You can tell a lot about a guy from the people he chooses as his friends — and his enemies.
The mayor counts as friends a circle that includes lobbyists, developers and big shots who are getting rich off of the public business and see opportunities to get even richer.
And there’ are people like Brian D’Arcy — the DWP union boss who thinks labor negotiations are a game of blackmail and gets spectacular union contracts and promises of thousands of more jobs from the mayor when everybody else is hurting and taking pay cuts or losing jobs.
Then, there are his enemies, enemies of his own making, people like the DWP managers he dismisses collectively as incompetent and recalcitrant without having the guts to offer specific names or do anything about them during his five years as mayor.
And City Attorney Carmen Trutanich has become Antonio’s Enemy No.1 because he poses the greatest danger as the only independent elected city official, the only one who isn’t owned by the same crowd of insider profiteers that hover around everyone else in City Hall.
The mayor’s way of dealing with Trutanich is to break his promises and gut his department by slashing his budget by more than a third this year and next.
Trutanich is no one to be messed with lightly. He fired off a letter to the mayor and put it up on his website accusing Antonio of political cynicism and “a remarkable lack of leadership and imagination” that puts “public safety and the protection of taxpayer dollars at substantial risk.”
“You have apparently lost faith in and given up on the innate ingenuity and work ethic of its residents and employees, who have suggested and implemented innovative cost-saving measures that can lead us through these challenging budgetary times. Moreover, your proposed Budget fails to recognize the core missions of the City and thereby continues to place public safety and the protection of taxpayer dollars at substantial risk.
“In short, your proposals will only exacerbate the budget crisis looming in the future and appear to be motivated by some agenda other than the continued success of all of the public safety offices in this City, including the City Attorney’s Office.”
Trutanich notes the mayor’s budget only cuts his own office’s spending by 2.6 percent 2.6% r, and “despite a so-called ‘hard hiring freeze’ for other City employees, your office continues to hire political staff.”
The impact on losing 100 more attorneys, Trutanich said, will be dramatic in terms of his ability to defend the city against $2 billion in pending liability claims and will force him to discontinue prosecuting discretionary cases involving “gang injunctions and related prosecutions; the Safer City Initiative; the Neighborhood Prosecutor Program; the Citywide Nuisance Abatement Program; the Housing and Problem Properties Program; environmental and consumer protection; code or “broken window” enforcement; domestic violence
prosecutions; and many other non-priorable criminal offenses.”
For a political cynic like the mayor, the decision to go to war is a big mistake, a blunder that violates the first precept in Machiavelli’s bible of political manipulation: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
The disintegration of the mayor’s political strategy is happening so fast it is hard to keep up. But the signs of his desperation are clear enough.
He dismissed the likes of Eli Broad and RIchard Riordan from the day he took office as mayor and then suddenly, as budget crisis was crashing down on him, turned to them and surrendered his authority to their guy Austin Beutner, a fabulously rich corporate takeover financier with nothing better to do since he fell off a bike and nearly killed himself.
Three months later, Beutner has become the extra-legal de facto mayor, calling the shots in nearly a dozen key departments on everything from economic development to the sale of city assets to reduce the massive budget deficits.
This week he took on yet another major job for his dollar-a-year salary as interim general manager of the Department of Water and Power, a dual role that tramples on the city charter’s intent to provide checks and balances to ensure civilian oversight on policy and prevent corruption.
Interviewed by Warren Olney on KCRW’s Which Way LA? (link to podcast, Beutner comes up at 27:45 minute mark), the 9th DWP boss in 10 years showed he was a quick study in the fine art of saying little specific but implying a great deal, thus leaving all his options open: Get a green energy plan together, be transparent enough to sell it so he can get the rate hikes the mayor wants and reduce the political tensions enough to be able to hire a professional utility manager for the first time in years.
Even as he was chatting with Olney, the mayor was praising D’Arcy as “part of the solution” and waving his enemies list in front of editors and reporters at the LA Times, defaming without naming names the DWP management as “”wall to wall…at the highest levels…the biggest defenders of the status quo.”
“For four years, I’ve battled a bureaucracy that just won’t respond to the policy direction,” Villaraigosa said. “It’s been an absolute war. Getting through that Byzantine bureaucracy is very difficult . We’ve got to figure out a way to make that agency more transparent.
