” and “anti” sentiments regarding bike-lane people. And there was virtually no discussion on the merits of the plan before the NC reversed its position.” 

At the time, I recall referring to Joe as “one of the loudest and least civil pro bike-lane supporters.” 

The second time I met Joe was at a Northeast Democratic Club meeting. He was a new person, coat and tie civil, enthusiastic, and talking about more inclusive issues like the environment, land use, and neighborhood public policies. The Northeast Dems, of course, largely ignored his presence. 

The third time I met Joe was last week at the Bowtie Parcel of the Los Angeles River. He was there to announce his Endorsement from Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters. It was presented by their director, Stephanie Molen, and was streamed on Facebook live. Again Joe was civil, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable about the issues facing voters in Council District 1. He is also a small businessman whose business actually lies within the boundaries of the District. 

I’ll admit it…I was impressed. 

Does Anyone Stand a Chance Against Gil? 

My initial cynicism about the race has been based on the “‘normal” math of beating an incumbent with huge resources and the ability to lock up the overwhelming lions’ share of vote-by-mail during the primary election in March. 

But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. I remembered that seven percent Jesse Rosas got the last time in the battle of the giants, and the fact that his percentage of votes denied Gil the 50% plus 1 he needed to win. 

I have also noticed that there is a generational issue going on. The party insiders know how to crush someone using the traditional tools of targeted outreach, bags of money and phone banking. But it’s all old stuff, sorta like Hillary vs. The Donald. 

The Bray-Ali folks are betting on serious use of social media. Not just putting up a Facebook page, or sending out some emails -- serious social media. It’s something new and it’s a wildcard. Just ask Hillary. Let’s see if a candidate can effectively use the media to fire up younger voters who mostly don’t participate because they know the system is rigged. Lessons from Bernie and The Donald. Also something that the traditional consultants like Parke Skelton (aka SG&A Campaigns) aren’t that good at. 

For someone who’s not a part of the Democratic Party establishment, this is an advantage. Also, actual progressives are starting to step up for a change -- witness the results of the recent AD51 Delegates Election where Bernie folks scored big, and a poll was conducted by Latino Decisions for who’s who in the upcoming Congressional District 34 election to replace Xavier Becerra. You can check out the posts from January 6 and 18 at MayorSam.  

The Takeaway 

Look at it this way: it isn’t as if Mr. Cedillo is beloved in the District. He’s mostly loved by big real estate developers and the Democratic Party machine. And most of them don’t live in the District. As readers of CityWatch know, there is a large sentiment of “throw all the bums out” among the City’s electorate. The trick is to get some of them to the polls. 

Also, as reported in a couple of recent CityWatch articles by Beth Cone Kramer, the Cedillo campaign has had some troubles with the Ethics Commission.  While there may or may not be violations that are ultimately upheld by the City Ethics Commission, the behavior complained about seem to be beginners’ errors for a big bucks, professionally-run campaign. 

Helping the challenger is Joe’s recent announcement that he is the first candidate for CD1 to have qualified for 2:1 matching funds from the City. In order to do this he submitted over 1000 signatures of registered voters and raised contributions from over 270 CD1 donors. 

So is it a long shot? Sure. But if Joe Bray-Ali can force Cedillo into a runoff, all the electoral math changes in a hurry. If an incumbent with all the advantages can’t put the election away in the primary, he’s viewed as wounded meat and all bets are off. 

So for now, all Jesse Rojas and Joe Bray-Ali have to do is attract some new voters, get some more of the “regular” voters to simply vote against Gil Cedillo (or not vote at all), and try to deny the incumbent 50% plus 1 of the vote on March 7. 

Maybe they can even force Mr. Cedillo to have a public debate or two. Should be interesting. And, like I said, Joe Cleans Up Nice!

(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.

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-In an increasingly desperate tactic to stop Measure S, Big Real Estate -- a handful of large real estate companies -- is opting for the Big Bamboozle. They are pulling out all the stops to defeat the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative in LA City’s March 7 election. 

Their Big Bamboozle is a pack of blatant lies targeting key interest groups in the hope that they can sway them into voting against their own self-interest. The goal is to keep City Hall’s pay-to-play soft corruption in motion for their pet mega-projects. But, when their whoppers fail to gain traction, their fall back position is an old magician’s trick: distraction. Their strategy is to keep the voters’ attention averted from Measure S’s primary impact: ending City Hall’s soft corruption for the spot-zoning and spot-planning that allow hundreds of parcel-level mega-projects to sprout up in nearly every nook and cranny of Los Angeles. 

In this case, their magic trick is to conjure up obscure, hypothetical conflicts with Measure S. The hope is that low information voters will think these imaginary scenarios are so real and so important that they will prevail over the real corruption and real spot-zoned mega-projects harming communities throughout Los Angeles.

Why is Big Real Estate opting for this smoke and mirrors? 

There is no mystery here. They want to make sure that such minor hurdles as LA’s legally adopted General Plan element and their zoning implementation will not block their business model: squeezing as much profit as possible from individual parcels through unplanned, openly illegal mega-projects. But, since it impossible to win an election with such an honest, but highly unpopular campaign position, Big Real Estate has only two choices. They can sacrifice some short-term profits by adhering to Los Angeles’ land use laws. This means building by-right projects that conform to adopted General Plan elements and the Los Angeles Municipal Code (LAMC). 

Their other option, the one they have turned to, is the Big Bamboozle: throwing the kitchen sink at Measure S, hoping that enough gunk will stick so City Hall’s corrupt political culture can linger on. They are crossing their fingers that once the March election is over and the Los Angeles Times’ impressive coverage of their skullduggery fades; they can re-emerge from the barely drained swamp. 

If they pull off this Big Bamboozle, newly adopted General Plan Elements, including Updated Community Plan and zones, will be severed from City Hall’s land use decisions. Those major cases with multiple entitlements that preoccupy City Hall and Neighborhood Councils – to the tune of between 300 to 600 per year – can then reemerge, at least until the next round of public outrage sweeps Los Angeles.  

Who are Big Real Estate’s players in this “Toxic Sludge is Good for You” game? 

As I previously wrote there are four major Big Real Estate players funding the opposition to Measure S. These large firms have a global reach, with billions of assets stretching far beyond their pay-to-pay operations in Los Angeles.  They include: 

• Westfield Group, based in Australia, owns and operates shopping centers throughout the world, including 38 malls in the United States. In Los Angeles their malls include Century City and Warner Center. In Warner Center their latest project, rebuilding the old Promenade Center, will cost $1.5 billion. 

• Crescent Heights, based in Miami, builds and operates up-scale commercial and residential projects throughout the United States, including the proposed Palladium high-rise tower in Hollywood.  By August 2016 this firm had already donated over a half million dollars to their No on S astroturf organization: the Coalition to Protect LA Neighborhoods & Jobs. 

• Lowe Enterprises is headquartered in Los Angeles and invests in commercial and residential real estate projects throughout the United States. Their local projects include 1.4 million square feet of commercial space at the Howard Hughes Center in LA’s Westchester area.  

• Eli Broad, based in Los Angeles, has not completely moved on from insurance and tract housing to philanthropy and museums.  He did find time to donate $25,000 to oppose Measure S. 

What is their actual Bamboozle? 

Like every magician, these opponents of Measure S are trying to keep voters distracted by obscure, rare, or totally hypothetical glitches with the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative until March 7. For example, at a recent Measure S debate in Sherman Oaks I heard the following allegations, all of which fell apart when I researched them: 

• Under Measure S, private schools, churches and synagogues, and hospitals cannot get building permits because they require General Plan Amendments. In fact, these uses are allowed by right in many zones throughout Los Angeles, and in other zones they can be permitted as a Conditional Use. They can all be built without the City Council adopting the spot-zones and spot-General Plan Amendments blocked by Measure S. 

• Under Measure S real estate development on Ventura Boulevard and other areas with a legacy of “embedded parking zones” will be obstructed. In fact, this is another rare and almost entirely hypothetical problem. This is also an argument for the quick and proper updating of Community Plans to address this rare problem, not allowing soft corruption and spot-zoning for mega-projects – as well as “embedded P zones” -- to continue unabated. 

• Under Measure S, desirable projects, such as the repurposing of an old LA Times printing plant for a Google Fiber facility, will be blocked. In fact, this project did not require a General Plan Amendment, and this hypothetical conflict rarely if ever appears as real cases that Building and Safety sends to City Planning for a legislative fix. And, with the expedited updating of the General Plan and the Community Plan that Measure S triggers, these make-believe problems can be addressed by comprehensive planning based on extensive public participation. 

Who is being targeted by the bamboozle? 

Affordable Housing Advocates: he No on S campaign is targeting organizations and groups with totally legitimate concerns about LA’s lack of affordable housing. They are told that Measure S is either a total development ban, a housing ban, or it creates impenetrable barriers to the construction of affordable housing. Of course, Measure S is nothing of the sort. 

For nearly an entire year I have repeatedly asked City Watch readers to identify any affordable housing projects that required a General Plan Amendment or even a zone change to begin construction. So far, I have only been told about one case in all of Los Angeles. And, City Planning's recent Citywide Metrics Report confirms this. Only two (2 !) percent of LA’s new housing is affordable, and this tiny fraction results from Density Bonus/SB 1818 projects, not the City Council adopted spot-zone changes and spot-General Plan Amendments barred by Measure S. 

Another allegation against Measure S is that it will prevent the construction of affordable housing on parcels owned by the City of Los Angeles. In fact, the idea of building affordable housing on City property originated with Mayor Tom Bradley in 1988. That is nearly 30 years ago, and as far as I can determine, since then the only result has been the use of air-rights above several city-owned parking lots for affordable housing. 

In three decades the City of Los Angeles has not managed to use any of its 9,000 documented properties for affordable housing, including sites where housing is permitted by-right. Now, suddenly, this long-ignored affordable housing option has been taken out of mothballs. It has become a pressing reason to tolerate hundreds of illegal mega-projects that a benevolent City Council routinely legalizes for its patrons through spot-zoning and spot-planning ordinances. 

Nevertheless, other claims about Measure S barring the construction of affordable housing keep popping up. One of the more imaginative assertions is that Measure S is punitive because it only allows zone changes for projects that are 100 percent affordable housing. If projects are less than 100 percent affordable, they are therefore out-of-luck. This hypothetical problem then leads to an imaginary corollary; Measure S is punitive against affordable housing contractors despite any supportive evidence. In fact, its only punitive actions are against Big Real Estate companies opting for luxury housing on parcels where such projects conflict with the General Plan and with zoning. 

This line of reasoning, however, ignore the obvious benefits of updating the General Plan when it comes to affordable housing. These updates will identify areas where there are existing parcels already zoned for denser housing construction, as well as neighborhoods with the greatest need for additional affordable housing.  Most likely, these areas will overlap in the form of long, low-rise commercial corridors, such as Pico Boulevard. Their commercial parcels could all be built out as four or five story apartment or mixed-use buildings through SB 1818/ Density Bonus incentives.  

If these were legitimate reasons to stop Measure S, its subtext is, "I have no problem with the many mega-projects sprouting up in many LA neighborhoods through City Council spot-zones lubricated by developer money handed over to city officials." 

Environmentalists: Some clever-by-half advocates of sustainability imagine that every large and tall apartment building is automatically transit-oriented. If they actually looked at the transportation patterns of the residents, however, they would have to return to the drawing board. Nearly all of LA’s high-rise apartment buildings, such as the luxury towers in Hollywood, Century City, Wilshire Boulevard, Koreatown, and elsewhere are only transit-adjacent, not transit-oriented. They are all auto-centric buildings whose tenants own and drive cars that they park on-site.   

