Results tagged “l.a. city council” from Ron Kaye L.A.

Just back from its latest vacation, the City Council looked as naked today as if they were being broadcast through the lens of a full-body scan camera.

Three times a week, Matt Dowd, Michael Hunt and Zuma Dogg annoy, offend and sometimes make perfect sense as co-stars in the theater of the absurd TV drama that passes for LA City Council meetings.

It says a lot about the state of LA's political culture that they have become something like the voice of the people, ranting, raving and sometimes exposing City Hall's hypocrisy.

Wednesday was no exception, the gadflies -- minus Zuma who was says he is moving on to other things with the CD2 race over -- stood before the Council and mocked and berated them.

Hunt was back in his KKK garb but this time, the Council didn't walk out (except for Richard Alarcon and Herb Wesson) or try to throw him out. Dowd was given special dispensation to ppear before the Council after being banned from speaking for violating the new rules of decorum -- rules specifically aimed at them, rules that have been added to the litany of civil rights violations he and his Venice Beach companions have sued over in federal court

Against all logic, they have not only sued but they have won.

And that was the subject on the Council's agenda.

They have won a second federal court ruling that the city's beach ordinance requiring permits to sell wares and to perform at Venice Beach where they and so many others have performed is unconstitutionally vague. Different zones have been set aside for vendors selling things and for performers but the enforcement has been haphazard, to the detriment of limiting the space available to performers like Hunt, Dowd and Zuma.

The vagueness problem comes from the city's series of unsuccessful attempts to write a valid ordinance that relies on the phrase "inextricably intertwined" with the vendor's right to free speech as the basis to deciding what is and isn't allowed.

Enforcement then is left to authorities to decide what activities are "inextricably intertwined'' with free speech -- something the litigants argue is enforced arbitrarily. So, they claim, is the ban on performers using paraphernalia over 4-feet tall like the microphone stand musician Dowd uses and the cutout of Hannah Montana he keeps nearby in hopes people will donate to him to have their picture taken on the beach with a likeness of the Disney Channel star.

The result of all this is $270,000 judgment in favor of Dowd and friends on one aspect of their current case which is continuing in mediation talks aimed at reaching a settlement.

The issue on the agenda Wednesday was the city's need to deposit $211,000 with the federal court to cover attorney fees awarded to the plaintiffs so the partial ruling in the case can be appealed.

It says a lot about the quality of leadership of this city, their skill at managing it, that guys many people would call bums have beaten all the brain power, all the lawyers, all the capacity to intimidate of a City Hall that treats its 4 million residents.

The Venice Beach performers turned into Council gadflies three years ago when the cops started harassing them because city officials wanted to clean up the Boardwalk freak show to make it more appealing to tourists.

Zuma Dogg, who is smarter than and knows more about city government than most Council members, has become something of an urban folk hero, skewering City Hall foibles and failures in his frequent public comment appearances broadcast on Channel 35. His campaigns for mayor and now CD2 attracted respectable numbers of votes for a candidate who not only is penniless but homeless.

Last week, Dowd -- now something of an amateur lawyer -- and a dozen other beach denizens filed a new complaint in federal court.

They are challenging the 2006 and 2008 beach ordinances over the same vague words "inextricably intertwined" and adding a challenge to the new rules of decorum for Council meetings that allow the Council President to ban public comment by people deemed disruptive for up to 30 meetings, or 10 weeks.

Like the permit system for beach performers, the decorum rules are arbitrary on their face and almost certainly unconstitutional. Some Council members think they don't go far enough and want to move the public comment period from the start of meetings to the end, something that has infuriated many in the activist community.

In a city where the wishes of ordinary people matter so little to those in high office, where so many are alienated or indifferent, there seems something fitting that the Council is haunted by these gadflies and that their carefully staged meetings disrupted by their antics.

But it also says a lot about the rest of us watching from the sidelines or ignoring what's going on altogether. We have abdicated our responsibilities as citizens and have the city we deserve.

Ten weeks into the new fiscal year, the LA City Council has spent the last five days -- putting it $5 million in the red -- trying to preserve its sweetened early retirement deal for city workers.

After two days of closed door meeting and behind-the-scenes negotiations, the Council came out in public and voted to rescind the early retirement and order layoffs and furloughs on Sept. 27. But Council President Eric Garcetti said they hoped to come back Friday and rescind that plan and approve an early retirement package.

