L.A. city officials were warned Monday in a "high priority alert" from Chief Legislative Analyst Gerry Miller that a deal is near in the state legislature that will cost L.A. $150 million this year and create a budgetary -- and political catastrophe -- when next year's budget is put together in the spring.

"On top of the $350 million gap the CAO projected for 2010
during the budget this past spring, that could mean a total
hit to the City of half a billion dollars in fiscal year 2010," 
Miller wrote City Council members and their chiefs of staff.


"Below is some additional information about the proposal and
strategies calling and writing the governor and legislative
leaders. Anything you can do to contact the State and let them
know how seriously this will impact us and all cities would be
helpful. It is critically important to try and get the governor
not to pass an emergency resolution, which is the first step
in the borrowing. From the governor's statements, he is opposed
to the borrowing.  However, given the State's situation, there
will be significant pressure to put a plan in place very soon
and it is important to communicate our strong opposition."

The State could run out of cash in early August, and legislators are
considering borrowing against Prop 1A, but also Prop 42, Prop 63, 
Prop 10, and Prop 49.

The state Department of Finance "has prepared a scenario where they
could justify taking Prop 42 (for relief of transportation congestion)
without any obligation to repay. No one has seen the text of that scenario."

"One scenarios is that the legislature agrees to release far more Bond
money than originally planned, in an effort to back-fill other local
funds taken. The political problem is that voters were promised that
this was additional money, not back-fill money."

Miller's advice to city officials is to send letters to the governor
and key legislators.

Why that sounds almost like ordinary people pleading for mercy from our
high and mighty government officials, formerly known as public servants.

One of the interesting elements of this is that I've heard public speeches
by three city council members from different parts of the city recently use
almost the exact same language in describing the city's own budget crisis
was covered up raiding every dollar lying around and various tricks of
papering over the problem.

"You got to meet Lucille Saunders."  I must have been told that half a dozen times in the past few weeks. '"She's the one who gets things done."

At the Saving L.A. Project's Bastille Day rally at City Hall I did get to meet Lucille and spend a few minutes with her. My wife spent a lot of time with her and told me later, "You've got to really meet Lucille. She's amazing."

Lucille Saunders, psychotherapist in private practice and longtime community activist, has taken a bead on the No. 1 problem in Los Angeles: Out-of-control development without a coherent plan for making the city better for its residents, workers or businesses.

She's found the fatal flaw -- and she's trying to drive a stake through the heart of City Hall's corruption.

What has been going on for years as anybody who has paid the least bit of attention knows is that our public servants have been selling out the public interest to developers.

What Saunders has found is that City Hall is violating state law and the city's own general plan for development -- and the violations have been going on for a decade.

Saunders and the La Brea-Willoughby Coalition she leads sued the city last month with the help of attorneys Sabrina Venskus and Emilee Moeller. They don't want money, only for the city to obey the law. Here is the suit, click on the link to download:
labrea.pdf.

"We will not be diverted from what we're asking. We will not be co-opted," Saunders told me."There's audits and procedures required by law that must be done... or the city cannot know whether developing is outpacing infrastructure. The city hasn't followed the rules since 1998."

If Saunders wins, we ought to build a statue to her on the South Lawn of City Hall.

Victory would mean the judge imposes a moratorium on city approval of zoning changes and changes to specific community or the general plans until the monitoring and reporting is completed. It also would force officials to sit down at the table of power with the people and figure out what kind of city this is and how the quality of life can be improved for all and make sure new projects enhance, rather than degrade, the urban environment or face the consequences with an increasingly organized and effective electorate.

Dressed appropriately for the occasion writer, performer and NPR commentator Sandra Tsing Loh, author of "A Year in Van Nuys" and public school advocate, speaks at the Saving L.A. Project's July 14th Bastille Day rally at City Hall.

KABC morning talk show host Doug McIntyre speaks to the Bastille Day rally at City Hall.