What these unwitting shills for Big Real Estate have not realized is that two other elements are necessary to build transit-oriented buildings. The buildings’ units must have affordable and low-income rents, and the tenants must be transit dependent. Without these features, clichés about transit use are just ploys for real estate speculators to get their valuable spot-zones and spot-General Plan designations. 

While it is certainly possible to rebuild Los Angeles as a transit-oriented city, it will take much, much more than locating high-rise apartment buildings with well-off tenants near bus stops. To become another New York City, London, Paris, Tokyo, or San Francisco, Los Angeles needs a dense, fully built-out dense mass transit system. It also needs better streetlights, street trees, pedestrian-oriented sidewalks interfacing with transit, and a fully developed system of bike lanes and bicycle infrastructure. 

When these components of LA’s built environment finally appear, then transit-adjacent buildings can finally become transit-oriented housing. Until then, extravagant claims about transit-oriented projects are just another bamboozle ginned up by real estate speculators to take advantage of well-meaning but poorly informed supporters of alternative transportation modes. 

Labor: The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor has been co-opted to become a public bamboozler for the No on S real estate interests. As a former union officer at the City of Los Angeles, I am not surprised, but it is time for union members to call out the union staffers who made this sordid deal. Don't they know the identities of the Big Real Estate companies who asked for their endorsement? Don’t they know that most building projects, whether by-right or permitted through spot-zones, prefer short-term, non-union construction workers?ies will treat organized labor like chumps once the election is over and their political support is no longer needed? Don’t they know that every zone change and General Plan Amendment is also a transfer of wealth to large corporations that comes out of the pockets of their members and non-unionized working people in Los Angeles? 

Their supporters will not benefit from these shady land-use deals, and in fact, they will soon be on the short-end of the stick when they are gouged for expensive rents, down payments, or monthly mortgage payments. And, for those many union members and other employees who are pushed out of LA by real estate speculators demolishing rent stabilized apartments to make way for units renting at $3000 per month or more, cheaper housing in distant suburbs is offset by long, deadening commutes. 

Why do they have no shame about their Big Bamboozle? 

As we learned from the Corleone family in The Godfather trilogy, “It’s just business.” They are checking-in facts and ethics at the door as the March 7 election looms closer.

(Dick Platkin is former LA City planner who recently taught courses on sustainable city planning at USC and CSUN. He is also a former union officer, who worked hard to create labor-neighbor alliances in Los Angeles. Please send corrections or comments to [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

THE PREVEN REPORT--On December 15 of last year, Mayor Garcetti approved by signature an expenditure of $50,000 for specialized legal services to assist in responding to a Department of Justice investigation.  

Provided by Arent Fox LLP, the specialized legal services are described as a “new” two-year contract. New two-year contract? There’s more than one? Have there been others, with different law firms perhaps? 

The people of Los Angeles need to know what is going on. We won’t tolerate another “Independent Living Ctr. vs. the City of Los Angeles” … a case that should have been settled years ago but instead was litigated endlessly by Mayor Garcetti and the rest of the Council. The losses, already $225 million, continue to rise. A similar case, Willits vs. City of LA, soared all the way to $1.37 billion.  

The people of Los Angeles have a right—indeed, an obligation—to see all invoices to date that specify the amounts that the City of Los Angeles has been billed by Arent Fox LLP, or any other law firm, in connection with this Department of Justice investigation. 

On December 29, 2016, the California Supreme Court, ruling in favor of petitioners  Eric Preven (co-author of this article) and the ACLU of Southern California, affirmed, in effect, the right of the public, in the face of secretive government malfeasance, to pull back the curtains and have a look around, to confront our elected representatives and assess the damage (and so start the process of repair).  

It's time for us to exercise that right.

(Eric Preven and Joshua Preven are public advocates for better transparency in local government. Eric is a Studio City based writer-producer and a candidate for Los Angeles mayor. Joshua is a teacher.)

-cw

THE REAL WORLD--I've had enough of CD 5 Councilman Paul Koretz. I can't be spun by his niceness, anymore. And, I'm sick of hearing him say, 'Perhaps we should consider, at some time in the future, entertaining the notion of pursuing this matter with further discussion, possibly leading to a study, in the future; before we move ahead." (Way to take a stand, Paul! The softest community stiff-armer, in the horseshoe.)

There are two other candidates running against Paul "Korrupt" Koretz, in the March 7th election: Jesse Creed and Mark Herd. Jesse has a lot of money raised; and Herd is the only #YesOnS candidate in the CD 5 election. Get out the word, to get out the vote; for one of these two candidates. We must take Koretz and replace him to show City Hall that enough community backstabbing is enough.

As you probably know, the LA Times did an article exposing all the money that billionaire developer Rick Caruso was spreading around City Hall to get his 20-story mixed-use, mega-project approved for the Beverly Center area, where average (big) building height is 8 stories.

Of course, Paul Koretz was on Caruso's payroll, as was LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, to get this project, out of scale and character of the community, approved.

After the LA Times article, Koretz came out against the project. But, here’s how the game is played: ask for a little more than you know you can get ... then say, "Well, we scaled back the project, and I am now for it." Guess what. Caruso offered to cut 3 stories off the project and Koretz said “I am now for it.”

Koretz can hide behind scaling it back from 20 stories to 17 stories; but the people weren't against the project over the 15% reduction of something that is completely out of scale and character for the area.

Just because Caruso wants to jam something into the area for his portfolio doesn't mean the community wants to jam up the neighborhood with another shopping plaza of stores and restaurants for tourists.

And there is big citywide outrage over the exposure of how Carsuo buys off elected officials to do what he wants; with the pay-to-play type donations he makes to Koretz, Garcetti and others.

Q: Did Paul Koretz and Eric Garcetti give back the money they took from Caruso? A: NO!

Does reducing it three stories, when they always ask for more than they expect; and reduce it down in the negotiation ... I'm pretty sure this was a back room deal all along. ("Yeah, we'll ask for 20 stories, then cut it down to 17.")

The Caruso project should have its own district and councilmember. Is EMS/Fire/Police going to be able to staff up for increased demand this project will be placing on city infrastructure? Traffic is so gridlocked in the area this is certain to increase response times; for emergencies across the community. (Like when elderly call for ambulance; or you call for fire response.)

I know some people are unsure about Measure S. They think it goes too far.

But, Garcetti, Koretz, Council and the developers who run them have proven they are out of control, corrupt, pay-to-play maniacs who can't stop themselves, like any addict. Replace Koretz with one of the other two candidates on the ballot in his race.

The problem isn’t the Koretzes of the city, it’s the people who keep voting for them. Look in the mirror. Do the right thing.

(David (Zuma Dogg) Saltsburg is a candidate for Los Angeles mayor. He has been a community activist in Los Angles for more than 10 years successfully taking on City Hall on numerous occasions. Learn more here.) 

-cw

LATINO PERSPECTIVE--Zillow which is the leading real estate and rental marketplace dedicated to empowering consumers with data, inspiration and knowledge around the place they call home, and connecting them with the best local professionals who can help has published a report that concludes that minorities in Los Angeles are more likely to have negative equity loans. 

In LA’s predominantly Latino neighborhoods, 7 percent of all homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth — that’s compared to 4.3 percent of homeowners in predominantly white neighborhoods and 5.7 percent of all homeowners in L.A., according to the Zillow report. 

“Our previous research has shown that negative equity is more concentrated among less expensive homes, and now we know that it is also more prevalent in minority neighborhoods than in white communities, which are also trailing in the overall housing recovery,” Zillow chief economist Svenja Gudell said in a statement. “These gaps can and will have long-lasting implications for growth and equality.” 

That conclusion is important for Latino residents in Los Angeles. For Latinos one of the most, if not the most important issue facing the city of Los Angeles right now is housing and development. Latinos in particular need to pay close attention to this problem since they can be directly affected by what voters decide in regards to measure “S” and other measures. 

Housing in Los Angeles is increasingly becoming extremely expensive, and things will get worse before they get better. It just doesn’t make sense to live in this city when 50 percent or more of a family’s income goes to pay just for rent. What’s going to happen? Families will have to move out of the city and commute, this will not only increase traffic but the quality of life for all will be affected. This is not the way to grow. 

Our city leaders along with community leaders, developers, residents, and lenders need to work together and be smart about how to grow the city of Los Angeles, just look a the homelessness problem. We still have time to figure things out, let’s do it.

(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

@THE GUSS REPORT-It would be easier to write something positive about Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti if there wasn’t the gnawing feeling that virtually everything he says is torturously measured, in need of dissection and adding an asterisk or three.

For example, last week the San Diego Chargers announced they are leaving the team’s home of 56 years to come to LA … the County of Los Angeles, not the City of Los Angeles where Garcetti is Mayor.  

The Chargers wisely chose to play their next few seasons in the nearby City of Carson’s diminutive, but new and fun 30,000-seat StubHub Center and have the place filled to the brim with fans rather than in Garcetti’s half-empty, soon-to-be-vacant and soon-to-be 95-year old LA Memorial Coliseum while the Rams’ billion dollar stadium in the City of Inglewood is being built. 

So let’s back-up and dissect, shall we? 

The Chargers are moving between three cities not named Los Angeles. They are leaving San Diego, temporarily to Carson, and will eventually wind-up in Inglewood. They will only be in the City of Los Angeles if, and when, they play the soon-to-be-leaving Rams. 

But in Garcetti’s mind, he needs to make the public (i.e. voters) feel as though he accomplished something, and so put out a statement welcoming the Chargers “back to” LA: 

“….Today, we welcome an important part of (LA’s sports) history back with the Chargers returning to Los Angeles….The Chargers will make our NFL tradition even richer….” 

What NFL tradition? The City of Los Angeles does not have its own franchise anymore, and hasn’t in decades. What is this “will make” you speak of, Mayor Garcetti? 

The Chargers played in the City of Los Angeles for just one season, in 1960, when the Coliseum was only 37 years old. There was so little interest in them despite their having a winning season that on December 10, 1960 only 9,928 people attended the game in the nearly 100,000 seat Coliseum. Their highest attendance that season was 21,805. 

By “returning to” Los Angeles, Garcetti once again tries to blur the lines between the City which he does govern and the County which he does not.

The only City of Los Angeles Mayor to bring the Chargers here was C. Norris Poulson, who also lured the Dodgers to LA from Brooklyn. Garcetti misleads the public on the NFL because there is nothing that an ambitious politician loves more than those awkward stadium groundbreaking photos where he (or she) wears a pricey suit with a silver hard hat and holds a shovel. Politicians crave them because, they feel, the massive cost of the project to the taxpayers takes a backseat to being able to claim that they brought a sports team and thousands of jobs to the area. 

In each chapter of Garcetti’s career in City Hall he never got that photo so he issues statements and Tweets, all deceptively. 

(Note: there is an unintentionally humorous and ironic anecdote on Mayor Poulson’s Wikipedia page which reads “Poulson's victory in the Los Angeles mayoral race came after a contentious battle in which his opponent, incumbent Mayor Fletcher Bowron, claimed that the Los Angeles Times wanted to control city government and, by endorsing Poulson, would have a puppet in the mayor's office.)

Some things never change, but I digress. 

Garcetti’s NFL charade is nothing new. During his failed quest for the Rams to make the City of Los Angeles its permanent home, he discouraged other U.S. mayors from doing the same thing, telling ESPN, “Don't be so desperate for a sports franchise and don't put your city in debt for decades.” 

