Results tagged “Paul Krekorian” from Ron Kaye L.A.

As the Los Angeles City Council grappled with eliminating the Human Services Department and other humanistic agencies, the debate moved to how much can be saved and what services can be preserved

Finally, Councilman Paul Krekorian asked the right question: What are the core services the mayor has identified, the services he wants preserved? Deputy Mayor Larry Frank dissembled and doubletalked his way through his answer.

He demanded to know whether since the infamous Dec. 17, 2008 memo that first warnedt 4,000 layoffs were needed if the mayor or Council had done anything to identify what are the core services that must be protected.

Deputy Mayor Larry Frank was paying no attention to him when he spoke so Krekorian repeated his question but all he got was meaningless double-talk

In the course of the discussion, Councilwoman Janice Hahn scored points on Frank as well, making it clear that the City Charter requires the mayor to explicit detail what services will be provided and how whenever any department is eliminated.

Don't miss this video of exchanges between Ed Reyes, Paul Krekorian and Jan Perry -- a rare few minutes where City Council members actually mix it up.

The issue is how the Council leaped from 1,000 layoffs that they opposed to approving 4,000 layoffs without any public discussion, study or documentation -- a scheme Krekorian had the courage to vote against.

If you're too lazy to actually watch this, tough. It proves that video says more than a thousand stories. You'll never understand why LA is in so much trouble without seeing the level of leadership we have -- and how a single Councilman can make a difference.




I know it's hard to believe that Reyes and Perry think they are making themselves look good by telling the world that a report nearly 18 months ago said 4,000 layoffs were needed to balance the budget so it wasn't a number plucked out of thin air.

They seem oblivious to the fact they ignored that advice and did nothing to balance the budget even in theory until now and self-righteous over Krekorian having the courage to break the code of silence by pointing it out.

The rest of the budget discussion Tuesday was even worse with Janice Hahn tormenting one of the city's best managers in Rec and Parks' Jon Kirk Mukri over the obstacles to her plan to have goats mow the loan in parks, and Alarcon foaming at the mouth against greedy capitalists and Koretz displaying his complete ignorance of just about everything.

Watch these videos and decide who is doing the better job, bureaucrats or politicians?

What's going on in LA is a calamity of historica proportions -- not the kind that causes catastrophic destruction like the day the levees broke in New Orleans. But the kind that just as surely damages a city physically and spiritually like a slow water torture.

Maybe that's why I've spent the day watching City Council members prattle mindlessly and ignorantly about the city's finances, posturing and preening as if they were both blameless for what has happened and had any answers on how to fix what they have broken.

The dark side of my soul took over and all I could see was the bleak outlook for the city I love if left in the hands of these foolish and selfish people.

And then I listened to the good and decent people, who unlike the nation's highest paid and most pampered city officials, give their time and energy out of love, not money, to make their neighborhoods and their city better, appeal for a small measure of sanity.

They came before the Board of Neighborhood Councils for a special meeting just 24 hours after the Mayor had exercised powers he does not have to abolish their department -- the central reform enacted 10 years ago to empower the community.

If it were me I'd have tried to get the more than 1,600 members of 90 Neighborhood Councils to resign in mass and tell City Hall to take their lousy money and shove it. Like homeowners and other community groups, they don't need to be under the thumb of people who treat them with contempt even as they fear them.

But that isn't how these people handled this crisis.

They have been meeting every Saturday for weeks and emailing all day long to generate ideas on how the movement they are part of can gain strength no matter how many obstacles are thrown in their way.

They were polite and constructive and persuasive and the BONC commissioners agreed with them in every regard to push forward even in the face of the treatment they are receiving.

Then, they took their message to Paul Krekorian and Dennis Zine on the Elections and Neighborhood Committee and spoke sincerely from their hearts about what they believed, even when they didn't always agree.

Krekorian and Zine heard their message and voted to go forward with official elections of NCs that start next Tuesday.