Green Dot Charter School head Steve Barr speaks to Bastille Day Rally

City Controller Laura Chick's remarks at the Bastille Day rally

Noel Weiss, an attorney long active in community affairs, speaks at the ralley

City Councilman Dennis Zine speaks at the Bastille Day rally

Clean money advocate Wayne Williams speaks to the Bastille Day rally

Videos by Michael Cohen

A lot of people shared their issues and viewpoints at Saving L.A. Project's July 14th Bastille Day rally. Here's videos of part of my remarks.

Videos by Michael Cohen

A friend visiting from out of town wanted to play golf today so we headed over to Griffith Park and reached the ninth hole at Harding Golf Course where there's a snack shop surrounded by a large asphalt-covered area.

A city employee was hosing leaves off the asphalt and had been at his task for a long while from the looks of the mud puddles and mini-ponds forming downhill as he inched forward with his hose.

Isn't it illegal for you and me to hose down our driveways, or at least regarded as an anti-social waste of water, especially as we are faced with a water shortage crisis later this year and are being forced to pay higher rates so we can drink recycled toilet water one of these days.

Clearly, the rules that apply to ordinary people don't apply to the city. And that goes for just about everything. including the state open meetings law which city officials are enforcing ruthlessly against neighborhood councils even as the City Council cuts back room deals and routinely holds closed door meetings that violate the law.

My sensitivity to this waste of a precious resource was heightened recently by the continuing series of items at laist.com by Stephen Box on buses and other public agency vehicles left idling for long periods of time, presumably so drivers can stay cool and comfortable in the air conditioning.

He's taken pictures all over town of city, county and state vehicles left idling, waste=ing fuel that has gotten ridiculously expensive as we all know and polluting the air which is still the nation's dirtiest as we all know.

One of my favorite examples involves the Orange Line  buses that run across the Valley from North Hollywood to Warner Center. They are idling in the picture with the drivers chatting nearby so it's not the Valley heat that's the issue.

My pal Antonio missed his calling. With his gift for turning the truth on its head, he could have been the greatest salesman of his era. He could have been rich.

Of course, he does live like a rich man in an elegant mansion, surrounded by servants and gofers, chauffeurs and bodyguards, wined and dined at the finest joints, his every need looked after. First class all the way.

On "Which Way L.A.?" Wednesday night,  the master salesman sold a worn-out used city as if it were the hottest property in the world, his lackluster record as a gold-plated standard of achievement and his inattention to his job while jet-setting around the world --- well, it's a sacrifice that he makes for us.

He reminded me of the governor down South I knew who got caught taking bribes and proclaimed: "Sure I stole but I stole for you."

How an intelligent guy like Warren Olney could let him get away with this is beyond me, unless of course he was happy to let the mayor get away with murdering the truth.

I'm not going to make this easy for you and parse every sentence. It's too important that you listen to it yourself.

Olney did ask some tough questions but they turned into softballs because he didn't ask tough follow-up questions and certainly didn't provide the relevant facts that would have put the lie to the mayor's outlandish claims that he's a miracle worker who fixed the schools, got traffic moving, solved the gang problem and saved L.A.

OK, he actually said he's courageously tackled all those problems and is making great progress and would solve them all if only the penny-pinching public would give him the "resources."

The No. 1 point that Olney ducked in helping the mayor turn his re-election campaign into a coronation was the money.

There's the mayor's unchallenged claim that people from all over the world are donating the millions he needs to chase away challengers because they love L.A. Sure, a few might have some business they want to do in the city but really folks they're giving generously because they love this town.

How could anyone interview the mayor and not slam him for turning the biggest revenue surge in the city's recent history into the city's biggest budget shortfall in history?

OK, Ryan Seacrest did earlier in the day but Olney? It must be love.

How could anyone interview the mayor for most of half an hour and not tabulate all the fee increases and rate hikes and new taxes and not ask where all those hundreds of millions of dollars went?

Don't look to me for answers. I'm just an unemployed newspaperman with nothing better to do than ask some tough questions.

It was 1970 when Walt Kelly's Pogo first uttered that unforgettable phrase.

