Editor's Note: The following two columns I wrote were published this week in local community newspapers. The first one in Wayne Adelstein's North Valley Community News and the second one in Nina Royal's North Valley Reporter.

Remembrance of a Valley Past

Every week, Councilman Greig Smith's newsletter shows up in my email and every week I keep thinking I wish I lived in Council District 12 instead of a few blocks away in CD3. 

After all, I grew up in a happier time in the 1950s and Smith's weekly briefing conveys that world of half a century ago when life was simpler and father really seemed to know best.   

For Smith, who has spent his whole adult life on the city payroll, it must still seem like 1954 all over again. Library book sales, youth sports programs, Earth Day celebrations, college reunions, health issues of the elderly, honors for worthy citizens, after-school programs, benefits for veterans, special reports from staff on the Boys and Girls Club and electric lawn motors, community outings, visits from foreigners

All causes and activities worthy of note but not a word about how LA - even Chatsworth and Northridge and other communities in CD 12 - has reached a fork in the road and we have to decide whether this is the tipping point for the city or the turning point where we start to fix all that is broken.   

Even as he was sending out his newsletter, Smith was leading the charge on the City Council to impose dramatic increase in water rates that will almost entirely be paid by his constituents who live in single-family homes, particularly those with horse properties and those with smaller lots. 

The rest of the story...

Can Neighborhood Councils Fill the City Services Gap?

At a recent City Council meeting where water rate hikes that punish single-family homeowners and horse properties were approved, Janice Hahn seized on the failure of the Department of Water and Power's to reach out to Neighborhood Councils.

 

"I am very, very troubled that our Department of Neighborhood Empowerment's General Manager (BongHwan Kim) says you do not have a good relationship with Neighborhood Councils," the councilwoman lectured DWP General Manager David Nahai in opposing the rate hike.

 

She noted the city initiated its first Memorandum of Understanding with the NC movement to bring the community inside the nation's largest municipal utility - a relationship that flourished until Nahai took over and cut off communication.

 

DWP Commission President Lee Alpert raised the same issue just days earlier and Nahai - a man widely criticized inside and outside the DWP for his arrogant and contemptuous attitude - seemed to gag every time he had to utter the words Neighborhood Council. He couldn't bring himself to even refer to the DWP MOU Committee.

 

A year ago relations deteriorated to the point that the committee's president, Soledad Garcia, set up a separate DWP Committee outside the MOU to advocate for ratepayer rights.

 

It was Garcia's group that set in motion what became the No on Measure B campaign that against all odds stopped a $3.5 billion fraud from being perpetrated on ratepayers.

 

I raise this issue because it goes to the heart of what's wrong with City Hall: Our elected officials think we the people are so dumb we don't know what time it is.

 

They think that a little lip service and occasional patronizing smiles will keep us quiet while they cut sweetheart deals in exchange for campaign cash and free lunches at fancy restaurants. They have good reason to think that way because it's worked so long.

 

But economic hard times have a way of waking people up.

This afternoon, public access TV producer Leslie Dutton  of the Full Disclosure Network will lead  a group of us from the left, right and center of the political spectrum before the City Council's Budget Committee where we will get a minute or two to plead for some token of support for a radical idea.

It's called the First Amendment. You know that quaint notion embodied in these words: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Free speech is an idea whose time has come -- and gone in LA.

For years, Dutton and people with all kinds of beliefs -- from Neighborhood Council activist Dr. Dan Wiseman to sexologist Dr. Susan Block -- could hold forth on public access TV.

It was pretty bizarre at times to be sure but it was open to one and all and it also produced serious news and commentary like Dutton's Emmy-award shows.

Public access TV was part of the deal that cable companies agreed to in getting franchises. They provided 14 studios and channels and the equipment and staffing so that anyone could speak their mind.

But that ended in January when state legislation stripped cable companies of their franchises and freed them from providing public access facilities. Instead, Time Warner which still owns the LA market despite being de-franchised, has to provide the city with roughly $25 million a year with $5 million designated by law for capital investment in public-educational-government TV.

So far, City Hall has shown no inclination to do anything to keep the public element alive.

Instead, Channel 35 remains a showpiece for government propaganda from the usually well-staged and scripted City Council meetings to "Fishing with Herb Wesson" (my personal favorite) and uncritical reports on the city's great achievements -- shows that are reminiscent of the Soviet Union's portrayals of heroic wheat farmers in the Ukraine.  There is also the tepid educational programming on Channel 36.

The city has the option to maintain four other channels but so far has refused to, just as it has refused for so long to help fund development of stronger public access programming.

Anyone who has watched how council members chat or are absent during public comment or seen how Neighborhood Councils and other community groups are kept in the dark and excluded from participating in the debate on major issues knows how little respect City Hall has for the public or for free speech.

Dutton is not someone to take City Hall's rebuff quietly.

Last month, she brought together a diverse group of people -- Ed Asner, Stanley Sheinbaum, Arlene Peck, Dr. Charlotte Laws, David Hernandez, Sandra Needs and me -- to help set up the Public Television Industry Corp. as a non-profit to keep public access TV alive. Each of us has reached out to others, including former California Attorney General John Van de Kamp d and Scott Minerd, CEO of Guggenheim Partners Asset Management.

What we're seeking is a small fraction of the city's cable revenue to help get a four-channel public access system off the ground with private funding providing the rest of the money needed.

My own beliefs as a newsman is this is critical of we are to stop the decline of LA and turn it into a great city where people from all over the world have come in search of freedom, in search of bringing their dreams to life.

The news media are in sharp decline and are struggling just to survive in a scaled-down form. The Internet as a news and information source is still in its infancy.

My own project, OurLA.org. a community-based online newspaper combining citizen and professional journalism is I believe part of the solution. Public access TV is another critical element.

Free speech is the first principle of American democracy. We need to bring it back to life in LA to have an informed populace and the kind of civic engagement that will break down the barriers of race and class and bring us together as a city.

I hope you will support the free speech campaign.

It all seemed so simple way back when the case of the house that became a tenement came my way.

Nadya Mahdavi bought a house in my tract out of foreclosure and got cited for construction without a permit and over the next three months wound up with four criminal charges for allegedly converting a single family home into a three-apartment tenement that seemed like a cancer in our neighborhood -- the start of what could become the deterioration of modest 50-year-old Valley floor tract into a slum.

But the ownership of the house got flipped three times and her husband Nasir Shaikh emerged as a suspect too. Through month after month of legal maneuvering, the case has dragged on without resolution, costing untold thousands of dollars for the time of Chief Building and Safety Inspector Frank Bush and his team, Assistant City Attorney Don Cocek and various magistrates and court personnel.

Trial is supposed to take place Thursday but it won't. Shaikh has finally hired a lawyer and undoubtedly will get another continuance.

In the meantime, the house on Haynes Street in Lower Woodland Hills north of Victory Boulevard has more or less been restored to legal status as a single family home under the law. There's only one kitchen again and there are passageways between rooms so the apartments are gone although there are multiple tenants.

With maximum penalties of $1,000 per charge and six months in jail, a sentence unlikely to be imposed, it's hard to see how my neighbors will ever feel justice has been done. There might be some satistaction though knowing that Mahdavi and Shaikh, for all their machinations, say they're broke, their investments in this house and others under water, and their marriage on the rocks.

As the amateur detective in this case, I've come to understand they are not the real criminals. The city is filled with thousands of illegal conversions, illegal granny flats, illegal dwellings that don't meet minimum standards for a civilized city.

I have sat in court for dozens of hours over the last 10 months and watched prosecutors, city officials, court personnel try to deal with rat-packers, prostitutes, druggies, building code violators, dog fighters and assorted petty criminals of one type or another like a woman cited for smoking a cigarette in the park.

They were dealt with compassionately with occasional stern lectures to get them to change their behavior and comply with the law. They even got compliance from Mahdavi and Shaikh whose profiteering schemes have apparently gone awry.

I also have come to realize the victims of crimes like the illegal conversion in my neighborhood are the people of Los Angeles.

It is we the people who suffer the consequences of the failure of the leadership of this city. It is they who are killing my neighborhood, and yours.

Weak laws with weak punishments, the failure to use civil laws in conjunction with criminal laws, the failure to fund the Building and Safety Department with the money needed to crack down on slumlords and all the others who flagrantly violate laws intended to protect the health and safety of our neighborhoods.

I've heard from people all over the city that what happened in my neighborhood is happening just about everywhere.

There are thousands of illegal conversions like this one. There are thousands of granny flats with illegal wiring and inadequate facilities. There are thousands of people getting government housing assistance living in squalor.

It is the shame of this city that the $7 billion we're pouring into the city treasury isn't enough to provide effective laws and adequate funding to enforce them.

If there was any doubt in my mind about who's killing my neighborhood, my city, it was erased when I listened to the budget hearings going on this week when Building and Safety General Manager Andrew Adelman came before Councilman Bernard Parks' committee.

The mayor admits to having created a $530 million deficit that is soaring so fast it will be closer to $1 billion by July 1 when it takes effect. He says it's a balanced budget when it's built out of $80 million in hypothetical revenue from selling off parking structures, $240 million from hypothetical reductions in city worker costs, $146 million from stealing the money for badly-needed parking structures.

It is a fraud and the consequences are disastrous.

Adelman's testimony makes that painfully clear and he's only running one department.

He's supposed to enforce the city's new proposal for tightening controls on digital and other off-site billboards with three inspectors when there are already 4,000 illegal ones. "It's a joke," Councilman Bill Rosendahl (building3.mp3)called it.

He described how the revenue stream from various building permits and fees fully supports his staff in quickly and efficiently carrying out inspections for new projects with its "enterprise" fund. But he noted his code enforcement team is paid for out of the general fund and is facing such steep cuts that the number of inspectors could be cut --"virtual elimination" of code enforcement, Councilman Greig Smith (building1.mp3)called it.

That means a lot of code violators will get away with it, among those Adelman cited being celebrities and other prominent people who have ignored height limits on fences and hedges to protect their privacy. Undoubtedly, more serious violations also won't be dealt with as Building and Safety focuses its diminished resources on problems where this is an immediate health safety hazard (building2.mp3).

He was complaining, mind you> He accepts the idea of "shared sacrifice," as the mayor calls it, or "shared responsibility," as the council prefers. He was just stating the facts in response to prodding by the council who seemed to be staring the truth in the face but too weak to embrace it.

There are answers to this crisis and it's not selling off our assets or raising our taxes or early retirements. It's not deferring wage increases or slashing services or laying off city workers.

It's about the leadership of this city standing up in public and acknowledging their actions over a long period of time are killing LA. It's about forming a new partnership with the people of the city, not public-private partnerships with corporations happy to profit from our troubles.

It's about city workers accepting sharp reductions in pay and benefits and most of all, it's about making the Neighborhood Councils the agents of change by using them and the residents of their communities as the first line of service-providing and problem-solving.

Power must be pushed down and the people must rise up.

I know now who's killing my neighborhood and I know who can save it.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The City Council's rush to please lobbyist Ken Spiker Jr., who represents taxicab operators and billboard companies, by giving taxis an exemption from the ban on long-term parking on residential streets has stalled thanks to community opposition. Here's the email:

Subj: Taxi Parking in Residential Areas.

The Department of Transportation, which opposed this last September, now says next week's hearing was canceled and has not be rescheduled.

This is to inform you that this item will not be heard at the May 6 Special Meeting  of the Transportation Committee.  This will give you more time to schedule discussion of this proposal by your NC and/or your Transportation Subcommittee.

The next regular meeting of the Transportation Committee is scheduled for May 13; this item may appear on the May 13 agenda.  I will let you know if this item will be considered by the Transportation Committee on May 13 as the agenda for that meeting takes shape.

Yours in public service,
Carolyn Jackson, Senior Management Analyst
Department of Transportation, Office of the General Manager

At the end of a long day of hearings on the city budget crisis, officials of the Board of Public Works and the mayor's office admitted Monday there was no "urgency" to efforts to quadruple the storm water runoff tax and it wasn't a budgetary problem.