But that is precisely what Garcetti did during his 12 years on the LA City Council, six of which he spent as its president, and during his first term as Mayor. 

Last May, I wrote that City Hall squandered too much time groveling for a Super Bowl that it wouldn’t – and didn’t – get. 

And in June, I pointed out that Garcetti was still awkwardly and deceptively Tweeting that he succeeded in getting the 2021 Super Bowl when he didn’t. 

The only rich NFL tradition that Garcetti and the LA City Council have is their ill-advised begging for it, always coming up empty and never quite telling it like it is.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a contributor to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post and elsewhere. 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.

@THE GUSS REPORT-It’s so very “Rich” in both the proper noun and the adjective sort of way. Last week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti appointed his adviser Rich Llewellyn as interim Chief Administrative Officer after Miguel Santana’s exit, a departure that is referred to in some corners of City Hall as another Garcetti mammal jumping off a sinking ship. 

It’s true that Llewellyn has held a number of Chief-of-Staff-ish positions in the City and has a background with the County government as well. That is valuable experience. But make no mistake; there is nothing about this appointment that will help unlock the gridlock, and rid us of waste and status quo. If anything, Llewellyn is the Super Glue that holds the deep dollar deceptions together.

Llewellyn has, at most junctures of his career, taken measures to suppress transparency that many of us CityWatch contributors and our brethren elsewhere work to crack open for you. 

In my own never-ending quest to shine a light on Garcetti’s deceptions, I had numerous occasions to make public records act requests of the Mayor’s office. 

The most shameful response ever written to me was by Llewellyn on April 27, 2016, and it takes the cake. 

In it, he explained the myriad reasons why I got virtually none of my requested records. One was an unwanted invasion of personal privacy, except that I did not request any private information. Another was that the documents are pre-decisional. I get that. You get that. There is no argument there. But Llewellyn’s third reason was perfectly telling about the corrupt nature of local politics. 

“….records for which the public interest served by withholding the records clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclosure, and may be withheld pursuant to Government Code 6255.” 

In other words, less disclosure is better than more, because the “public interest” is not, and never will be, defined. 

But as I showed in my articles throughout 2016, public interest in Garcetti World means his own personal and political interest, not ours and that of the city as a whole. 

The most telling comment about Garcetti appointing Llewellyn, who served as Chief Deputy and Chief of Staff respectively, to those paragons of virtue former City Attorney Rocky “Crash” Delgadillo and current Councilmember Paul Koretz, is this assurance from City Council President Herb Wesson: “We are pleased the Mayor is committed to a national search to fill the vacancy of Chief Administrative Officer.” 

Wesson was similarly committed to finding a replacement for Felipe Fuentes (who shockingly quit his City Council position in his first term) but decided that Fuentes’ district was better off with himself (Wesson) running it than it would be by immediately electing someone who actually lived there. 

Llewellyn is the ultimate insider where the game first and foremost involves kicking the can down the road and keeping elected officials employed in their jobs or getting them elected to the next ones. His career of knowing the insider stuff will serve the city’s 18-elected officials well, but will benefit few others. Well-paid insiders rarely do right by the people, and you shouldn’t expect this appointment to be any different.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a contributor to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post and elsewhere. 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.

CITYWATCH ‘FIRST PERSON’ COVERAGE BEGINS THURSDAY--More than 20 U.S. lawmakers have now said they will not attend Friday's inauguration ceremony, while Saturday's Women's March continues to gain steam. 

TNN Editor/Publisher Dianne Lawrence will provide ‘first person’ perspectives on Saturday’s Women’s March from Washington DC beginning Thursday in CityWatch.

Fusion is keeping a list of representatives who are skipping President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration—a list that grew overnight after Trump lashed out  at Rep. John Lewis in a series of tweets. 

"While I do not dispute that Trump won the Electoral College, I cannot normalize his behavior or the disparaging and un-American statements he has made," California Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) said in a statement on Saturday. "For me, the personal decision not to attend Inauguration is quite simple: Do I stand with Donald Trump, or do I stand with John Lewis? I am standing with John Lewis."

In a statement posted online Sunday morning, Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) declared:

I was planning on attending the Inauguration on Friday out of respect for the office of president, while still making it back home on Saturday to attend the Women's March in Madison. However, after long consideration based on reading the classified document on Russian hacking and Trump's candidacy on Thursday, the handling of his conflicts of interest, and this weekend's offensive tweets about a national hero Rep. John Lewis, I am no longer attending the event. At minimum, it's time for Donald Trump to start acting like President Trump, not an immature, undignified reality star with questionable friends and a Twitter addiction. I hope for better, but will not hold my breath.

Speaking to Politico, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, suggested there might be similar announcements in the works. 

"You can guarantee this will cause people to organize with even greater intensity," he said of Trump's attacks on Lewis. "This will make it even more likely that additional members skip the inauguration."

Many of those who are ditching Friday's festivities have explicitly stated that they do plan to participate in the Women's March on Washington happening the following day—or in a solidarity event taking place closer to home.

The march's organizers this week released a four-page platform (pdf) described as "the definition of intersectional feminism" and "an unapologetically radical, progressive vision for justice in America." In keeping with the march's broad agenda, the document does not mention Trump, but honors "the legions of revolutionary leaders who paved the way for us to march," including Ella Baker, Berta Cáceres, Rachel Carson, Shirley Chisholm, Winona LaDuke, Audre Lorde, Gloria Steinem, and Harriet Tubman. 

"Our liberation is bound by each other's," its authors write, outlining demands including:

• accountability and justice for police brutality and ending racial profiling and targeting of communities of color;
• dismantling the gender and racial inequities within the criminal justice system;
• reproductive freedom;
• LGBTQIA rights;
• workforce opportunities that reduce discrimination against women and mothers;
• rights, dignity, and fair treatment for all unpaid and paid caregivers;
• a living minimum wage;
• restoring and protecting voting rights; 
• ending mass deportation, family detention, violations of due process, and violence against queer and trans migrants; and
• clean water, clean air, and access to and enjoyment of public lands.

"We believe Gender Justice is Racial Justice is Economic Justice," the document reads. "We must create a society in which women, in particular women—in particular Black women, Native women, poor women, immigrant women, Muslim women, and queer and trans women—are free and able to care for and nurture their families, however they are formed, in safe and healthy environments free from structural impediments."

There's a good chance the Women's March will outdraw Trump's inauguration—despite the president-elect's Saturday night claim that his celebration "is turning out to be even bigger than expected." 

The Washington Post reported Thursday that "far more parking permits are being sought for buses for the Women's March on Washington the day after inauguration than for the inauguration itself," according to D. C. city council member Charles Allen.

Meanwhile, pink yarn is reportedly flying off the shelves as knitters fashion pink "pussy hats" for Saturday's demonstration, and Broadway star Jennifer Holliday said this weekend that she would not, in fact, perform at an inaugural event Thursday after outcry from fans. 

(Deirdre Fulton writes for Common Dreams … where this report originated. Watch for CityWatch ‘first person’ coverage beginning Thursday.)

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EXPOSED--Last week, we reported on Councilmember Cedillo’s possible violation of LA Municipal Code section 49.5.5b in his quest to keep his CD 1 seat. Cedillo doesn’t appear to be changing course, according to activist Marc Caswell, who first shared this info with CityWatch. 

One of the attendees at Cedillo’s kickoff event on Saturday emailed Caswell with additional ethics violations. Photos from the event show taxpayer funded newsletters at the check-in table – next to campaign materials, a definite no-no. (See photo above) 

He also reported at least two CD1 staff members at the event were sporting City Seals, a second no-no. (See photo below left.) 

Both activities would be in violation of the Los Angeles Governmental Ethics Ordinance (LAMC 49.5.5) for misuse of city position and resources. 

Three formal complaints have been filed detailing that at the January 14 ‘Gil Cedillo for City Council’ campaign event held at 1139 W. 6^th Street, Council Office staff members Fredy Ceja and Conrado Terrazas both wore Team Cedillo windbreaker jackets, prominently displaying the official City Seal of the City of Los Angeles. 

In addition, the complaint cites Misuse of City resources through the “use of two Council Office-funded newsletters, (“1Voice/1Voz Summer 2016 and Winter 2016) distributed by City Staff at the sign-in table for the campaign event and placed beside a prominently displayed “Gil Cedillo, Democrat for City Council District 1’ banner, manned by Council Office staff members Alfonso Palacios, Suzano Muro, Moniquea Roberson, and Kimberly Salazar. 

The complainant continued: four stacks of Council Office-prepared newsletters bearing the City Council District 1 field office address of 5577 Figueroa Street were displayed and distributed adjacent to the sign-in sheets, along with “Gil Cedillo for Los Angeles 2017” buttons and stickers. The newsletters, according to the attendee, indicated that they were “published by The Office of Los Angeles City Council District 1. 

“It is unclear,” he said, “how Gilbert Cedillo’s campaign was provided with this large quantity of taxpayer-funded newsletter materials for use as a campaign advertisement at the event.” 

These reports raise serious ethics questions about the candidate. Is Cedillo … a long time Los Angeles politico … unfamiliar with the law? Does he think no one is paying attention? Or, with today’s soft corruption climate at City Hall, does Cedillo presume no one cares?

The search for answers goes on. Stay tuned.

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.)

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ELECTION 2017-I heard the director of the Downtown LA BID (Business Improvement District) say to Doug McIntrye on his KABC radio show that, "the sky's the limit, regarding downtown Los Angeles real estate development." McIntyre noted how New York City has a lot of endless skyscrapers, and downtown LA is where all the skyscrapers should be, adding that the city has a lot more room to grow. 

I am usually in lock-step with McIntyre on LA municipal issues, so listening to him agree that, "the sky's the limit" on the LA skyscraper issue, made me wonder if I am being too extreme in my belief that LA is “skyscrapered” out. I'm not sure we should be The Eagles of LA real estate developers, taking it to the limit, one more time. Just because we, as a society (or municipality) can do something, doesn't mean we should. Technology and the ability to achieve and accomplish more does not mean we should just do it. 

You can walk up to an all-you-can-eat buffet and eat as much dessert as you want. Keep piling it on your plate, then go back for more and more and more. The manager won't tell you to stop, because it's all-you-can-eat. And, you're an adult now, so your parents can't tell you to stop either. You can do whatever you want to do. So what if you don't want any veggies or meat? You may only want the pudding. But in case you haven't heard, here in LA, you shouldn’t have any pudding until you finish your meat. Unfortunately, though, LA City Hall doesn’t understand this: it’s all pudding (giant, upscale luxury projects) and no meat (affordable housing for homeless and middle-class.) 

How does that apply to LA development? It's not, "the sky's the limit," it’s “the infrastructure's the limit." All this pudding has LA's infrastructure clogged up like a bad artery. Because City Council keeps going back for more and more skyscrapers we’re having problems with EMS/Fire response times. And we can't recruit enough cops for the streets. The local exit ramps don't get any wider. And the streets don't get any wider either. Water is scarce and getting more expensive. Can't jam any more parking spaces onto the same city street, just because someone paid off city officials to stick up another twenty-story, mixed use project in that area. (See Caruso's project for Koretz's district.) And, though not a City Hall issue, it’s hard enough to manage the LAUSD administration and its students. 

The city can no longer enforce itself. These developers know they can get away with more than has been permitted and no one is gonna stop them. In Venice, someone built a McMansion house out into the sidewalk. In other words, the home cut off sidewalk access. Whoops! House already built...too late. 

