Antonio’s Finale: Advertisement for Himself as L.A.’s Greatest Mayor — and Putdowns to Greuel and Garcetti

Posted on April 9, 2013 by

In his eighth and final self-flattering State of the City address to Los Angeles’ four million people, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa offered an advertisement for himself as a Latino salesman for a world far better than the one he will leave behind in his hometown.

Safest, greenest, most mobile, most sustainable, best educated — the superlatives flowed from his mouth like the flood of water down the concrete L.A. River, hundreds of them, one after another, remarkable achievements of a man who sees himself as not even his lovers see him.

Except. Except who could possible live up to the legacy he said he left in what can only be described as the greatest lie he ever told after a lifetime of lying?

Certainly not Wendy Greuel or Eric Garcetti.

And that is something we can all agree on. Much as we might think Tom Bradley’s last years were the beginning of the end, and Dick Riordan’s were much ado about nothing, and Jim Hahn’s were much about doing nothing, and Antonio Villaraigosa’s were the end of what began so long ago, the years that await us offer not even the promise of hope.

Antonio said that, not me. He is better than them — and that is a terrible thought to take to heart.


Or maybe the strategic placement of Greuel — favorite honey of labor and businesss interests — as Antonio left the stage and their prolonged embrace gives us a clue that she will soon be outlining an education program for L.A. schools that big money Eli Broad can truly support after seeing his various initiatives come to so little for so long.

 

Posted in 2013 Election, 2013 LA Elections, City Hall, Hot Topics, LAUSD, Los Angeles | Tagged , , , , , | 36 Comments

Villaraigosa’s Legacy: We Thought Better of Him Than He Thought of Himself — Not a Problem for Greuel, Garcetti

Posted on April 9, 2013 by

What can you say after you said you were sorry you believed Antonio Villaraigosa could reach deep for his better self and rise to the occasion when he got to be mayor of what ought to be the greatest city in the world?

I am sorry I did everything I could to get him elected, attacking the passive and lackluster Jimmy Hahn for four years and believing from long private conversations that Antonio knew what was wrong and had the courage and ambition to fix it.

But it turned out he was just a song and dance man, entertaining but weak, afraid of standing up for what he knew was right, content to live like a millionaire at public expense and enjoy fine wine, food and entertainment at the expense of the greed merchants.

In advance of his 5 p.m. today 8th and final State of the City address, here’s what he put out to charm us with smiley faces one more time. You can tabulate the lies of fact and omission yourselves.

 

Posted in 2013 Election, City Hall, Hot Topics, Los Angeles | Tagged , | 10 Comments

The Firing of Kathy Riordan: A Window into the Depths of Corruption at City Hall

Posted on April 8, 2013 by

The simmering controversy over how and why Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa fired long time Animal Services Commissioner Kathy Riordan finally boiled over into public view today — thanks to a comprehensive report in the blogosphere, not the mainstream media.

The Daily News early in March told the story of Riordan, daughter of the former mayor, being forced out after 14 years on the commission but it was left to animal rights activist Phyllis Daugherty to report the back story of how narcoleptic Deputy Mayor Jim Bickhart arrogantly carried out orders — one that delighted him having long expressed his dismay at Riordan’s independent-minded efforts to provide sensible policies.

When Riordan questioned why she was being when the next mayor can replace the entire commission in July, Bickhart responded to her by e-mail, “If you want to raise a stink or question the Mayor’s logic or authority to make the change, I can only report that to my supervisors and they will just accept your boiler-plate letter and be done with it.”

Daugherty reports the “boiler-plate” letter is “the undated, pre-signed letter required of all Animal Commission appointees and kept on file in case they don’t vote the wishes of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. It undermines the original purpose of having a citizen oversight panel to expose questionable practices and proposals” as it was in Riordan’s case.

Her article at opposingviews.com opens a window into the culture of the Villaraigosa administration where influence peddlers spouses are appointed to the Ethics Commission, where the six-figure seats on the Board of Public Works are handed to political hacks and insiders, where the highly-paid top executives of city departments are reduced to slavish obedience to order from above.

The result is a city government that is totally politicized, totally corrupted to the point where solving L.A.’s problems and serving the public are no longer the goals of a system that serves itself.