The Vietnam War had dragged on for years and sapped the nation's energy, divided it in half and left it paralyzed.

We have not recovered.

We are lost in another fruitless war. We still have no effective national health care system or immigration policy and little or no progress has been made in dealing with most of the nation's problems. A fundamental economic restructuring is going on and the government is timid and slow to react. The two political parties are more remote from the people at every level of government than ever. The public is more dissatisfied and fearful than ever.

And so we play the blame game. Blame Bush. Blame Arnold. Blame Antonio. Blame whoever you want. It's not going to change anything Just don't blame yourself.

As I see it, this is a free country and when we stagnate for 40 years and let ourselves be divided by a poltical system taken hostage by big labor and big moneyed interests, we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

And that's truer for the state of things in L.A. today than anywhere. I've played the blame game myself, probably a lot more than most of you. The corrupt culture of City Hall. The political careerists strutting around as if they were princes and princesses when they should be acting like public servants and doing the bidding of the people who put their trust in them.

From time to time, I've also made the point that the real problem is us. We accept their lip service and the smiles as if they were genuine and keep them in office. Powerless, we get preoccupied fighting over every narrow, local issue without looking up and seeing the same things are going on all over the city. We quarrel with each other over the rules of governance rather than charging in and doing something about the problems themselves.

The result is that people who know better sit on the sidelines believing nothing they do could make a difference. Most people pay no attention at all.

That's the way I see things and it's why I've proposed we set aside our differences and our egos and come together in a united front, a people's coalition, the Saving L.A. Project.

It isn't going to be easy to come together for the common good. There's no easy solutions to what's broken. I only know that talk is cheap, especially my own. That nothing good is going to come of this effort without those of you who have worked so long and hard for your communities buy into the idea that we can achieve more together than alone and take ownership of the Saving L.A. Project.

After all these years of preaching from above without actually having to do anything, I'm giving what I can and so are a lot of other people. For great things to happen, we're all going to have to look in the mirror and accept responsibility for our portion of what's gone wrong or we can keep on being part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

The enemy is us and we can do something about that. And if we do, we can start doing something big that matters, that is all-iniclusive, that forces our political, business and community leaders to partner with us.

That's what democracy and freedom are all about. That's what L.A. should be about.

For those who came from every corner of L.A. to City Hall on Monday, something good and positive happened at the Saving L.A. Project's rally.

There was a feeling of belonging, of being among people like yourself who care deeply about the community they are part of, of being among people who have worked long and hard to make their dreams come true and kept alive their spirit in the face of official resistance and the apathy of so many.

For a couple of hours, they felt hope that they were there at the birth of a movement that finally would bring to life the real spirit of the city -- the spirit of the freest place on earth, a place where dreams really can come true.

These aren't people who dream of wealth or glamor or stardom or the pleasure of libidinal excesses. Theirs are more mundane dreams: Good schools, safe streets, healthy neighborhoods, a good life for themselves and others.

There were in all 200 or so people there, 135 signed up to be part of this people's coalition. Most of the rest already were involved.

(This article was published Sunday in the Daily News.)

Taking back Los Angeles

The impetuous fool in me came out a while back and I declared publicly I was going to engage in an act of civil disobedience and carry a bag of garbage down to City Hall on Bastille Day and deposit it as an act of civil disobedience.

Foolish I might be but I'm a man of my word and on Monday I'll bring a bag of garbage and leave it on the steps of City Hall as a symbol of protest, an expression of my anger over soaring trash and other fees and the declining quality of life in the city I love.

I've learned since I made that declaration that we don't need acts of civil disobedience to change L.A. from a city rotting in the failure of its leadership to a city rising on the energy of its people.

The outpouring of support from hundreds of dedicated people from all over the city who have worked so hard for so long to make our community better has helped me to see the light.

We have the numbers. We have the knowledge and the skill. We have the leaders in community groups of one type or another to take power from the special interests without acts of defiance.