So, the lesson of LA City development is a lot like the lesson of life itself. It’s all about moderation, which takes discipline and that is not what’s being used at LA City Hall. Though it wasn't my intent as I started this piece, looks like it just became a "Yes on Measure S" article. So, let’s roll with it, like Steve Winwood (with some additional considerations) and vote "Yes on Measure S." 

Mayor Garcetti and LA City Council want to protect non-documented immigrants from deportation, but what about their eviction onto the streets that a skyscraper city will cause? Getting pretty competitive for sidewalk space to put up any more encampments. 

And, the evictions don't affect just immigrants. American citizens will be forced from their homes by foreign (Chinese) developers building a mega city for us lucky Angelinos! It's called “Chinafication” or “Garcettification” or "The Sky's the Limit.” 

Shanghai has geological conditions that are sub-standard to LA and yet they have some of the tallest buildings in the world. Not too difficult for us to achieve that too when our current mayor has basically thrown out building height regulations saying they were a "stupid rule.” Remember Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti's press conference, held on the flat roof of the city's 32-story AT&T Center, where he announced the law's demise, describing it as "one more stupid rule in Los Angeles?" 

On March 7, the people get to pass a smart law that Garcetti is certain to find stupid. He may think he's smarter than the rest of us, but a city's success is measured, in large part, by the amount of homeless on the street. Garcetti himself has declared a homeless emergency for Los Angeles. He’s had more say, sway and influence than anyone -- first as council president, then as mayor. So, don’t be (Shangai) suprised if Garcetti is against Measure S, and takes the China developer money. LA is one big “all you can eat” luxury condo buffet. Take another huge bite. 

Sixty-story high rises on average? No problem since "6" is a lucky number to Chinese developers! (Eighty stories is probably too high, but sixty is cool to heavenly sky proponents.) 

We could build out DTLA to accommodate a 10-12 million person population. And maybe it is a very good idea to build out DTLA as a skyscraper mega-city. The land is cheap and City Hall is easy. 

Only downside is the fate of the less fortunate: those earning less than $200,000 per year will have to move on and move out of their own neighborhoods. And you'll have to leave for work two days before you have to be there, due to traffic gridlock. 

Once the mega luxury skyscrapers go up, everything becomes more expensive. Mom and Pop mini-marts and cheap eateries are replaced with upscale, expensive counterparts. Five dollar burritos are replaced by $17 sandwiches at fancy sandwich places. Just apply that concept to everything else. If you used to own a store, now you can work for a big national chain as a clerk or maybe even a manager. 

It’s a simple choice for the voter: vote for the status quo and re-elect all City Hall incumbents. Then get half the value of your property through eminent domain, and be forced to move to Riverside. Or…vote them all out and vote Yes on Measure S.

(David (Zuma Dogg) Saltsburg is a candidate for Los Angeles mayor. He has been a community activist in Los Angles for more than 10 years successfully taking on City Hall on numerous occasions. Learn more here.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

LA DREAMIN’-LAX is certainly not associated with magical moments. But it was the usual LAX experience of driving through traffic mayhem to pick up a nephew, and inadvertently parking in the taxi zone (LAX needs better signage,) where the magic happened.  

I picked him up on the north side of the airport road loop, fought my way out of the traffic bottleneck in front of the Bradley International Terminal, and turned the corner onto the southern part of the loop.  

I was now traveling east, and in front of me were the LAX Lighted Pylons in a deep blue. Poking between two pylons, just under the crown, was a white, bright moon, a few days past full. It was magical. I felt like I was witnessing an ancient ritual, tied into times when the passing of the moon, the sun, the planets and the seasons had a greater resonance to life.  

The pylons are placed in a circle on both sides of Sepulveda and Century Boulevards, straddling the intersection. Evenly spaced and uniform in height, they give an aura of an ancient, mysterious ruin, placed there in the unknown past. Of course these pylons are not mysterious; they are one of the great public arts works by the City of Los Angeles, erected for the 2000 Democratic Convention held in LA, and updated in 2016.  

During the day, the glass pylons are mute, somewhat interesting in their silent, shiny glass. It is in the evening when the lights inside transform them into mysterious, magical forms. The colors change by algorithm, sometimes in tandem, other times individually.  

The rising moon, aglow in white against the dark sky and punctuated by the dark blue pylons, stopped Time. This was a modern event involving electric lights, special glass, electricity, highlighting the ancient spectacle of a rising moon. But the sights and feelings were of an ancient ritualized time-travel through modern life. 

Sadly, my gawking admiration was extremely short-lived because I was driving in the chaos of LAX traffic. My mythical experience was brutally cut short by the need to drive safely. 

The pylons also extend out in the median, moving down Century Boulevard from LAX to the San Diego Freeway, their height shortened in succession as you go eastward. 

These pylons are unique to Los Angeles, and could become a trademark for the Los Angeles region. As much as I enjoy seeing them when I go to LAX, and from neighboring Westchester, they should be spread throughout the city where they can be seen and experienced in a more human, leisurely way. 

Another transportation hub, Union Station, would benefit from the pylons, highlighting its rebirth as a transit center with increasing ridership of subway and light rail riders along with Metrolink and Amtrak passengers. 

The pylons could be placed in the Music Center Plaza which sorely needs updating. They could circle to the Lipschitz statue, and run along Grand Avenue as it transforms into a cultural corridor. 

The pylons would work perfectly in the parking lot desert of Dodger Stadium. They would do marvels in Exposition Park. They would add some artistic sensibility to LA Live.  

They could also be explosively vibrant, welcoming audiences to the Hollywood Bowl.  

The pylons represent Los Angeles, but need to spread from the chaos of LAX to places where one can just stop, stand, or sit to watch the moon pass between lighted columns as it rises in the darkened sky. 

(Matthew Hetz is a Los Angeles native. He is a transit rider and advocate, a composer, music instructor, and member and president and executive director of the Culver City Symphony Orchestra) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GOVERNOR’S RACE, ALREADY--This post is the first in an occasional series based on interviews with the 2018 candidates for Governor of California.

In one of the first in-depth interviews about his 2018 campaign, Antonio Villaraigosa told Calbuzz that the next governor must focus heavily on creating economic opportunities in areas of inland California that have not rebounded along with prosperous coastal cities.

“I think the folks in San Francisco and Los Angeles care about the people in San Bernardino and Fresno. I care about them,” the 63-year-old Democratic former mayor of Los Angeles and speaker of the Assembly, told Calbuzz.  “I think the best way to move forward is to move forward together. If we’re going to govern this state with a goal of restoring the luster to the California dream, we’ve got to restore it for more people.”

Speaking to and for the more conservative Central Valley and Inland Empire, where Villaraigosa in recent months has been active and visible, might not, by itself, be a winning strategy for a Democrat in a general election. However, it could prove a formidable game plan in an open primary, where the goal is to make it into the statewide top-two runoff.

Having collected more than $2 million in campaign funds since announcing his candidacy in November ((name brand contributors include Michael Eisner, Ryan Seacrest, Reed Hastings, Eli and Edythe Broad, Molly Munger, Fabian Nunez, Stewart Resnick and Monica Lozano, to name a few), Villaraigosa appears to be confronting the key question about his strategic plausibility as a candidate in what will likely be a crowded field.

“I believe strongly that the next governor has got to focus on the parts of the state that aren’t reveling in the rebound,” Villaraigosa said. When asked how this message would work for people in cities along the coast, Villaraigosa had both an idealistic and practical response: “You speak to peoples’ better angels but also to the notion of what we need to be successful” as a state that grows when prosperity is more widely shared.

First Latino since 1875? Villaraigosa is, thus far, the only Latino in the 2018 race to succeed Gov. Jerry Brown – a contest that to date includes poll leader Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, Treasurer John Chiang and former Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin. Other potential candidates whose names have been floated include San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer (a Republican elected to non-partisan office), businessman environmentalist Tom Steyer, former Controller Steve Westly,  Secretary of State Alex Padilla, not to mention Silicon Valley zillionaire and the Trump quisling Peter Thiel.  

During statehood, California has not had a governor of Mexican ancestry since the brief term of Romauldo Pacheco in 1875 – and he was a Lieutenant Governor who filled out the term Gov. Newton Booth who had been elected to the U.S. Senate. No truth to the rumor Calbuzz covered that race.

While he would be the first Latino elected governor, however, Villaraigosa contends he will not make his heritage a central argument of his campaign.

“I realize everyone’s watching and as a first you have a unique responsibility to do a good job,” he said. “I want to be a governor for all of California,” he added. “I’m not focused so much on breaking that glass ceiling. I never have – not when I was speaker, not when I was mayor. I wanted to focus on governing.”

BE governor or govern? Your Calbuzzers, who’ve posed this question to gubernatorial wannabes for decades, asked Tony V. if he wants to be governor or if he wants to govern and, if the latter, specifically, what he wants to do. His reply:

I’m not looking for a job. I’m not looking for power or fame or privilege. I want to do something with the job. I’ve been majority whip, majority leader and speaker of the Assembly … My 20 years in political life has been about wanting to do big things … [When running for mayor] I told people, dream with me and I tried to do big things around education, transportation, infrastructure, jobs, the environment, public safety. And that’s what I want to do as governor. I want to govern. I want to take on the big challenges that this state faces.

He said he recognizes the enormity of the challenge. “My buddies make fun of me – in fact some of them have actually questioned my sanity,” he said. “You gotta take risks and you gotta be willing to fall on your face.”

He declined to say why he’s better for the job than his competitors.

They’re all good people and I don’t have any negatives to say about anybody, particularly so early in the race. I would just say this: I think what I bring to the table is that I’m a leader and a risk taker … I don’t want to compare myself to the others. But I’m willing to speak truth to power and take on the tough issues and I’ve had a knack for bringing people with me.

Yes and no, actually.

As our friend, the indispensable Seema Mehta wrote in the LA Times when Villaraigosa was considering running for Barbara Boxer’s Senate seat: “Though Villaraigosa began his career in labor, he made enemies in that camp while he was mayor, notably by questioning the power of teachers unions. They are a critical group in a Democratic primary with the resources to shape the race — and to go all in to block his effort.”

California resistance. We asked Villaraigosa about the unprecedented dominant issue facing California: what the state must do in the face of the Trump Regime and GOP control of Congress.

I don’t want to spend my time screaming at Washington, DC. We need to double down on what we do well…expanding our economy, improving our business climate, creating jobs … [especially] in parts of the state that are not benefitting from that job growth and that economic success … not just lead the nation and world in setting climate change goals but double down on creating green jobs that provide a double bottom line for improving our business climate and improving our climate …

[California also should] use the courts where we are being threatened in a way that violates our constitution or our state prerogatives and use every tool at our disposal to challenge where we have to. But I think the best way to fight them is to double down on our success, to deepen it and to broaden it, to focus on what has worked for California …

We have to double down on what we do well, make the economy work for more people, lift more people into the middle class, train more of our folks for the jobs in the new economy, create more jobs in the places where the California rebound is non-existent or barely existent.

That’s a lot of doubling down on doubling down.

On more specific issues, Villaraigosa was clear on some and squishy on others.

High Speed Rail:

There are 16 countries that either have high-speed rail or will build it. We have to get into the 21^st Century. There’s no question that there are various technologies available but ultimately the notion that we wouldn’t make an investment in high-speed rail is not a notion that I’m willing to accept, not in California. So I support high-speed rail.

However, he added, we need to “value-engineer” it and “leverage it” by, for example, making investments in housing and job creation near train stations in Fresno and other parts of the Central Valley.

