Just like that in 26 seconds without further adieu or debate, the City Council last week grabbed another $27 million out of the money we pay for electricity and put it into the treasury to help mask years of reckless spending.
Today, the council will put its final seal of approval on a budget that is a work of fiction. It won't even stand up 26 seconds into the new fiscal year starting July 1.
By then, the Department of Water and Power will have gotten the green light to impose a variety of massive rate increases even as it absorbs as much staff as it can from other city departments and a long list of costs normally paid by other city departments.
Will the city's cash cow be hit with furloughs, layoffs, buyouts, early retirements? Not in your lifetime.
The battle for City Hall has just begun but the opportunities for the public to win some respect and a seat at the table of power are many.
Since the City Council exposed itself as a bunch of know-nothings during the Billy the Elephant debate and its uninformed passage of what became the solar energy ballot Measure B, there have been clear signs that a degree of nervousness has intruded into their lives.
It hasn't stopped them from sneaking what's left in the $100,00 annual slush funds they award themselves into their office accounts in the new year but it has given them pause in moving too swiftly and carelessly on a lot of important measures like the new billboard ordinance that came up on Tuesday.
This is a legislative body (I hesitate to use the phrase deliberative body) that enacted into a law a billboard ordinance so full of holes seven years ago that corporate lawyers have run circles around it. Even when the city won in court, the council and mayor sold out the public interest and opened the door to nearly 1,000 of those truly annoying digital signs.
When then-Planning Commission President Jane Usher pushed for a tough ordinance to clean up the mess, the system went to work to scuttle her effort and eventually forced her to resign in disgust.
By then, the public was aroused and the council agreed to a three-month moratorium on implementing the hole-filled ordinance they had passed just six weeks earlier. Then, another three-month moratorium. And on Tuesday, they put off a decision until September.
What was interesting about the two-hour-long parade of people who spoke at public comment was the council's patience in allowing them all a full two minutes. That's because it wasn't just the disgruntled citizenry coming forward. Labor and business were united in their opposition to any effort to clean up the visual blight destroying the human environment of the city.
Jobs and profits are at stake. The economy is bad. This isn't the time to clamp down on illegal billboards or stop their proliferation. If those arguments were made about poisoning the air, land or water, the environmental lobby would have been out in force but since it is only the visual landscape that is threatened, they were nowhere to be found.
My point in raising this is that there is an unease at City Hall these days. The public is aroused and getting organized. City unions are refusing to embrace the idea of "shared sacrifice." Business is hurting. City Hall can't pay its bills and the state is about to take away somewhere between $70 million and $120 million in property taxes.
It all makes for lively politics and turns every issue into a contentious battleground. I keep thinking that someone in the political arena and will step forward and provide real leadership when it's so badly needed. Desperate times have a way of bringing out the best in people, or the worst.
The months ahead will tell us who we really are and whether we care enough about our city to pull together for the greater good or whether we continue to put our narrow self interests ahead of the public interest.
I don't know how it plays out but I do know the future of LA is at stake for years to come.
Ron Kaye is the former editor of the Los Angeles Daily News where he spent 23 years helping to make the newspaper the voice of the San Fernando Valley and fighting for a city government that serves the people and not special interests.
Twice in recent years, Los Angeles Magazine listed Kaye among the city’s most influential people, specifically in the area of politics. Kaye has been variously described in the media as the “accidental anarchist,” “the Patrick Henry of the San Fernando Valley” and a “passionate populist.” He is now committed to
carrying on his crusade for a greater Los Angeles as an ordinary citizen. Previously, Ron worked at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner,
Associated Press, Cleveland Plain Dealer and The Australian as well as papers
in Fairbanks, Alaska and Yakima, Wash. He also wrote for Newsweek magazine, The Guardian in London and the National Enquirer.
Ron-
I have just heard that another rat on the slime boat of City Hall, the Autry Museum, has gotten the City to schedule a meeting of the Board of Referred Powers to hear Autry's application to expand its building on taxpayer land in Griffith Park. This is the extremely controversial proposal of the Autry to build a new wing to enable it to swallow the historic Southwest Museum an destroy the separate institution of the Southwest.
Now get this Ron, I heard it is scheduled for June 16, 2009 at City Hall at 9:00 a.m. -- one hour before a Wednesday City Council meeting. I was at the other public hearing in August last year on this issue. There were so many people there the testimony before the Planning Department took 4 hours.
Is the City Council really so arrogant and out of touch that they will try to limit the testimony in opposition to the Autry's destruction of the Southwest Museum to like 50 minutes? Does the City's first museum, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, warrant just 50 lousy minutes of time of our City Council when Billy the Elephant got days of testimony?
I saw where Carmen Trutanich asked Council to delay the billboard ordinance until he could review. Here's another issue that is a hint of how this Mayor and this City Council has lost its way and needs review by the new City Attorney. To give serious consideration to the Autry's blatant breach of merger agreement promises with the Southwest Museum is PROOF that pay to play and utter corruption of our City's political process is complete.