Daugherty’s article provides a glimpse of what went on for a long time and continues to go on in one department but you can look at any aspect of city government from financial management of the never-ending budget crisis to the way the parts and libraries are run and contracts are awarded and you will find the same thing.

Are Wendy Greuel or Eric Garcetti going to change any of that? After all their years as part of it, do they even see what is wrong?

Will the Kantor L.A. 2020 Commission comprised of union bosses who helped corrupt City Hall for their own benefit or the members of the commission who have profited from it or gone along for the ride even take note of fact that the city’s real problem isn’t the economy or the budget.

The real problem is political corruption. You can be sure that no one who can do anything about that is about to stand up to it like Kathy Riordan tried to do time after time.

Posted in Uncategorized | 46 Comments

My Sunday Column: The Beauty and the Ugliness of Cities — Solve Problems Together or Suffer the Consequences

Posted on April 6, 2013 by

Everybody loves cops and firefighters who protect our lives and property so when you get a slate mailer in the middle of a heated election campaign that looks like these public servants are supporting candidates based on their personal merits, you probably take it seriously.

Not so in the case of “Glendale Firefighters for Better Government,” a totally misleading moniker for a business run out of a modest house in Long Beach. Still, City Clerk Ardy Kassakhian and other candidates coughed up as much as $1,000 for the privilege of being listed as getting its support.

Not so in the case of slate mailers with the headline “Glendale Law Enforcement Voter Guide” over the photo of a cop in his patrol car. In almost invisibly tiny print, it carries a tiny disclaimer saying, “Appearance in this mailer does not necessarily imply endorsement of others appearing in this mailer, nor does it imply endorsement of, or opposition to, any issues set forth in this mailer. Appearance is paid for and authorized by each candidate and ballot measure which is designated by an *.”

The address given for the origin of the mailer is 4700 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 1050b, Los Angeles, which happens to be the office of David Gould, a professional campaign treasurer for Kassakhian and several other candidates in this election.

Elections, even in suburban towns, aren’t quite what they were in the good old days. Consider the $51,670 that the Chicago-based National Assn. of Realtors Fund spent on behalf of local Realtor Rick Barnes.

Fortunately, money doesn’t always talk. Barnes finished seventh in a field of 12, just behind Edith Fuentes and ahead of Mike Mohill, according to the unofficial tally.

Kassakian won re-election easily. Councilman Rafi Manoukian ran unopposed for city treasurer, putting all his efforts into a $20,000 campaign to crush Measure A that would have eliminated his new post as an elected position.

The top vote-getters in the City Council and school board races were both Armenians — incumbents Ara Najarian and Greg Krikorian.

Zareh Sinanyan and Chahe Keuroghelian ran third and fourth for the three council seats and Armina Gharpetian captured third place for the three school board seats, helping to push incumbent Joylene Wagner down to fifth among seven candidates, although the outcomes won’t be final until 3,500 mail-in and provisional ballots are tallied.

“It was a watershed election in the Armenian community when so many factors came together and resulted in higher turnout,” said political consultant Eric Hacopian, who has strong ties in Glendale.

He believes Assemblyman Mike Gatto‘s targeting of Armenian Democrats back in January at the 43rd Assembly delegate selection meeting, compounded by Councilwoman Laura Friedman’s public confrontation with candidate Zareh Sinanyan over purportedly racist and sexist remarks he posted online some years ago, helped to galvanize many in the community that normally would not have voted.

“Voters always know when there is antagonism toward them and they respond when they think they are being targeted or disrespected with higher turnout. It happened with Latino voters last November and on a local level with Armenian voters last Tuesday,” Hacopian said.

Going through the contribution lists at Glendalevotes.org, it is clear this was a very expensive election for Armenians, who provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to finance the campaigns of candidates from their community from the top on down.

“We’ve seen Armenian ballot box power before, but this was special,” Najarian said. “The community made a very focused effort to get the people out to vote.”

Certainly, the campaign highlight video would showcase the council meeting where Sinanyan, thought to be an early favorite for the open seat created by Mayor Frank Quintero’s retirement, seemed to crash and burn in refusing to deny or repudiate ugly remarks attributed to him in a YouTube video despite Friedman’s prosecutorial approach to questioning him.

