Hot Topics: September 2008 Archives

Even as Los Angeles Unified keeps hiring more bureaucrats and fewer teachers -- and the disparity in their pay keeps widening -- the massive school district is disintegrating under an assault from the charter school movement.

On Wednesday, ICEF Public Schools, which operates 13 charters with 3,000 students in South Los Angeles, will announce it's adding 22 new campuses in what it calls the "Education Corridor" - the 45-square-mile region bound by the 110, 105, 405 and 10 freeways.

It should more aptly be called the "Dropout Zone" with half the students quitting school witihout a diploma. With Green Dot already running many schools in the area and having taken over troubled Locke High School, the area will be getting free of LAUSD's stifling bureaucracy, its can't do culture and its 30-year record of failure.

Mostly serving African-American students in one of the city's poorest areas, the Inner City Education Foundation boasts that all its graduates go to college, two- or four-year.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa displayed his usual political chutzpah after the House rejected the $700 Wall Street bailout plan by blustering for Congress to "put politics aside and get back to work for the American people."

It's hard to beat Antonio for pure gall for demanding anyone else work harder.  After all, he's the mayor who works 11 percent of the time and showboats 89 percent of the time.

Turning Teddy Roosevelt's famous dictum about speaking softly and carrying a big stick on its head, the mayor issued a press statement that was borderline hysterical.:

"The consequences of doing nothing to fix it would be simply intolerable. The credit market could collapse. Small businesses would struggle or fail to meet payroll. Families would be shut out of the housing market, and would have no ability to get a car loan or student loan for college. On the City side, tax revenues would plummet and construction projects would be delayed or canceled. Bonds would become more expensive and pension contributions would go through the roof."

The last sentence is the one he really means. He gave 6 percent pay raises to thousands of city workers, spent the city $400 million into the red, jacked up rates, fees and taxes to the breaking point  and desperately needs even more cash for massive construction projects to appease the special interests who keep him alive politically.

My congressman Brad Sherman voted "no" on the bill to keep America from falling into another Great Depression.

I think he's got the right idea so I'm going to vote "no" on Brad Sherman come election day in hopes it keeps me from falling into chronic depression. After all, he's wiping out my 401k, jeopardizing my tiny pension and my chances to get a job as a WalMart greeter to keep my house out of foreclosure.

Of course, I don't even know who his Republican challenger is or even if there is one since how I vote -- or you vote -- doesn't matter in California. All our congressional districts like our local and state districts have been gerrymandered to make sure that voting is irrelevant. Democracy works better that way for special interests and both parties prefer it nice and clean in that regard without interference from those troublemakers referred to in the Constitution as We the People.

I'm sure Brad's vote was a matter of conscience just as it was a few years ago when I editorialized in the Daily News about his stooging on the China trade bill for that small minority with big clout called organized labor and he called me up and denounced me as an M-F.

I was cool then. I'm not so cool about pushing the nation to the brink of the worst economic crisis in nearly 80 years. Everybody hates the idea of bailing out the scoundrels who caused this financial disaster and profited from doing it, but I got a question for Brad and the 227 others.

What's your plan to save the economy, the nation? And what about me?

"We're told not to worry because this $700 billion is not going to cost anything," Sherman told reporters in Washington, D.C. "Wall Street gets its money now, and we get it back never."

Say what? You calling the President of the United States and the men who would succeed him -- including your own favorite Barack Obama -- liars?

Hard as this may be to believe, given all the lip service paid to fixing our failing schools, LAUSD's "bureaucracy ballooned by nearly 20 percent from 2001 to 2007. Over the same period, 500 teaching positions were cut and enrollment dropped by 6 percent."

Got that? $20 billion invested in new school buildings and millions more to pay the salaries of a bloated bureaucracy and there's fewer teachers than six years ago to educate 650,000 children who still are almost as likely to drop out as get a diploma, whose test scores still remain abysmally low.

That's from Sunday's Daily News in a story by Beth Barrett, her final story at the paper after more than 20 years of exposing the sins and crimes of L.A.'s political and civic leadership.

It's accompanied by a searchable database that provides the name, salary and job of every LAUSD employee. What it shows is that the average salary of the district's 4,000 administrators. managers and other nonschool-based employees is $95,000 -- more than administrators are paid elsewhere. The average teacher salary: $63,000 -- less than teachers are paid elsewhere.

What teachers have been saying for decades is now a demonstrable fact: Classrooms have been robbed of resources to pay six-figure salaries to bureaucrats whose main function in life is to stifle the creativity and energy of the people who hold the future of our children, of our city, in their hands -- the teachers.

"(The bureaucracy) grows whether it's fat or lean times," said United Teachers Los Angeles union leader A.J. Duffy. "It's iindicative of an upper echelon, of a leadership cadre that doesn't want to use its authority to clean house."

Get rid of 1,000 of the bureaucrats and $95 million plus a third more for benefits is freed up for  classroom resources and to reward thousands of the best teachers with the salaries befitting the value of their contribution. Get rid of 2,000 and you might actually have a district that starts to work.

After 30 years of decline and failure, somebody should have figured out what the problem was and done something about it.

For all those years, we've heard repeatedly that it's the children's fault because there's too many that come from poor or immigrant families. And it turns out the biggest problem is too many bureaucrats and leadership that is too feeble to face the truth.

They point fingers at everybody else but the truth is the city's leadership lacks the political will to do anything about the LAUSD's most glaring problem or any of L.A.'s other glaring problems for that matter.

And when you see what LAUSD's board members and bureaucrats have to say in Barrett's story you can see that the mentality exposed by then Inspector General Don Mullinax years ago -- Deny, Defend, Deflect -- remain at the core of the culture of failure within the district.

What does it take to get real reform?

