Editor’s Note: DWP Commissioner Jonathan Palfrey, director of Green L.A. Coalition and vice president of the LA League of Conservation Voters, and I debated Measure B today on KPFK 90.7 FM on “Uprising” with Sonali Kolhatkar. Listen here.
By ANONYMOUS
Know Jack Weiss.
NO Jack Weiss.
Installment #1:
Our City Attorney Matters
THE CITY ATTORNEY IS OUR LEGAL WATCHDOG
Perhaps
you are counting on our City Attorney to protect us from hard core
criminals. And to be our go-to-guy against gangs. You should know that
the District Attorney, not the City Attorney, prosecutes felons.
Ideally, our next City Attorney will be a master of the criminal law
system and an aggressive partner to our District Attorney, but crime is
only one of the responsibilities of the City Attorney. The City
Attorney defends us in the hundreds of civil lawsuits filed against the
City. And, every day, the 500 City Attorneys instruct our Mayor, City
Council, Police Chief, and City Departments on their legal obligations
to the public. The City Attorney is all that stands between us and a
rogue City Hall that trades in political backslapping instead of what’s
right.
THE CITY ATTORNEY DECIDES WHICH LAWS TO ENFORCE
And
then there’s that other major responsibility. The City Attorney decides
which of our laws to enforce. Did you ever wonder why that illegal
building is still standing? Or why that sea of fresh billboards is in
place? Or why the “club” down the street or that shuttered facility is
home to activity at all hours of the day and night? The list goes on
and on. You know the volume of unlawful, disruptive activity in YOUR
neighborhood. Our City Attorney is tasked with enforcing our laws.
Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have our laws enforced? All it takes is a
City Attorney whose eye is on serving us, the public. All it takes is
for US to elect a new breed of City Attorney. More to come…
Do NOT vote for Jack Weiss for City Attorney on March 3
Installment #2 of 7:
The Subject was Rape
RAPE VICTIMS COUNTED ON JACK WEISS FOR HELP
When
he first ran for City Council in 2001, and again in 2005, candidate
Jack Weiss made this pledge: he vowed to make the female victims of
violent crime his priority. When he spoke to the National Council of
Jewish Women, he reaffirmed his promise. But Jack’s post-election
inaction was deafening. By September 2007, our expectations had dimmed.
We sat with Weiss and a thousand others at the annual Santa Monica Rape
Treatment Center brunch. Now chairman of the Los Angeles Public Safety
Committee, Weiss had yet to lift a finger. Rape victims spoke movingly
about their personal ordeals and heroism. Civic leaders told us about
the volume of untested LAPD rape kits. Perhaps this time, on this late
date, we could goad or shame Jack Weiss into action. We approached
Weiss, yet again, for his help.
WEISS TURNED HIS BACK UNTIL RAPE COULD HELP HIM
Jack
brushed away our September 2007 appeals like so many flies. That is,
until late 2008, and the ramp up of his campaign for City Attorney.
Jack Weiss and the City Council directed $250,000 from the City street
furniture fund to test the waiting rape kits. Reports stated that as
many as 20% of the DNA samples had degraded to unusable. Weiss publicly
proclaimed himself the white knight, rescuing rape victims from the
City’s dallying. We cringe at the avalanche of television ads
broadcasting the “leadership” of Jack Weiss in the fight against rape.
City Council Members Jan Perry and Dennis Zine, and rape victims, have
called Weiss on his deception. Why did Jack Weiss make victims wait
seven long years? Grateful for even his tardy, manipulative attention,
they (and we) will never know. More to come…
Do NOT vote for Jack Weiss for City Attorney
Know Jack Weiss.
NO Jack Weiss.
Installment #3 of 7:
One Man McMansion Band
LA: THE WILD McMANSION FRONTIER
You’re
not surprised. Until 2008, there were few limits on the size of what
could be built on a single-family residential lot in our City. This
lack of regulation produced McMansions: grossly oversized houses that
took away light, greenery, shade, and views, that hogged natural
resources, that diminished every other home on their street. After each
of our surrounding cities had imposed curbs on these Hummer-sized
homes, the City Council pushed the LA Planning Department forward. The
planners and Planning Commission held dozens of public meetings — more
hearings than on any other topic. A proposal was drafted that would
permit mansions to flourish, but that would prohibit the most
outlandish abuses. Dozens of communities and hundreds of emails
supported the new ordinance. Kudos! Consensus!