The full Council will take up that issue on Wednesday and other aspects of the attempted assassination of the community empowerment issue in the days ahead.

To be honest, I'm just an old softie and tears came to my eyes at times as I listened to these humble voices of the people and I thought a time long ago when I was young and thousands of us stood together in protest and gave ourselves strength with songs of solidarity.

Once again, I came around and knew deep in my heart that I have never lost and never will lose my faith that the good does prevail over the evil, someday.

(REPUBLISHED FROM OURLA.ORG)

Paul Krekorian got a lesson Friday in how City Hall works when his colleagues on the City Council rejected his committee report for the City Clerk to come back on Tuesday with options on how the newly-formed Westwood Neighborhood Council could hold an election by July.

As chairman of the Education and Neighborhoods Committee, Krekorian proposed a series of steps for the City Clerk to take in response to widespread criticism of the process for holding NC elections between March and July, including giving each council the power to decide on term limits and use volunteer poll workers.

The only controversy was over Krekorian's recommendation the the City Clerk "report on the feasibility of including the newly-certified Westwood Neighborhood Council in the City Clerk's upcoming 2010 Neighborhood Election cycle, and on a process by which new certified neighborhood councils will be included in the City Clerk's neighborhood election process."

Krekorian offered a reasoned case on why several options should be considered because of cost and expediency to allow for Westwood to be able to elect its board in the coming months rather than wait two years for the next NC election cycle.

Westside Councilman Paul Koretz would have none of it, insisting the City Clerk would just come back next week with reasons for "why it can't be done."

He was backed with vehemence by Richard Alarcon, whose right to hold office has been questioned by District Attorney investigators who served search warrants based on a tip that the councilman doesn't actually live in the Valley district he represents.

So the issue was whether the City Clerk's office had to be ordered to do its job or whether it could be trusted to provide reasonable alternatives for Council consideration, a small point to be sure.

The vote was 10-1 against Krekorian -- a rare lack of unanimity that was in a sign that the Council's political agenda now includes pleasing the NC movement and a lesson for Krekorian that he will find himself isolated and without support if he tries to buck the sytem when larger issues come up.

Councilman-elect Paul Krekorian: "The voters of CD2 demanded profound change and soundly rejected the domination of this city by Downtown insiders. This victory is the  beginning of a fundamental transformation of the government of Los Angeles, and it sends a strong signal that the people of the San Fernando Valley are not satisifed with business as usual.  The task now ahead of us is to build a city government that will work for the people and that is marked by integrity, honesty and accountability. To succeed, we need to start healing the divisions that have resulted from this campaign and begin bringing our community together."


It's not been a good year for Antonio Villaraigosa.

His scheme to rip off the public with a phony solar energy plan called Measure B was snuffed by voters. His stooge candidate for City Attorney was beaten by outsider Carmen Trutanich. And now the compliant Chris Essel got trounced by Paul Krekorian in the CD2 Council race in the East San Fernando Valley.

It's a new day in LA.

Community activists played the key role in all three humiliating defeats for the mayor and the creaky political machine he heads. There ought to be a law that bans three-time losers from serving in political office for the rest of their lives.

Antonio had the chance to be somebody, to bring LA together and achieve great things. But he's become a cartoon figure, a  lame duck out of touch with the people who quacks irrelevantly while the city sinks deeper into a financial crisis and the discontent of the people grows.

He knew what had to be done but lacked the courage to stand up to the entrenched interests. Instead, he chose to live like a king, drink $500 bottles of wines on other people's tabs, chase women like he's Tiger Woods and hide behind a brigade of gofers and bodyguards while flitting from one staged PR event to another and promising great schools, great public transit,  great jobs and a green city sometime way off in the future.

All the while billboards and pot shops blighted the city's neighborhoods, the infrastructure rotted from lack of investment and maintenance, poverty soared, corruption flourished and the city treasury was depleted to the point where services are being slashed and only bankruptcy or the sale of assets like parking structures, the airport or DWP can stop the flood of red ink.

