UPDATE: The City Council emerged from two days of closed door meetings and round-the-clock negotiations shortly after 4 p.m. and voted 13-0 to reject the early retirement package and instead impose furloughs and layoffs. But members made it clear it was a bargaining tactic by agreeing to two more days of negotiations in hopes the unions would grant enough concessions to provide cover for them to flip-flop.
How did it come to pass that we, the people, wound up working for the unions instead of the unions, the public employee unions, working for us?
We can't blame them for the state of our city. We let it happen by doing nothing while they organized and pursued what was good for them. They joined forces with other special interests like developers, contractors, lobbyists and started electing the people they wanted to into office, people who serve their interests far better than the public interest.
Even when that became obvious years ago, we did nothing about it. We didn't pay attention. We didn't vote. We let them write their own contracts, their own work rules, the laws they wanted.
The creeping control of our local government has reached the point of no return. Not a single LA elected official has consistently shown the courage to unequivocally state the obvious: City government costs too much and delivers too little.
The infrastructure has been allowed to rot and become burdened by over-development. The cost of payroll and benefits has soared with multiple raises every year to most employees on top of an expanding series of regular and special bonuses. City policies have driven up the poverty rate while chasing away the middle class shrunk.
The budget crisis now threatens to force the city to make massive cuts in basic services from libraries and parks to police and fire protection even as spending on social welfare programs expands.
It never had to come to this. We allowed our city officials to be taken hostage by city unions and to sell out the public interest to special interests.
The housing market collapsed more than two years ago and the economy began to decline sharply. But City Hall kept on spending as there was a bottomless pit of money to squeeze out of the public in the form of higher taxes, rates and fees. A year ago, the nation's financial system collapsed and for all their hand-wringing, city officials kept on spending as if there was no tomorrow.
There is no tomorrow.
The city is rapidly running out of cash and facing a $405 million deficit -- nearly 10 percent of the general fund, 80 percent of which goes into salary and benefits -- and spending $1 million a day more than it takes in.
Yet, City Hall is paralyzed.
They offered a sweetened early retirement deal to 22,000 workers on June 26 in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression with revenue tumbling, and a $4 billion unfunded debt to public employee unions. They tied their own hands by guaranteeing no one would be furloughed or laid off.
They ignored what little financial advice they got, failed to get an honest analysis of the costs and benefits of the deal.
All that mattered was the welfare of city workers, not the city.
Then, last Friday, even their bureaucratic advisers could no longer shrink from the truth. The city will run out of cash by May, the deficit will double next year and triple after that. The word that was used was "unsustainable" -- the early retirement deal and other efforts to reduce city spending was insufficient.
They will not be able to pay their bills. The future of the city is stake. And so inaction became paralysis. The unions and their members cried foul, a deal is a deal. They talked of being part of a City Hall family and their entitlements to the jobs. They threatened to sue and personally retaliate against anyone who stood in their way.
One Council member after another swore their allegiance to the unions, talked of their abhorrence for wage cuts, layoffs and furloughs.
Yet, day and night and finally round-the-clock negotiations on a new deal have failed so far to produce a plan for LA to get through this year and have any hope for the future. Deadline after deadline has passed even as the deficit grows hour after hour.
You can be sure they will come up with a plan of some sort but it will only be the end of this chapter in the decline and fall of LA.
A new one will start immediately as the plan falls short of solving the deficit crisis and lawsuits move the drama into court and tensions rise and troubles mount.
Only those who allowed this to happen can fix it and write a happy ending to this story. At its heart, they did not fail us. Greed, selfishness, corruption are natural occurrences when the people abdicate their civic responsibilities.
Only a new political force, a new political organization that grows out of the grassroots and is joined by those with wealth and influence can create the new civic culture that can turn the fortunes of LA around and revive hope in our future.
How did it come to pass that we, the people, wound up working for the unions instead of the unions, the public employee unions, working for us?
We can't blame them for the state of our city. We let it happen by doing nothing while they organized and pursued what was good for them. They joined forces with other special interests like developers, contractors, lobbyists and started electing the people they wanted to into office, people who serve their interests far better than the public interest.
Even when that became obvious years ago, we did nothing about it. We didn't pay attention. We didn't vote. We let them write their own contracts, their own work rules, the laws they wanted.
