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From Frogtown to South LA, Hollywood to Westwood, Fed Up Angelenos are Joining the Preserve LA Revolution

SPECIAL TO CITYWATCH--It's been an incredible few weeks for the Coalition to Preserve LA, a citywide movement of tens of thousands of Los Angeles residents who support the historic Neighborhood Integrity Initiative that, in a few days, will be officially certified by the LA City Clerk for placement on the March 7, 2017 ballot. 

We've been honored by endorsements from working-class Latinos in MacArthur Park, Westlake and Elysian Valley (the longtime residents don't actually call it “Frogtown,” a disturbing indicator of the days when brutal gangs controlled the area) who are watching a frenzy of “zone changes” by the City Council that let developers build as big and as ugly as they wish, setting off gentrification and displacement of longtime residents that robs Los Angeles of its crucial working-class neighborhoods. 

We've been delighted by endorsements from Westside professionals, attorneys and, yes, even developers, who make up such groups as the Brentwood Hills Homeowners Association and the Westwood Neighborhood Council.  Their members, people such as Debra Hockemeyer, Sandy Brown and Steve Sann are watching staggering new surface street gridlock from the Santa Monica border to La Cienega, traffic that radiates out one, two or even three miles from the mega-developments approved by City Council members during widely acknowledged backroom deals that break the zoning rules to profit a single developer. 

We've been humbled by endorsements from important journalistic voices in South Los Angeles and Mid City, from two inspiring women who publish small, but respected, newspapers — Gloria Zuurveen of Pace News, and Dianne Lawrence of The Neighborhood News, and from the iconic Los Angeles Sentinel columnist Larry Aubry. All of them are appalled at plans for Cumulus, a 30-story luxury skyscraper in a single family neighborhood of South LA on La Cienega Jefferson Boulevard that sped through the rigged system that lets developers build whatever they wish, regardless of the zoning and rules. 

We've been energized by endorsements from Richard Close and Cindy Cleghorn, who represent the trademark activism of the 1.8 million people in the San Fernando Valley and its foothills., a polyglot working-class and middle-class world where $2,500 one-bedroom buildings fashioned like inhumane glass cubes, approved in backroom deals with individual City Council members, are creating a devastating domino effect, prompting other landlords along the same blocks to slap on a coat of paint and dramatically raise their own rents, too, now that the area has been made “hot.” 

We've been thrilled by surprise endorsements from film stars Leonard DiCaprio, Kirsten Dunst, Garrett Hedlund, Chris Pine, Joaquin Phoenix and Chloe Sevigny, who are watching attempts by developers to transform such wonderfully livable areas as Silver Lake, Echo Park, Los Feliz and Studio City — all at risk of becoming the next Hollywood, California's most richly historic district that is now being methodically destroyed by the City Council to make way for skyscrapers. 

We've been invited to meaningful meetings and phone chats with aides to City Councilman David Ryu (the sole Los Angeles City Council member who is interested in reforming that body's broken system of planning and developing Los Angeles), we've met with Mayor Eric Garcetti in his gracious and huge Old World conference room, and we've sat down with City Council President Herb Wesson. The meetings were all at their request, all to determine whether any serious reforms of City Hall's rigged system could be rushed into law, to stop the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative from appearing on the March ballot. 

And during all of this time, we've been pummeled by much of the Los Angeles media, whose political reporters have yet to raise a finger to conduct any credible investigations of how these backroom deals between individual City Council members work, in which the council member accepts money, gifts and wining and dining from a developer. What actually goes on, and how, when City Council members privately agree to help that developer break the rules to build an outsized project such as the Martin Cadillac development in congestion-jammed West LA, or the towering Frank Gehry blob at the already gridlocked entrance to Laurel Canyon, yet another community under threat of destruction? 

In the current state of Los Angeles journalism, of which I was an avid member for 35 years, business reporters have yet to produce a single report on how the backroom game pencils out, in which global financiers and developers have flooded LA with unwanted and unaffordable luxury rentals, yet still bring in plenty of profits while sitting on empty $8,000 penthouses, ghost condos and half-rented $3,500 rental towers. The city housing department admits to at least a 12% vacancy rate in these overbuilt glass boxes with which the City Council is fixated, their key source of campaign funding and evenings on the town. Yet for everyone else in living in Los Angeles, the vacancy rate is close to zero. 

But that's OK, the campaign itself will probe these greed-driven deals, thanks to our crew that includes award-winning journalist Patrick Range McDonald, and the folk hero who stopped the $465 red light camera tickets by investigating the city's phony claims about what causes auto accidents, Jay Beeber. 

All of this makes even more compelling the evening I spent on September 14 in a church in Westwood, where the Westwood Neighborhood Council endorsed our measure 8 to 1 — a key victory in the block by block battle to reform City Hall. 

The room was oddly stacked with men from hipster neighborhoods east of Hollywood, who argued with passion that Los Angeles must become a city of towers and skyscrapers and give up its unique big-city, small-city lifestyle. Our paid opposition was there as well, a team slickly financed by three global development billionaires who have everything to gain from keeping City Hall's rigged backroom dealing intact: The Lowy family of Australia that controls $68 billion worth of Westfield Malls globally: Miami developer Sonny Kahn who controls, with his cousins, Crescent Heights Inc., which has filled Florida’s beachfront with skyscrapers; and Robert J. Lowe, the billionaire multinational luxury resort developer based in Los Angeles. 

For me, among the voices who spoke eloquently for the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, including respected former LA Building and Safety Commission Chairman Joyce Foster, and lifelong community defender Sandy Brown, the one who stood out was a soft-spoken developer trained in economics at UCLA who asked the Westwood Neighborhood Council to endorse our citizen initiative. John K. Heidt explained that “I am committed to following the rules, but I am competing in a system that favors the developers who create special relationships and are exempted from the rules.” 

Heidt serves on the Permanent Supportive Housing Committee of the Ocean Park Community Center to help move the homeless into meaningful housing, and is not the first decent, fair-minded developer to back the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. Heidt didn’t want to talk to the Westwood Neighborhood Council about the sexy and most-discussed element of our measure, which bans for two years the 5% of development in Los Angeles that is breaking the rules, destroying neighborhood character and jamming up the narrow or already overwhelmed streets where these projects do not belong. 

Heidt wanted to talk instead about the profound reforms at the heart of the measure, that force our pay-to-play City Council members to end their backroom deals that soak up an enormous amount of their time and their staff’s time, and pivot back to their real jobs— long abandoned — of planning what Los Angeles should become during the next few years. 

This planning, which is done in every well-run city but, incredibly, is not done in Los Angeles, means the writing of a General Plan that explains where and how the City Council plans to provide us our long-promised and far too rare city parks and protect our open spaces, how our council members plan to overcome their repeated failure to address our streets, sewers, water availability and overtaxed safety services, and — just one element among these many pressing needs — where and how Los Angeles will add office buildings, stores, restaurants and rental units over the next five years. 

Even more important, through the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, voters will force the City Council to update the city's 35 Community Plans, the Airport District Plan and the Harbor District Plan, and as a new lever of power, we will require the City Planning Commission to hold all of its Community Plan meetings out in the neighborhoods --- and the meetings must be held at night and on weekends only. 

This deceptively simple new lever of power brings the debates over what Los Angeles should become directly back to the neighborhoods, a radical change that will all but end the sparse downtown City Hall 10 a.m. hearings that few working people can attend, and which I, as a journalist, noted were dominated by the “suits,” the paid lobbyists for the developers. 

It is through the Community Plans that the city's badly backfiring policies will finally be debated and influenced by the residents themselves, on such topics as Small Lot Subdivisions (city records from 2005 show that these towering, skinny, $1 million homes were supposed to be affordable housing for first-time buyers), Mansionization (the latest fix falls far short for many areas of the city), Airbnbs (city planners and the City Council are clueless about how many affordable units are being lost to this trend in touristy areas such as Venice that cannot afford to lose a single apartment unit), and Granny Flats (city planners and the City Council are unprepared in their rush to correct their illegal “second dwelling” policies, quietly implemented without community debate in a backroom meeting years ago). 

Wonky, yet far more important than anything else, the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative is behavior modification aimed at the Los Angeles City Council. This historic citizen initiative forces these 15 elected leaders to do their jobs, requiring them to pivot away from their wildly inappropriate roles as closed-door real estate dealers — a job for which they are woefully unqualified. 

The Neighborhood Integrity Initiative hands power to the communities, something that should have been done decades ago.

 

(Jill Stewart, a former journalist,  is campaign director for the Coalition to Preserve LA, sponsor of the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative.)

-cw

Edmund D Edelman: Great Man Passing

REMEMBERING ED EDELMAN-Toward the end of the film “To Kill A Mockingbird,” Alabama lawyer Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) has just lost his case defending a black man, Tom Robinson, who had been unjustly accused of raping a white girl. Dejected, and bearing the heavy moral burden of having failed the local black community, he walks down the aisle to leave the courtroom. As he does so, all the black townspeople segregated in the “colored” balcony solemnly rise to their feet out of respect for his effort on their behalf. His young daughter “Scout,” seated with them, peers over the rail, oblivious, until she feels a tap on her soldier and hears a gentle whisper from the Negro Baptist preacher, Rev. Sykes. “Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passin’.” 

I thought of that scene when I received a call from a longstanding friend that my former boss, Los Angeles County Supervisor Edmund D. Edelman, had just died at the age of 85 a few minutes earlier. “I didn’t want you to hear it first on the news,” she told me. 

Ed had suffered terribly over the last several years from Atypical Parkinsonism, a neurodegenerative brain disorder that gradually robs those afflicted of the ability to move or even speak. It was almost too painful to imagine the man I spent five years working for in the County Hall of Administration, who played tennis regularly and always insisted on taking the stairs instead of the elevators up to his eighth-floor office, reduced to this enfeebled condition and utterly dependent on round-the-clock attendant care. I have to believe that his death came as a release. 

With his quiet and determined decency, Ed had more than a little Atticus Finch in him. He entered politics the old-fashioned way: attending public schools, serving a hitch in the Navy, graduating from UCLA in political science and UCLA Law School. He served as a staff counsel for legislative committees in Washington and Sacramento, and at the National Labor Relations Board, before making a successful bid for public office in 1965, running a mildly insurgent City Council campaign to score an upset victory against a popular establishment-backed incumbent. 