Voters have finally rebelled.

When will the business, labor and civic leaders of the city wake up to what's going on and see the Antonio's promises are nothing but fool's gold?

The viciousness of the campaign Antonio's pals ran against Krekorian could turn out to be a turning point. They may have turned a knee-jerk liberal Democrat into a true democrat who has the passion to challenge the lemming-like unanimity of the City Council.

Surely, he owes his election to the grassroots activists from Sherman Oaks to Sunland-Tujunga who rallied behind him in the hope he would stand up for them and be the voice of the anger and frustration of people all over the city.

Krekorian has a mandate to lead. If he betrays that trust and becomes just another hollow man in the go-along world of City Hall, it will soon be clear enough and he will pay the price when he comes up for re-election in little more than a year.

He may turn out to be just another gear in the machine as he appeared to be at the outset of this election campaign or he can join with Trutanich and become the cornerstone of the movement to change the political and civic culture of LA.

I may see things darkly but I'm an eternal optimist and I believe Krekorian is made of the right stuff. Of course, I thought that about Antonio so I could be wrong as I so often am.

The sleazy campaign run against Krekorian with a record-shattering amount of dirty special interest money has freed him from control of the machine.

He needs to make community leaders like Mary Benson, Judy Price and Ellen Vuikovich an integral part of his team and build a grassroots organization that gives him the power to stand up to the special interests and serves a base for bringing activists all over the city together.

LA is at a turning point and the Measure B, Trutanich and Krekorian elections show there is a groundswell for reform that is growing.

Few voters -- 10 to 15 percent of the electorate -- will actually cast ballots in the Council District 2 despite the lavish spending by Chris Essel and the explosive, if specious, charges her campaign has leveled against Paul Krekorian in a barrage of mailers and ads.

Hers is the most expensive campaign ever run for a City Council seat with DWP union bully boy Brian D'Arcy and construction trade unions leading the big-spending pack. D'Arcy even went so far as to go to court in a futile attempt to get rid of all campaign spending limits and even the feeble pretense of ethical controls in this or any other city election.

This is a race that started out with as a contest between eight citizen candidates and two carpetbaggers who were financed by various interests that make up the City Hall political machine -- a double entry that showed just how desperate the developers, unions and other special interests are to retain near absolute control of the LA's political machinery.

They got away with it and the runoff was set with Krekorian, an Assembly Democratic leader, facing Essel, a former Hollywood studio lobbyist and head of the influential pro-development Central City Association.

It didn't seem like much of a contest from the viewpoint hoping for change at City Hall until an old letter surfaced showing what pals, politically speaking, Essel and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa are and have been for many years.

Since the mayor is such a negative in most parts of the city, the Antonio-Chris connection -- something that had been vehemently denied despite its obviousness -- stirred interest in the race, especially when Essel called the cops and claimed Krekorian stole it from her house (outside the district) and the mayor himself went berserk.

Throw in her charges that Krekorian is a woman-hating devil incarnate and a million dollars in dirty campaign money and suddenly the election took on a whole new significance.

Desperation had become hysteria. But why?

They shouldn't have done it, they shouldn't have gotten Paul Krekorian mad, so mad he's started sounding like a guy who will to stand up for his constituents instead of a politician running for a new office.

Their big mistake wasn't accusing him of almost single-handedly causing the state budget crisis or of being guilty by association with an unpopular state Legislature, Democrats and Republicans alike. After all, he does deserve his full share of criticism in those regards.

It wasn't calling him a liar or a thief or even raising a million dollars to defeat him or challenging the quarter-century-old law limiting how much dirty money can be poured into a local election.

No, they pushed Paul Krekorian over the edge by sneaking into the Valley Village apartment building where his family lives and snapping pictures to use in their endless stream of false and misleading mailers.

They messed with the guy's family and only fools do that.

Krekorian now has fire in his belly, the passion to tackle the corruption of City Hall and its crazed drive to elect someone who will do what they are told, not what's right.