“They pulled out all the stops and put tons of resources into Sinanyan’s campaign as the [Armenian National Committee] candidate” Najarian said. “He needed a strong Armenian turnout.”

If Sinanyan’s 262-vote lead for the third seat survives through the final tally, it will be interesting to see whether he and Friedman, who finished second nearly 2,000 votes behind Najarian, work together or work against each other and exacerbate the rift that exists in the community.

The first test might come over who the council appoints to replace Manoukian, who is moving to a full-time job as treasurer, or whether a costly special election is held to find a successor.

In the interim, the problem of dealing with the changes falls to City Manager Scott Ochoa just as he faces difficult questions about next year’s budget and possible electric rate increases.

“My mantra with council members is they don’t have to get along with one another or like one another, but they do have to work with each other respectfully and agree to disagree, and do it agreeably. That means we as staff can do our job of serving the public,” he said.

“The moment the council gets dysfunctional, you start to see the erosion of a level of dedication, commitment and professionalism within the organization and outside the organization. If they can set a positive, constructive forward-thinking tone — where merit matters, professionalism matters, integrity matters — it doesn’t matter one iota what you are.

“The beauty of cities is that cities have to solve problems. And if they don’t, they are dysfunctional toxic cities … and everybody knows it,” Ochoa said.

Let that be a warning to one and all — or just take a drive across the city line into Los Angeles and see what happens when racial and ethnic divisions, and selfish interests, triumph over the shared sense of being part of something greater than ourselves.

It’s Getting along to run the city.

(Published by Glendale News-Press)

Posted in 2013 Election, Glendale-Burbank, Los Angeles | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

Forget Figuring Out Who’s the Lesser of Two Evils — Greuel and Garcetti — Join the Brian D’Arcy for Mayor Campaign

Posted on April 4, 2013 by

In the flood of hollow words and empty promises spewing from the mouths of Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti, none is more ridiculous than how they are going to cut the bloated costs of running City Hall where everyone feels entitled to live like a king at the pauper’s expense.

Look at these lovely facts supplied by the LA Times Seema Mehta:

Greuel’s office was budgeted $15.2 million in the 2009-10 fiscal year and spent $16.6 million. The next year, her office was budgeted $13.8 million and spent $15.6 million, according to documents provided by the Garcetti campaign.

However, during the same period, when Garcetti was City Council president, the council also spent more than its budget allocation. In the 2009-10 fiscal year, the council spent $27.2 million, about $4 million more than budgeted. The next year, it spent $25.6 million, nearly $5 million more than was budgeted.

These are two phonies whose actions speak far more loudly than their words, who have never demonstrated the least political courage, who are incapable of pulling L.A. out of its fiscal nosedive.

This isn’t a case of which candidate is the lesser of two evils; they aren’t even interesting enough to be labeled evil. They’re just empty suits playing the part of political leaders without any proven ability to lead.

That’s why the political heavyweights in the labor, business and civic culture staged their coup d’etat after the primary and set the stage to decide what course to chart to avert crashing into the iceberg of financial insolvency.

They waited far too long and lack the political will to push for the drastic cuts needed in worker pay and benefits which account for more than 70 percent of the budget.

Worst of all, the Kantor L.A. 2020 Commission is a baker’s dozen of elitists looking down from on high without having a clue about what life is like on the ground where the impact of years of destructive economic policies have taken their toll, chasing away hundreds of thousands of middle class people and making it so hard for people willing to work hard to get to the middle class.

That’s what makes Greuel’s constant abuse of the phrase “working people” so offensive because it only includes the small fraction of workers  — less than one in six — who are members of unions which are the principal source of her multi-million-dollar campaign war chest.

Unions, particularly public employee unions, once stood up for all “working people.” Today, they only stand up for themselves which is why the percentage of workers in unions have dropped by two-thirds in my lifetime.

No one epitomizes the greed of labor more than IBEW bully Brian D’Arcy who proudly proclaims it’s not his job to give a damn about anybody or anything except the members of his union who are paid a 40 percent premium over other utility workers.

It’s good he is at the table with the big shots on the Kantor Commission because without major concessions from the IBEW that will ease pressure for the planned massive DWP rate increases, no deal with other city unions is possible.

