October 2008 Archives

And the winner is ... David T. Vahedi.

The 60 or so representatives of dozens of groups that are part of the Coalition of Homeowner Associations-Council District 5 came to a near-unanimous verdict that Vahedi, an attorney and former state tax auditor, was their choice to succeed Councilman Jack Weiss, the wannabe City Attorney they disliked so much they tried to recall him.

I was one of the moderators of the group's recent two-hour forum in which five Fifth District candidates participated and here's what homeowner activists said when asked later "which candidate or candidates were the most likely to be an advocate for protecting and preserving neighborhoods":


As community groups come together, we are seeing positive signs of change. The Cultural Heritage Commission vote to grant monument status to Griffith Park, the DWP debate on a Ratepayer Advocate, the Planning Commission push for a ban on new billboards are just a few of the recent events where public pressure have helped move things forward.

Even the lively City Council debate on ballot measures this week shows what happens when the poltiicians see the community is paying attention, getting aroused and organizing.

For a long time, I've said i'm not sure if we can change the people but I know we can change the agenda.

I'm now beginning to think we could even change the people. The entry of DWP board president Nick Patsaouras into the Controller race, strong challengers to Weiss for City Attorney and the possibility Rich Caruso will jump into the mayor's race provide the opportunity to wake up the voters and make a difference.

It's hard to believe that the City of Los Angeles has designated 900 places for preservation as cultural-historical monuments and it's taken this long and this much effort from so many to get the city's greatest asset, Griffith Park, within reach of that status.

In a hearing room packed with 150 or so community activists, the Cultural Heritage Commission voted 4-1 to approve monument status for the park, setting the stage for the City Council to act on their decision.

The key moment came at the outset when Councilman Tom LaBonge, who represents the park area and is it's No. 1 cheerleader, ended doubts about where he stands with unequivocal support for the commission staff report which found nearly all of the park contributed to its cultural-historical significance.

LaBonge talked about his love affair with the park and his daily hikes, and how Babe Ruth found out he was traded from the Red Sox to Yankees while playing golf at Harding and how his idol Walt Disney dreamed up Disneyland watching kids playing on the park's merry-go-round.

The crowd loved it and cheered him for his support, and for dispelling the notion that he harbored a dream of creating a different kind of "Disneyland" in the thousands of acres of wilderness in Griffith Park.

In all, 58 community members signed up to speak and they got their chance after representatives of the Autry National Center and the lobbyist firm Latham & Watkins accused them of having "misunderstood" or worse "misstated" the Autry's position on the park proposal.

They were all for approving monument status for the park as long as it fully excluded the Autry.

The Autry, the zoo, Toyon Landfill were among the parts of the park that city planning staff determined were not elements of the historical nature that justified granting special protections.

The Autry, which pays $1 a year lease for its 12 acres and wants to expand dramatically on the 10 unused acres, is the most contentious issue and its continuing dismissal of community opposition only fans the passions of their opponents.

The sore spot has less to do with Griffith Park but its willingness to commit to maintaining the Southwest Museum in the Mt. Washington/Highland Park area as a living museum of western and Indian culture. Long mismanaged, the Southwest -- with a collection of art and artifacts far more valuable than the Autry's -- was taken over several years with a promise it would be restored and maintained.

The Autry, once seen as a savior, now faces intense community opposition and the Cultural Heritage Commission spent a lot of time talking what it's role could be since it is included in the overall monument area but not a "character defining" element of the history.

The issue of the Autry and similar elements was left vague and the staff was directed to develop a policy that would let the commission intervene if any development might negatively impact the park's character.

In the end, community activists came away pleased that they had gotten as much as they could have hoped for and started gearing up for the dealing with the City Council.

So how does an out-of-state company that gets paid $32 million under a three-year contract with L.A. County to help welfare recipients get jobs win a contract renewal when it fails to meet five of its eight goals?

This is L.A., baby, so it does it the L.A. way. It hires well-connected lobbyists like Harvey Englander and Associates and it starts spreading the money.

According to Garrett Therolf in the Times, Maximus Inc. of Virginia has contributed thousands of dollars to county supervisors and spent $124,000 on lobbying the county this year, making it the third biggest spender on influence peddling for the first half of the year, according to records.

The money seems to have helped. Maximus is still in the running for a new contract, one that includes a 21 percent bonus for achieving certain goals, despite being rejected by Department of Public Social Services officials, a review panel and the county auditor-controller.

"The recommendation to cut Maximus follows previous efforts by county officials to sever the county's relationship with the company, whose aggregate 13 years of service have been marked at times by significant shortcomings," the Times reported.

It may have helped Maximus that the top-rated firm for the contract, Policy Studies Inc., of Denver spent only $5,000 on lobbyists.

Or maybe having Supervisor Don Knabe's son Matt on the payroll of Englander's lobbying firm is helping or that Englander himself has served as a political consultant to Knabe in the past.

No way any of that would influence anybody, according to everyone involved.

Whether Maximus gets the contract appears to depend on Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky with Knabe and Mike Antonovish on side with the company and Gloria Molina and Yvonne Burke opposed, in part because they think the job placement work should be done by unionized county workers.

In 2000, Yaroslavsky took heat from the unions for casting the deciding vote for Maximus a year after the company made a $25,000 donation to a political committee run by his political allies fighting efforts to expand the Board of Supervisors.

Yaroslavsky is likely to be in the same swing vote position again. His spokesman, Joel Bellman, said: "He is still studying and gathering information."

For a few hours Wednesday afternoon, the Los Angeles City Council actually acted like a legislative body debating issues of great public importance as if they represented democracy in action -- instead of a conspiracy to hoodwink the people and sell out the public interest.

The issues that caught my ear as I listened in were the Instant Runoff Voting ballot measure and the Luxury Tax on big houses.

The sell in both cases amounted to money, nothing but money. And why not when the city admits to a $110 million current deficit and a looming $400 million shortfall and knows it will get worse in the months ahead.

Instant Runoff is one of those great ideas that works in really democratic communities where there's lots of candidates for every office, a contentious political environment and competitive races -- towns like Berkeley or Santa Monica or Cambridge, Mass.

It eliminates runoff elections by having voters number their first choice, second choice and so on. So when no one gets a majority, the also-rans are eliminated and the second choices are counted until a majority is attained.

In L.A., the unions and such great advocates for the masses as Jackie Goldberg and other ultra-liberals are gung-ho for it because they believe it will all but eliminate the pretense of city elections and allow them to indulge their destructive political fantasies for decades to come no matter what the people think.

Surprisingly, the argument that eliminating runoffs would save millions fell apart because election officials pointed out the near impossibility of doing that in isolation from the state and and county and Councilman Dennis Zine honed in on the fact it would actually cost more for the next few years at the least.

Others spoke up like Jan Perry and noted that underdogs in L.A. stand almost no chance in elections that are as lopsided in fund-raising and insider support as they are unless they can force a runoff. The playing field levels then as it did in her upset win to her first term.

Councilman Richard Alarcon's class warfare against the rich was even more inspiring since what he proposed had even less merit.

Frankly, I could sooner support a soak-the-rich city income tax than go along with charging them money because they have a big house as Alarcon wants. That at least would represent an honest socialist point of view about redistributing the wealth rather than taxing them on the presumption that owning a big house requires more city services.

By that illogic, residents of poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods would pay higher taxes because they require more cops and support services than affluent hillside residents.

Bill Rosendahl actually got testy about it -- a violation of the council's rules of tepid engagement and unanimous agreement -- and Alarcon bristled at the violation, arguing the $10 million his plan would raise would make his class warfare supporters happy even if it wouldn't do anything to solve the massive deficit problem.

All in all, I took it as a good sign that there was still some life left in City Hall politicians. Maybe, just maybe they aren't dead souls.Maybe they are just the living dead and we can still resurrect them if we can awaken ourselves.

In an orgy of self-congratulations and abdication of responsibility, City Council members agreed Wednesday that the LAPD's crime lab needs more money to eliminate over the next 30 months the 7,000 backlog of rape kits that have gone untested for DNA for years.

Council members, without even a hint of shame, acted as if they had not ignored the problem and endless warnings for years even as they admitted that an up-to-date crime lab is a  necessity, a basic service, to protect the public.

No sooner had the hour-long discussion of how they are all committed to contracting with outside labs in the short-term and hiring 10 criminalists every six months than officials of Emergency Management Department stepped forward and said they were ill-prepared for the city's frequent disasters whether its fires, floods, earthquakes or train wrecks.

They said they desperately need three of the seven positions they have been asking for filled to begin to deal with their inability to provide this basic service.

Again, it's about basic services that aren't being met even as revenues soared. Now the city faces a massive deficit.

I invite you to respond in comments or email me at ron@ronkayela.com with your examples of basic services that are not being delivered.

That's what Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Tuesday at a hurriedly called press conference that he had miraculously found nearly $1 million to pay for testing of semen stored in the nearly 7,000 rape kits that have piled up because City Hall didn't have enough money to hire lab technicians.

I don't want to be overly harsh about the mayor's audacity in boasting about how he keeps promises but maybe the operative word might be "bank" since we all have learned in recent days that they can't be trusted and are subject to failure.

But let's not get lost in the question of breaking promises. The issue is untested rape kits and it was put in perspective just last week by City Hall's persona non grata, Controller Laura Chick, who in a scathing report riled up the public by exposing just how negligent city officials have been in investigating rape cases.

Given the abhorrent nature of rape and other sex crimes, the report prompted the mayor, Police Chief William Bratton and the trio of ambitious City Council members -- Jack Weiss, Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti -- to hold a press conference in time for the evening TV news to announce $950,000 was suddenly available for the LAPD's crime lab.

Noticeably not invited to the event was Chick for reasons that should be obvious: If she's going to embarrass City Hall for rolling up a deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars and not solve the most basic problems, then she won't get invited to the self-promotion party.

The mayor, under whose leadership police requests for adequate crime lab funding were turned down, declared the city has a "solemn obligation to seek justice" when crimes are committed and he now has found the political will to fulfill his duty.

"When I put my word to it, you can take it to the bank," the Daily News quoted him as saying.. "If you are a rapist and you think you got away, forget it."

The price certainly won't be cheap but the brand is pure gold -- Beverly Hills 90210.

Feeling a lot like the woebegone residents of Los Angeles whose leaders have sold out the city and its people, the community is fighting what they believe is a critical battle against high-rise development that will set the course for the city for years to come.

At issue is a project adjacent to the Beverly Hills for a massive high-rise development at one of the nation's busiest and most famous intersections -- where Wilshire and Santa Monica meet.

It is the dreamchild of tough guy developer, the one-time schlock computer maker Beny Alagem and the hardball lobbyists and consultants he has hired to sell voters on the virtues of Beverly Hills tallest building and two other high-rises that will provide expensive condominiums and a Waldorf Astoria Hotel adjacent to the Beverly Hilton.

Residents see it as the start of something big, way too big -- a domino effect that would turn Beverly Hills into Century City and Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood, creating massive traffic congestion, changing the skyline, polluting the air during five or more years of construction.

For many like Terre Thomas, daughter of the late entertainer Danny Thomas and sister of actress Marlo Thomas, community activism had meant her involvement in St. Jude Children's Research Hospital which had been her father's favorite charity.

"We know this isn't the '50s anymore," says Terre Thomas, daughter of the late entertainer Danny Thomas and sister of actress Marlo Thomas,  whose community activism had meant her involvement in St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, her father's favorite charity.

"But some things have got to stay the same. Many people are very upset at Beverly Hills becoming a high-rise city and that this will unleash a whole lot of other high-rise projects. We don't want to see Beverly Hills ruined."

Thomas has helped produce a video that tells the story of why so many oppose what Alagem, who has parlayed his wealth from the knockoff computer maker Packard Bell nearly two decades ago into a real estate fortune.

The Planning Commission rejected his proposal after months of review 5-0 but the City Council approved it 3-2, forcing residents to get a petition drive going and get it on next Tuesday's ballot as Proposition H.