The stunning admission, coming just days after the idea suddenly popped up before the City Council, came as community groups were already activating a campaign to defeat the tax measure as they did Measure B. (Earlier item)

The reasons were similar. It was not presented to Neighborhood Councils, no case was made for the tax in public, it was being rushed before voters without any facts that allowed for full debate.

In this case, there was even a subterfuge involved to use a mail ballot to the three-quarters of a million property owners and allow them 45 days to respond while officials, backed by a campaign undoubtedly well financed by contractors and unions, sought to sell on the public on paying more for something they already have agreed to put up $500 million for.

It was nothing but an attempt to get more money out of taxpayers to avoid facing the crisis caused by overspending and underperforming.

The mayor's representative left open whether the tax hike would come back in several months, presumably with a more methodical approach and hopefully a more honest argument.

David Zahniser in the Times today quotes City Council President Eric Garcetti as saying he feared the tax would face the same fate as Measure B.

"It's going to get killed, for now," said Garcetti after discussing the plan at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum.

Councilwoman Wendy Greuel said she and her colleagues were troubled by the speed with which the proposal had moved. "A lot of questions couldn't be answered to show that it was ready to go."

And Public Works Board President Cynthia Ruiz said her agency would now develop a public outreach plan promoting the Bureau of Sanitation efforts to remove pollutants from storm water.

What's really appalling is that Ruiz -- like other members of the board draws a six-figure salary -- admitted she was pushing the tax to raise nearly $25 million a year to buffer the impact of the department actually having to come up with a 10 percent cost reduction because of the budget crisis.

In other words, the storm water tax had nothing to do with the storm water runoff program anymore than tripling the trash fee had anything to do with hiring more police officers as the mayor claimed.

It's all about charging the public for basic services so they could pour the money into sweetheart contract and programs that they city can't afford.

I'd suggest the first step the Public Works Department should take to reduce costs is eliminate the salaries of the board members, the only paid city commissioners. There's never been any justification for these salaries except to create plum jobs for political insiders.

It's stories like this that remind the newspaper man in me why I love LA, I mean really LOVE.

For pure in-your-face, public-be-damned audacity it's hard to beat the City Council's sudden mad rush to lift the ban on taxicabs parking for more than three hours at a time on residential streets.

Campaign money, influence peddling, back room deals -- it's all there between the lines of how a motion by Janice Hahn and Bill Rosendahl back October 2007 germinated into this assault on our neighborhoods, quality of life and sense of place.

Bans on commercial vehicles parking overnight or for long periods of times in front of homes and apartments are routine in cities across the region even in LA. They make sense because of the visual blight of advertising and the limited amount of street parking.

The problem that was brought to the City Council's attention by Hahn and Rosendah -- undoubtedly with the assistance of top lobbyist Ken Spiker Jr. who makes a fortune representing both billboard companies and taxicab operators -- is where can taxi drivers park if there's no off-street parking at their homes.

The council duo acknowledged in their motion that "it makes sense to prohibit" commercial vehicles and their signage from parking in neighborhoods.

"This restriction does not allow the numerous taxicab drivers who live in the City of Los Angeles to park on streets outside their homes during non-working hours. Taxis are no different than any other passenger car or van except for the exterior signage. These hard-working individuals often have no other parking option and it makes no sense to penalize taxi drivers simply because of their livelihood."

The motion sat dormant for 11 months until last September when Department of Transportation General Manager Rita Robinson reported back to the council that the problem is really non-existent, that city parking enforcement is so lax taxi drivers are rarely cited.

Robinson looked at the parking ticket record of the city's 2,239 cabs over a three-year period and found they were issued a total of 5,319 parking citations -- 705 for parking too long in a residential area.

In fact, 80 percent of the fleet had no such citations; 308 just one, 93 just two, "33 vehicles had three tickets, eight vehicles had four tickets, eight vehicles had five tickets, two
vehicles had six tickets each, one vehicle had seven tickets, one had eight
tickets, and one had 13 tickets."

That works out to 0.15 tickets per cab per year and only "a very small percentage (2.34%) of total taxi vehicle operators" get one or more tickets a year.

She recommended that her report be filed away and forgotten, saying "It is submitted for informational purposes only and no further action is required."

But that isn't what happened. Because 53 taxi drivers have even a once a year problem, the council is moving forward on letting 2,239 taxis to park in residential areas and opening the floodgates to all kinds of commercial vehicles with all kinds of signs getting the same right.

We already have sign trailers standing alone trashing out neighborhoods and 4,000 illegal billboards the city does nothing about and digital billboards going up everywhere and now the city wants to let commercialism invade where we live and our children play and we look out on our trees and gardens.

Transportation Committee Chair Wendy Greuel took the lead back in November by putting the pressure on Robinson for a new report but it didn't surface until March 12, nine days after she won election as City Controller, the public's watchdog on city government..

At that meeting, GM Robinson did an about-face and with what reads like the gritted teeth of a politicized bureau recommended that "the City Council direct the City Attorney to prepare an ordinance to amend Los Angles Municipal Code Section 80.69.2 to exempt taxis from restrictions prohibiting commercial vehicles from parking in residential areas for periods exceeding three (3) consecutive hours."

She reiterated what she reported last September "There had not been a substantial number of these types of citations issued in the past three years, and that allowing this exemption may set a precedence for other types of commercial vehicles requesting this same type of exemption in the future."

She also reported that she had complied with the council's orders to survey other cities in the area. "We did not find any city that specifies in their local code that taxicabs may park in
residential areas...Most of the cities surveyed do specifically limit commercial vehicle parking (which includes taxicabs) in residential areas."

But orders and orders and Robinson parodied the council's willingness to enact this ordinance by calling for several meaningless conditions.

"They should obey all posted or painted signage and curb markings, including any requirements to obtain permits in preferential parking districts. It is recommended that just one taxicab be allowed the exemption per residence."

She also noted that bandit taxis would benefit from the ordinance since it would be "discriminatory" to exclude unlicensed cab drivers and that many taxis display advertising on the vehicles.

"It is unknown how local residents will react to the sight of taxis (with advertising) parking for extended periods in their neighborhoods."

For that line alone with its wry wit, Robinson deserves forgiveness for not telling the council to take this ordinance and shove it.

The community is already taking action in that regard.

The future of LA hangs in the balance of 12 days of City Council budget hearings that get under way at 9 a.m. Monday but only a fool like me would hold any hope that the nation's highest paid -- and most overpaid -- municipal elected officials will actually deal with the grim realities.

As proposed by the mayor with his rhetoric of "shared sacrifice" and "reinventing" LA's middle class, the budget is a blueprint for bankruptcy.

The real sacrifices beneath the surface of the mayor's proposal are lopsidedly the public's, the reinvention a recognition that decades of misrule have destroyed the vibrancy of the city's middle class that will not be restored by selling off future revenue streams, raising fees, rates and taxes even higher or providing a few thousand make-work "living wage" jobs.

The surface itself is a list of possible temporary wage reductions and "deferral" of some wage increases to deal with the estimated $530 million deficit that will be far higher by July 1 and is likely to get as large as the entire general fund budget within five years unless drastic steps are taken now to reduce payroll costs and eliminate wasteful spending and unaffordable programs.

In truth, the mayor -- for all his emphasis in public on the sacrifices being asked of city employees -- has proposed in closed-door negotiations with unions an early retirement plan that will cost the public tens of millions of dollars and add to future deficits. 

Already, it has had the negative effect of causing hundreds of employees to delay filing for retirement in hopes of padding their pensions with five more years of credit. The situation will be even worse if his scheme is carried out since he will eliminate a critical layer of managers -- some of whom are "deadwood" as the mayor describes workers over 50 and some the experienced talent that have held the system together.

In truth, for all his talk about delivering on his commitment to reach the arbitrary number of 10,000 cops, the LAPD on his watch has grown by only 2 percent -- barely 200 overall -- with sworn officers doing the work of 600 unfilled lower-cost civilian jobs. There are no more cops on the street and the tripled trash fee has been used to inflate the rest of the city workforce by 10 percent or so and delay the impact of falling revenues and rising costs.

And so we come to the budget hearings, the public's last chance that the worsening crisis will be dealt with honestly and with courage.

Our hope for genuine reform rests with Budget Committee Chairman Bernard Parks and committee members Councilmen Jose Huizar, Bill Rosendahl, Greig Smith and Controller-elect Wendy Greuel.

As I said, only a fool like me would hold out hope.

With the exception of Parks, who has a bead on the mayor's police hiring plan for reasons as much personal as professional, none of the committee members has shown more than an occasional moment of independent thought and action.

And they don't help matters by relegating public comment to the end of each day's budget hearings schedule so that even if we the people had some thoughts about what needs to be done, we'll have to call on the indefatigable Zuma Dogg to present them.

Still, I hold out hope. It's my nature to always look at the way things are and develop a theory on how things could improve. It's why I'm usually on the losing side but hope springs eternal and keeps me young in my outlook.

I don't see how any sane person can look at the LA's financial situation and not come to the conclusion that the situation is going to get worse in a hurry.

Unemployment in the city already is officially at 12.5 percent -- that's one in eight people.  The unofficial rate is roughly twice that, one in four. And more people are certain to lose their jobs in the coming months and nearly everyone is certain to see their incomes decline.

Home prices are down 40 percent or more so more people will lose their homes, Taxes are soaring so there's even less money to spend in stores. And the increases being put in place -- sales tax, water conservation rate hikes, stormwater parcel tax -- are all regressive.

They add to the burdens of working people who have lost or live in fear of losing their jobs, their homes, their security, their futures.

The budget hearings involve a parade of bureaucrats who spend hours making the case for more money for their departments. At the end of each day, there's public comment.

We should know early on whether these five council members are prepared to rise to the occasion and face up to the challenge of seizing this opportunity to restructure city government while there is still time.

The options will be far worse months from now than they are today.

For months, the rumor mill has heated up over possible federal investigations of various individuals inside City Hall's narrow political culture.

There was nothing to back them up until now.

David Zahniser and Walter Hamilton of the LA Times posted a story this afternoon about two LA city pension fund officials getting "informal" inquiries from the Securities and Exchange Commission's enforcement division asking them "to produce information on their sources of income since Jan. 1, 2005, including their bank and brokerage accounts."

The letters to Sean Harrigan and Elliott Broidy, who serve on the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pensions board, were dated April 7, two weeks before news broke in New York about the LA and California links to pension fund kickback scandal.
 
Pro Publica reported Tuesday that the prominent LA investment firm, Wetherly Capital Group, allegedly "funneled $314,000 in checks to indicted political consultant Hank Morris through an intermediary firm he owned. Wetherly received up to $3 million in fees for one pension deal in New York, investigators say."

The indictment described the checks from Wetherly as "proceeds of criminal conduct."

Morris, longtime partner with top LA Democratic political consultant Bill Carrick, is accused of taking millions  in kickbacks from firms seeking to invest assets from New York's $122-billion public pension fund between 2003 and 2006.

Daniel N. Weinstein, a top Democratic fundraiser, founded Wetherly in 2001, the same year Carrick was guiding James Hahn's successful campaign for mayor.

Wetherly allegedly shared fees with Morris' firm, Searle & Co., for helping a private equity firm seal three multimillion dollar deals with CALPERS and LA's two city pension funds, LACERS and the LAFPP, Pro Publica reported. The firm is not charged.

The Times story said the SEC asked Harrigan and Broidy "to identify any source of income greater than $10,000 since 2005 and any document showing communications they have had with four companies -- Aldus Equity, Wetherly Financial, StepStone Group and Pension Consulting Alliance Inc. -- or representatives of those companies." The companies have been involved in investing LAFPP assets.

"For purposes of this request, 'document' includes, but is not limited to, memos, letters, e-mails, reports and notes of conversations," the SEC letter states.

"Because the facts acquired as a result of this inquiry may be considered for possible enforcement action by the commission or other law enforcement agencies, you may wish to consult with your attorney with respect to this matter."