Breakup of the district was squelched. Dick Riordan's takeover of the school board got shanghaied. Charter schools have faced resistance every inch of the way. One superintendent after another has proven unable to act decisively. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's school czar plan amounts to indirect control of less than a dozen schools and the insertion of Ray Cortines into LAUSD's No. 2 job, a role that has created more confusion than clarity of purpose.

Maybe Duffy and the teachers union is right that a strike's needed. But it's going to take a strike by parents, students and the teachers backed by the community as a whole to change the culture of LAUSD once and for all and put the district's resources to work where it counts: In the classroom.

Frankly, they can take this $7 billion bond issue on the November ballot and shove it. Let's see them dismantle this system first before they stick their hands in our pockets again.

The wheels of justice turn slowly and awkwardly at best and that's little consolation to the victims of lawless behavior.

It all seemed so simple those many months ago when when my neighbors found out the foreclosed home nearby was being converted into a three-unit tenement -- three kitchens, four baths, more than a dozen rooms in all -- in 2,000 square feet.

Last month, the city charged the owners of the property at 19953 Haynes St. in Woodland Hills with four misdemeanor crimes -- illegal use of land, illegal occupancy, construction without a permit and failure to comply -- and gave them six weeks to appear in court.

Wednesday was their day in court. They didn't show up, Their lawyer didn't call. Warrants were issued for their arrest.

So tonight nothing has changed. There are still five or six cars in the driveway, the neighbors are still upset at seeing the modest stake in paradise being trashed by ineffective city policies and Kashi the dog  still is chained in front of the house and has my dog Bruno so scared he looks the other way when we walk by.

I learned in recent months that this kind of thing is going on all over the city and not enough is being done about it. Most of the time neighbors have to get together and make a big stink to get action.

While City Hall is saving us from second-hand smoke in the parks and taking money for the visual blight of 24-hour-a-day monster flashing electronic billboards, neighborhoods all over the city are being turned into slums.

I went to court in Van Nuys today to see how the system works when these defendants -- Nady Madhavi who bought the house in January and flipped it in May and something called Fidelity Investments LLC of Bellflower, the third owner in six months -- were due to enter their pleas.

I watched prostitues and druggies and abusers of animals and wives went before Magistrate Rebecca Omens one after another, most of them needing two or three months to pay fines and costs of $200 or so.

And I watched Deputy City Attorney Donald Cocek, with two Building and Safety officials standing by, deal with one case after another and patiently take time to talk to people accused of violating Building and Safety laws and regulations.

His goal was to get the problem fixed, to get people to comply with the rules, get permits and fix up their properties to code. There was a man who needed a Thai interpreter, one who needed a Korean interpreter, a third who needed a Spanish interpreter.

These were people who didn't understand the rules, who weren't turning single family homes into tenements, who weren't destroying the quality of life in their neighborhoods for profit. Cocek has a 100 percent compliance record in these cases.

My case was different and he was surprised no one showed up for it. But he's just the guy who handles the case in court, the guy who asks the judge to issue the arrest warrants. The Building and Safety guys just enforce the code.

Nobody, as far as this sleuth has been able to determine, actually investigates the relationships between the the three different owners this year of the house at 19953 Haynes Street. Nobody looks for the patterns, the larger abuses. And nobody can do anything about it as the clock keeps ticking and the rent keeps flowing in at the rate of about $5,000 a month.

The wheels of justice move slowly and the neighborhood's resentment over this nuisance keeps growing and City Hall keeps fiddling around while the city burns.

I was afraid this was going to happen when I posted the 32 claims of greatness made on Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's behalf by his supporters -- people are starting to challenge the assertion that he's making Los Angeles "the greenest city in America."

Some critics note the Department of Water and Power isn't getting rid of coal burning power plants as much as its buying wind power at an enormous premium from the Northwest -- costs that are passed through straight to ratepayers as add-on charges above the soaring rates.

Then, there's the problem NIMBYs trying to preserve the quality of life in their neighborhoods with his green-lighting every development put on the table to drive revenue into the city treasury and make his campaign contributors happy while increasing the population and the demand for more electricity.

Some cynics even complained that the deal to restore the Owens River Valley started long before he took office and that the "expanded" recycling program for apartment dwellers is so miniscule as to be laughable.

And supporters of the South Central Farm -- progressives like the people who published Antonio's List -- didn't take to kindly to the idea the mayor "developed a new 9 acre farm in Watts for 150 of the displaced South L.A. Farm families.'' They point out the South Central Farm produced food for 350 families before it was bulldozed for redevelopment by Forever 21, which funneled $1.3 million to the mayor's campaigns and now can supply just 75 families.

There's just no pleasing all the people all the times or even some of the people some of the time. Isn't that the point to Antonio's game?

Here's how the green-conscious website SustainLane.com rates L.A. -- No. 28 right behind New Orleans. Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and New York top the list. Even Cleveland is 16th.

Here's the site's view and commentary on L.A.:

From Washington to Sacramento to the seats of power in L.A. city and county government, poltiicians suddenly have awakened to the fact that these are hard times  -- $700 billion to bail out bankers will do that to you.

Of course, ordinary citizens already knew how bad things are because they go to the grocery story, pay for their own gas and have been scrambling to pay the mortgage for a long time.

But don't worry. Nearly three months late, the governor signed a record $145 billion state budget, nixing $1 billion out of spending for the elderly poor and the poor with children -- a budget his own money man Mike Genest called "not nearly adequate" and Democratic State Controller John Chiang, a Democrat said "was out of balance the moment it was signed."

At the county, Chief Executive Officer Bill Fujioka put a hold on new spending, including projects already approved, in anticipation of his final budget presentation in a couple of weeks.

"If I can use an analogy of sorts, we need to start storing our nuts because it's going to be a very cold winter," Fujioka said.