“They undermined [former General Manager Ronald] Deaton, they undermined [former General Manager David] Nahai. Even [outgoing General Manager S. David] Freeman. I’m talking about that upper-level management . You can’t fire them. They just go back to the Civil Service system” and they lose about $15,000 in salary as well as their city-provided cars, but they stay in the DWP. They out-wait you. They’ve out-waited everybody.”
The funny thing about that is Nick Patsaouras told him the same thing two years ago with the only difference being that the then DWP Commission President identified by name those who wanted to open up the books and were capable of doing a good job and those in the way.
Patsaouras got fired for his trouble and his solution, creation of a Rate Payer Advocate, was killed because transparency was the last thing the mayor wanted.
But it has reared its head and left the mayor and his allies scrambling to derail it by putting it under the control of the compliant Controller Wendy Greuel even as some members of the City Council are showing signs of getting uppity with an awakening public demanding better of them than they have seen in a long time.
Read Trutanich’s letter in full, a declaration of war between elect officials in LA that has no precedent in recent history:
CARMEN A. TRUTANICH
City Attorney
April 21,2010
Honorable Mayor Villaraigosa:
This letter is in response to your proposed Budget for Fiscal Year 2010/11 issued on April 20, 2010. Needless to say, I am deeply disappointed in your proposal, which displays a remarkable lack of leadership and imagination, and further demonstrates a fundamental failure of management on the part of the Mayor’s Office.
The proposed Budget is not a successful strategy to protect and promote the fiscal health and public safety of our City, and clearly fails to recognize and appreciate the basic skills necessary to efficiently manage its resources and employees. Rather than creatively and effectively managing this City, you have apparently lost faith in and given up on the innate ingenuity and work ethic of its residents and employees, who have suggested and implemented innovative cost-saving measures that can lead us through these challenging budgetary times. Moreover, your proposed Budget fails to recognize the core missions of the City and thereby continues to place public safety and the protection of taxpayer dollars at substantial risk. In short, your proposals will only exacerbate the budget crisis looming in the future and appear to be motivated by some agenda other than the continued success of all of the public safety offices in this City, including the City Attorney’s Office.
It is also obvious that your proposals cynically protect political positions at
the expense of public safety and essential services. For example, I note with
great dismay that the proposed Budget recommends only a 2.6% reduction for
the Mayor’s Office. I also understand that, despite a so-called “hard hiring
freeze” for other City employees, your office continues to hire political staff, which
is not tasked to perform public safety functions. In comparison, the Office of the
City Attorney, which is a designated public safety office under the City Charter,
has been targeted for a reduction of 18% (or approximately $17 million), which is
unprecedented for any City public safety agency and will result in the
unnecessary layoff of over 100 prosecutors and support staff. Such a severe
reduction to this Office constitutes an assault to public safety and a diminished
capacity to protect the City’s treasury. Our City and its residents need and
deserve reasoned and competent management In the effective delivery of
essential services, not the wasteful protection of overtly and costly political
positions proposed in your Budget.
In addition to being misleading, the proposed Budget disproportionately
impacts this Office compared to other public safety offices. As you are aware,
priorto the issuance of the proposed Budget, representatives of both your office
and the CAO advised this Office that a 10% (or $9.3 million) reduction, which
could be offset by any savings derived from anticipated furloughs, would be
recommended for this Office. In addition to offsets or “credits” for any furlough
savings, our Office was advised that any remaining deficit could be addressed
and any layoffs avoided through cooperative or “incentivized” agreements with
other departments, in which our budget would be credited by revenues collected
or saved by this’ Office. Specifically, our Office provided your office with
materials and inforrnation regarding several such cost-saving and revenue-
generating projects, including the consolidation of the Workers’ Compensation
Program and certain debt and tax collections activities within our Office, as well
as the proposed Administrative Code Enforcement program. Obviously, I was
surprised and shocked to see your recommendation for an 18% (or $17 million)
reduction, with no credits for furloughs, for this Office. The credibility of your
office has been sorely tested and damaged by this and other recent actions.
It is beyond dispute that, as required under the City Charter, the Office of
the City Attorney provides and performs vital and essential and mandated public
safety services and financial protection to the City and its citizens. As you know,
there are three primary and core public safety agencies under the Charter: the
Los Angeles Police Department; the Los Angeles Fire Department; and the City
Attorney’s Office. Your proposed FY 2010/11 Budget recommends an 18%
reduction in the funding for the Office of the City Attorney, which, when combined
with the 16% reduction imposed during FY 2009/10, equates to a total reduction of more than 30% over two budget cycles. This is the largest reduction suffered
by any public safety agency in the City and poses an unacceptable risk to public
safety. On the other hand, your proposed Budget proposes a 2% reduction for
LAFD and an increase of 1% for LAPD.