Both men were appointed to the board by Mayor Antonio Villaragosa, Broidy previous servingly as Hahn appointee.

The Times said Wetherly hired Harrigan to perform consulting work in 2006, according to city Ethics Commission documents. Harrigan recused himself on a vote regarding LA real estate firm CIM Group, a Wetherly client, a year later.

The Pro Publica article is rich in detail and a lot of other LA names come up.

It's hard to say where all this will go but my journalistic instinct is this story has legs and given the fact the feds are involved and indictments issued it pays to read up on it if you want to be an informed citizen

The mayor's first road-show appearance selling his hypothetical $7 billion city budget took me around the corner Thursday afternoon to Providence Tarzana Medical Center where I kibbitzed with leaders of VICA and the United Chambers waiting for the inevitably late Antonio to arrive.

Suddenly, as the program began with introductions, someone grabbed me from behind in a chokehold. I didn't have to turn around to know it was Antonio.

It's a funny relationship we have. I'm probably his harshest critic and yet I like him a lot and we've had some long serious chats over the years, though not lately.

"Antonio is a great guy with great potential," a prominent Valley business leader told me before the event. "It's tragic for the city that he's done so little with it."

That's how I feel. And that sense of the disconnect between the man himself and his actions as a political leader only strengthened as I watched him in action wooing a crowd that doesn't share his political views and sees the community they love in jeopardy, the city they love getting worse,

The screen in the front of the auditorium proclaimed "Keep LA Working," a sign said "Saving Jobs, Maintaining Services," another showed rows of city workers in four scenarios for how their jobs can be saved with furloughs, deferring raises, additional pension contributions, one less paid hour of work a week.

The mayor smiled and turned on the charm, looked straight into the faces of people in the front, danced through his routine of how terrible the economy is and how no mayor in modern LA history ever was prepared to lay off so many workers, ready to make such tough decisions.

He's a pro-union guy, no one can question that, he said, but payroll costs have to be reduced 10 percent and the unions are going to have to make concessions or else. The only other way out is early retirements -- getting rid of the deadwood was a phrase he avoided repeating.

"We don't have the money, so let's figure it out together," Phil Willon of the Times quoted the mayor as saying in an article only published online like so many these days.

It all seemed so logical, so reasonable, so fair. We're partners in this crisis. He's listening to us. He respects our values and interests. He understands the problem is government costs more than we can afford and is fixing it.

Hardly a mention of fees, rates and taxes going up  or that he's expanding social welfare programs. Ot that deferrals and furloughs aren't permanent reductions in costs or that early retirement has the same impact on services as layoffs, only worse because it wipes out a generation of experienced managers without regard to the value of their labor.

Willon noted wrily that "he received a much warmer reception than he did in the March election" when the mayor actually ran second in the Northwest Valley and failed to get a majority in the Southwest Valley.

It was the same earlier in the afternoon when he met with 20 or so Valley Neighborhood Council leaders at the home of Al Abrams, Tarzana NC leader and a mayoral appointee to the Board of Neighborhood Empowerment, to listen to their concerns and pitch his budget.

"We have a budget deficit that's historical and unprecedented, and I believe there's a way out," Kevin Modesti in the Daily News quoted the mayor as telling the group.

What a performance, good if not great to be sure, from a super-salesman.

But what is he selling?

Is he proposing a solution to the catastrophic city pension crisis that will require taxpayers to pay 80 cents into pensions for every dollar of police and fire payroll in five years and more than 50 cents for every dollar of payroll for all other city workers? Is he surgically getting rid of programs that we can't afford or don't work or the real "deadwood" in the city workforce and getting back to basics?

Or are the real problems being deferred to another year as he did in the current budget and the one before?

That is what is wrong with smooth-talking and glibly gliding over the truth. It all sounds so good in the moment of seduction but it isn't necessarily love the next morning that you awaken to.

Next week, Councilman Bernard Parks will start budget hearings and attack the mayor's plan to keep on adding more cops even as other services deteriorate.

He'll prevail to a degree and free the mayor from his unshakable commitment to the symbolic 10,000 cops promise but the City Council will go along for the ride and we'll sell off parking revenue that will make things worse in the future and make the pension crisis worse with early retirements.

It will all fall apart within months and the $530 million deficit today will become a $700 million deficit as unemployment goes from 12.5% to 14 or 15 percent and revenue shrinks even farther.

The day is coming when even the mayor won't be able to talk his way out of the troubles facing the city. 

Bring it on -- we beat you at the polls and we'll beat you in the mail!

That's my attitude to the latest audacious plan of the mayor and City Council to rob the public because they have failed in their sworn duty to serve the people.

This gang of 16 has stolen the trash fee they tripled to supposedly hire more cops so they could fund their sweetheart contracts with unions, contractors and consultants.

They have violated the law by stealing $30 million a year from water service charges to pay inflated salaries. And when they still ran out of money, they turned the entire DWP into a cash cow that squeezes every resident and business already struggling to make ends meet.

And still it's not enough.

So now they want to corrupt the election laws by holding an unprecedented citywide mail-in election to skirt the taxpayer protections in the state Constitution to gouge even more money out of the public to cover up the $530 million budget deficit they created with their irresponsible actions.

They have nothing but contempt for the law and the people of LA.

On Monday, the mayor's cronies on the Board of Public Works approved a plan to seek a four-fold increase in the storm-water pollution fee to pay the salaries of workers engaged in cleanup projects that are funded by a $500 million bond issue voters approved five years ago.

The increase would free up nearly $25 million to pay the six-figure salaries of the Public Works board and to cover up the waste and inefficiency and misguided policies.

And they don't even want to allow a public discussion.

Today, the City Council put the measure on Budget and Environment committees' agenda as a special item for Friday with the intent of hurriedly rushing it to the council next Tuesday so  that ballots can be sent to the city's 788,620 properties owners by June at a cost of $450,000.

It's Measure B all over again and the fate will be the same.

This has as much due process in it as an armed robbery on the street: Give me your money or your life.

This is nothing but a betrayal of public trust, a dirty trick, more poisonous to the health of the city than the polluted runoff.

It allows them to win approval of the increase from $23 to $99 per property (a fee charged regardless of value or size) with a simple majority rather than the otherwise required two-thirds majority.

We already are paying $500 million for the infrastructure of this because we want clean waterways as much as we want clean water to drink and clean air to breathe.

We want those just as we want safe streets, good schools, healthy neighborhoods and good jobs. But we're fed up with being robbed and deceived time after time.

Let them clean up the mess they have made of city government before they come asking for anymore money. We are willing to pay but we're not willing to be robbed.

If City Hall doesn't understand the mood of the people struggling financially in these terrible economic tmes, they will have to learn the hard way.

From the HBO show guide: The outlaw camp of Deadwood marches slowly towards civilization... But the power struggles continue over everything in Deadwood--influence, money, and whores--as the founding camp members form strategic alliances to face down the threat of a powerful newcomer, seeking to remake Deadwood in his image.





Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa hit a sore spot with his carelessly revealing remark about his scheme to avoid layoffs by getting rid of the "deadwood" in city government by offering older workers five extra years in retirement credits to pad their pensions.

First off, it's a remark filled with prejudice against the elderly, the kind of thing that he would jump all over if someone else said that about protected classes he cares about.

Second, it's plain wrong. The deadwood in city government or any organization comes in all shapes, sizes and ages. And any organization that doesn't deal with low performers on a regular basis is destined to fail.

Third, CIty Hall has created a system designed for failure though sweetheart contracts and civil service rules that make it impossible to have any degree of real workplace discipline. Achievement is no more rewarded, then failure punished.

Worst of all, eliminating thousands of older workers whatever their skills or value has a greater negative impact on the city than eliminating jobs that provide the least public benefit. It 
may be the worst alternative since the city faces so many problems and needs experienced and competent managers more than ever.

The mayor has overseen an explosion in city spending, created a $530 million deficit, raised taxes, rates and fees faster than ever and approved massive wage increases to city workers. He is the unions' mayor, not the people's mayor, and his "deadwood" crack has even turned labor against him.

"Some people have given 20, 30, 35 years of their lives to the city. They help make it run, they know how to get things done..."

-- Bob Schoonover, President of SEIU Local 721

Here's what the Engineers and Architects Association posted:

I'M NOT DEADWOOD, MR. MAYOR

The Mayor referred to valued long time City employees as "deadwood". The employees he is referring to are the same individuals that are responsible in large part for police and fire services and all of the other vital services that the City of Los Angeles provides to the citizens of our city. These individuals he refers to as "deadwood" are even responsible for doing the work that the Mayor takes credit for.

In these troubled financial times when the Mayor is supposed to be uniting employees, and he is asking them to make even more sacrifices, it is unconscionable for him to refer to his employees as "deadwood". This indicates a basic arrogance and lack of respect on his part. Copy and paste the following paragraph and email it to the Mayor if you agree:

mayor@lacity.org
Mr. Mayor, I work very hard day in and day out to do the best job possible for you, the Council, and most importantly, the citizens of Los Angeles. Shame on you for referring to me as "deadwood".

Join EAA Executive Director Bob Aquino at the Los Angeles City Council session at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, April 24th, when he expresses his disappointment to the City Council over the Mayor's disrespect of City employees.

While 45 percent of LA voters recently called for Antonio Villaraigosa's early retirement, the mayor has his own plan to get rid of the "deadwood" at City Hall.

In pitching his hypothetical plan to erase the looming $530 million city budget deficit, the mayor visited editorial boards at local newspapers where he sought to prepare the public for his real plan to reduce payroll costs.

Forget furloughs and pay cuts and no raises and free hours of work and all the other proposals mentioned in the mayor's budget plan. What Villaraigosa wants is an unbelievably costly plan to offer early retirement to thousands of city workers by giving them five extra years credit on their pensions.

The mayor, in an interview with Times reporters and editors, said he is reluctant to lay off anyone in the city's 50,000-member workforce because it could lead to cutbacks in municipal services. However, he acknowledged that sending workers into retirement would be better than sending them to the unemployment line.

"Of the two -- I'm not saying either one is perfect -- early retirement is better than layoffs. Because you're laying off a lot of deadwood, you know, the folks who wanted to go anyway," Villaraigosa told the LA Times.

"We believe, strongly, that it is better to preserve the younger workers who are on the frontline of city service and to allow those closest to retirement to retire early."

Deadwood? At City Hall? Who knew? Does he mean anyone over 50 who could take advantage of his offer? Isn't that age discrimination? Somebody should report it to the city Human Rights Commission but better hurry because he wants to eliminate it.

Contrary to the mayor's discriminatory statement, deadwood in the workplace is not age defined. And that's the real problem. City Hall has awarded sweetheart contracts to the unions that reward longevity, not productivity, and so there is no workplace discipline which results in a toxic environment where motivation to achieve is up to the individual and too many people just go through the motions.

Speaking of deadwood, the mayor also made some 2007comments about his boy, poor Jack Weiss, that all but put the kiss of death on the wannabe City Attorney's campaign against Carmen "Nuch" Trutanich.

The mayor noted the LAPD union, Police Protective League recently hired Don Novey, the former head of the powerful state prison guards union as its political consultant, and spent $250,000 on radio spots, $17,636 on a mailer, and $2,645 on a billboard highlighting

Trutanich's endorsements by Districh Attorney Steve Cooley and Sheriff Lee Baca.

"These guys are going to spend a lot of money. Don Novey is leading a charge," Villaraigosa told the Times. "I can't guarantee it; I can't tell you I know for sure what's going to happen. But I can tell you - he's a good man. He's a good man, and I think people need to take a second look."

That's Weiss he says is a good man who needs a "second look" because what people have seen in their first look was so unsatisfactory.

Bye, bye, Jack.

Contrary to his previous statement, the mayor has proposed cutting the city's payroll by 10 percent across the board -- the "meat cleaver" approach that lets him avoid some of the hard choices between basic city services and social welfare services.