During his time on the City Council, Ed was a quiet but committed rebel. He criticized police abuse, stood up against censorship, defended civil rights, pushed to fluoridate the City’s water supply in the name of dental health, and tirelessly advocated to improve public services. 

Shortly after beginning his third Council term, a position opened up on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, and after a hard-fought contest, Ed was elected in 1974 to represent the Third District, which at the time stretched from the northeast San Fernando Valley down through Hollywood and the Westside, across the city to take in part of downtown, and included unincorporated East Los Angeles and southeastern cities like Bell and Commerce. 

Though he lived on the Westside near his beloved UCLA, Ed was always proud of his service to his Eastside constituents. He didn’t speak Spanish, but his field staff did, and they made sure those unincorporated communities were properly taken care of. Thanks to Ed, the roads, parks, and public services were considered much better than in the neighboring cities. In 1990, after a successful voting-rights lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice, the ACLU, and the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a federal court scrapped the Board’s gerrymandered district map and redrew the lines, shifting Ed’s district west of downtown to include more of the San Fernando Valley, the Santa Monica Mountains, and the coastline, stretching from Venice up to the Ventura County line. He quickly embraced the issues and concerns of his new constituents—wilderness and open space preservation, fire safety, coastal environmental protections—with the same enthusiasm and commitment he had formerly served the Eastside. 

His signature issues centered on an abiding commitment to serving those in need, ranging from abused and neglected children and battered women to the medically indigent, the mentally ill, the homeless, and the transit-dependent. Representing the area of West Hollywood both before and after it formally incorporated as a city, he embraced the LGBTQ community and called for improved AIDS care and treatment and protection against discrimination long before it was popular or even acceptable in many political quarters. 

He was also a champion of the arts, representing a district that initially included the Music Center and the future site of Walt Disney Concert Hall (a County project he helped initiate thanks to generous founding gifts from Walt’s widow Lillian Disney and their two daughters), as well as the Hollywood Bowl, the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. An amateur cellist who practiced regularly on his lunch hour across the street at the Music Center, Ed was fiercely protective of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and LA Opera, and invigorated the County’s grant-making Arts Commission with dynamic new leadership and increased funding. 

Nor did he shy from confronting controversial issues that he deeply believed in. He reviled Howard Jarvis and Proposition 13 for its negative impact on local government taxing and spending authority, despite the measure’s enormous popularity with the public; he cajoled a reluctant Sheriff Sherman Block into embracing a sweeping set of reforms after a spate of alarming officer-involved shootings; and he tirelessly (but unsuccessfully) pushed to expand the number of supervisors to create smaller and more responsive districts, and establish an elected County Executive to emulate state and federal constitutional principles of checks and balances through a separation of executive and legislative powers. 

One of his final acts before retiring in 1994 was to successfully broker an agreement to end a contentious decade-long development battle in the Santa Monica Mountains and acquire and preserve nearly 700 acres of prime wilderness open space for the state parks system. 

Retiring by choice in 1994 well before the County adopted term limits, Ed went on to a successful career as a mediator and arbitrator, policy fellow at the RAND Corporation, and consultant on homelessness and other issues before he was felled by his illness. He was truly a committed public servant to the very end. 

On a personal note, I will always be more grateful than I can express for the opportunity Ed gave me as a former broadcast and print journalist, when he recruited me to change careers and join his staff as communications deputy. Apart from serving an honorable and honest public official, I experienced firsthand how much good the public sector could accomplish with capable and dedicated leadership and staff, and I made some of my closest and most respected friends. 

Working for a real-life Atticus Finch was a rare privilege that I will always cherish. So stand up, Los Angeles. A great man has passed.

 

(Joel Bellman is a former Communication Deputy to Los Angeles County Supervisors.  This piece appeared originally in Fox and Hounds.)  Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

City High Charter School Has Locked Its Doors and Stranded Its Pupils

EDUCATION POLITICS--Why? Why Is This A Thing

Why is the public afforded no right to follow its public monies behind the privacy hedge of unaccountable Charter Schools? What’s it feel like to wake up one morning and discover your school has simply closed

I’m guessing a whole jumble of feelings vie for primacy from angry, sad, betrayed, scared, anxious, small, vulnerable, unimportant … I’m guessing there’s a huge range of PTSD symptoms, none of which encompases, critically, any feelings at all that happen to be conducive to learning: supported, encouraged, bolstered, trusted, buoyed, secure, powerful, competent.

If the high schoolers of City Charter School on Olympic Blvd in West LA weren’t so busy scrambling to enroll in a new school one month after the start of the school year, we could ask them. Because over last weekend, reportedly, or perhaps as late as Monday night for some, that community was gathered together and informed it would imminently be no more.

As the mother of teenaged high schoolers, I can testify personally to their fragility, susceptible to hormones and insecurities and a pressurized academic system at the mercy of Big Testing, High-Stakes, Big Business.

But as a veteran of some 18 years of overwrought admissions-induced panicking parents, it is worth remembering that empirically, kids command remarkable stores of resilience. Subjecting kids to a churn of insecurity will affect their immediate learning achievement, but it is the crisis of vulnerability that determines their plight as political collateral.

Expendable accessories to Education is what these kids have become. 

Because for all intents and purposes, Charter schools are corporate educational entities that are not accountable to anyone, and sustain no corporate responsibility for the welfare of their constituent client-students. There is no accountability for Charter School’s finances, not for their academic integrity, not for their functionality, nor for betraying their – our – kids.

We do not know why City Charter HS closed its doors, and because it is not a public entity, we cannot compel verification that low enrollment is a precipitate. Unlike in a truly public enterprise there is no means to investigate the school’s financial jeopardy. Meeting minutes from 2015 reference ongoing enrollment and extreme financial hardship but financial data is not presented and there is no surety that these vestigial minutes will not disappear anon. There is no way to monitor the institution and its public monies for efficiency, fraud or equity.

So even as “public Charter Schools” pocket public monies privately and insist on the fallacious moniker, and even as a boardmember of this de facto private corporation campaigns for a seat on the public schoolboard he has pledged to dismantle, yet as members of the public we have no mandate to scrutinize the foundational hallmarks of nominally public Charter institutions: financials, constituency and governance.

Time and again Charters unveil what is truly pernicious about them. They are designed as entities to circumvent accountability and reassert politically unacceptable advantage. It should not be a surprise when repeatedly they are felled by hubris and disregard. 

The political history of mankind is a struggle between limiting malfeasance and unleashing the human spirit. There never has been an institution public or private that does not require checks and balances, for these institutions are run by people with vested and competing interests. Until we design our schools’ top priority to be the educational interests of our students individually, and not their derivative monetary value, our children will inevitably be burdened and disserved, with the cost of their betrayal shouldered by the public, borne by each and every individual child personally.

Best of luck to the flood of City Charter students dissplaced, midyear. The good news is that our public schools are still here, still excellent (if flawed), available and open to welcome them as learners.

I apologize as a voting citizen, for unleashing on them this Charter school system which is so unaccountable to you my children, its students.

(Sara Roos is a politically active resident of Mar Vista, a biostatistician, the parent of two teenaged LAUSD students and a CityWatch contributor, who blogs at redqueeninla.com)

-cw

Is the Road to Charter School Accountability Paved with Good Intentions?

EDUCATION POLITICS--It’s 9/11. Read the recollections on the web. Watch the tributes on television. Ponder. And please remember that Democracy was the target. The cornerstone of Democracy is public education. Can we redouble our efforts to save and support public education? 

The Wall Street Journal says elected school boards are passé -- especially in big districts. 
Last week, blogger Peter Greene, aka Curmudgucation, told us:

Behind the paywall at the Wall Street Journal, Chester Finn (honcho emeritus of the Thomas Fordham Institute,) Bruno V. Manno (Walton Foundation) and Brandon Wright (Fordham) are happy to announce the death of one more piece of democracy in this country.

“The trio reports that charter schools are spearheading a "quiet revolution" in local control. Because, like Reed Hastings (Netflix), they are happy to see the local elected school board die.

“Oh, the elected school board was fine back in the day. ‘This setup functioned well for an agrarian and small-town society in which people spent their entire lives in one place, towns paid for their own schools, and those schools met most of the workforce needs of the local community.’ But this set-up does not work for a ‘country of mobile and cosmopolitan citizens.’ Not with money coming from the state and feds, and not when ‘discontent with educational outcomes is rampant.’ What does that mean? Where is the evidence? What do you mean?! Didn't you hear him? The discontent is rampant! Rampant, I tell you!

“Also, they want you to know that some school districts are really, really big. So big that elected boards are no longer "public spirited civic leaders" but are now a "gaggle of aspiring politicians and teacher-union surrogates." Because gaggles of aspiring politicians are far worse than gaggles of aspiring financial masters of the universe. Hedge fund managers are known for their altruism -- remember how altruistic Wall Street was back in 2008? Not that these guys are going to mention that the folks behind the “great charter revolution” are mostly hedge funders and money changers.” 

There’s more at Curmudgucation.blogspot.com. 

El Camino Real = the Royal Road

After blaming its own alleged financial violations on the Los Angeles Unified School District for failing to provide enough oversight of the independent charter school, El Camino Real Charter High School is refusing to hand over the investigative report it commissioned. That’s rich.

Such is the Royal Road to charter accountability in California.

El Camino can’t quite get its story straight on the reasons it’s hiding the report. The Royal Road’s attorney says it’s because the report contains personnel matters. If the report is used for a personnel evaluation, that evaluation is subject to confidentiality, not the report. Just like a report about a robbery would be public, and then also might be used in a personnel evaluation that would be confidential. Just like an iPad contract would be public, and the evaluation of the superintendent who might have fixed it would be private. Other examples abound.

Then there’s the Royal Road’s argument that it’s covered under attorney-client privilege, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.  

The investigative vendor, Oracle Investigations Group, is not a law firm. How can its report be covered under attorney-client privilege?

If the school’s attorney commissioned the report, it seems that would have been part of the discussion when the president of El Camino’s board asked his board colleagues to approve the hiring of Oracle. But it never came up.

The Los Angeles Daily News reported that discussion back in June:


“Now the El Camino high board of directors has decided to launch an independent financial probe of the popular principal’s spending. The forensic accounting comes ahead of a year-long management assistance review by a state financial turnaround agency prompted by the credit card scandal.