The 7-minute public session, in all its confusion, speaks for itself. This video covers the meeting from start to finish, and contains everything you are allowed to know about decisions that will affect your job, your neighborhood, your life for years to come.




If there was any doubt where Garcetti stands, his joint statement issued last night with the Coalition of City Unions makes it clear that whatever deal emerges from these back room talks willl be in the best interests of the unions and not the city unless Councilman Bernard Parks can muster five votes or the mayor lives up to his veto pledge.

Here's the joint statement followed by my favorite song from the heyday of the union movement -- a song Garcetti and the Council, in the name of honesty and transparency, ought to play before every meeting.

Coalition and LA City Council Make Joint Pledge to Continue Working to Protect City Services

LA's City Council Wednesday committed 13-0 to continue working with SEIU and the Coalition of LA City Unions toward a budget solution that will prevent slashed services through the layoffs and furloughs recommended by the Mayor's new CAO Miguel Santana.

The outlines of a solution could come as early as Friday.Council President Eric Garcetti and the Coalition of LA City Unions released a joint statement:

After working around the clock in a marathon session of the Los Angeles City Council, which was recessed overnight to continue discussions with the Coalition of LA City Unions, significant common ground was reached to protect City services and to save jobs.

While no agreement has been reached as of now, both sides are optimistic that together solutions can be found.

"We are very grateful to the City Council for providing the leadership that this City needs to move forward," said Cheryl Parisi, Chair of the Coalition of LA City Unions. "Today's progress shows the power of working together as unions, and the importance of working in collaboration with our City leaders. We will continue to work around the clock over the next several days to finalize an agreement that keeps City services whole while keeping employees working."

"We've worked around the clock to develop solutions to meet our budget gap while giving us the flexibility necessary in these tough economic times," said L.A. City Council President Eric Garcetti. "I want to acknowledge the Coalition Union leaders for their commitment to keeping this dialogue open and quickly moving towards a fiscally responsible agreement that will also save jobs and critical city services."

In addition, both sides agreed to move forward with contingency plans in the event that agreement cannot be reached. However, both sides remain optimistic that a resolution can be reached before those plans will need to be implemented.

With the audacity of a man distracting the world for a thousand failures, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa chose the 40th anniversary of mankind's first walk on the moon to pump his plan to save the Earth from global warming.

And he got Huffington Post, no less, to carry his toxic hot air to the world:

"It was only fitting, then, that today I signed a partnership agreement between NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to explore ways to decrease water usage, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and stimulate green job growth in Los Angeles," reads the post attributed to the mayor.

"You see, the next great hurdle we face, the next dream we must make a reality, is combating climate change. We must work together to combat climate change head-on and reverse its course. If we do not, there might not be a planet left for our future generations."

I'd have thought the next great hurdle in LA was to provide jobs for the 13 percent of the people who are jobless and the 13 percent more who don't even count in the statistics.

Or reduce the 75-year backlog in street and sidewalk paving.

Or ease traffic congestion now rather than build a subway extension 20 years from now.

Or save the quality of life in the neighborhoods.

Or end the scourge of 40,000 gangsters who control the turf in half the city.

Or to actually balance the city budget and end runaway spending and stop giving sweetheart contracts to unions, developers, consultants, lawyers and all the other insiders who cut their deals in the darkness of back rooms.

Need I go on.

"The Next Great Challenge" is how the mayor hypes this deal that puts JPL in bed with the city's favorite cash cow, the Department of Water and Power, which is hiking rates faster than a rocket ship launched to the moon.

"We are setting the stage to be at the forefront of the clean tech revolution that will drive the new, green economy and relegate global warming to the prologue of the Great Book on America in the 21st Century," the mayor concludes.

Is that why we elected him mayor? Is that why we have a city government? Is City Hall that screws up everything it touches from elephant exhibits at the zoo to digital billboards in our neighborhoods and pot shops on every street corner really up to the task of writing the "Great Book on America in the 21st Century?"

I'm no rocket scientist but I've got a better idea: Let's send the mayor and the CIty Council on a mission to the moon, or better yet Mars. That way they'll all be term-limited out by the time the return and we won't have to put up with their nonsense anymore.

In the meantime, I'm certain us ordinary mortals could go to work on the problems we actually can fix and even make the city more environmentally healthier.

Just getting rid of their poisonous political games would be a giant leap for the four million who call LA home.

UPDATED: Excerpts of what Council members said at the bottom.

And they'll say or do anything to get their hands on it.

