VALLEY VILLAGE, WEDNESDAY - A debate between the City Attorney candidates sponsored by Neighborhood Council Valley Village,
The Valley Village Homeowners Association and Mid-Town North Hollywood Neighborhood Council will be held this Wednesday, April 17, at Colfax Charter School. The school is located at the corner of Colfax and Addison in Valley Village.
The moderator will be Dave Bryan of KCAL9 News.
Carmen Trutanich has done some good. He aggressively tackled the blight created by supergraphic billboards and the danger they posed to public safety. He has been diligent in defending the city against lawsuits.
He recently announced he would require the removal of 100 digital billboards around the city.
He also came out against the mayor’s proposal to cut Neighborhood Council budgets, stating it would violate the City Charter. That’s good, but where has he been the last few years as the budgets have been steadily reduced?
On the other hand, he broke his pledge to the voters about not running for another office and embarrassed the city and himself with his threat to arrest a city council member. He did not help his image with his bluster about possible criminal charges against AEG over the Michael Jackson memorial service at the Staples Center. Although his intent in the latter issue was to recoup the city’s costs of providing services for the event, his antics were anything but professional.
As a career legislator and attorney, Mike Feuer knows the law, but he has no court room experience.
Whether that is important to the effective management of the city’s equivalent of a law firm could be controversial. It is reasonable to assume it is important when it comes to assigning resources, prioritizing caseloads and evaluating risk. Presumably, though, he would have staff to assist him in those decisions.
Unfortunately, Feuer has been a member of one of the most inept legislatures in the state’s history.
He has supported every unbalanced budget passed in Sacramento. His support of Proposition 25 made it even easier to pass unsustainable budgets. The only teeth to the proposition – the provision of no balanced budget, no pay for the legislators – were pulled soon after State Controller John Chiang blocked their pay for passing a bogus budget.
To make matters worse, Feuer informed the Neighborhood Council Valley Village that he did not object to a lawsuit by his colleagues to sue Controller Chiang for enforcing the no pay provision.
As a board member of NCVV, I have submitted a question about a recent topic – whether Greuel’s threat of a lawsuit against the Los Cerritos Community Newspaper is worth the time and effort of the City Attorney’s office to pursue. For that matter, does it defeat the objective of public transparency?
It should be an interesting evening in Valley Village.
(Paul Hatfield is a CPA and serves as Treasurer for the Neighborhood Council Valley Village. He blogs at Village to Village, contributes to CityWatch and can be reached at: [email protected]) –cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 31
Pub: Apr 16, 2013