They want people to vote "No" and reject the project, forcing Alagem to come back with a more appropriate sized project.

If it's any consolation to residents of L.A. who are fighting battles like this all over town, the issue isn't demographics -- Beverly Hills is 85 percent white. BH has an annual household income nearly twice L.A.'s. BH has a tenth the population of L.A. and BH has hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank versus L.A. facing a deficit of hundreds of millions of dollars.

So why did the Beverly Hills City Council ignore the interests of the community and sell out the city's future? Listen to what the No on H campaign has to say and what the yes on H campaign has to say about this project:

 

Editor's Note: I wrote this article for the October edition of Nina Royal's North Valley Reporter which is now available.

For too long the politically conscious people of Los Angeles have projected their own good hearts and good intentions onto their City Council members and come hat in hand hoping for favors like a speed bump on their street or been seduced by a smile and flattering word.

If we're going to change the political culture of City Hall and save the city from over-development, over-population and over-taxation, we're going to have to stop being so naive and get tough with our elected officials.

The problem in a nutshell is they treat us like their servants and order us around and make decisions for us that aren't in our or the city's best interests. The elected officials have to be put in their place. They're the servants, the public servants and they are handsomely rewarded for it.

They live like millionaires -- and somehow most of them become millionaires while on the public dole -- with the highest salaries of municipal officials in America and lucrative perks.

I've listened to a lot of City Council meetings in the last six months and I've attended a lot of commission and city hearings and I'm shocked -- critical as I've long been about the arrogance of City Hall -- by the way the pubic is treated.

Nick Patsaouras, president of the DWP Board of Commissioners and a long-time watchdog on public spending, disclosed Monday that he will run for City Controller in the March 3 primary.

Patsaouras, who played a key role in the Villaragosa Administration keeping costs under control and overseeing construction of the new LAPD Headquarters as well as performing similar roles for the County-USC Medical Center and Harbor-UCLA Hospital, will challenge Councilwoman Wendy Greuel for Controller for the right to succeed Laura Chick, who is termed out.

In recent months, Patsaouras has emerged as an advocate for DWP ratepayers and championed creation of an office within the utility specifically to serve as the equivalent of an ombudsman or inspector general.

"I don't believe in coronations. We need to discuss the issues," he said a phone interview.

"We need someone in the Controller's Office who has the experience, technical knowledge and ability to make sure we're using the best management practices and look after the public's money..

"We have to think about our kids and the future of the city."

Greuel, a two-term councilwoman from the East Valley, appeared to be headed towards an easy primary victory without significant opposition until Patsaouras entered the race.

His decision to run for controller caught City Hall insiders by surprise.

"There's a lot of very surprised people tonight -- especially Wendy Greuel," said one source. "This is not the way it's supposed to work in LA nowadays. Wendy and Nick travel in the same circles and have many of the same friends and political allies.  Given Nick's personality, this will be a helluva of a race."

A Greek immigrant who worked his way through community college and CSUN, he brings 30 years of experience in key roles in city government from the Tom Bradley years through to today.

He runs a successful electrical engineering company and is president of Polis Builders, a developer of mixed use projects.

Patsaouras was a key figure in the MTA and its predecessor transportation agencies and helped drive the subway and light rail projects. The Patsaouras Transit Plaza near Union Station is named in his honor.

He and his wife Sylvia are long-time residents of the Valley and have two grown children.

UPDATE: True to form, DWP General Manager David Nahai issued a smiley face statement about the latest screwup which continued under his watch as president of the utility's board and went to trial for six weeks last year, adding millions to the overall cost. "We are pleased to have fashioned an agreement which will enable energy efficiency improvements and overall lowered energy usage for the plaintiffs in this action. We can also take comfort in the fact that the involved parties are government entities whose constituents are largely LADWP customers. That the beneficiaries of this settlement serve the residents of the city and County of Los Angeles was a prime factor for LADWP to enter settlement negotiations."


Now you know what your DWP rate hikes are going for and why so many more are coming:

You have to pay for the incompetence and dishonesty of your officials.

A settlement was announced today between lawyers for various government agencies and the Department of Water Power which had to admit it had cheated them for a decade and will have to pay them $160 million. Or more precisely, you will have to pay them.

That's 10 times what DWP officials claim it will cost extra to give its workers a whopping 5.9 percent pay raise in the middle of the worst recession in a generation.

In June 2007, Superior Court Judge John P. Wade ruled that DWP had inflated its electric bills to governmental customers going back to 1998 by a total of $223.8 million because it charged them more than a share of the capital costs needed to generate electricity in proportion to the share of the plant's output they used.

Use 5 percent of the plant's electricity, pay 5 percent of what it cost to build. That was the rule. That was the law. But DWP plays by its own rules and charged a lot more than that.

"This settlement will give back to the school district and our other
clients some much-needed funds," said Eric R. Havian, a San Francisco
attorney with Phillips & Cohen LLP, which is representing all the non-State
agencies. "We are pleased that the matter was resolved without the need for
further litigation."

So here's the windfall coming to local agencies:

* Los Angeles Unified School District -- $67.7 million
* Los Angeles County -- $32.3 million
* Metropolitan Transportation Authority-- $28.1 million
* State agencies -- $22.3 million
* Los Angeles Community College District -- $5.58 million
* University of California at Los Angeles -- $3.8 million.

In the face of LAPD 's adamant defense of every aspect of Special Order 40, former LAPD Chief Daryl Gates said Mondaythat officers were being handcuffed by City Hall politicians (click here gatesclip.mp3)from using it against illegal immigrant gang members.

In a hearing put off for six months by the council's Public Safety Committee Chairman, Jack Weiss, the wannabe City Attorney, emotional statements flowed freely from the family of Jamiel Shaw Jr. -- the South L.A. youth slain allegedly by a illegal immigrant gang member last spring -- and others who wanted tougher law enforcement and those who defended Special Order 40 and how it's being used.

Police Commission member Andrea Ortin, who was the U.S. Attorney for L.A. when Gates adopted Special Order 40 nearly 30 years ago, gave no ground in her defense of the policy or LAPD's use of it.

LAPD officials took the same tack, conceding only that it was being  applied unevenly in different parts of the city by officers. Training is now under way so officers will understand that they are to report when they believe people arrested for felonies or multiple misdemeanors might be in the country illegally

They argued they aren't authorized to enforce federal laws -- a contention that was challenged by Councilman Dennis Zine who introducted a motion to stregthen Special Order back in April shortly after the murder of Jamiel Shaw Jr. .

Gates traced the reasons he adopted Special Order 40 to the failure of federal officials to collaborate in his efforts to crack down on gang activity. He said it was necessary to get illegal immigrants who were victims of crime or witnesses to cooperate with police. It was never intended to protect gang members who engaged in crime from immigration law enforcement

In the end, the committee decided to do nothing more than ask the LAPD to provide periodic reports on training of officers in Special Order 40 without suggesting any changes to it.

So nothing changed. The Shaw family will continue to try to qualify Jamiel's Law for the ballot through the petition drive and the controversy over illegal immigration and the protection of the civil rights of all immigrants will continue.

Righteous passions are aroused these days about chickens penned in cages so small they can't move and elephants locked in the L.A. Zoo without room to roam in anything like a natural way.

Voters and officials  alike seem touched by these concerns about man's inhumanity to animals and want to see the quality of their lives improved by giving them space to breathe.

So I can't help but wonder why we don't care as much about man's inhumanity to humans with regard to the same issue of quality of life and space to breathe.

I guess man's inhumanity to humans doesn't touch the same compassionate nerve as it does when it's directed at animals. Maybe all these endless wars and violence have damaged the neurons that connect our brains to our compassionate hearts.

Density bonuses, subsidies for multi-million-dollar condos and luxury hotels, inclusionary zoning, exclusion of the public from development decisions and now Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's $5 billion "affordable housing" plan -- it all adds up to people living in little boxes all stacked up to the sky and unable to road freely on gridlocked streets and highways, giant digital billboards flashing in their eyes day and night.

It's not a pretty picture but then money rules in L.A. -- not the people. And money has everything to do with the mayor's plan for the city, not the quality of human lives.

Of course, the economics are different. Not a lot of chicken, calves or pigs are raised in L.A. anymore so they don't make the city's fat-cats rich or fill the treasury with currency to squander. The space they require long ago was filled with humans.

And the elephants at the zoo, though thrilling to children, won't really help the city pay the bills that are piling up as it continues to spend far more than it takes in.

So when you look at Villaraigosa's audacious five-year housing plan to create 20,000 new units -- an average cost of $250,000 each assuming the money actually goes for construction -- you have to understand it's about the money and who it benefits.

The City Hall power structure has been in hard-sell mode for quite a while trying to convince the public that the population will soar no matter what we do, that the poor have an inalienable right to live in L.A. even if there's nothing but low-paying service jobs and housing costs half their paychecks. 

City officials are in a mad rush to build taller residential buildings and malls and entertainment complexes and offices, to pave every scrap of land as if living like caged chickens will make us happier and more prosperous.

It's called densification. But slumification might be more apt.

I recently listened to Helmi Hisserich, Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development Policy, provide the Planning Commission with a thoughtful and persuasive-sounding presentation of the plan.

But I was struck by a couple of charts she showed.  

One compared the number of housing units built in 2007 in various income levels to the number of units needed at those income levels. For incomes below $29,000, it showed 1,019 built to 3,405 needed; for $29,000 to $42,000, it was 595 to 2,187 built; for $42,000 to $72,000, it was 14 -- yes 14 units total -- to 2,413 needed. Above that, from $72,000 to $120,000, there was actually more units built --12,661 -- than needed -- 6.104. You can bet there's lots of housing being built and available for the affluent but for some reason the mayor's team didn't supply the numbers.

It seems so clear to me that whatever you believe, there is something askew.

We have a glut of housing for the affluent and relatively affluent and we're doing a fair job of providing subsidized housing for the very poor and working poor.

But 14 units for the middle class -- the people who are right at the average median income for households in L.A. $42,000 to $72,000?

These are the people who have jobs, often very hard jobs, and go to work every day and struggle to make ends meet. They are the bedrock of society, the class of people whose numbers are diminishing as the city continues to be inhospitable to business and industry with good-paying jobs, tolerates gangs and failing schools and looks the other way as sweatshop operators and slumlords thrive. Talk about broken windows.

A healthy society has a healthy balance of rich and poor with the largest number in the middle. The LAUSD is a prime example of what happens when the numbers get out of balance. It's not the change in ethnicity that occurred over the last 30 years or even the stifling bureaucracy that has led to its breakdown. There's simply too many students whose needs are too great so a third to half of them never get a diploma and the cycle of poverty goes round and round.

It's through those eyes that I looked at the Mayor's Housing Plan -- an ambitious proposal to marshal $5 billion from public and private sources over five years to preserve or build 20,000 units.

So who will get these units?

For the chronically homeless, the goal is 2,200 units. For the very poor, households with less than $29,000 a year, there is 8,800 units.  And for the poor with incomes of $29,000 to $42,000, there's 3,800 units. That's 14,800 units in all, or nearly 75 percent of what the mayor proposes.

This is what he means by "affordable housing."

The remainder of the units -- 5,200 -- are intended for those with incomes at the L.A. median range of $42,000 to $90,000. That's the middle of the middle class.

So let's be clear about what's on the table. The word "affordable" is a big lie. What's affordable to one person, isn't affordable to another. What we're talking about is housing for the poor -- not the middle class.

We're talking about tearing down the Jordan Downs housing project and building a new project next to it for three times as many families in a much denser space. We're talking about densifying the poorest areas of the city with more poor people and we're talking about densifying the whole city -- except for the most afflurent areas -- with more market rate housing that will overwhelm the city's resources and its infrastructure.

What we're not talking about is what kind of city L.A. will become if the mayor and the developers have their way.