Here's a 10-minute movie I made from comments made by each of those who spoke in support of a motion that would put the City of Los Angeles on the record as backing any  and all measures that would reduce the threshold needed to approve a state budget from the current two-thirds

The City Council -- policy making body of the City of Los Angeles -- voted unanimously Friday, Democrats and Republicans alike in the non-partisan unity, to support getting rid of Proposition 13 and its taxpayer protections.

And they supported using any means necessary to get their way and repeal Proposition 13.

Missing just a couple of votes in the Legislature, and often just a couple of points at the polls, to raise taxes, your elected officials will be happy to settle for anything less than two-thirds -- 50 percent, 55, 60, why they'd even take 65 percent and still be able to raise taxes and approve a budget locally or at the state level.

All they want is your money.

The billions in dollars of government deficits could be wiped out just like that.

The tens of billions in unfunded pensions to public employees, the sweetheart contracts, the sinecures for former politicians, the patronage, the back room deals, the sellout of the public interest -- just like that your tax dollars let them go on same as always, business as usual.

I know it's asking a lot but I hope you'll watch this 10-minute movie. It might help you to make up your mind about which side you're on:






Just to be helpful for those who didn't watch the video, here's excerpts, with an interpretation, from each Council member who spoke Friday.

Koretz: Blame the Republicans: "It's a disaster of epic proportions. It's purely caused by the two-thirds budget (requirement)."

Huizar: It's not our fault: "Here we are now looking at some dramatic cuts...when we've already passed our own budget and we may have to go back to the table to make some changes because the state has not passed its budget."

Parks: Limited tyranny of majority: "Prior to Prop. 16 there was a caveat of 5 percent ..as long just as we are here today in the council nonpartisan we get to vote on what we choose to vote on. We have no one that's punishing us one way or another."

Garcetti: Selective tyranny of majority: "Californians are angry...the rules that we have passed have to change in order forf California to repair itself...It's ironic in this state as we saw with the vote on Prop. 8 you can take someone's civil rights away with a majority vpte but it takes a two-thirds vote just to pass a budget."

Rosendahl: No term limits, no Prop. 13: "No. 1 we need to restructure the budget and the budget process...this six-year term-limit is insane...the initiative process is totally dysfunctional...we need to do deal with political reform. I'm talking about clean money."

Wesson: Demoracts good, Republicans Bad: "We in Los Angeles i don't think we have a lot in common with the state of Arkansas..or Rhode Island...The entire system needs to be changed. The majority party is the Democratic Party. So you would think the agenda in the state government would be led by the majority party."

Alarcon: Who needs reform? "There's a lot of problems with the state. There's a lot of problems with Los Angeles. Anywhere in between would be better than 66 and two-thirds percent. They say... we have to do all these other radical things to fix state government... To me democracy is about the majority ruling."

LaBonge: Huh? What? Vote Aye! "Whatever is this about?: "What are we recommending?...I ask you for an aye vote."

Zine, as presiding officer: Just trying to help: "12 ayes, that matter passes. Hopefully that will help the state and the budget."

Editor's Note: If you support retaining the Southwest Museum as a a living museum, you can help by going to the Friends of the Southwest Museum's website  and joining their email and fax campaign.



Of all the dozens of city issues I've learned a lot about in the last year or so, the one that befuddles me the most is the Battle of the Museums -- Autry vs. Southwest.

As things stand, we have a really mediocre facility in the Autry in Griffith Park and a rundown facility in the Mt. Washingon/Glassell Park area that represents the oldest museum in LA, a landmark on the Eastside.

For all I've paid attention to the arguments on both sides, I can't understand why we can't have two wonderful museums dedicated to the artifacts and history of the Old West. The Southwest Museum's vast collection -- now owned by the Autry -- could sustain both museums as valuable community assets if there was the will and the money.

The showdown in this long war comes Tuesday at 3 p.m. in Room 350 before City Hall's Board of Referred Powers with both sides mounting intense campaigns by fax and email and mobilizing their supporters to attend.

It is a foregone conclusion that the board -- Janice Hahn, Ed Reyes, Tony Cardenas, Bill Rosendahl and Bernard Parks -- will green light the Autry's doubling its size and the Southwest Museum will get fixed up on the cheap and used as little more than classrooms.

I just don't get it.

The city's cultural and political leadership valued the Southwest and its collection so little they allowed the building to deteriorate and the collection to be looted until it reached the point that the Autry came in as the white-hatted hero with promises to restore it as a living museum.