Since everybody isn't taking the same pay cut as the mayor, that means fewer workers to provide fewer services to the public.

How that is to be done is left in the hands of departmental managers and the commissions that provide oversight on them -- all of whom have been reduced to political yes-men by this regime.

"These extraordinary circumstances demand a fresh approach, shared responsibility and shared sacrifice, and the willingness to make lasting changes that close the gap today and lay the groundwork for a secure tomorrow. Therefore, my proposed FY2009-10 City Budget closes the deficit in ways that minimize layoffs and keep vital services intact," Villaraigosa says in his budget summary.

His plan eliminates more than 1,000 vacant positions, consolidates several smaller departments, reduces the vehicle fleet has been reduced, extends replacement cycles for office equipment, discontinues or renegotiates some contracts and includes "a series of responsible public-private partnerships and advertising opportunities which could generate hundreds of millions in revenue over the next several years."

All that accounts for only half the $530 million deficit which is why city workers are under pressure to cut a deal to reduce their take-home after years of lucrative increases in salaries and benefits.

Much of the 60-page budget summary is a lengthy explanation of how bad the global economy is, how the LA economy is even worse and how that means tax revenue is falling dramatically.

But the heart of the matter appears on page 14, Exhibit 2, Summary of Expenditures. That's where we learn where the winners and losers are in the mayor's political agenda, where we find out what's important to him.

Commissions on women, children and human relations are basically eliminated and the money rolled into a Department of Human Services which is supposed to help the jobless and homeless, as far as I can tell.

Finance, Emergency Services and Street Lighting come off basically even or slightly up while all other departments get cut.

The big losers are Building and Safety (-23%), Planning (-22%), Ethics (-18%), Clerk (-69%), Treasurer (-34%), Environmental Affairs (-14%), Zoo, Neighborhood Empowerment, Street Services and Transportation (all -13%). Those figures are based on this year's adopted budget, not actual spending, so the cuts are undoubtedly steeper.

The entire last half of the budget summary is a snow-job on all the great things the mayor is achieving with the $7 billion still at his disposal -- much of what he highlights as his initiatives seems mostly about adding more social services, protecting his political agenda for his campaign for governor, and whitewashing the impact on basic services he's cutting deeply.

The time bomb in the budget -- apart from the fact it's mostly hypothetical and not a spending plan --.is found on page 17 Pension Fund Shortfall.

City pension funds lost nearly 30 percent of their value last year and the city -- that means the public -- has to make them whole. This year, the contribution to them is $714 million, next year it rises to $754 million, to $1.4 billion the year after, to $2.3 billion by 2014-15.

Many like former Mayor Richard Riordan have warned for years that the pension costs, including lifetime health benefits, was a catastrophe in the making but there is no indication of the budget summary that the proposed spending plan deals with it all.

"The final impact of these market losses on the City's future required contributions is not yet known," it says.

In truth, the estimates of future contributions are a lot more solid than the mayor's estimate of what the deficit actually will be in the coming fiscal year and where the revenue will come from.

And that's where this whole budgetary house of cards falls down.

The mayor and City Council kept on giving away raises of up to 6 percent to city workers on top of other step increases they get and spending like fools on everything else even as the economy weakened and finally collapsed.

They juggled the books to mask the problem and failed to carry out any significant measures at any time this year as the deficit got worse.

This budget does more but fails to create a stable base and scale city spending to the revenue available now and in the next few years. So we are mortgaging our future, selling off future revenue streams and will be finding new ways to squeeze more money out of the public in the form of higher taxes, rates and fees.

There is, of course, an end to all this: A miracle will occur that will save us from the looming catastrophe or the bills will finally come due and there won't be enough money to pay them.

If the same effort and intelligence that put the mayor's brilliantly smiling face on his disastrous budget plan for next year had gone into managing the city's financial affairs and solving its problems the last four years, LA would have healthier neighborhoods and a brighter  future.

In fact, it isn't a plan at all, just talking points built on guesstimates and massaged into a public relations masterpiece that the latimes.com bought whole with the headline: "Villaraigosa unveils $7.05-billion budget, cuts own $223,000 salary by 12%."

The mayor's pay cut is the symbolic action that the press was programmed to buy. Talk about "shared sacrifice,'' the mayor leads the way without having to give up his multi-millionaire's lifestyle with his mansion, his 24/7 armed chauffeur service or any of the accoutrements of his high office.

The text of his budget plan is almost all about the sacrifices he is asking of city employees to avoid drastic cuts in services to the public with a "calculator" to show he means business about avoiding layoffs: Deferring raises $120 million, 1 no-pay holiday $11 million, two furlough days $25 million, mileage reform $5 million, healthcare reform $13 million, overtime reform $65 million 1 unpaid hour off, 2% percent retirement increase, $60 million.

My tally is 3,886 jobs would be saved and $308 million in spending. It's the employees choice to decide which cuts to accept..

Under the slogan "Keep LA Working," the mayor's office says of his proposals for city employees:

"The City of Los Angeles faces a $530 million deficit, which could lead to massive service cuts and as many as 2800 layoffs. Mayor Villaraigosa has balanced the budget with a package of spending cuts and revenue enhancements, but the city is facing over $200 million in service cuts and layoffs if no further action is taken to reduce the cost of the workforce."

Behind the scenes, something very different is going on.

According to the Engineers and Architects Association -- a union scorned by the mayor and besieged by his pals in the increasingly corrupt SEIU -- the mayor's legal whiz Tom Saenz last week offered five years of service credits to city employees who retire early. (Presumably, those are jobs that would not be filled.]

In addition, the mayor's team is only asking for a 1% extra contribution to the lifetime pension/health benefits packges, not 2% as publicly says.

"The unions agreed to meet on Monday, April 20th at 1:00 PM in caucus to formulate a counter proposal. We also agreed to meet again with Tom Saenz on Thursday, April 23rd, at 9:00 AM to present this counter proposal."

That's just one element of the budget plan that is little more than talking points.

There's the "selling the farm" element that might even be more worrisome.

The mayor wants to sell off parking lot revenue and possibly parking meter revenue to private companies that will pay big bucks upfront for the right to jack up the costs to the public in the future.

This is known as mortgaging your future, selling off future income to pay today's bills. Perhaps, it explains the recent experiment in making us walk around with rolls of quarters to feed parking meters so that we'll be used to soaring charges when private companies take over. As I said, there's a lot of intelligence and planning that went into this connivance.

I could only assume the mayor has already cut the deal for this since his budget plan contains $146 million in revenue for the general fund from a "special parking revenue transfer" fund plus an extra $113 million from a similarly named fund for the "special revenues" account.

For the uninitiated, the general fund that provides most of our service is put at $4.444 billion -- $1 million less than this year's estimated expenditures. The mayor calls that a 2% reduction or more than $22 million by using the figure in the original budget for 2008-09.

Special revenues are actually forecast as being higher in the fiscal year starting July 1 so the total city budget excluding DWP, harbor and airports is $7 billion -- nearly $400 million more than the current year's actual expenditures. The mayor calls that a 1% decrease by comparing it to the budget he pushed through a year ago.

More to Come



 

Editor's Note: This is a report on Saturday's first after the fact DWP public meeting on the water rate hike approved Friday.

By DWP Committee Member

Give the Department of Water and Power credit for trying, but their first workshop on water shortage year rates, held on April 17, isn't ready to hit the road.

With as many attendees as DWP staff, eleven of each, and more than two hours of presentation and question and answers, the big questions asked at the end were "How can I explain all this to my wife?" and "How can I explain this to my Neighborhood Council?"

And with those, H. David Nahai, CEO and General Manager summed it all up: Conserve or pay more.

It is easy to be critical of LADWP presentations to the public. We've seen it before--water rate increases; electrical rate increases; ECAF increases ($10 to the first person who can explain that to your husband or wife or neighborhood council in two minutes or less); infrastructure reliability rate increases; water security increases...you get the idea.

It's a complex rate system, mired in bureaucratic and legal process, and the trick is to reduce the message to those two-minute sound bites people have the attention span for.

Look at our City Council--even two minutes is too much on important issues like the water shortage year rates--90 seconds was the allotment for public comments last Friday, while unknowledgeable council members pontificated.

But back to Saturday's customer workshop. There was a 23-page Power Point presentation, including Excel spread sheet "compute your rate increase" in near real time.

That took two staffers and a management guru just to answer the question "How much will my rate increase?" when attendees brought their bills in. Need it be this difficult? Or should this information program have been started one or two years ago so it could be rolled out with ease?

Here's an example of why the public doesn't comprehend what DWP says, and why so many accuse them of obfuscation. From the presentation:

Water Shortage Year Rates

Why?
    * Southern California is facing the third year in a row of below normal water supplies.
    * Most of the water supplies (about 85%) for Los Angeles are imported.
    * Los Angeles Aqueduct supplies from the Owens Valley Eastern Sierra snowpack are below normal.
    * Metropolitan Water District (MWD) supplies from the Colorado River and Northern California are significantly below normal.
    * MWD has to reduce water deliveries to LADWP and all member agencies starting this summer.
    * Without additional conservation, the City's demand for water will exceed the available water supply.
    * Shortage Year Water Rates are designed to ensure that LADWP's costs are recovered without penalizing customers who conserve when there is a water supply shortage.
    * Shortage Year Rates are found in General Provision R of the Water Rates Ordinance.
    * Increasing the Second Tier rates during a shortage clearly signals to customers there is a need to conserve, and those who conserve, staying within their First Tier Usage block, will avoid the higher rate.

What's the hidden message? Simply that with conservation LADWP needs to raise rates to cover costs. That's hidden in the above. A gold star to those that find it.

The Tier 2 penalty rate will hit customers with a dramatic percentage increase, most won't even see it because it will represent such a small portion of their total LADWP bill, and the billing system is so antiquated it cannot show the numbers.

Then, come the summer LADWP increases the rates anyway, and in September 20% increases in Metropolitan Water District Rates will be passed through. Who would notice a $5-8 penalty, which is the median increase for affected ratepayers.

No need to belabor the details. H. David Nahai is on point with his message. Conserve or pay more. How hard and expensive need it be to communicate that message?

Sometimes it's harder than other times to suck down my anger over how our city officials carry out their pogrom against the middle class year after year, seemingly oblivious to how their actions subject the poor to generations of poverty, enrich the rich and drive away those who are neither rich nor poor.

Water rate hikes that the City Council rejected unanimously barely a week ago were enacted into the law on Friday with only Janice Hahn and Dennis Zine honest enough to speak the truth or vote with honor against the DWP's latest effort to turn the public's desire for environmental sensitivity into revenue to sustain its bloated payroll.

Starting June 1, residents of single-family homes get a 15 percent cut in their base water allocation and face a 44 percent increase on every drop of water they use above that -- a rate that is 75 percent higher than the base.

Yet, as far as I can tell, apartment owners and businesses and everyone else in LA only need to cut their base rate consumption by just 2.5 percent

The allocation takes into account lot size and other factors so that houses on small lots face the same 15 percent cut as those on giant lots which get roughly twice as much water on their base rate allocation.

At the same time, the DWP is in the process of more or less doubling those on reduced rates to about one-sixth of the total number of households. This is being done without regard to means testing so, for example, people who live in an area where most people are poor all get the reduced rates regardless of income.

Is any of this fair or rational or likely to achieve conservation goals? Does any of it achieve the mayor's stated goal of "re-inventing" LA's middle class (re-inventing because the middle class has been chased away for years) or does it strengthen the message that the real goal of City Hall's policies is get rid of the middle class homeowners replace them and their houses with high-rise slums surrounding luxury enclaves?

LA does have a water shortage, an electricity shortage, a land shortage, a paved streets and sidewalks shortage, a jobs shortage and a budget shortfall so massive that the mayor on Monday will announce he will start selling off pieces of the city like parking revenue, raising fees on the middle class and cutting services just to get through a few more months before the situation worsens.