Are his goals the right goals for L.A.? Will more housing for the poor attract more poor people or will it make them less poor? Will businesses with good-paying jobs locate or expand without workers with the skills and employment records they require?

The issue isn't the need for more housing for more people as the mayor and the power structure have defined it. The issue is how we make this a healthier, more prosperous and better city for the people who live and work here.

I don't see how people living like caged chickens or elephants locked in the zoo achieves anything except turning L.A. into the Blade Runner city envisioned by filmmaker Ridley Scott a quarter century ago.

It seems fitting somehow that Nadya Mahdavi, the landlord at the heart of the mystery about who's killing my neighborhood, surrendered to police a month to the day after she failed to show up in court.

Mahdavii faces several charges that could carry six months in jail and $1,000 fines growing out of the illegal conversion of a modest single family house in my neighborhood into a tenement with three apartments and a dozen rooms.

Jessica Tarman, in Councilman Dennis Zine's office, alerted me that Mahdavi was arrested Thursday night. Zine, who took an intense interest in the case after we had a confrontation over how it was being handled months ago, had wanted me to join him in making the arrest but police brass nixed the idea.

Tarman didn't know much else so I called Chief Inspector Frank Bush of the Building and Safety Department who filled in a few sketchy details. An officer left a note at one of the houses where Mahdavi was believed to live and got a call from an attorney who met the suspect at the Devonshire Division station where she turned herself in.

She was booked and posted the $5,000 bail on her warrant and then released. Her company, Fidelity Investments LLC has a Nov. 5 date in Van Nuys Courthouse, Bush said

The Watch Commander at Devonshire Division, Sgt. Walters, wasn't on duty last night so he couldn't add much. And yes, they took a booking photo but no, you can't have it because it's against policy.

Very routine, happens everyday kind of crime, not the stuff of best-selling mysteries.

But it's not that way for my neighbors. This is a drama that started back in February and there's no end in sight despite the honest efforts of Building and Safety, City Attorney Don Cocek, the LAPD and Zine.

My neighbors see the house at 19952 Haynes St. as an eyesore, a cancer in their neighborhood, It undermines the quality of their lives and destroys the sense of place that they learned to love living in a quiet tract of single family homes abutting an L.A. River channel with streets designed to keep traffic to a minimum.

This is their home and in some cases has been their home for 50 years.

And there's a tenement with a bunch of people living in it and five or six cars in the driveway or parked in front and a dog named Kashi tied up in front much of the day and the night. The residents don't make a lot of noise and niether does Kashi but my dog Bruno -- a pit bull and shar-pei mix who carries 60 pounds of jaw and muscle and latent fury from the abuse he suffered before we found him in our bushes -- is so scared of Kashi from an early confrontation that he looks the other way when we walk nearby.

I understand why the system sees this problem as no big deal. This is a city where gangs run wild, drug dealing is rampant and the political system is corrupt.

So the concerns of a few people in one little tract don't amount to a hill of beans.

But that isn't how my neighbors feel. Or how people all over the city feel about the concerns they have. The concerns of the city's people don't matter much in the grand scheme of things.

That's really what's wrong with L.A., why there is so much discontent, so much middle class flight for so long, why L.A. is becoming a city of rich people who can take care of themselves and poor people who can't do anythiing about it.

I believe it's likely that justice of sorts will be done in this case. That the residents of the tenement who haven't violated any laws will be evicted and given help by the city to find another place to live.

But how long will it take and will it really solve the mystery of who's killing my neighborhood?

Honestly, I don't make this stuff up. DWP Commissioner Edith Ramirez actually said in public the other day that the people don't need a Ratepayer Advocate because her board is "vigilant in assuring the public that the rights of ratepayers are being protected."

And it's not just the commission but the whole Department of Water and Power management who loves you the ratepayer so much and care so deeply that they are hiking rates as fast as they can with another 13 percent increase in water charges coming in January and such horrendous increases in the offing that nobody even dares to talk about yet.

It's why DWP employees are getting 6 percent pay hikes and have huge pensions guaranteed by you while you are living in fear of losing your job, your house and your future as your retirement investments shrink to nothing.

It's why the mayor and City Council who have squandered your taxes are already eyeing the bottomless pit of DWP ratepayer money to cover the $110 million deficit they've created this year and the $400 million shortfall next year.

It's why Ramirez and her colleagues on the commission with the exception of Commission President Nick Patsaouras rolled over to the mayor and came out in opposition Tuesday to creating a Ratepayer Advocate. It's an act of love not contempt, take their word for it.

Who do they think they're kidding?

Don't they know the DWP has no credibility in the community, that it's seen as a thief stealing the public's money to give to contractors and public employee unions while it lets the infrastructure rot, plans to pipe recycled toilet water into homes and pays huge premiums for "green power" so the mayor can boast he's an environmental saint and get re-elected.

DWP General Manager David Nahai is so shameless he claims that the whole city government structure has no interest but the public interest on its mind and that with the board, the City Council and various committees there are "no less than 22 ombudsman ratepayer advocates."

That's not the view of Patsaouras who has been around City Hall for 30 years and made the point that " we are political appointments, let's be honest with ourselves."

OK, Nick, let's be honest with ourselves. With the exception of you, Jane Usher in Planning and a few other commissioners out of all the hundreds of them, there is no one with a record of showing independence, of serving as the public watchdog, ombudsman or advocate.

They represent a narrow class of people beholden one way or another to the politicians who appoint them. And the politicians are virtually appointed by the unions and various other special interests who put them in the jobs with campaign contributions and support.

This isn't democracy. This is a tyranny of a tiny minority controlled by narrow and selfish interests who have failed miserably in their most fundamental function of managing the city's resources to provide good police and fire services, pave the streets and sidewalks, solve basic problems like traffic congestion, plan for healthy neighborhoods and work for a business climate that generates good-paying jobs.

And so when something comes up as modest as proposing a Ratepayer Advocate to make sure the DWP spends the public's money wisely and can ask tough questions so the public knows what is going on, the mayor and the power structure go ballistic.

They are scared to death of the truth coming out about their scandalous abuses of the public trust that they are sworn to uphold.

Ramirez is right about one thing  If she and the elected officials and bureaucrats fulfilled their duties they would be vigilant of the public interest. But they aren't.

They betray themselves and the people and go about their lives as if they had any honor left but there is no honor among thieves.

I don't know how they say the things they say, or do the things they do. But I do know this:
If they can't see their way to appoint a public advocate to help clean up the corrupt policies of the DWP as the LAPD and the MTA have done, they leave the public no alternative but to fight them every inch of the way in every way they can.

There is an army of thousands of community activists out there who have worked long and hard to try to partner with the city to make L.A. better. The power structure may dismiss them as amateurs, crazies, gadflies and Nimbys but they are mobilizing and breaking down the barriers that keep them apart and one of these days, the bills will come due as they always do -- or there won't be much of a city left to fight over.
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Deflecting blame for the city's money woes on "forces and factors outside" his control,  Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa ordered a series of "belt-tightening measures" Tuesday to try to reduce a looming $110 million budget deficit this year and a $400 shortfall next year.

The mayor's memorandum to department heads, the City Council and other top officials praises cost-cutting efforts undertaken already and tosses around phrases like "prudent, focused and multi-faceted," "hard work and sacrifice," and "conservative revenue forecasting and expenditure discipline."

But those efforts are not enough, he said, because the city "has had to endure enormous financial challenges" caused by the national housing and credit crunch, failure of financial institutions and the stock market declines.

In addition, his budget underestimated the cost of gas prices and lawsuits by $55 million and overestimated revenue by the same amount.

The six-page memo called "FY 2008-2009 Belt Tightening Measures" AVBudget.pdf contains seven directives to department heads but it contains no drastic steps such as layoffs or cuts in public services.

Instead, he urges them to limit hiring and overtime to essential needs; suspending general fund purchases for furniture, equipment and computers; raiding infrastructure investment funds as has been done often in the past; cutting back on mailings; speeding up grant and bond funds recovery and seeking $2 million from signage on the Convention Center and $38 million from selling the Mangrove site.

He called these steps "but a part of the extraordinary measures we must take to address our projected year-end deficit."

But taken as a whole his actions seem like window-dressing for a mayor seeking re-election right at the time next year's budget must be put together rather than a tough CEO prepared to brave criticism for imposing austerity measures that would get ahead of problems of declining revenue and rising costs.

The giveaway is his plan to go ahead with a 3.9 percent cut in business taxes on Jan. 1. He called it a "stimulus" even as he is seeking tax hikes on the general public on the Nov. 4 ballot and his administration plans on imposing a 13 percent water rate hike on Jan. 1. Clearly, one of his goals is to keep the business community on his side -- something that could be vital to his re-election if developer Rick Caruso who runs a multi-billion-dollar corporation jumps into the race.

The mayor's strategy all along has been to raise so much money -- now nearly $2.5 million -- that he can scare off well-funded challengers and avoid a runoff election campaign in March and April when more severe actions likely will be needed.

Besides going forward with the business tax cut,  Villaraigosa suggested a series of other actions that should be taken::

* Limiting fee waivers for special events
* A 10 percent reduction in water and power use in city buildings
* Voluntary furloughs by city employees
* Advertising revenue on the city's public access computers and at its wi-fi locations
* Reviewing existing contracts for possible savings
* Reducing fuel consumption and replacing gas-guzzling vehicles with higherf-mileage ones.

"Working together, creatively and wisely as we have, I know that we can all meet the current fiscal challenges,'' he concluded

Community activists won a major victory in their effort to protect Griffith Park from various proposed development projects when city planners on Tuesday recommended granting it cultural-historical monument status.

The finding that the park -- with the exception of the zoo, Autry National Center, I-5, Roosevelt Golf Course and Toyon Landfill -- meets the criteria for preservation sets the stage for a hearing Oct. 30 of the City Cultural Heritage Commission.

Community activists have intensified their campaign in recent months and will step up their pressure on the commission in the next week.

Various proposals have been made for projects in the park and the cultural-historical monument status would make sure there is a full and public examination of any development to protect what most would agree is L.A. greatest asset.

The Planning Department's Office of Historic Resources saw the importance of that in the report prepared by Edgar Garcia and Ken Bernstein. The challenge now is to make sure the commissioners respond and to mount a major public campaign to keep the City Council from slipping in loopholes.

Here's their report: griffithparkreport.pdf.

Often, when I listen to City Council debates on an important issue like Prop. 11, I think I must have come from another planet because what they say seems so to be in a language I don't understand or maybe they're just lying through their teeth.

I'm sure they feel the same way about what I have to say.

I know they are elected officials and claim theyhave the support of voters so they think that makes them right about everything. But when you look at the numbers it doesn't mean they have anything like a mandate from the people, or that there is anything like democracy in L.A.

Among those who denounced Prop. 11 Tuesday -- the Nov. 4 state ballot measure that creates an independent Redistricting Commission in hopes of ending the gerrymandering of legislative districts --were Council President Gil Garcetti and Councilmen Richard Alarcon and Tony Cardenas.

Garcetti won his last election with less than 5,000 votes and Alarcon with just over 7,000 -- out of the 275,000 who live in their districts. And Cardenas got similar vote totals with nearly 10 times as much money as all his challengers put together.

In Garcetti's mind -- if he meant what he said about Prop. 11 -- the problem is Sacramento isn't caused by districts the legislators drew for themselves so that only far left Democrats and far right Repbulicans could get elected. Gridlock is caused by partisanship and he'd like to see the parties abolished so everybody could get along unanimously like they do on the City Council. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

For Alarcon, this whole redistricting thing is infuriating, nothing but a dirty trick being played by Republicans to cheat the voters who can't stand them.

Cardenas credits gerrymandered districts for the surge in Latino elected officials as if the massive demographic changes had nothing to do with it.

A single quote or characterization doesn't do them justice. You really got to listen to them for yourselves. And then listen to the supporters of Prop. 11 -- former Democratic Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg, former L..A Chamber of Commerce head David Fleming and City Controller Laura Chick explain their position.