At City Hall, the mayor and his colleagues indicated they intended to store theirs to protect the city's pension funds, debt portfolios, possible future bond expenditures and the impact on capital projects -- and crush yours.

"If this continues in the way it has over the last few weeks, then it's inevitable that the department's going to have to look at our water and power rates," Councilman Tony Cardenas is quoted as saying in the last graph of the Times story.

A fount of wisdom, Cardenas also puts the finishing touch in the Daily News story: "We should not be using public tax dollars to reward bad behavior."

The mayor himself took a similar tack: "It's absolutely ludicrous that anybody would propose a $700-billion bailout that could go to more than a trillion dollars . . . without regulation, without accountability."

It's enough to make you laugh -- or cry, depending on your mood.

Here these people -- everyone one of them -- has squandered the public's wealth while achieving precious little for the public benefit.

And now they're giving the pointed finger to Washington and Wall Street 3,000 miles away and talking about "accountability" and "rewarding bad behavior" and the problems they face borrowing money to cover up the phony budgets they approved.

And they even have the nerve to talk raising water and power rates yet again? For what? to give DWP workers another 6 percent raise next year? Oh, I almost forgot they've already written that into contract.

     WINNER                                                LOSER

                                              

                              

           OR

Here's what "progressives" who are part of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa support team list as his achievements in just three short years and why they're gathering downtown Sunday to contribute $250 to $1,000 each ("$100 non-profit hardship")

ANTONIOthegame.doc

They've come up with a list of 32 achievements to show he's done a great job. Some people might question whether "mutual gain bargaining" is an achievement or what's mutual about 6 percent raises for DWP workers during a national economic crisis is a mutual gain. Or whether he bulldozed the South Central Farm or "developed" it. Or even whether he had anything to do with any of these things.

Success, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. So here's how to play Antonio, The Game: Just put your comments on specific achievements or failures, false claims or honest truths, in the comments sections and I will keep you posted. It's a win-win game, everybody gets to speak up. I'll keep the tally. The decision of the judge is final.

EXPANDING OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL

-This Mayor has tripled the number of youth summer jobs, from 3,000 in 2005, to over 10,000.

-He and his office have mediated the key sessions to secure new contracts for hotel workers, janitors, security officers, private waste haul drivers, and secured labor peace at the MTA and within the city through the introduction of mutual gains bargaining.

-Supported low wage workers, through the new Day Labor ordinance, support for the "Car Washeros," increased fares and appointed a strong commission to support Taxi drivers.

-Developed local hire requirements on most city construction contracts, resulting in over 1000 new paid African-American apprentices since July 1, 2006, and thousands of new local careers in the construction trades.

-Passed and defended a Living Wage Ordinance covering hotel workers in the 13 airport hotels.

-Quadrupled city job training programs. With this and other labor and workforce programs, are more than halfway toward moving 100,000 Angelenos into living wage jobs by 2010.

-Supported over 100,000 Angelenos participating in community service through 16 Days of Service, and major funding and support for two "Big Sundays." 

ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT

-Tripled the amount of clean, renewable energy sold by the DWP

-Adopted the Clean Air Action Plan to reduce air pollution at Port by 45%; working with Labor and the Environmental community to replace trucks while addressing driver standards.

-Restored water to the Lower Owens River

-Expanded curb-side recycling to multi-family housing, schools, and restaurants.

-Adopted Green Building Standards, that will reduce carbon emissions more than any other green building standard in the country.

-Developed a new 9 acre farm in Watts for 150 of the displaced South L.A. Farm families

-Working with the Apollo Alliance on a Green Retrofit and Workforce campaign.

HOUSING

-For the first time, fully funded the $100 Million Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and have done so in each of the last three years.

-Investing $200 million in permanent supportive housing for the homeless.

-Supported & signed ordinance that secured higher relocation fees for displaced renters.

-About to release L.A.'s Housing Plan, with a mixed income component.  

Forget the collapse of Amercia's banking industry and the horrible train collision in Chatsworth, forget everything and suffer amnesia with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa who is descending into the bowels of City Hall East today to show off for the TV cameras and the assembled members of media his latest achievement.

Dailynews.com reports today "'Operation Bottleneck Relief Phase IV" will use variable green light intervals and other traffic signal tweaks to improve traffic flow at an additional 60 of L.A.'s most-congested intersections, according to a spokesman for the mayor.'"

What the mayor is actually showing off is the latest upgrade to the Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control System developed by city traffic engineers 24 years ago -- the last time the city Department of Transportation did anything right -- to regulate the duration of traffic signals depending on traffic congestion.

The city's own website explains: "Based on the successful performance of the Coliseum Area ATSAC System during the 1984 Olympic Games, the ATSAC System is being implemented citywide. To date, ATSAC has been implemented at 3,100 of 4,300 City of Los Angeles signalized intersections."

ATSAC has gotten so much publicity over the years that even something called "Swindle" magazine published a lengthy story praising the system.

"L.A. traffic is the worst in the country. Rush hour can stretch for over eight hours a day. According to the Texas Transportation Institute's (TTI) 2005 Urban Mobility Study, the average peaktime traveler spent 93 excess hours sitting in congestion in 2003, and traffic jams cost each commuter about $1,600 per year in extra fuel and time lost. Yet, as costly and time consuming as L.A. traffic is, it could be worse. Much worse."

ATSAC's operations center is four stories below ground in a windowless room where traffic flow data pours in from sensors at intersections and seven large video screens show what's happening at various locations around the city.

It's not the least bit clear what if anything the mayor has to do with ATSAC or why he would claim credit for it -- unless, of course, his standing in the polls is at an all-time low, he's running for re-election and his campaign for a $40 billion sales tax hike for transportation projects is in deep trouble.