This has got to end. In fact, it will end one way or another. Middle class workers are losing their jobs and their ability to pay the escalating costs of city government, let alone their mortgages. Small business people are seeing their revenue tumble so they're getting rid of workers, paying less in sales and business taxes.

Meanwhile, the revenue from the water rate hikes will keep DWP workers in their jobs at bloated salaries without any effort at making the utility more cost efficient.

The Daily News today has a long list of things that actually could be done to conserve water use if that were the DWP's goal, which it isn't.

David Coffin at Westchester Parents offers a good explanation of much of what's wrong with the water rate hikes and suggests a graduated system of as many as five tiers with rates rising at each level. Environmentalists who have studied our failed electricity rates system have suggested similar ideas to encourage reduced use of increasingly precious resources.

The rich and flagrant wasters would be soaked for their excesses; those at the lowest end of the middle class, like the poor, would not suffer. It's sort of like the graduated income tax and if combined with streamlining of the DWP and reductions in payroll costs would keep the utility solvent, provide a degree of fairness and achieve meaningful conservation.

But that would require leadership at City Hall, a degree of honesty and integrity and respect for all segments of the community.

That isn't going to happen without an uprising of the people. City Hall is at war with the middle class and the only sane response is to fight back with renewed energy as we did to stop Measure B.

Maybe we should all start by appealing the rate hike. Don't many of us face economic hardships these days? Won't the massive sales tax increases and proposed state income tax increase and city fee hikes add to our economic burdens?

If you've lost your job, seen your income fall sharply, already conserved as much water as you can, aren't you entitled to a break like the rich and the poor?

Poor Jack Weiss wants to be City Attorney so bad he's blindly done the mayor's bidding for four years and groveled before developers to raise campaign cash.

Trouble is he wants the job alright, he just doesn't want the work that goes with it.

It's clear to everyone in City Hall that Weiss would do whatever the mayor tells him to do if he wins the May 19 runoff against Carmen "Nuch" Trutanich. That alone ought to disqualify him from holding an independent office, let alone the high position of City Attorney where he's supposed to be the "people's lawyer" and a protector of the public interest.

Under the guidance of political hatchet man Ace Smith, Weiss' campaign consists of little more than attacks on Trutanich -- who is backed by District Attorney Steve Cooley and Sheriff Lee Baca, numerous law enforcement and community groups, and all the local newspapers -- for being a lawyer in private practice after years as a courtroom prosecutor.

Wherever he campaigns, Weiss needs to bring along a paid claque to neutralize the boos and jeers he gets.

Wednesday night's debate with Trutanich before the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association was typical. The audience wanted to hear what the candidates stood for and what they will do to make the city better as City Attorney but all Weiss could talk about was who Trutanich represented in his private practice.

A friend of mine reported: "I was amazed at the focus of the audience.  They were mesmerized. No one moved.  They just sat there soaking in the obvious hatred between the two and weren't fooled one bit by any of Weiss' ploys... Weiss was booed at least four times when he kept returning to the subject of Nuch's client list and "association" with the gun industry.  Further, Nuch was the one who wanted the debate to go where it needed to -- to discuss the issues of concern as opposed to personal attacks. So he took every opportunity  to make certain people knew where he stood and what Jack did. He was masterful." Others said the same thing. It's similar to what I heard at the LA Neighborhood Council
Coalition debate two weeks ago. I'll be at next week's debate sponsored by the LA League of Conservation Voters and see if Weiss can get off of his cheap and dishonest personal attacks on Trutanich and onto the issues.

But don't take my word for it. Watch the videos made by Pete Vukovich yourself.

First, the feelgood moment we all need (click here for video)...



What exactly does Antonio know and how does he know it...

People have wondered for years what expertise Antonio Villaraigosa has beyond being able to charm the pants off of just about anyone.

Thanks to the Bond Buyer, we have found the answer: Public employee pensions.

That's right, the man who helped pad the pensions of public employees as a legislator, City Council member and now mayor and is at the helm as the massive losses in city pension funds threaten to bankrupt LA or its taxpayers has found his calling.

"The Bond Buyer is pleased to announce our new keynote speaker Antonio R. Villaraigosa, Mayor, City of Los Angeles. Hear Mayor Villaraigosa's featured address at the 4th Annual Pension & OPEB Financing Conference on Thursday, April 30 at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel," says the press release.

The event is subtitled "Unlocking Budgetary Flexibility in a Lean Year" -- the mayor has indicated he will nothing if not flexible about which city assets to sell off -- parking meters, the zoo or whatever it takes -- to restore city pensions to health.

Send checks to Nancy's campaign, her causes, her bank account...

You got to hand it to Community College District Board Member Nancy Pearlman when it comes to chutzpah.

Pearlman is facing Robert Nakahiro in the May 19 runoff against and is so sure of victory she's not just seeking money for her campaign and her various causes but for herself as well.

Angela Reddock faces a runoff challenge from Tina Park, a financial auditor who wants to bring some fiscal responsibility to the bond-rich district, must be far less certain as she is more concerned with raising campaign -- than personal -- cash.

"Remember that I am always available for consulting work as an environmental lecturer, panelist and speaker, a documentary video producer, a radio interviewer, a cultural anthropologist, and as an ethnic folk dance performer," Pearlman says in a recent campaign mailing.

And if you just like to party, Pearlman is hosting a party April 25 at her John Lautner cabin in the San Jacinto Mountains "donations requested" but apparrently not required.

Here's my favorite line from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's "State of the City" speech Tuesday: "When challenges seem daunting, it's always helpful to recall the old Japanese proverb: 'Adversity is the foundation of virtue.' "

My personal favorite proverb comes from my mother: "Actions speak louder than words."

I've been struggling since last night to put those proverbs together and make sense of what I feel about the mayor's speech and my own beliefs about what LA needs to turn around its decline into a city of haves and have-nots, a city where special interests prevail over the public interest, a city where 50.5 percent of the voters showed last month just how alienated they are from the political leadership by voting against solar energy.

In its own small-time way, the mayor's State of the City speech had all the theater of a presidential State of the Union address. Even the themes echoed: Hard times, sacrifice, green energy...

The Times was oddly fascinated with the larger political context, headlining "Villaraigosa strikes gubernatorial tone," and largely ignored the actual content of what they mayor had to say, putting the story on page three.

The Daily News made it the front page centerpiece and Rick Orlov captured the heart of the speech in his lead quote: "This is reason for urgency," Villaraigosa said. "A reason to come to the table with new ideas. To recognize there is not a moment to spare."

Personally, I'm willing to wait for his budget plan next week before judging what he appears to be proposing. And I'm choosing to overlook the fact he was using the speech to launch his campaign for governor, and that he deflected all responsibility for the city's 12 percent unemployment rate and the $530 million and rising budget deficit.

Secure in the belief he couldn't possibly mean the majority of voters who said "No" to Measure B, I'll even overlook his attack on "the politics of no. Of saying what we can't do. No to investment in the long-term. No to what we can do together as parents and neighbors in communities, small towns and big cities across our state."

Instead, I want to focus on the foundation of virtue in our adversity, the recognition in his speech that he knows the truth that there is only one way out of the calamity we face.

"It's going to take a bold reassertion of our belief in community as a value - here in LA and across America."

That is what it will take: Community. The dictionary offers these definitions: "a unified body of individuals; an interacting population of various kinds of individuals ...in a common location; a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society; a group linked by a common policy."

We are all in this together, our lives, fortunes and sacred honor at stake, as the Declaration of Independence puts it.

I don't see why it so hard to see that and put action behind the words. In my 30 years of fighting City Hall as a journalist, it's always seemed to me the problem always was the lack of openness, inclusiveness and honesty in our government.

The mass of people have been treated like the enemy, seen at best as cash cows that feed a system that fails to provide the basics like good schools, public safety, paved streets and sidewalks, livable neighborhoods, good jobs and a healthy business climate.

The mayor talks to some but not all of those issues, too often putting worthy social welfare goals ahead of the fundamental duties of the city.

We do need to put failing schools in the hands of the people who can help them succeed. We do need energy and water conservation, a clean technology industry and many other goals the mayor has set.

But we also need the costs of city government brought into line with what we can afford and focused on the primary goals of making this a city that works, in all senses of the word.

It doesn't take a butcher with a "meat cleaver" to achieve this as the mayor described it. It takes a surgeon carefully eliminating what is not working or unaffordable.

And it requires depolicizing the bureaucracy and the commission system so that policies come forth that provide for the common good with common sense.

Most of all, it takes a commitment to make the people of the city true partners involved in the process, respected for their differences in values and needs and empowered and informed to fully participate in finding solutions.

If the mayor wants to be governor, he needs to be a great mayor first. That's his job.

Last Wednesday, the City Council spent most of an hour describing a litany of DWP failings when it comes to managing our water supply and then voted unanimously to disapprove a "water shortage" rate hike intended to make up for lost revenue in anticipation the public will fulfill hopes for a 15 percent reduction in water use.

The reasons were many, all having to do with the failure of DWP officials: Failure to operate in an open and transparent manner; failure to show even a modicum of respect for its customers, ratepayers or the oversight committee created under a memorandum of understanding with Neighborhood Councils; failure to provide proper notice; failure to explain who would be impacted under its complex and unintelligible 15 different rate structures; failure to take long-needed steps to ensure an adequate water supply; failure to introduce an effective conservation program 18 months ago when it was obvious there would be shortages.

One issue that wasn't mentioned was the only reason the rate hike was being sought was to keep the DWP "revenue neutral" -- it has nothing to do with getting people to use less water since only a neuroscientist could understand Tier 1 and Tier 2 rates, base rates, ECAF rates and how they impact their water bills.

No one even thought to suggest maybe the DWP's costs are too high and should be cut to make up for the loss in revenue from conservation. Maybe 6 percent wage hikes on salaries already far higher than those in private utilities should be. Maybe City Hall should stop tranferring staff to the DWP payroll. Maybe the DWP doesn't need to be the city's cash cow anymore.

Maybe the mayor's new political posture of "shared sacrifice" should apply to the DWP.

Today, we began the charade of pretending any of those problems with this rate hike are being fixed.

The DWP Commission met in special session today to approve and send back to the council the exact same measure the council disapproved last week. The vote was unanimous. The debate was non-existent except for the 10 or so community activists like me who tried to suggest there was a better way than arbitrary rate hikes.

Reason, of course, did not prevail.

DWP General Manager David Nahai, who prefers the title of CEO as if he was really in charge, assured the commissioners that he will pay lip service to the community's concerns -- after the fact when the money is rolling in.

The mayor has made it clear in his treatment of the two commissioners who did stand up for the community -- Jane Usher as Planning President and Nick Patsaouras as DWP President -- that there is no room in his administration for anyone who shows the slightest degree of independence, who tries to make the city better and actually solve its problems.

Betrayal, that was their crime. Betrayal of what? The machine that feeds the greed of the few, exploits the needs of the poor without providing any real help, and sticks the middle class with the bill for its failure.

Tomorrow, Jan Perry's Council Energy and Environment Committee will take up the rate hike and Soledad Garcia, president of the DWP MOU Committee and the DWP Committee for advocacy and others will be there to make similar points. And they'll go before the council on Friday and try again.

But don't hold your breath. It's all a charade.

When Jonathan Parfrey was named by the mayor to replace Nick Patsaouras on the DWP Commission four months ago, he vowed to give up his role as a lobbyist on environmental issues with the Liberty Hill Foundation and advocate for his group, the Green LA Coalition.

Here's what the LA Times reported back then:

"Parfrey is the head of Green L.A., an environmental coalition that has pushed for greener policies at the City Hall. Last year, he was registered with the Ethics Commission as a lobbyist for Liberty Hill Foundation, a nonprofit group that focuses on environmental and social justice issues.

"Parfrey, who is paid for his work with Green L.A., said he views his work as social advocacy, not lobbying. Still, because Villaraigosa bars lobbyists from serving as commissioners, Parfrey vowed to stop contacting city policymakers on behalf of his group's advocacy issues. According to the Ethics Commission's website, Parfrey halted his lobbying work on Dec. 11 -- the day the mayor nominated him to serve on the DWP board."