Both Greuel and Garcetti have shown time after time that they would rather roll over give D’Arcy everything he wants than risk his wrath.

Maybe we should just start a write-in campaign “Brian D’Arcy for Mayor” and get this farce over with in a hurry once and for all. After all, the big shots think he’s the smartest guy at City Hall and he definitely qualifies as evil.

 

Posted in 2013 Election, 2013 LA Elections, City Hall, Hot Topics, Los Angeles | Tagged , | 19 Comments

One Last Chance to Save L.A. — Take It or Leave It

Posted on April 1, 2013 by

Now is the time – and very likely the last time – that everyone who still clings to the belief that something great can come of Los Angeles will have the chance to step forward and make themselves heard.

At a time when unions, developers and all the other special interests have City Hall totally in their pockets and the candidates for mayor offer no hope for change, the sleepwalking “establishment,” or what passes for it, has opened the door to community activists and concerned citizens to make what I believe amounts to one last stand.

The political insiders – union, business and civic leaders – who make up the newly created Los Angeles 2020 Kantor Commission intend to restore fiscal solvency to city government and revive the local economy by spending six months talking mostly in private to people in the elite world they understand with little or no interest in what the ignorant rabble of the city have to say.

It is an “unholy alliance” as community leader Jack Humphreville labeled it. But they all are respectable people with reputations to protect even if they have all prospered to one degree or another from the creeping corruption that has now gotten total control of the system, even union bully boy Brian D’Arcy knows there is precious little to gain from further sacking of L.A.

Opportunity knocks for Neighborhood Councils, resident groups and the issue-oriented organizations fighting for quality of life issues to make themselves heard – if they will do the work of organizing, detailing specific problems and solutions and create the political theater that will turn this into the long overdue public conversation this troubled city has so desperately needed for so long.

The hard truth is this is a very tough town and if you want something you’re going to have to take it. If you want something bad enough, you just might be able to get it.

It is the law of the jungle and why greed and egotism have been triumphant for so long.

What is amazing is that it has taken five years of grinding recession and gutless fiscal mismanagement for the business, civic and labor elite to come out of the closet and out of the shadows into the bright lights of public political theater.

This is the 40th anniversary year of the revolution that toppled the right-wing oligarchs that built this town and the 20th anniversary of the mayoral campaign architects of that cabal, Richard Riordan, who formally acknowledged it had gone astray with his promise to be “tough enough to turn L.A. around.”

He wasn’t. The unions and their many developer and business allies derailed his efforts at privatization and outsourcing, took Charter reform hostage and left him he believed no choice but to go along with expanding pensions and raising salaries of city workers to able to get

Even then, it wasn’t until voters revolted and handed labor stooge Herb Wesson a humiliating defeat at the ballot box for the Measure A tax hike that his main overseer, union uber-boss Maria Elena Durazo, ordered him to surrender to an “establishment” the all too often little more than self-serving, self-glorifying and self-absorbed power brokers and the networks of power that have flourished around them.

That is what happened last week with the appointment of a politically correct panel led by Mickey Kantor, former Clinton Administration Commerce Secretary who leaped to wealth and prominence in the early years after the Bradley revolution.

Despite giving Wesson a face-saving gesture as the creator of the commission, it was an idea engineered by Austin Beutner, the equity fund multi-millionaire who dabbled in city politics as top deputy for a while to Villaraigosa and briefly mounted his own mayoral campaign.

Besides Kantor and Beutner, the world of politics provides former Gov. Grey Davis, whose budget bungling earned him a place in history as the only California governor to be recalled from office; Hilda Solis, former Congresswoman who recently resigned as Secretary of Labor with the intention of running for County Supervisor, and Maria Contreras Sweet, Promerica Bank chair with a long record in high-level political positions.

From the civic elite come David Fleming, long-time Valley civic leader and a lawyer affiliated with Latham & Watkins; Tom Sayles, USC’s public affairs vice president and lobbyist and DWP board member, and George Pla, head of the politically-connected construction firm Cordoba Corp. who was appointed as an alternate.

From the non-profit world come Antonia Hernandez, former MALDEF president and now CEO of the California Community Foundation, Kathay Feng, head of Common Cause.