From the ivory tower of a newsroom, I long ago grew critical of City Hall's inaction. Now that I'm getting down to there in person an activist, my attitude has changed.

The corruption of democratic processes, the view of the public as second-class citizens, the ingrained subservience of politicians and bureaucrats to special interests is far worse than I thought.

On Monday, I trekked to the 10th Floor of that Palace of Greed and found myself as usual wondering what could have been achieved if they had spent half of the $300 million it cost to luxuriously refurbish City Hall on programs that benefited the people, like effective gang prevention programs, a police crime lab, street paving and other basics of civilized society.

I was there to see how Zoning Administrator Andre Parvenu handled the crowd of Echo Park residents upset over T-Mobile's plan to put 12 cell phone towers atop a landmark apartment building, the Delmor, at 1551 Echo Park Blvd.

Parvenu, who didn't return my landline phone calls last week, didn't show up. And neither did T-Mobile or the landlord who stands to reap a handsome windfall profit if the cell phones towers go on his building.

Albert Landini was handling the hearing. He seemed like a decent man but officious and clearly acted like the 40 or so community activists in attendance were more an annoyance that had to be tolerated as part of the job but whose concerns were largely irrelevant.

It seemed he only had ears for T-Mobile as he asked at least 10 times if the company's representatives were present before acknowledging in the end that the company "blew me off." and its absence "bodes well" for the community.

The community's case was helped by the support given by Council President Eric Garcetti who sent a staffer who made two key points that Landini took seriously: The towers would rise 10 feet above the 45-foot height limit in the area and Garcetti will see historical-cultural status for the century-old apartment building, exactly what activists are seeking to protect Griffith Park from development.

Listen to the audio atof the start of the hearing where Landini lays down tough ground rules to the community, shows he's eagerly looking around for T-Mobile representatives and then happily agrees Garcetti's staffer should go first.garcetti(128Kbps).mp3

Then, it was Echo Park's turn. They lined up one after another and pridefully told their story: How artists, musicians, students, young professionals were creating a lively and hip neighborhood, how Echo Park was just named one of America's 10 great neighborhoods by the American Planning Assn., how assaults on the character of the community like T-Mobile's undermined its regeneratin.

They presented petitions from 500 people and complained the towers were a threat to their health and the value of their property. They complained the towers were visual bligh to the thousands of people who live above the Delmor. They warned the leaky roof of the Delmor might collapse and kill them from the weight of the towers. They resented the fact T-Mobile and the landlord would profit handsomely and the community would be trashed.

Throughout the hearing, Landini made it clear that the health concerns of all those radio waves was under federal law not an issue for his consideration and, beyond that, he repeatedly scoffed at the idea that cell towers are dangerous in any way.

He dismissed as mere hearsay worries about renters fleeing and other negative impact on property values.

What struck me most is the impression I got that cellular companies had a "right" to put towers wherever they wanted unless there was a clear legal reason standing in their way. And that's what is so disturbing:

Why doesn't L.A. have clear rational rules that protect community interests and define where and how the towers can be placed? Other cities do that but then other cities actually care about the people who live, work and do business in them.

Near the end, I joined the parade of witnesses to make the point that the concerns of Echo Park are the concerns of every neighborhood in the city -- which is the whole reason we started the Saving L.A. Projectcellron1.wav

Finally it was Landini's turn to sum up what he heard from careful notes he took of each issue that was raised. Given the rules he operates under and the mentality of City Hall, it seemed a fair analysis of the situation landini-end.mp3.

It'll be interesting to see what goes on behind the scenes over the month or so Landini needs to make up his mind and write his decision.

But you can bet T-Mobile will find a way to tell its story in back rooms where deals can be cut and you can be sure the city will not adopt new regulations that give the community a genuine voice in decisions.

Last year, T-Mobile paid 78,000 to a lobbyist to try to get DWP policies affecting it changes. This year, in contrast, it has contributed just $500 each this year to Council Members Eric Garcetti, Ed Reyes and Janice Hahn and paid $15,000 to a small firm called John Q. Public Affairs for help in putting cell phone towers wherever it wants around town.

If the company really wants to screw the John Q. Publics of Los Angeles, it's going to have throw a lot more money than that around City Hall.

And even that might not work if more communities get organized like this Echo Park neighborhood and if communities around the city the issue isn't just local to one neighborhood but affects us all.

Innocent people arrested, jailed and even extradited. Rapists and other criminals walking the streets free to carry on their mayhem. Officials breast-beating and butt-covering with calls for public hearings and private investigations.

Only in L.A.

This is a town where public officials line up like lemmings to sign off on a federal court consent decree that handcuffs the entire Police Department and costs the public hundreds of millions dollars because of the misdeeds of a couple of bad cops but can't find a few million bucks for a modern, efficient crime lab.

Don't they watch all those CSI shows on television and know how science solves crimes?

It's going to take more than the ineffectual Councilman Jack Weiss posturing for the cameras to help his candidacy for City Attorney -- heaven help us -- or the LAPD's Inspector General who's ignored the problem for years to get to the bottom of this problem.

Innocent people who were jailed because of this bungling had their civil rights violated and that's a crime that ought to justify the California or U.S. Attorney General stepping in with an independent prosecutor to find out the truth about whether this is misfeasance or malfeasance -- incompetence or criminality.

The latest evidence of wrongdoing comes out today with City Controller Laura Chick's audit of why the LAPD has thousands of rape kits containing DNA evidence that are untested despite years of controversy and demands for the funds needed to upgrade the crime lab.

To make her point, Chick is releasing the audit on the steps of City Hall with Sarah Tofte, a  researcher at Human Rights Watch and Kathy Spillar, Executive Vice President of the Feminist Majority Foundation at her side.

Weiss, as head of the City Council's Public Safety Committee, has been the point man for getting funds for the crime lab but he has as little respect from his colleagues as his constituents so he gets ignored and the LAPD's DNA testing staff is as grossly inadequate as ever.

The same is true about the fingerprinting section as the Times reported last week.

"The Los Angeles Police Department has acknowledged in a confidential report that people have been falsely implicated in crimes because the department's fingerprint experts wrongly identified them as suspects.

"The 10-page internal report, obtained by The Times, highlighted two cases in which criminal defendants had charges against them dropped after problems with the fingerprint analysis were exposed. LAPD officials do not know how many other people might have been wrongly accused over the years as a result of poor fingerprint analysis and do not have the funds to pay for a comprehensive audit to find out, according to police records and interviews."

When I listened to Los Angeles Planning Department General Manager Gail Goldberg boast last week about how Echo Park was named "one of America's 10 greatest neighborhoods," I couldn't help but laugh.

The city has had little or nothing to do with the regeneration of this wonderful but rundown community. Echo Park, like Eagle Rock and Highland Park and a few others neighborhoods, are undergoing an exciting revival. It's happening despite City Hall policies that are ruining many other neighborhoods.

What was ironic about Goldberg's boast is that she probably isn't even aware that a zoning administrator who works for her is holding a hearing Monday on T-Mobile's request to put a dozen 55-foot cell phone towers atop a nearly 200-year-old apartment building right in the center of an area that is attracting young professionals, artists, students and others who are making it a hip place to live.

Apart from the unknown health issues associated in living beneath and around massive bursts of radiowaves is the hideous visual blight those 12 towers would create, the sense of the neighborhood being violated by their intrusion. This wouldn't even be a question if the city had a comprehensive policy that protects community interests and processes to inform and help residents look after themselves.

Have a laugh yourself. Listen to Goldberg echopark1.wav as reported last Thursday to her bosses -- Jane Usher and the Planning Commission -- the pride she feels at the American Planning Association's honor for Echo Park

How could anyone disagree with what Goldberg is saying -- if only that were the policy of the city. Recognition that quality of life and enriched social capital are the heart of a a great community gets occasional lip service but City Hall's decisions are made on the basis of a different capital -- the monetary kind. There is no goal beyond filling the city treasury and lining the pockets of moneyed interests.

To the corrupt and greedy insider political culture, the spirit of a community has no value. That's why L.A., after these years, is still a city in search of an identity. The Spirit of L.A. is struggling to be born out in Echo Park and neighborhoods across L.A. But City Hall is like a mausoleum that houses in its crypts all hopes for the birth of something greater than ourselves, a dynamic sense of community that inspires us to strive for more than our own private interests.

Editor's Note: Two North Valley mobile home parks were engulfed by this week's brush fires. At Sky Terrace Mobile Lodge, where residents already were under siege from a developer, dozens of homes were destroyed.

Down the raod at Blue Star Mobile Home Park, residents were luckier with several homes damaged but only one destroy. Residents had the scare of their lives, here's account of what it was like:

By Glenn Bell

Correstpondent

My wife, Jean, and I woke up at our normal time at 5 a.m. Monday morning. We enjoy our early mornings together, as we have for the 25 years of our marriage.

It was not a normal morning. We were experiencing a fire in the hills above us. Fire above Lopez and Kagel canyons is a pretty regular occurrence. Living on the edge of Los Angeles, everyone in our situation has grown used to this. But this time it was different. The smoke was much more rancid. The glow of the fire seemed nearer than in times past. 

Over the past couple of years things have changed in our neighborhood. Los Angeles County has allowed hundreds of diesel rigs to take up residence, without permits, directly up the hill from us. Because of that we have all of that truck-traffic and the pollutants that they cause driving 20 feet outside our bedroom window at all hours of the day and night. We have called the county, the city and the police many times and they will do nothing to remedy the situation. The only reason I bring this up is that this Monday morning, those trucks caused a severe and significant risk to the lives and safety of the thousands of people living below them.   

I started hearing explosions, I don't remember how many, but there were more than a dozen. So I went out to an area in front of my house to have a clear view of the hill above us. My neighbor and I watched as the truck diesel tanks exploded. As they exploded, the winds, blowing roughly 65 miles an hour, would blow the burning fuel down the hill towards our community. With every explosion I shuddered, fearing for our lives. It was the most surreal thing I have ever seen. This set into motion a series of events that will be seared into my memory forever. 

At that same time a police vehicle was traveling at a fast pace through our mobile home park, an officer was screaming into his PA system, GET OUT, GET OUT NOW, THIS IS AN IMMEDIATE AND MANDATORY EVACUATION!

Just like that, he was gone. The evacuation notice was simply a "drive-by" shout into a loudspeaker. There was no assistance offered for an orderly evacuation.

Editor's Note: The deadline to run for city office in the March primary is Nov. 8, just three weeks away.

By Sandy Sand
Correspondent

From letters to the editor, comments on ronkayela.com and those that I read in the L.A.Times, Daily News, L.A.Weekly, mayorsam.blogspot.com and others...the answer is a resounding YES.

We love Ron's S.L.A.P. [Save L.A. Project] and really want to slap our politicians silly, starting with our 11-percent mayor (on the job 11-percent of the time), to every councilmember to the supes.

But...BIG BUT...as wonderful as community groups, Neighborhood Councils and community activists are...all they can accomplish is one big fat ZILCH, zero, nada, gurnished, rein, nothing until there are honest brokers in these positions.

That means one of us [or two or three] must run against one, two or three of the incumbent councilmen, who have little or no opposition, just as Walter Moore is running against Antionio "11-percent, Photo-op" Villaraigosa.

At the outset of the hearing Thursday on the city's billboard policy, Planning Commission President Jane Usher took the audience through a PowerPoint presentation she put together on the history of how City Hall bungled the situation.

It read like a bill of indictment for wrongdoing and all that was missing was the name or names of the criminals.

For that. someone would have to go back and follow the money and match up how it flows  from the billboard companies to the politicians. Maybe City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo will do that -- maybe not since he's the No.1 beneficiary of the billboard companies contributions.

Here's the link digitalbillboard.ppt

That was the wisdom shared by City Planning Commission, Father Spencer Kezios, as he and his colleagues listened to one community activist after another express the "wrath of the people" Thursday over the giant electronic billboards going up all over L.A and the failure of the city leaders to represent the interests of the citizenry.

