Talk Turns to Action -- The Fight Is On

What, Me Worry?! from Michael Cohen on Vimeo.

While most of America tuned into football and the "Simpsons" 20th anniversary special on Sunday, the lines were being drawn for the political battle that will determine the future of Los Angeles.

The mayor, with his proclivity for the rich and their lifestyle, named a wealthy equity firm manager, Austin Beutner whose name has not come up in the public pension fund scandal, to run his economic development program using the Airport, Harbor and DWP to create jobs and keep the city out of bankruptcy.

It will be interesting to see how he skirts federal, state and local laws that the city has run afoul of in the past in its efforts to raid these proprietary agencies' funds for uses that are outside their public missions.

On the other side of the battlefield, more than 75 Neighborhood Council leaders met in Hollywood for some three hours to confront the truth that all their talk over the last 10 years meant next to nothing since nobody at City Hall listens.

History of a sort was being made as they began to develop strategies to turn talk into action, starting with demanding a direct role in budget decisions -- the deepening crisis the city faces after years of overspending and overtaxing.

The mayor's answer is to sell off parking structures and other assets, to pay off workers to retire and to loot the DWP in particular to subsidize businesses to locate or expand in LA.

The result is chaos in nearly every city department as senior staff retires, escalating deficits, soaring rates and nothing but a wing and a prayer that the flight of the middle class and good-paying jobs will somehow end if enough money is pumped into the economy.

At the LA Neighborhood Council meeting Sunday, LANCC President Len Shaffer laid out the framework of the discontent and need to take a more dynamic position at the outset of the meeting at the Hollywood Community Center.

There was a clear consensus that the residents of the city want an entirely different conversation -- one that focuses on basic services and the quality of life, one that actually would help businesses to thrive and make LA attractive to investors without having to pay them to set up shop.

The first step is to demand "a seat at the table" in budget discussions as Dr. Dan Wiseman plans to do today before the Council Budget and Finance Committee

"They (NCs) want Ex Officio status at the City Council, Council Committee, Task Force and Departmental meetings so that they can fulfill their Chartered responsibilities:
1. .to promote more citizen participation in government
2. to make government more responsive to local needs
3. to present to the Mayor and Council an annual list of priorities for the City budget
4. to monitor the delivery of City services in their respective areas and periodic meetings with responsible officials of City departments."

To mobilize support, Hollywood bike activist Stephen Box, following the pattern that helped defeat Measure B a year ago, last night launched BudgetLA.org to coordinate organizing efforts and provide up-to-date information.

Noting that the mayor's Budget Survey is a farce, Valley Village blogger Paul Hatfield pressed for a campaign to get thousands of people to refuse to answer and of the multiple choices and only fill out the comments sections with their views about the city's spending priorities and how to deal with the deficit.

There was the usual anger and discontent about cracked sidewalks and untrimmed trees, about the lack of cops and the deterioration of neighborhoods. But there was more.

There was a video Michael Cohen put together for CityWatchLA that showed the courage Department of Transportation GM Rita Robinson and Assistant City Administrative Officer Tom Coultas have shown in publicly saying the steps the mayor and City Council have taken in the face of their soaring deficits have disastrous consequences that will be even worse next year.

And how Council Members like Bill Rosendahl don't have a clue about what their irresponsibility has wrought.

And then businessmen activists Jack Humphreville and Doug Epperhart laid out just how disastrous the city budget problems are and how they escalate in the years ahead -- $4 billion in the general fund, nearly $11 billion for city pensions. .

It went around the room with everyone poring out their specific grievances until Westside restaurateur Jay Handall passionately argued for focusing on the budget details and a strategy force discussions on how to really fix what's broken, and spoke out against plans to sell or lease city revenue assets. Last March, the NC Budget Advisory Committee he serves on was recommended the city declare a fiscal emergency, combine agencies, avoid selling assets and reduce salaries by 10 to 15  percent among other steps -- many of which the city ignored or was slow to move on.

Kevin James, the KRLA radio talk show host who launched a coalition last week to change LA and got 1,000 members in just a few days, spoke of the need to organize people behind and get media attention.

Councilman Paul Koretz, just over pneumonia, sat through the session and so did Bong Hwan Kim, the head of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, and his predecessor Greg Nelson and DONE Commission member Linda Lucks

An aide to City Controller Wendy Greuel was there looking disheveled and impatient that he was missing the NFL playoff game and so was a young aide to the mayor who fled after a few minutes, apparently satisfied that it was just another meeting of crazies, gadflies and mad men and women, people of no account in the high stakes game of profiteering off the public's money.

After 90 minutes I'd heard enough to know that the NCs were crossing the line. They were ready to act.

Others in the city outside of the NC organization are ready to organize what amounts to a citizens' political party and I'm ready to join with them, with LANCC, with anybody else who wants to seize power and topple a regime of insiders who for too long have lived high and mighty on the public dole and failed to deliver a city that works for its people, or provides for their future.

Just last week, the state of California enacted into law the right of parents to have a say in how their children our educated.

I say this is America and we have a God-given right to have in say in government. It's as basic a civil right as there is, the right of everyone to fully participate in government.

Next Saturday, these issues will come up again at the CityWide Alliance of NCs and at the Saving LA Project meeting that will follow it.

Let's get it together and get on with the fight to show City Hall they are servants of the public and we are the bosses.