The creeping control of our local government has reached the point of no return. Not a single LA elected official has consistently shown the courage to unequivocally state the obvious: City government costs too much and delivers too little.
The infrastructure has been allowed to rot and become burdened by over-development. The cost of payroll and benefits has soared with multiple raises every year to most employees on top of an expanding series of regular and special bonuses. City policies have driven up the poverty rate while chasing away the middle class shrunk.
The budget crisis now threatens to force the city to make massive cuts in basic services from libraries and parks to police and fire protection even as spending on social welfare programs expands.
It never had to come to this. We allowed our city officials to be taken hostage by city unions and to sell out the public interest to special interests.
The housing market collapsed more than two years ago and the economy began to decline sharply. But City Hall kept on spending as there was a bottomless pit of money to squeeze out of the public in the form of higher taxes, rates and fees. A year ago, the nation's financial system collapsed and for all their hand-wringing, city officials kept on spending as if there was no tomorrow.
There is no tomorrow.
The city is rapidly running out of cash and facing a $405 million deficit -- nearly 10 percent of the general fund, 80 percent of which goes into salary and benefits -- and spending $1 million a day more than it takes in.
Yet, City Hall is paralyzed.
They offered a sweetened early retirement deal to 22,000 workers on June 26 in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression with revenue tumbling, and a $4 billion unfunded debt to public employee unions. They tied their own hands by guaranteeing no one would be furloughed or laid off.
They ignored what little financial advice they got, failed to get an honest analysis of the costs and benefits of the deal.
All that mattered was the welfare of city workers, not the city.
Then, last Friday, even their bureaucratic advisers could no longer shrink from the truth. The city will run out of cash by May, the deficit will double next year and triple after that. The word that was used was "unsustainable" -- the early retirement deal and other efforts to reduce city spending was insufficient.
They will not be able to pay their bills. The future of the city is stake. And so inaction became paralysis. The unions and their members cried foul, a deal is a deal. They talked of being part of a City Hall family and their entitlements to the jobs. They threatened to sue and personally retaliate against anyone who stood in their way.
One Council member after another swore their allegiance to the unions, talked of their abhorrence for wage cuts, layoffs and furloughs.
Yet, day and night and finally round-the-clock negotiations on a new deal have failed so far to produce a plan for LA to get through this year and have any hope for the future. Deadline after deadline has passed even as the deficit grows hour after hour.
You can be sure they will come up with a plan of some sort but it will only be the end of this chapter in the decline and fall of LA.
A new one will start immediately as the plan falls short of solving the deficit crisis and lawsuits move the drama into court and tensions rise and troubles mount.
Only those who allowed this to happen can fix it and write a happy ending to this story. At its heart, they did not fail us. Greed, selfishness, corruption are natural occurrences when the people abdicate their civic responsibilities.
Only a new political force, a new political organization that grows out of the grassroots and is joined by those with wealth and influence can create the new civic culture that can turn the fortunes of LA around and revive hope in our future.
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.
I want a new City, Ron.
When does the Valley finally secede?
You blame all the woes of the city, like collapsing infrastructure/DWP problems, to over-development and reduced social services, as do all the NIMBY's which had such a distorted impact on recent local elections.
Then with the next breath admit that revenues are down, especially property and sales taxes. And therefore, we have significantly reduced social services and union members have to take a hit, too.
It's controlled development that produces the revenue to provide the social services, but with the great success WLA and some other NIMBY's have had in stalling all that - often driving pfofitable commercial developers to places like adjacent West Hollywood and Santa Monica, cities that can call themselves "progressive" because they OVER-develop and use the resources for residents, LA residents have the traffic from those adjacent towns but none of the benefits.
This has been absolutely BRILLIANT. Anyone who's been able to put 2+2 together, like Jack Weiss, you've derided and these NIMBY's have even spitefully supported West Hollywood over LA residents. Those cities, meanwhile, openly couldn't care less about their adverse impact on LA residents, including how their congestion impedes fire trucks (like to the fire in the hills this morning) and police from reaching them in a timely fashion, as they have to slog through a gridlocked Sunset Blvd. or wind through circuitous, longer alternate routes.
