UPDATE: The Recreation and Parks Commission decided to maintain the status quo on the golf cart contract Wednesday, leaving Kishi on a month-to-month contrac,t, but sought to uphold a fair and transparent process going forward.
When they write the obituary for the City of Los Angeles and it fell into bankruptcy and decline, there surely will be extensive discussion to the role of unions, lobbyists and influential insiders and how the political leadership did their bidding at great cost to the public interest.
The way the city’s golf courses have been run is a prime example of why the city doesn’t have enough money to pay its bills and why services are so poor and getting worse.
Last month, city officials moved to raise the price of playing a round of golf by as much as 27 percent, rates that already are higher than at county-run public courses.
Today, the Recreation and Parks Commission is all but certain to turn its back on hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in added revenue along with rebuilding of golf cart paths and replacement of worn-out old electric golf carts with brand new ones with GPS.
This will mark the fourth time in seven years that the city has failed to award a contract for the golf cart concession.
That failure has left the concession on a month-to-month basis in the hands of J.H. Kishi, a well-connected company that got a 12-year lease back in 1991 and has kept the business despite reports, audits, staff findings and commission recommendations that the public would be better served and the city get more money if the contract was awarded to Michael Bernbach’s Ready Golf, the company that runs the Encino-Balboa driving range.
How elaborate processes were derailed and common sense ignored is a prime example of what goes on all the time at City Hall: The public interest is sold out by our elected officials to special interests in back room deals, resulting in worse services at higher costs and less revenue to the city.
Last September, the City Council by a one-vote margin rejected the Rec and Parks Board recommendation in favor of Ready Golf despite an elaborate vetting process by staff and an outside consultant that gave the Encino company the highest marks and found serious fault with Kishi’s operations.
“Politics of the ugliest variety trumped public process of the highest order,” Craig Kessler, executive director of the Public Links Golf Association, wrote in the LA Business Journal.
“Lobbyists, political operatives and family connections carried the
day over rational business analysis, reasoned discourse and objectivity.
And in the process, a lot more was lost than the simple endurance of
substandard, dangerous golf cart service. Public integrity was lost.”
David Zahniser in the LA Times described what was going on this way: “For those who fear that government always moves at a glacial pace, the
city of Los Angeles may be poised to provide a new poster child: golf
carts.”
More than an inability to make a decision was going on.
Kishi, represented by heavy-handed lobbyist-political consultant Harvey Englander, and Michael Yamaki, a lawyer prominent in the Asian-American community whose ties to City Hall go back the era of Mayor Tom Bradley. Yamaki, a relative of the president of Kishi, was named to the Police Commission the same year Kishi got its 12-year contract and has remained a City Hall insider ever since.
On two previous occasions dating back to 2003, Ready Golf had beaten out Kishi but failed to get the contract because of the company’s behind-the-scenes influence and the role of the SEIU that represents golf course workers and wants to take over the entire operation of the city’s seven 18-hole courses itself.
The SEIU successfully blocked awarding the contract by invoking what’s called a 1022 provision that allows city officials to consider union-run costs and benefits before contracting out services.
“We want them to do it over,” Julie Butcher, the union’s regional
director, said last August. “Our preference . . . is for Recreation and Parks to decide
that they can do this work themselves…It’s cheaper than contracting it out because the city gets to keep all
of that money.”
That isn’t what the consultants or city financial analysts determined in recommending Ready Golf after 13 months of study last year.
But then the mayor’s lawyer,
Thomas Saenz, moved in and Councilwoman Jan Perry picked up the Kishi
torch, arguing: “Kishi has a long record of service, dating back to when
Mayor [Tom]
Bradley was in office,. I think they should be given great
weight and consideration because of that.”
At the time she was
talking, city auditors were taking a hard look at Kishi’s operations and
finding a number of problems from failure to have health certificates
for employees to an inadequate system of receipts.
More
importantly, there was the problem of the missing $564,556.11.
“Our
reconciliation of the concession’s reported gross receipts and its bank
account records disclosed that the reported gross receipts were
understated…(that) resulted in the rental payment deficiency (to the
city) of $265,341.37,” according to the draft audit that has been
suppressed for nine months.
Kishi was unresponsive to questions
about the missing money at first and then offered several different
explanations for the discrepancy. Still, the auditors said that “by
grossly understating the revenues resulting in substantial loss of
Income to the City, we strongly suggest that the Administrative
Resources Section sternly warn the Concessionaire to discontinue this
practice for which appropriate sanctions may be imposed.”
Rather
than sanctions, city officials have extended the Kishi contract for the
last nine months and the Rec & Parks Commission is likely to do so
yet again today by invoking the 1022 process to look at a union-run
concession.
The goal of City Hall, after all, is to protect the
jobs of city workers and to keep the cash flowing into campaign coffers
from special interests and the “gifts” flowing to the mayor so he can
live like the multi-millionaires who so envies and adores.
The
golf cart concession is small potatoes, worth only $1.5 million to the
city from Kishi, $2 million or more from Ready Golf. But it’s typical of
what goes on in hundreds of deals after year that add up to the
difference between solvency and bankruptcy, between a city that works
for its people and one that is deteriorating by the day.
Does anybody remember when that “well run concession” caused a fire that burned the golf cart warehouse @ wilson harding to the ground…
Why should Angelenos support the LACK of LEADERSHIP Los Angeles City Council and the DWP Mayor Villaraigosa’s decision to increase DWP rates, including trash fees, parking meter fees, traffic citation fees, dog license fees, etc, and continue to provide less service to their constituents.’ This does not include LA County, State and Federal increases.