Gov. Brown’s twin tunnels water project:

Before I’d be supportive of that project I think we need to do a lot more to recycle, capture water runoff, clean up our underground aquifers, store water, look at the two dams that were promised in 1999… an all-of-the-above strategy that doesn’t require that kind of investment first – then the tunnels are an option.

Keeping MediCal under Trump:

The last time I looked there’s only one governor and it’s Gov. Brown … [Villaraigosa notes he wouldn’t take office until Jan 2019] … The state will have made some decisions long before that. I’m well aware that what we’re looking at right now, Jerry is facing somewhere between a 20 to 40 billion dollar cut. I think most people think it will be, at a minimum, the elimination of MediCal. So we’ve got our work cut out for us.

Our goal has to be to provide care for them, understanding that we’ve got to pay for it…And that $20 billion hole on top of the $1.8 billion (projected deficit) that he announced – we’ve got our work cut out for us. I certainly support the notion that that’s what our goal has to be…That’s why these policies [Trump’s] are such a threat because we have expanded health care to a greater degree than any state in the country.

We’re not sure a guy who wants to be the next governor can just stand aside and hope such a massive problem, with tragic human consequences, will be cleaned up before he takes office. (Devil’s advocate here, but maybe he should advance a strategy that could make him stand out when he’s actually in a multi-candidate campaign for governor. But, hey, if we were smart we would have become political consultants making 15 percent on every multi-million dollar campaign TV buy).

We also asked Villaraigosa to boil his campaign down to a simple bumper-sticker theme. He said he hadn’t thought about that although maybe it would be “Giving Voice to Every Californian.” Pretty big bumper strip or really small type.

He might do well to just accept the Calbuzz moniker we gave him years ago, based on his birth name,  Antonio “Tony” Ramón Villar, Jr., as in Voz Para Mi: Tony V. 

(Jerry Roberts is a California journalist who writes, blogs and hosts a TV talk show about politics, policy and media. Phil Trounstine is the former political editor of the San Jose Mercury News, former communications director for California Gov. Gray Davis and was the founder and director of the Survey and Policy Research Institute at San Jose State University. This piece appeared originally in CalBuzz.)

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DEEGAN ON LA-Which hangover are you trying to shake: the overindulgence of New Year’s Eve or the game changer National Election in November? Want a triple-header head-splitter? In just three weeks you can start voting by mail for or against the momentous issue of “uncontrolled” development, whether or not you like the Mayor, and the chance to sweep some political newcomers into City Council offices. Unfortunately, turnout cannot be expected to be as high as the stakes. Voter fatigue has lots to do with that. 

The centerpiece of the balloting will be Measure S, aka the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, that would enact a moratorium on “spot zoning” variances as one of its main provisions, if enough voters say “yes.” 

Voter turnout is one of the two pressures that will be driving the outcome of the election. The other is the opportunity to Vote by Mail that starts on February 6. Up to one-third of the city’s voters take advantage of early voting, so it’s urgent that candidates get their message out hard and fast, now, to win over the minds of these leading edge voters. These days, voters make up their minds and cast their ballots up to thirty days ahead of the actual election. How candidates and supporters react to both of influential factors could provide them with an advantage. 

Primary elections historically attract a very low turnout. On the heels of our intense recent election, who really has the interest or stamina for this primary? This is a situation that will benefit aggressive campaigners for the odd-numbered council district seats that are up for grabs. The number of “yes” votes needed to elect someone, or to pass or defeat Measure S, may be exceptionally low, thanks to the shrunken base of who actually votes compared to the number of all registered voters. 

The winning ground game could be twofold: 

• Knowing how voters feel about Measure S, the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, and aligning campaign pledges and promises to meet those pro or con expectations. There are massive campaigns running both for and against the measure. Development is the hottest issue on the March ballot. 

• Capitalizing on early Vote-By-Mail (VBM) that starts on February 6. The traditional get out the vote (GOTV) models cannot be counted on in our new post-truth world, where emotion overrules fact and news can be fake; mailboxes stuffed with flyers can no longer be certain to work. Development partisans are so passionate and emotional on both sides of the issue that getting them to vote early by mail could jump start a campaign. 

Some say that there are a lot of good things about Measure S, like the expedited timelines for upgrading community and general plans, and the requirement that the city, not the developers, be the client for EIR’s. In addition, the measure calls for the elimination of spot zoning and a “moratorium” for up to two years on construction that increases development density and it prohibits project-specific amendments to the city's General Plan, thereby restricting the size and number of development projects. 

Opponents of Measure S, led by the voice of labor leader Rusty Hicks, say, “In November, an overwhelming majority of Angeleno voters passed Prop. JJJ to create affordable housing and good jobs for LA's middle class. Just four months later, LA's working families are facing an unprecedented rollback on progress. Trump and his supporters are trying to dismantle the progress we’ve made, from healthcare to the EPA. Trump’s vision of America doesn’t stand a chance in LA. Don’t let them roll back our progress. Measure S, which will be on the March ballot, is the height of selfishness. A cynical ploy to stop virtually all housing construction in LA, including housing for the homeless.” Hicks adds that the measure is a “pile of S.” 

The LA City Council races (for odd-numbered districts) have some young political newcomers with decades of potential public service ahead of them. They’re worth listening to by anyone who cares how the next generation will grapple with the legacy their predecessors leave behind. Right now, it’s not an enviable dowry, with budget and pension problems, rampant development, and increasing allegations of corruption and back-room dealing at City Hall. A credible showing at the polls by any of them will help put politicos on notice that times are changing. 

But first, everyone must vote, and that’s the bigger challenge right now -- activating voters. The clock is ticking: vote by mail starts February 6, and could be the wild card. About one-quarter to one-third of voters now vote early, so making the sale immediately has more importance than ever.

(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.

NEIGHBORHOOD POLITICS--Neighbors had been complaining for years.  “My dog kept picking up the chicken bones their customers threw on our lawns.”  “They would start at 1 pm and keep going till 1 am.”   The 2918 S. Rimpau residence responsible for the community distress was owned by Vincent Bowens and called Dilly’s Kitchen (photo below left). He served Jamaican food which won great online reviews and had a strong following that grew as hipsters discovered it.  Dilly’s was even registered with the city.  Only one problem.  It was a commercial enterprise in a residential zone.   It was illegal.  Bowens who had a large kitchen facility in his backyard, claimed he only ran a catering business but the customers coming and going all day and the online reviews spoke differently.  

Then it happened. In the early hours of a recent Saturday morning there was a shoot out that left 4 people dead and 12 injured.   One of the men killed, Robert Davis, also known as Rodigan, was a reputed Jamaican gang leader from Kingston.  Two Jamaican men Mowayne McKay, 33 and Diego Reid 25 were booked shortly after and released when prosecutors realized they needed more evidence to file charges.  Their attention soon turned to a Jamaican national named Marlon Jones who was immediately put on the FBI's Most Wanted list, the 510th person since the list's creation in 1950.  On Dec. 3rd it was reported that they had taken a man into custody believed to be the suspect.  

Prior repeated complaints to the police and Building and Safety about the nuisance yielded no results for the neighbors.  It took these murders to finally shut down Dilly's.  Mr. Bowens is headed back to Jamaica.  

In another part of mid-city, several neighbors express distress over another weekly party house with its loud discussions that turn into loud arguments as the booze flows and the evening wears on.  Because it isn’t illegal to have a party it is very difficult to prove that money is exchanging hands for either entry, liquor, food or all of the above. Vice needs to be called in, and undercover detectives have to get involved.   

But there may be relief for neighbors who have to endure these noisy, relentless, and disrespectful to the community, illegal party houses.  Apparently it has been a huge problem in Councilmember Ryu’s District 4 which includes part of the Hollywood Hills where houses are sometimes bought for the express purpose of being rented out for parties.  So early in November Councilmember Ryu introduced legislation which was passed unanimously by City Council. It instructed the City Attorney, in consultation with the Los Angeles Police Department  to draft an ordinance regulating  party houses.   

From Ryu’s Motion 

“Unfortunately, our current enforcement tools (LAMC 41.57, 41.58, 12.27.1, 112.01(b), and 116.01) are not strong enough. Enforcement by LAPD of the City’s noise ordinance does not provide the police enough tools to discourage the next offense. Additional tools in our building codes are almost impossible to enforce as there is little to no building inspector availability on a Friday or Saturday night when most parties occur. Over the years, the City has attempted to grapple with this problem. Motions have been introduced (CFs 02-2476, 06-1231,07-0184, 12-1824) on multiple occasions over the past fifteen years to deal with this problem, to no avail.” 

His ordinance instructs the City Attorney to draft a motion that will return to City Hall for approval. It includes the following:  

- Adds additional activities typically found at an unruly party as a ‘nuisance per se’ that LAPD can identify as being associated with a “Party House”; 

- Provides for escalating fines for successive violations to both the party host and, crucially, the property owner; 

- Requires posting a public notice of violation on the property, that will serve to notify the neighborhood that the property is under a violation period of a set number of days where addition unruly parties will lead to higher fines or even criminal charges for excessive numbers of violations; 

- Includes liens on properties for property owners who fail to pay fines; 

- Includes additional fines for commercial events or parties held at a residential unit; 

- Includes a prohibition on any home-sharing or short-term rental activity during a posted notice of violation period. 

Looks like the party's over. 

(Dianne V. Lawrence is editor/publisher of The Neighborhood News, a community magazine in Mid-City and is Editor-at-Large for CityWatch Neighborhood Politics.)

AMENDMENTS WILL REDUCE HOME SIZE LIMITS--Despite citywide ordinances to stop mansionization, Angelenos from Venice to Boyle Heights have seen their neighborhoods blighted by spec-built McMansions that loom over their neighbors and violate the character of established neighborhoods. Remedies have been in the works for nearly three years, since Councilmember Paul Koretz initiated amendments to the ineffectual ordinances.

This coming Wednesday, January 18, the matter will finally enter the home stretch with a hearing by the City Council’s PLUM (Planning & Land Use Management) Committee. The amendments will reduce size limits for homes in single-family zones throughout the City of Los Angeles and provide the framework for a slew of related zoning measures.

What had been a routine, slow-moving process gained drama and speed last month. After a surprise vote by the PLUM Committee to weaken the amendments on November 29, Council President Wesson took things in hand. Barely a week later, the Council voted unanimously to reverse the PLUM decision.

Now the amendments are coming back to PLUM for what should be the last hearing before a full Council vote. Councilmember Koretz, who played a key role in getting the amendments back on track, is pressing for one more fix: to count front-facing attached garages as floor space.  

The treatment of attached garages figured prominently Koretz’s original Council Motion and has been a rallying cry among homeowners and residents since Day One. They contend that the exclusion of attached garages from floor space adds 400 square feet of bloat, eliminates the buffer a driveway provides, and rewards a design feature that disrupts the look and feel of many LA neighborhoods.

At the City Planning Commission hearing last July, Commission President David Ambroz underscored the logic of counting attached garages when he commented, “Square footage is square footage.”

In advance of the hearing on Wednesday, supporters of reform are expected to again take aim at this 400 square foot “freebie” with messages drawn from the campaign website.  They are also expected to turn out in force at the hearing.

Wednesday’s specially-scheduled PLUM session should be lively. The agenda also includes the hotly-contested development that Rick Caruso wants to build on La Cienega Boulevard, which would be much bigger than city code allows. As our elected officials grapple with the fallout from the “Sea Breeze” development scandal and brace for an initiative on the March ballot to stop spot zoning (Measure S), the votes taken on Wednesday will offer this year’s first glimpse of things to come.  