As a public safety agency, I believe this Office should be treated no
differently than LAFD or LAPD, especially given the critical support and
successful defense our Office provides to these departments each day. There is
no rational basis to increase the LAPD by 1 %, while simultaneously reducing the
number of prosecutors handling its cases by the proposed 18%. Without city
prosecutors, persons arrested by LAPD will be released without being charged.
As noted by the late Chief Daryl Gates in response to proposed budget cuts to
the City Attorney’s Office in 1982, “[I]t makes no sense for the Police Department
to apprehend (a criminal) and then find the prosecution cannot be completed.”
(See copy of attached article in Los Angeles Times, 117/82). It should also be
noted, that in 1982, then-Chief Gates publicly stated that he was prepared and
committed to share resources with the City Attorney’s Office in order to
accomplish the joint mission of the two departments, namely, to protect our
residents from crime. To date, there has been no effort by your office or the
LAPD to act in a similarly gracious partnership of true shared-sacrificed in our
joint mission.
This Office has more discretion in deciding whether to file and prosecute
criminal cases, as opposed to defending civil liability cases filed against the City
by private parties. As such, in the event this Office suffers the proposed 18%
reductions and layoffs, I will have no choice but to discontinue prosecuting those
criminal matters in which I have some limited discretion. These matters include
the following: gang injunctions and related prosecutions; the Safer City Initiative;
the Neighborhood Prosecutor Program; the Citywide Nuisance Abatement
Program; the Housing and Problem Properties Program; environmental and
consumer protection; code or “broken window” enforcement; domestic violence
prosecutions; and many other non-priorable criminal offenses.
Under the mandate of the City Charter, this Office also serves as the
guardian of the City’s treasury. Although the Mayor proposes the budget and the
Council approves it, this Office aggressively defends it everyday from liability and
lawsuits that seek to deplete it through frivolous and unreasonable damage
claims. Every reduction in the number of deputy city attorneys defending the City
against frivolous lawsuits exposes the City to potentially more millions of dollars
in damages and payouts to private lawyers looking for a payday from the City’s
deep pockets.
Since I took office in July 2009, our attorneys have vigorously andsuccessfully protected the City by winning 32 out of 32 civil trials – and saving theCity over $100 million in potential damage awards. Obviously, had the City been held liable at trial, the jury or the court could have ordered damages and costs significantly higher than the last pre-trial settlement offer, which could have totaled in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Although this Office
has been extraordinarily successful over the past nine months, the loss of any additional attorneys will greatly diminish our ability to further protect the City’s treasury from such liability damage claims.
Moreover, additional reductions to our budget will not limit the City’s
liability. Rather, such reductions will expose the City’s treasury to even more or
potentially higher liability payouts. This Office does not create liability – other
departments within the City engage in activities that create tens of millions of
dollars of potential liability each year. Currently, our Office is defending the City
against nearly $2 billion in civil liability claims, which if lost, will be paid by the
taxpayers. As the City’s lawyers, we are solely responsible under the Charter to
defend the City against these and other potential liabilities created by other
departments. Therefore, when you reduce the budget of this Office by 18%, I
cannot magically reduce the number of civil liability cases currently pending
against this City by a corresponding 18% or lower the City’s potential exposure
by even one dollar. Even though you may want to layoff employees of this
Office who tirelessly and professionally defend this City, you cannot wish away
the thousands of pending lawsuits demanding potentially billions of dollars from
the taxpayers of this City. Unlike sidewalks to be fixed or trees to be trimmed,
you cannot pick and choose which civil lawsuits to ignore. Each and every one
of these thousands of lawsuits must be answered and defended. Losing just one
of these cases, due to a lack of experienced or a sufficient number of counsel,
could cost the City millions of dollars in damages and wipe out any potential
savings you mistakenly and shortsightedly believe can be accomplished through
further reductions to this Office.