It was an historic moment with the commission unanimously voting to call for a two-year moratorium on new digital billboards and making it clear they want a lengthy moratorium on all new billboards while officials figure out a coherent policy to end this blight of our city -- a scandal that touches every one of our elected officials.

Listen carefully to what Planning Commission Chairwoman Jane Usher and Fr. Kezios have to say on this video -- they are telling you the truth about what has to be to done to save L.A.





I have to admit I'm almost always happy living in L.A. but it's pretty rare that I feel proud of my town.

Today was one of those days.

Dozens of irate citizens showed up at City Hall at considerable cost in time and money to voice their support for that rarest of breeds, a city official who courageously was standing with the people, fighting for the common good -- Commission President Jane Usher.

And even more incredibly, it was second time in two weeks that a commission president has defied the corrupt power structure and taken a stand for the good for the city. Last week, it was Nick Patsaouras, president of the DWP commission, who pushed forward despite intense opposition from the mayor and others a proposal for a Ratepayer Advocate who would represent the public within the Department of Water and Power's walls of secrecy and deceit.

In both cases, it was the strong support from the community that made it possible for these true leaders to carry the day, and to carry their fellow commissioners with them.

I don't have to tell you about the vast sums of money that billboard companies and their lobbyists have thrown at our politicians to be able to get away with this waste of electricity, this visual blight, these safety hazards

There's 4,000 illegal billboards in L.A. -- more than a third of the total. The mayor, city attorney and the council sold out the public interest even after the city won in court by settling a specious lawsuit entirely on the terms dictated by the billboard companies.

The lesson that I took away from today's meeting and last week's as well was this: Community action has made a difference but it's going to take the involvement and effort of a lot more people to change the corrupt insider culture of City Hall.

If you didn't watch the videos, go back and do so. Jane Usher and Fr. Kezios are telling you the truth. You have the power to change L.A. but it's going to take a lot more of us to get involved. 

Here's big news that somehow is below the radar of political outrage and press coverage: The massive state pension fund CalPERS is getting clobbered in the market to the tune of losses totaling $70 billion or more than 25 percent of its value.

Long know for its assaults on corporate leadership and pretentious demands, the state pension has been keeping a low profile about its own bungling.:

Even beyond staggering losses in the stock market, leaderless CalPERS has suffered huge losses in real estate like putting up $1 billion in an effort to bail out a failing Santa Clarita Valley land deal or trying to help out hedge funds by lending them Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley shares to cover short positions even as the companies were failing.

You'd think Treasurer Bill Lockyer and other state officials might sound the alarm but they're too busy trying to deal with their own paralysis over bungling the state's finances.

And the press? You got to be kidding.

As for CalPERS, it's website reminds me of what went on during the last Great Depression when everybody sang "Happy Days are Here Again" and news reports stressed good times are "just around the corner."

"CalPERS Stays the Course in Market Storm
"The news in the financial markets can be alarming for our members, but it is important for you to know that the current credit crisis does not directly affect your retirement benefits, which are securely protected by law, or our ability to pay benefits."

Not to worry alright -- taxpayers are on the cuff to pay all benefits no matter what. Of course, taxpayers don't have any money either so maybe there really is a problem we ought to be talking about.

The issues were preservation of Griffith Park and the Southwest Museum and both sides sent advocates to the City Council on Wednesday to help make their cases.

It provided the chance to what a contrast there is between how the pros operate like Latham & Watkins lobbyist Bill Delvac and how community activists talk when pleading for City Council support.

Notice how Delvac references his ability to meet privately with Council members to make his case while activists need to show up en masse to get two minutes each during public comment time.

Delvac is paid handsomely and believes in what his clients want him to believe in and works for the top City Hall lobbying that is able to channel fortunes into political campaigns.

Activists spend their time and money to try to protect their values and interests. They're involved in issues that they truly believe in.

Here's a video that gives a peek into the way the system works. It's provided for purely educational purposes.

 

Here's your civics lesson for today: You don't elect city officials in L.A.; DWP union boss Brian D'Arcy appoints them so they do his bidding and send you the bill.

It's worked that way for so long that when D'Arcy called a meeting last Friday of three top City Council members and the mayor's deputy and announced he was flip-flopping on his opposition to solar energy in the city, they stood up saluted and are ready to put it on the ballot.

His only requirement All the work of putting solar units atop commercial, industrial and government building must be done by D'Arcy's International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers even though it means hiring hundreds of people and paying them inflated DWP wages and benefits far beyond what the private sector pays.

Whatever D'Arcy wants, D'Arcy gets.

That's because he has a bottomless pit of campaign cash from the contributions of his menbers who make up nearly 95 percent of the DWP work force, managers and all. More IBEW members, more cash to help Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the three overly ambitious Council leaders -- Eric Garcetti, Wendy Greuel and Jan Perry -- win their March primary elections against little or no opposition.

Of course, if they crossed D'Arcy -- like not backing 5.9 percent wage hikes for his members or opposing the endless expansion of the DWP workforce and his union membership base -- they would find they faced opposition with lots of money to campaign with.

You see it all the time in L.A. despite the sprawl and fragmented civic culture: Neighborhoods, communities of interest, social networks come together and achieve something greater than themselves.

In the last 48 hours, the people who own horses, the people who care about animals and each other pulled together to provide safe shelter to hundreds of animals.

At Pierce College's farm, dozens of volunteers showed up yesterday as a daylong line of trailers pulled up with horses from the North Valley in need of a safe haven -- 168 horses in all were stabled there.

They put up temporary stalls, they washed and fed the horses, they called in veterinarians to deal with injured animals. They call themselves a "family" and a family takes care of its own.

That's what keeps coming up for me about the possibility of all the "families" coming together, putting aside their differences, and turned this into the greatest city on earth, the city it ought to be with its perfect climate, its unlimited freedom and opportunity.

At Pierce, I talked with veteran L.A. County Animal Control Officer Mary Lukins who took charge of the chaos at the barn as she has done before when fires threatened the community and others. Tina Harmon who stables a horse at Stoney Point Ranch told me of her experiences, of how firefighers, neighbors and volunteers showed what kind of people we really are.

The fire has passed the Sylmar area where the Blue Star Mobile Home Park is located and Glenn and Jean Bell were able to return and find their manufactured home suffered serious damage but was not destroyed.

One home was destroyed and several others damaged but the toll at Sky Terrace Mobile Lodge to the east was serious: About 40 of the 57 homes were destroyed.

Bell said it was a nightmare getting out of Blue Star as the fire roared around the park where there's 186 homes. More than 300 vehicles jammed up trying to get out the single exit onto Gladstone Avenue until residents finally broke the lock on an emergency gate and left onto Paxton Street.

He described how the wind from the fire blew his cap off and it was completely in flames by the time it hit the ground.

"We were lucky," he said. "We thought it would be a lot worse."

Glenn Bell is a friend of mine, a passionate organizer and advocate for the residents of mobile home parks who are under siege across the state from landowners who are jacking up their rents, evicting them on any pretense and using the sites for industrial parks, luxury homes and any other use the makes them richer.

Glenn prefers to call them manufactured homes and points out they provide affordable housing that can be provided at low cost on a mass scale. But they are endangered.

The brush fires his two mobile home parks hard on Monday -- Sky Terrace Mobile Lodge in the Lopez Canyon area where most residents already had been forced out and the Blue Star Mobile Home Park in Sylmar where Bell and his wife Jean live. Actually, it's where they lived because they're home was among the dozens of manufactured homes destroyed in the fires.

"My house has burned to the ground. We were lucky to get out with our lives," Jean told the Daily News after fleeing with 165 other residents. I saw the trees around my home burning and then my home catch fire. There was nothing we could do."

The Times got photos of what the mobile home park looks like after the fire:

Glen talked about the problems facing manufactured home owners, particularly the elderly living on fixed incomes, at the recent Town Hall meeting of the Saving L.A. Project. Listen to what he had to say about a class of people being victimized by developers who are buying mobile home parks -- people like L.A. Times owner Sam Zell -- and how government agencies are complicit in what's going on

I just don't get why everywhere I go around town these days nobody has a kind word to say about Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, not even insiders in his tight little world.

Am I the only one in L.A. who thinks he's a great guy who could still do great things -- if only he could remember who he is and where he came from and the values he once believed in?

Look at what the bloggers are saying  A Strikeout for Villaraigosa at laist.com; and Villaraigosa Diddles While L.A. Burns at Mayor Sam just because he didn't show up at the first in his yellow emergency jacket until the 5 p.m. camera opportunity and then dashed off to Dodger Stadium to sit in owner's box so the network cameras could catch a glimpse of him.

I think that's very unfair. The man is everywhere, the ubiquitous mayor of this small town out in the desert somewhere that just happens to be on fire. Watch this video from last night and see how much he cares that you know what a great job the firefighters, cops and other city workers are doing. OK, so he forgot to mention the people who lost their homes and the thousands of ordinary people affected. Nobody's perfect.


Why he even answered the phone this morning when I called 311 to get some information about a story I'm doing. I recorded it just to prove he's the superman of City Hall av311.WMA.

And when the operators were too busy to answer my question he even provided me with music to bide away the minutes av311-2.WMA. After 10 minutes of musical interlude, I decided it wasn't worth waiting anymore but I'm sure he was busy handling 911 emergency calls that were far important.

Or maybe he was tied up on the phone calling contributors from coast to coast looking for money for his re-election campaign. You know the $2.2 million he's raised is only  15 times as much as his closest challenger.

And then there's his campaign for Measure R -- the half-cent sales tax to raise $40 billion to solve today's traffic congestion problems in 2030. He was supposed to raise $9 million and he's $8.9 million short with just a few weeks ago and he had to cancel the MTA's own $4 million campaign because everybody thought it was blatantly illegal.

The man's got troubles. He can only work 11 percent of the time as mayor because he's got to be everywhere all the time.

Give him a little slack. Odds are you're going to have to live with him for four more years -- unless, of course, he runs for governor or goes off to Washington.  

How can a city that's so Democratic be so anti-democratic that few people pay much attention, fewer people vote and almost nobody is crazy enough to challenge incumbents seeking re-election?

The six incumbent City Council members seeking re-election who are eligible for a third term only because of the fraudulent Measure R campaign two years ago have raised 7,000 times as much money as the total of four challengers that have entered the races against them, according to Ethics Commission reports. The seventh incumbent who is seeking only a second term has raised $200,000 and doesn't even haven an opponent yet.

The other incumbent running in the March primary, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, doesn't have it quite so easy. It has raised only 15 times as much money as his six challengers combined with Walter Moore having collect all but $2,602 of the $165,000 that has been contributed to opponents compared the the mayor's $2.3 million.

Even in the City Controller's race where Laura Chick is termed out, Councilwoman Wendy Greuel has raised $700,000 to zero for challenger Sherree Saperstein.

Of the seven incumbent City Council members are seeking re-election in the March primary, five face no opposition with the candidate filing deadline just four weeks away.

In the two races where there is opposition, the four candidates have reported raising a combined total of $200.

With Richard Alarcon not even bothering to raise money, the incumbents have raised a combined total of  nearly $1.4 million -- a 7,000 to 1 advantage. It's only a 6,000 to 1 advantage if you don't count Bill Rosendahl who's only seeking a second term.

A similar disparity exists in the Controller's race where Councilwoman Wendy Greuel has raised $700,000 to zero for challenger Sherree Saperstein.

District 1: Ed Reyes $132,980; opponent William M. Morrison "Rodriguez" zero, Jesus "Jesse" Rosas $200, Ernest E. Sanchez zero.
District 3: Dennis Zine $203,708; no opponent.
District 7: Richard Alarcon, zero; no opponent.
District 9:Jan Perry $247,345; no opponent.
District 11: Bill Rosendahl $200,970; no opponent.
District 13: Eric Garcetti $471,449; opponent Keith Hardine zero.
District 15: Janice Hahn $101,529; no opponent.

