Results tagged “lawa” from Ron Kaye L.A.

It wasn't that long ago that Bruno declared Janice Hahn the dumbest person on the Los Angeles City Council for a stupid stunt she pulled using her city website to promote her campaign for lieutenant governor.

Now she's up to something even dumber - and this time she's got company.

The LA Weekly reported last week that Tony Cardenas was set to hold a fund-raiser to kick off his re-election campaign at a restaurant owned by a company that is partnering in a bid for a $600 million food concession contract at LAX.

Showing how much respect he has for the city's ethics laws and concern for what voters might think, Tony was holding the event on the same day as he was sitting in judgment on who gets that contract and seven others at the airport. He insisted he doesn't take money from airport concessionaires but he doesn't mind taking as much as he can get from the restaurant lobbyist's other clients.

City Hall is such an ethical sewer that the concessions issue wound up in the hands of the Board of Referred Powers chaired by Tony because the Airport Commission could not vote on staff recommendations for the contracts because its president owns a chunk of one of the bidders.

Clearly displeased that his pals were not on the staff list of recommendations, Cardenas -- supported by Janice -- found fault with what was recommended and demanded answers to a long list of petty questions.

Is it any wonder that the Airport GM Gina Marie Lindsey is looking for a healthier working environment as far from LA as she can get?

For her part, the Queen of San Pedro has her own conflict of interest, having taken $40,000 from airport concessionaires for her failed lieutenant governor campaign.

This kind of conduct ought to have every dog lover in town howling in outrage, especially the top-dog Dog Trainer..

But in what must be the most lily-livered editorial in the history of the newspaper, if that's possible, the Dog Trainer worked itself into a lather over the possibility Tony and Janice might queer contracts recommended for such "acclaimed L.A. chefs such as Susan Feniger, Mary Sue Milliken and Joachim Splichal, and a bakery from Homeboy Industries."

Ethics issues, who cares? Gourmet food is what matters.

Tony moved his event for this Thursday to a neutral location so it's not a problem, opines the Dog Trainer.

Then the editorial really lets Janice have it.

"There's no evidence of anything illegal going on at the board -- just politics as usual. "

Here's the hammer that has the two one of them looking over their shoulders: "As carefully as Cardenas and Hahn are scrutinizing the contracts, voters will be scrutinizing their actions."

Grrrrrrrrrrr!

Maybe the Dog Trainer doesn't know it, but Janice's vote would be illegal at the MTA, where board members aren't allowed to vote on any contract if they've taken money from an interested party in the past four years.

I'm just a dog, and an ugly one at that, but I think this highlights what's wrong in this town: Tony and Janice don't give a damn about looking conflicted and the Dog Trainer has become so emasculated in it's attempt to cozy up to the ruling class that's it's become toothless. (A mixed metaphor, I know, but a fun one, nonetheless.)

The Dog Trainer should have ripped them both a new one for creating at the leasat the appearance that influence peddlers and campaign cash are at the heart of how City Hall does business.

But why should they care?  The Dog Trainer - the only media outlet they seem to care about - soft-pedaled what they are doing (hat tip to those scrappy folks at the Weekly) and the only folks outraged are the rabble who has been complaining about this kind of behavior forever.

Oh, and me.  But I'm just a dog.

Woof!

How could anyone in their right mind question the good intentions of United Way and the generous contributions of Goldman Sachs, CB Richard Ellis, AECOM consulting and Herbalife to create jobs in LA working with the mayor and his jobs czar Austin Beutner?

Just because Goldman Sachs reaped a windfall paper profit of $145.6 million a week ago when the City Council approved upzoning the massive Playa Vista project that Goldman Sachs, union pension funds and others own "to allow about 2.6 million square feet of luxury housing, a smattering of senior housing and about 341,000 square feet of retail, offices and public buildings," as LA Weekly reports, is no reason to question its motives.

After all, what's a piddling $80,000 contribution mean to the firm's chairman, Lloyd Blankfein, when he earned $77 million last year after being saved from bankruptcy by U.S. taxpayers.

That Beutner was put in place by a committee that included Playa Vista president Steve  Soboroff and that approval of the development's expansion won't be final until next week and that the people trying to save Ballona Wetlands are set for a last-ditch fight are surely just coincidences.

Only a cynic would wonder about the enormous generosity of the giant real estate firm CB Richard Ellis' tax deductible donation of $500,000 to United Way to bring six "young business executives and workers into city government to assist with efforts to create jobs and help companies," as the LA Times joyfully reported.

That the firm has enjoyed serving as the city's long-time real estate broker under contracts with the General Services Department and other agencies could not possibly have anything to do with this.