“I want guidance from agencies to tighten up the (school fiscal) policy,” El Camino board Chairman Jonathan Wasser said after a unanimous vote late Wednesday to pay for the probe of its principal. “I believe in due process.

“We need to have the forensic accounting look over all the information because it’s big, and I’m not an accountant, and it requires somebody trained to look over the evidence.”


El Camino might not be an outlier. 

Everybody's doing it


In this KPCC report, charter schools advocates are blaming school districts' lack of expertise in oversight for the ACLU's recent report showing 1 in 5 California charters illegally discriminating in enrollment. They say it's all just a big mistake and if the school boards had the expertise, they could have just told the charter schools to stop requiring a birth certificate or a student essay or a parent's volunteer contract in their enrollment packets. A state oversight commission would seem like a good idea if you wanted to focus on one appointed board instead of all these hundreds of pesky elected school boards throughout the state. 

The wild, wild West


The Washington Post asks, “How messed up is California’s charter school sector? You won’t believe how much.” Education reporter Valerie Strauss gives her column to Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education (NPE) who visited the “wild, wild West” to write a report on California’s charters. I’m glad to have had a chance to sit down with her and highlight the lowlights. The report is the first of four she will be writing.

Perfect timing! There are two charter accountability measures on the Governor’s desk.

Legislative update


Is the Charter Schools Association supporting El Camino’s earlier call for more oversight by urging its members to push the governor to sign them? Nah.

In an email to its members, it urges:

Ask Governor Brown to veto AB 709. AB 709 would apply a series of conflict of interest laws to charter schools. CCSA opposes AB 709 because it would impose Government Code 1090 on charter schools, remove important flexibility for charter school governance, and cost charter schools time and money spent on compliance that is better spent in the classroom. AB 709 is nearly identical to a conflict of interest bill from the last legislative session that was opposed by CCSA and vetoed by Governor Brown.
 
Please help us ensure Governor Brown hears loud and clear that AB 709 is bad for charter schools and charter school students, and should be vetoed. Send a letter today!”


At last count, the CCSA was looking for 8,350 more letters.


The CCSA is also urging passage of AB 1198 – Assembly member Matt Dababneh proposed this bill to help charter schools buy or build facilities or refinance existing debt, even through personal deals with their own board members. 1198 passed through the legislature unanimously.

The NPE is circulating its own letter:
 
“It is time for sensible regulation of charter schools in the State of California. Stories of illegal selection practices and even outright fraud and corruption are far too commonplace. Millions of tax dollars are wasted, even as millions more are drained from public school districts.

If you have not read our recent report on California charter schools, please read it now.  You can find it 
here.
 
Write Governor Brown today. We make it easy. Just click 
here. Ask him to sign two bills that are sitting on his desk today.
 
AB 709 requires charter schools to abide by the same oversight as district public schools, like the Brown Act and the California Public Records Act, because they spend public funds. Yet this reasonable measure is being fought by the powerful California Charter School Association lobby.
 
SB 739 puts a stop to one school district approving a charter in another district. It’s hard to believe this is allowed, but it happens. This bill would allow charter authorizers to place charter schools only in their own districts.
 
Write today by clicking 
here. Then share the link with neighbors and friends.”
 

I listened in on a short conference call about AB 709, with its author, Assembly Member Mike Gipson, State Treasurer John Chiang, LAUSD Board member George McKenna, Anaheim Superintendent Michael Matsuda, the California Teachers Association, the ACLU, and the Center for Popular Democracy -- and now you can, too.

My favorite school district


Last week, the LAUSD board held its first Budget and Facilities meeting at which board members were asked to bring ideas for the year’s agenda. I was told no one mentioned Prop 39, which requires school districts to hand over empty classrooms to charter schools. I was told no one mentioned bond measures. 

Tuesday, September 13th is the first Curriculum and Instruction Committee meeting. 10 a.m. In the Board Room.

 

(Karen Wolfe is a public school parent, the Executive Director of PS Connect and an occasional contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

Valley Village: Corruption Out of Control … Lopez Meeting Vetoed

CORRUPTION WATCH-Power corrupts, and corruption destroys, but corruption breeds something worse – a grandiose sense of hubris. The attitude that “I can do whatever I want and screw you” describes Valley Village’s Councilmember Krekorian. 

Councilmember Krekorian’s hubris is not misplaced. He is the absolute ruler of Council District 2 where there are no laws. Rather it operates at the whim of the councilmember. If you want to destroy historic homes? No problem, someone in CD 2 will ring up City Planning’s Office of Historic Preservation and you can be certain the historic home will be bulldozed. 

Concerned about the loss of affordable housing in established neighborhoods? No matter who you are, Krekorian ignores you. Assemblywoman Patty Lopez, who district is contiguous to Valley Village and who therefore will be directly impacted with a rise of homelessness in this area, requested that the City Planning Department take the time and effort to meet with her so that the housing crisis will not worsen. With Krekorian’s blessing, Garcetti’s Commission rejected out of hand Assemblywoman Lopez’ request for a meeting. 

Assemblywoman Lopez’ focus on the needless loss of affordable housing is allegedly shared by the Mayor, Councilmember Krekorian and the LA City Council in general which declared homelessness to be a crisis. That is all propaganda PR for the March 2017 re-elections. All the units which Raffi Shirinian’s Urban Blox will destroy are rent-controlled units and none of the new units are affordable. However, the behind-the-scenes secret dealings with politicos to push through Raffi Shirinian’s Urban Blox destruction of affordable homes is more nefarious. 

The Theft of State Property 

The long established rule in California is that city streets belong to all the people of the State. “It is settled that the public streets of a municipality belong to the people of the State,” it is stated in Keller vs. City of Oakland (1921 Calif Supreme Court) 54 Cal.App. 169. 

Krekorian and his cohort Raffi Shirinian recognize that Shirinian’s destruction of poor people’s homes requires the theft of state property. According to City documents, Shirinian’s entire project is 42,342 square feet and about 14,070 square feet (33% of the land) is being stolen from the State of California. Weddington does not even belong to the City of Los Angeles and certainly it is not the personal property of Councilmember Krekorian, even though he treats it as such. 

Weddington Street (photo left) sits between Shirinian’s south side of Weddington and the parcel to the north. Weddington Street is 60 feet wide. That means that without Krekorian’s ripping out all of Weddington Street’s 14,070 square feet and giving all that land to his buddy Raffi Shirinian, there is no viable project. 

Instead, Raffi Shirinian has a small parcel south of Weddington and a small parcel north of Weddington which are unconnected to each other. Neither parcel is large enough to support the cost of destroying the nine homes of the poor and disabled people now at stake, but with Krekorian’s gift of the connecting State property, Raffi Shirinian now has enough acreage to construct his 26 high-end homes. 

Giving Away State Property Makes Money for Corrupt Politicos 

It has become quite the rage for councilmembers to give away city streets to their friends and campaign donors. (More about how that works later.) The target can be any dead-end street or cul de sac. A councilman like O’Farrell declares that the street is no longer necessary and councilmember’s friends get to incorporate what used to be a public street into their property. This ploy is favored by the wealthy who want to live in illegal gated communities. Because gating off a public street is unlawful, the councilman simply gives the entire dead-end street and -- like magic -- the landowners now have a private driveway where there used to be a public street. 

But Weddington Street is used all the time as a street. The residents have showed how it is being used by the neighborhood children as a play area – and as a dead-end street, it lacks the dangers of a through street. It provides on-street parking for about fourteen cars. After this project is constructed, none of these current residents will have any place to park; there will be no play area for children. The street also serves the function of providing open space in a residential neighborhood. In fact, any city that cared one whit about the quality of life of its citizens could make the intersection of Weddington and Hermitage much safer by installing a modest roundabout. 

A roundabout is a circle often filled with flowers which is placed in the middle of an intersection so that cars cannot speed directly down the street, but rather, when they come to the roundabout, they must slow down and drive counter-clockwise around the circular garden. 

We Know that this is Corruptionism 

We know that this gift of Weddington Street to Raffi Shirinian is slow-motion corruption which could be stopped dead in its tracks – except for the overwhelming hubris that the unanimous vote trading pact has created in city councilmembers like Krekorian. Krekorian knows that no councilmember will mention the fact that there is no basis – other than cronyism - to give Raffi Shirinian 14,000 sq feet of state land. Rather, the City Council will unanimously approve this additional bit of corruptionism. 

Judges are very familiar with how this delayed compensation-bribery system functions. While on the bench, many judges are very nice to insurance companies, real estate developers, and other business interests. Then when they retire on fat pensions, the judges go to work as arbitrators and mediators for insurance companies, real estate developers and large “downtown” law firms. These ex-judges can pull in $750 an hour. How does anyone tie their bizarre rulings on the bench with the generous compensation which they receive after their “retirement?” There is no way. 

There is no way to trace future campaign contributions to Krekorian or to his deputy Karo Toussian, who is running for Council District 7, to this deal with Raffi Shirinian or to the deal whereby Krekorian needlessly destroyed Marilyn Monroe’s home. 

The Los Angeles City Council’s Unlawful Vote Trading Pact Makes Los Angeles Safe for Criminals 

This gift of state land to Raffi Shirinian is the result of LA City Council’s unlawful vote trading pact. Each councilmember agrees to vote YES for every construction project no matter how corrupt, and in return, each councilmember is guaranteed the same “respect.” This type of “respect” is also known as “omerta.” In other words, “I won’t talk about your illicit deals if you don’t speak about mine.”

 

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams’ views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

 

The Mayor Gets an Ultimatum: Bar Backroom Meetings with Developers! Leaked Letter Tells What Happened.

VOX POP--Mayor Eric Garcetti has vowed to ban ex parte backroom meetings between developers and his planning commissioners, conceding to a demand by the Coalition to Preserve LA Described by the Los Angeles Times as a “burgeoning” movement, the citywide Coalition is fighting pay-to-play corruption at City Hall through the reform measure known as the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. 

The LA Times reports that Garcetti’s plan to issue an executive directive to prohibit such private meetings is “part of a bigger attempt to fend off [the] hotly contested” Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, which the Coalition aims to place on the March 2017 ballot.

In an August 17 letter to Garcetti, the Coalition and its supporters offered four reforms to improve LA’s broken planning and land-use system. For the first time in memory, City Council members and the mayor have agreed the system is broken. The Coalition demanded:

— Developers and their special interest lobbyists must no longer be permitted to choose the consultants who literally write Environmental Impact Reports for their own developments. This obvious conflict of interest must be banned.

