Greg Smith is a smart guy and a tough lawyer — that’s how come he was able to make a fortune whipping the lawyers for L.A. and other cities in the region when they botched the treatment of firefighters and cops.
But can you really trust a shark like Smith in the fish bowl of City Hall.
Noel Weiss is a great guy who really cares but he doesn’t have any money or a campaign so he’s not the right guy to be City Attorney.
Then, there’s Mike Feuer, the Assemblyman, former Council member and losing candidate for City Attorney in 2001, a startling upset to be sure. Feuer is the ultimate doctrinaire PC liberal who has campaigned on the idea that taking money from Republicans is borderline criminal but union, developer and other special interest money is just wholesome and clean politics.
He promised to “hit the ground running on day one” if elected to “protect our children and fight to keep guns out of their schools.”
Say what, Mike? How are you going to do that exactly after 40 percent of the City Attorney’s office has been given walking papers and you don’t make policy, you run an office that prosecutes misdemeanors and gives legal advice to the rest of City Hall.
Before Tuesday’s election, Mike, show us the metrics on how we’ll measure your success every year in protecting our children (from child molesting teachers?) and keeping guns out of schools.
That leaves us examining the record of the incumbent, the only outsider to win any office in the city in more than a decade, the clumsy and mistake-prone Carmen “Nuch” Trutanich himself.
Let’s enumerate the faults:
- Like everyone who runs for this office, he promised the world when running he would be the people’s lawyer, ignoring the reality of how limited the power of the City Attorney is and how he can’t speak out honestly because he the political machine’s lawyer and bound by legal ethics to be their mouthpiece and obedient servant.
- Right after taking office, he stood up in public comment at the Council and denounced Mr. Big, AEG’s Tim Leiweke, for ripping off the taxpayers for the costs of Michael Jackson funeral party that earned the firm a fortune and never was able to deliver on his threat to prosecute Leiweke and Councilwoman Jan Perry for getting in his way.
- He spent way too much time whining about how the mayor and Council gutted his office, even hiring their own lawyers to avoid using his, because he wasn’t trustworthy as a stooge of the system.
- He stupidly ran for District Attorney when he had promised he would serve two terms as City Attorney, a miscalculation that humiliated him since he ran third in the primary and cost him a lot of support in the community.
So why is Trutanich the right man for the job?
Because he’s still independent of the corrupt power structure and he runs an efficient and effective office thanks in no small part to surrounding himself with smart and capable and experience people like Bill Carter, Jane Usher and Curt Livesay.
Nuch may be a bull in a china shop but he’s our bullheaded City Attorney who has done a remarkable job of winning an unprecedented number of lawsuits against the city, sharply cutting the cost of settlements, unraveling the city’s completely incompetent — and corrupt — handling of billboards and pot shops.
On Wednesday, the state Supreme Court agreed with Trutanich that the 100 digital billboards owned by Summit Media must come down and its a testament to his leadership that the 800 to 1,000 pot shops in L.A. will be legally reduced in number to 100 to 150 if any of three ballot measures passes in March.
Choices in life are hard, rarely perfect, but you can gamble that Smith will be tough with cops and firefighters who sue over stubbed toes and dog food spaghetti, you can believe Feuer will stand in the schoolhouse door and take away the guns from psychotics or you can accept that what you got is better than what they offer.
My vote goes to Carmen Trutanich.
Ron, I fear you may be bowling alone on this one.
Ron sometimes has these moments of CLARITY. He’s right, Dumbtanich DOES run a tight ship and has done a few miracles over at City Hall. One such thing is the zoning violators—he gets them into court and cry to the JUDGE to beg for 30 days to fix the violations (some of which are 10 years going!)
BUT!!!!!!!! He broke the PROMISE—THE ONE HE RAN ON—NOT TO RUN FOR DA AND BECOME A DOUCHE-BAG, which he did.
THUS….This voter WON’T be giving Carmen the vote this time.
Noel is the right man for the job. Greg Smith is sneaky, but he ISN’T DUMBTANICH and isn’t FEUER–who went to Sacramento and helped screw all of us on everything imaginable starting with higher taxes and ending with tax increases.
Field Mashall Koretz cannot be stopped in his continued occupancy of Encino, but WE CAN DEFEAT SOME OF THESE BASTARDS this time around. LET’S DO IT!!
Ron, I think you are overreacting. I will still vote for Greg Smith.
Ron, I think you are wrong about backing Nuch. He should not be rewarded for breaking his word, and his claims to have achieved great things as city attorney just don’t appear to be true. I will vote for Greg Smith.