So now that you've "accomplished" this, what's your solution, besides complaining? How is halting all development "until we get vastly improved infrastructure," the battle cry of the shortsighted WLA HOA NIMBY's, going to PAY FOR this infrastructure? Right, greater property taxes on those of us still here and already struggling with lower home equity and with losses in our portfolios. More DWP rate increases on homeowners, starting with the tripled trash fees that can't go to cops and public safety, because the city's broke. More absolutel brilliant short-sightedness.
the sad thing about all this crooks dont care in city hall.
and i am afreaid cd2 is goin to elect another one of this crooks.
Ron, you are "dead on balls accurate".
After being at the budget committtee meeting, it was amazing and scary to see the tremendous pressure that unions put on the members of city council. I hear city council and the city unions discuss the fact that they are family and it seems that residents are step children. And that makes me angry since we are the ones who pay the bills.
But where is the countervailing voice? Where’s the voice of the rest of us in the communities and private sectors to counteract that union pressure?
What I find truly amazing is that on one hand, people on blogs like this will grouse about how self serving public employee unions are, and, then, uncritically accept every statement that comes from either the United Fire Fighters and the Police Protective League.
It is easy to accuse the City Council of being cowardly, but unions devote a great deal of money to political campaigns particularly on the local level and they educate their members. And, they call and they write and they show up downtown (where, admittedly, it is much easier for them to be).
While we are waiting for secession to happen, every chamber of commerce has Government Affairs committees; every Neighborhood Council has Government Affairs and a Budget Rep; and every community have their activists. Where have they been during this process while public employees are howling?
By the way, what percentage of people employed by the City of Los Angeles, reside in the city of Los Angeles?
Union chiefs are all over the city council. How many people from the Rotary, Neighborhood Councils, Chambers of Commerce and community activists have done something to express their point of view?
By the way, for those who believe that bankruptcy is the answer to the city of Los Angeles, I hope they know about an attempted coup that was staged last week at the California state legislature level. Senate Bill 88 (a bill submitted much earlier) was suddenly replaced with language to prevent local governments from filing bankruptcy under Chapter 9 of the federal bankruptcy code.
It would require the permission of the California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission for local governments to file for bankruptcy and thereby renegotiate union contracts.
So, I hope that rather than watching the city of LA twist in the wind, that an eye is kept on what is going on at the state level and how that will affect us. After all, this is how the notorious density bonus bill got through.
"We allowed our city offiicals to be taken hostage by city unions and to sell out the public interest to special interests"
I think you used the wrong words there, Ron ... we allowed our city officials to prostitute themselves to city unions.
Like parents who allowed their children to run amok, the public is finally discovering that they have a problem on their hands due in large part, to their failure to pay attention. We don't have to look back too far into the past, either. Remember the "tax cut" for the phone tax? Going into the election, the polls consistently said that the public was against it; but a week before the election, the city unions were out in force, knocking on doors. It worked! To my complete astonishment (and not a little scorn for the public) it worked! It may also have been that the same people who voted 'no" in the polls couldn't be bothered to vote when it actually counted. Regardless, the measure passed, and now ... well, now, the police and fire that were supposed to be kept intact are now being considered for layoffs and furloughs.
Not that I think they shouldn't be; they should. So much of the City's finances are expended on them that's it's about time they lost their untouchable status. I'm not referring just to the salaries, overtime, bonuses, etc. that they're paid. I'm also referring to the workers' compensation payments and the lawsuits that they generate. They have cost the City a truckload of money over the years, so I don't want to hear anymore whining from them.
Mentioning workers' compensation reminds me. Did you know that an employee off on workers' comp is paid about 90% of their gross salary? For a year after the injury? Well, they are, and some have made a habit of being injured and then miraculously recovering when the year is up and their payment is going to shrink to the state rate. That's another area where the Council could save the city huge amounts of money. Pay them the state rate from the beginning and watch how quickly they recover! Someone should bring this up to Council since they're still cloistered with the unions, so that maybe this could be part of the negotiations. I'd do it, but I don't want to blow my cover.
Ron, it's really not our fault at all. Most citizens haven't a clue that something in the city is wrong, and they don't have a clue how to fix it. How can you blame naivete?
We've been bamboozled by the rich, the attorneys, the developers, the rich entertainers, the City Department Heads, and the rich politicians. They've lied to us. They believe corruption is a valid way of life. They say, "if you don't show up, you get nothing." The fault lies at the hands of the rich. They're crooked.
3:01: can you spell major reduction of work force?
3:01: You forgot to weave in Trutanich somewhere. What's wrong with you today?