JACK WEISS: KING OF THE McMANSIONS
You’re
still not surprised. The proposed new law then began a slow and painful
death. It stalled for more than six months. Why? Councilman Jack Weiss
became a one man band in favor of McMansions. Check the record for
yourself. Weiss single-handedly held the matter in committee so that
it could not be voted upon by the very same City Council whose members
had initially pressed the Planning Department into action. He publicly
lobbied against passage. No other Council member stepped in to ally
with Weiss; he had threadbare public support. So, we ask ourselves, who
or what motivated Jack Weiss? Today, Los Angeles forbids wildly
excessive homes. The effort to get this measure adopted nearly undid
the neighborhoods, which kept the measure alive through countless
additional rounds of hostile hearings, courtesy of Jack Weiss. More to
come…
Do NOT vote for Jack Weiss for City Attorney on March 3
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Installment #4 of 7:
A Tale of Two (Century) Cities
PARADISE FOUND: CENTURY CITY
Until
our current worldwide economic meltdown, the real estate market in Los
Angeles was red hot. Post 9/11 brought us the gold rush of 1849 all
over again. Buy some land. Convince the City Council to double, triple,
or even ten-fold its zoning and make your fortune. Nowhere was this
gold rush more in evidence than in Century City. This mostly “office
park” had not realized the promise of its specific plan zoning of the
early 1980′s. The original idea had been to tie the growth of Century
City to the number of car trips that its few streets could accommodate.
But by the mid-2000′s, planning had moved beyond simply counting cars
to the notion of mixing uses for the purpose of shrinking the overall
number of vehicle trips. Dozens of developers perked up their ears.
PARADISE LOST: CENTURY CITY
Briefly,
good news. Girding for a half dozen gargantuan development proposals,
the homeowner associations surrounding Century City formed a
collective. They called on the developer of two new towers offered for
Avenue of the Stars at Constellation. With the traffic-relieving
“subway to the sea” still just a twinkle in the Mayor’s eye, they
swallowed, and negotiated neighborhood protections with the developer:
$5 million to be paid into a fund monitored by the California Community
Foundation. Its beneficiaries were specifically named and allocated
neighborhood improvements. How smart! Followed by lasting bad news:
Jack Weiss arrived to witness the happy resolution. He dismissed the
collegial round table, announcing to his astonished constituents that
his office would control and earmark all money. City Hall lobbyists
spread the hushed word that homeowners were seeking personal payoffs.
Litigation ensued. The coalition went home, some deflated, others
nearly destroyed. Goodbye community-designed mitigation fund. Hello
unchecked development. More to come…
Do NOT vote for Jack Weiss for City Attorney on March 3
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Know Jack Weiss.
NO Jack Weiss.
Installment #5 of 7:
Backrooms and Billboards
IT’S NO ACCIDENT: LA IS AMERICA’S BILLBOARD CAPITOL
It’s
like that shell game that you were suckered into in your youth. Ready?
In 2002, our City Council banned new billboards and all upgrades to
existing billboards. They adopted a billboard inspection and illegal
billboard removal program. The billboard industry sued. Because LA had
followed the tried and true model of other cities, we were winning in
court! But wait. In 2006, the City settled. We simply folded our tent.
The City Council gave the billboard industry the right to install 840
digital billboards at locations of the industry’s choosing. Not a
single public discussion. All closed doors. We were represented by two
lawyers in the negotiating room that day: current City Attorney Rocky
Delgadillo and City Attorney candidate Jack Weiss. The digital signs
began sprouting up in 2007 and 2008, followed by public outcry. We
learned that no inspection or removal of billboards had taken place. We
met a new enemy, supergraphics, those huge tarps now affixed seemingly
everywhere. We realized that LA is the laughing stock of the billboard
industry.
MEET JACK WEISS: THE BILLBOARD INDUSTRY’S BEST FRIEND
And
where is Jack Weiss today? He is calling press conferences to talk
tough against billboards. But talk is cheap. Where was Weiss when your
neighbors, instead of the City, began an inventory of our illegal
billboards? We guess he was out raising campaign contributions. Where
was Jack when digital billboards popped up in your backyards? We guess
he was diverting your attention to supergraphics while hiding from his
backroom blessing of the deal that gave the digital signs life. Where
is he on the subject of enforcing our billboard laws? No guessing
required. Jack is aggressively pressuring City Hall to rewrite all of
our billboard rules, when all we need are strict standards for sign
districts and penalties and enforcement for the laws we’ve got. Jack’s
proposal contains billboard-friendly loopholes the size of Mack trucks,
such as its grandfathering of many pending applications for flashy sign
districts. More to come…
Do NOT vote for Jack Weiss for City Attorney on March 3
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apologies for the tech failure, please bear with us and unsubscribe
again if you have previously done so.
Know Jack Weiss.
NO Jack Weiss.