But that didn't stop Parfrey from backing Measure B like the DWP officials who claimed they were just being "informational," not advocating for it.

And it doesn't stop Green LA, part of  the Liberty Hill Foundation, from lobbying for approval of the new water rate hike that does little or nothing for conservation efforts since its goal is to maintain DWP revenue when the mayor's conservation plan, such as it is, goes into effect.

The effect of the hike is to allow the DWP to continue paying exorbitant salaries to its workers -- far higher than other utilities pay or the city pays for the same jobs -- and to continue to cut sweetheart deals with consultants and contractors.

It amazes me why environmental groups like Green LA and the LA League of Conservation Voters, of which Parfrey is vice president, continues to support take money out of the public's pocket for Measure B and rate hikes that keep DWP workers in the green but do nothing to make the environment greener.

I don't question the right to support whatever they want, just their judgment in backing a corrupt power structure that has failed to fulfill its environmental promises for so long, and why they now are pushing for a rate hike instead of much tougher conservation measures that we need and broadly would support.

I can see the difficulty Parfrey faces as an environmental lobbyist and activist co-opted into an official capacity by the City Hall political machine. But you're either for the best environmental measures possible or the question has to be asked whether you're an environmentalist or a greenwasher profiting from public support for a greener world.

Here's Green LA email urging support for the hikes:

"A proprietary department of the City of Los Angeles, the Port is self-supporting and does not receive taxpayer dollars." -- April 2, 2009 press release from the Port of LA announcing the DWP will give a "$3.5 million up-front cash incentive" -- 40 percent -- toward the cost of a 1 megawatt solar energy project.

Unbelievable!

Just days after voters rejected Measure B, the Mayor/DWP's plan for 400 megawatts of in-basin rooftop solar, the port and the DWP cut a deal for the public to heavily subsidize a 1 MW rooftop solar energy project at the World Cruise Center.

It's the first phase of a 10 MW, five-year project that, extrapolating the numbers, would cost $90 million with DWP ratepayers providing $35 million.

"We are harnessing our greatest resource to power our greatest economic engine," said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, according to the press release.  "This project will create good, green-collar jobs and stimulate the growth of a new, green economy powered by clean technology.
 
"The solar power initiative at the nation's largest container port is part of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's Solar LA Program, the largest solar power project undertaken by any single city in the world.  The Solar LA Project will ultimately create a 1.3 gigawatt solar power network of residential, commercial and municipally-owned solar systems that will lower Los Angeles's dependence on greenhouse gas emitting fossil fuels."

That's the language of Measure B. David Freeman, ex-GM of the DWP and leading spokesman for Measure B, is the head of the Harbor Commission who presumably engineered this deal.
 
It's as if we never voted to reject Measure B.

Editor's Note: If the mayor wants to restore his damaged credibility, he should start by naming DWP Committee President Soledad Garcia to the Board of Commissioners of the DWP so ratepayers will have a voice in policy.

Evidence is mounting that the ever-cautious City Council has figured out that the natives are restless and requiring some lip service and posturing -- if not actual action on policies

The same cannot be said for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

He continues to run -- from the issues and for higher office -- but he can't hide. He more than anyone is responsible or the catastrophes of overspending on public employees salaries, runaway development, the visual blight of electronic billboards and the soaring rates, fees and taxes that provided little or no benefit to the public.

In the KCAL Channel 9 interview with Political Reporter Dave Bryan broadcast last week -- properly called "revealing" at the end by a news anchor -- the mayor smiles and spins with his usual song and dance without giving the slightest hint that he's going to turn around and put the public interest first instead of the special interests and his own political interests.



The budget deficit, already at $530 million and rising at the rate of $70 million a month and getting far worse in the years ahead, affords Villaraigosa the opportunity to face up to the scope of the problem. Instead, he is looking to mortgage the city's future by raiding special funds, selling off parking revenue for decades to come, imposing more fee increases, cutting services and hoping he can squeeze some money out of the unions he's given huge increases to.

The biggest beneficiary of his sweetheart deals has been the IBEW which virtually runs CIty Hall's favorite cash cow, the DWP. Raises of up to 6 percent on top of salaries far higher than other city workers or private utility workers get for the same jobs have been paid for with massive increases in water and power rates.

Yet another water rate increase likely will be imposed this week to protect the DWP's revenue stream, this one in the name of a water shortage. The rate hike has nothing to do with water conservation, which DWP is trying to do something about 19 months too late.

It is simply another effort to gouge money from the middle class even as the pool of people getting reduced rates is being nearly doubled without having to show proof of any sort that they are actually poor and need the help.

The City Council disapproved the hike last week, citing the lack of any kind of public process for debating the hikes, its ineffectiveness as a conservation measure and the arbitrariness of the rate structure among many other reasons.

Even as they were making a stand -- under considerable pressure from the community activists who defeated the Measure B solar energy plan -- the council gave indication they will rush the water rate hike through this week.

There is no justification for the rate hike. Increases already are being imposed for the added cost of buying water from the Metropolitan Water District. Instead of keeping revenue neutral, the mayor and council need to demand costs be reduced which would require the IBEW to actually join the mayor's call for "shared sacrifice."

Toward the end, the mayor has the chance to make a bold statement that he's going to change direction during the crisis and live up to the promises he's made time after time to be the mayor of all the people.

Wally Knox has resigned as a DWP Commissioner to take a well-paid post as a community liaison for the Port of Los Angeles -- or is that Pork of Los Angeles. This gives the mayor a chance to reverse himself in his opposition to a RatePayer Advocate within the DWP.

Soledad Garcia, president of the DWP's Neighborhood Council Committee, who formed the DWP Committee as an independent advocacy group out of frustration with resistance to public participation, is the right choice to take a position on the DWP Commission.

She knows DWP operations better than anyone now on the board and is a passionate advocate for ratepayers.

The mayor has made sure that business, the Valley, minorities and the environment are represented.

Is it about time for the ratepayers to have a voice?

We'll soon know if the council actually will make a stand for the public and whether the mayor is tough enough to reverse course and give the ratepayers a chance to have an advocate for water and power policies that serve the city and not the union and contractors.

"We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don't care for." -- German novelist  Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach.

Faced with an admitted budget deficit of $530 million that is rising rapidly and doubling and tripling in the following years, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa isn't thinking of the welfare of the city and its four million residents.

He only has eyes for himself, according to this report on the Engineers and Architects Association website with regard to a proposal to offer early retirement to city workers:

"APRIL 9, 2009 - The third meeting started at approximately 3:00 PM today. In attendance were representatives from most of the City Unions whose members participate in LACERS. In attendance for EAA were BOG President Michael Davies, Patti Loparo, and Bob Aquino.

The meeting started with a presentation from Thomas Saenz and Julie Gutman representing the Mayor. Saenz told the group that the Mayor couldn't implement the retirement incentive program by itself, even though it would save the City $219 million in budget year 2009/10. He explained that the Mayor was concerned with how he would be "received by the public, taxpayers, and media". Saenz told the group that the Mayor would have another proposal to present to us on Tuesday, April 14th , at 10:00 AM."

So here we are at a critical juncture in the city's history and the mayor who wants to be governor is more worried about what the "public, taxpayers, and media" will think about him than how he will solve the budget catastrophe he created despite massive increases in taxes, fees and rates under his leadership.

Instead, he is talking about firing 5,000 city workers, reducing city services, raising fees and rates yet again and negotiating a scheme in back rooms to mortgage the city's future by selling off its parking revenue for generations to come.

It is, after all, all about Antonio. That's why we work and struggle, that we see our federal income tax cuts meant to stimulate the economy going down the drain of the city treasury, that we see federal stimulus dollars going into the hand of social welfare programs that aren't the city's responsibility and into the pockets of developers and real estate speculators.

We have the word of the mayor's lawyer, Deputy Mayor Thomas Saenz for this and should be grateful for his honesty.

Saenz is the former top lawyer for MALDEF who's nomination by President Obama to head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division was withdrawn because of the potential controversy that would surround his appointment. He and Julie Gutman, a former lawyer for the National Labor Relations Board who now draws a six-figure salary as a Board of Public Works commissioner, have been negotiating with city unions for several months.

The Operators Behind MTA's Rail Car Deal

Beth Barrett in the LA Weekly goes behind the scenes of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's back room maneuvering to keep a $300 million deal for new rail cars in the hands of the Italian firm AnsaldoBreda that failed to fulfill the terms of its earlier contract.

The firm missed deadline after deadline and when it delivered its cars they were 6,000 pounds too heavy with seats too narrow and might not be operable on all the region's light rail lines.

MTA management wanted to open up bidding on a new batch of cars to all comers but the Italians cut deals with billionaire Stephen Bing, the county Federation of Labor and LA's mayor with promises of opening a factory downtown

"The case is a vivid example of how politicians, firms and unions are grabbing for tens of billions of dollars expected to flow from the new Measure R sales-tax increase," Barrett writes. "The Italians have hired Chris Lehane, a political spinmeister and former aide to President Bill Clinton, as the firm's media handler."

Desperate Jack Weiss Sells Out to Developers

Mayor Sam's Michael Higby takes apart Jack Weiss' ordinance approved Wednesday by the City Council that virtually turns over the city to developers.

The measure, going far beyond a new state law, extends the life of developers' entitlements on property by a year. The intent was to recognize the impact on development of the economic crisis and limit the extension to projects actually in the works.

But Weiss, who will do anything for the moneyed people so he can win the City Attorney's race, went far beyond the state law in winning a blanket extension.

Higby writes: "Shouldn't there be an analysis of how many and which projects will be impacted by this ordinance? One would think that certain projects should not be given a longer life for related entitlements, and that the projects that do get an extra year for related entitlements should have to pay a hefty fee for it. Don't we have a budget crisis? Why are we giving away significant value for NO consideration? The more egregious the entitlements (or if they've already expired or they're close to expiration), the higher the fee should be.

Writing Is on the Wall for City Hall Calligraphers

Daniel Heimpel in the LA Weekly pens a story about City Hall calligraphers who produce beautiful proclamations -- nearly 28,000 of them last fiscal every year -- honoring people far and wide at the whim of the mayor and City Council.

He suggests that with the mayor admitting to a $530 million budget deficit, the scrolls are a $1 million indulgence City Hall cannot afford any longer.

"For years, these same council members failed to fund even one extra billboard inspector to help the three inspectors long overwhelmed by a proliferation of thousands of controversial and illegal billboards in L.A. And $1 million per year would have greatly helped pay for the testing of rape-incident DNA evidence that has sat, untested, on LAPD shelves for years."

For the record, here's the tally so far this year: Mayor 4,215, Eric Garcetti 1,926Tom LaBonge1,519, Jose Huizar 1,386, Dennis Zine 1,298, Jan Perry 1,134, Ed Reyes 1,073 and Bernard Parks 1,067.

Reflecting the intensity of community concerns, the City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to reject the DWP's water shortage rate hikes but agreed to revisit the issue next week.

It was clear from the debate that the DWP's legacy of failures and indifference to public concerns has caught up with it -- as they did in leading to the defeat of Measure B last month.

Inequities in the rate structure, the failure to institute conservation measures long ago, lack of individual meters in apartment buildings were among the issues raised and most of all the failure of process that has excluded the Neighborhood Councils, DWP Community and the public in general.

Councilwoman Janice Hahn, in an impassioned speech, put it best:

.

Here's the LA Times online report:.



Saying they did not have enough time to fully study the matter, the Los Angeles City Council today rejected a proposed water conservation ordinance..

The measure, however, which is designed to reduce Los Angeles water use by 15%, is not dead. A council committee is expected to review the matter and send it back to the Los Angeles Water and Power Commission for another vote as early as next week..

The proposal would increase water rates for users who exceed a certain base allocation. City water department officials say that 85% of single-family homeowners and 94% of low-income residents would not see an increase in their water rate or would even pay less under the proposed ordinance..