"It's really not our fault at all?" Are you going to go with that kind of adolescent whine? And since when is naivete an excuse? Making a villain out of rich? I admire my rich friends--they've earned their money and they put it in service for their interests.
No, we have gotten the governemnt we deserve by leaving the hard task of real influence to others and then complaining at the result.
The Neighborhood Councils managed to show up in force to save their annual $45,000 stipend. Where have they been for this go around?
As an example of a culture of corruption in L.A. politics, look to the Sunland/Tujunga Neighborhood Council. Those corrupt dweebs are supporting Tamar Galatzan for CD2, a political insider with a demonstrated slew of corrupt connections.
KK,
There's never much value in your posts.
I said above, "It's really not our fault at all?"
I also say here, "It's really not your fault at all."
Elect Phil Jennerjahn the next time he runs for office!!
He promised to fire people in City Hall if elected.
The other candidates for Mayor did NOT say this.
Phil Jennerjahn has no charisma nor leadership ability.
Ron Kaye has leadership ability but no charisma.
Walter Moore has charisma but no leadership ability.
Combine Kaye and Moore and you'd get a successful candidate, if and only if that type of person can only get some likable celebrity people to support him.
All I can say is this gives so much more power for Doug to collect those signatures and get the ballot measure to cut the politicians salaries in half. People all over the city are really upset. These incompetent politicians waited until the last minute instead of doing something last year when they knew this financial crisis would have to be dealt with. The Mayor last month hired yet another Deputy Mayor. They insulted the people of Los Angeles last night by having a shindig disrespecting the many workers who were pleading for their jobs in council earlier. And there was our Mayor Villaraigosa waving a Mexican flag on stage as if everything was ok.
"Freedom from something is not enough. It should also be freedom for something. Freedom is not safety but opportunity. Freedom ought to be a means to enable the press to serve the proper functions of communication in a free society.. Z. Chaffee (Nieman reports, April, 1948.
God bless America.
Ahhh, 3:55, now the anonymous adolescent jeer to go with the whining. Not a pretty picture, but of course, it isn't your fault. It was your parents. Were they rich too?
Self evident truth needs no by-line. Conversely, KK and kk need to self announced, and wishes for an implied honorific, too.
3:48: NIce of you to throw your friend Trutanich into the formula for draining the city of revenue: besides his contradictory promises and downright lies to get elected, his insisting on hiring back the four dozen or so lawyers that have been lost in the last 4 years through attrition in compliance with budget demands, and their support staffs, he wants 200 private secret police to indulge his passion for vendettas and "flushing out the cockroaches from City Hall." And of course he needs a private accounting staff to see what Greuel is doing, since it goes without saying, she can't be trusted.
Only after all that can he just maybe even try to come out ahead in "savings" from outside law firms (he admits his staff is too swamped now); in the meantime, he can just continue lying that he's saving money and keep Wendy focused only on Rocky's unemployment comp claims, since by refusing to settle the lawsuit she's auditing "at his pleasure." (With his "on set of eyes" paid to follow her people around.) Thanks for your input!
3:48, it obviously was only a momentary lapse on 3:01 part.
Oh 3:48, let's not forget that your Trutanich has already invited class-action lawsuits for reneging on his promises to marijuana patients and shops to get THEIR votes; from civil rights attorneys for crafting an injunction that criminalizes kids who have the bad luck to be raised in bad neighborhoods where taggers may reside and they're caught "just hanging," especially in baggy cargo pants, the kinds our suburban valley kids wear, too; oh, pretty much every time he opens his mouth or does anything he causes a waste of money or invites a suit. (When he's not busily intent on adding hundreds of specialist lawyers that have to be further trained, hundreds of cops and cars, staff, stuff.) I'll refrain from speculating that this may be because his no-name night school that ran afoul of accreditation, didn't train the sharpest legal minds: an unrestrained ego, bent for the theatrical and lack of moral compass are way under-rated.
KK/kk is right on the money about the PPL/LAFD unions: he and Zine siding with Paul Weber of the Police Union and Pat McOsker of the Firefighter union (who are firmly, adamently on the side of Julie Butcher and the unions on holding the city to the June bad, tentative deal) just to give the finger to Antonio, is more hypocrisy. Like the Daily News editorial says, his goal is about "winning at all costs" in some personal record he's setting, as he narrowly sees it, NOT what's good for the city.
