Comments@THE GUSS REPORT-Los Angeles is roughly two months into the corona virus lockdown and its Mayor, Eric Garcetti, still mistakenly thinks it needs comforting and a shoulder upon which to cry rather than advancing plans to de-handcuff LA so it can cautiously and independently return to work, school, shopping, recreation and self-sustainability.
Rather than trusting us as adults, Garcetti continues patting us on what he sees as our collective elementary school kid head during his obnoxiously repetitive daily TV briefings.
While the Southern California television market inflicts Garcetti on tens of millions of people each day, he is the mayor of only four million. Those who live in SoCal but somewhere other than the City of LA may ask themselves why am I listening to this guy when he doesn’t represent me and what is he doing on my TV?
What we also don’t hear from Garcetti is why there is still an army of filthy motorized rental scooters out there, touched by dirty hands, dirty feet and the dirty sidewalk and his plan for when the federal government stops paying for hotel rooms for the homeless and management wants them out so tourists might someday return, as though tourists won’t know that the prior occupant of their bed was homeless.
While we’re at it, here’s more LA foolishness from the past week.
Let Them Wear Masks. . .Even Though Garcetti Won’t
A few days ago, ABC-7 prematurely cut to Garcetti’s City Hall office, showing him primping for his usual wear-your-mask-or-else posturing.
While Garcetti wasn’t wearing a mask himself, the staffer attending to him was. How very Trumpian and Pence-ist!
Also, how is it that Garcetti (like California Governor Gavin Newsom) never seems to need a haircut for his daily TV appearances, while continuing to shutter barber shops and salons for the rest of us? Marie Antoinette, much?
Something New, Something Yoo
Congratulations to Grace Yoo, the Koreatown attorney and community leader, for landing the endorsement of Jan Perry, the agreeable former LA City Councilmember, in Yoo’s quest to represent the 10th District, currently under the stranglehold of Herb Wesson.
In the 105 years since Estelle Lawton Lindsey became the first woman on LA City Council, only 18 women, counting Lindsey, have been part of it, including two current ones, Nury Martinez and Monica Rodriguez.
It appears that Yoo would also be the first Asian woman on the roster.
Since the 15 current LA City Councilmembers and the three other elected city officials, Garcetti, City Controller Ron Galperin and City Attorney Mike Feuer love celebrating “historic firsts!” as they did when Martinez became LA’s first Latina City Council president, certainly these self-proclaimed feminists will root for at least one more woman to join its ranks and offset City Hall’s current 16:2 gender imbalance among its elected officials.
Right?
Their heavily male majority hasn’t exactly been kicking booty. . .
We look forward to them stepping up to endorse, cheer on and support Grace Yoo. Otherwise, their future feminist proclamations may be seen as full of horseshit.
But, oh, watch them fawn if and when Yoo wins.
¡Wait, You Forgot Something!
On Cinco de Mayo, with the Councilmembers divided across the city and participating in their meetings via Zoom, the one chosen by Martinez to lead the Pledge of Allegiance dropped the ball by forgetting the word “indivisible.”
The error was more likely due to a lack of caffeine than a morning margarita, even though the casually attired lawmaker in question was streaming from what appears to be the backyard.
At any rate, ¡salud, niños y niñas!
Advance to the 27-minute, 45-second mark to see who it was.
They Ignore You Until You File a Claim
With Council meetings gradually resuming, April 21 felt like a good time to submit a very easy identical public records request to each City Council office to see whether they’re going to be ignored, per usual.
The request was simple: All documents showing how many people in each District signed-up for corona virus testing and how many people showed-up.
The answer, we already knew, is that those records are kept by Garcetti’s office and the County Supervisors.
Each office had 10 days to simply acknowledge the request.
Accordingly, a claim was filed against those who failed to meet the deadline, seemingly triggering a curious week-late response from Bonin’s office on May 7, which read, in part, “This office is in receipt of your email request for records under the California Public Records Act (“CPRA”) dated April 27, 2020.”
Did you catch that?
The request was submitted on the 21st, but Bonin’s staffer said it was dated the 27th which, if so (though it wasn’t so) would make their reply precisely within the mandated 10-day response window, rather than a week late.
When asked why the date was misrepresented, the first response came back that it was a typo.
But how does one mistype a 7 when they intended a 1? If you use the numbers at the top of a keyboard, the keys are typed by different hands. If the keypad on the right side of the keyboard was used, they are still two keys apart, coincidentally meeting the blown deadline.
The excuse was then switched to a reading comprehension problem. Since Bonin’s office stood by that, a new PRA was submitted for all public records requests sent to Bonin’s office since January 1 and for the dated initial response to each one, because one would expect to see a reading comprehension-induced pattern of typos and missed deadlines.
Sometimes it’s better to just say we missed the deadline, we apologize, and can we just let this one go? Had Bonin’s office done that at the time, the response would have been of course, and thank you for your honesty.
And finally. . .
Part of the problem with Garcetti’s overbearing coronavirus shutdown is that he never gave full consideration to what “essential” workers are, and whether some jobs are okay to keep doing because their very nature is socially distant.
This would be one example of that; a man 70 feet above street level changing a huge billboard advertisement by himself, hardly essential but safely socially distant. Garcetti needs a breather from TV updates to focus on solutions with a mindset that everyone’s job is “essential” to them and their family.
If Garcetti insists on keeping LA irrationally locked up anywhere near the current degree, people are going to resume their lives anyway and his words and authority will continue losing their oomph as people will shop and visit freer neighboring communities instead.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star News, Los Angeles Downtown News, and the Los Angeles Times in its Sports, Opinion and Entertainment sections and Sunday Magazine, among other publishers. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Photo: Spectrum TV. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.