But then adding 60 more intersections -- barely 1 percent of the city's total intersections -- getting the latest upgrade to ATSAC is pretty exciting if you look at it as the mayor and political consultants.

What they see is a 60 percent increase in the 103 intersections already upgraded and can boast the mayor achieved something great to make your life better.

"According to a statement issued Sunday...(ATSAC) resulted in a reduction of 900,000 delay hours each year while reducing the average driver's time spent at red lights by 8 seconds per signal," dailynews.com reports.

California Time Bomb: Watch out for the fallout from a phony state budget and the impact of 873 bills the governor has eight days to act on

In the best of times, the legislative process produces a flood of measures in the frantic last hours of every session, many containing unnoticed provisions that pander to special interests or have explosive consequences

These are not the best of times, with the Legislature shattering all records for failing to meet the constitutional requirement of passing a state budget by July 1.

Of course, the politicians don't pay for their failure, you do. Many programs were disrupted and lives affected without state funds for three months, the budget that finally passed last week did nothing to solve the fiscal crisis they created and 873 bills held hostage in the budget stalemate are awaiting action by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The governor has just eight days to sign or veto all the bills or let them become law without a signature. Jim Saunders in the Sacramento Bee recently gave a rundown recently of what some of the 873 bills contain but I'm willing to bet a lot worse will be discovered in the coming days.

Here's a sampling of what the pols fiddled around with while California burned: Ban driving with an animal in your lap or while text messaging, banning employers from discriminating against medical marijuana users, giving driver's licenses and college scholarships to illegal immigrants, allowing churches to operate multiple bingo games at different locations but not electronic bingo that would compete with Indian casinos, require chain restaurants to post calories of menu items and exempting raw milk from bacteria regulations.

Then, there's a host of anti-business bills and the measure to set a state-run universal health care system that don't stand a chance of getting by even as half-hearted a Republican as Arnold. 

 

Trains don't kill, people do -- that's perfectly clear from the latest Metrolink tragedy and the terrible record of carnage on the Long Beach Blue Line.

Here's the facts: Metrolink has "one of the worst fatality records of any commuter rail system in the nation" with 74 fatalities this decade and the Blue Line has recorded 90 fatalities, 64 involved pedestrians, 26 vehicles, none train passengers.

That's what happens when you do things on the cheap. Safety last might well be the motto for the L.A. transit system.

The blood on the tracks around L.A. is the inevitable consequence of building a rail system at grade for the most part in a heavily-congested urban area. Subways, trenches, elevateds, grade separations are the rule almost everywhere else but not L.A.

And since we refuse to learn from our past mistakes, we are condemned to repeat them. The Expo Line now under construction from downtown to Culver City and the Westside is a prime example.

Damien Goodmon of the Fix Expo Citizen's Campaign has organized the community into an effective force to fight against street-level crossings, particularly in the area around Dorsey High School where hundreds of students have to cross the tracks every morning and afternoon.

He warns of the certainty of deadly accidents in the area and recently wrote: "MTA/Expo Authority don't have public support for their unsafe street level crossings...We need mass transit solutions, but it has to be done right, and done safely, and the impacts should be equitable across all directly adjacent residential communities."

His campaign has been so successful that the Expo Authority, set up by the MTA as a separate agency, is fighting back with its own organizing and information operation run by Dakota Communications, the same firm that used such hardball tactics in the Sunland-Tujunga/Home Depot controversy that the community became inflamed and became highly organized.

I talked at length recently with Expo Authority spokeswoman Samantha Bricker who argued Fix Expo was engaged in a campaign of "disinformation" and the record had to be set straight so Dakota was hired for its expertise in community outreach.

She patiently and carefully took me though how the costs of Phase I of  the project had jumped a third to $860 million and how it was now on track in terms of budget and completion in 2010. As she explained it, the reasons seemed rational enough as did why the line goes underground at Flower and above ground in Culver City.

What interested me most was the idea that some kind of bizarre concept of social equity is in play:

"We're meeting all the requirements of state and federal agencies for safety at the crossings," she told me. "But even apart from the costs involved, it wouldn't be fair. We had to use the same standards that applied to the Gold Line and the Blue Line."

Isn't that the point? Isn't it why the community around Dorsey High is up in arms and Westsiders are already organized and ready for war over design for at-grade crossings for Phase II of the Expo Line?

We got it wrong in the first place because our leaders don't care about the consequences of their actions.

They built the Blue Line on the cheap so they could put most of the money available into the subway from downtown to the Westside. But they only got as far as Hollywood since the Westside didn't want it for reasons that we don't need to go into.

They only got just over the hill to the Valley because they used community opposition to save money for the Gold Line. So they built the Orange Line busway on the cheap at grade.

And now they want $40 billion in sales taxes to build the "subway-to-the-sea" while leaving everybody else at risk of death when they cross the tracks and stuck in traffic congestion because the public transit system is grossly inadequate.

That's not a vision for easing traffic congestion or for protecting the lives of the people.


 

Hooray for Councilman Tom LaBonge -- he's heeded the cry of the city, given into his heart and declared his commitment to protect L.A.'s greatest historical-cultural asset from the kind of trashy developments that are destroying so many of the our neighborhoods.

A lot of people have been worried that LaBonge had lost his way and was stooging for the greedy special interests who don't give a damn about L.A. but he sent out a mass mailing this week to the public, his colleagues on the City Council and, most importantly to the mayor, asserting his own values and his independence of thought..

Of course, there are questions about the details and nuances and especially his commitment to preserve the Southwest Museum as a living museum and not let it be destroyed by the Autry Natonal Center which has yet to prove itself financially viable or respectful of the history, culture or art of the West.