I'm NOT an apologist for the Mayor or city hall by any means. There's no doubt the whole lot of them including the self-styled "budget hawks" should have tackled the hard decisions much earlier. But the myopic NIMBY's and their opportunistic mouthpiece Nuch are definitely part of the problem, not the solution.
I'm still waiting to hear what you people have by way of solutions, having stalled controlled, upscale, revenue-generating development even as neighboring cities have benefited from it to our detriment.
5:31, good to hear that you are not an apologist for city hall or the Mayor. The question is why are you so hung up on Weiss who was a jack ass, and would have long been forgotten like the dozens of politicians who leave, if not your carrying the torch for him. Your relationship is bizarre if not downright obscene.
Move on, and join us all trying to clean the corruption in City hall. Trutanich has not been there long enough for you to beat up on him. There are 16 others for you to select. But you never do that, so your motives are suspect.
She's baaaaack, as Anonymous on September 16, 2009 5:31 PM. The Trutanich-hater, Dissassociative Identify Disordered (multiple identity poster), crazy lady AKA KK/kk from Mayor Sam Blog is in the house. She wants us to tell her how to save the WORLD, er, or just the city. Anyone?
5:31 is not capable of moving on. 5:31 is not human. It is a computer program that generates comments on blogs based on a fixed script. It cannot pass the Turing test. :-)
5:51, you're the one who asked to bring your Trutanich into the conversation, remember? Liars and hypocrites who prove themselves to be such so quickly, are indeed worthy of note. You all attacked Weiss tirelessly, yet his "ethics" violations were of the technical oversight kind many politicians make by mistake, not intentional. It's Trutanich we have NOW to worry about. Believe me, there are plenty of others I can and do comment on: where to start? Rosendahl, whose "solution" was to do nothing even longer, and hope the problem will go away? Zine, who didn't show at all, afraid to vote against his friends, the heads of the PPL and McOsker, but afraid not to? Just go around the horseshoe. But central to the topic at hand, if you believe Weiss was "a jackass" as a given (and plenty of people didn't and voted for him, continue to support him), again, what's your solution besides complaining? Controlled, upscale development on certain high-traffic corridors, planning for mass transit, is the viable way to go, to achieve a balance between residential and commercial, revenue and congestion, etc. Whether it's Weiss, Gail Goldberg or anyone else.
We've yet to see how Koretz handles it: he said while campaigning that the whole Grove should be razed, a bit extreme considering how popular it is despite some neighbor complaints. On the other hand, he seems like a reasonable person who wants to balance residents' wishes with the city's need for revenue. I am hopeful.
Again: How do you propose to get the revenue needed to repair and add all the infrastructure the city needs and which you want as a pre-requisite to any more development, without controlled development? Right now, our taxes and fees continue to go up even as services are cut, people are laid off, and it's going to get worse. So now what?
Hate to bust your little bubble, but I'm not 5:31, nor 5:15 nor 3:01. Ask Nuch since I threw a fund raiser for him during his campaign.
From crazy lady in the peanut gallery, "Again: How do you propose to get the revenue needed to repair and add all the infrastructure the city needs and which you want as a pre-requisite to any more development, without controlled development? Right now, our taxes and fees continue to go up even as services are cut, people are laid off, and it's going to get worse. So now what?
Answer from the solid timber floor, "Get rid of the illegal immigrant mentality that "forces" the middle class to flee Los Angeles", sabe, and woo the productive folk?
So Minuteman at 6:27's solution is, "Get rid of the illegal immigrant mentalit that 'forces' the middle class to flee Los Angeles," and all will be well? (Who are you quoting, anyway - yourself? Some Minuteman sage we should know about?)
And just HOW do you "woo the productive folk," and just WHO are they? Since ALL developers and busineses are evil by definition, since they generate traffic (especially until we have good, clean, extensive mass transit like the subway, which you people also oppose because it might bring "that kind" to the neighborhood too), can we have some specifics, please? Are you simply saying that if we somehow evict all the illegals from the city, wealthy homeowners will flock back? (An interesting public policy to implement, kind of dicey, don't you think?) What, exactly?
6:21, you now are a certified lunatic. It was bad enough that you were a Weiss groupie, but to add that idiot Gail Goldberg to the mix, you should be locked up in one of those high density cells. At least it will have a view of the misery on the streets.