But that isn't what happened. After the takeover of the Southwest, the Autry started making plans to operate only one museum, not two as promised.

It's a question of money, or the lack of it. The "Singing Cowboy" died at his Studio City home in 1998, leaving an estate worth hundreds of millions of dollars to his widow Jackie.

Despite promises the Autry Museum will eventually inherit a good chunk of the estate when Jackie dies, it has operated on a relative shoestring for many years and it's far from clear it has the money to expand the facility.

The questions I keep wondering about are these:

* If the Autry now can raise the huge sums needed to expand, why can't it raise the much smaller amount needed to restore and operate the Southwest?

* If the city's leaders think there is so much value in a first-rate museum celebrating the Old West, why did they neglect the Southwest for so long, why have they not come forward with money?

* Where's Hollywood? Don't the studios have a stake in promoting the Cowboy and Indians story anymore, in actually contributing to the city's cultural life instead of running away elsewhere to make movies on the cheap?

For my money, this conflict epitomizes the cultural poverty of the city and the lack of political will to create great institutions like Disney Hall and and preserve local institutions as well like the Southwest Museum.

City Hall could not start down that happy trail towards a greater LA on Tuesday by supporting the two-museum solution but don't bet on it.

Every time the LA City Council meets, my pal Zuma Dogg and others who qualify as gadflies by the regularity of the attendance to rant and rave for their two minutes of public comment and a minute or two each on an assortment of specific issues.

Under the council's rules -- rules they set themselves -- members are not required to pay the least attention to these self-styled spokesman for the people. And usually don't, gossiping or plotting amongst themselves.

Once in a while, groups of ordinary citizens descend on the Council chamber to plead for a cause: Stop the project killing their neighborhoods, ban billboard blight, clamp down on pot shops.

Sometimes like when the fate of Billy the Elephant is at stake, the public, pro and con, get to speak for hours. Other times, they get short-shrift if a committee hearing has been held where they had the chance to speak.-- five minutes a side at one minute per speaker if they're allowed to speak at all.

But recently, the council -- apparently chastened by growing evidence that the natives are becoming restless -- has taken to suspending the rules and allowing the public enough time to actually convey their concerns and objections.

This dismays the council's legal adviser, Assistant City Attorney Dion Connell, who grimaces as he advises the council members that those rules of theirs require them to actually pay attention when they conduct what are called "fair hearings."

The hearings may be "fair" but the result is the council votes exactly as they planned to, unanimously, no matter what the public says.

That's what occurred last week when the La Brea Gateway project came up and again Wednesday when the the council gave the green light to a massive expansion of the Museum of Tolerance so it can raise money holding weddings and Bar Mitzvahs.

It's no coincidence both projects are in the district of the developers' and lobbyists' best friend, lame duck Jack Weiss.

I bring this up and share the video of the Council wasting its precious time trying to figure out whether or not to give the public a few extra minutes to vent its spleen to make the point that public comment and public hearings don't amount to a hill of beans if nobody's really listening and everything already has been decided in back rooms.

What's the point of trekking down to City Hall, waiting around for hours, paying $13.20 to park just to have two minutes to speak your mind if Council's minds are already made up?

I've done this myself a few times in the last year and always come up feeling empty and foolish.

Part of the strategy that the Saving LA Project has developed but not yet implemented consistently is to emulate how lobbyists work.

They don't waste their time sitting around the Council chamber to speak for a minute or two unless it's to put on a show for the cameras when the public shows up in large numbers. They meet privately with Council members and their staffs numerous times in advance of the public debate, such as it is.

Community activists can't shower money on Council members like lobbyists and their clients do but they can organize their neighborhoods and pose a threat to the political futures of their elected representatives. 

If you can't help or hurt your elected representative, all you'll ever get is lip service and two minutes to blow off steam.

A full court press on all 15 Council members from well-organized local activists can, and has, changed the course of events.

It's my belief that Neighborhood Council need to stop talking their issues to death and start banding together within each Council district, coordinate with other organizations in their areas and become lobbyists meeting frequently with their electeds to become an effective pressure group.

From the beginning of my life as an activist, I've put my faith in the power of the people to change the political agenda, if not the politicians, through action, not talk.

That's how Measure B was beaten, Carmen Trutanich elected City Attorney and a growing number of issues won. The Council is even gritting its teeth and allowing the public to speak more often.