I spent some time with Krekorian last weekend and came away ready to make the leap of faith that he represents not just the lesser of two evils but the best hope for the people in his East San Fernando Valley to have someone at City Hall who will stand up for them and their interests.

He's smart enough, experienced enough and hard-working enough that he might even make a difference in the sea of go-along to get-along mediocrity that passes for the City Council.

As we head into the final two weeks of the Battle for CD2, the campaign between Paul Krekorian and Christine Essel suddenly has escalated into one of the costliest and nastiest ever for the City Council.

The City Hall political machine has pulled out all stops to get Essel elected, which raises the question of why a pro-development corporate lobbyist is getting the nod from powerful city unions and the liberal Democrat city elected officials over a pro-union, liberal Democrat state Assemblyman.

It doesn't make sense...unless there's a lot more at stake than just one seat on a Council that votes unanimously on just about everything no matter how destructive to the public interest and leaves no room for dissenting without punishment.

One clue is the half million dollars or more being poured into Essel's campaign by unions, most of it by bully boy union boss Brian D'Arcy who has taken his effort to a higher level by suing the city over a 23-year-old law limiting individual contributions to independent expenditures.

D'Arcy, whose members at the DWP have benefited spectacularly from sweetheart contracts for years, especially those approved by good pal Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, has never had a problem skirting this ethics law provision in the past.

So why now? Could it be he is fronting for wealthy developers who want to build giant projects from Universal City to Victory Boulevard in the face of massive community resistance in CD2 don't want any hard questions asked and are willing to help D'Arcy get the huge DWP rate hikes he wants and ownership of rooftop solar projects?

Even more interesting is how the leak of a "thank you" letter from then Assembly Speaker Villaraigosa to Essel in 2000 has reportedly sent the mayor's team into a tizzy and prompted Essel herself to call the cops and report the letter was "stolen" (essel-police report.pdf) from her home outside CD2.

She even sent a letter to District Attorney Steve Cooley (CooleyEsselLetter.pdf), who unlike his pal, City Attorney Carmen Trutanich, wasn't foolish enough to endorse Essel, demanding he "immediately open up a criminal investigation of Mr. Krekorian and his campaign. It is critical and time sensitive to get to the bottom of this scandal to help preserve and protect the integrity of our electoral process."

The source of her outrage is a campaign mailer from Krekorian over the letter then the Assembly Speaker sent Essel on Feb. 8, 2000 expressing how her "support and friendship has always been important to me," especially for the "salon" dinner she provided at Laurel Canyon home for what I assume are Hollywood types happy to fund his 2001 mayoral campaign.

Essel does have a point. The event was a "meet and greet," not a fund-raiser, although  Villaraigosa already was in full mayoral campaign mode so it's a small point of political hyperbole.

Essel's own hyperbole in her letter to Cooley is considerably grander, suggesting the "theft" of the letter is a "chilling development (that) eerily conjures up images of the Watergate break-in scandal."

On the police report, Essel admits the letter has no value but actually believe LAPD detectives are going to investigate the matter. Maybe she knows something but if they do former Chief of Detectives and now Chief of Police Charlie Beck ought to be fired.

The Villaraigosa letter is innocuous on its face, except for showing Essel is a long-time friend and supporter of the mayor and has his support, something she denied when I talked to her.

The significance of the Krekorian mailer is clearer: Republicans could be expected to be knee-jerk backers of Essel since she's not a liberal Democrat legislator.

But if she is in fact a devoted and obedient servant of the mayor it poses a difficult choice for Republican voters: Who do they dislike more, a Democratic legislator or a Villaraigosa follower who will sell out their neighborhoods and quality of life to the developers who want to turn the area from Universal City to Victory Boulevard into Manhattan?

Without most of the Republican votes, Essel can't win, which helps explain why Krekorian dragged up this letter from Villaraigosa and why Essel has called the cops as if it was stolen from her house rather than pulled out of the files of the Legislature.

