It's a small world isn't it, small and funny and fine -- at least for people in the tight little circles of influence where opportunity to reward friends and punish enemies abounds.
Take the case of Northeast San Fernando Valley Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes who, while nobody was watching largely because he has been so invisible, took steps to strip the City of L.A. and its citizens of their basic right to decide land use issues by letting developers do almost anything they want like tear down houses and put up apartments.
It should be noted that his skullduggery was aided and abetted by the fact the Daily News no longer has anyone in Sacramento and the Times still doesn't care about such mundane matters as the well-being of the city.
But word does get around and on Friday Rick Orlov reported Fuente's deceit and a brushfire of outrage quickly spread across the city.
(Strike up the appropriate music by clicking here to get in the right mood for what follows)
With a little help from his friends, Fuentes has concocted a measure, AB212, that "would limit the ability of the city to make zone changes in areas where the community plan is not consistent with the general plan," according to Orlov.
That lack of consistency is everywhere since the general plan is a fraud and the community plans outdated.
Fuentes' goal is affordable housing -- a code word for taxpayer subsidized housing for the poor and densification of neighborhoods all across L.A.
Now I don't know at this point who would get rich from Fuentes' effort to strip the people of L.A. and their government of control of land use but an examination of how he came to be an elected official and how this legislation came to be might be instructive.
For starters, you need to know Fuentes is a tool of City Councilman Richard Alarcon and former City Council President Alex Padilla, who is now a state senator.
Now 39, Fuentes is a Valley boy who boasts he "began his career promoting immigrant and children's rights through the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law," so he is not unaware of the importance of respecting people's rights. He went to work for Padilla in 1999 and two years later, undoubtedly with the support of the Padilla, he became weak Mayor Jim Hahn's deputy in the Valley until he returned as Padilla's chief of staff.
It gets more incestuous fast.
When Padilla resigned to move to the Assembly and a special election was held in May 2007, Fuentes was going to run his council seat but Alarcon wanted to be home more and make a lot more money so he took the council slot and pushed everybody else out of the way so Fuentes could go to the legislature.
Right after his election, Alarcon helped Fuentes get some cash he needed to set up his new life -- a $7,500 bonus awarded for services rendered which the council passed unanimously without discussion.
At the same time, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa named Ernesto Cardenas, brother of Valley Councilman Tony Cardenas, to the city Public Works Board, the only city commission that pays its members a salary, a handsome one at that.
As luck would have it, Ernesto replaced a relative of Felipe's, Yolanda Fuentes. An even more amazing coincidence: Yolanda was named by Villaraigosa to be his Valley liaison.
(Try another chorus of "Small World" if you'd like)
OK, none of this is just a coincidence. It all came about as part of backroom dealing and conspiracies. The same surely is true of how Fuentes came to gut a dormant one-sentence budget bill and turn it into the monstrosity it is today.
For that you have got travel back in time to last year when 14 Assembly members proposed AB 212 as a dummy bill to change state budget procedures It read in full:
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF
SECTION 1. It is the intent of the Legislature to enact statutory
changes relating to the Budget Act of 2007.
It sailed through the Assembly and onto the Senate as part of the Democrats' budget negotiations strategy but nothing came of it. So on July 17, 2007, Fuentes quietly laid the groundwork for his gambit by gutting AB 212, putting his name on it and turning it into a radical change in zoning law.
The ingenuity of this deceit is that the measure is alive throughout this year's session because it passed one house already and can linger like a deadly poison until the legislature's last frantic moments when all hell breaks loose and almost anything can happen.
Indeed, the Fuentes transformation of the bill from a budget measure to a zoning measure rested pregnant with sinister possibilities until he amended it nearly nine months later to apply only to L.A. and to qualify it as an emergency so it would take immediate effect On May 6, Fuentes put the finishing touches on his bill which would give developers a license to trash every single neighborhood zoned residential in L.A.
On Friday, the stench of AB212 finally reached City Hall where the City Council voted 13-0 to oppose it.
Councilwoman Wendy Greuel captured the council's sentiment by saying, "The last thing we need is Sacramento telling us how to do land use." No offense to Wendy, but the council members zealously and jealousy regard selling out the public interest in their districts to developers as their own personal prerogative. After all how else could they raise all that money for campaigns and perks.
For his part, Fuentes says with a bit of candor that he just wants to make "sure that people who want to build affordable housing are not blocked by delays that could occur," Heaven forbid, the community have some say in how their neighborhoods are going to be turned into gang-infested slums.
And while most council members were beating their chests at the insult of not being told in advance and cut into this scam, Fuentes found at least one ally, the aformentioned Mr. Alarcon.who, with the innocence of a newborn baby, wants to "try to work with him to see why he introduced it."