"In these tough budget times, hiring people is just not the easiest thing to do; in fact, we're moving in the other direction," Villaraigosa said. "So looking for public-private partnerships that will bring fresh ideas, new energy and not cost the city any money on the general fund is my kind of new idea."

One might quibble with how new an idea it is to bring insiders further inside City Hall's dealings but really what's the point.

The same is true for AECOM Corp., the global management consulting firm, and its handsome contracts with LA World Airports for hundreds of millions of dollars.

It has every reason to be proud of the $25 million initial contract that its subsidiary DMJM Aviation got in 2008 for "program management services supporting the Capital Improvement Program (CIP) at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)."

That contract has blossomed today so that AECOM is unashamed to note on its website that it is "planning for design and phased construction to modernize the airport...Our management tasks included conceptual design, detailed phasing plans; scheduling; cost estimating; program and design criteria development; all necessary research; modeling; assessment; project definition; and pre-construction management."

AECOM is involved in everything from "Bradley International Terminal Expansion,  New Midfield Satellite Concourse, Relocation of south runway; addition of center taxiway to accommodate new large aircraft; and improvement of airfield movements,  A new Intermodal Transportation Center (ITC) to improve land access to the central terminal area, Consolidated rental car facility serving over 16 rental car companies, with a total capacity of over 20,000 cars."

We should be thankful that their fine work has avoided disruption and inconvenience at our wonderful airport and give double thanks for their $100,000 contribution.

As for Herbalife and its $100,000 donation, the piddling subsidies they got last year for street services and other special events dispensations for the "Herbalife Facility Tours" and later their Triathlon clearly would not represent a conflict of interest unless city unions negotiate a benefit that includes free lifetime supplies of their products or the firm has some land use needs.

The nobility of the rich should never be questioned which is why the Times felt no need to mention of this.

I, for one, agree. They are above reproach. My only concern is for how much it is going to cost me for these six charity consults and Austin Beutner to "buy jobs" in a city near bankruptcy, torn by dissension and facing billions of dollars in bills to fix the mismanagement of its far from charitable municipal utility.

It's hard to believe how this could be happening after all the headlines and trials and mayoral directives but it's true -- the give away of public money to public relations firms for jobs that city workers are paid to do or don't need to be done is still going on.

Last month, it was the L.A. Harbor officials who got caught red-handed ignoring the mayor's order and agreeing to hire two PR firms for $1.6 million to tell truckers new rules were coming to cut down on pollution.

Now, with documents I obtained under the California Public Records Act, we learn that Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) has been doing the same thing dating back to 2005 when Antonio Villaraigosa came to power and kept in place Jim Hahn's directive that ended the use -- and abuse -- of PR contracts that were nothing but payoffs for "other" services rendered.

Amazingly, the contracts I obtained -- and there may well be others in a subsequent release of documents -- show they were awarded without competitive bidding by keeping the deals just below the legal limit that would have required making them public at the time.

When things are done to keep the public from knowing what's going on, I like to use the word secrecy. It makes it sort of sinister and it's accurate.

Now I don't know whether these deals were a secret from the mayor or his staff but if I supported a ban on something that was useless and tainted by scandal in the past I'd be mad as hell to find out my orders were being disobeyed by people who work at my pleasure.

Of course, if I did know about it or didn't really care, I might do as the mayor did with the Harbor contracts when they became exposed to the light of public knowledge -- I'd cut the initial payoff back to say $350,000 and look for opportunities to extend or expand it.

And under those circumstances, I certainly wouldn't hold anyone responsible for defying my orders.

Maybe when the mayor gets back from Denver or campaigning in New Hampshire or raising money somewhere, he'll have a different view of these LAWA contracts.

The new head of the LAX airports, Gina Marie Lindsey, has made a lot of friends inside City Hall's power structure -- which is no larger than a walk-in closet -- and a lot of enemies outside the system and among the L.A. World Airports staff.

Supporters say she has brought fresh eyes and strong leadership to LAWA and is strengthening the organization by adding outsiders to her managment team. But inside the massive LAWA organization, there's nothing but complaints.

The most serious allegation of cronyism, reported Saturday in the Daily Breeze already has prompted the city's clean government crusader, Controller Laura Chick, to send in a team of auditors to check out charges that Lindsey manipulated the award of a $25 million contract to DMJM over Bechtel, which was higher rated by the airport's contract selection committee.

Lindsey has close ties with DMJM, which got the contract for improvements to the Seattle airport, where she last worked.

Insiders say Lindsey has played hardball with the LAWA staff with sharp criticism of their performance and passed them over to bring in pals from outside.

With billions of dollars in contracts at stake for the controversial LAX expansion plan and Lindsey's tepid support for air traffic regionalizaton efforts at Ontario and Palmdale, the controversy swirling around her is certain to get a lot more intense.