Installment #6 of 7:
Follow the (Dirty) Money
LAW, POLITICS, DIRTY MONEY
A
war chest of more than $1 million. That is the size of the gift from
developers and their special interest teams to Jack Weiss in support of
his campaign for City Attorney. Shocked? You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Walk back with us to 2001. Attorney Jack Weiss was making his first bid
for elected office. The election turned on 369 votes. Jack Weiss won.
Three years later, in 2004, the vice president of developer Casden
Properties and 14 of the firm’s subcontractors pled “no contest” to
charges that they had laundered money to the 2001 Weiss campaign. The
illegal dollars were delivered in envelopes each labeled “Casden.”
Estimates of the total laundered amount range wildly, from $20,000 to
$90,000. Neither figure includes the bonus dollars of public matching
funds that Jack received for each dirty contribution. Trivia buffs:
care to add insult to injury? This was the self-same 2001 campaign
where Weiss unlawfully failed to register each one of the 23 mass
mailers that he sent out to tout his candidacy.
MEASURE A MAN BY HIS DEEDS
Jack
Weiss rose to this day, to this race for City Attorney, on the back of
his cloudy 2001 City Council victory. The record of the 2004 no-contest
proceedings raised devastating questions about what Weiss knew and when
he knew it. We are ashamed to report that the City Ethics Commission
never answered those questions. But we can tell you two things. One,
the laws of the City of Los Angeles require the return of dirty money
and the corresponding matching funds. Two, Jack Weiss never returned a
single penny. This sounds unbelievable, but it is true. What does Weiss
say? He mumbles about the passage of time and the closing of the
specific fund into which these sums were deposited. He says nothing
about the opportunity he has had to raise money to clear this record,
to do the right thing. So we have a question of our own: How can
someone ask to oversee our laws who is himself unwilling to live by
them? More to come…
Do NOT vote for Jack Weiss for City Attorney on March 3
Know Jack Weiss.
NO Jack Weiss.
Installment #7 of 7:
The Man and His Record
COMPARE: WHAT A RECORD OF PUBLIC SERVICE LOOKS LIKE
As
City Hall watchers, it is easy to become shrill and cynical. But do not
give in to the temptation to dismiss our indictments of Jack Weiss as
the unavoidable stuff of politics as usual. His practices dip well
below that dismal standard. Consider for one moment the selfless
accomplishments of just a few of his City Council colleagues: Bill
Rosendahl’s campaign on behalf of the tenants of Lincoln Place; Ed
Reyes’ championship of a revitalized LA River; Jan Perry’s one woman
effort to solve the desperation of Skid Row; Wendy Greuel’s stand up
opposition to Home Depot; Tom LaBonge’s daily vigilance to preserve
Griffith Park; Eric Garcetti’s leadership of the design “walkability”
teams in Hollywood; Greig Smith’s refusal to go along with the
sprawling possibility of Las Lomas. Forgive us for the partial nature
of this list.
WE DESERVE BETTER: THE UNACCEPTABLE JACK WEISS RECORD
Contrast
those stories with the accomplishments that define Councilman Jack
Weiss. He has an inexcusable attendance record; we would be fired for
failing to show up for work one-third of the time. A mind-numbing
20,000 of his Council District constituents signed petitions last year
to recall Weiss for his disservice in office – the recall supporters
numbered more than 70% of the voters that had once elected him. We
challenge you to locate causes beyond real estate development that Jack
has advanced as a Councilman prior to this campaign season. You will be
hard pressed to locate them. On his history of disrespectful treatment
toward his colleagues and constituents, we leave it to others to bring
those messages forward. We ask only that you educate yourself. Then
vote on March 3. Make an informed, heartfelt choice for the important
post of City Attorney. With thanks for reading.
Do NOT vote for Jack Weiss for City Attorney on March
Written by that credible source, “anonymous.” Wow getting a little over the top anxious, aren’t you?
This is so hilariously blatant and false there’s no point in rebutting it. Just one example, the rape kit issue: The Times documented that he’s been committed to the issue since at least the fall of 02, from which there’s an extensive trail, as well as a full show on KPCC from 9/02 with Kitty Felde about him pushing for rape kit testing. Fact that many councilmembers didn’t see it as a priority and are now trying to lie about it to claim co-credit doesn’t change the facts. Zine as a “source” is ludicrous, and Perry is as reliable here as in claiming she’s been on board with fighting billboards all along.
This is just a pile of lies by the angry little failed-recall group that is obsessed with Weiss and installing their puppets Nuch and Vahedi. So they repeat the same things over and over, louder and louder, posting this stuff on sites like MS2 and their own, until some other ignorant and foul-mouthed people repeat them.
