UPDATE: Read Austin Beutner’s letter to DWP workers at OurLA.org.
It wouldn’t be make believe if anyone in their right mind still believed in Antonio.
He couldn’t even get more than one round of applause from his hand-picked audience of contributors at his State of the City speech, and that was for the one thing that has gone right under his watch, the reduction in violent crime.
The budget plan he outlined Tuesday night is nothing but a work of fiction by a mayor so desperate to save himself he is willing to destroy his city — a compilation of wishful thinking on revenue projections and fantasies of income from fire sales of assets.
It is loaded with one-time savings and revenues that even if they materialize will only help get through the coming year’s $484 million deficit while leaving the 2011-12 deficit of $775 million and the following year’s $1 billion deficit untouched.
He must be stopped before he harms us all.
Some people learn from their mistakes, not Antonio. He got us into this mess doing exactly what he is proposing to do again: Chasing numbers downhill and using smoke and mirrors to avoid reality.
He’s probably the only man in America who still believes the Obama economic miracle will lift the city’s ship back to normal. There isn’t going to be any economic miracle. Normal isn’t coming back. Fundamental economic changes are occurring.
We can no longer use City Hall as a jobs and social welfare program, as a bottomless pit of wealth for sweetheart contracts with unions, contractors and consultants and to subsidize developers whose projects make the quality of our lives and our neighborhoods worse.
Surely, De Facto Mayor Austin Beutner understands this as well as anybody. He made his fortune buying up distressed companies on the cheap, scaling costs to revenue, focusing on the core business and then selling them for spectacular profits.
As the mayor’s top gun, he has been given direct authority over every city agency that impacts revenue and. in a move that is extra-legal, has crossed the line and handed direct control of the Department of Water and Power as its general manager.
What does that say about the pretense of separation of powers, of citizen commission’s providing oversight on politicians and bureaucrats when as the mayor’s man Beutner is part of the authority that appoints the DWP Board and as general manager he reports to the board he appoints?
Is there a secret memo somewhere in the dungeons of City Hall that says martial law was declared as part of the fiscal emergency and the rule of law suspended?
The City Council must stop this abuse of power by rejecting Beutner’s appointment or at the least force him to resign as deputy mayor for appearances sake, if nothing else.
The same is true of the mayor’s budget. The Council is as much responsible for this crisis as he is and now has one last chance to put an end to these phony money games that are rapidly moving LA down the road to oblivion and bankruptcy and made our city the laughing stock of the world.
“I understand your utility is going bankrupt and your city with it,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Beutner at an exclusive Getty Center event Monday night during a visit presumably to scout around for some bargains in public assets to pick up for 10 cents on the Euro.
David Zahniser in the LA Times all but ignores the budget in his story on the mayor’s speech by focusing on the dizzying pendulum swings in direction and message that Antonio, Controller Wendy Greuel and the Council have engaged in for the last year, from early retirements to 4,000 layoffs to today’s “not to worry, we fixed everything” sound bite.
“When the information is that confusing and that contradictory, the
public doesn’t know what to believe — except to distrust anything
they’re told,” said Westside community leader Mike Eveloff, president of the Tract 7260 Homeowners Assn.
The mayor’s handlers regard all this as nothing but a public relations exercise in need of a “more consistent message.”
Antonio himself clearly agrees, deflecting all responsibility for the crisis he created by falsely claiming he’s gotten city spending under control during his reign of profligate hiring, wage increases and giveaways of the public’s money.
All that’s wrong is the fault of Wall Street and the global recession and some mysterious force that obscured Southern California’s eternal sunshine.
“Over the last several weeks, we have allowed darkness to cloud our
optimism. I think that you could even say that we have
allowed the strain of the challenges we face to undermine civic unity.”
Unity? He barely got a majority a year ago against Walter Moore and eight others with little money or name recognition despite his own fame and bottomless pit of dirty political money.
Maybe he means how he achieved the impossible and united the citizenry and public employee unions in opposition to his policies and politics and even gotten the business community to suffer a crisis of confidence in his leadership to the point that only the promises made to them by unelected mayor Beutner has kept them in line.
Antonio is right about a couple of things:e thing: This isn’t why he was elected to office and it is going to be “a tough time for everyone” — even him.
This also underscores the importance of “LA Clean Sweep,” i.e., of replacing the City Council Members in even-numbered districts in the March 2011 election.
The Mayor only proposes the budget. We need a REAL City Council that will exercise independent judgment, not a bunch of career politicians who will rubber-stamp the wishful-thinking budget and then act surprised when, lo and behold, there’s yet another deficit.
If it’s possible to get rid of the Mayor through a recall, great. But whether that happens or doesn’t happen, we must elect new City Council Members in March.