District 5 incumbent Jack Weiss is running for City Attorney and has raised $1.6 million -- three times what challenger Carmen Trutanich has raised, and eight times more than Michael Amerian.

In the race, to succeed Weiss, six challengers all have raised roughly $150,000 each which makes it competitive and already has sparked so much public interest that 30 or so homeowners and resident groups in the district sent representatives to the first forum on Saturday which I helped moderate.

Five of the six well-funded candidates showed up and the one who canceled at the last-minute, Adeena Bleich, who leads the pack with $156,000 got soundly criticized for being a no-show.

When elections become more like coronations, it isn't democracy. Major reforms are needed. Clean money that flattens the playing field and many other measures are needed. But that's not going to happen without a massive grassroots organizing movement that poses a threat to the political culture of City Hall.

Brent Hopkins came to the Daily News as a cub reporter with unbounded enthusiasm and a nice touch on light features and grew over the years into a pro who could handle every kind of story, especially those that could touch people's hearts.

He was an aggressive leader of the newsroom's union who cared more about the success of the paper than many of the front office executives who ran the paper.

The series of stories he did with photographer Hans Gutknecht about the shooting of LAPD Officer Kristina Ripatti by gang members, the long and painful process of her recovery and finally the joy she and her husband LAPD Officer Tim Pearce felt when she gave birth to a son despite being partially paralyzed was among the best journalism the Daily News produced in recent years.

He captured not only the personal drama of Ripatti but put us all in touch with what it means to be a cop, to be part of a family of officers who put their lives on the line to protect and serve us.

On Friday, Brent Hopkins, the former cub reporter, became a rookie cop. He graduated form the L.A. Police Academy after six months of grueling training. We're lucky to have people like him keeping us safe.

Short takes on another busy day:

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa reports raising $600,000 more for his re-election campaign but only $103,000 for his troubled Measure R Transportation Tax. His hit-man campaign strategist Ace Smith proves truth has no meaning at all to him with his boast about why the jet-setting mayor who fears a well-funded challenger entering the race has been able to raise $2.3 million for his re-election: "Angelenos are showing overwhelming support for the mayor's leadership in taking on the city's biggest challenges."

In the last fallout of the Hahn Administration scandals, former city commissioner Leland Wong got five years in prison for bribery, embezzlement and a host of other offenses. Wong was a fixture on the city's juice commissions -- Water and Power, Airports, and Harbor -- for three mayors.

Short takes on a busy day:

Struggling to raise money to buy votes for its tax-and-spend ballot measures, City Hall has suddenly awakened to the fact these are tough economic times for most people and the wrong time to be picking their pockets. What a year of foreclosures, job losses, high prices, long lines at food pantries couldn't do, sharp declines in their own rich stock portfolios seems to have achieved. David Zahniser in a terrific piece in the Times quotes Councilwoman Janice Hahn on her discovery people are scared: "They're nervous about whether or not they're even going to be able to hang on to their homes, and property taxes add to that anxiety."

One down, 10,999 to go: The city's gang injunction policy has scored its first victory with an unnamed ex-gang member winning his appeal to be removed from the list of those under court-ordered restrictions. At this rate of winning conversions from the gang life, it could take a really long time to solve the problem.

More in the Times on Ted Stein, the former ubiquitous city commissioner, and his demand for reimbursement of $143,000 in legal fees for successfully fending off prosecution in connection with investigations of wrongdoing during the Hahn Administration.

And knowing something about the middle class is something Knox takes pride in. He chaired the Assembly Select Committee on California's Middle Class and after leaving office, he got a Masters Degree in econometric sociology at UCLA studying the American middle class.

"Upon completion of his studies he founded the Institute for the Middle Class, the only national research institute entirely devoted to restoring the vitality of the American middle class," according to his bio on the DWP website.

So why would a man so "entirely devoted to restoring the vitality of the American middle class" embarrass himself so publicly by trying to undercut all the reasons why middle class people want to know what's going on in the city's largest agency and have a say in how it's run?

Is it his allegiance to the union that has so much clout many believe it runs the DWP? Is it his obedience to City Hall's political culture that tolerates no dissent? Does Wally Knox really think of his gratitude to DWP workers when he sits in air conditioning on a hot summer day?

As I listened to him Tuesday in a board room filled with activists from the Saving L.A. Project and other community groups, I realized why Patsaouras' call for a Ratepayer Advocate touched a nerve with so many.

We don't have advocates for the public in our elected offices or on the commissions that oversee the agencies of government. When people like Knox won't stand up for us, it will take a lot more than a Ratepayer Advocate to restore public trust and end years of mismanagement of the city and its assets.

Short takes:

* You got to love the idea being floated that former Valley state Assemblyman Lloyd Levine will take over as head of the Department of Animal Services when they fire Ed Boks. By City Hall logic, Levine is perfect for the job: His dad Larry is a liberal Democratic political consultant and Lloyd supports euthanasia for human beings but not dogs and cats.

* Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is on the road again trying to top the $3 million mark to chase off opposition to his re-election. Pardoned ex-convict Henry Cisneros has organized a fund-raiser in San Antonio where you can be sure there's a lot of people who really about care the quality of life in L.A.

* Passage of Prop. 11 on the Nov. 4 ballot ought to be a no-brainer because all it does is take redistricting out of the hands of the politicians of both parties and put it in the hands of an independent panel -- a mild but needed reform after Republicans and Democrats conspired in 2001 to create nothing but safe districts that effectively froze out moderates from winning primary elections. George Skelton in the Times calls the Democratic-driven anti-Prop. 11 campaign "Orwellian" since it's calling the measure "a power grab by politicians" among other deceitful things.

For all the doomsday talk in recent years about the eventual inability of the Social Security System to pay full benefits to retirees, the real pension catastrophe looming these days is the massive bill for public employee retirement.

With cops getting pensions worth 90 percent of their highest salaries and city, county and state workers getting 60 to 75 percent pensions for a career in government, the liability is enormous with the population aging and hundreds of billions of dollars of those retirement costs being unfunded.

And that problem has gotten a lot worse in recent days with the bankruptcies of major financial institutions and the sharp declines in the stock market.

Here's some facts dug up by the Daily News' Troy Anderson, who has reported extensively on the issue of the unfunded liability for public employee pensions:

* The state retirement system has lost about $50 billion in investment value since June 30, 2007, a drop of about 20 percent in just over a year.
*The state teachers retirement system has also dropped 8 percent, down to $158.6 billion.
* Los Angeles County's system has dropped 8 percent, from $40.9 billion down to $37.8 billion, during the same period.

* The city of Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension System dropped 13 percent, to $12.1 billion.

"The public-employee pensions were going to place a heavy cost on the taxpayers before the drop in the stock market and it's going to be even more costly now," said Keith Richman, the former Valley Assemblyman who is now president of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility.

That's the point. The government can cut your Social Security benefits if there's not enough money but if there's not enough money in public employee pension funds, taxpayers have to pay the difference.

You're liable for it under their sweetheart contracts negotiated with bureaucrats who benefit from the same system and officeholders who get elected with public employee unions help. It a vicious circle.

Anybody out there who's ever racked up more debt than they can handle or spent more than they have can feel the pain of L.A. City, County and State government officials that have lived beyond out means for years.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger needs to call the Legislature back into special session just weeks after he and they approved a phony state budget that's left what state Senate leader Dom Perata says is a hole of $3 to $5 billion and the state won't be able to pay salaries or other bills before the end of the month.

The county already is looking at cutting up to 7 percent in its spending which will impact the poor more than anyone else.

And what about the city of L.A.? You got to be kidding. The city is hoping that water rate hikes in January, raids on the DWP, the gang tax on the Nov. 4 ballot and cuts in street repairs and a long list of services to the public will allow it to survive at least until March.

By then the mayor and City Council members who have hidden their mismanagement with massive increases in rates, fees and taxes will be re-elected.

The crisis is looming well before then so it makes sense for candidates to step forward now -- with the filing deadline looming -- to challenge the mayor, controllers and especially the six council members seeking a third term because of their own complicity in deceiving the public about Prop. R two years ago as if it would clean up City Hall's corruption.

Anybody want to run? Pay is great, perks are fantastic. You can live like a millionaire. And you could even put the people first and the special interests last.

You know it's an important story when you see the names of James Acevedo, Richard Alarcon, developer Mark Siffin (he with a dark past) in the same article with $200 million project and Community Redevelopment Agency and the headline says: "Questions surround Panorama City mall, condos.''

Questions about this plan for the old Montgomery Ward site came up Saturday at the Saving L.A. Project's Town Hall meeting when activists learned that once again the community was being left in the dark while special interests were buying "access" at City Hall.

Let's start with Siffin whose career was outlined in a terrific story Wednesday by reporter Connie Llanos in the Daily News.

Here's a "58-year-old businessman from Indiana whose record includes a failure to finish a previous big project in the Los Angeles area and a conviction for drug dealing in his 20s."

His name ...but no charges were filed and he's had success with projects elsewhere in the country.

But eight years ago, he ran into sharp opposition in West Hollywood over a  660,000-square-foot mixed-use development with a luxury hotel, two office buildings and upscale restaurants and shops with Vegas-style billboards. Residents objected to both his plans and his tactics, and pulled out before the project was complete, Llanos reported

Siffin was convicted in 1973 of possession of heroin with intent to sell and was twice indicted but not tried in the 1980s for buying a gun as a convicted felon and drug conspiracy In 2000, old DEA reports surfaced before the Nevada Supreme Court that Siffin was suspected of being a "major cocaine trafficker" in the 1970s -- information that led to a murder conviction of another man being overturned because authorities had withheld it.

Siffin told Llanos he "didn't act mature in my younger days." His lawyer noted he hasn't actually been convicted of anything in 35 years.

Then, there's Acevedo, the man who fancies himself as "Mr. Big" of the Valley who has built a political machine around Alarcon, Councilman Tony Cardenas and state leigslators Alex Padilla and Felipe Fuentes and profited handsomely along the way.

He's a City Hall political insider who has has served -- amazingly -- on the Harbor Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals -- but his track record on developments he runs is less than illustrious.

Los Angeles County Supervisors Gloria Molina and Mike Antonovich have stepped up their attacks on the MTA's tactics to suppport Prop. R's $40 billion sales tax hike.

The supervisors condemned spending more than $1 million to send all the nearly 4 million households in the county a 16-page color brochure promoting the tax hike, which mostly builds a subway and light rail for the Westside to justify densification.

They are particularly critical of County Counsel Roy Fortner for okaying the brochure. "I think you made a drastic mistake, a very drastic mistake," Molina said menacingly.

Antonvich called the brochure "propaganda," adding, "Even a high school government student would tell you that this is a political mailing,"

The supervisors are a day late and a million dollars short. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, fearing his campaign for the tax is in trouble, called off the MTA's $4.1 million campaign using public funds because of the negative publicity and is focusing on his own multi-million dollar campaign using money from contractors, consultants and others who will benefit if the half-cent sales tax hike is approved.

If the supervisors are serious about going after Fortner, they need to press him on why he hasn't issued an opinion on the mayor's campaign getting money from these special interests when there's a tough law on the books authored by former state Sen. Tom Hayden that sharply tightened restrictions on the MTA because of its long history of scandal and abuse of the public's money.

Deja vu all over again, City Hall gets in trouble raiding airport funds

Is Ted Stein back at LAX mishandling airport funds to cover up holes in the city budget or does it just seem that way because the feds are investigating where the money went?

According to the Times, Federal authorities are questioning whether airport officials have been putting nearly $7 million a year into L.A. Inc., the city's convention and visitors bureau, for the last six years -- a total of about $40 million.

Airport GM Gina Marie Lindsey is scrambling to prove the money somehow meets federal rules that airport revenue go to support aviation, not tourism, and she concedes that the law involved is "very general, with lots of gray areas subject to interpretation."

You don't need a weather man to tell which way the wind is blowing when you got a mayor who can predict rough economic times ahead

No new taxes, no new fees, no new ...well maybe water rates will go up and who knows what else.