• ACTION INFO (How you can help by calling or speaking)

Phone script

“The amendments to the citywide mansionization ordinances are finally is good shape, but one key issue still needs work: We must count attached garages as floor space.”

Here are phone numbers for the PLUM Committee members:

José Huizar (Committee chair) – 213-473-7014

Gil Cedillo – 213-473-7001

Mitchell Englander – 213-473-7012

Marqueece Harris-Dawson – 213-473-7008

Curren Price – 213-473-7009

Speaker’s notes

Last month the City Council reinstated sensible floor-area ratios for single-family homes, and the amendments to the citywide mansionization ordinances are finally in good shape.   But one core issue still needs work: We must count front-facing garages as floor space.

They disrupt the look and feel of neighborhoods, eliminate the buffer provided by a driveway, and add a whopping 400 square feet of bloat to a house.

Allow front-facing attached garages, but count every square inch as part of the floor space of the house.

Half-baked compromises ruined the mansionization ordinances the first time. We cannot make the same mistake again.  

(Shelley Wagers is a homeowner, community activist, an expert on Los Angeles’ mansionization crisis and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.

-cw

EDUCATION POLITICS--On March 7, 2017 we will have a primary election for three of the seven seats on the LAUSD Board. If no one candidate for a given seat receives a majority of votes in the primary, that will be followed on May 16 by a run-off in the general election.

In going over the new and incumbent candidates’ statements, one cannot help but be struck by the fact that none of these candidates has put forth a detailed, substantive platform to address LAUSD’s endemic problems that have been the cause of long-time failure, causing it to be on the verge of both financial and academic bankruptcy. 

The notion of "supporting a strong quality public education for all" is right up there with motherhood and apple pie, but none of the candidates -- be they new or incumbent – has addressed how to fix this school system in which students continue to be socially promoted without mastering prior grade-level standards. This has pretty much made it impossible to create a "strong quality public education." 

But how do you "strengthen core subjects and electives programs" in a district with a 50% chronic truancy rate? This fact is completely antithetical to the recent disingenuous assertion of LAUSD Superintendent Michelle King who touted a "100% graduation rate," a claim that has gone unchallenged by the present LAUSD Board of Directors and the mainstream media. 

It sounds nice to talk about increasing school electives, but the reality is that virtually all industrial arts programs have been closed down throughout the District. The classes could give students an employable skill or one with which they could earn enough money to pay for a post K-12 education. This has happened as both the LAUSD administration and the Board refuse to recognize that the total capacity of all colleges and universities in the United States is at only 30% of high school graduates. So what is everybody else supposed to do to stay out of jail? 

I wish one of these candidates would tell me how you "reduce class size, stabilize classrooms, support all staff and establish appropriate discipline strategies," when the LAUSD administration and the Board have spent their energy targeting senior teachers at the top of the salary scale using false charges in order to hire cheaper fresh-out-of-college "teachers" on emergency credentials. 

This has created a critical shortage of experienced teachers. Add to this the continued huge number of students moving from LAUSD to charter schools and you wind up with the remaining LAUSD classrooms filled with 40 or more students, creating over-crowding in a misguided attempt to stem the hemorrhaging of money. 

And of course, since LAUSD gets paid by Average Daily Attendance (ADA) -- measured exclusively by how many warm butts are in seats, rather than an objective measurement of academic achievement -- LAUSD allows chaos to reign in the classroom in order to receive more money from the state and federal governments. 

Administrators are loathe to suspend students ($$$) who are then left free to disrupt classes on a regular basis to the detriment of all other students and teachers; it’s nearly impossible to teach or learn in this administratively tolerated bedlam. Could that be why enrollment in teacher credentialing programs is down to an historic low? 

If any candidate for LAUSD Board is truly interested in positing a three-dimensional, detailed platform to address corporate and administrative corruption and to turn around what used to be a great school district, I would be happy to endorse them. Any takers? Look at it this way: given the extreme levels of student, parent, teacher, and voter apathy, it will not take a whole lot of votes to get you elected.

(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected]) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CORRUPTION WATCH-Poor Steven Mnuchin. People do not see the fiscal nightmare facing the Secretary of the Treasury designate, Los Angeles’ own Steven Mnuchin. The nation lived through the Crash of 2008 and well into 2009 with little Timmy Geithner. Now, in 2017, few people realize that the current upswing in the business cycle -- with the Dow-Jones approaching 20,000 -- signals an incipient financial crash. 

Poor Steven Mnuchin. Trump labors under the notion that the “latest, best and greatest” economic theory is Mercantilism, which is actually from 1550. He thinks forcing manufacturing to be done within the U.S. and raising tariffs will improve our economy. But Trump’s protectionist policies cannot cure unemployment. (General Theory, Ch 23 ¶ 3) And introducing inflation into the new car market will not help the middle or lower classes. To the extent that Trump increases the cost of new cars by insisting they be manufactured here, he will retard the car manufacturing economy. We assume that Mnuchin knows this and should know how to head off these problems caused by Mercantilism. 

Poor Steven Mnuchin. Due to the gross economic incompetence of the Obama Administration, he will have to re-wind history and first undertake measures that Obama-Geithner failed to take, such as: 

1) Replace Dodd-Frank with a beefed up reinstatement of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act. “Beefed up” means closing the loopholes that the GOP courts had cut into Glass-Steagall.   

2) Outlaw Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) which are weapons of mass economic destruction. CDSs are criminal evasions of insurance laws. 

3) Insure all residential mortgages and require all LLCs and LLPs that own residential real estate to disclose their real party in interest. This form of mortgage insurance is based on the income of the actual human beings who are liable for the mortgages, and thus, their identities have to be known. The side benefit of such disclosure is that it kicks the money laundering of drug kingpins and foreign oligarchs out of the residential real estate market. The government has a duty to make certain that the value of residential real estate is based on its value as living space and not on other illicit motives. 

4) Reinstate the portions of the 1936 Commodities Exchange Act which limited the participation of Wall Street speculators like Mnuchin’s Goldman Sachs from the commodities market. The purpose of investment houses is to find investment capital for businesses and not to make money in commodities where it has no underlying stake in that commodity. 

5) Stop the Corruptionism in the housing industry which is leading to the Federalization of Local Debt. 

Los Angeles Corruptionism and the Federalization of Local Debt 

Poor Steven Mnuchin: While the Secretary designate no doubt knows about this looming disaster, no one in Congress has a clue. As a result, during his confirmation hearing set for Thursday January 19, 2017, he will not be grilled about this on-going problem which has led to horrendous inflation in the housing market. How can he ward off what no one else knows is coming? 

What Is the Federalization of Local Debt? 

Corrupt local governments like the LA City Council and our Mayor Eric Garcetti are seizing control of the “stimulus” mechanism of Keynesian economics. Allowing a local government to rack up so much debt that it can never pay its bills is like giving a nursery school toddler a bunch of matches and a can of gasoline, and then asking, “Gee what went wrong?” Yet, this is exactly what the Obama Administration has done nationwide. 

Unless the Trump Administration takes the matches and gasoline away from Eric Garcetti and the mayors of other major American cities, these cities will pile up so much debt trying to stimulate their local economies that the federal government will have no choice but to provide massive municipal bailouts. The Trump Administration will then lose control of the national economy. 

No Administration Can Allow Local Governments to Abuse the Keynesian Stimulus Protocol 

Poor Steven Mnuchin: His own home city of Los Angeles is intentionally running its debt up so high that it cannot possibly pay it, ensuring that the federal government will have no choice but to bail us out. The Villaraigosa and Garcetti Administrations have brought economic disaster on LA. Their plan to stimulate the local economy was and is based on a fool’s understanding of Keynesian stimulus, that just spending billions will do the trick. And the Garcetti Administration apparently believes it can escape bankruptcy because LA is “too big to fail.” 

How Corruptionism at LA City Hall Is Destroying Our Economy 

The City of Los Angeles has already destroyed the proper relationship between the marginal efficiency of capital (MEC) and interest rates for the housing market. Because the housing market is so large, its fall-out has harmed the entire LA economy, prompting the middle class to abandon the City. 

From a macro-economics point of view, the government, when making investments in private projects, has to assess factors that businessmen may ignore. When investing in a private project like Hollywood-Highland or the Grand Avenue Project, LA must take into account other costs which will be required of it if the Project is built -- basically the cost of additional infrastructure. Explicitly, a city needs to consider not only the interest it has to pay on loans to the Project but also the cost of infrastructure that will service the project in order to calculate the profit the City must receive from that project. (Since the City does not operate on a Cash Basis, it has to pay interest on all funds given or loaned to a private project.) 

For a city, the amount of its incremental tax revenue on a project is its profit. Thus, the City which invests in a real estate project like the CIM Midtown Project in City Council President Wesson’s CD 10 has to make sure the additional taxes flowing into the public treasury from the City’s investment will exceed not only the interest rate the City pays for money it borrows to “lend” to CIM Group, but that the project’s tax revenue will more than pay for all the necessary infrastructure upgrades including roads, water, power, police, fire and paramedics. (One also has to consider “retroactive gifts” where the City co-signs for a developer’s loan on which the developer will then default.) 

Unless a City can guarantee its investment in a project will generate more in taxes than the interest rate and more than the costs of infrastructure, the investment will have a negative Profit. (Donald Trump would certainly tweet out “Loser.”) Because of the vast corruption in the Los Angeles City Council, the city usually gives sales taxes and often gives the incremental property taxes to developers. When their LLCs or LLPs go bankrupt, the loans made by or guaranteed by the City are repaid to Wall Street from the City coffers. This is how Los Angeles is building its way into bankruptcy. 

How De Facto Negative Interest Rates in the Housing Market Harm the Entire Economy 

Projects with a de facto negative interest rate attract private investment capital to bad projects. This misdirection of private capital then harms the rest of the economy by depriving more productive ventures of the capital they need. 

Un-repaid Loans Increase the City’s Losses 

The harm of a de facto negative rate of interest is magnified when the City does not require repayment of the loaned funds. Such a situation is fraught with corruption as the developer will then be induced to “over pay” for product and pocket the difference between the “book price” it alleges it is paying for goods such as steel and the lower actual price. A lender that demands repayment will scrutinize suspect purchases, but when the City forgives loans or pays off Wall Street loans for a developer, no one asks any questions. 

One variant of this type of this skimming is developer’s purchasing lower quality steel for projects while the books show the purchase of a higher quality. When the steel is manufactured far away from the construction site, let’s say Chinese steel is purchased for high rises in earthquake prone downtown Los Angeles, there is no way to ensure quality control. 

As an aside, the Mercantilist contingent of the Trump Administration should be concerned when the Chinese government, acting through CORE, invests $200 million in the Grand Avenue Project; the City is obligated, behind the scenes, to purchase Chinese steel. As a result, American steel producers are closed out and the money ends up back in the pockets of the Chinese government. Economically speaking it is similar to Los Angeles’ building its new skyscrapers in Beijing. 

CRAs and EIFDs Guarantee the City will Slide to Bankruptcy 

When the City uses entities like the now-defunct Community Redevelopment Agency or a misleadingly named Enhanced Infrastructure Financing District (EIFD), all the profits (incremental taxes) go to them, reducing the City’s profit to zero. Zero rate of return for the City is a huge gift to the developer since the CRA or EIFD then give the City’s profit back to the developers. Even if a project is a terrible failure by traditional measures, it will pay some taxes (the city’s profit) but all that money comes back to the developers. 