But here's what Tom had to say about keeping Griffith park "a park for the people" so you can judge for yourself:

September 17,2008

Dear Friends,

Thank you for your recent communication concerning historic-cultural designation for Griffith Park. All of us share a great love for what I consider this city's most treasured and greatest gift, Griffith Park.
Currently, the City's Cultural Heritage Commission has taken this historical designation under consideration. They will be making a recommendation that, once approved, will be forwarded to the City Council for deliberation.
I have encouraged the Commission staff to have a thoughtful discussion with Department of Recreation and Parks staff to interpret exactly what a historic designation would mean to the park and its operation. I have always been a proponent of preservation. It was my idea to apply for historic designation for the Griffith Observatory in 1976. I want to make sure other buildings, like the Greek Theater, get their designation to add to the nine existing historic sites in the park.
Additionally, the second and most current draft of the updated Griffith Park Master Plan will be reviewed soon. I want to make sure that historic designation would not conflict with the Master Plan when it's adopted.
Griffith Park is currently more than 4,218 acres: One of my major goals is to expand the park to the west, especially the area near Cahuenga Peak and the Hollywood sign. Additionally, I want to connect the park to the Los Angeles River and its revitalization.
There's a lot of misinformation out there. I hike to Mount Hollywood every morning and there have been fliers stapled to trees accusing me of supporting development in the park. I do not endorse any development plans in the park. All of the items mentioned in the emails are things I rejected years ago when I opposed the first draft of the Master Plan. That is why I formed the working group to create the second draft.
If you would like to hike with me to discuss this further, please call me at my office at (213)485-3337. Additionally, on Tuesday, September 23 at 4 p.m., I will lead a tour of the park by van for all interested parties. On that same date, I will lead a hike to Mt. Hollywood from the Fall Equinox SunsetHike. See attached flyer.
I am honored to serve this City and protect and enhance Griffith Park. My primary objective is to do what Colonel Griffith Jenkins Griffith wanted: to keep Griffith Park a park for the people.

What is there to say?

You're living in fear of losing your job. You can't afford the soaring costs of gas or food. Your neighbor just lost his house and you wonder how much longer you can keep up with your mortgage. You've got no pension and your 401k is shrinking faster than you put money into it. Your kid's school is rotten and you're worried about what the future will hold for your family.

Then you find out that all those rate hikes you're paying for water and power are going straight into the paychecks of 8,500 DWP workers who average nearly $80,000 a year already and never have to worry about losing their jobs or their pensions worth 75 percent of their salaries.

And on Oct. 1, they're getting another 6 percent raise compliments of a sweetheart contract granted them by the people who take a solemn oath to serve you and protect your interests.

I can't really say you elected them since the mayor and City Council were really put into office by special interests and the biggest and powerful of those interest is Brian D'Arcy, the business manager/financial secretary of Local 18, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

You can Google and search all you want but you won't find many pictures or quotes from D'Arcy in the public record.

He doesn't need the public; he owns the public's representatives and they tremble at the thought of crossing him as if their lives or at least their careers would be at risk if they crossed hiim.

That's how he got a five-year contract in 2005 for his workers (which includes almost everyone at DWP except the top tier of executives) that provided 3.25 percent annual pay increases with an escalator clause that could lift that to 6 percent depending on inflation

This is the year when the escalator clause kicked in with a vengeance because of the high cost of fuel and food -- the year when massive rate hikes were imposed to fix the water and power infrastructure that was allowed to deteriorate because so much money was going into DWP salaries and benefits and being transfered to the city general fund so the rest of the workforce could keep pace.

Kerry Cavanaugh in the Daily News puts the actual raise this year at 5.9 percent, much of it not budgeted, and notes pointedly that D'Arcy and other officials of the IBEW "did not return calls."   

And why should they? Does the thief call up and say thank you? Is D'Arcy going to heed the pleas of Soledad Garcia, the San Pedro community activist who heads the DWP Oversight Committee to "take pity on the ratepayers."

That isn't going to happen anymore than Antonio Villaraigosa is going to invoke the "reopener" clause in the IBEW contract and demand D'Arcy go back to the bargaining table because 5.9 percent raises are outrageous and unaffordable.

Instead, the mayor offered hollow reassurances that money from rates will only go for infrastructure improvements as promised -- just like the money from trash fee hikes would only go to hire more police officers.

You know by now that a promise from the mayor is meaningless.

So the question is what are you going to do about?

Probably nothing.

You'll do what you've done for years, you'll grumble and go on being robbed by the city day after day, year after year, hiding behind apathy and defeatism as your neighborhood gets worse and traffic gets worse and your employer relocates to Arizona or Oregon and then you'll try to sell your house and find out it's worth less than you paid for it.

There is an alternative.

You could stop being a patsy. Thousands of people across the city are fighting back and in small ways they're beginning to make a difference. The politicians might be scared to death of people like Brian D'Arcy but like all bullies, he'll run for cover if enough people join together and stand up to him and the cowards at City Hall.

Out of the blue at Tuesday's Department of Water and Power Commission meeting, Board President Nick Patsaouras threw out a revolutionary idea: What if the ratepayers had an advocate for their interests inside the utility they own?

Patsaouras who has been around City Hall politics since the early Tom Bradley years has grown increasingly and publicly concerned about DWP's disconnect from the people -- an arrogance that has made General Manager David Nahai a target of increasing criticism from Neighborhood Council members and many others.

In proposing to put a motion for the Ratepayers' Advocate position on the commission agenda for its next meeting on Oct. 7, Patsaouras offered a long list of reasons from transparency to better communication with the public and community engagement, according to community activists who were present.

Nahai was clearly caught off guard.

He questioned where the money would come from to pay such an advocate -- as if there isn't some room among the 8,000 or 9,000 DWP employees or among the deadwood dumped on the DWP by the rest of City Hall.