In fact, rather than suffer the additional and punitive proposed 18%
reduction, this Office must be recognized and rewarded for its tremendous
success in reducing costs and eliminating its deficit during FY 2009/10. When I
assumed Office on July 1, 2009, there was a deficit of over $18 million. Since
that date, our employees have successfully generated savings that have reduced
the deficit, which is now targeted to be entirely eliminated by the end of FY
2009/10 on June 30. We have accomplished this success through a combination
of ERIP, furloughs, reductions in costs for outside counsel, vendors and litigation
expenses, as well as increased subrogation collections and environmental and
consumer protection penalties – and just plain hard work.
Our employees have accomplished and endured all cost-saving measuresthey have been asked to implement and will deliver a balanced budget.Unfortunately, other City departments have apparently not been able to properlymanage and balance their own budgets. Despite our success and sacrifice,however; our employees are again being asked to bear the burden of those other departments that have not been properly managed and will suffer a disproportionate share of the reductions – all to the very grave risk to publicsafety and the City treasury. Moreover, such reductions will result in even more potential liability for the City due to lack of staff necessary to defend against lawsuits or prevent such lawsuits through adequate risk management and municipal counsel.
The Office of the City Attorney and its employees clearly recognize and
understand the serious and unprecedented financial challenges facing the City.
Our employees have worked hard and sacrificed much over the past year to
reduce costs and accomplish increasingly more with fewer resources. In fact, as
you well know, I personally advised you and your staff on multiple occasions that
this Office and its employees were willing and prepared to take on more
responsibility, including the City’s entire Workers’ Compensation and debt/tax
collections programs, in order to assist the’ City in reducing costs and generating
much-needed revenue. As I stated, there is no need to contract out such work
to outside vendors and contractors when we have experienced and dedicated
City employees who can more efficiently handle such matters.
Our success to date in bearing our share of the burden and reducing the
City’s deficit is proven and easy to measure. We have successfully performed
our duties, while at the same time dramatically cutting costs and reducing staff
from the General Fund. For example, this Office will reach the targeted goal of
less than 750 General Fund positions well before June 30, 2010, which
significantly exceeds the $8.6 million in savings requested in the Mid-Year
Financial Status report issued in January 2010.
Your recommended ·18% reduction to this Office and resulting 100 layoffs
will reduce our staff to an untenable 650 General Fund positions. Such a
reduction will constitute a budget loss of nearly 35% and more than 200 General
Fund positions in just one year. The proposed 18% reduction and layoffs will
severely impair the ability of this Office to provide the public safety and fiscal
protection services mandated by my authority under the Charter.
I cannot emphasize enough that we are a public safety office – protecting
both the safety and health of our citizens and our City treasury. Prosecuting
crimes and defending the City treasury are core missions of this City, and our
Office and its prosecutors, litigators, investigators and their support staff perform these essential services in a highly professional and cost effective manner.
Accordingly, I will firmly and publicly object to your proposed
disproportionate reductions and resulting layoffs that will significantly impact
essential and core City services provided by this Office. I will address my
concerns to the Council, where I intend to demonstrate the serious flaws in your
proposed Budget. I anticipate that the Council will provide much needed
guidance and direction, and eventually allocate and approve appropriate funds to.
fully support the essential services provided by this Office without the need for
any layoffs of prosecutors, litigators, investigators or their support staff.
Ultimately, I will take whatever actions are necessary in order to ensure
that the Office of the City Attorney is able to perform its mandated role under the
Charter to protect the City’s residents and its treasury. The City deserves
nothing less.
Carmen A. Trutanich
City Attorney
Interesting the Mayor cuts one of the few depts. that actually is bringing in money to the city. Nuch went after Prestige Parking shortly after he got into office and made them pay a couple million back to city they owed. He also had the guts to go after Marijuana shops that council screwed up and allowed the city to be saturated with them now we have to clean them up. They are being robbed all over the place. Bottom line is Nuch is a MAN something we dont’ have in any of our elected officials. He isn’t afraid to go against the idiots who ruined our city. He has the support of the people.
Mr. Spin, himself, rebounding on the up-take, garbs a microphone and responds the letter from the City Attorney as follows
“The city attorney’s letter is based on a fundamental misunderstanding
of the budget,” Szabo said. “We did not propose — and we do not propose –
to lay off a single city attorney. As it relates to the size of the cut, we’re
going to work with (Trutanich’s) office to try to attempt to address his
concerns.”
With advisers like these surrounding him, Phony Tony’ll undo himself.
