Sometime Wednesday, the CRA’s Vice Chair Madeline Janis signed an announcement that yet another “Special Meeting” of the Board of Commissioners will be held today at “10 a.m. or as soon thereafter as practicable following the adjournment or recess of the regular CRA/LA Board Meeting.”
It was not until past 10 p.m. that Hollywood activist Bob Blue spotted the announcement with its skimpy details and sounded the alarm.
Who knows whether there really was proper 24-hour notice of what appears to be yet another legally questionable CRA special board meeting?
The purpose of the special meeting is for the CRA to abolish itself before the state Legislature abolishes all redevelopment agencies statewide — something that remains in doubt because “cities have mounted a fierce campaign to block the proposal, fearful at
losing control over billions of dollars that would flow to schools,
counties and public safety instead of civic projects,” the Sacremento Bee reported late Wednesday.
Item No. 1 on the agenda is awarding $50,000 more in a sole source contract to Donald R. Spivack for advice on how best to protect the pensions of the highly-paid staff who will be losing their jobs..
Having taken care of the interests of the staff, the CRA Board then will address Item No. 2: The sale of all CRA “personal property” — vehicles, computers, desks, office equipment etc — for $1 to the City of Los Angeles.
Item No. 3 will approve the transfer of all “real property” — land and building — to the city. No price is given.
Item No. 4 will dispose of the $56 million more of CRA’s cash to various city agencies — Public Works, General Services, Bureau of Engineering and Recreation and Parks — presumably to provide the money to pay the salaries of the soon-to-be-hired former highly-paid CRA staffers who will be continuing on as if nothing had changed since its $1 billion in taxes already has been locked up out of the state’s reach..
Then there are eight last-minute items funding at a cost of $16 million various projects around the city for various favored City Council members.
The final two items will be dealt with in closed session regarding what appears to be settlement of a pending lawsuit against someone named Eli Sassoon and a second legal matter referred to only as “one (1) matter of anticipated litigation.”
Having taken care of its staff, disposed of its personal property, real property and cash assets, the CRA will have made sure the governor’s plan to restore California to financial stability is dead.
Without the $1.7 billion in savings promised by abolishing all CRAs, the “schools, counties and public safety” will not get that money — money that provides the greatest benefits to the poor and needy who already facing sharp cuts in “work grants, copay
requirements for Medi-Cal patients and services for the developmentally
disabled” as well as “less money for childhood development, mental health and local transit.”
It seems a fitting end to the CRA — punishing the poor for the sins of the rich.
After all, it was an agency created to restore vitality to blighted neighborhoods and provide economic opportunity for the poor but spent most of its taxpayer dollars on luxurious palaces for the pleasures of the rich.
To hell with the poor, let them sell hot dogs at Farmers Field football games or sweep floors at Eli Broad’s art museum at Bunker Hill..
According to these guys and their bloated egos and wallets, even selling hot dogs at Farmers Field football games or sweeping floors at Eli Broad’s art museum at Bunker Hill is too good for the poor unwashed masses. I’m still waiting for the mayor to come and clean my toilets.
You know, I really think the Legislature has the power to adopt legislation that provides the effective date of the abolishment of CRAs is January 1, 2011. That way, all panic-driven transfers of assets and contracts just entered into by CRAs will be subject to invalidation. These “contracts” do not have the dignity of constitutional protection. It is the only fair way to eliminate the CRAs. Make the effective date of the legislation, the date prior to its announcement or say, January 1, 2011.
In bankruptcy law, transfers 90 days prior to the filing of the bankruptcy petition are subject to cancellation by the bankruptcy trustee. The legislature should enact a version of this idea: abolish the CRAs effective January 1, 2011, appoint a trustee to marshall the state’s assets, take our money away from the greedy a-holes who run the City of Los Angeles, fill in the massive budget deficit run up in part by the billionaire welfare agency of the CRA.
And to think we could have had Chris Essel on the City Council. Oh the horror.
It’s a whole new level of crazy.
I seriously doubt it will work (8:47 is probably right on the retroactive bit.)
Well the good news is that we won’t have the CRA anymore to suck dry the taxes which should go to other priorities, so we take the short term bad for the long term good.
Please Ron stay on top of where these aholes end up on the city payroll as they feather their nest from one agency to the next.
It is clear, as much as I hate to admit it being a New Deal FDR style liberal, that the corruption on the left is fast rivaling the always corrupt corpocracy of the right.
Is there any hope for sensible, rational policies and politicians to replace both the idiotic left and lunatic right?
Just yesterday CRA was roaming the Public Works building seeking signatures on the most recent contracts approved by Council. Word is that the Mayor is about to release another layoff list. All of these actions are disgusting. The Governor should backdate the effective date of abolishing CRAs. If the City is going to layoff civil servants then bring in CRA employees to the departments referenced it’s nothing short of nepotism and inequality and defies the civil service process. But the Mayor has been defying the process since he got into office. We are all screaming but no one is listening.
Anyone wanna bet DWP absorbs all those highly-trained CRA employees?
Anyone?
The only place for these high-paid employees is either in the Mayor’s office or DWP, who’ll match their wages.
Don’t hold your breath. In Sacramento, they only need one Republican to vote and the Republicans aren’t budging. And this isn’t about tax increases, rather Republicans decided to support taxpayer bailouts for wealthy developers, massive debts (issuing bonds without voter approval), and private-to-private Eminent Domain.
OMG! A humane and human article about Michael and his caring for people. What a concept!