Because even financially disastrous projects can make money for the developer, money flows towards these projects. It is similar to Wall Street executives’ manufacturing defective bundles of mortgages and then buying credit default swaps [CDSs] on them. Although the investment vehicle will crash, the executives will realize huge personal paydays. When they repeat this corrupt scam a sufficient number of times, the firms issuing the CDSs go bankrupt or the government pays trillions of dollars to bail them out. Likewise, a city that has CRAs or EIFDs and invests in foolish projects like Hollywood-Highland or Grand Avenue, will run out of cash to pay its debts. 

The Keynesian Duty to Protect the Price Structure or Why Los Angeles Has Run-away Inflation in its Housing Market 

Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes accepted as axiomatic the need for the government to protect the Price System. In the housing market, the cost of homes has to represent their value as living space. Residences cannot continue to be vehicles for financial speculation and corruptionism, as has occurred in Los Angeles. 

After Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed AB 2531 in 2010, which was Garcetti’s attempt to bring Kelo eminent domain to the entire city of Los Angeles, and after Governor Brown staved off bankruptcy by abolishing the corrupt Community Redevelopment Agencies in 2012, the City of Los Angeles under the leadership of then-City Council President and now Mayor Eric Garcetti went hog wild into Spot Zoning. Despite the warning by Planning Director Gail Goldberg in 2006 not to let developers dictate the zoning they wanted for their projects, Garcetti’s policy has been to up-zone any property the developers want, subject apparently to a hefty contribution to his Mayor’s Fund. Developer Leung paid $60,000; developer Caruso paid $125,000.   

From the macro-economic perspective, the extortion-bribery aspect of the Los Angeles housing market fuels the destruction of the Price System for housing based upon the its value as living space. The value of housing now reflects its speculative value. By allowing any property to be up-zoned upon the payment of the appropriate sums of money to the mayor and city council, the middle class has been priced out of the single family housing market and they are moving away from Los Angeles. 

This irreversible brain drain of the Gen Xers and Family Millennials impacts all other segments of the Los Angeles economy. People “osmosisize” themselves away from areas of high cost and low opportunity toward areas of low cost and high opportunity. 

This dynamic explains why developers are lining up to build in Los Angeles, while the real demand for housing is declining. With a de facto negative rate of interest where developers make money even if a project is a financial failure, building mega office towers and hotels based on this type of corruption makes them fantastically wealthy. (The demand for housing for Los Angeles’ poor is up because Garcetti has been destroying rent-controlled properties in order to manufacture additional homelessness so the public will approve billion dollar bonds for his developer friends.) 

Poor Steven Mnuchin: The State of California and the City of Los Angeles have already reached the insolvency point. Last week Governor Brown announced a $1.6 billion deficit and the City of Los Angeles lacks the funds to pay all the judgments from its liability lawsuits. Within a short period of time, Mnuchin will be forced to bail out the City of Los Angeles. When Federalization of Local Debt rescues Los Angeles, how can the Trump Administration deny it to NYC, Chicago or Cincinnati?

(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.

LA … WHO ARE WE?--The brilliant new film musical La La Land is being celebrated as a love letter to Los Angeles. But the darker heart of the movie lies in a brief and devastating critique of Southern California, delivered by the jazz pianist played by Ryan Gosling.

“That’s LA,” he tells his lover, an aspiring actress played by Emma Stone. “They worship everything and they value nothing.”

There has been no better recent summary of the California struggle—with the very notable exception of the 2015 novel, The Sellout, whose author Paul Beatty recently became the first American to win the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

La La Land and The Sellout seem very different. On the surface, the film, an Oscar favorite, might appear to be a glossy escapist romance about white artists who hang out in Griffith Park. The novel is a taboo-trashing racial satire about an African-American urban farmer of watermelons and artisanal weed who reintroduces segregation to his neglected South LA neighborhood, ostensibly in hopes of putting it on the map. (His real agenda is even more deliciously subversive).

But the film and the novel are two of the most thought-provoking and entertaining documents of today’s California. And both are about the same big problem: that for all our celebration of successful game changers in this state, we offer precious little space or support to those who dare to upset our blissful status quo.

The film and the book also make the same provocative argument about how to break through the Golden State’s stacked deck: Don’t be afraid to do things that are totally nuts.

To make an impact here, you must embrace, and express, your inner madman. Both works specifically champion a self-sacrificing craziness, a willingness to surrender yourself and the people you love to focus on making your mark. Here, hitsville and heartbreak are two sides of the same heavy coin.

La La Land makes a straightforward case for crazy. Gosling’s musician is the film’s romantic hero, because of his uncompromising commitment to restoring traditional jazz even though he can’t pay his bills because the rest of the world is abandoning the form. Stone’s frustrated actress only inches closer to the red carpet when she devotes herself, against conventional wisdom, to producing her one-woman play in a theater she can’t afford to rent.

And in the audition scene in which she finally breaks through, she embraces the virtues of craziness in song: “A bit of madness is key to give us new colors to see. Who knows where it will lead us?”

Both the film and the book wrestle with the conflict between loyalty to one’s dreams and selling out—and in the process point out just how hard it is here to tell the difference between the two.

Beatty’s novel similarly suggests that, to smash through the California looking-glass world, the sanest course may be to go right over the edge. The farmer refuses to accept the city of LA’s erasure of his minority neighborhood (it’s called Dickens, in one of Beatty’s winking allusions to artists who embraced thorny social themes). And so the farmer fights this fire of systemic discrimination by violating dozens of laws and cultural norms. Most outlandishly, he takes a slave, who helps him segregate the local school, hospital, bus line, and businesses to the advantage of racial minorities. (He puts up signs reading “Colored Only” and “No Whites Allowed” all over Dickens).

Beatty’s satire is so rich and layered—no one is left unskewered, from white supremacists to our first black president—that it’s futile to attempt to convey it in a short column. But I will mention two of the most provocative parts of the politically incorrect plot—how long it takes for anyone outside the community to notice the farmer’s segregation edicts, and how, through the farmer’s loopy and unconstitutional acts, seeds of tolerance and kindness (lower crime, higher test scores, more polite behavior) take root.

“The racism takes them back,” the farmer explains. “Makes them humble. Makes them realize how far we’ve come and, more important, how far we have to go.” And it is only through embracing racism that the farmer makes his impact—and a point. As a judge in the novel remarks, “In attempting to restore his community through reintroducing precepts, namely segregation and slavery, that, given his cultural history, have come to define his community despite the supposed unconstitutionality and nonexistence of these concepts, he’s pointed out a fundamental flaw in how we as Americans claim we see equality.”

The Sellout and La La Land keep the reader and viewer enjoyably engaged and off-guard because they leaven their tough messages with comedy (the movie takes on screenwriting and the Prius, while the novel imagines “the Untouchables” in its caste system as starting with Clipper fans and traffic cops). And both works, for all their high ambition, fall back on some wondrous magical realism as an escape hatch from the difficult tonal and political juggling acts they perform. The La La lovers literally float into the stars through the ceiling of the Griffith Park Observatory, while The Sellout Metro bus becomes a rolling party that ends with the vehicle being driven into the Malibu surf.

The Sellout feels especially current because it breaks political ground, even becoming the first artwork to satirize our state’s fastest-rising representative, Attorney General-turned U.S. Senator-turned-presidential wannabe Kamala Harris. Once the farmer is finally arrested, an unnamed black-and-Asian-American California attorney general shows up in Prada shoes to prosecute him for violations of major civil rights laws, the 13th and 14th amendments, and six of the Ten Commandments.

Both the film and the book wrestle with the conflict between loyalty to one’s dreams and selling out—and in the process point out just how hard it has become to tell the difference between the two. And both get at a painful paradox. We know we must hold onto real people and real things, to be truly human. But in LA, we learn we must loosen our grip on reality to get noticed, and get ahead. It’s not just lonely at the top; it’s lonely on the whole journey up the California mountain.

In this way, both masterpieces ultimately raise the question of whether making your mark here is worth the cost. It may be that the real winners in this California are those who don’t bother to play the game and navigate the hurdles to ambition—and instead plop themselves down in unfancy places where they can enjoy warm weather and their loved ones in blessed obscurity.

No character in the book or the movie is happier in Beatty’s satirized world than the farmer’s slave, an aging actor named Hominy from the 1950’s TV show Little Rascals who refuses all efforts to free him. Trying to be a star in LA is so confounding that he prefers the simplicity of servitude.

“I’m a slave. That’s who I am,” he insists to the farmer. “It’s the role I was born to play.”

After all, if you’re going to live in a place that values nothing, then why fight so hard to be something?

(Joe Mathews is Connecting California Columnist and Editor at Zócalo Public Square … where this column first appeared. Mathews is a Fellow at the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University and co-author of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It (UC Press, 2010).)

-cw

CORRUPTION WATCH-Hamlet anguished over “To be or Not to Be,” but in November, 2016 Californians quickly answered the question of “To Kill or Not to Kill” with a rousing “Kill ‘Em.” Then Californians slapped on an addendum – “Kill ‘Em Faster.” 

Prop 66 also gives a lot of power to the trial court judge who has presided over a legal case to thwart an effective review of the conviction. Due to legal challenges, the California Supreme Court put Proposition 66 on hold and Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye and Justice Ming Chin had to recuse themselves from hearing the case since they are two of the defendants. The Los Angeles Times has discussed the procedural aspects of this case.

We Cannot Entrust Our Lives to the California Courts 

California’s judiciary is an ethical swamp. As briefly discussed in a prior CityWatch article, California’s court system is a disgrace to the notion of justice. 

People who are used to living within a polluted environment come to accept the status quo without question. In the 1950s many people inhaled the exhaust of buses, feeling good about the sign of progress, oblivious to the dangers of lead poisoning and other toxins. Many people fought against cleaning the air and still argue in favor of smog and against a clean environment. When assessing the State of California’s judicial ecology, take a look at the air quality in Beijing during one of China’s smog alerts. 

This China analogy provides a rough idea of the polluted nature of California’s judicial climate. In November 2016, Californians voted against cleaning their judicial system of one of its worse carcinogens by retaining the death penalty. Then they went a step further to ensure that innocent people are put to death. This language may sound strong to many, but they do not know the rot which has eaten away the moral fiber of our judicial system. 

Given the number of people nationwide on death row who have already been found innocent, California could have about 30 innocent people awaiting execution. Prop 66 would reduce the chance of ascertaining who is innocent before they are executed. Prop 66 gives new meaning to the phrase, “Speed Kills.” 

The Courts Have Brought Us Some of California’s Most Memorable Murders 

Fifty-four people died in the aftermath of the exoneration of the police officers in the Rodney King trial held in Simi Valley. Angelenos do not know, however, how the California State court maneuvered the acquittal of those police officers (two of whom were subsequently convicted of federal civil rights violations in the federal court room of Judge John G. Davies.) 

Back in 1992, the Law and Order judiciary feared that if the police officers involved in the 1991 beating of Rodney King were tried in the downtown criminal courts building, that a Los Angeles jury would convict them. The feeling was the same if the trial were to have been held at the Van Nuys Criminal Courthouse, which served the area where Rodney King was beaten. 

Thus, a bogus claim was made that the LAPD Officers could not get a fair trial and the case had to be moved. The California appellate court came up with two alternatives: Oakland which they knew would be labeled too expensive by the District Attorney’s Office, and Simi Valley, a nearby bedroom community for police officers. Gerrymandering the location of the trial made an acquittal a foregone conclusion and thus the court laid the ground work for the deaths of fifty-four innocent people. Had the California courts allowed the prosecutions to proceed in a fair manner, the State court outcome would most likely have mirrored the officers’ later convictions in federal court where two of the officers were found guilty and served prison time. 