— There must be a clear and transparent process, including fast-tracked deadlines, for crafting the new Los Angeles General Plan that empowers the people to chart the future of our own city, slashing the undue influence of developers and their lobbyists at City Hall.

— Spot-zoning exceptions to the General Plan, a practice which currently allows wildly inappropriate mega-developments in neighborhoods, must become the rare exception, rather than routine, as it is today.

— Ex parte communications between developers and city elected officials or members of the City Planning Commission — also known as backroom meetings — must be eliminated. Such communications give developers an all-access pass to our government officials while regular people with a much bigger stake in their communities wait in line at long meetings for one minute of public comment.

The Coalition and more than 20 neighborhood activists delivered the letter during an August 17 meeting with Garcetti at City Hall.

Yesterday, the LA Times revealed a leaked letter that Garcetti had sent to the Coalition pledging to “bar ex parte meetings with members of the City Planning Commission and the area planning commissions that vet development plans in different parts of the city.”

The LA Times notes: “Critics have grown increasingly vocal over the last year about private meetings conducted between real estate developers and planning commissioners appointed by Garcetti, arguing that such talks have skewed city planning decisions in favor of development interests.”

Bizarrely, David Ambroz, Garcetti’s appointed planning commission president, gave the LA Times a completely false statement saying that the powerful commission is somehow “at the tail end of the process.” In fact, the City Planning Commission is mired in backroom meetings with developers, and Ambroz is widely known for being arrogant and condescending to neighborhood residents who try to speak at his hearings.

Garcetti’s promised ban is a clear, first-step victory for neighborhood activists who have banded together to form a citywide, grassroots reform movement, the Coalition to Preserve LA. 

(Patrick Range McDonald writes for Preserve LA. Read more news and find out how you can participate: 2PreserveLA.org.) 

-cw

Prop 56: Big Tobacco is Blowing Smoke … Smoker Health Issues Cost Non-Smokers Big Bucks!

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW--As we race towards November 8, it’s easy to forget we have a tome of ballot initiatives to read through before filling out the Vote by Mail ballot next month or arrive at the polls. We are unlikely to get an onslaught of presidential campaign ads that those in the swing states might see but we are getting hit by ads against Prop 56, which would increase cigarette tax by $2 per pack, with an equivalent increase on other tobacco products and e-cigarettes that contain nicotine. 

If passed, the tax increase would boost existing healthcare programs and would also be used for prevention and control programs, as well as research for tobacco-related disease research and law enforcement. Other programs that would benefit would be University of California physician training, dental disease prevention programs and administration. Revenues would be excluded from Prop 98 funding requirements. The Passed in 1988, the Mandatory Education Funding Bill requires a defined percentage of the state budget be used for public education. 

The state’s legislative analyst and director of finance estimate that the bill would increase net state revenue by between $1 billion and $1.4 billion, with potentially lower annual revenues over time. 

Opponents to the proposition, as the numerous ads running against Prop 56) claim Prop 56 throws money at “special interests,” i.e. insurance companies. I did a bit of digging to see who is paying for those ads, as well as who is supporting the proposition and here’s what I found. 

Prop 56 is sponsored by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Lung Association in California and the American Heart Association. The proposition is supported by dozens of nonprofit organizations, including California Medical Association, California Dental Association and California Hospital Association. The opposing organizations? Take a guess. Philip Morris USA Inc. and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. That’s it. 

Tobacco costs California taxpayers $3.58 Billion each year in tobacco-related healthcare costs and each year, tobacco causes more deaths than guns, car accidents, HIV, alcohol and illegal drugs combined. Big Tobacco (Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds) have made billions in profits from California and are figuring out ways to attract new smokers, such as e-cigarettes and vaping. They’re trying to protect their turf, which is why they’ve spent millions to defeat Prop 56. 

Instead of dipping into the wallets of nonsmokers to the tune of about $413 per household, Prop 56 would tax tobacco users to fund existing programs. According to the U.S. Surgeon General, increasing tobacco taxes reduce teen smoking. This year, an estimated 16,800 California teens will start smoking and a third of those will eventually die from tobacco-related diseases. In every state that has raised cigarette taxes by a significant margin, teen smoking rates have decreased, which is something Big Tobacco doesn’t want. 

In fact, introducing electronic cigarettes is the latest marketing plan to introduce a new generation to smoking because ninety percent of smokers start as teens; and teens who start with e-cigarettes as twice as likely to become smokers. Almost every major tobacco company now owns at least one e-cigarette brand and some even market to younger users with themes like Barbie and flavors like bubble gum, cotton candy and gummy bear. 

Prop 56 would require independent audits and strict caps on administrative spending and overhead, as well as to prevent politicians to hijack funds for their own agendas. 

Charging smokers a user fee tax instead of leaving California taxpayers on the hook for tobacco-related healthcare costs, preventing teens from using tobacco and maybe decreasing the number of smokers in the state seem to be sound reasons to support Prop 56. 

Sorry, Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds.

Los Angeles: 27 Ways to Make City Hall More Transparent

THE CITY--Recently, CityWatch published comments from Eric and Joshua Preven who argued that the City Council shouldn’t be holding so many secret, closed-door meetings. They’re right.

To take the discussion to the next level I am proposing 27 specific actions that City Hall could take, and neighborhood councils could push, to make City Hall more transparent, and improve the public’s perception of government.

Any one of the suggestions could become a crusade led by a neighborhood council. After all, they were created with the hope that they would organize themselves into a force that could, among other things, fundamentally change the way government operates.

To date, the results have been dismal.

Do the math. There are nearly 2,000 neighborhood council board members. Add in former board members, activists who have specific interest areas, members of each council, and all their friends and relatives. The number is staggering. It’s easily enough people to determine how this city is run.

In between neighborhood battles over planning and zoning issues, it seems reasonable to expect that a citywide reform effort or two could be included in order to reduce some of the reasons for all the neighborhood battles.

Improving City Hall’s transparency isn’t just a matter of reducing the number of closed sessions. There are procedures used by the City Council, its committees, and city commissions that reduce transparency in open meetings too.

I’ve written enough CityWatch columns to know what will happen next. Someone will write a comment taking exception to one of the suggestions on the list. If you read a recommendation you disagree with, ignore it, pick just one that you agree with, and organize the crusade.

The city of Riverside, in adopting transparency reforms for its City Council said it best: “Our values lie not in hiding embarrassment and unpleasant occurrences.”

The first step is to begin changing the culture at City Hall that discourages public participation. City Charter Section 900 explains that the purpose of the neighborhood council system is "To promote more citizen participation in government ...." That too should be the goal of the City Council, and they should be constantly reminded of it. Here's the list. (Mentions of the “City Council” generally also include its committees.) 

 

1.  If a City Council meeting is to be a closed session for reasons of discussing anticipated litigation, recordings of the meeting should be made public after two years if no litigation is filed, when the statute of limitations passes, or when the controversy is concluded.

2.  After closed sessions, the City Council or commission should publicly announce which items were discussed that weren’t confidential.

3.  If the city attorney’s representative in a closed meeting leaves after issuing warnings that a potential violation of the Brown Act has occurred, or is about to occur, the Office of the City Attorney should notify the public and media ASAP.

4.  Every member’s vote on a final action in a closed session should be disclosed to the public at the end of the session.

5.  Before the City Council votes on a settlement, the deal should be made public at least 10 calendar days before the meeting, or 15 days if it’s a collective bargaining agreement so that the public may weigh in.

6.  City Council committees should be required to keep minutes and make them public.

7.  City Council and commission minutes should include a brief summary of each person’s statement made during the public comment period for each item. Submitted written comments of up to 150 words should be included in the minutes.

8.  Draft minutes of City Council and commission meetings should be available no later than 10 working days after the meeting.

9.  All preliminary drafts and department memoranda should be declared public information.

10.  Elected officials and agency heads should keep a public daily calendar of every meeting and    event attended, minus personal events, including a brief statement of issues discussed.

11.  The City Council and commissions should write their procedures and rules in a way that is easy to understand, much in the same way that city ballot measures are written in simplified language.

12. The Brown Act requires that, at a minimum, agendas must include a brief general description of each item. But the City Council and commissions shouldn’t to do the minimum just because it can. Often the descriptions of agenda items do little to explain to the public what is to be discussed. There have been too many examples in the past of items that were purposely worded to be so vague that nobody knew the importance of them, e.g. the Staples Center deal.     

13. Rule 11 permits the presiding officer to determine the duration of speakers' comments based on the impending danger of losing a quorum. This misses the underlying problem of why a         quorum is about to be lost. Legally, there is very little required of the City Council members.          One would think that showing up and staying for work would be a minimum expectation.      

14. City Council members arriving late to meetings should be required to explain publicly why they are late, or why it is necessary for them to leave early, especially if it causes a loss of a quorum, something that is insulting to the City Council and the public. All the explanations should be recorded in the minutes.      

15. The City Council president should direct that the Channel 35 cameras in the Council Chamber be turned on at 10 a.m. so the public can see who arrives on time, and who is tardy.      

16. The council minutes clerk should post on the internet the time of day at which each member arrived, distinguishing between those who have been previously excused and those who haven't, and publish the information.       

17. Council Rule 17 permits the chairs of committees to waive consideration of an item pending in their committees. Instead, a majority of the committee members should be required to allow a committee to waive consideration of an item pending in a committee.      

18. If it is anticipated by the Council President or committee chair that an item MAY appear on a future agenda, that item should be listed at the bottom of all preceding agendas. Often lobbyists and parties with a financial interest in an item will privately arrange to have an item scheduled for a specific date, usually when it's convenient for them. The problem is that the public never knows about it until the agenda is released 72 hours in advance for a regular meeting, or 24 hours for a special meeting. The future item can include a statement that the date is tentative and subject to change even after the agenda is released.      

19. Council Rules 16, 23, 39, and 64 allow items to be considered by the City Council without being referred to a committee, or meeting the normal 72 hours posting requirement. The Council Rules should be amended to require that any such action include an explanation for the urgency, even if the reason is that it's a routine, non-controversial matter. Far too often there is no real urgency, and the public's ability to participate in the decision-making process is severely hampered by design.      