Surprisingly, at least to me, this race has become important and the City Hall political machine is prepared to go to any length to elect Essel, which ought to tell voters to think twice before casting their ballot for her.

The Dec. 8 runoff in Council District 2 between Paul Krekorian and Chris Essel shaped up as a choice between the lesser of two evils, both beholden the same City Hall political machine that for so long has betrayed the public trust and jeopardized the city's future.

Krekorian: Liberal Democrat owned by Hollywood, the Democrats and the SEIU
vs.
Essel: Business advocate owned by Hollywood, downtown developers and DWP's union, the IBEW.

With nearly 90 percent of the money spent in the primary to succeed Wendy Greuel in the East San Fernando Valley, they easily knocked off eight other candidates -- who unlike them actually lived in the district prior to the seat opening up.

It was a tossup, as far as I was concerned, between two decent, intelligent people who would do nothing to change the political dynamic at City Hall.

Then, on Wednesday, the election calculus changed.

IBEW union boss Brian D'Arcy escalated what was already a vicious and expensive campaign against Krekorian by suing the people who, against their will, have made his union members the wealthiest utility workers in California, if not the nation and the world.

D'Arcy isn't just greedy and selfish like most of the special interests who feed at the trough of City Hall. He's the closest thing to a truly evil force in city politics. He's someone who has shown utter contempt for the public interest for years, someone who has sabotaged every effort to replace the DWP's coal-burning power plants with renewable resources, someone who has blackmailed city officials into putting ratepayers money into staggering increases in wages and benefits while the water and power systems rotted.

Using the IBEW front group Working Californians -- the one that spent $800,000 in a failed attempt to pass Measure B in March so the union get rip off the billions of dollars that was supposed to buy solar energy -- D'Arcy went to court Wednesday to challenge the city's campaign financing law.

Maeve Reston in the LA Times reported that the legal challenge is to the 1985 city law that "bars political committees from accepting contributions of more than $500 if the group plans to use that money to make an independent expenditure for a city candidate.
 
"In practice, the law prevents outside groups or individuals from contributing to each other to pay for independent expenditures that support city candidates. Contributions that are not earmarked for a specific city campaign are not subject to that $500 limit. (If violations are suspected, the City Ethics Commission's enforcement division determines whether a contribution was for an independent expenditure)."

In other words, D'Arcy who has already spent nearly $100,000 in the runoff to elect Essel wants to lift all limits on what he can spend to buy the election outright. It's an indication that he has polls showing the race is close and winnable, which ought to wake up voters if anything will.

Editor's Note: I wrote two versions of my views on the special election in CD2, the first for Nina Royal's North Valley Reporter, the second for Wayne Adelstein's North Valley Community News.

Snatching Victory from Defeat
(Republished from Norvth Valley Reporter)

The Community vs. The Carpetbaggers -- not much of a contest, not given the state of politics in L.A.

Paul Krekorian and Chris Essel were a dual entry, handed half a million dollars to buy the Council District 2 special election by the mayor and the union-developercontractor political machine which he heads.

Public apathy, ignorance and defeatism, too many community candidates without money, lack of organization, all contributed to an election that made a mockery of democracy and dealt a blow to the growing movement to take back City Hall from special interests. 

The election was only Round One of a much longer battle. Round Two comes in the runoff election in December -- a ten-week campaign that gives community activists the opportunity to achieve some of what they failed to do in the last three months. 

If community and business leaders from Sunland-Tujunga to Sherman Oaks come together now, they can sit down with Krekorian and Essel and demand hard commitments to the issues and values they care about. Put them on the record and decide which of the two will best represent the sprawling East San Fernando Valley district and its 270,000 residents.

Unified support will determine whether Krekorian or Essel wins and at the least give the community leverage when the new Council member takes office. It also will provide a core organization that can serve as a watchdog on the new member, providing daily updates on their votes, their actions, their services to the community, transparency and their responsiveness.
Letter to Unions 111309.pdf