You are cordially invited to LA RED. On April 24, 2010 (12:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.), El Sereno is hosting a mixer based on self-determination. All communities are welcomed. This gathering is an opportunity to create and fortify networks. Come one and all to have some fun in the sun….For directions to the festivities, see link below:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=112016098819943&index=1
Right. “WE don’t propose you lay off any attorneys. WE just expect you to keep all your attorneys, with $17 million less in your budget. Just give them calligraphy certificates.”
Give me a big bleepin’ break.
What an indictement of deriliction of duty an fiduciary responsibilities. Let`s see how Szabo spins this one. Unfortunately for the Mayor Szabo ain`t Trutanich.
Tony is on the run. He brought it to himself. He did not mind the store, preferring instead the playboy/lothario business. He is done.
Trutanich lost all credibility with me when he refused to cut his own salary because he made more in the private sector.
Respect to the attorneys working in his office but when it comes to Trutanich himself, the man has only done 3 things since being elected
1 – Gave the Controller a hard time with nothing to show for it
2 – Gave some advertiser the most ridiculous bail in LA history. Then lowered it after everyone laughed at him.
3 – Relocated drug dealers on skid row to other parts of LA
And this guy is supposed to be someone special. To me it looks like he has no clue what he’s supposed to be doing.
Why hasn’t Nuch gone after AEG for over $1 million for the Jackson Funeral? He’s brought in milliona for the city winning lawsuits but this has been hanging in the balance far too long. Jackson’s DVD has made over $200 million. If the Mayor cuts Nuch’s attorney’s by 100 then there will be a drastic cut to the crimes we want prosecuted i.e. gangs, domestic violence. But the Mayor has his own baggage with DV.
The Mayor is beyond any redemption. I am willing to circulate the recall petitions. Even if the recall is not successful, it can kill a political career and therefore it’s worth doing. The community was unable to recall Jack Weiss, but the recall killed his political career. That made it successful in the long run….
I just read the best case why Nuch’s budget should not be cut on Walter Moore’s website. The anti gang programs is getting $17 million. If Nuch was smart he would let the people know how many of the gang members running those programs have been arrested for FELONIES. Nuch needs to put out the facts of all the gang members his office has put behind bars. Where the hell is WENDY? hIDING OUT LIKE A WHUSS. She needs to audit those gang programs because community members know some of them aren’t even in the city. They are giving gang program money to political friends in the County. THe Mayor is an ex gang banger and the idiots like Cardenas, Reyes, Alarcon, Huizar all Mexican Mafia thugs support gang bangers. They love giving our tax payer dollars to criminals. C’mon Nuch put the fact out on those so called anti gang program scams
Another unneccessary Villaraigosa made crisis which is going to further tarnish the reputation of the City. And in July, the City needs to raise over $1 billion in tax and revenue anticipation notes. We will be lucky to sell the notes, and if we does, we will get tagged with the Villaraigosa Premium.
http://recallcityhall.org
What a brilliant move by the mayor…attack Nuch and cause a distraction from what’s really going on downtown.
Except this time he has picked the one guy who isn’t afraid of the mayor’s so-called power.
Tighten your seatbelts…
The Nuch old fogie spinners are onboard as usual. When they’re not egging him on to jail Jan Perry, Paul Koretz and Ed Reyes, businessmen who post or oppose him on supergraphics they don’t take down immediately, volunteer planning commissioners, head lawyers and executives of AEG, oh, anyone. The arm-chair or rocking chair brigade showing their “Tru Colors” like their mascot. Ron’s hero.
Trutanich accusing the mayor of saying one thing and doing another is more than the pot calling the kettle black: ask Laura Chick about his “soundbites and fancy speeches, not just empty words but lies…”, Wendy Greuel, even Doug MacIntyre and the Daily News about the Controller’s right to audit issue. Without which there is NO corroboration for him claiming he’s “saving millions” for the city so “I’m SO SPECIAL!!!” And who’s the one on a political vendetta, using his office for hoped-for higher office, his puppetmaster DA Cooley’s job, as he’d planned from the start? (Look out Jan Perry, if he doesn’t even have to just walk you and Liewieke and your staffs “across the street to the DA’s office” to back up his unfounded threats.) The mayor never promised not to cut his office, that I can see – everyone’s taking cuts. And Trutanich admitted to the Times editorial Board some months ago that he has NOT done a balance sheet showing let along PROVING, that he’s saved the money claimed for the city.