And he suggested stalling a decision by sending the motion to the Energy & Environment Committee to study for six weeks or so. He offered to talk further with Patsaouras in private but in the end the commission rallied behind the idea and Nahai finally agreed to work on the proposal.

Members of the DWP Oversight Committee, who come from Neighborhood Councils all over the city, jumped on the Ratepayers' Advocate idea and stepped up their own efforts to get the DWP to also create an Ombudsman who would have the independence to provide another voice for the public inside the utility.

Soledad Garcia, head of the Oversight Committee, detailed what the Ombudsman's responsibilies would be and how it was an important goal for Neighborhood Councils who are still angry over Nahai's insistence that the year-old memorandum of understanding with NCs be interpreted strictly to the letter and not become an opening for a genuine public involvement.

Oversight Committee members Dan Wiseman and Candido Marez backed her up and differentiated between an Ombudsman and a Ratepayers' Advocate.

For the thousands of people who have struggled for years to make the city better in the face of official resistance, it's important to take note of how persistent and well-organized efforts of a broad-based group of community activists can begin to make a difference.

The problem isn't the people who hold power in the city as much as the people of the city don't have any power. And that will only change when community groups across the city look beyond their narrow issues and join together to change the political culture of L.A. and the dynamics of power.

It all seems a terrible dream even by my standards jaded by too many years as a newsman.

Another hurricane causes death and destruction.

Another major financial firm faces bankruptcy.

The state legislature cuts a budget deal 11 weeks after the deadline that isn't a budget at all, and actually will make the situation worse before long.

And we are confronted with the aftermath of an unspeakable tragedy in our own backyard that has investigators at war with each other as they try to determine if the engineer really was text messaging with some teenage boys as his train was heading toward disaster.

Maybe we sll should get down on our knees and pray like so many did over the weekend as they grieved for those who were killed or hoped for the recovery of those who were injured.

Nature itself seems angry at us and too many of us seemed to have lost all sense whether we're engaged in high finance or more mundane occupations.

My darkness at dawn this morning isn't just about the confluence of events this weekend. It's hardly the first time I've felt like the world's gone mad and things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

Truth is a vision of looming catastrophe has haunted my thoughts most of my life. Maybe it started with being made to crouch under my desk in grade school to prepare for a nuclear way. Maybe it was the anti-Communist fanaticism or the racism exposed in the '50s or the assassination of those with the power to inspire in the '60s. Maybe it's the endless wars and pointless ideological conflicts that have brought our society to a standstill even as we continue our addiction to materialism as if more of everything could ever make us happy.

All I know is we have to change our ways before it's too late. We have to get back to basics in our personal lives and we have to start fixing what's broken in our collective lives.

I've been in awe most of my adult life at the resiliency of our society to sustain itself even as the disparities in our society grow wider, and the divisions between us harden.

None of us is free of responsibility for the state of things. We are all going to have to change our minds about the way we live, what's really important and how we are going to get along together.

There is no evidence that our government or our civic leaders are going to be the driving force of change. Wealth and power are the strongest narcotics. Change is going to have to come from the grassroots, from ordinary people waking up and starting to do something  about the world around them.

This is as close as I can come to putting into words what I believe. It's why I've gotten involved with others who have worked for years to try to make their neighborhoods and our city better. It's why we somehow have to get others to pay attention.

The warning signs are everywhere. If we keep going on the path we're on, the tragedies will only grow larger, the breakdown of our society will only grow worse.

So put me in the doomsayer class and ignore me, ignore the trend lines that are all heading in the same direction toward a collision at some point in the future. Keep mortgaging the future and living like there's no tomorrow.

Just know this: In all our lives, rich or poor, smart or dumb, beautiful or not, all bills come due sooner or later. And when you have moments of doubt sometimes that awaken you in the middle of night, dwell on it for a while and maybe you'll change your mind and start making different choices.

That's the only miracle there is and as far as I can see, we need some miracles.
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1- Write letters to: Councilmember Tom Labonge, and to the Cultural Heritage Commission. They are both at City Hall, 200 North Spring Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012. We have provided samples below, but your own words are always better.

2- Send e-mails right now to: Councilmember.Labonge@lacity.org  & the Cultural Heritage Commission  CHC@lacity.org
  
3- Go the the Friends of Griffith Park website to submit your name as a supporter of protecting the park. http://www.friendsofgriffithpark.org/GPPreservationRegister.html  

4- Attend the Cultural Heritage Commission Meeting on October 2nd to personally voice your support for preserving all of Griffith Park as an Historic-Cultural Monument of the City of Los Angeles.

Open letter from Lee Zebold, L.A. Hiking Meetup Group

Although this hiking club was not created to be a political organ, sometimes we have to engage in a fight to preserve what we like to do.....go hiking.

Griffith Park is unofficially our home - it is where the genesis of the LA Meet Up Hiking Group began.

Griffith Park is UNDER ATTACK

I am writing to ask you to support the Griffith Family's application to the City to have the Griffith Park designated a Historic Monument in the City of Los Angeles.

ALL of Griffith Park must be protected, not just the existing landmarks (e. g., the Greek Theater, the Zoo, the Adobe House, the Observatory etc).

The interior must be protected as an urban wilderness; a green, open bastion of tranquility, unique in the City of Los Angeles.

Although public support for this application is almost 100%, right now it looks like councilman Tom LaBonge will kill the entire application as he has effectively stated is his intention to private parties. Publicly, he's using scare tactics about "infrastructure" that have no real merit... really sad, but unfortunately true. We thought he was our friend.

So without an overwhelming response from the public and community groups, this is likely to happen. What does that mean to you??? Well, they have plans on the table, and have for a couple years now, to turn our Park into a Disneyland with aerial tramways, restaurants, amusements, and other ways to bilk money out of the citizens. They will have controlled hiking trails, restricting most of the trials that we now use. Our "city planners" have long drooled at the 4400 acre Griffith Park as a tremendous resource to become a Cash Cow for the City.