Like on the previous thread, where some ignoramus spouting this propaganda was shown evidence that he was totally uninformed about Weiss’s stance on parking. He couldn’t challenge the facts, but the same bunch can make general accusations anon. and amongst themselves, figuring if you scream falsehoods and gross accusations loudly enough some of it will stick with those ignorant and generally angry at City hall. Their own views and opinions are generally very narrow, out-of-date and would spell disaster for the district and city.
What’s saddest is absolutely none of the candidates who are most qualified and have the guts to make decisions based on broader visions are the ones that would pass muster with them, and v.v. Their detriment to the district and city extends way beyond their pathological venom for one person. (I hope you feel better now, Ron, with another attempt to exorcise your own.)
If Jack Weiss has been so committed to the issue of rape since 2002, then how come nothing was done about the untested rape kits until 2008? He was the head of the City Council’s committee on Public Safety for crying out loud!
Either he was so inept as a councilman that he could not get anything done on the kits for six years, or he didn’t care about it until he needed something on his resume for the election.
Either way, nothing was done on his watch. Arguing that other councilmembers “didn’t see it as a priority” is laughable: all it would take is one phone call to the LA Times about it, and the money would have been found, which is what happened when Laura Chick made that call.
Obviously Weiss has been a no-show in the City Council for 8 years.
The problem is that he is arrogant. He thinks of himself as a grand statesman, perhaps a special envoy to the Middle East like George Mitchell.
In reality, his job is about mundane customer service, casework and local issues like tree-trimming, traffic and graffiti.
So he makes all constituents feel as though they are beneath him and not a good use of time. And he constantly sells out to the special interests so he can win election to grander office, to feed his out-sized opinion of himself.
He does not deserve promotion to a higher, city-wide office. And I see no evidence that he would be independent of the Mayor and developers to whom he owes so much.
Fortunately we can stop all this arrogance and poor performance by voting against him on Tuesday.
Laura Chick loves theatrical press conferences, and she made a huge point of feigning anger at some allegedly hidden outrage: “Shocked, shocked,” to realize what she should have known all along OR just chose to ignore because she wanted to claim the spotlight in the waning months of her lame duck term. (In prep for re-emerging in some new job? To stave off Rocky’s accusation that she was focusing too much on him?)
This means she was either asleep at the switch for over 6 years, or as Greig Smith alleged in a heated Daily News article, she simply chose to ignore the work of others. Those who think she’s some sort of selfless saint despite a lifetime career as councilwoman and whatever she can fit into, are transferring their wishful thinking onto her as “the one honest official.” She has done good with her penchant for theatrics by elevating the role and visibility of the Controller, but she’s as much a political animal as any of them.
She spent a lot of money doing an audit that found out nothing new – in fact, far less than the committee (Weiss, Greig Smith, Dep. Chief Beck of LAPD) etc. had could have told her had she asked, instead of circumventing them. They had detailed the problems and solutions, and the notion that they blew off rape victims is too intentionally insulting to address. Should they have held more theatrical press conferences like Chick, instead of releasing regular (documented) reports on their progress and need for funding? Maybe — but then the council colleagues who’d been averse to providing funding (many wanted to cut police hiring too) would have accused them of grandstanding, as they do even now. They’ve all got their own pet projects, jealousies, and some are just not that bright and educated, and need to operate in very broad strokes (Zine and Perry being prime cases in point). You can’t blame Weiss because they can’t focus on priorities and then agree on anything once they do — using Billy as an example — and then blame Weiss for how they are. (Probably one reason he’d be perfectly suited to City Attorney, where decisions are logical and calling them as you see them is not only OK but required.) Similarly someone like the Controller is the opposite of a team player with all its constraints.
It’s curious that Mariel Garza of Daily News was just interviewed on KPFK over why they endorsed the way they did, and she said that Wendy was “too nice,” too much of a consensus-builder. You can’t win if you’re a city official. (I think Wendy can be tough and like Weiss, freed from the constraints of having to get 8-9 other people to support everything you do, can really effect change.)
Let’s see what happens with the next CD5 person: either they hang tough for keeping the westside district a separate entity in essence, battling to retain its own tax base for cops, street repair etc., and getting nothing done because they’ll get no support, or learning to compromise, or forgetting campaign promises altogether. Vahedi would be the first: Koretz, who presided over the greatest development phase of West Hollywood oblivious to the outrage of CD5 residents adjacent, but now claims to be the second coming of anti-development, would be the last. Anyone but those two.
Right on!!!
ANYBODY BUT JACK WEISS!!!!
Jack Weiss doesn’t care about people, and I was happy to move away from his messed up district. Now I am looking forward to leaving Los Angeles altogether, because I am sure he’ll get next prize. I can’t imagine what assholes would vote for him, but soon at least I won’t have them in my neighborhood. Sorry for the future of a place I still love until the day he takes office.