20. Recommend that an explanatory statement of urgency be included whenever a "placeholder" item appears on a City Council agenda. This happens when the City Council committee plans to meet on an item after the City Council agenda has been posted. Often the committee meets just an hour before the City Council meeting is scheduled to begin, and the committee decision is literally run over to the Council Chamber. The public should know why it isn't possible for them to have at least a 72 hour notice of a committee's discussions and actions.  

21.  The City Council should tell the mayor that, except in the event of a real urgency, the Council will not schedule an item, or cast a final vote on any item until the staff report has been made available to the neighborhood councils and public X working days before the meeting. The mayor should give this same instruction to city commissions. Too often, critically important reports aren’t available until moments before a meeting is to start.

22. Council Rule 51 allows the City Council to send a matter immediately to the mayor for signature or veto without allowing time for the City Council to reconsider its action at its next meeting as provided by the Brown Act. "Forthwith" actions should include an explanation of the urgency. This would help alleviate concerns by skeptics that the action has been taken to purposely eliminate the public's ability to influence the mayor's actions.      

23. Council members should be present in the chamber in order to cast a vote. Council Rule 48 provides that members’ votes be recorded as "yes" if they haven't used the electronic voting system switches at their desks. This is not the case when oral votes are taken, so it shouldn't be asking too much of council members to actually go to their desks and cast votes. There have been many “yes” votes cast while a member was in the bathroom, or snacking in the backroom.        

24. From time-to-time, motions are referred to more than one committee either when the motion is submitted or afterwards, and each committee in turn will discuss the matter. But the city clerk should create a copy of the file so that each committee has one. In this way, any one of the committees may take an action and send it to the full City Council. This would eliminate the problem of one committee chair refusing to place the item on his/her committee's agenda.        

25. Twice a year, the city clerk should post on its website a list of the files pending in each committee. These lists already exist in electronic form so there wouldn't be additional work for the office.  

26.  The mayor should assign one high-ranking staff members to be responsible for promoting transparency and public participation throughout city government. 

27.  The city controller should maintain a database on the internet that keeps track of how much each elected official receives in total financial compensation, where their discretionary funding has gone. Finding this out shouldn’t require a Public Records Act request. 

If there is one person who take just one of these recommendations and lead a crusade to get it adopted, neighborhood councils will know the satisfaction of having the first step toward being the most influential political force over city government.

 

(Greg Nelson was instrumental in the creation of the Neighborhood Council System and served as General Manager of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

LA’s Archbishop is Wrong! But, He’s Also Right!

LATINO PERSPECTIVE-Archbishop Jose Gomez said this week, and I quote, “that with all due respect to the Pilgrims, they got to the U.S. about 100 years late, since there were already Spanish and Filipino explorers and missionaries here – a point, with relevance for today’s immigration debates.” 

With all due respect Archbishop Gomez, the United States wasn’t conceived until 1776, and the Pilgrims didn’t arrive late at all; they founded this country -- not the Spanish and not the Filipinos. I dare to say that if it wasn’t for those courageous Pilgrims the United States would not exist today. 

The Spanish and Filipino explorers didn’t come to these lands to found a new “Nation conceived in Liberty, dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The Spanish didn’t write these words: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It was our founding fathers. 

The Archbishop goes on to say that long before the U.S. had a name, hence before George Washington and the 13 colonies existed, Spanish and Mexican missionaries and explorers had settled in the territories that are today Florida, Texas, California, and New Mexico. But what he doesn’t seem to know is that Florida, Texas, California, and New Mexico were not American territories at that time. They became American territories much later. 

He’s also wrong when he says that the first non-indigenous language spoken in this country was not English but Spanish. He seriously needs to retake American History 101: of course English was the first non-indigenous language of the United States of America. Tell me where in the 13 colonies that Spanish was ever spoken at that time? Can someone please hand the Archbishop a 1st grade American History book? 

But he’s also right in this: as the United States grew and gained new territories, Spanish and Filipino explorers and residents became members of the new and expanding American nation. The “Hispanic Footprint” that he talks about is part of the America that we know today. 

Mexico, without a doubt, is part of the fabric of what America is today; but if we are going to have a discussion about history and immigration, we must deal with the facts and always with the facts. 

And the facts are that there are at least 11 million undocumented immigrants living in this country – most of them for a long time and most of them are law abiding, hard-working individuals who have made and continue to make America great. 

The vast majority of American citizens agree that we can’t leave this group of people living in the shadows any longer. Comprehensive immigration reform has to be one of the top priorities of the next President. We must secure our border -- no wall is needed because that doesn’t make any sense. But at the same time, the U.S. Congress must work on a plan to get the 11 million undocumented residents on a path to legalization. Archbishop Gomez is definitely right about that.

 

(Fred Mariscal came to Los Angeles from Mexico City in 1992 to study at the University of Southern California and has been in LA ever since. He is a community leader and was a candidate for Los Angeles City Council in District 4. Fred writes Latino Perspective for CityWatch and can be reached at: [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

LA City Council Wimps Out … Kills’ Bike Lanes in LA’s Mobility Plan

MOBILITY LA--A plan to reimagine the future of Los Angeles streets had its final vote at the City Council last week after more than a year of controversy.

The Mobility Plan 2035 is a blueprint to guide policy decisions on transportation over the next three decades.

The proposal spurred multiple lawsuits, hours of public comment and more than a year's worth of back and forth at the City Council.

Adding bike lanes to busy streets, particularly on Westwood Boulevard near UCLA and Central Avenue in South Los Angeles, proved the plan's biggest controversy. Opponents complained the bike lanes would displace car traffic. 

On Wednesday, the council decided once and for all to strike the two controversial bike lanes from the busy arteries. Instead, the bike lanes have been moved to parallel streets, Gayley Avenue and Avalon Boulevard, which critics say won’t disrupt traffic as much.

The decision was a blow to bike advocates who showed up by the dozens at meetings on the proposed plan over the last year.

"It’s a disappointment for sure," said Brian Moller with the LA County Bike Coalition. "I think identifying alternatives is a good next step."

Laura Lake, a Westwood resident who had helped lead a lawsuit over the proposal with the organization, Fix the City, was happy with the decision.

"Substituting Gayley for Westwood Boulevard keeps the 60,000 daily bus riders moving on Westwood. Gayley is safer for cyclists.  It's a good compromise," she said.

Moller with the Bike Coalition is still hopeful Westwood Boulevard and Central Avenue can be added back into the plan in the future as politics in the city changes. He said the routes provide more direct, and in the case of Central Avenue, a safer alternative than the side streets.

Nothing in the plan will move forward until the council approves funding and takes further action.

(Meghan McCarty Commuting and Mobility Reporter at KPPC … where this piece was first posted.) 

-cw

How to Empower the Citizenry: Try a Little Respect!

ALPERN AT LARGE--Much of what brings the divergent opinions of CityWatch LA contributors together is the overwhelming desire of the contributors to allow the right of Joe/Jane Citizen to be heard, represented, and EMPOWERED.  Much of this desire is premised on simple "majority rule", but much of this desire is also in response to a City Council, County Board of Supervisors, and State Legislature/Governor who treat voters and taxpayers like lower lifeforms. 

It's without a doubt that many of those elected to City, County, or State office have said something to the effect of, "Hey, I paid the price and did the work to get elected.  If that group of people, even the majority, have a problem with my policies, they can get do the work and get elected themselves." 

Which, of course, belies the whole idea of representative government that began with the dawn of the United States of America.  That dawn, so eloquently and fervently understood and supported by Franklin and Jefferson when they wrote the Constitution, and after vigorous debate and drafting by Madison and others, was premised on the following paradigm: Those elected to public office are the servants of the people, and not the other way around. 

The observation that so many of these Founding Fathers were slaveholders, and yet were amazingly ahead of their time, is as relevant as the argument that the Greeks of Athens were ALSO slaveholders and yet ALSO the first to promote the concepts and paradigms of representative democracy. 

The original consideration of only allowing wealthy landowners to vote was rejected, and that set a trend that led to individuals of all genders and ethnic backgrounds inevitably being represented and allowed to vote in order to establish a true democracy. 

President George Washington set both the trend of term limits and ensuring there would be NO king of the United States in his departure from office after eight years, and in the statements in his Farewell Address. 

Yet after we fast-forward a few centuries, we've got human nature right back at its worst: City, County, State (and, of course, National) elected officials presuming they're higher life-forms, and all-too-many citizens willing to blindly re-elect them, regardless of their track records, to innumerable terms in office. 

Of course, it should be remembered that: 

1) The original representative democracy in Athens was never so threatened when they elected a tyrant (now a bad term, it should remembered that "tyrant" meant a pragmatically-elected general in times of war) who, understandably, had a hard time giving up the reins of power. 

2) Democracy is never so much threatened today when society allows the executive branch of government (or any branch of government, including the legislative and judicial branches of government) the ability to change the rules against the will of the majority. 

So if YOU are one of those who NEVER vote, or blindly follow the will of the elected as if they were kings and queens, then you're anything but a true proponent of democracy.  That's how socialism, communism, fascism, etc. all come into being. 

Of course, there's probably more than a few reading this now who think that socialism is a good thing, and that democracy is a bad thing.  Pity--and if you're one who ignores (or never learned about) both the 20th century examples of socialistic failure, and if the latest examples of socialistic failure (Cuba and Venezuela) are lost on you, then clearly you're part of a frightening problem. 

And ditto to that sentiment if you think that the historical perspective I wrote above is just booooooooring and irrelevant to our modern times. 

But back to City, County, and State elections and how they view the rest of us as lower lifeforms:  

1) When we ignore the pension crises as things we just don't want to talk about, or spend any time on, and are so easily cowed into avoid being called haters of police, fire, teachers, civil servants, etc. that we risk creating a slew of city, county, state and federal bankruptcies, then we've established ourselves as lower lifeforms. 

Of course we respect and cherish the public sector ... but, as with doctors and contractors, if their paid and with early retirements and unsustainable pensions, then bankruptcy will help them, us, and our children...how? 

2) As fellow CityWatch contributor and Planner-Extraordinaire Dick Platkin recently opined, there are a few darned good reasons why we need a Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, and legal efforts, and mass actions to allow the larger citizenry to say "NO!" to horrible ideas that enrich a few and significantly harm the majority. 

It should be remembered that the Los Angeles City Attorney represents Downtown, and not the average Angeleno, based on that position's job description.  There is NO attorney or legal or governmental entity for volunteer, grassroots neighborhood councils to run to for legal and political help when the opinion and rights of the citizenry get crushed. 