Politicians speak for the money that backs them. Special interests should be made to stand in line for 2 minutes like the rest of us and should have no place behind closed Mayoral/Councilmember doors. Something’s smelly innately in the way we’re doing self-governance. We’ve allowed a monster to get out and it is now consuming us. As a retired city employee, I felt the wrath of retaliation several times when I attempted to expose fraud or improve operations. City employment a bizarre culture. Because of Civil Service laws, it has always been easier to promote a problematic employee than to remove them. Look at Villariagosa’s Department Managers. He chooses those who will not stand up to him and challenge his mayoral idiocracy. Some years ago, film crews wore tee shirts emblazoned: “B.O.H.I.C.A,” (Bend Over Here It Comes Again). Time to reprint these, only now, to wear to Council meetings and Mayoral press statements.
Zahniser stacks the decks of his story again: asks Mike Eveloff, long-time critic of Antonio and City Hall in general, who wants literally ZERO DEVELOPMENT OR GROWTH on the westside BUT of course, more cops and services, and gets what you’d expect.
None of these “community leaders” has a coherent vision or plan, just “just say NO.” Much as I don’t like many of Antonio’s policies including pandering to illegals who he conflates with citizens and legal immigrants, he’s right that he’s been left trying to balance the needs and demands of citizens and other officials, with what’s realistic. The rest of them point fingers, criticize and “just say no.”
Actually, the people who want to replace the Mayor and City Council DO have specific proposals.
Ron’s group came up with over 30 potential platform planks, some more specific than others, and a committee is working on refining them.
This isn’t “just say no,” this is “just say no to mismanagement and malfeasance.”
Walt Whitman, To The States:
To the States, or any one of them,
or any city of the States,
resist much, obey little!
Resist much! Resist!
Once unquestioning obedience,
once fully enslaved,
no nation, state, city of this earth,
ever afterward resumes its liberty.
Resist! Resist!
Why do we need Antonio at $200k/yr plus fringe benefits etc etc, when we have Beutner, a de facto Mayor, for $1/yr. Anyone?
There was a good editorial in the Daily News today.
Man of mystery: Beutner’s appointment to lead DWP doesn’t seem to make much sense. After reading Beutner’s letter to his colleagues at DWP what really makes sense to me is Mayor Tony’s placement of yet another puppet to continue his energy plans which will double and triple ratepayers DWP bills. The third paragraph in Beutner’s letter says it all: We need to reinvigorate our focus on our customers, expand proven and effective programs in the energy efficiency arena, and exhaustively explore new concepts like rate redesign and targeted incentives.
Transparency at DWP will never change as long as executives like Raman Raj who runs the daily DWP business remains on the payroll. You can’t change spots on a leopard and each department has their old timers who will never change the way they do business. If heads start to roll within six weeks then we will know Beutner means business.
The Mayor thinks anyone rich must be smart. Why keep going to the likes of Breutner etc. when there are enough smart people in City Hall who chose public service over making big bucks and are routinely ignored.
It should be in all new dictionaries:
“Villaraigrosa, Antonio, Mayor of Los Angeles; aka, “The Mayor That Ruined Los Angeles,” aka, “Gray Davis of Los Angeles.”
Other terms: lightweight; showboater; featherweight.
Political legacy: “The Mayor that Ruined Los Angeles.” Used as example: “We don’t want another Villaraigosa.” To “Villaraigosa a city”, meaning to run it so ineptly that few can believe it. “It’s been Villaragiosaed,” also “It’s been Antonioed.”
Cited in historical texts: “The city’s finances declined abruptly under the tenure of Antonio Villaraigosa, often called “The Mayor That Ruined Los Angeles.”
“Like the closing days of the late roman empire, Los Angeles under mayor Villaragosa, a poorly educated union puppet, declined into a dismal state. Libraries closed, roads deteriorated, all while high level corruption and incompetence went unchallenged.
Many commentators believe the level of incompetence and cronyism under this mayor is perhaps the worst of US mayors, rivalled only by former mayors of Detroit. Children were particularly impacted, as utility costs soared in an economic downturn after the the mayor’s short-sighted, feel-food decision to abandon the city’s reliable coal-fired electricty generation.
Businesses needed to create new jobs fled the city, leaving it more and more dependent on a diminishing tax base provided by low income citizens and declining businesses.”
Villaraigosaed or Antonioned. Good ones!
But let’s make it much easier: Villared, Antonioed or Tonioed. No one can pronounce Villaraigosa.
http://recallcityhall.org
Am I the only one who wants to scream each time the Mayor says “My fellow Angelenos”. Hate this word.
If we had elected an outright terrorist to the Mayor’s position, would he have been able to unravel it as completely as Tony has? Just wondering!
Well, J. Usher has shown again that she is one of the very few persons in City Hall who has cojones. She has taken on the “failure”.
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