Of course, I may be wrong as I often am. But I'm an optimist in a time of so much gloom.

The governor and legislators are going back to normal today with their posturing and pretenses as if voters hadn't just slapped them in the face and kicked them in the groin over their pathetic ballot propositions.

In LA, the City Council will operate n its business-as-usual mode as it steals $27 million more from the Department of Water and Power's electricity revenue while pretending the $120 million hit LA is expected to feel from the state ballot propositions defeat isn't really going to happen.

Poor Jack Weiss, the political machine's favorite gofer, lost badly despite the mayor's and Police Chief Bill Bratton's increasingly irrelavant efforts to defeat outsider Carmen "Nuch" Trutanich, who chatted with KABC's Doug McIntyre this morning (Trutanich-McIntyre.mp3)

Even more stunning was the victory of the smart and capable Tina Park who knocked off LA Community College Board incumbent Angela Reddock.

Community activist David "Ty" Vahedi came within 300 votes of beating professional politician and machine-backed candidate Paul Koretz on election day with the outcome still uncertain with many absentee and provisional ballots still to be counted.

Democracy lives in LA, finally.

Just as the defeat of Measure B in March signaled a groundswell of grassroots support for change, the results of Tuesday's election shows the depth of discontent with our politicians is growing.

The public is fed up and waking up.

The political machine is oblivious even as it creaks and breaks down. It lives off of special interest money and smear politics of consultants like Ace Smith.

UPDATE: Shortly after the City Council voted on the billboard moratorium, Jack Weiss' office put out a press release boasting of his leadership on the issue.  And Bernard Parks' office announced four billboards were going up in the next month in his district offering a reward of up to $500,000 for the arrest and conviction of the "Grim Sleeper" serial killer. Parks' press release said Clear Channel Outdoor "has consistently been a  responsible member of the communities it serves and also takes a proactive role in making the communities better places to live." And now City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, the main culprit in the billboard fiasco, has joined the PR orgy with his own self-congratulatory praise of the moratorium.

Call me a cynic, call me a troublemaker, call me Ishmael for all I care, but when I hear the City Council try to sell out the public interest, it makes me mad as hell.

Let's start with the closed-door session on Tuesday when under the ruse of talking about one of the two dozen or so lawsuits the despicable billboard companies have filed against the city over its bungling -- deliberately corrupt or mere incompetence as the case might be -- the council discussed for nearly two hours a six-month moratorium on all new billboards.

Janice Hahn admitted that today they really talked about the moratorium -- a clear violation of the state open meeting law -- and that they had reached agreement in closed session on a ban on all billboards, not just digital signs supergraphics.

But even that weakening of what had started out as a one-year moratorium was too much for Jack Weiss -- the wannabe City Attorney who rests his case in great part on his tough stand against billboard blight.

Weiss, aided by Ed Reyes, proposed not only reducing the moratorium to three month but watering it down to only electronic billboards and supergraphics.

It was a screwball twist that only Hahn and to some extent Bernard Park had the honesty to challenge. How could anything be more outrageous in a city where more than a third of the 11,000 off-site billboards were put up without permits, many of them decades ago?

Such concerns never occurred to Bill Rosendahl or Wendy Greuel or Tom LaBonge who couldn't rush fast enough to get unanimous agreement on anything.

That may be the most important point. They needed unanimity and they needed 12 votes and they were desperate to get this interim control ordinance for a moratorium passed today.

The reason for that is the lesson people who actually care about the quality of life in L.A. need to take to heart.

Just days ago, the council intended to put this off until January when they return from their luxury Christmas vacations By then, they hoped permits would be pulled by their contributors for more digital and supergraphic monstrosities and more offensive billboards.

But the public's anger made that impossible. You can be sure that much of their illegal back room discussion was about how to defuse the public outrage while doing the least they could do.

The answer was to pass the moratorium but make it as brief as possible even though their lawyers and planners had told them they needed the full six months to find out where the 11,000 billboards are and which are illegal and to figure out an ordinance that actually stood up in court.

Once upon a time, the city had such an ordinance and it did stand up in court. But thanks to the City Attorney, the council and the mayor, they chose to cut deals with the billboard companies that undermined the ordinance and gave away the city sightscape to visual blight. Already, more than 100 digital billboards are in place.

Council members as usual claimed today they didn't know what they were doing -- a plea that falls on deaf ears when judges hear it in court whether it comes from hardened criminals or crooked politicians.