That's Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa talking to 500 business leaders at the annual United Chambers of the Valley luncheon Tuesday.

"We have raised the trash fee as much as
 we can and this is not the time to seek any
other increases," Villaraigosa said.

So how's he going to cover the $400 million
budgethole he created? Well, fake layoffs,
creative accounting and borrowing worked last year so maybe he'll just cut public services this time. Now that is creative.

The revolution that gives the people a seat at the table of power will take time and effort.

That was obvious Tuesday as Department of Water and Power Commission President Nick Patsaouras fought with passion to end the public utility's historic exclusion of the public from its business.

Even as other commissioners, under pressure from DWP officials and the mayor, undercut Patsaouras a strong turnout of community activists -- 25 speakers plus 15 or 20 others -- logically laid out the case that the utility has lost the public's confidence after imposing one rate hike after another, allowing the water and power infrastructure to deteriorate and given away sweetheart contracts to its employees worth 5.9 percent across-the-board this year and even more to thousands of them.

In the end, the board voted unanimously to move forward on Patsaouras' proposal to create an independent office that might be called the Ratepayer Advocate, Ombudsman or Inspector General.

The three commissioners who attended the meeting -- Edith Ramirez, Wally Knox and Lee Kanon Alpert -- expressed little enthusiasm for giving the seat at the table of power for the first time in the hundred-year history of the DWP.

Video and audio of the meeting -- despite their poor quality -- might tell the story best and will be posted thought you'll have to turn up the sound to high Twice, security guards ordered me to stop taking video and I had to interrupt the meeting for permission to exercise such a basic right, which tells you a lot about the mentality of the DWP.

Here's Jack Humphreville, member of the DWP citizen's committee and the DWP Neighborhood Council committee, appealing for creation of the Ratepayer Advocate office.

Unfortunately, Knox scuttled the appointing of Humphreville, Soledad Garcia and Dan Wiseman to an advisory committee to work with the board to develop a plan for public involvement. Ramirez and Knox will now form a committee to decide whether to recommend public participation and who should be the public representatives as the process goes forward.





Here's a clip of Commissoner Knox -- an apologist for all things DWP and a long-time pal of the mayor -- arguing the rate hikes, salaries and exclusionary processes of the utility's management are entirely justified and in the public interest. But he concluded by insisting he has an open mind on the Ratepayer Advocate issue.



Here's Board President Patsaouras in part one of his impassioned argument that including the public in DWP decisions and transparency in the utility's activities will help restore its lost credibility. The video was interrupted by security guards threatening to kick me out of the meeting.

REMINDER: Today's the day to let DWP commissioners know you support creating a Ratepayer Advocate:
ACTION ALERT 1: Contrary to the way the Department of Water and Power treated the public in the past. the utility's Board of Commission on Tuesday will consider creating a Ratepayer's Advocate -- a independent expert paid by the DWP who's mission is to keep the public informed about what's going on and to protect the public's interest.on community activists of every type in every part of the city to speak up  We urge you to join us at the board meeting at the DWP at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday (Oct. 7) at 111 N. Hill St., 15th floor. There's free parking at the DWP.

The markets are crashing, welfare rolls are surging, county prepares to make cuts, the end of the world is coming...

Well, maybe not. World stock markets are mostly up this morning, the actual increase in welfare rolls is relatively small and the county is only looking at modest cuts out of its $22 billion budget.

Still, a lot of people are struggling which makes you wonder why our local and state governments think it's such a good time to seek nine tax and bond issues on the Nov. 4 ballot, why it's such a good time to have raised rates and fees on everything.

Maybe it's because preserving government is their goal, not helping people get through a rough economic time. The Daily News runs a list of what meager help is available to those people.

Prop 5: "Drug dealers Bill of Rights" will help empty the prisons and put hardened criminals back in your neighborhood

Critics of Prop. 5 have focused on it being a large step toward legalization of drugs but Sen. Dianne Feinstein has honed in on its claim that it would only expand the number of "non-violent" drug offenders who can get rehabilitation rather than incarceration.

"Not only would Prop 5 reduce accountability, it could allow gang-members and other criminals accused of identity theft, domestic violence, child abuse, car theft, killing someone while driving under the influence and a host of other serious crimes to effectively escape prosecution," Feinstein said in a statement.

"Proposition 5 should be known as the 'drug dealers bill of rights.' Proposition 5 is a dangerous initiative that would cause far too much harm to our families, schools and communities."

The Nov. 4 ballot measure, heavily backed by billionaire George Soros, uses Section 667.5 of the Criminal Code to define the "non-violent" offenses for which treatment rather than prison is allowed so Feinstein is absolutely right about this.

At the Saving L.A. Project's Town Hall Saturday, retired parole officer Caroline Aguirre explained just how dangerous Prop. 5 is and how it will be used by criminals of every type who will claim they're really addicts and not responsible for their actions -- a dodge that will let them avoid prison.

Here's what she had to say:

In a far-reaching opinion Superior Court Judge David Yaffe ruled today that the city's efforts to use agendas to obscure what they're doing like referring to an item with major environmental consequences as ENV-2007-2939-MND violates state law.

How would anyone know what that means, which is the argument attorney Robert Silverstein made on behalf of the La Mirada Avenue neighborhood in Hollywood. The community claimed the city Planning Commission's agendas explained the issues before it except when it came to those that are often the most important -- issues covered by CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act.

"The evidence before the court, which is uncontradicted, shows that the City Planning Commission of the City of Los Angeles repeatedly posted agendas of its meetings during the year 2007 that clearly disclosed each action that it intended to take or to discuss at a meeting except actions to be taken or considered under (CEQA)," Yaffe wrote in his opinion.

That wasn't the case when CEQA issues were on the the agenda. All they got was the cryptic reference of a file number.

"Such cryptic references are meaningless to most members of the public and do not in any way describe the particular action to be taken...such descriptions not only violate the Ralph M. Brown Act (open meeting law), they also violate the fundamental purpose of CEQA." 

Clear and complete information sufficient for the public to understand what is at stake is the goal of both laws, Yaffe ruled. And he is prepared to issue a broad order requiring the City to be transparent in this regard in the future -- a ruling that can be applied more widely to much of what City Hall tries to do in the dark, hidden from the public.

Its management is in chaos, it's being taken apart piece by piece and even the people who have most to gain don't support LAUSD's ridiculous $7 billion bond issue on the Nov. 4 ballot.

Feeble in its efforts at reform over three decades, the LAUSD and its endlessly swelling bureaucracy have lost the confidence even of its friends -- the people who stand to gain from yet another bond issue.

The rapidly expanding charter school organizations, the teachers union, even the head of the bond oversight committee have refused to endorse this money grab without a plan.

If ever there was a vote of "no confidence" in the district, the lack of support for this bond issue is it. And voters should take the cue and resoundingly defeat Measure Q -- aptly named for its questionable nature -- and send a message that it's time for radical change in public education in L.A.

Think about these facts:

LAUSD has put in $450 million for charter schools despite fighting them every inch of the way and making them go to court to get the money mandated by state law. And the charters still don't support the bond.

There's $1.8 billion to rebuild brand-new massive schools into smaller academies where kids might actually learn -- a goal long sought by genuine reformers but resisted by LAUSD -- and nobody is lining up to cheer.

Green Dot Charters led by Steve Barr supports the spending plan as it's written but doesn't trust the bureaucrats to deliver on its promise.

The California Charter School Association, which can build classroom space 33 percent cheaper than LAUSD and thus get more bang for the buck, has withheld support, saying it has "concerns about the effectiveness" of the plan and wants the district to embrace a broad policy that recognizes charters' ability to create more seats cheaper and faster.

Mike Piscal, founder and CEO of ICEF Public Schools, which operates 13 charter schools in South Los Angeles and is expanding rapidly, strongly opposes Measure Q.

Neighborhood Councils vs. Villaraigosa: How come the city is still in the red despite higher rates, taxes and fees?

The mayor will have to be at his smooth-talking best Saturday when he meets with hundreds of NC members for Budget Day or it likely will become a Day of Reckoning.

Until now City Hall has had an easy time of it as it gouged the public and gave away the treasury in sweetheart contracts and deals but the hole in the budget keeps getting deeper and resistance to the nine tax and bond issues on the Nov. 4 ballot is growing.

Concerted efforts by the Dept. of Neighborhood (Dis)Empowerment and the City Council have kept NCs fragmented and confused but they are growing more sophisticated and better organized and may be ready to challenge the way the city does business.

"I think one of the things the mayor and his staff will hear is that we understand the need to cut back," Jill Banks Barad, president of the Valley Alliance of Neighborhood Councils told Rick Orlov. "What we don't want to hear is more tax or fee increases. What we want to hear is where the city will be cutting back and that it's getting back to basics and don't start new programs we can't afford."

Cut city spending? What a novel idea. The truth is there's little room left for creative bookkeeping with a phony budget in place, revenue falling and costs soaring through with many employees getting raises of up to 5 and 6 percent.

A lot was learned by the activists who came to Saturday's Town Hall meeting of the Saving L.A. Project and we identified two immediate opportunities to let City Hall know that people across the city care deeply about preserving our heritage in Graffith Park and the Southwest Museum and we are willing to fight for a future that preserves our quality of life.
 
That after all is what L.A. is really about. There's no place on earth where the living is as good for so many as right here but at the rate and in the direction we're going that won't be true much longer.

That's what I've been hearing from people all over Los Angeles, people who are trying to do something to reverse the course we're on. I don't know if anybody else would put it into to the words I use but I believe with all my heart that the people I've met from east, west, south and north L.A. rich, poor and in between, share a strong commitment to change.

Toward that end, we seized on two coming opportunities for political action -- so get involved yourself, spread the word to others, make a difference, let City Hall know what you believe, that you care enough to do something about it.

ACTION ALERT 1: Contrary to the way the Department of Water and Power treated the public in the past. the utility's Board of Commission on Tuesday will consider creating a Ratepayer's Advocate -- a independent expert paid by the DWP who's mission is to keep the public informed about what's going on and to protect the public's interest.

After a strong presentation by longtime DWP activist Jack Humphreville, SLAP called
on community activists of every type in every part of the city to speak up  We urge you to join us at the board meeting at the DWP at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday (Oct. 7) at 111 N. Hill St., 15th floor. There's free parking at the DWP.

If you can't get there, send an email to DWP General Manager David Nahai at david.nahai@ladwp.com as well as to the five board members at forescee1@cfrc.net, patsaouras@earthlink.net, wallyknox@earthlink.net, lkalpert@AlpertBarr.com, edithramirez@quinnemanuel.com.

Among the other important issues on the agenda are how to pay for the unbudgeted 5.9 percent raises just given to DWP workers, whether another water rate hike should be imposed in January and the subsidy to LAUSD.

Action Alert 2: A large turnout of activists is planned for the City Council chamber on Wednesday Oct. 15 at 10 a.m. to speak during public comment of the importance of protecting Graffith Park from development and preserving the city's oldest museum, the Southwest Museum in Mt. Washington

City officials are in the process of deciding whether Griffith Park should be granted cultural/historical status which would make any future development efforts subject to an open and complete public process. That would go a long way to preserving the park as open space and the city treasure it is.

The commitment made by the Autry National Center when it took over the Southwest Museum was to restore it as a living museum. The community has been fighting ever since to get the Autry to leave up to its commitment and guarantee the Southwest will be restored and have sufficient funding to stage important exhibits.

Besides questions about the Autry's intent is the issue of its proposed expansion in Griffith Park and the $1 a year it pays the city for use of the public land.

Many other issues were discussed and it was reported that significant strides have been made in getting non-profit status for the Saving L.A. Project, establishing an organizational structure and launching the webside ourla.org as a citywide news, information and community center for all of Los Angeles

Heinrich Keifer agreed to be acting president, Nina Royal acting secretary and Tom Carter acting treasurer to help give us some structure while we create a board and leadership team for our loosely-knit coalition and obtain IRS approval for the non-profit corporation that has been certified by the Secretary of State.