In the name of conservation, the City Council meeting is set today to approve yet another water rate increase to feed the DWP and pay the soaring salaries of its IBEW workers.

So much for all the talk about openness and transparency and including the public in the process of governing, specifically the city's own official Neighborhood Councils that have a legal contract with the DWP to be involved in all major decisions.

DWP Committee President Soledad Garcia has prepared this form letter to City Council members with an urgent plea to send it to them this morning. (dwp-waterletter.rtf).

Here's Soledad's excellent explanation the situation

Dear Colleagues,

Tuesday was a packed day for meetings at City Hall and at DWP.  Our presentations to E and E Committee and DWP Commission on Tiering were good.  We learned that there is no need to rush another increase.  Just as with Measure B, there was no meaningful outreach. There was allowance for Neighborhood Councils and Community to provide input.  The Community does not even know what the tiering will do and how the additional imposition of a fourth increase in July will impact us all.

Although tiering is on the DWP books, there really was not a need to rush to bring it to E/E and Council except to get the rate changes on the July schedule.  There was no emergency declared.  Governor Schwarznegger had declared water shortage, but that was not enough to point to the State Constitution and the DWP statutes as the basis for the time sensitive increase.  In essence, DWP is acting on its own timelines.

City Hall does not depend on water to feed it monies.  DWP could wait for a couple more months before imposing the new tiering.  There will be additional power rate increases in July:  Power base rate increase, second quarterly pass through increases, possible summer restructuring and if allowed, Tiering. 

The E/E Committee followed the procedure to allow input.  However, it was a Special Meeting that should not have taken any action without a Council File number and without noting possible action.  At the time of signing in, there were no Report from the Office of the CAO.  Legally, one was later placed on the counter.  There were a few put out before the meeting closed and a Council File number was then attached.

Please consider emailing all the Councilmembers before 10 AM urging them to withhold their vote so that they not bypass the Brown Act.  Use your personal reasons and refer to the sheet I had previously sent you for additional thoughts to support your position.

Shades of Measure B in ignoring the correct process.

Soledad S. Garcia  

Editor's Note: The chart below shows just how LA's dire financial condition will begin a catastrophe that will force the city into bankruptcy in a few years if dramatic steps are not taken now. The charts, part of a presentation two weeks ago by the city's two pension funds, shows the city general fund next year will pay 28.32 cents into the Police and Firefighters pension fund (LAFPP) for every dollar in payrolls costs. That will double the following year as is estimated to reach 79.29 cents per payroll dollar in five years. For other city employees in the LACERS pension fund, the contribution required from the city general fund is expected to go from 19.43 cents per payroll dollar to 41.62 cents in the same time period (see below).
A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants -- Antonio's Budget Roadshow is on the road.

Some givebacks from city unions, some fee increases for the public and a lot of cuts in services -- and like magic the $530 million budget deficit for 2009-10 that will be a lot worse by July will be gone.

That's entertainment.

But in the real world all the clowning around with the public's money won't solve the looming crisis, one that is entirely due to the long-term failure of City Hall, a failure that has gotten far worse under the current regime with its sweetheart deals for unions and developers and disregard of the public interest.

The outline of the mayor's plan is simple enough: To save 6,000 city jobs services will be cut sharply, fees and rates will soar and city workers will be paid for one hour less a week and contribute 2 % more to their pension and lifetime health benefits funds which will still leave most of them paying far less than the average worker pays for Social Security.

None of that actually solves any problems except on paper.

The problem is city government costs too much and delivers too little. The reasons are many: Poor leadership, lack of workplace discipline, too much spending on social programs and too little on providing basic services.

Put all that aside. What is driving the city to bankruptcy is pensions.

Last year, the pension funds lost 27 percent of their net worth and do not expect to grow in value by any significant amount over the next five years.

That means you the tax-paying, rate-paying, fee-paying public -- being gouged everywhere you turn by soaring charges for water, power, parking, playing, buying, screwing up -- are liable for whatever it takes to keep these pension funds and their lifetime health benefits solvent.

And what a cost it is: $754 million in the coming fiscal year, doubling the following year and more than tripling in five years to $2.3 billion.

The general fund, now at $4.7 billion in this year's budget, is likely to get only $4 billion in revenue next year.

The bills are coming due and you the ordinary citizen are getting stuck with them. You can keep on pretending it isn't happening. You can carry out your oft-uttered threat to leave. Or you can stand and fight now while there's time to force our elected officials to face up to the reality of what  they have wrought.

It's now or never.








xxxxxx

"As a matter of fact we have an agreement with the IBEW that (under) the 20 percent by 2010 (renewable energy) standard, 40 percent will be owned or will be optioned to be owned (by the DWP) in recognition of the fact you could never ever attain this (100 percent ownership)/" -- DWP General Manager David Nahai, March 17, 2009.



Did anybody but a DWP Committee solar energy maven pick up on this extraordinary statement Nahai (nahai-deal.mp3) made that he's got a dirty little deal with the IBEW guaranteeing union boss Brian D'Arcy the jobs he wants no matter what it costs ratepayers, no matter whether it achieves environmental goals?

Nahai's statement came under pressure from Commission President Lee Alpert who wanted an intelligible explanation of what was really going on as opposed to the phony plan Nahai promoted as part of the Measure B discussion.

I ask again: Does the environmental movement want jobs for the IBEW or does it want clean energy for LA?

That's the heart of the questions the DWP Committee will be asking if the mayor and City Council ever deliver on their public promises, made after Measure B's defeat, to revisit solar energy policy in an open and inclusive public discussion. Or are they already at work on another back room deal?

Meanwhile, the public is moving ahead with or without the politicians.

The Bay Area solar buyers' cooperative I've written about gets coverage in the NY Times Sunday Magazine with a story about how One Block Off The Grid has launched its effort in LA and New Orleans and is going to other cities as well.

Kanyi Maqubela, the former Obama campaign organizer who is now 1BOG's field director talks about how the group is tapping into "latent activism" to bring potential buyers together, educating them about solar and negotiating group buys with up to 20 percent discounts.

The economics depend on feed-in tariffs that pay homeowners with solar units a significant premium for the electricity they generate, federal tax credits and subsidies to make solar pencil out financially.

Third-party owners of rooftop solar and the use of property tax bonding allowed under AB811 are also proving popular to eliminate upfront costs for homeowners but LA's Department of Water and Power, of course, doesn't allow those.

So much for its commitment to solar energy as opposed to feathering the nest of its union, the IBEW.

You can see a mashup map of all the people in the LA area who already have signed up with 1BOG.at their site.

Demand would be even greater if federal, state and local policies are aligned around feed-in tariffs.

Toward that end, Marc Strassman is doing an incredible job promoting solar energy and feed-in tariffs at his Etopia News site. Here's the interview he did with me last week:

Here's Wikipedia's explanation of what a feed-in tariff is:

A Feed-in Tariff (FiT, Feed-in Law, FiL, solar premium^[1], Renewable Tariff^[2] or renewable energy payments ^[3]) is an incentive structure to encourage the adoption of renewable energy through government legislation. The regional or national electricity utilities are obligated to buy renewable electricity (electricity generated from renewable sources, such as solar photovoltaics, wind power, biomass, hydropower and geothermal power) at above-market rates set by the government.^[4]

The higher price helps overcome the cost disadvantages of renewable energy sources. The rate may differ among various forms of power generation.

 

Exactly one year ago Saturday I was fired as Editor of the Daily News, the newspaper I devoted 23 years of my life to. and like everybody else who worked there during that time, endured just about everything imaginable to be able to keep my job and put out the best newspaper I could for myself, the organization and the San Fernando Valley.

I got no regrets.

The Daily News was the best thing that ever happened to me. I found success, and met my wife there. Together, we found true happiness and saw our son grow up strong and smart.

Without a doubt, this was the best year of my life. I found my voice as a writer, for better and worse, blogging whatever I wanted after a career of struggling to express myself under the constraints of corporate journalism.

And best of all, I got to connect to thousands of people all across the city who just like me were frustrated that the LA of their dreams was in reality a city going to hell.

While I'd been closeted in a newsroom taking pride in being part of a newspaper that stood up for the community and exposed wrongdoing in high places, these community activists were doing the hard work by joining Neighborhood Councils and neighborhood associations, business and political groups and service clubs.

They did good works for their communities and went to City Hall to plead their cases in the minute or two allotted to them. They studied the records and sat through endless hours of public meetings.

As a newsman, I found they knew more about what was going in our city than the entire news media. I came to realize that we in the news media spent nearly all our time covering government and government officials when the real stories of this city were out in the neighborhoods among the people where the decisions of government touched the lives of the people.

Often, I've said that if I had a staff or four or five good reporters today I could tell better stories, more important stories, more human stories, than I could with a newsroom of journalists.

The newsroom I left behind is now barely half the size it was when I was fired. I don't see how it can survive and that breaks my heart because of the pain it causes my colleagues and for the loss it means to the community.

Ever since I arrived in LA in 1980 as part of the traveling road show of an Indian guru, I've grappled with the tantalizing mystery of this place. If Chicago is the city of big shoulders, LA is the city of lovely shoulders, beautful but dangerous.

I've grappled over and over with the anything goes, anything is possible nature of LA, with its myths of stardom and freedom without bounds.

Only now, after a year without the armor of a job, a year as just another ordinary citizen fighting City Hall, am I getting a glimmer of what LA is really about.

It's as simple as happiness.

All the struggles and handwringing, all the lawsuits and protests, are about the failure of our city leaders to provide the environment we need to find our own happiness.

That, of course, means different things to different people, different things in different neighborhoods.

In a city of extreme diversity, a city of extremes, we have a government that panders to the poor without actually helping them, that enriches the rich without making the city better, that gives sweetheart deals to the special interests without serving the general interest.

We are segmented instead of unified. We are played against each other instead of being brought together. We are at war with a city that destroys a community farm in South LA, green-lights digital billboards all over West LA, gives lip service to the Valley and ignores East LA.

It isn't good enough anymore. We must do better before it's too late.

We are being gouged for our money every time we turn around from trash fees to parking meters. We get too little in return. We are about to get even less as the mayor proposes slashing our services and raising our fees to paper over his $1 billion budget deficit without solving any problems. In fact, he will make them worse.

I don't think he'll get away with it. The financial hole is too deep and certain to get worse. The global economic crisis insures that.

People are waking up. We saw that in the recent election. We'll see it again in the May 19 election when voters examine a series of state tax and spending measure that don't address what's broken and as they consider local runoff election candidates like Carmen "Nuch" Trutanich in the City Attorney race and David "Ty" Vahedi in Council District 5 and Tina Park in the Community College Board contest -- people who can make a positive difference.

Something big is going on and we need something big to change the course of history for our city.

This is our LA and we are going to take it back. My year as an ordinary citizen has convinced me it can happen. I have no illusions that it will happen overnight or be easy. But change is coming.

That's what I believe anyway as I start my second year as a blogger and ordinary citizen.

Controller Laura Chick named top state watchdog

City Controller Laura Chick -- the one standout among LA elected officials over the last eight years -- has been promoted to General, Inspector General of the State of California by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Chick will act as an independent auditor overseeing California's $50 billion share of federal stimulus funding, according to the Sacramento Bee. She will take up the post by the end of the month and her top deputy, Rushmore Cervantes, will fill her LA post until Controller-elect Wendy Greuel takes office in July.

"I am proud to announce this first-in-the-nation position that will make sure the funds we receive from the Recovery Act are used with accountability and transparency to stimulate our economy and create jobs," Schwarzenegger said in prepared remarks.

Long Beach vs. LA: Water Conservation vs. Water Rate Hikes

Long Beach's Water Department reports LA County's second city set yet another record for conservation, reaching a 10-year low consumption in March, 14 percent below the city's 10-year average for the month.

Eighteen months ago, the Long Beach Board of Water Commissioners issued a Declaration of Imminent Water Shortage and activated the City's Emergency Water Supply Shortage Plan.