"I want the public to know we have good intentions," Hahn declared, losing much of the credit she earned for pointing out Weiss' hypocrisy a few moments earlier.

Just before the vote, Dennis Zine -- perhaps upset that it was suggested by colleagues that he leave the room if he wouldn't support a watered-down ordinance -- told the anti-billboard activists what they really wanted to hear: Ban all new off-site billboards permanently like some communities have done.

Zine stood alone at that point but went along with the three-month moratorium on all off-site signage, a 14-0 vote.

That's not the end of the story, only the beginning.

If you think this issue is important, you need to tap into the widespread public anger and organize to demand full participation in the planning process where a new ordinance will be developed. You need to work with Building and Safety and the City Attorney and the Planning Department to make sure what is drafted and finally approved is what you want.

You need a lawyer, a good lawyer.

There is a strong case to be made that the settlements with the billboard companies are illegal and were made without the authority to overturn the city's zoning laws.

There is a strong case to be made that the deals being made with L.A. Live since the moratorium issue was raised violated the law.

There is a strong case to be made for a total ban on all billboards of any type until the mess is completely cleaned up.

And there's an even stronger case that they city should be getting millions in revenue from the billboard companies and the property owners they pay to use their space rather than the few hundred dollars the city now gets.

But if you don't learn the lesson of the billboard scandal, none of that will happen. When the people get angry enough to pose a threat to the rank and privileges of their elected officials, they do the right thing -- at least while the anger is hot and the public is vigilant.

Frankly, nothing else works.

Billy the elephant keeps nodding his head and public access TV advocates keep shaking theirs.

Once again Wednesday, the LA City Council -- paralyzed by its lack of homework, its own skewed priorities and its self-inflicted budget crisis -- spent hours debating what do about the L.A. Zoo's new elephant exhibit and maintain public access shows on cable television.

And yet again, it couldn't make decisions on either hot-button issue.

Listening to the debate on these issues which goes back as long as two years ago is almost scary for its plodding mediocrity, lack of straightforward honesty and self-congratulatory back-slapping.

These are not exactly complicated matters that take rocket scientists to resolve. But then the council isn't exactly blessed with a lot of brain power. If there weren't so many smart people among the bureaucrats, lobbyists, consultants, union bosses, contractors and developers pulling their strings, these puppets would fall limp to the ground and never get anything done.

Is it any wonder that during one of the greatest booms in tax revenue in history accompanied by an endless string of hikes in rates, fees and taxes the city is going broke?

It's clear that to a man and woman their hearts go out more to the elephants than to people. They are heart-broken poor head-nodding Billy is locked in a cage when he should be allowed to roam free in a sanctuary with others of species somewhere in the San Fernando Valley.

But that would cost money and the $28 million that's unspent on the new elephant exhibit has them drooling with the possibilities of rewarding their friends and contributors -- or at least covering some of the sweetheart deals they've already made with them.

So the question was sent back to zoo advocate Tom LaBonge's committee yet again to see if he can find a benefactor by Jan. 23 who will foot the cost of completing the exhibit. The council has its eye on the $28 million already raised and allocated for the project so its up to you zoo-lovers to make good on the cost.

Meanwhile, construction will be halted, adding to the costs, and the city will have to pay back millions that the county and others put up in the belief that the council's approval of the project two years ago actually meant something.

We now learn from this debate it didn't because one council member after another has confessed they didn't know what they were doing back then. Big surprise!

Nor is it a surprise that they didn't have time to face up to the issue of public access TV until just four weeks before Time Warner Cable was ready to exercise its legal right -- thanks to a gift from the state Legislature -- to pull the plug on its 14 public access studios and channels.

No time, no money -- those are good excuses in the minds of these people. Of course, they had more than a year to deal with the issue and they do get $25 million a year in franchise fees from the cable company which is really cable subscribers money and a form of taxation.

And there will be another $5 million a year coming in from the additional 1 percent tax which the Legislature threw in for good measure when it abolished the requirement for cable companies to give the public the right to be heard.

But that money must go for capital improvements and the city has its own needs to upgrade facilities at Channel 35 so it can broadcast its own tedious meetings and endless hours of self-serving propaganda that would make the commissars in the old Soviet Union proud.

The public be damned -- that's really the heart of this farcical debate. Who needs public access or the free exchange of ideas and information when there isn't any democracy in the city anyway?

They have a point in that regard. What difference does it make what the citizenry thinks if nobody in power has any intention of listening?