Thanks to the generosity of the the Progressive Democrats who created westcoastpress.com as a potential online newspaper for the region, we now have a terrific website for ourla.org, the online community network to link up Neighborhood Councils, residents groups, service clubs and activist groups of various interests and political perspectives.

"The more I learn, the more troubled I am. It's clear that people feel obligated to give to charities when there are people in positions of power who are asking for the money."

I wish everybody was getting that "troubled" feeling like Robert Stern, president of the nonprofit Center for Governmental Studies, is. There's a lot to be troubled about in all aspects of the way City Hall does business and Dave Zahniser in the Times uncovered a fragment of what is going on all the time.

His story, actually played on P. 1 of all places, connects the names of mayoral pals and moneyed big shots Henry Cisneros and George Pla among others to the ethics investigation of Robert Aguallo Jr., who retired as general manager of the city's $10 billion employee pension fund in May.

Arguallo took a job in April with Cardinal Americas, Pla's firm that had received help from his agency only two months earlier. And he was shameless about personally dunning beneficiaries or wannabe beneficiaries of investments from Los Angeles City Employees' Retirement System (LACERS) for contributions up to $10,000 for his March 17 retirement party at the exclusive California Club downtown.

The 400 emails obtained by Zahniser "show LACERS employees performing an array of party-related tasks, such as choosing the menu and reviewing the inscription planned for a commemorative 'whisper cut' crystal bowl."

The event raised $150,000 with two-thirds going to a "Robert Aguallo Jr." scholarship to be administered by the Robert Toigo Foundation, a nonprofit that helps minorities get jobs in finance.

At least 16 companies bought tables that benefited or stood to benefit from LACERS, particularly from a program Arguallo developed to help minority and other companies that normally can't raise the kind of $10 million investments that he helped provide.

Among those paying the $10,000 for tables was Palladium Equity Partners, which got a $10 million LACERS commitment for its efforts to capitalize on "the overall Hispanization of the U.S. society;" the real estate fund CityView run by mayoral pal and fund-raiser Henry Cisneros, the former Housing and Urban Development Secretary who got a $25 million LACERS commitment; Cordoba Corp., the George Pla company that runs Cardinal Americas, the start-up fund that got a commitment of $10 million through Aguallo's initiative and now employs him.

School days, school days, dear old broken rules days -- Antonio wants union, student protections thrown out at his 10 LAUSD schools

You got to love life's little ironies like Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa figuring out one month into the school year -- and three years after he wanted to take over all of LAUSD -- that there's 86 state laws that make it impossible to run good schools.

No kidding, he's cut a quiet deal with LAUSD to seek state a waiver from the 86 state laws that protect teachers and students from administrators who think they can do anything they want with public money. And the school unions are mad as hell.

So here's the guy who started as a teachers union organizer, the man who these days brings companies to their knees in labor disputes and now suddenly he wants to "waive all laws that can be waived." because he finds requirements on teacher certification, math training, the employee merit system, student promotion, student retention and dozens other issues.

"Everyone agrees that the regulations imposed by Sacramento have taken dollars away from our classrooms and wasted them on the bureaucracy," mayoral spokeswoman Emma Soichet to the Daily News' George Sanchez.

A lot of people who said the same thing for years -- like the Valley school breakup movement and other reformers -- got the cold shoulder from Antonio and his pals but this time it's different. "We need to do this quickly because things have not been working in the district for a long time," said school board president Monica Garcia.

UTLA head A.J. Duffy calls the secret process "absolutely appalling" and other union leaders offer similar sentiments. Welcome to the club, that's how every activist in town feels -- it's all back room deals as if we're all idiots who don't matter.

The state budget was three months late, tax revenues are falling and California is nearly broke -- no wonder there's nine bond and tax issues on the ballot

How could the world's sixth largest economy get into such trouble? Could it be the political system is what's really bankrupt? Nah, it's all Washington's fault.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Treasurer Bill Lockyer are in a lather because no one will lend the state $7 billion to pay its bills and it will run out of cash before the month's end.

The credit crunch is the immediate cause but the real reason is years of overspending and the failure of state officials to make tough decisions. Nothing shows the political bankruptcy more clearly than the fact that the city, schools, community colleges, MTA and state think this is the right time to borrow billions of dollars and raise taxes on people who are losing their jobs left and right and can't pay their food, fuel and mortgage bills.

Garcetti sees the light --  angry constituents force to take a second look at giant electronic billboard flashes in their eyes 24 hours a day

Besieged by the anger in Silver Lake over a new digital billboard, City Council President Eric Garcetti says the deal he helped cut with Clear Channel and other companies after the city won their case in court has ramifications that weren't clear to him at the time.

"You don't want a flashing billboard spewing light into your bedroom every night, so I want the city attorney to look at that," he told the Times.

Maybe citizen action does have an effect after all.

Sign of things to come: City starts cutting back on public services, laying off workers

When the city magically made its $400 million budget deficit disappear a few months ago without cutting anything, you knew it was only a matter of time before reality prevailed over their fantasies.

Now we learn, the parks department has started laying off about 140 temporary workers and reducing the hours for hundreds of others -- the people who clean toilets, rake the sandboxes, provide security and other basic services that keep the recreation facilities safe for kids and the rest of us.

Maybe those workers can move in with the DWP employees who are all getting 6 percent raises out of the increased water and power rates.

Trust me on this one, it will get a lot worse in the months ahead as the city finds it can't pay its bills despite massive hikes in rates, taxes and fees.
Cry-baby legislators squealing like pigs with lipstick over Arnold's 415 vetoes

It took the state Legislature a record 85 days after the constitutional deadline to pass a phony budget that won't make through winter but that doesn't stop legislators from whining because the governor nixed 415 bills.

Those vetoed included such momentous acts of legislative courage as a bill that would have required capitlizing "delta" when referring to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta; one allowing a Catholic girls' school to use National Guard  property as a parking lot and another permitting funeral directors to return pacemakers to manufacturers.

That doesn't mean they didn't do a lot of harm with the 772 bills that made it into law. You can bet your next state income tax refund -- if you get one -- on the certainty that they didn't solve any of the real problems people face but did a good job of looking after a long list of special interests'..

That's the conclusion of a Rand Corp. study released today that puts the lie to the Measure R sales tax hike as the answer to L.A.'s traffic woes.

The study found local officials have taken most of the cheap and politically easy solutions -- what a surprise! -- and now need to move quickly and decisively to adopt measures that work all around the world.

"Without bold action, congestion across the region will only get worse and cost everyone more -- financially, environmentally and through a diminished quality of life,"said Paul Sorensen, lead author of the "Moving Los Angeles" study.

Congestion pricing for driving and parking in peak hours, local fuel taxes region-wide bike paths, restricting parking on main thoroughfares, one-way streets, more HOV lanes are among the 13 practical proposals for reducing the nation's worst traffic congestion within five years.

In the simplest terms, drivers who use the roads the most, especially during peak hours, are so heavily subsidized by the rest of us that they don't have to make the economic decision to make different choices like using public transit, ride sharing and staggering work hours.

Make them pay more and their behavior will change. In other words, sales taxes-- already at 1 percent for the MTA and soon to rise another half-cent unless voters wake up and reject Measure R -- hit everyone equally and encourage traffic congestion.

So what do our local officials who thirst for the public's money like vampires for blood have to say about that?

Wendy Greuel, who heads the City Council's Transportation Committee and wants to be the public's watchdog on money as Controller, told Rick Orlov in the Daily News that the report confirmed the city is "doing all it can on short-term solutions."

"The fact is, we have to look at the more costly programs, such as Measure R, the half-percent sales tax on the Nov. 4 ballot," she said. "What we need to do is pay for the mass transit we need and continue to look at our land-use decisions to get people to live closer to where they work."

Wait a minute, the report said just the opposite. It said make the people who cause the problem pay by imposing short-term solutions that don't require higher taxes.

It said local officials "adopted most of the 'easy' ways to reduce congestion -- those that are effective, affordable and uncontroversial -- such as freeway on-ramp meters, traffic signal timing, and ridesharing programs" but haven't implemented the effective short-term solutions that require leadership and political courage.

Rand researchers did not even look at costly long-term infrastructure investments like adding freeway lanes or the subway-to-the-sea. In fact, the study pointedly notes that while getting 2 or 3 percent of the cars off the roads can produce up to a 15 percent reduction in congestion, the impact is only temporary. As soon as people see congestion isn't so bad, they get off the bus and go right back to driving.

"Pricing strategies are the only sustainable option for reducing congestion over the long-term, and they will be immediately effective upon implementation," said Martin Wachs, one of the study's authors.

Did I miss the MTA announce a series of pricing strategies that would reduce the massive subsidies that support traffic congestion? Is that a secret part of Measure R nobody wants to talk about?

Hardly. It's easier for the mayor and his colleagues on the MTA board to go out and raise $10 million from contractors, consultants and lobbyists to buy votes than to tell the public the hard facts and take the tough steps that might cost them votes.

How can they possibly know what infrastructure investments would produce long-term benefits to the community if they haven't taken the only steps that work?

It's Tina Fey's lookalike, none other than Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin -- the darling of the right, the object of scorn from the left.

The Alaska governor will be holding a rally at the Home Depot Center in Carson at 1:30 p.m. Saturday and GOP activists are expected a big crowd with buses bringing in the faithful from Long Beach and Woodland Hills.

For those more concerned with the local political situation, the Saving L.A. Project is holding its third Town Hall meeting Saturday at 1:30 p.m at the El Charo Community Center is El Sereno on L.A.'s Eastside.

It's a chance for community activists from all over L.A. to get together, share their concerns and develop action plans to change City Hall's political culture and empower the communities of interest and the neighborhoods.

Metrolink's tough-sell answer to expected lawsuits: "Our No. 1 concern is the safety of our passengers"

Lawyers held two informational meetings yesterday in Simi Valley as the process of rounding up clients to sue over the train collision in Chatsworth last month.

Given the deaths of 25 people and the injuries to more than 100 others, there will no shortage of plaintiffs -- or defendants for that matter. Sue Doyle in the Daily News offered this list: Metrolink, the MTA, Veolia Environmental, which contracts with Metrolink to provide engineers and conductors; Mass Electric Construction Co., Herzog Cos., Union Pacific and Bombardier, the Canadian designer and manufacturer of passenger cars.

Those are a lot of deep pockets and surely before it's over they will come up with a better argument than Metrolink spokesman Francisco Oaxaca offered which would be laughed out of court. Safety was clearly not Metrolink's No. 1 priority.

There's the problem of trains headed at each other on a single track, the engineer text messaging, bonuses doled out to train employees and middle management for keeping trains on time. Attorneys accused Metrolink officials of knowingly operating trains with mechanical defects, encouraging engineers to exceed speed limits and fudging records toward that end.

"Their chief concern is not what it should be," attorney R. Edward Pfiester Jr. said. "And that's the safety of their passengers."

You can bet the costs will be staggering in the end for the loss of life, pain and suffering and the punitive damages that will be imposed for the flagrant disregard of what Metrolink claims is its No. 1 concern.

If the city can't get rid of advertising trailers parked on our streets, what can it do?

Exemplifying the true spirit of free enterprise and American ingenuity, David Rosensweig deserves a place in the Hall of Fame of Capitalism --- a small place in a dank, dark corner to be sure.

As Rosensweig tells Barbara Correa in the Daily News, he got a brainstorm after he put up a mini-billboard in West Hills and got 12 quick responses. Today, his company AD-A-Glance has about 40 ad trailers parked on the streets of Los Angeles and is expanding across the Southwest.

OK, Rosensweig isn't exactly an entrepreneurial genius who made life better for humanity. He wasn't even the first one to start putting the 4-by-6 signs on miniature trailers but he is making a good living from these annoying portable billboards and doesn't understand why anyone would object.