From the world of labor come D’Arcy, head of the DWP’s  IBEW Local 18; Tyler Izen, head of the Police Protective League, and Ron Miller, head of the Building and Construction Trades Council – three of the most influential union leaders who use their vast wealth and muscle to control city elections.

No, this is not a group that includes a single ordinary citizen. They are all deeply involved in power games played in the city, the state and in some cases in the nation’s capital, and they are mostly firmly in the camp of Wendy Greuel, the easiest-to-manipulate mayoral candidate who has stand for nothing and says nothing.

They see the world from 50,000 feet without any sense that there are real lives being led by four million people who see their jobs and hopes disappearing, their streets and sidewalks crumbling, who see their neighborhoods threatened while the rich get richer.

This is not a commission set out to change the world any more than the Christopher Commission intended to offer more than a skillful whitewash in the wake of the Rodney King beating.

But the truth about the official cover-up and tolerance of LAPD brutality against minorities and the poor was exposed in the pages of the Daily News where I worked and the horror of the video of King’s beating aroused the community and the whole country.

The Christopher Commission’s had much to lose by perceived as part of the LAPD cover-up. The Kantor Commission members are in the same position.

Take them at their word and hold their feet to the fire.

What needs to be done isn’t a mystery.

City workers whose wages and benefits eat up 70 percent of the general fund need to take a step back to a level that is affordable. They won’t do that when DWP workers get a 40 percent premium over comparable jobs at City Hall or private utilities.

None of them will do that unless a fair short-term set of taxes are identified that clean up the budget mess a lot sooner than the 2020 as envisioned by the Kantor Commission. L.A. doesn’t have that long.

It ought to be clear that destroying neighborhoods with skyscrapers, digital billboards and one thousand pot shops and downtown with a football stadium that will never get built will not solve the city’s economic malaise.

It isn’t simply about living wages for the few or tax cuts for business or short-circuiting planning processes that L.A. will revive economically. Business-friendly is a slogan when so many people are poor that one in five households get subsidized water and power rates and aren’t expected to pay for city services.

What is needed is a new spirit of L.A. that brings all of us together working for the greater good – and that’s not going to happen with a commission looking down from 50,000 feet at the little people of no more significance than a colony of ants.

Posted in 2013 Election, 2013 LA Elections, City Hall, Community Activists, Hot Topics, Los Angeles | Tagged , , | 24 Comments

My Sunday Column: The Gadfly’s Choioce: Throwing rocks at the windows of power — or trying to make things better on the inside:

Posted on March 23, 2013 by

What would your town be like if its harshest critic had a seat at the table of power?

The question is a natural one for me to ask, as I am one of the harshest critics of what passes for a government in the city of Los Angeles. I have envisioned from time to time what impact I could have as a councilman ranting about backroom deals and policies that pandered to special interests at the public’s expense.

Not much, I concluded, unless the public was aroused and wanted real change. But Glendale clearly is not L.A. I’ve come to know and respect top city officials in Glendale, elected and appointed, for being forthright and for doing a pretty good job.

It was with that in mind that I sat down last week at Billy’s Deli on Orange Street, where one of the city’s harshest critics, City Council candidate Herbert Molano, was pecking at a bowl of oatmeal.

Call him a gadfly, call him a nuisance who jumbles the facts to suit his purposes, as many inside City Hall see him, or call him a visionary fighting for justice, as he sees himself; whatever label you apply, there’s no doubt Molano stands out from the field for his intelligence and perseverance in a decade-long campaign of challenging City Hall week after week with statistics and percentages and his own brand of insights.

How, I asked, can he look through a glass so darkly at Glendale when it seems like such a well-run city to me, a paradise when compared with L.A.?

“You’re basically talking about a totally corrupt system in L.A. and saying we’re not as corrupt,” he said. “But we have officials who lie, who hide the truth from the public and waste taxpayer money. The only reason we are living better than L.A. is because so many things were done right many years ago.”

Molano tells a remarkable story about his “Horatio Alger” life, how his mother fled hardships and turmoil in her homeland in Colombia and brought her children to L.A., where they faced more hardships balanced only by hope for a better life.

(READ FULL STORY AT GLENDALE NEWS-PRESS)

Posted in Glendale-Burbank | Tagged , | 35 Comments

The Multiple Personalities of Wendy Greuel: Who’s Channeling Through Her at Any Given Moment?