Meetings in geographically-accessible locations, and held during hours when most of us aren't working for a living, is something we all deserve.  This isn't ancient Athens or the dawn of the United States...it's an Era of Empowerment, and whether the tyrant comes from the Left or the Right, and whether the tyrant wears a scowl or a charming smile, that person is still a tyrant! 

3) As fellow and occasional CityWatch contributor and Historian-Extraordinaire, Fred Gurzeler, points out, the ballot initiative came about because politicians don’t listen to the people, so the people have to do the work themselves.  Hence we've got Mayor Garcetti trying to stop the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative by barring private developer meetings. 

Here's another thought for all of us who no longer wish to be lower lifeforms.  Pass the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative.  Both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans and Independents, and both the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy favor it because it's the right thing to do. 

Too many of today's developers aren't looking for building within legal parameters that were established for a variety of scientific, environmental, and ethical reasons.   

They're not they aiming for a reasonable variance based on compromise and mitigations.  They want to win the lotto, and to Hades with the rest of us (who apparently can just move the heck out of the City, County, or State if we don't like it).  Because they've got fiscal, political, and legal connections, and they can WIN. 

Even if that means the rest of us LOSE in the worst sort of way. 

Consider the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. Donate if you can. And vote. 

Because the rest of us in the Citizenry who opted NOT to be elected to public office did NOT elect our public officials, merely for them to turn around and then treat us like lower lifeforms.

 

(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at  [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.)

-cw

 

Don’t Believe the Anti-Progress Naysayers … ‘Measure M’ Can be a Game-Changer

GUEST COMMENTARY--I love working with Investing in Place because I get to work with you all towards improving people’s lives and future generations in LA County. I won’t mince words: I ultimately believe that our public budgets are moral documents (Martin Luther King, Jr. said the same) and, frankly, we don’t spend enough to undo historical wrongs and correct underinvestment in low-income communities and communities of color. But Measure M, in my mind, is a game-changer that would transform our transportation system for decades to come, and here’s why…

We’ve pored over every project and every dollar in the measure. We’re convinced this measure respects our county’s diverse communities and their aspirations for a safer and more accessible, sustainable, and equitable transportation system. I’m not saying Measure M — or any transportation investment — is the end all be all for equitable communities, but it certainly is a catalyst. After tracking Metro’s development of the proposed ballot measure for years, Investing in Place is proud to endorse Measure M. Below are the key outcomes that enabled us to make that decision:

Outcome #1: Creating Safe, Walkable Communities

Relatively less expensive projects — like first and last mile improvements, sidewalks, and complete streets — are the glue that holds the rest of the transportation system together. In Measure M, walking and biking have dedicated funding and are integrated into all other projects as part of a cohesive system. The days of dropping projects into communities are over. Metro is planning for better connections and access for all.

Outcome #2: Keeping Buses, Trains, and Infrastructure in Good Shape

As we think about access to jobs and housing, we think about reliability. This is especially important for low-income families that are affected by bus and train delays more than others: if a shift worker is a few minutes late, they could lose their job. If the system is unreliable, they need to pay more of their paycheck for a more expensive transportation option (e.g. a car). Similarly, the condition of our infrastructure (hello, sidewalks!) affects seniors, youth in strollers, and individuals with disabilities. Maintaining what we’re building is important for everyone — but it matters most for our most vulnerable residents.

Outcome #3: Investing in More and Better Bus and Rail Operations

At Investing in Place, we care about transit operations: transit is only useful when the bus or train is there when you need it. Frequency, span, and reliability are what matter for quality service. Bus service has been flat or declining for the past 8 years. If you care about bus service, Measure M provides the resources to have a serious conversation about increasing bus revenue service hours. What that service looks like matters, too. Transit will be even better (and cheaper to operate) when 40 people on a bus or 200 on a train have priority over one or two in a car. For us, this is a simple issue of fairness. Investing in Place wants to see investments in high-ridership corridors with more frequent, all-day service — the original vision for the MetroRapid that has been somewhat watered down. Measure M includes dedicated money for Bus Rapid Transit improvements, which would build the physical infrastructure to support improved operations. These are real operational and infrastructure improvements to our heavily used bus network.

Outcome #4: Investing in Local Street and Sidewalk Repairs

It is no longer sufficient for transportation projects to have a singular focus on mobility. The public right­-of­-way is a significant asset that must be managed to achieve multiple objectives. Local return gives cities more resources to address placemaking, stormwater, complete streets, urban greening, sidewalk repair, crosswalk upgrades, bicycle lanes, and more. Local return is an opportunity, not a guarantee, and community members need to engage collaboratively with local elected officials to set priorities for this funding (and Investing in Place will help!). Measure M brings resources to the table to help local conversations about planning our streets holistically.

Outcome #5: Investing in Better Connectivity Across The County

Measure M will expand opportunity through fast, reliable transit to new areas. Projects from Measure M can provide better access to job-rich areas for under-resourced neighborhoods. For example: the Sepulveda Pass and East San Fernando Valley Corridor connects Pacoima to the Westside; the San Fernando Valley-San Gabriel Valley corridor puts job-rich Glendale and Burbank on the network; the Santa Ana Branch and Gold Line Eastside connect low-income cities in Southeast LA County to downtown LA and industrial zones; the Crenshaw Northern Extension means South LA residents can get to job-rich areas in Mid-City and Hollywood.

Outcome #6: Affordable Fares for Older Adults, Students, and Individuals with Disabilities

Metro has recently revamped their reduced fare programs for college students, and is looking at improvements to other fare subsidy programs. To make these programs work and serve more people, they need more funding and Measure M would provide it. It’s not just about fare discounts — this is about increasing access to education, helping older adults who want to age in their community, and providing a valuable service for individuals with disabilities to get around.

Outcome #7: Maintain Flexibility and Oversight on Program Funding

Measure M provides us the resources to build, operate, and maintain an ambitious transportation system — but we need to stay at the table to hold Metro accountable on delivering for our communities. Measure M has a built-in oversight committee and flexibility to adjust program funding in response to future needs and opportunities.

Through November 8th, we’ll be rolling out more details on why we support Measure M. We invite you to join us in working to pass this measure. As always, we welcome your feedback, reactions, and ideas for working together to ensure our public investments strengthen all our communities.

(Jessica Meaney posts at InvestingInPlace  … where this perspective was first posted. She can be reached at: [email protected]

-cw

Build Bridges Instead of Firewalls: What Went Right, and Wrong … and How to Improve the Next Neighborhood Council Elections

ELECTIONS MANAGER REPORT-(Editor’s Note: This is a lengthy report, agreed. But CityWatch is publishing it because it is an important report, well done and offers solutions not just fault-finding. And, because solving these Neighborhood Council election issues … in particular those related to exclusion … to the future of Los Angeles’ Neighborhood Council System.) In the 2016 Neighborhood Council Elections we encountered many new and positive experiences; but there were also many issues that caused confusion and were detrimental to the process – leaving much of the voting public with a negative view of the election process, procedures, the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) and the City Clerk. 

Voters have placed much of the blame on the City, but from the beginning, issues with the voting process and resulting misunderstandings stemmed from the individual neighborhood councils’ bylaws and their attempts to limit or exclude certain stakeholders within their districts. 

First and foremost, it should not be harder to vote for the Neighborhood Council than it is to vote for the President. One thing that could help is the standardization of the ballot voting models. They don't have to be identical -- there could be three or four choices -- but it probably isn't necessary to have 96 different models because so many of these iterations are actually attempts to reach common goals. 

For example, some of the most difficult to navigate models this year were born of attempts to thwart community interest takeovers. There are other ways to prevent that without alienating the entire community by using oppressive restrictions; most likely, the NCs are trying to figure out their own solutions to issues like these without much guidance. So why not identify a short list of priorities or board structure types? Why not build a ballot/voting model around each of these items, then create a menu for the next election cycle from which the NCs can choose? Such a menu could outline the ballot voting model and list its advantages. That way the system would be streamlined in a way that serves the needs of the NCs. 

Now might be a good time to consider ballot voting model reform, since voter documentation has been the subject of recent and ongoing federal court cases. Though quite a few states have passed some sort of voter ID laws, several states have come under scrutiny, and some have been ordered to amend laws that were too restrictive. The ACLU has spoken out against demanding voter IDs, as well. Since it's normally the states’ job to decide on issues related to voter documentation, and since California only requires an ID number (not a copy of the ID) to register, it may actually be best, from a legal standpoint, for the NC system to comply with the state law, especially since the rest of the City does. The NCs cannot hope to become a legitimate part of City government if they continue to operate under qualitatively different laws in this fashion. 

Another major problem with the elections is that the process is often not well-promoted at the local level. Although EmpowerLA has had some responsibility for this, promotion is mostly left in the hands of the NCs and the candidates. But some board members don't know how to promote well enough to get the people already on their mailing lists to come to meetings -- so doing the kind of promotion that would bring new people into the election process, as candidates and voters, is beyond their reach. 

Other board members know how to promote, but if they're running for reelection, they might be reluctant to find their own replacements and so deliberately do not court well-qualified, popular candidates who might bring people to the polls. There are a couple possible solutions for this: EmpowerLA (ELA) can run workshops to train Elections and Outreach Committee members in the months leading up to an election. Or, the way NCs allocate their elections budget can be changed so that part of it goes toward hiring their own outside Elections Manager with event planning and promotion experience. ELA can create a list of approved vendors for this job, much in the way the Department already helps NCs choose vendors for their websites. 

Certainly, one of the biggest issues is that City Council does not adequately fund NC elections so that staff can be hired early enough to thoroughly vet the process. Better funding would ensure that all of the necessary components needed to run a smooth, efficient and transparent election cycle could be bought, leased or developed in a timely manner. 

Below is a list of (1) what was new in the 2016 NC Elections; (2) negative issues surrounding the elections; and (3) potential changes that can make the 2018 elections successful. 