The Rodney King case was not the first time the California judiciary has been implicated in outrageous injustices. Anyone who has spent time in courtrooms gains a sense of when something hinky is going on. The situation was worse with the LA criminal courts since many of the judges were former prosecutors who worked closely with the District Attorney’s Office to obtain convictions. 

In 1988, a furor arose over the Los Angeles DA’s use of jail house informants due to their persistent committing of perjury, later upheld in an appeal.  

For our purposes, the most significant fact is that many judges are former prosecutors. The judges knew that lying jailhouse informants were being used. Before they were judges, they had worked in the DA’s office where the use of lying jailhouse informants was routine. 

In the Mid-1990s We Were Explicitly Told that Innocent People Were Being Set up 

After pleading no contest to a perjury charge in 1996, Detective Mark Fuhrman of OJ Trial fame, asserted that “all true cops lie, cheat and set people up.” But no one wanted to hear the truth, especially from a disgraced cop whom they incorrectly blamed for the loss in the OJ trial. (Fuhrman’s perjury conviction was later expunged.) 

Before the end of the 1990s, we learned about the scandals at the Ramparts Division with the LAPD being placed on parole under the supervision of the United State Department of Justice, effective June 15, 2001. Once again, criminal court judges are very often former prosecutors who work very closely with the police. As we saw with the use of lying jail house informants, as former assistant district attorneys the judges had to be well aware of the illicit procedures by the district attorney and the police. The Rampart Scandal could not have existed without the support of the judges who allowed the unconstitutional abuses to grow to such proportions that the LAPD ended up having its own “Parole Officer” from 2001 until 2013. 

While the LAPD emerged from the Consent Decree in 2013 as a transformed institution, the public never learned about the role the judges played in the use of jail house informants and condoning the abuses which resulted in the Consent Decree. Since there is no accountability for miscreant judges, the misconduct continues. 

Prosecutors who use perjury did not die in the 1980s or in the 1990s or even in the 2000s. In January 2015, the 9^th Circuit of local federal court complained about a prosecutor who took the witness stand and committed perjury. Even after his lying ways had been uncovered, the judiciary did nothing. Let’s be clear – not only did the prosecutor get an informant to testify, the prosecutor himself then took the stand to support the informant’s veracity. To aggravate matters, other courts had decided that the prosecutors had obtained the conviction in Baca's trial by the use of false evidence, but these other judges upheld the conviction. 

“The 9th Circuit (the federal court) keeps seeing this misconduct over and over again,” commented Gerald Uelmen of the Santa Clara University School of Law. Nor, has the judicial misconduct ceased. Currently, the FBI is investigating the Orange County Sheriff Department’s long-term misuse of jail house informants. On Thursday, December 15, 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the FBI’s investigation of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department use of jail house informants. 

The investigation will focus on allegations that the OCDA and OCSD “systematically used jailhouse informants to elicit incriminating statements from specific inmates,” inmates who had been charged and were already represented by attorneys. The investigation will also examine if county prosecutors violated defendants’ rights to a fair trial by “failing to disclose promises of leniency that would have substantially undermined the credibility of the informants’ trial testimony.” 

Since a high percentage of judges come from the district attorney’s office, they are well aware of these unconstitutional practices. Without the cooperation and supervision of the judges, these decades of serious constitutional abuses would not exist. We have to remember that we are not talking about short cuts to “catch the bad guys,” but rather, are plagued with intentional schemes to convict the innocent. 

California’s Judges Preside over a System with an Epidemic of Misconduct 

The three federal judges in the Baca Case did not limit their criticism to objecting to this one prosecutor’s behavior in that case, but they went on to charge that the California judicial system has “an epidemic of misconduct” and they laid the blame at the feet of the California State court judges who turn a blind eye. 

These three federal judges’ observation on the lack of ethics in the California judiciary brings us full circle to Proposition 66. One thing which Proposition 66 does is return Habeas Corpus hearings to the original trial judge. Habeas Corpus is Latin for You May Have the Body. A person requests a court to free a person from jail, and if the court grants the request, it gives a Habeas Corpus order, which says, “You may have the body.” 

Proposition 66 wants this vital decision to be made by the judge who has the highest likelihood of helping to railroad an innocent person to the death chamber. Before Proposition 66, the Habeas Corpus hearings were held before other judges who had no vested interest in denying this particular request. The last person on earth who should preside over a Habeas Corpus hearing is the judge who just orchestrated the conviction. 

This aspect of Proposition 66 doubles down on the corrupt nature of the California judiciary, and it is not surprising that it contains this provision gutting Habeas Corpus hearings. 

Assuming California has the same percentage of innocent people sitting on death row as other states, then about 30 innocent people are likely to die if Proposition 66 is found constitutional. For judges, who have helped railroad innocent people by looking the other way at prosecutorial misconduct, anything that reduces the chances that their complicity in wrongful convictions can be revealed is a good thing. As the saying goes, “dead men tell no tales.” They see Proposition 66 as a way to prevent their epidemic of misconduct from being exposed. 

What Will Become of Proposition 66's Requirement that We Kill People Faster? 

Rejecting Proposition 66 will not rectify the decades of judicial misconduct in the California judiciary. Rejecting Proposition 66 will, however, temporarily slow down California’s slide into an ethical morass.

(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.

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-We could surely address growing social and economic inequality in Los Angeles if each call to update the Community Plans was matched with a nice raise for all those who live and work in the City of Angels. 

But, please don’t hold your breath, because there are tremendous barriers to effectively updating the Community Plans. When the job is finally completed, the curses of time, a rudimentary planning process, and City Hall’s pay-to-play political culture will have rendered the final product useless. This hopeful City Hall magical elixir is just a will-o-the-wisp. 

Furthermore, there is every indication that if and when the Community Plans are eventually updated, the Updates will be used to placate developers, not a concerned public rooting for a well-planned city. And, if Measure S, the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, wins on March 7, the timetable to update the Community Plans will dramatically speed-up. Like the botched and annulled Hollywood Plan, each future Update will be quickly appended with extensive up-zoning and up-planning ordinances to circumvent Measure S’s ban on spot-zoning and spot-planning. 

Private Greed, not Public Need 

As described in a recent Los Angeles Times editorial, City Hall’s slimy pay-to-play land use decision-making process has become “soft corruption.” But, this corruption is much more than a problem of public perception. It also means that land use decisions – especially for mega-projects – are disconnected from the legally mandated planning process. This is because LA’s money-infused pay-to-play culture annually spawns hundreds of parcel level zone-changes, height district changes, and General Plan amendments. Called spot-zoning, the result is that many Los Angeles neighborhoods are already dotted with parcels that exceed legally adopted zoning, height districts, and General Plan designations. 

Furthermore, if and when the City Council eventually adopts updated Community Plans, continued spot-zoning will render every Community Plan irrelevant. Each Plan’s land use maps and implementing zoning ordinances will become a shelf document because deep-pocketed developers will continue to overturn adopted plans and zoning at whim. When their bean counters tell them, for example, they can make considerably more money through a high-rise luxury apartment tower than a low-rise retail store, contributions will flow, followed by zoning applications and eventually by building permits. 

In this world unrestrained market forces, not official plans and zones, remain LA’s de facto planning process. The City’s legally adopted General Plan, including its Community Plans and their implementing zones, will stay on the books, but as minor speed-bumps on the yellow brick road to private enrichment. 

Like today, pay-to-play will continue to squeeze certainty and predictability out of the planning process. 

Technical barriers to effective Community Plan Updates 

In addition to these formidable political barriers to effective Community Plan updates, there are three technical barriers begging for solutions. 

• Community Plans should be updated every five years, not on a 20 or 25 year cycle. The current Update process, called the New Community Plans, began over a decade ago, when Gail Goldberg was the Director of City Planning. Beginning with her administration, the City Planning Department has only updated several Community Plans, and its latest estimate is 7 to 10 years to complete the job. Long before then, however, the entire updating process should start all over again. 

• The Community Plans -- the General Plan’s Land Use Element -- apply the Updated General Plan’s many citywide elements (chapters) to local communities. But, City Planning is updating the Community Plans on a separate timeline. They will complete most of these local plans without the benefit of updated citywide General Plan data and policies. Cities with such a fragmented, cart-before-the-horse approach, therefore, rely on dumb luck that their local Community Plans properly knit together and cohesively guide the entire city. 

• There is no accurate and timely data of the buildout potential of Los Angeles’s existing zoning. City Planning computed such buildout calculations 25 years ago, but since then City Hall has implemented SB 1818, the Density Bonus ordinance. It allows up to two more stories of residential development on all commercial lots. This means that LA’s long, one and two story commercial corridors could now be rebuilt with four or even five story mixed-use or totally residential apartment structures. 

What is already visible on the Miracle Mile could repeat itself on all other commercial thoroughfares, such as Pico or Washington. While this zoning potential certainly varies among Community Plan areas, an effective planning process needs to carefully consider this data, especially in light of forecast demographic trends. Even if City Hall relies on SCAG’s habitually inflated population numbers, there is every indication that LA has far more land zoned for apartments than would be required by all conceivable General Plan growth scenarios. 

My conclusion 

For the Community Plans to be a magic elixir, the City of Los Angeles must overcome two barriers. First, City Hall’s soft-corruption has to go. If it remains, it totally undermines any planning process. Second, the technical planning process needs to be accelerated, properly sequence, and based on reliable data for the city’s zoning build-out potential. 

This is certainly a tall order, but it is necessary.

(Dick Platkin is a former LA City Planner who reports on local planning issues for City Watch. He welcomes comments and corrections at [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW--City Council incumbent Gilbert Cedillo has set sail on his campaign to retain his District 1 City Council seat. LA’s primary election is March 7. His ship may be off to a rocky start, however. Activist Marc Caswell asks if Cedillo is using his office resources to send campaign emails, which may be in violation of LA Municipal Code section 49.5.5b? 

No City official or employee of an agency shall engage in campaign-related activities such as fundraising, the development of electronic or written materials, or research, for a campaign for any elective office of ballot measure during the hours for which he or she is receiving pay to engage in City business or using City facilities, equipment, supplies or other City resources. 

While we don’t know if Cedillo has been campaigning during office hours, LA’s Marc Caswell believes Cedillo has used city resources to send campaign emails. Caswell, who lives on the border between CD13 and CD1 says he subscribes to the email newsletters for both districts’ council members in order to stay up to date on community news and information. 

“I find it odd that I started receiving campaign emails from only Mr. Cedillo when I know I never signed up for them, “ he explains. “I think it’s wholly inappropriate that an elected official would take his taxpayer-funded newsletters (database) and use that for campaign emails. And this offense is ever more egregious since Mr. Cedillo didn’t even bother to change his City Hall office address for his campaign emails.” 

Caswell says he filed an ethics complaint because “elected officials should not abuse the taxpayer by spending our money on their re-election campaign. Not only is this a clear violation of City Ethics laws but it shows Mr. Cedillo’s clear lack of respect for the voters and residents of Los Angeles.” 

This isn’t the first time Caswell has filed an ethics complaint against Councilmember Cedillo. Back in November, Caswell says he sent a complaint about a violation of another law related to emails that was reviewed by the Ethics Commission. He is still awaiting a response. 

“Normally, I’m not this nit-picky -- but he keeps violating email ethic laws over and over!” says Caswell.
Stay tuned. If Caswell is right, Cedillo’s campaign journey may run into some campaign turbulence before he reaches that doc by the primary election bay.

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.)

-cw