Posted on March 21, 2013 by

Well known as the mayoral candidate who is easiest to manipulate, Wendy Greuel one minute says employee unions were treated unfairly when pension reforms were imposed on them by the mayor and council without negotiations.

And then the next minute says the reforms were insufficient so she will go back to the bargaining table and get more concessions from the unions that are pouring millions of dollars into her campaign.

It’s hard to know minute to minute which Wendy Greuel is speaking or for that matter whether she even cares anymore whose words she is mouthing as long as she gets the support and money from those who matter.

People like Dick Riordan who stepped onto the stage Wednesday to bolster Greuel’s campaign as it wobbled on her vacillations and evasions on policy and her submission to the labor unions trying to retain ownership of the mayor’s office even as it tightens its iron grip on the council.

“I will help bring labor and business together to save the city,” Riordan said in announcing he will work for $1 a year as her senior adviser if she wins.

This is the same guy who a few weeks ago endorsed Kevin James in the primary saying he was “the only one running” who would keep the city from bankruptcy. “The others can’t possibly run our city well because they can’t make major pension changes. They are owned by the unions.”

This is the same guy who a few weeks earlier had taken his failed campaign for pension reform to the council only to be publicly mocked and humiliated by the ultimate union stooge Council President Herb Wesson.

I know and respect Dick Riordan well but he’s just kidding himself and us acting like Brian D’Arcy and other union leaders are going to agree to cut salaries and sharply reduce pension costs to the point that bankruptcy can be averted, services restored and the infrastructure repaired.

Throughout his time as mayor, Riordan’s biggest weakness was trying to salvage political defeats by agreeing to things he hates and calling it pragmatism instead of taking his case to the public and fighting for what he knows is right.

I also know and respect former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg well but he too was just kidding himself and us in sending out an email blast Wednesday to try to stave off a rebellion from the business community over Greuel’s flip-flops on pensions and the city budget and her humiliating promise to “stand with labor, not stand up to labor.” (Hertzberg-Greuel)

Saying he became co-chair of Greuel’s campaign because of “her authenticity, her passion and drive for excellence in city government, coupled with her proven ability to deliver tangible results for the residents of L.A.,” Hertzberg called her “the best candidate to lead our city into a new direction — one that that has its fiscal house in order, brings businesses back, and establishes Los Angeles as a hub for economic opportunity and growth once again.”

The email, headlined “Setting the record straight!,” blamed the press for Greuel’s gaffes and total failure to take a clear and detailed position on a single issue of importance.

Despite what the press is reporting, Wendy does NOT want to roll back any pension reforms enacted by the City. It’s quite the opposite. Wendy strongly believes that these so-called reforms did not go far enough to address the structural problems in our pension system.

She believes we need real pension reform — not costly political gimmicks.

So what is Greuel’s plan?

“She wants to explore raising the retirement age for current employees, and scaling employee contributions based on when workers enter the pension system. Other changes, like banning “pension spiking” and “double dipping” will also help save millions.”

If she is such “a strong leader, straight talker and honest broker” as Hertzberg describes why can’t she speak for herself and say exactly what she intends to do and how she will achieve it — or is it enough that somebody speaks for her commitment to “explore” her options when the time comes?

Contrary to Hertzberg’s assertion that “business and labor rarely agree on anything,” the truth is they agree on almost everything these days like the miserable sales tax increase that voters just rejected.

When good men like Dick Riordan and Bob Hertzberg settle for the lesser of two evils at a time of crisis and can only argue that they have more influence over Greuel than Eric Garcetti because she is easier to manipulate, then you have to wonder whether they are standing up for us — or for themselves.

Posted in 2013 Election, 2013 LA Elections, City Hall, Hot Topics, Los Angeles, Pensions | Tagged , , , | 67 Comments

March Madness in L.A. — A Soulless City Searches for the Fall Guy for the Farmer’s Field Scandal

Posted on March 18, 2013 by

It’s getting harder every day to tell the players in L.A.’s drama apart — maybe they should wear numbered jerseys at least while they mourn the loss of another National Football League franchise, an unnamed one that joins the Rams and Raiders in the city’s scrap heap.

