INSIDE INGLEWOOD-In what has become a clear pattern of abuse, the mayor of Inglewood, James T. Butts, may be responsible for the libelous and intimidating statements made in the taxpayer-funded “official” city paper, Inglewood Today.
In the last several editions, editorials under the paper's owner, Willie Brown, and city council meeting notes by the paper's assistant editor, Veronica Mackey, have closely echoed the mayor’s public comments at city council meetings.
Three residents, Diane Sambrano, Joe Teixeira and Ethel Austin, have several times been targeted by the mayor in his council closing comments. The mayor has also had Austin and Teixeira ejected by police—an action that a federal judge has declared illegal and unconstitutional.
Ethel Austin was ejected "permanently" when she called the mayor "Satan." Teixeira was ejected no fewer than four times for demanding that the Brown Act be observed and that an investigation into a murder be done professionally and properly. Sambrano was not ejected but she has been unethically addressed by the mayor and present city council members who have exhibited a lack of respect for Robert's Rule of Order even as they demand certain residents observe their "Rules of Decor."
In editions of Inglewood Today that followed each such event, Brown's ostensible editorials made defamatory and libelous remarks regarding all three residents.
In the September 19 edition, Mackey opened up her weekly column, "Eye on the city," with a statement clearly meant to intimidate citizens from exercising their rights in a democracy. " With the exception of a few residents complaining about the outcome of the election 3 [sic] months ago…" Later she picked up the drumbeat of intimidation to state that "[t]wo people complained that the hearings were set during the day…" with a tone that was not meant to be objective but to argue on behalf of the mayor.
In the September 26 edition, Brown—whom many residents have "complained" has far trio cozy a relationship with the mayor—wrote, "Joe Teixeira and Diane Sambrano have the most inflammatory comments at council meetings…" and spent an entire newspaper column attacking both residents for daring to protest the mayor and city council's behavior.
Brown's frequent defamatory remarks in his paper prompted Teixeira to serve a subpoena on Brown immediately prior to the September 25 city council meeting.
At the beginning of the same editorial, Brown took time to welcome Austin back into the fold. "She had a change of heart and went from being negative, critical and difficult to positive, cooperative and polite." Her "permanent" ban—for calling the mayor "Satan"—had evidently been reconsidered.
According to statements made by Austin, she had been evicted from her Section 8-based apartment in Inglewood shortly after her "negative" comments some months earlier. The City of Inglewood is directly responsible for her Section 8 allotments.
On the other hand, former city employees and current commissioners who made favorable remarks regarding the mayor but defamatory remarks regarding residents and former council members took to the podium at city council meetings, Brown did not chastise them.
Former HUD/HOME City of Inglewood Grants Manager for Pamela Thigpen made a display of remarkable negativity and name-calling that ended in calling a sitting councilman, Mike Stevens, "Satan. She was neither banned nor mentioned in Inglewood Today. She also did not get evicted from her home; then again, Thigpen was the person who oversaw Section 8 housing for 27 years in Inglewood.
Inglewood Parks & Rec commish Willie Agee—a regular donor to Butts campaign coffers and a person who thinks that Inglewood "has the greatest mayor and city council in the world," has at city council meetings more than once mentioned the act of wiping his ass. "I'd like to thank whoever put that phony paper in my front yard this week. I just ran out of toilet paper and needed that," said Agee at the October 1 meeting. The mayor and city council laughed but no mention was made of Agee's frequently negative comments regarding "naysayers" who protest the mayor.
Also of note is that former City of Inglewood city manager Mark Weinberg—who remains retained by the city as a "management consultant" and who also sits on the Successor Agency Oversight Board—has written no fewer than two articles in 2013 editions of Inglewood Today attacking former council members as well as implying that residents should stop complaining.
To those targeted, the pattern is clear: to intimidate residents from protesting the mayor’s possibly criminal behavior and the city council’s complicity in alleged corruption, theft and cover-ups. The fact that the paper is supported primarily by taxpayer funds is harrowing.
Official documents filed with the city clerk prove that residents are on the hook for ads in Brown’s paper that should be paid for by private companies such as CDS/Republic. The trash hauler, which was granted a 10-year contract in late 2012, is known to have taken on the mayor’s brother, Michael Butts, shortly after the contract. According to a telephone conversation with Republic’s General Manager Jay Fowler, Michael Butts is the Supervisor of Dispatch at the Gardena-based company.
Republic, a privately owned company, does not pay for its ads in Inglewood Today. The city’s general fund has been repeatedly billed for the half-page color ads, and the mayor and city council has repeatedly approved the payments during city council meetings.
According to the city's Warrant Registers, Willie Brown, the owner of the paper, receives nearly $10k monthly from various Inglewood city funds.
On April 23 the mayor and city council majority approved $8,208.00 for two ads for Republic Services. On July 9, the mayor and city council approved $5,823.00 for a single ad that exclusively featured the trash-hauling firm.
These are but a few examples.
It has also been learned that Brown is receiving state funds to be repaid out of the California Successor Agency's Recognized Obligation Payment Schedule (ROPS), a repayment schedule to the states recently dissolved Redevelopment Successor Agencies. The ROPS schedules in Inglewood are presently being litigated by the State of California owing to a great many problems that have occurred since Butts became mayor.
In a September 17 letter from city manager Artie Fields to the City of Inglewood as Successor Agency, Fields states that "the Successor Agency and the State Department of Finance (DOF) are disputing the amount of funds owed and are currently in litigation." These funds are the ones listed as the city's ROPS.
The Inglewood Today "news"paper is not free: it is paid approximately $100,000 annually from taxpayer city funds—and it is taking an ever greater price in its mayor-supervised attack on First Amendment rights to protest the gross theft of city funds that possibly allows Brown to print Butts’ attempts to prevent residents from exercising their Constitutional rights.
(Randall Fleming is a veteran journalist and magazine publisher. He has worked at and for the New York Post, the Brooklyn Spectator and the Los Feliz Ledger. He is currently editor-in-chief at the Morningside Park Chronicle, a monthly newspaper based in Inglewood, CA and on-line at www.MorningsideParkChronicle.com. Views expressed and/or conclusions reached by Mr. Fleming are his and do not necessarily reflect those of CityWatch.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 81
Pub: Oct 8, 2013