Nothing but greed holds the power structure together and it will crumble in the face of a united community. Our elected officials are held hostage by the unions, developers and contractors who flatter their delusion of self-importance with the money that keeps them in office.

From the Eastside to the Westside, from San Pedro to the Valley, I've heard over and over similar stories of frustration with our city government and our elected officials, and with their neighbors hiding behind indifference and ignorance.

The issues may be different in different neighborhoods, in different communities of interest, but the experience is the same. We get the runaround while special interests are buying access and favors.

It's time to put aside the differences and find the common ground that brings us together as people, as residents of L.A., as people who want a great city with great schools and great neighborhoods.

The power structure has used these differences -- race, class, needs, values -- to keep us separated and weak, begging for crumbs from the table of power while the insiders feast on the city's wealth.

We need to change the system. We need to seize power and make our government accountable to us, to do what we want.

There's only one way for this happen. It's through a community coalition that is united in support of each other, united in demanding openness, honesty, accountability and respect for the people of the city.

This is America and the basic civil rights of the ordinary men and women of L.A. have been trampled upon for too long. We have a right to own our schools, our neighborhoods and our city.

On Monday -- Bastille Day when the French Revolution began more than 200 years ago -- people from every part of L.A. are coming to City Hall at noon to Take Back Los Angeles -- Demand A Great City.

We don't need garbage to symbolize our frustration. We need each other.

We'll listen to each other's stories of the failure of city government to serve us and the failure of the schools to serve our children. We'll talk about overdevelopment and bad development, traffic congestion and poor public transit and we will open the dialogue on how to solve these and so many other problems now and in the long run.

We need to learn from each other. We need to understand each other. And we need to come up with solutions that achieve the greatest good for the greatest number.

We know there are no easy answers. But through an honest and open public conversation we can do a lot better than what we've been doing.

Whether there are 30 of us or 300 come to City Hall on Monday, this will be the start of something big, something great. It's not going to come from high from the people in power. It's going to have to come from the grassroots, from you.

This rally is only the first step. We will follow up quickly with a town hall meeting to organize our coalition of the people. And we will build on that and grow more confident with each success and see those on the sidelines step forward into the public arena.

That's my dream anyway, fool that I might be. But I know now that there are others who share that dream and are willing to help make it come true.

By Sandra Tsing Loh
(A writer and performer, Ms. Loh appears regularly on Public Radio's Marketplace with "The Loh Down" and on KPCC with "The Loh Life."  and has written several books, including "A Year in Van Nuys." This article was submitted as a comment to "Come back to LAUSD and make a difference.)

Thanks to all for a frank and amazing discussion, although I always
wonder what it means to comment "anonymously."  (Does that reflect a
fear LA's roving Armenian gangs will come after one online?  Presumably
the ones who don't graduate and hence cannot type?  We digress.)

All questions of morality aside, here is a practical flea's eye--or
parent's--view of the LAUSD.  In certain middle-class, educated,
more-tending-towards-white generation(s) before ours (I am 46 and my
daughters are elementary-aged), there was an unspoken assumption that
most urban public schools were the pits, and it was completely socially
acceptable to move to where the white people were or grab a silk-lined
parachute into private school.  The mentality was to each his own, and
the faster better-heeled families could pull that portcullis down
behind them the better.

Unfortunately, such dog-eat-dog thinking is a bit like strip-mining in
that it leaves behind, for the next generation of families, a blasted
dog-eat-dog landscape.  When I started looking at kindergartens for my
older daughter in 2004, houses in a "good school district" like La
Canada started at $1 million while tuition at a "good" private
kindergarten started at $15,000/year (now it's more like $20,000).
Such are the economics of fear which, while destructive for new
families with more than one child and limited incomes, are fabulous at
lining the pockets of Realtors, private schools, private school
"counselors," and (inadvertently) the city of Portland.

So that's why many of us have our children in the LAUSD.  We love this
city--its vitality, its energy and yes, its diversity--we're staying,
and we simply can't AFFORD to parachute our children out and away from
the world in which we live. 