I am going to create a webpage and email you all again with the link. It will have a form letter that you can use if you don't feel like writing your own letters. Of course, personal letters are more effective than form letters, but anything will help. Please write to each commissioner individually.

Cultural Heritage Commission
Office of Historic Resources
L.A. Department of City Planning
200 N. Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012

The individual commissioners are: Richard Barron, President; Glen Dake; Miriam Guttfreund Lehrer; Oz Scott; and Roella H. Louie.

Also, a letter to Tom LaBonge would be good, too....

Councilmember Tom LaBonge
Los Angeles City Hall
200 N. Spring Street
Room 480
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Hard as it may be to believe, it was just six months ago that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa celebrated his managerial triumph by getting the long troubled L.A. Housing Authority (HACLA) back in the good graces of the federal government.

The mayor boasted that HACLA "has reached an important milestone in its efforts to reform..and successfully met federally mandated reforms covering the City's Section 8 voucher program, putting the department back in good-standing and ending federal oversight of the program."

"For the first time in years, this agency is solvent, functional and in a strong position to deliver much-needed help to low-income families in LA."

Oops, maybe Antonio spoke a little too soon.

A new report from federal housing authorities -- that has gotten no visibility in the press -- says he spoke way too soon  to the tune of a $27 million problem, nearly $28 million actually.

"The Authority's accounting records showed that it improperly advanced and expended more than $27 million in restricted funds to cover its operating losses for its other programs," reported Regional Inspector General Joan Hobbs in the Housing and Urban Development Report dated Aug. 21.

"The authority contended there was no misappropriation of funds, but rather the way the accounting system presented its financial transactions; however, we were unable to validate its contention."

The focus of the audit was to see if the city was still screwing recipients of Section 8 vouchers that let them live in decent units at a price they could afford but it expanded when suspicions arose that the highly-paid HACLA head Rudy Montiel  (more than $300,000) was juggling the money without regard to federal  rules or regulations.

No surprise there, the city of L.A. doesn't believe in obeying the law.

It's not entirely clear from the audit what exactly Montiel was hiding or why he was moving the money from account to account other than to conceal losses in specific areas, but HACLA's history suggests it has a lot to do with mismanagement of Section 8 housing vouchers.

From what I can see I'm willing to bet Montiel _ who's gotten a lot of favorable media treatment -- was cooking the books to make it look like the Section 8 funding problem was fixed when he, like just about everybody else at City Hall, was doing the mayor's bidding.

And in the housing area that means carrying out the mayor's insane policy of densifying the city to "address the affordable housing crisis in Los Angeles" -- a crisis manufactured by the philosophical commitment to providing new housing to any poor person who wants to live here.

Lucille Saunders discusses LaBrea-Willoughby Coalition's infrastructure lawsuit

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Editor's Note: The Saving L.A. Project will hold another Town Hall meeting on Saturday Oct. 4 at the Charo Community Development Center at 4301 E. Valley Blvd. in the El Sereno neighborhood. The time will be announced soon.

 
 
During a town hall meeting Saturday in East L.A., Saving L.A. Project (SLAP) members voted to take positions on eight hot topic issues and is now looking for volunteers to mobilize the community activists across the city to help make a difference: 

SLAP OPPOSES THE TAKEOVER OF THE SOUTHWEST MUSEUM BY THE AUTRY NATIONAL CENTER

City Hall is rushing to shut off public debate and close the deal to loot the Southwest Museum of its valuable collection and turn this historic facility -- the city's oldest museum -- into community college classrooms using bond money from the November ballot measure put up by the LACCD.The Autry National Center in Griffith Park is lookiing to rebuild and expand its lackluster museum dramatically and has cut a back room deals with LACCD to get $12 million to convert the Southwest into class space -- an action that will rob the Mt. Washiington-Highland Park area of its most notable landmark. The deal betrays the commitment made by Jackie Autry, widow of the western movie star Gene Autry, to maintain the Southwest as a museum.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has broken his promise to protect the Southwest as a museum. Councilman Jose Huizar has done nothing to stand up for his constituents. Councilman Tom LaBonge has spearheaded the Autry's campaign which has spent large sums of money to get heavyweight lobbying support from City Hall insiders Bill Delvac and George Mihlsten of Latham & Watkins and PR man Steve Sugerman, the admitted felon. Please contact Heinrich Keifer <hkeifer101@sbcglobal.net> who is helping to put together a team that will drum up support from community groups, conduct email and phone campaigns and develop other strategies to force the Autry to live up to its commitments. 

SLAP  OPPOSES THE  LOS ANGELES COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT BOND ISSUE

Because of the LACCD's complicity in this back room deal, instigated by Community College Board member Mona Field, SLAP also decided to oppose the $3.5 billion bond issue, the district's third in recent years. 
 
SLAP  SUPPORTS THE CULTURAL HISTORICAL DISIGNATION OF GRIFFITH PARK

Kris Sabo won the full support of SLAP for a motion to support the efforts of Save Griffith Park and the heirs of Griffith Jenkins Griffith who donated the land for L.A.'s "Central Park" to get the city to declare the park a cultural-historical preservation zone which will give it badly needed protections from the city's intention to turn it into an amusement park and tourist trap. Councilmember LaBonge also took heavy criticism from SLAP activists for his role in pushing for other developments in Griffith Park even as he postures as its guardian. Contact ksabo@wildwildwest.org who will help coordinate with other groups. 
 