There’s an old saying, make a fool outa me once, that’s your fault. Make a fool outa me twice, that’s my fault. I am not going to let Nuch make a fool out of me twice. I voted for him, raised money for him, and supported him. Right up until the time he started letting it be known, quietly, that he was going to be the next DA. What about your promise? I asked. He said the doctrine of changed circumstances meant he was not bound by that promise. I said, ‘Get real Nuch, voters relied on what you said.’ He didn’t listen then, and he’s not listening now. I’m gonna vote ABC Anyone But Carmen.
Smith by default. Feuer is a Sacramento hack with no courtroom experience. He is more interested in ideology as opposed to justice.
Hey Ron , I thought we want to bring new faces in City Hall. Smith for me
Well, I guess Ron just went the “kunta kinte” route and his choice is to cut off his foot since the alternatives to Nuch are so much worse.
What a great city we live in to have such elective choices….NOT!!!!
Trutanich made mistakes but he has done good. He is ridding our town of billboard blight and that’s good enough for me.
You were right about one thing – Greg Smith is a smart guy and a tough lawyer. Hell will freeze over before I would vote for Trutanich. Same goes for 77% of Los Angeles who voted A.B.C. Anyone But Trutanich last time his name was on the ballot. Feuer is a know nothing political hack. My vote goes to Greg Smith to be the kind of City Attorney we need.
Trutantich (FalseTanich) has taken the position to protect elected officials and Dept heads even if they fail to follow his advise to not break the law.
At that point he became their Criminal Defense Lawyer and not someone looking out for the taxpayer’s/voters – He is an enemy of the people of Los Angeles.
The only honest qualified person that understands this is Noel Weiss who will work for the people and not the crooks.
That’s the essence of some points made Noel made at LANCC after we heard Carmen and Jane wring their hands about their dilemma of being obliged to defend the perp’traitors who are prosecuting a case to assault our senses…and pocketbooks! It’s like a predator who confesses to a priest/witness so that the latter is obliged to maintain confidentiality. Unfortunately, I don’t think that merely defrocking Msgr. Nuch would relieve him of the ethical dilemma, but I would hope that he would find some fortitude in mete out more appropriate penance!
He has broken some promises, but fulfilled others. Is Greg Smith making new ones we should expect to be fulfilled, or it a lack of promises (other than being an outsider) that we think is lesser than the other evils?
That does indeed leave Noel, the Good Weiss. If indeed he is an underfunded longshot, a vote for him is hardly wasted. There’s assuredly going to be a run-off, so unless Feuer is knocked out in this round, there will still be a chance to rally for his opponent come March.
So…that means that like 2009, we have a choice to send a message with our votes. Every vote for Noel, is a vote for reform, with minimal risk of letting the worst man win.
I think I just made up my mind!
Hey suckers. Greg Smith is a Beverly Hills personal injury lawyer who is trying to buy this city office with money he obtained from you as a result of LAPD not supervising their cops properly.
He’s out there saying a lot of stuff that he can’t possibly keep his word on. Is that what you want? Mike Feuer is obviously a career politician who is just looking for a new seat, any seat, anywhere. We need to keep these Sacramento career politicans out of City Hall.
So, that makes it just Noel Weiss and Trutanich. Trutanich probably has a better shot at winning and his office has done a good job.
Sorry, Ron, there is no way I would vote for Nuch again. LA needs a true independent City Attorney, and while Nuch does piss off a lot of the council folks, he also does deals with scum like Jerry Brown. That’s the deal breaker for me. I won’t vote for Feuer, neither will most who know him, and that leaves Smith and Weiss. Either one is fine by me.
I agree with you
I went on Doug McInterd’s show this morning and got power flushed by Doug when he asked me “you said you’d go into City Hall and kick some butt..” I then gave my lawyer bullshit answer “I have an ethical duty to represent my client, the City.” DAMMIT! How fast can I resign and move back to Palos Verdes?
You should have spoken to some of the attorneys who have to work there and attorneys who have done business with the City Atty Office over the years. Trutanich is atrocious and he is hated except for his small cadre of favorites. When I say “hated,” that is a quote from an otherwise mild manner, very professional city attorney.
He is a liar and a bully and brings discredit to the entire legal system. And he too is corrupt and he walks hand in hand with the corrupt councilmembers. Saying that Trutanic is independent indicates that this time Ron, you did not do your home work
I suggest that you find out about the real Trutanich.
Why did Nuch suspend his campaign so late in the race? How many absentee ballots did he take from the other candidates?
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/03/trutanich-suspends-campaign-following-mothers-death-saturday.html
Ron, care to look at what you wrote a year ago, and let us know what made you change your mind?
How Success Ruined Carmen Trutanich.
So far as I can see, nothing about him has changed between then and now, other than his defeat in June 2012. I am glad he pulled out of the race at the last minute, but he does not deserve an endorsement from you.