What was New in 2016 

  • Online/digital voting. 
  • Supplied all NC’s with household data for mailings. 
  • 24 election workshops. 
  • TV campaign Citywide. 
  • Radio campaign. 
  • Candidate trainings by regions. 
  • Mayor’s PSA English and Spanish, channel 35 and online used for TWC ads. 
  • Poll Worker pay for all workers. 
  • IEA pay and schedule.I
  • Individual Independent Election Managers.
  • Pop up polls. 
  • Challenge panels. 
  • Staff working with “Selections.” 
  • Artwork collaborated to NCs. 
  • Citywide artwork campaign. 
  • Bus benches and pole banner advertising. 
  • Weekly dedicated Election newsletter. 
  • 24 hour response time. 
  • 1st time 3 polls for 1 selection and system to track voters. 
  • Interactive maps to locate voter qualifications. 
  • Fee free annual street pole banner permit from City Council. 
  • Pre-registration of volunteers and poll workers for Election Day. 
  • Staffed selections for the first time. 
  • Automated counting by the City Clerk. 
  • Nationbuilder: see notes below. 

 

Negative Issues in 2016 

  • 6 Neighborhood Councils failed to hold elections due to a lack of candidates. 
  • Failure to provide updated bylaws in a timely manner causing challenges, staff time loss, and litigation. 
  • Failure of NCs to provide both stip sheets. 
  • Calling both “stip sheets” was confusing to the boards. 
  • Failure of some NCs to have an annual budget on file. 
  • Lack of training for board members of the election process. 
  • No training for online voting process. 
  • Online and paper Registration was too difficult for the average voter.* 
  • Some stip sheets never reviewed causing incorrect ballots. 
  • Wrong information posted on EmpowerLA elections webpages. 
  • Lack of tablets early on in the election process. 
  • Confusion over seating of board. 
  • No staff training for election staffers. 
  • Lack of specific job descriptions causing staff issues. 
  • Internal Voter portal not secure, causing 2 breaches of data. 
  • E1C failure to provide voter portal until 3 days before the last election. 
  • E1C failure to initiate emails. 

E1C failure to have registration portal correct until 3 days before last closing period.

Online marketing director brought on to staff with no mission, direction, or budget to work with. 

  • Failure to train work-time keeping. 
  • Online marketing staff hampered by lack of funding, direction, and mission. 
  • Due to shortage of staff and no shortage of jobs to do, there were periods where the verified voters were not transmitted on a timely basis to E1C, causing many calls and email complaints about length of time to receive pin and passwords. 
  • Failure to educate voters registering for online that they would not receive their pin and password immediately upon registration. 
  • Documentation issues and its confusion caused to both voters and candidates. 
  • Rules for grievance panels made up “on the fly” and then changed when the outcome was “wrong.” 
  • Allowing third-parties to affirm the creation of legal documentation for voters. 
  • Too many “chiefs” led to conflicting and confusing information and internal conflict among staffers. 
  • Polling place staff assignments arriving the night before an election. 
  • Constantly changing election rules and manual. 
  • Communications on Election Day between DONE staff and Elections staff. Many issues where changes were made due to wrong ballots or bylaw interpretations in which DONE staff made a call on the voting but did not transmit the instructions to elections staff or City Clerk staff, causing under votes and failure to count some initial votes. 
  • Expectation that Board members would recruit candidates to run against them. 
  • NCs not wanting to spend their money. 
  • NCs not wanting to do outreach. 
  • NCs not wanting to have elections. 
  • “Rainbow sheet instructions” to poll managers not matching an NC’s bylaws. 
  • Failure to hire Director of Elections early in the process. 
  • Nationbuilder: see notes below. 
  • Everyone Counts 24 hours help line, was not always available. 
  • Issues of ballots vs registrations and human error in verifying if someone voted online and was trying to vote again at the poll. 
  • All portals should have been fully tested and functional no later than September of the year before the elections. Testing in mid-February for portals that are already live is bad business. 
  • Clarification of ballot model is needed. If seats are not challenged, do we put those seats on the ballot anyway? (If no seats are contested, no election). Some councils had only one of a number of seats contested. If a seat is not contested, should it be on the ballot? If no seats are contested, is it election by affirmation, or do you still hold an election and do ballots? The issue is cost savings of taxpayer dollars.  

Potential Changes and Resolutions for the Future 

  • Election manual update to clarify many ambiguous issues. 
  • Acceptable Forms of Documentation manual needs a major update and clarifications. 
  • Bylaws cut-off and internal maps and Ballot voter models earlier dates and added to bylaws as attachments. 
  • Standardize Bylaws.* 
  • Remove documentation-self affirmation only.** 
  • Take away all elections from NC’s and hire election managers for all. 
  • Have staff fully involved in ALL selections. 
  • Mandate spending $10,000 to $13,000 for outreach. 
  • Hire Election Administrator to begin process in fiscal 2016. 
  • Hire Election Staff much earlier. 
  • Get to all boards before the end of 2016/2017 fiscal year and get leftover funds for 2018 elections. Have Board vote 2017/2018 budget money for elections. 
  • Don’t allow Boards to control their election funds - no special board meetings. 
  • Mail every registered voter a ‘vote by mail’ application. 
  • Online all single ballot and self-affirmation NCs. 
  • Potentially mandate all NCs’ self-documentation. 
  • Consider changing stakeholder definition to live in the area only. 
  • Reverse elections by date and region 2018. 
  • Seat all on July 1, 2018. 
  • Lease proper electronic equipment and software for smoother online registration. 
  • Have unified collateral ready by end of 2017 and offered to the NCs for marketing the elections in 2018. 
  • Have one head of elections. This will eliminate issues with staff and voters alike. 
  • When funds have been frozen: This is a major marketing issue as well. NCs with frozen funds should have a special process for election materials so as not to hamper the candidate and voter turnout. 

Seat designations are too cumbersome and need to be simplified. 

If keeping documentation, the manual needs to be laser focus amended to specifics. NO more self-written affirmations. 

There were complaints that the NC bylaws require a ⅔ vote to amend, but that the stip sheets, which override the bylaws, only take a simple majority. It’s a violation of the intent of an NC’s bylaws. 

Combine all stip sheets into one. Having two stip sheets both named “stip sheets” was redundant and confusing to boards causing many to believe they already filed their stip sheet, when in fact it was the 2nd stip sheet that was missing. 

Hire professionals to design the 2018 election collateral materials and negotiate with vendors well in advance for outreach opportunities. 

Nationbuilder 

An online service, Nationbuilder was contracted. The purpose was to gain the voter data from the County Registrar and populate the NC’s data base to market to those voters to join us in the NC elections. 

Most NCs found it hard to sign up for and use. Asking the department staff to do the marketing to the individual NC universe was met with resistance. 

Unfortunately, thinking through the process, there was a hitch: If in fact, the NCs used the system well, and some did, it caused us to be shut down for spamming. While NCs were promised the service, many could not use it as it was shut down in mid-elections. Additionally, some were able to move the data into their own website contact list. 

The Department did use the system to outreach to over 100,000 registered voters. But, it was then shut down in midstream. 

Overall, Nationbuilder could have been a great tool for voter outreach, but it was not thought out thoroughly causing confusion and frustration; it consumed too many staff hours. 

Online Electronic Voting 

There have been accusations that the online voting was compromised and that it did not work. 

For the record: 

  • Pre-registration was very difficult for many and needs to be revamped using driver’s license scanners and QR code printers and readers. This will speed up registration and voting and make it much simpler at the registration desks. 
  • The online system used must be made more user friendly as many attempting to register at home gave up. Uploading documents was cumbersome for many, causing them to not register online. 
  • Pop up polls were hugely successful. Defined rules about pop up polls need to be drawn up and this system should be implemented with protocols and in larger numbers. Go to the people and they will engage. Allow equal opportunity for everyone to have a pop up poll. Be sure to designate an electioneering zone. 
  • Day of election registration needs for bullet point #1 above to be implemented. In addition, additional staff and laptops need to be secured. Tablets are too small and not easily used in registration. 
  • Better protocol needs to be in place to report the preliminary results on the same night on all online NCs. 
  • The period of early voting should be extended. Three weeks was not enough time to get a full effect. 
  • Further define the definition of electioneering. It is broad, ambiguous and unclear to all, including grievance panel members. 
  • With regard to the challenge process: it is important to further define the penalties allowable for the various offenses. They need to be spelled out clearly. 
  • The actual election (tablet voting) was smooth and effective. It should be encouraged. 

“Everyone Counts” did not perform all items as it should have, including but not limited to the voter registration portal. This should be calculated and debited from any payments made to date.   

Election Manager 

The Job Description: Needs more defined tasks and expectations and to be reviewed between client and EM so there is an agreed upon scope of work for the time given to work. 

All election budgets should be worked on in tandem with the Elections Manager (EM) so the client gets the most use out of the talent they hired. Otherwise, that EM is rewriting budgets, going to multiple committee and board meetings to get board approval on every line item. Once approved by the Board, the EM should have control of the election budget and not have to wait for votes on every item. Minutes take 30 days to approve and are not immediate enough to provide proof. One printer carried $25,000 of debt to help facilitate NC printing. 

All Election Committees should be formed one year out. Candidates should not be members of an Election Committee and it is recommended that the President not double as the Election Committee Chair. 

All Election Committees should have set monthly meetings one year out. 

Every NC should have a web page set up in advance with URL /Elections 2018. 

The compensation of $2000 is fine for certain NCs' needs but insufficient for others. There is a wide range of variables that can take up the EM’s time and expertise. These include everything from those NCs that are in exhaustive efforts to those NCs that have everything locked up and are 100% on target with needs and expectations. There are NCs that have fragmented Election Committees and Boards (no consistency in meetings and attendances leads to delays in execution and approval process); NCs that have worked 7-days a week and evenings/days; NCs that have added more work to the already scope of work, etc. 

The EM should have core direct response, advertising and media planning and buying skills. This is IMPERATIVE to add value for the client and be able to lead with experience and garner the best results. 

ELA and Funding needs to have "triggers" in place for "if/when" scenarios. EMs and even ELA learned too late in the game that no annual budget was on file at ELA. 

Expediting vendor payments should be done through EM or Election Chair/Outreach Chair and Funding. Having too many handlers loosens the control mechanism for execution. Turnaround varied and thankfully, since I knew the players at ELA, I could check on the status of payments because I made it my business to follow up and provide a full itemized budget with vendor estimates and names per line item. 

ELA needs to provide each NC with the name and contact info for their field reps so they know their liaisons at ELA. Each field rep should be connected to the Election Committee and EM. 