SLAP JOINS  THE LA BREA-WILLOUGHBY COALITION  

Headed by Lucille Saunders, the lawsuit  is aimed at forcing the city to carry out required studies of traffic and other infrastructure needs before approving new developments. Every neighborhood in the city is being negatively impacted by developments approved in ignorance -- the city hasn't made these required studies for a decade. Lucille Saunders  laid out the issues involved in the lawsuit and won support Saturday from the L.A. Neighborhood Council Coalition as well as SLAP. More than a dozen community groups have now joined the suit and the support of as many as possible will help strengthen the campaign to bring sanity and good information to the city's future development. Forms to join as Plaintiff's for the lawsuite are on the website.  They must be completed and faxed the September 11.   Contact Lucille Saunders and the website  at labreacoalition@gmail.com

Call me naive, call me stupid, slap me upside my head, but I somehow thought there was a mayoral ban on city agencies hiring outside public relations firms -- a prohibition put in place by Jim Hahn to cover his butt in the DWP/Fleishman-Hillard scandal and kept in place by Antonio Villaraigosa.

I guess when it comes to City Hall you just can't believe a word they say.

First, we learned in July that L.A. Harbor authorities were set to spend $1.6 million in public money for PR consultants to let the public and truckers know there's tougher air pollution rules at the port -- deals that were cut back to $350,000 after the mayor was embarrassed by the publicity.

Then, we exposed a series of PR contracts quietly awarded by airport authorities without competitive bidding to let international travelers know the Bradley Terminal is undergoing construction.

That led to somebody dropping a dime on the Animal Services Department's deal with Samson PR to let to the public and press know about the new spaying and neutering law. Animal Services  Director Ed Boks told me it isn't costing taxpayers any money thanks to a combination of pro bono services and monetary contributions.

Now, I find out the Public Works Department's Bureau of Sanitation -- flush with cash from massive increases in trash fees recently imposed on homeowners --  miraculously found at least $1.735 million, half of it available now, to hire PR firms to let the world know about the city's recycling efforts and intends to spend a lot more for media and public opinion manipulation over the next six years.

Trash fees undoubtedly will have to keep rising to pay those bills.

Unlike the other examples PR abuses, the mayor and the City Council have no cover story for this deal.

They signed off on it in principle nearly 18 months ago. And now Public Works -- moving with bureaucratic swiftness -- has identified eight PR firms and several dozen minority subcontractors as potential recipients of this gift from homeowners and is ready to award the contracts

Editor's Note: The Saving L.A. Project will hold a Town Hall meeting on Saturday Sept. 6 at 1:15 p.m. at the Charo Community Development Center, 4301 Valley Blvd., in the El Sereno neighborhood, following the 10 a.m. meeting of the L.A. Neighborhood Council Coalition. The goal is to form action teams to organize, research and advocate for community interests citywide. Get involved, make a difference.


We already know with certainty that Obama will win all 55 of California's electoral college votes in November, that the odds are 100 to 1 against any congressional or legislative seats changing hands and that the public will be deluged with tens of millions of dollars in campaign ads to support higher taxes.

What we don't know is if there will be a state budget by then and if there is, how disastrous will be the consequences to the quality of our lives and our future hopes.

But even the dark cloud of the state government's grotesque incompetence has a small bright side, it seems.

Mayors of California's nine biggest cities complained to the governor yesterday that the proposed cuts in funding the cities will "sweep away all money from redevelopment programs which would 'threaten to undermine one of the key tools that cities have to grow the economy,'" the Daily News reported.

Think about it, what community protests, lawsuits and common sense has been unable to achieve is being accomplished by the bunglers in the state legislature who have shattered all records with there inability to come up with a budget to deal with the $15.2 billion hole they somehow created during one of the state's greatest economic booms.

If Mayor Villaraigosa and his counterparts are to be believed -- and that's a big if -- cutting off billions of dollars to the cities, will stop or at least slow development.

I don't know about the other cities but when Antonio signs his name to a letter saying he's worried about economic growth, I have to laugh. Since when is growing the economy the goal of City Hall in L.A.?

If it really was the goal, wouldn't the city be taking steps to make it attractive to business and industry?

The truth is the city encourages retail projects with its low-paying jobs and housing construction because of the quick payoff in revenue to the city treasury -- the monster that eats the public's wealth to provide subsidies to billionaires and salaries and benefits to city workers that far exceed what's available in the private sector.

The goal of city government is city government itself -- not the improvement of the city or the lot of its residents. That's why rates, fees and taxes keep soaring and city services get worse. That's why there's a 75-year backlog in paving streets and sidewalks, why there aren't enough cops on the street, why the pipes and power grid are neglected, why good-paying jobs and the people who filled them have been making an exodus for a generation.

Not only is City Hall the safest building in L.A. in an earthquake thanks to a $350 million renovation, jobs at City Hall especially those of the politicians are the most secure as well.

They pander to the agenda of the unions and sell out to developers, contractors and consultants to get the campaign cash and support needed to keep the system from ever changing.

And it's not like Villaraigosa or Councilman Herb Wesson -- both former state Assembly speakers -- ever did anything about the long-term failure of state government which they now are so worried about impacting local government funding.

City Controller Laura Chick has scuttled the City Council's attempt to hold an illegal closed door meeting to cut a back room deal to end the political fight between her and City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo.

Wannabe City Attorney Jack Weiss, backed by council leaders Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel, introduced a motion last month in absentia making council intervention in the dispute an emergency issue and setting the closed door meeting for tomorrow's council agenda.

At issue is Chick's insistence on being able to audit programs run by other elected officials, in this case the city's troubled worker compensation cases handled by the City Attorney. Delgadillo refused and filed a Superior Court complaint claiming the City Charter does not give the controller authority to subpoena his records or an audit his performance.

The council then jumped into the fray even though if Delgadillo is right it would not have the authority to intervene in a political and legal fight between two elected officials whose positions are created by the charter.

Since the council cannot affect the dispute, its justification for freezing out the p