Or ask the pro-pot people who must have been too stoned to spend 5 minutes looking up his real record as a conservative Republican in Long Beach defending rich criminals, that’s RICH criminals, not you, Don Duncan head of ASA (Americans for Safe Access, I think it’s called) unless you fork over MORE big bucks like you used to get him elected and turn out tens or thousands to vote. (But WAIT: where’s you get the money, when he and Cooley insist no profits are allowed and no money is to change hands? Oh, oh – fooled ‘ya!) In his letter today, his role model is the just-deceased Daryl Gates, as for Zine and the rest of their crew.
FUNNY how Trutanich is comparing himself to LAPD and saying his dept. shouldn’t be cut because it’s just as vital to public safety.
The LA Police Political League’s “Million Dollar Man” to the detriment and befuddlement of the rank and file, “delivering” for them again. Ha-ha, it’s “all about me and mine.” NOT “beholden to anyone,” the “only independent,” Ron claims? Or what about his loyalty to his mentor DA Steve Cooley who recruited him and “persuaded” those he’s built up relations with (the Republican money-bags, judges and lawyers like MetNews-Enterprises Roger M. Grace; smaller DA’s who see him as the big cheese…) and now needs him/ our city’s strapped resources, to grandstand on the medical pot issue to prove to conservative Republicans that he’s “tough” and not the softie they claim because of his 3-Strikes stance. What Jane Usher called “bogus lawsuits” from these dispensaries are mounting, so they must need all those extra lawyers. As well as to jail or sue virtually every Democratic official in town, and keep on suing the Controllers instead of settling as he’d promised….How much alone has it cost to pay Usher and Bill Carter to pursue that matter instead, meanwhile vilifying Chick and her lawyer, claiming he REALLY promised to work “for free” all along…WHO believes that about a pro like Woocher? What fancy footwork! NO pay cut for this “budget hero,” because “I made more in private practice.” Public service, Tru style.
This hero of budget conservatives who’s intent on suing the broke city if he doesn’t get his way, Jane Usher’s outbursts notwithstanding.
Ron and the lackeys left at the Times editorial, Newton-Greene, Zahniser in “news,” are the ones spinning like mad with the Armchair Army, hiding the fact that their hero is the MASTER of “say one thing, do and mean another” with major anger management and control issues.
The mayor and city council may be spinning faster than the Amusement Park teacups, making people just as nauseous, but he’s only adding to the distrust and confusion and dysfunction of city government.
The “wacko” in house.
The Mayor’s petty little spin team at 12:45 pm.
“The Mayor’s petty little spin team” actually has several valid arguments in that little rant up there.
Instead of addressing them you resort to ad hominem name calling.
2:26; wacko again.
Rick Orlov’s piece on this flap in the Daily News points out that all 104 jobs in the CA’s office slated for “layoffs” are “currently vacant.” In other words, jobs that Trutanich wants to FILL. A little detail lacking in this thread and elsewhere when it comes to the Trutanich shills.
The nature of his and Usher’s letters attacking the mayor for gross incompetence are mind-boggling: way to TRY to destabilized and undermine the credibility of the city further. If that’s his way of “Running” against “The Democrats” toward his future official ambitions, to continue the “attack, attack, the status quo” hitting below the belt style he used to campaign, it’s NOT what the city needed right now!
2:32; wacko again.
2:26 PM claims that, instead of addressing 12:45′s rant, 2:05PM “resorts to ad hominem name calling”
Personally, I stopped reading 12:45′s rant in line 1, where she writes “The Nuch old fogie spinners are onboard as usual”. I don’t like ad-hominem name calling.
To Anonymous @ 1:08, 2:30, 2:34
Sweetie, this is a site for grownups. Bring your Mommy or Daddy to the keyboard and you run off and play with kids your own age.
HOLD ON! WAIT A MINUTE!
I was not aware the 100 positions are VACANT!
That makes a HUGE difference to me. This is now not a matter of CUTTING 100 attorneys, as I originally believed, but instead a matter of whether we need to ADD 100 attorneys.
I think the burden of proof therefore shifts from Villaraigosa — of whom, in case you didn’t know, I am not a fan — to Trutanich, to explain to us why we need to ADD 100 attorneys.
He may have a perfectly legitimate explanation — e.g., to save money on hiring outside counsel — but I’ll need to see it before I sign up to hire MORE people downtown.
In the meantime, I still think we ought to stop spending $17 million per year on the “anti gang” programs run by “ex” gang members.