While LA belatedly has imposed modest conservation measures as justification for significant water rate hikes, Long Beach reached out to the community and has gotten such strong support that hits 10-year lows all but a couple of months in the last year and a half.

"Long Beach implemented extraordinary conservation measures long before people were talking about weather conditions or the drought," according to Kevin Wattier, General Manager of the Long Beach Water Department.  "Southern California faces a structural imbalance between its water supplies and its water demands, even in normal years, and every Southern Californian needs to heed the Governor's call to reduce their water consumption by 20 percent."

Uncivil funding for LA Civic Park exposed

The LA Weekly tears apart funding for the planned LA Civic Park centerpiece of the Grand Avenue luxury hotel and shopping center and finds that $27.1 million in state bond money intended to provide housing for the homeless and battered women is being ripped off to pay exorbitant costs for the park.

Related Cos, which has missed deadline after deadline to start building the Grand Avenue complex, was supposed to pay the full $56 million cost of what is mostly "paved spaces that lend themselves more to organized sponsor-driven events than to picnicking or playing Frisbee," reporter Tibby Rothman reports.

The cost of the 16-acre park has soared to $5 million an acre so the city-county authority came up with a way to make the needy make up the difference.

Rothman asks: "Why are politicians pushing what is arguably the most expensive 16-acre park ever built here on public land, located nowhere near park-poor neighborhoods teeming with children?"

Urban critic Joel Kotkin,  a Chapman University fellow, offered an answer and his own questions.

"There is no mechanism anymore for the public to question these things because it's all an inside deal. You don't have legislators who are going to question it because they're all part of the same machine."

"How come we don't have $50 million for parks in South Central Los Angeles or the Valley? Has anyone noticed why we don't have parks or only have crummy parks where people actually live?"

Another question is how does this square with slashing fund for park programs all over the city and increasing fees for youth sports programs?

 

 

"Padilla, now a state senator, did not return phone calls Thursday" -- Daily News.

The fiasco of the LA Children's Museum is now visible for all to see, a tragedy that began with then City Council President Alex Padilla's demand -- that everyone in power went along with -- to locate what was supposed to be the Valley's first such cultural institution in the most remote northern reaches of a gridlocked city of four million.

It could have been in North Hollywood at the end of the Metro subway line. The MTA had the land and wanted it there as part of creating a wonderful cultural center that would have regenerated a whole neighborhood and was easily accessible by public transit and freeways to the whole city.

But no, Padilla wanted this prize for his district, as well as a $25 million Major League Baseball training facility at Hansen Dam that even the community didn't want..

Now, after years of failed leadership, the museum is going to go into bankruptcy and will be liquidated, leaving LA as the only major city in America without a museum that could light the imaginations of children with a sense of wonder and awe.

And Padilla does not return calls. His council successor, Richard Alarcon, (,ALARCÓN.doc) instead proposes that the $52 million underground building we paid for be used as a school.

Where's the inexorable laws of karma when you need them?

Look at almost everything that City Hall does (and the state Legislature and Congress for the matter) and you will find self-service, special-interest service and a failure to serve the public interest.

If I had my way, everybody -- Democrat and Republican alike -- now holding public office would be banned for life like the moral felons that they are.

Look at the Zahniser story in the Times about how the mayor, council and DWP Commission under then President and now General Manager David Nahai jacked up our water rates three years ago at the height of the economic boom in order to transfer $30 million to the general fund to pay bloated salaries to city employees.

A judge has ruled tentatively in favor of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association that the rate hike violated Proposition 218 which "bars municipal utilities from overcharging ratepayers for water and then using the surplus to pay for other city programs."

So what does the embattled Nahai say: "We have received the tentative ruling and are studying its ramifications."

What's to study? Nahai and everyone else knew damn well it was illegal but they kept on collecting the illegal tax. They were so sure it was illegal they put it in a special account, now totaling about $100 million, for safekeeping.

They're supposed to refund the money but don't rush out to your mailbox because the checks will never come.

They've found other ways to keep on raising your water rates like Nahai's phony "water conservation" program that punishes the struggling middle-class homeowner and by transfering all kinds of city workers to the DWP payroll to drive up costs that would further justify higher and higher rates.

Scratch the surface of the billboard mess, or the Housing Authority and its half-million-dollar-a-year boss, or the CRA or just about anything City Hall does and you will find a scandal, a total disregard of the public interest and the public's money.

That's why the city is facing a $1 billion deficit next year that will soar even higher in the years ahead as the cost of employee pension funds suck the life out of city services.

If there was a shred of integrity left among our elected officials, the city would follow the lead of the Children's Museum and file for bankruptcy today. They would appoint a Blue Ribbon Commission to deconstruct Los Angeles into governable regions that empowered the people to create livable neighborhoods, good schools and safe streets.

They don't have to take my advice on this matter. The inexorable laws of karma are at work and sooner rather than later, the city will run out of money to pay the bills and the public will rebel against the endless increases in fees, rates and taxes and diminishing public services and lies and deceits.

LA is broken and nearly broke. They are running out of tricks to hide their failures. It's for the people who live and work here to rise up and take ownership before it's too late.

A plea of poverty: "I'm saying is there is no money"

Finally, the Day of Reckoning for the people accused of killing my neighborhood -- April Fool's!

Thirteen months after Nadya Mahdavi was first cited for construction without a permit and began converting a house in my single-family tract into a three-unit tenement, she and her now ex-husband Nasir Shaikh were supposed to face the strong arm of the law and go to trial Wednesday.

But as has happened time after time, they found a way to postpone their date with LA's justice system.

Shaikh had stalled the case for months by denying he was a principal of Fidelity Investments Group which bought the house from his secretary Claudia Perez who bought the house from his wife -- all in the space of six months last year.

On Wednesday, his excuse was he's so poor that he can't afford a lawyer so he stood before Commissioner Thomas E. Grodin in Van Nuys Court Department 121 and asked for an attorney to be provided him at taxpayer expense.

His vow of poverty got him a stern lecture from Grodin but it did buy a delay until April 30, much as his wife's flipping ownership of the house, failure to appear in court and her own pleas of poverty had gotten them a long string of continuances.

There was no discussion of the $40,000 or so the couple has gotten in rent on the house that has caused my neighbors so much distress but there was considerable talk about the four houses owned by Fidelity Investments, some of which have Building and Safety issues now being investigated.

Assistant City Attorney tracked down the four properties and put their assessed value at about $3 million with one valued at just under $1 million.

Shaikh insisted the properties are all "under water" and he can't afford child support so he needs a lawyer. He was supposed to bring income tax and other financial records but offered the court only a few pay stubs.

"All the properties are upside down. . .what I'm saying is there is no money,'' Shaikh said.

Grodin was unimpressed: ""I told you last time you were supposed to come with an attorney. You told my bailiff you had an attorney."

When Shaikh disputed that, Grodin turned on him: "His word is good. What's going on is you're speaking out of both sides of your mouth . . . I can't appoint a lawyer for you at government expense."

At that point, Shaikh talked out of the side of his mouth that communicated his desire to represent himself. "I would like to go pro per."

In the meantime, the deconstruction of the tenement at 19953 Haynes St. in Woodland Hills is going on with kitchens going out and interior walls going in and one of the three tenants leaving. Soon, it is likely to look like a single family home again on the inside although the law does not proscribe how many people actually live in such a dwelling.

The investigation of the property dealings of Shaikh and Mahdavi are expanding to the various companies they set up and their employees but there is no indication whether anyone will take a hard look at how these transactions were put together and financed.

Mahdavi's attorney, Gerald Cobb, indicated to the court that the house on Haynes will soon be in compliance with the law.

As is usual in these cases, compliance is prosecutor Cocek's No. 1 goal.

But these are criminal charges, four misdemeanors carrying penalties of up to six months in jail and $1,000 fines each, and it remains to be seen how it will play out in the end.

Will my neighbors feel justice was served and the punishment fit the crime?

Will they see compliance with the law as the proper resolution to the year of aggravation, the year of worrying that their neighborhood, their property, would go down the road to becoming a slum like so much of LA

Will they accept that the economic meltdown that appears to have robbed Mahdavi and Shaikh of their dreams of wealth as a fitting end to the story?

The verdict and sentencing in this case -- a rare one that has become publicly visible -- will tell us a lot about whether it's people like Mahdavi and Shaikh who are killing our neighborhoods or whether it's the city itself, its policies, its laws, its enforcement that are the real criminals.

Whether or not they believe in some imminent environmental doomsday, just about everybody "gets it" that we have to stop wasting water, polluting the air and exhausting the planet's resources.

 

It's taken a long time but the environmental movement has won.

 

President Obama wants green technology to be the center of our new post-collapse economy; 43 million Americans are growing their own food; Detroit, or what's left of it, is building hybrid cars; people are conserving water and putting solar panels on their rooftops in record numbers.

 

Everybody gets it -- except the leaders of the environmental movement who are so enamored of themselves and their political connections they have lost sight of the goal of a cleaner, greener world. They are what are called "greenwashers," profiteers in ego, power and money who have lost touch with the ordinary people

 

They are betraying their own cause at the very moment of their triumph.

 

David Allgood, regional director of the California League of Conservation Voters, and Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay -- fresh from the defeat of Measure B that they backed blindly -- have now mounted a campaign to save DWP General Manager David Nahai's job.

 

Recognizing the axe is about to fall on Nahai, they sent out this email Tuesday appealing for letters of support to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa:

 

Colleagues:

 

Our friend, David Nahai, is under attack for not sufficiently supporting Measure B. There's also grumbling about his management skills. In truth, some of these allegations are warranted because David Nahai is a human being, not a god. (I suspect that only gods need apply at DWP.) Mark Gold joins me in believing that Nahai has performed a yeoman's job. We all know his replacement would NOT be an environmentalist -- and without him we'd lose many recent gains.  Mark and I ask that you take a look at the attached support letter and if you concur with our judgment, add your name and organization to it. Time is of the essence, we would like your response by end of business tomorrow. Please email your response to me at davidallgood@ecovote.org. Many thanks for your attention and support.

 

David Allgood   Mark Gold

Attached to the email is their letter to the mayor

Nahai Support.pdf praising Nahai as an environmental savior instead of the man whose penchant for lying and arrogance has alienated the public in general, the people who work for him in particular, even IBEW union boss Brian D'Arcy specifically.

 

Allgood and Gold credit Nahai for helping

"develop the landmark 1380 (sic, it's 1280) megawatt SolarLA plan," of acting "wisely and decisively" in the face of "monumental challenges," and having "worked to protect both the environment and the ratepayers of Los Angeles."

 

Talk about lies.

 

The solar plan was slapped together without any coherent planning to lend some credibility to the fatally flawed Measure B they supported without giving it any thought. Nahai, as president of the DWP Commission and now it's GM, has overseen the largest water and power rate increases in the utility's history, broken faith with the memorandum of understanding with the city's Neighborhood Councils and rebuffed every effort to give the public a voice through creation of a Ratepayer's Advocate.

 

Decisive maybe, hardly wise.

 

But standing up for a pal counts for something and Nahai is definitely a pal.

 

He has been part of the leadership team of the California League of Conservation Voters and a long-time supporter for years -- a connection that helped establish his environmental credentials, even as he personally was consuming water and electricity at his home at up to three times the level of those ordinary people he holds in such low esteem.

None of this should surprise anyone.

Dissident groups that succeed inevitably lose their way and become institutionalized, dependent on large sums of money to feed the organization and themselves, too close to the very power structures they once opposed.

Allgood and Gold know better. They believe passionately in the environmental movement and have achieved a great deal that is worthy of respect.

But they have forgotten who brought them there: The ordinary people, not the rich and powerful.

Allgood's Facebook page gives insight into who he is: Politics ("hard left"), Religion ("atheist"), College ("many...None, difficult, my god it was the 60's..."

A lot of us were products of the 1960s. It was a time of anti-establishment ferment when many of us called into question our institutions of government, religion and education.

The environmental movement now is one of those institutions in question.