6:21PM claims that "Controlled, upscale development on certain high-traffic corridors, planning for mass transit, is the viable way to go, to achieve a balance between residential and commercial, revenue and congestion, etc. Whether it's Weiss, Gail Goldberg or anyone else."
This is ass-backwards. Our water infrastructure is already stretched beyond capacity (or haven't you heard?) Our electrical infrastructure can't handle the current load (rolling brownouts anyone?) Our sewer infrastucture is already 15% above its design capacity (can you say s**t?) Our streets are well beyond their capacity to handle cars, and haven't been repaired (or haven't you noticed?) What about fire protection? What about police protection? How the hell are you going to support all that new development if you cannot support what you have now? Why do you think the City has not done its charter-mandated annual assessment of the infrastructure for ten years? because they know what it's going to show.
And Weiss's claim that upscale development near transit corridors will fix the traffic problem is also bogus for two reasons: one - you won't have the transit corridors for years, so you'll be stuck with the traffic for years to come (does anyone really believe the subway to the sea will only take 20 years to complete?) And two - we upscale people will always have our 2.5 cars per family, whether there is public transit or not; and we are too self-important to waste our time waiting for the bus or or the train, so we'll continue to drive our cars. Do you really believe Candy Spelling will take the subway from her new apartment in Century City to the opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion?
Still waiting for an answer to 5:31/6:21.
8:25 is still another "let me tell you what's wrong with you," not ONE solution other than criticism of people with a solid plan. (Supported by RAND studies, by the way, etc.)
Simply sitting there in your chair banging on a keyboard or showing up at a meeting to rant and tearing people down who have gotten out there and implemented something is easy. ANSWER THE QUESTION, pls. INCLUDING revenue sources to "fix" the problems. Can you come up with ANYTHING more substantive & doable than our Minuteman friend?
8:25's naysayings include, "we upscale people will always have our 2.5 cars per family, whether there is public transit or not; and we are too self-important to waste our time waiting for the bus or train, so we'll continue to drive our cars."
That would be hilarious parody if this person weren't so SERIOUS. It's absolutely perfect to make the counterpoint.
(Besides being "too self-important," you're also too insular: there are quite a few "upscale people" taking the tube/metro/subway & high-speed rail-Shinkansen in London, Paris, Tokyo... you are TOO funny.)
These are silly and naive questions; but here goes. Is it possible that ballots were counted improperly across the board? Might our votes mean nothing because it is already determined who will win?
The RAND study was done by a UCLA professor- Martin Wachs- who wants to ban cars and have everyone ride buses. Biased study of little value in the cultural milieu of LA.
Our electrical infrastructure can't handle the current load (rolling brownouts anyone?)
DWP generates around 1000 megawatts more than the current load and sells the excess electricity. I swear to God, you guys that make up sh*t just to complain are ridiculous.
Hahn filed papers with the California secretary of state for “The Janice Hahn Lieutenant Governor 2010 Exploratory Committee,’’ which has not reported any political fundraising activity.
Hahn in March was reelected to a third four-year council term, and is scheduled to be term-limited out of office in 2013.
According to L.A. Times, five council members are contemplating running for mayor in 2013. When are Angelenos/Californias going to wake up and stop voting for these lack of leadership politicos.
Public sector unions are toxic to cities and taxpayers.
Their mission is to get more money for less work and eliminate individual employee accountablity.
See what they did to MLK Hospital? See what they've done to the once great LA School system? Or for that matter the one in NY? (Read the New Yorker's article, the "Rubber Room.") That's what they're doing to LA.
Sucking the cities dry. That's what unions do.
Preventing anyone from managing a city's finances or quality of work. That's what unions do.
The taxpayers lack a way to be heard: statewide they have the initiative process: citywide they are nearly powerless.
The voters never meant to sell the city: they have families to worry about and jobs and expected their elected people to do their jobs properly.
The voters were also sold out by the LA Times: its abdictation of its duty to probe the city's finances and government is breathtaking. The two video kids that went after ACORN have done more for honest government than the Times.
Hear that Mr. Rainey? Mr. Lopez? One reporter is worth 30 journalists.
More toxic than unions are the managers running the city departments. As long as the city continues to hire the dumbest people they can find for managers, unions are needed to protect employees from these morons.