UPDATE: Police intend to seek criminal charges against a motorist involved in a road rage  incident that seriously injured two cyclists in Mandeville Canyon on July Fourth. Laist.com has shocking photos and the story.

 You've heard the story now of how the city is destroying my neighborhood by passively standing by while a single-family house has been turned into a tenement apartment building and how commenters say the same thing is happening in their neighborhoods.

But did you know that golfers at city courses now have to show driver's licenses to prove they really are legal residents of L.A. even as City Hall resists asking for the same kind of proof from illegal immigrant gangsters who commit crimes, violent or otherwise.

And then there's the astonishing case of the LAPD's handcuffing and searching bicyclists for not having a front light -- one of a growing number of incidents logged at laist.com that suggests the LAPD has decided cyclists, not gangsters, are the real menace to our society.

SoapBoxLA.com reported on the incident that occurred last Wednesday in Hollywood and it seemed so outrageous I decided to call the cyclists involved myself.

The story involves a high-tech software developer, a young woman and a UCLA doctoral candidate in mathematics who were cycling home from Echo Park to the Westside when they were treated the way the LAPD used to treat hoodlums in its militaristic glory days under Daryl Gates.

The cyclists -- Alex Thompson, Paul Bringetto and Andrea Tzvetkov -- saw a Latino man slowly riding his bike being pulled over and handcuffed. They didn't know the man but they decided to stop and observe what was happening because that's the protocol adopted by activists who are demanding a Cyclist Bill of Rights.

Officers Corona and Stine did not like being watched and certainly didn't like Bringetto asking what was going on.

"It's like they equate bikes with poverty and poverty with criminals and think they can get away with anything," said Thompson, the doctoral candidate who will be blogging about the incident today at Westside BikeSide, an activist website.

He recalled Corona telling Bringetto, "Mind your own business."

Bringetto: "What did he do wrong?"

Corona: "Don't move. Stay there."

Bringetto: "We're just here to observe."

Corona: "You're going to jail."

UPDATE: laist.com riffs off of Lopez column and mentions the Bastille Day rally, observing, "The Saving L.A. Project seems to directly answer everyone's questions when it comes down to what's wrong and how to fix it: While we need great leaders, we need each other more."

L.A. Times star columnist Steve Lopez visited Chicago recently and was struck by the dynamism of  a city with strong leadership and the will to make things better -- a sharp contrast to what he sees happening in our city.

In his column Sunday,  Lopez asks a series of rhetorical questions to show just how big a difference there is between the city of Big Shoulders and what we all might agree is our city with no guts -- views that are similar to what I wrote about after my recent visit to Chicago.

He writes about how Chicago, under the leadership of Mayor Richard Daley, gets things done while L.A. under Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa languishes. "(Villaraigosa''s) self-induced loss of momentum, along with funding shortages and a City Council that never veers from its quest for mediocrity, have conspired to knock the shine off Antonio's Holy Card smile."

Lopez and I spoke at length Thursday about this tale of two cities and he mentions the Bastille Day July 14 rally at noon at City Hall, calling the idea of leading a public revolt -- in the absence of real leadership by our elected officials -- "the least rewarding of all L.A. challenges."

He closes by saying, "OK, I'm all for revolution. But at least for a while, couldn't we work out an exchange program in which we trade Villaraigosa for Daley and see what happens?

His skepticism is appropriate until enough of us come together and demonstrate we can force City Hall to respond to our concerns instead of giving us lip service and the special interests our money.

The publicity for the rally is welcome. We've printed up thousands of fliers to promote the rally and we need people to distribute them far and wide so email me and we'll figure out how to get some to you. I can also send you an email copy of the flier and the letter that community activists are sending out all over town.

From Boyle Heights to Westchester, from West Hills to San Pedro, people are committed to coming down to City Hall on Monday July 14th. There is your chance to shake the foundations of City Hall and begin the process of bringing real democracy to L.A. and empowering the communities to stand up together to a failing power structure.

Take Back Los Angeles -- Demand A Great City. Join the Saving L.A. Project.