Take Michael Hiltzik, the LA Times politically correct business columnist who on Sunday fell prostrate before right-wing extremist billionaire Phil Anschutz in idolizing how he called the NFL’s “bluff” and is the greedy league’s “worst nightmare: a potentialy team owner who can call his own shots.”

I guess all the other billionaire owners are just gutless lackeys but not Phil who spent up to $55 million to bribe and buy local and state officials, unions and poverty pimps to get $2 billion in entitlements for Farmer’s Field but is “not certain that pro football would be an unalloyed plus for his enterprise,” not anyway on “our campus” as if he owned all of downtown and not just the pieces City Hall bestowed up him.

Amazingly, Hiltzik finally has come to the conclusion that Anschutz has “done city officials the favor of demonstrating this project always amounted to a pig in a poke; he’s even showing them the ‘oink.’ ” Anschutz is certainly showing them something but it’s not an oink.

Even more incredibly, Jim Newton, the Times’ star editorial columnist, suddenly noticed the real pig in the AEG story was Tim Leiweke who owned City Hall so completely he got officials to write into the Farmer’s Field contract a provision that required him to be AEG’s chief executive or it could be killed by the city.

“Leiweke got his projects done by making sure that Los Angeles’ many interests all got something out of them. That wasn’t always pretty, and Leiweke sometimes resembled a ward boss. Labor got union jobs; community groups got parks or special treats; certain interests got donations to charity or programs for the homeless; politicians, of course, got political contributions.”

Citing leftist/labor leader Madeline Janis and downtown developers’ frontwoman Carol Schatz support for Leiweke’s giving them what they wanted, Newton turns from critic to admirer despite finding Anschutz’s Staples Center/LA Live “campus” something that is “gaudy and anonymous, a collection of chain stores and restaurants you could find in Kansas City just as easily as here.”

But in his morally equivocated world, it turns out bribery is a good thing in Leiweke’s case “he got things done . . .  The ability to deliver made Leiweke powerful. Some people didn’t like it — and sometimes for good reason. But he proved that with the right leverage and the right friends, big things could get done in Los Angeles.”

In other words, the ends justify the means because the soulless space Leiweke developed created some jobs and economic activity and replaced “a few scruffy buildings and empty lots” as if strong leadership couldn’t have insisted on something far more organic and interesting with longer-term impact for the health and wealth of the community.

Strong leadership was the problem as the statements from top two cheerleaders for this rotten deal gone nowhere, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and downtown Councilwoman Jan Perry, both of them now quite happy to rebuild the Convention Center without a football stadium.

The mayor who had insisted the AEG contract was “iron-clad” now is looking for a way out as if had not completely screwed up the deal.

Writing to woebegone City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana who is required to do the bidding of the people like the mayor that Leiweke bought, the mayor said:

“We are investing over $4 billion  into LAX to finally give L.A. the welcome mat to the world it deserves: World class destinations and attractions. A modernized Los Angeles Convention Center with an expanded contiguous floor space will help us book more and larger conventions.”

Added Perry: “Our first priority as a city is to make our Convention Center a leader by modernizing our facilities and increasing exhibition space. We want to make Los Angeles competitive nationwide, attracting more convention business, tourism, and the investment that comes with it. The bottom line is we need to have a plan in place with or without an NFL team.”

So we don’t have a plan. We don’t have leadership. We don’t even have Leiweke the Fixer anymore.

All we have is Miguel Santana. So fix it, Miguel, or you’re out. Every political scandal needs a fall guy and I’m afraid you’re it.

 

 

 

Posted in City Hall, Hot Topics, Los Angeles, NFL Stadium | Tagged , , , , | 15 Comments

My Sunday Column: Respect for the Council of Governments — The Valley’s Last Shot at Getting Its Fair Share

Posted on March 16, 2013 by

One of my first impressions when I called the San Fernando Valley my home nearly 30 years ago was that this vast middle-class enclave suffered from a bad inferiority complex, like it was populated by a lot of Rodney Dangerfields who just couldn’t get respect.

Respect – or the lack of it – is still pretty much the problem, through the failed secession movement and derailed efforts to make local government more responsive.