Well, we'd all like to get to the bottom of that.
Street-hassle blogger Joseph Mailander has offered to pursue the backroom dealings story on the inside mechanics and positioning of AB 212, so email him at joseph.mailander@gmail.com.
And if you know who stands to get rich off of this deal, feel free to email me at ron@ronkayela.com.
Ron Kaye is the former editor of the Los Angeles Daily News where he spent 23 years helping to make the newspaper the voice of the San Fernando Valley and fighting for a city government that serves the people and not special interests.
Twice in recent years, Los Angeles Magazine listed Kaye among the city’s most influential people, specifically in the area of politics. Kaye has been variously described in the media as the “accidental anarchist,” “the Patrick Henry of the San Fernando Valley” and a “passionate populist.” He is now committed to
carrying on his crusade for a greater Los Angeles as an ordinary citizen. Previously, Ron worked at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner,
Associated Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Australian as well as papers
in Fairbanks, Alaska and Yakima, Wash. He also wrote for Newsweek magazine, The Guardian in London and the Naitonal Enquirer.
Who else besides developers, real estate agents, mortgage and escrow companies, builders, councilmen's coffers, kick-back-getting-contractors and associated wheelers-and-dealers.
The littler guys who will reap the benefits are moving van men and u-haulers to relocate all those displaced people.
Then there's the roach coach operators who will use their greasy hands to oil the palms of the builders...the more grease, the better location for the coach at the building sites.
I'm sure there are more who can be added to the list.
I don't quite understand why someone who's on the war path to defeat another AB bill enclosed all these email address for state senators, when I thought "AB" meant Assembly Bill."
For what it's worth, state senators email addresses are below, plus two assemblymen's I got out of the Daily News.
senator.kuehl@sen.ca.gov
senator.aanestad@sen.ca.gov
senator.alquist@sen.ca.gov
senator.cedillo@sen.ca.gov
senator.cox@sen.ca.gov
senator.maldonado@sen.ca.gov
senator.mcleod@sen.ca.gov
senator.ridley-thomas@sen.ca.gov
Senator.steinberg@sen.ca.gov
senator.wyland@sen.ca.gov
senator.yee@sen.ca.gov
Very important, be sure to send a copy of your email to: scott.seekatz@asm.ca.gov
(Mr. Seekatz will be sure your letters get circulated).
Sharon Runner: assemblywoman.runner@asm.ca.gov
Lloyd Levine: assemblymember.levine@assembly.ca.gov
Aaarnold: governor@governor.ca.gov
Assembly people who don't have email address, means you have to go through their Web sites. It also means that to email them through their sites you have to put in a phoney address and their zip code so they'll think you're a constituent.
Think that's cheating? I don't. I usually put in a sentence saying I don't care if I don't live in their district, they represent all of us in one way or another.
All of them do have office and fax numbers.
Audra Strickland
Cameron Smyth
Felipe Fuentes
Julia Brownley
Mike Furer
Paul Frekorian
Anthony Portantino
This bill already passed the Assembly, and is now awaiting passage in the Senate under an "urgency clause," which usually refers just to emergencies and public safety issues. Wonder what "emergency" Fuentes, Alarcon (and Padilla and Cardenas?) have in mind? Someone said the most immediate one is the Verdugo Hills development they're pushing over community opposition, but I have no personal info. Alarcon recently suffered a public defeat over Las Lomas, of course, going against Greig Smith in a very personal way -- the lobbyist for that project is closely connected to his own staff.
This bill passed Assembly only AFTER it was rewritten to exclude all other cities except L A.; the others who'd gotten wind of it, vehemently objected. Why didn't Alarcon, Cardenas, Reyes and Padilla -- recent City CM -- tell the CM's not in their clique about this? Let us guess... Smith is right that L A is hurting from a lack of paid staff in Sacramento; the 1-2 paid lobbyists let this, plus stealing $2 Billion of our gas taxes intended for transportation for the State general fund, sticking L A county with the biggest burden for taking over state failures with its prisons, bills harming our environment when it comes to trucking, who knows what else, go unnoticed.
But where have Smith and the Council been while Reyes has been saying, week after week, month after month, that it's precisely his intention as head of PLUM to push these "affordable housing" schemes into areas which most vehemently oppose them, singling out CDs 5 and 11 in so many words, as well as "the hillside federations" and Valley?
Reyes, Cardenas especially have done a good job distracting angry HOA's with their McMansions ordinance, making themselves seem like the real "advocated of the public." What do they care if some private citizen has to scale back a house, as long as they get their cut from subsidized huge projects, and get to move their residents including many illegals, into other districts? It just makes room for new immigrants.