The individuals who complain the most are the same people who continue to vote for the LACK of LEADERSHIP, including the career politicians like Villaraigosa, Alarcon, Cardenas, Koretz, Wesson, Krekorian, politicians into office.
Start the NO vote campaign against Lt. Gov. Candidate Janice Hahn on Tuesday, June 8, 2010 or STOP complaining.
6 days left for June 8 and counting!
Shame. There was a day when a crusading newspaper would prevent this, and a crusading DA would punish it. We had productive businesses with solid CEO’s who didn’t see looting the city as a way to prosperity.
I hope the air/water/employment lawyers/wage hour maniacs in Sacramento are all happy.
In place of those large manufacturers we thought we could endlessly tweak, we have paracitic corrupt officials; a dilletante newspaper that supports diversity over competence and honesty; and a city that looks like a woman being bartered every day to the highest biddder.
Any self respecting city would have locked up the officials a long time ago.
Now we depend on a site by Ron Kaye for most of the inside news about the city, along with LA Weekly.
And this is what we pass to our kids.
Not only was there a fire at the Wilson Harding Cart Barn but also the Woodly temp cart barn burned to the ground and there was also a Rancho Cart barn fire. In all of So Cal you couldn’t find three cart barn fires. This company has five locations and three fires. Gee, you burn down golf carts that are 15 years old and your insurance company pays out. Not bad?
Not only was there a fire at the Wilson Harding Cart Barn but also the Woodly temp cart barn burned to the ground and there was also a Rancho Cart barn fire. In all of So Cal you couldn’t find three cart barn fires. This company has five locations and three fires. Gee, you burn down golf carts that are 15 years old and your insurance company pays out. Not bad?
Not only was there a fire at the Wilson Harding Cart Barn but also the Woodly temp cart barn burned to the ground and there was also a Rancho Cart barn fire. In all of So Cal you couldn’t find three cart barn fires. This company has five locations and three fires. Gee, you burn down golf carts that are 15 years old and your insurance company pays out. Not bad?
can you post that audit?
I realize that this is probably too much to ask, but DUFFERS ORGANIZE! Boycott all the damn city courses. Use the counties, and/or…
Get your exercise by walking the perimeter of the courses with picket signs. At least it won’t be a nice walk spoiled.
Bring those portable putting green things with you and take turns picketing and putting. It’s your money; show them who the bosses are!
Just out of curiosity, why on Earth does a golf cart need GPS? Are the courses that big, or filled with hedge mazes that GPS is needed to find the 19th hole?
Ron, who are the pimps, sorry, meant lobbyists?
The corruption is so disheartening. Our City Council makes decisions which reward dishonesty and insurance scams over well-vetted productive businesses like Ready Golf. The City Council should be encouraging honest, well-intentioned businesses as opposed to providing incentives to engage in corrupt practices.
Haven’t these clowns ruined our city ENOUGH????There isn’t ONE in the group that has the intelligence, the concern, the ethics & morals, class and conscience to do the right thing for the sake of the City and residents. I bet Kishi donated campaign money to either Perry or other council members. WE all know Harvey Englander is a nut job. He has his hands in everything inside city hall. His little nephew Mitch thinks he’s going to take Greig Smith’s place. THink again idiot!! I read dumb ass Garcetti wants to file a lawsuit against Arizona for their immigration law. STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES. Many of us are going to campaign hard all over the city to get these bastards out of office. No way in hell Garcetti, LaBonge, Perry, will ever be Mayor of this city
Janice Hahn joins backlash against Arizona’s new immigration law
by Tony Castro Staff Writer
Posted: 04/27/2010
The message that we’re trying to send to Arizona is that the law that (the governor) just signed is wrong,” said Hahn, who represents the Harbor Area and is running for state lieutenant governor. “We think it’s racial profiling, and we think it’s going to violate people’s civil rights.
“Being the second-largest city in the country, we feel we need to stand up and to ask if we have any contracts with the state of Arizona and can we terminate those contracts.” http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_14970448
Summary
In brief, the Mexican Constitution states that:
- Immigrants and foreign visitors are banned from public political discourse.
- Immigrants and foreigners are denied certain basic property rights.
- Immigrants are denied equal employment rights.
- Immigrants and naturalized citizens will never be treated as real Mexican citizens.
- Immigrants and naturalized citizens are not to be trusted in public service.
- Immigrants and naturalized citizens may never become members of the clergy.
- Private citizens may make citizens arrests of lawbreakers (i.e., illegal immigrants) and hand them to the authorities.
- Immigrants may be expelled from Mexico for any reason and without due process.
http://randysright.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/how-the-mexican-constitution-treats-foreign-residents-workers-and-naturalized-citizens/
I want to know when Janice Hahn says “we think” who in the hell is she referring to? Not her constituents because they want to recall her. 82% of America supports Arizona and 50% of California but leave it to our lame brain city council members who have no intelligence to speak out not knowing anything. On another note I notice the LA Slimes not posting comments on stories that aren’t favorable to them. Emails are telling people LA Slimes worried about newspaper reductions they won’t post anything negative comments people are posting about their stories. Fine, we’ll just BOYCOTT LA SLIMES
Sandy Sand asked why golf carts need GPS. GPS in a golf cart is used so the duffer can see the distance from his ball to the hole and choose the appropriate club for that distance.
It seems as though many concessions doing biz with the City may be under the impression, the game in this town has become “How big is your lobbyist?” and “Who’s in your wallet?”
The competition for coming out on top is surprising, given the estimated income on golf carts and driving ranges. Maybe there’s more to it.
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