The last vestige of a reform to change that is the San Fernando Valley Council of Governments, a little-known and largely ignored three-year-old, quasi-governmental body that brings together the county, the city of Los Angeles and the cities of Glendale, Burbank, San Fernando and Santa Clarita.

It is little-known and largely ignored for good reason: Unlike the 20-year-old COGs that link up all the other cities in the county to get grants and public investment to improve transportation, air quality, housing and other basics, the Valley COG requires unanimity, rather than a simple majority, to take any action. With seven L.A. Council members and L.A. County Supervisors Mike Antonovich and Zev Yaroslavsky — each with veto power — on the board, that makes significant action impossible.

Unlike all the other COGS that get hefty contributions from the member governments that give them annual operating budgets in the $1 million-to-$2 million range, the Valley COG is on a poverty diet with $10,000 a year from each of the member governments — the same $10,000 from the 23,564 people of the city of San Fernando that gets one vote as from the four million people of the city of Los Angeles that gets seven votes, reflecting the number of Council districts that fragment the Valley politically.

With that in mind, I headed Thursday to the Van Nuys Civic Center for the Valley COG’s bimonthly meeting with the full intent of writing its obituary, an untimely death that could be laid justly at the feet of the seven L.A. Councilmen and the two county supervisors who feared that somehow the four smaller cities were going to gang up on them and take all their money and power.

Executive Director Robert Scott, a longtime civic leader who was at the forefront of the secession drive and other efforts to give the Valley a political voice, started the ball rolling Thursday by explaining the various ways each government entity could have an equal vote and the other issues that need resolution, such as determining what constitutes a quorum and whether a simple majority or a super majority would be required.

“I think we all realize that it’s not the easiest thing to get a unanimous vote, especially on the issues we all deal with,” said Glendale Councilman Ara Najarian, the COG’s chair. “We don’t always see eye-to-eye, except for a lot of the feel-good things like the Mobility Summit and let’s save-the-whales sort of stuff that we can all agree on.”

It didn’t take long for the hammer to fall.

Yaroslavsky’s representative, Ben Saltsman, said his boss “wholeheartedly agrees,” but the point of unanimity was “so one entity doesn’t get run over by the others.”

“I think the important point we need to focus on here is that the reason we got to … the unanimous vote was so that we knew the Valley was going forward together and it wasn’t going to be moving forward with bare majorities and 4-3 splits and a divided Valley. The point was to unite the Valley,” he said.

“So my suggestion is in the spirit of where you were trying to get the COG to go … maybe we ought to set a six-month deadline, refer this issue out to a steering committee and say in six months bring this back for a vote,” Saltsman added. “Right now, we’re just simply not ready to get past the unanimous point.”

Santa Clarita Councilwoman Marsha McLean, noting the issue has been discussed for more than a year, would have none of it.

“I don’t see why we need to wait another six months,” she said. “We already did that. We had a working group,”

Arriving a little late for a rare appearance at the COG, Antonovich, arguably one of the smartest and most effective local politicians of his generation, weighed in, saying, “The other COGs have been pretty effective. Each member has a vote and if it takes a majority as it does in the other COGs, then so be it. Each member has one vote and we move forward, and by that I mean each city has one vote and the county has one vote.”

The energy in the room suddenly changed.

“What I’m hearing is there is good news here, we want to move past the unanimous requirement,” Najarian responded.

“It was almost designed for failure the way it was put together,” Burbank Councilman Jess Talamantes said.

“The big question we have to ask ourselves is, do we want this COG to succeed and move forward in a positive direction or we’re not going to let it succeed and we’re going to put it aside…. I feel it’s very important, not only to my city but the region as well,” he said.

With everyone aboard, the COG members agreed to put the issue with various voting formulas on the agenda for a special meeting in April when other issues important to its future will be considered.

So instead of writing about the death of the Valley COG, I can say it is finally pregnant with possibilities. We might actually soon see the birth of an organization that unifies the region and gives it the platform to get the leadership and funding it needs to solve its problems, such as connecting the Metro transit lines from North Hollywood to Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena, and even Bob Hope Airport, to all Metrolink lines.

Then, like Rodney Dangerfield, we’d be laughing when we said we can’t get respect.

(Published Sunday March 17, 2013, Glendale News-Press)

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