9:32, It's "Mike Feuer," not Furer.
Picky. Picky. What's a little transpositoin between Anonymouses?
The taxpayers will not have to be concerned with using tax dollars for affordable housing, at least some of it. The city has a proposed ordinance (CPC-2005-8252) which will finance such housing in the coastal zone. The owners of duplexes in the coastal areas of Los Angeles will.
Owners of old obsolete duplexes who wish to rebuild will be required to pay between $250,000 to over $300,000 per unit to the City housing trust if their tenants' income or rent falls below a specified amount.
The housing study (paid for by our tax dollars) reports that any lesser amount would not accomplish housing goals because most of the housing in the coastal zone consist of duplexes.
The study reports that to give duplex owners the same "break" given to owners of larger complexes who would be charged $200,000 to $300,000 for replacing nine affordable units, would not generate enough revenue.
Call me naive, but truly, who is Fuentes trying to kiss up to with this piece of legislation? The builders?
Do they really have such a stake in L.A. anymore?
Or is he trying to appear to have an interest in the poor?
I am naive, aren't I? I just don't get it.
Ron, this morning a bunch of people advocating for affordable housing, incl. AB212, showed up at city hall to make public comment: priests, homeless advocates, a variety of people struggling on Section 8 funds, incl. several who only spoke Spanish, like one guy who's on disability and brought his whole family with a sad story about how they're all in a one-bedroom apt. they can barely afford with a landlord who doesn't want the kids running around the building.
Then Reyes popped up for a very passionate response (not even legally allowed per the City Attorney but he went on anyway), with his usual blast against the homeowner and resident groups who argue against affordable housing/ Section 8 projects in their areas, and promising them that he would push for the affordable housing these people want: the AB212, using AB1818 this way, whatever he can manage. (Cardenas spoke in suppport, and Rosendhahl lamented the loss of $1 Billion bond for Prop H last year.)
Reyes railed against others on the Council who didn't see things his way, and with him as head of PLUM, and the other members being Weiss and Huizar, who do you think he's referring to as his nemesis, the protector of low density neighborhoods, if not your regular (and unjustified) nemesis? I honestly am not an "insider," but as an active observer of the City Council since I've started paying attention to how my NC's interests are at odds with these sorts of projects in our neighborhoods, Reyes, Cardenas, Alarcon and Fuentes literally terrify me. Clearly, they plan to mobilize the poor and clergy and activists with these sob stories, trying to make those of us hanging onto our homes and what we've got left out to be evil people -- as Reyes regularly does.
Ron, please alert people you talk to in HOA's and other meetings, about what's going on, get them to show up and fight for preserving what's left of our property values and neighborhoods -- these massive projects of affordable housing can and must be put where they don't destroy others' investments, and add to congestion and traffic that's already a nightmare.
It simply is NOT a "right" to move into projects in Bel Air or Holmby Hills or Hancock Park, etc.; NO city allows this, certainly not Mexico City, and even the most congested ones like Tokyo and London have definitely protected, less dense neighborhoods. However, as a new city that grew up with a surburban feel, L A is even more entitled to preserve its unique identity that these hundreds of year old ones that grew up around a dense core -- and we MUST.
People must email/ write their councilmembers and Assembly; Reyes says he doesn't have a majority yet (thank G-d), so that must mean there's some hope for now: Greuel, Smith, Weiss, Wesson, Parks (?), Zine, and LaBonge and Rosendahl (who's supposed to represent the Palisades and Brentwood as well as Mar Vista and Venice), Hahn have single-family areas which don't want everything to become TJ. But so does Reyes, who has hills about McArthur Park, and Huizar, etc. have less dense communities, too.
The politics of Los Angeles has become an ethnocracy.
Look it up, it's a real word. Call me a bigot, if you will, but my wife is a Mexican immigrant (legal from the beginning) and my kids are half Gringo, half Latino. Even my wife and my kids can see the Mexican style of politics creeping into California and other SoWest states. They don't like it. It's not good for Americans, Norte`, Latino, or otherwise.
Call me curious....
Question #1:
How can a bill pass the State Assembly under one guise, then shape shift into a zoning bill for consideration by the State Senate without the Assembly ever having the opportunity to consider the reinvented version?
As Ron noted in July 2007 Assemblyman Fuentes ‘amended’ AB 212, which had been introduced in January of that year. Strikethroughs are all that remain of the original bill in Assemblyman Fuentes' reincarnated AB 212. The bill was amended further in August of 2007, March 2008 and most recently last month.
Question #2:
What makes you think Fuentes’ version of AB 212 was created with a specific project in mind?