The possible unnecessary loss of the Southwest Museum using campaign contributions and three registered lobbyists paid for by the Autry demonstrates that there is nothing sacred that this Mayor and some Council Members will not flush down the toilet for their own personal political ambition. Our City Hall is very very sick.
With all due respect to 7:58 above, by the time this matter reaches the City Council, the decision will have been made.
When will people understand that the time to lobby Council Members is not during public testimony? Maybe 7:58 has. I don't know. But, this I do know - backroom deals.
It's well beyond the time for the public to have equal representation in any closed meetings. If you are wondering how do that, all you have to is contact the respective City Council members' "schedulers" and ask for an appointment. If they put you off, keep persisting.
Standing up at a City Council meeting expecting them to understand something you have worked on for days, months, years - in just two minutes -(or 50 minutes!) ends up being a waste of time.
(Yes, I am sure there are always exceptions too).
I have watched the Autry operate in the neighborhood of Los Feliz. At first, a lot of people thought that Autry was being a responsible organization by making its auditorium available for community meetings and stuff like that. Then the activists from Northeast LA began educating some of us on what Autry was saying it was going to do and what it was actually doing.
More and more people in Los Feliz are appalled at how crass and arrogant the Autry has been run by current management. We now know that Autry has "bribed" the Mayor and Tom LaBonge with campaign contributions and hired the sleaziest lobbyists to get into those back rooms with Councilmembers.
Tom LaBonge is one of those councilmembers. He fills his outer office lobby with memorabilia of historic Los Angeles. He prances around this City claiming he "cares" so much about its history. But he and his staff are drinking the Autry Kool-Aid and essentially supporting the destruction of the Southwest Museum at the hands of the dirty Autry. Shame on Tom LaBonge. He will be remembered for this.
And then there are the problems with the size and impacts of the Autry expansion on the Los Feliz neighborhood. There is now something tucked into the new sign ordinance that might let the Autry greatly expand its signage. So Tom La Bonge apparently supports sign programs in what is supposed to be protected open space parkland and habitat. Hypocrite.
Ellen, you said: "Standing up at a City Council meeting expecting them to understand something you have worked on for days, months, years - in just two minutes -(or 50 minutes!) ends up being a waste of time.
(Yes, I am sure there are always exceptions too)."
The only expection to the council's 'three monkey rule' when council members actually sit, listen, absorb and understand is when someone gets up before them and slathers them with a sack of verbal crap praising them for something.
Buck up, Ron! Tina Park will save us all!
Ellen-
I am shocked. Shocked. Are you saying that in violation of the Brown Act, a consensus is reached outside a meeting? Are you saying that public comment never changes the outcome?
What I find amazing is that no one has suggested going to -- and offering public comment at -- the actual COMMITTEE meeting where these things get discussed/debated before going to Council.
Why is this case not going to City Planning Commission? Why is the Griffith Park Open Space being used for such purposes? What does Open Space mean? Can someone enlighten us.
Why is this case not going to City Planning Commission? Why is the Griffith Park Open Space being used for such purposes? What does Open Space mean? Can someone enlighten us.
Isn't over half of that money owed back to the public for being overcharged on their DWP bills?
The City is full of contradictions. In order to make the transfer, the DWP board of commissioners declared a surplus. And yet they have on-going power rate increases in order to invest in the infrastructure. However not all of the rate increase is being applied to the infrastructure. Our City leaders don't have the backbone to give us straight talk. Instead of imposing fees, taxes, and making deeper cuts, they give us a backdoor tax by increasing our utility rates and then transferring the money to the general fund. Just like Measure R in 2006 was advertised as reform when it's main impact was to extend the term and the finances of those voting to place this item on the ballot. Also we are in the middle of a drought and the City is still granting variences for high density development which increase water demand at the same time they are fining us and drastically reducing our usage.
I have read all the valid comments. Do we have go
through the officials to make changes that are obviously needed? When Trutanich takes office in July, can we sue the city using our own attorneys? Interesting,we pay most of them and they are the problems. We also pay the City Attorney who promises to help fix the problems inclcuding excess billing and private meetins.
That will take some doing. Ron, while they all
try to figure out how they can lie to us again and again and get away with it and get the budget under control at the same time, why don't
you take a well-earned rest? We are selfish about this because we need you for the wonderful
job you do and we want somehow that you will out lsst them.
I have read all the valid comments. Do we have go
through the officials to make changes that are obviously needed? When Trutanich takes office in July, can we sue the city using our own attorneys? Interesting,we pay most of them and they are the problems. We also pay the City Attorney who promises to help fix the problems including excess billing and private meetings.
That will take some doing. Ron, while they all
try to figure out how they can lie to us again and again and get away with it and get the budget under control at the same time, why don't
you take a well-earned rest? We are selfish about this because we need you for the wonderful
job you do and we want somehow that you will out lsst them.
The only reason Mayor Villaraigosa and City Council, including L.A. County supervisors, Gov. Schwartneeger and CA Legislative body, are claiming a budget deficit is because they all want President Obama to provide them with federal stimulus money. What we have here is wasteful spending at all levels, city, county and state, with no accountability to the people.
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