Am I changing my position based on new information? You bet! Why? Ralph Waldo Emerson said it best: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”
I don’t want a hobgoblin, man!
Wacko again.
I’m with you Walter, why give money to ex gang members who many cops say still actively gang banging. Farmer john Beck at the helm of LAPD and his lapdog Gerald Chaleff they are making cops put those criminals in the loop of their search warrant raids, prevention strategies and its pissing them off big time. Why is Beck dragging the Mayor to roll call further pissing off his cops? Beck is so out of the loop he needs to go to a roll call so he can hear his cops say how much they hate the Mayor. Trutanich is sticking up for his team. The Mayor was an ACLU Director who fought against a gant injunction for the gang in San Fernando Valley and against hard working families. Nuch’s team is doing a great job with gang injunctions. Antonio and his Mexican Mafia boys hate.
Ohhhhhhh!!!!!! L.A. Council Accused Of Illegally Raising Electricity…Longtime City Council gadfly Joyce Dillard has sent letters to council president Eric Garcetti and City Attorney Carmen Trutanich alleging that the city illegally passed its electricity rate hikes last week without proper public notice — 72 hours in advance — required by the state. LA Weekly
If Trutanich wants to come out of this a hero he would jump on this to see if those rate hikes were in fact ILLEGAL.
Personally, I stopped reading 12:45′s rant in line 1, where she writes “The Nuch old fogie spinners are onboard as usual”. I don’t like ad-hominem name calling.
Good for you. You also have no idea what his arguments are and also have the attention span of a 2 year old.
Walter Moore, if you believe what wacko writes, you have some credibility problems. Too quick to judgement.
I’m not sure I know who “wacko” is or what they’re writing.
My statement was based on my having read Rick Orlov’s article. Orlov says the positions cut are currently vacant.
Is Orlov incorrect?
At some point, I’ll look at this part of the proposed budget myself.
UPDATE:
I’m not saying Orlov is totally wrong, but I’ve looked through the budget documents re the City Attorney’s office, and I can’t see where these 104 positions are vacant.
Where’s the proof, Rick?
UPDATE:
I’m not saying Orlov is totally wrong, but I’ve looked through the budget documents re the City Attorney’s office, and I can’t see where these 104 positions are vacant.
Where’s the proof, Rick?
there is on thing for sure city hall is run by crooks and liars , and who realy runs los angeles is BRIAN D`ARCY IBEW UNION BOSS
and the MAFIA special interest
city hall is the bich from evry one , NOT US THE RATE PAYERS AND VOTERS .
Does this mean I have a better chance of winning a lawsuit against the city? There are a couple of causes of action I am contemplating-all DWP related.
there is on thing for sure city hall is run by crooks and liars , and who realy runs los angeles is BRIAN D`ARCY IBEW UNION BOSS
Sure he does. That explains why he wanted the DWP board to accept the initial council-negotiated rate hikes and everyone from the mayor to the board to Freeman and Raj promptly ignored him.
city hall is the bich from evry one
Um, we WISH city hall was our bitch. English is not your first language, is it
It seems to me that when civics classes were phased out of our High Schools, liberal arts and science educations from our Universities and in general designed and implemented the forces of social engineering to redesign our belief systems, we weren’t able to predict the outcome; mistaken assumptions with unforeseen consequences.
We’ve dumbed down our youth as we’ve gassed up the motors of consumerism. We’ve overpopulated the planet as a religious and political consequence in the same way we’ve denuded the forests and raped the land.
All of this is burdened on the backs those who follow us as. Tony, his spin doctors and political appointments and the Councilmembers are all shining examples of how far we’ve sunk and how much work it’ll take to fix what unchecked greed has ruined.
It seems to me that when civics classes were phased out of our High Schools, liberal arts and science educations from our Universities and in general designed and implemented the forces of social engineering in order to refocus our belief systems, we weren’t able to predict the outcome; mistaken assumptions with unforeseen consequences.
We’ve dumbed down our youth as we’ve gassed up the motors of consumerism. We’ve overpopulated the planet as a religious and political consequence in the same way we’ve denuded the forests and raped the land.
All of this is burdened on the backs those who follow us as. Tony, his spin doctors and political appointments, Wendy, Dennis, Janice and the rest of the Councilmembers are all shining examples of how far we’ve sunk and how much work it’ll take to fix what unchecked greed has ruined.