Quite likely AB 212 has implications for a lot more than one project; however, the third paragraph of the State Assembly Bill Analysis of AB 212 sheds a little light on that question:
"A Los Angeles developer wants to build houses on a former golf course. The community plan for the area (part of the City's general plan) calls for residential use in a range of densities: very low, low, and medium. In March 2007, the local city councilmember proposed amending the plan to delete the higher densities and instead designate the property for open space or minimum residential uses. In July 2007, the developer applied for a zoning ordinance amendment that would be consistent with the community plan's designations."
Coincidentally MWH Development filed their application for a 229 unit housing development on the Verdugo Hills Golf Course property on June 27, 2007, just three weeks prior to the debut of the Fuentes’ newly restructured AB 212.
Question #3:
Who supports/opposes the Fuentes’s version of AB 212?
The State Assembly Bill Analysis of AB 212 lists the following:
Support:
MWH Development Corporation
California Building Industry Association
California Home Builders
Catalina Pacific Utilities
Spiegel Development Inc.
Opposition:
City of Los Angeles
American Planning Association-California Chapter
California State Association of Counties
League of California Cities
Regional Council of Rural Counties.
Question #4:
HOW is a bill like AB 212 able to fly under the public radar for so long?
I don't have an answer for that one.
Along those same lines, how does someone go about voicing their opinion about AB 212?
Visit: Comment on an Assembly Bill
You can also contact members of the State Senate Local Government Committee. They will be hearing the bill on Wednesday, June 4.
The latest on tomorrow's State Senate Local Government Committee hearing....Assemblyman Fuentes has pulled AB 212. According to staff at the committee office AB 212 has been reset for June 18th.
You know, I'm as angry about this sleaze bag and his tactics as anyone else, but let's draw the line at labeling this "Mexican style politics" (Buckoux, this is aimed primarily at YOU).
The fact of the matter is is that this kind of maneuvering between developers and politicians has been happening LONG before Hispanics got into the political field -- L.A. wouldn't be where it is (fighting for meager pockets of open space) were it not for the "good 'ol [white] boys" of yore. The San Fernando Valley used to be mostly fields and ranches up until the 1970's, remember?
Fuentes pulled the bill altogether last Monday, June 9. We've added a summary about AB212 on the www.savethegolfcourse.org website.
Interesting quotes to come out of the last few weeks:
Fuentes: "My concern was making sure that people who want to build affordable housing are not blocked by delays that could occur."
"Council may fight bill to limit L.A. power", Ron Orlove, Daily News, May 23
Kathay Feng, Pres. of California Common Cause: "An Assembly person should not be writing exceptions to the city law to benefit donors, friends or any other person."
"Assembly bill is tailored for L.A. developer", Patrick McGreevy, LA Times, June 9
Wendy Greuel: "The last thing we need is Sacramento telling us how to do land use. If this is such good legislation, why is it being applied only to Los Angeles?"
"Council may fight bill to limit L.A. power", Ron Orlov, Daily News, May 23
Fuentes: "To avoid criticism, we decided not to apply it broadly because Los Angeles is very different than Northern California. We wanted to make sure the process is working in the city of Los Angeles and then figure out how to back into the rest of the state."
"Fuentes shelves land-use bill", Kerry Cavanaugh, Daily News, June 10
Raul Bocanegra, Fuentes' Chief of Staff: "We are killing the bill. Unfortunately, the bill has been tainted. We are going to take a hard look at it and we are going to work with the city."
"Bill to put homes on Verdugo Hills Golf Course is killed by its author", Patrick McGreevy, LA Times, June 10
"Good riddance. This was a truly bad bill, in every sense of the word."
Editorial, Daily News , June 10
L.A. Times Letter to the Editor:
Actions on bill
Re "Assembly measure is tailored for firm," June 9
The Times draws the wrong inference from my actions on AB 212. I was not trying to delay a vote on AB 212, a bill that would take away local land-use decision-making power and that could have a profound impact on city planning.
I was against AB 212 from the moment I heard about it, and I voted to oppose it. My request for a report back to the council was not about delaying the vote or helping a contributor, as The Times implies. Indeed, my request did the opposite. The substance of AB 212 was introduced 10 months before council member Wendy Greuel introduced her resolution, and my efforts were to determine why it took so long for us to learn about a bill that is so obviously against the best interest of the city.
The council needs to know when legislation that affects Los Angeles is introduced so we can consider the bill, ask questions and take an informed stance -- not be blindsided.
Richard Alarcón
Council Member, District 7
Los Angeles
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You mean Alarcon didn't know what his friend Fuentes was doing up in Sacramento?
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