Early on, we created a Google Folder for IDEAs to NCs to EMs to tap into for Election files, agendas, schedules, timelines, templates, artwork, icons, images, free tools, etc. This is helpful since it enables the NCs to have (a) uniformity in "election" materials for ELA approved images; and (b) one-stop-shopping for outreach. 

Empower people. Trust who is hired once you understand that person's talent and aptitude. 

Allow mistakes to happen so as to learn from them. There is enormous value in trying. 

The NCs were confused when it came to event forms, contracts, who should review them, how long it would take, etc. Again, we need clarity as to who, what, where, when, why and how -- it's all in the education up front. NC funding should not control Election events – they often happen on the spur of the moment. NCs should be allowed to vote a bulk amount of election funding and hand that over to the Elections Manager with the work plan. 

There should be a board transition MOA drafted this year with insight and feedback from NCs. Many felt short-changed in their tenure to serve. Many were unsure of the actual start date of the new board. 

Board Transition needs to be fully flushed out and part of the "candidate" education so NCs can start letting prospective board members know what to expect. This includes the number of meetings per month; the number of hours per meeting; the number of committees to join; who can attend meetings; what are bylaws; who is ELA and how they fit in; who "protects" NCs; what does being "elected" really mean for a Board Member; what happens when a board votes and you are not in favor of that final vote (how to speak and not speak as a board member), etc. 

Many (in some NCs in the Valley) don't like always being first up for elections. 

Some NCs don't like being told that elections must be held on a certain day (weekdays vs. weekends.) 

Poll Workers

Training 

At the least, there should be two sessions of in-depth training/workshops for poll managers and poll workers that are focused on both traditional and online poll sites. Short or non-existent trainings resulted in long registration lines, mistakes and confusion when it came to multiple ballot NC voting. 

Current poll worker training consists of three videos online that are task specific, an optional one-hour long training conducted by department personnel that was choppy and not engaging. 

Workshops should be mandatory, paid, “theatrical” and hands on. 

Communication 

Online voter registration process: The amount of web click-through that it took to reach the online voter registration was counter-intuitive especially when there was an older demographic coming through. Logging in, back into the registration, to submit an attachment (Document) was confusing; we almost never saw anyone take that route. 

A huge factor that contributed to individuals having difficulty submitting headshots or other non-related documents was the lengthy wording and descriptions on the EmpowerLA registration form. It was not at all user friendly or comprehensible to the general public. A clearer, to-the-point registration form link that is located on the front page of the Empower LA website during the election cycle is a better alternative for the future. 

Too many last minute instructions existed concerning tasks, deadlines and policy.  

Online Assessment 

In reviewing the online elections, my observation is as follows: 

We should separate the components of online into: pre-registration, early voting, day of registration and day of voting, Pop up Polls. 

The weakest and most concerning issue is registration. The criticism we received consistently was that registering was just too hard or too cumbersome. Many voters were turned off to the process. 

I recommend changes such as driver’s license readers and slip printers that would have made the day of registration run more smoothly, allowing staff to better register and allow people to vote. We had issues with the handwriting of pin and user names, causing voters to come back to the tables complaining that the information they had was not working. In some cases, we had to revert to paper ballots due to the number of people wanting to register that staff could not handle in a timely manner. 

The pop up polls were successful. Having staff input the information so the voters could vote immediately showed a more than 20% increase to the numbers. 

Regarding the day of voting itself, I believe it was a success. It took less than two minutes for a voter to cast his/her ballot. Even voters who were computer challenged had very little issue with the process. 

There were questions by stakeholders when there was a pop up poll but no voting. This was because the pop up poll was done outside of the 21-day early voting period. This should not happen moving forward. 

Making the registration a more seamless process will greatly enhance the usability of the online voting system. Changing bylaws and documentation requirements will also smooth out many of the wrinkles we experienced. 

The online portal

E1C failed to deliver the voter registration portal until three days before cut off of the last election. 

ELA did a superb job in creating a voter portal. But the DONE portal was not fully secure, causing the Studio City NC problems. This is a financial issue that should be reviewed due to the contractual obligations of E1C not being met in a timely manner. 

The contract with E1C specified that the first payment year would include a build out of 50 NCs. This was not achieved and the fiscal impact should be reviewed. 

I would recommend that an audit of the RFP vs the final contract be done to ensure that the contract in fact mirrored the RFP. 

The vendor promised a 24-hour help line. We had many complaints that stakeholders called the number and left messages that were not returned. 

Post election, it has come to the department’s attention that in at least one case, there was duplicate voting. In addition, in auditing the NC in question, the number of ballots cast does not match the number of registrations submitted. This was by a significant number, causing many additional staff hours spent auditing, as well as fielding concerns by stakeholders that there may have been voter fraud. 

The system to catch a duplicate voter is flawed. It relies on human cross checking and is not seamless. 

This issue, as well as registration, must be addressed before moving forward with any future plans for online voting. One NC has confirmed duplicate votes. It appears that it was caused by human error. A full investigation and report is forthcoming from DONE. (This issue is still outstanding, I believe.) 

Outreach 

The continuing issue of asking NCs to find their own competition is a major reason for the low voter turnout. 

The department did more outreach this year than in prior years, but it was hardly enough. 

Taking away election responsibility for marketing and branding the campaign is crucial to building the success of online as well as analog voting, as well as the visibility and awareness of the NC system as a whole. 

NC’s budget for 2017/18 will be in place next May. Election funding should be in those budgets, not an afterthought. Staff needs to be hired to visit each NC with an outreach plan for the budget no later than April 2017. 

Public Perception 

At many of the polls, especially where documentation was required, the voters perception is that DONE created the rules, and DONE is disenfranchising voters. On too many occasions, from Studio City to Central San Pedro, to Venice, to Park Mesa to Sunland Tujunga, voters complained about the department’s rules about documentation. 

While the voters are incorrect, the reputation of the department is sullied while the issues actually occur due to the neighborhood council bylaw restrictions imposed. 

This goes back to reviewing the policy of acceptable forms of documentation, the rules for self affirmation vs documentation, and considering a method to better standardize bylaws. These issues need to be vetted and addressed before the end of the first quarter of 2017. 

Bylaw changes 

During this cycle, there were issues with receiving amended bylaws after the BVM was created. This caused confusion, and in one case, having to run an election outside of the City Clerk system. 

I suggest that all bylaws must be completed by DONE staff no later than April 30 and sent to the elections team to build the BVM’s. NCs should be encouraged to review their bylaws immediately and trained consultants should be made available to work with them. The bylaws process often takes many months to do properly. The stip sheets should be incorporated into the bylaws (Attachment C) so that the ⅔ approval process is honored. The BVM should be attached to the bylaws as Attachment D. 

Challenges 

The new challenge process was rocky at the start, but after the problem at Studio City, it was seamless. 

The definitions of electioneering and some other portions of the acceptable challenge manual need to be reviewed and clarified. In addition, the acceptable forms of documentation that are required need to be reviewed. Doing so would reduce the challenges dramatically. This year we had 97 challenges vs 97 in 2014. Of the 97, we had 11 duplicate challenges. We had two panels hold hearings of challenges that were upheld. That is two more than in 2014. 

The EA team at Piper Tech handled 5701 online voters. Of those, 1497 did not verify. As I am no longer on staff, DONE needs to match the pre-registered -- but not certified -- with the actual voters list to determine exactly how many were lost. 

In addition, the EA team fielded over 15,000 customer service emails and phone calls. 

Funding and Savings 

Overall, the budget that was allocated for elections Assistants, IEAs and marketing was served more efficiently this year. 

It is estimated that we saved approximately $51,000 from the overall budget covering EAs, IEAs and marketing. 

Selections 

In the past, DONE has NOT been involved in helping those councils that have Selections. This year, we helped staff and brought collateral to most of the NCs that held selections. As is the case of Central and Coastal San Pedro, there were more robust turn outs and engagement. 

Since the Charter/Plan/Ordinance allow either Elections or Selections, the department should be fully involved in helping to guide and properly hold selections. This will benefit the community as a whole. 

Conclusion

First and foremost, the City Council MUST fully fund elections including early hiring, sufficient allocations to do marketing and outreach, and fully funding ALL of the tools needed for a smooth and efficient online election process. This funding must happen no later than December 2016 in order to have the lead time to start the 2018 election process. 

Online elections overall were a success. The fixes needed will make them hugely successful in the future and a model for citywide elections. 

Working on the major points above will allow for smoother, less controversial and more secure elections. 

Doing online, plus adding a vote by mail application mailed to every household, will open the system up to full exposure and an increase in participation. 

Changing and standardizing bylaws will make it easier for the City to administer the elections, easier for stakeholders to understand the process, and will ultimately open up elections to a simple process versus a process built to keep people out. 

Negotiate with Everyone Counts for a rebate due to failure to perform contractual obligations. (Failure to deliver components timely, including but not limited to the Voter Registration Portal.) 

Budget for and hire staff earlier. 

Design and implement a syllabus of training for election staff and for certain staff members who are interjected into elections. 

Allow the Election Manager to manage without interference. Have that person report to either the DONE General Manager or, if elections are run by the City Clerk, report to the City Clerk. 

(Jay Handal served at the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment for ten months as Election Manager for the 2016 Neighborhood Council elections. He is Treasurer of the West Los Angeles Sawtelle Neighborhood Council and Co-Chair of the Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates Committee for the upcoming 2016-2017 fiscal year.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

 

Ballot Measure Corruption: Hold the Outrage

CORRUPTION WATCH--“Candidates are increasingly using these [ballot measure] committees as slush funds for unlimited contributions from special interests. They’re paying off lawmakers without technically violating the law. It’s disgusting.” — Kathay Feng (photo above), executive director of California Common Cause, a leading good-government advocacy group, as quoted by the Bay Area News Group

We are supposed to be outraged by the news, via the Bay Area News Group, that the number of ballot measure committees controlled by candidates has grown over the past decade. Adding to the outrage we must feel: BANG’s analysis that only $1 out of every $4 spent by these committees went to passing or killing measures on the ballot.

And the final reason for screaming: much of that money went to cozy up to political donors! With trips! With gifts of suits! With $17,000 worth of appetizers! Kathay Feng of California Common Cause, in the above quote, says that these committees amount to slush funds that represent a way around candidate committees that have limits.

Two reactions: First, hook me up with one of those appetizers (they ought to be great at those prices). Second, hold your outrage and disgust. Statements like Feng’s are self-serving and unfair to elected officials – and create public misunderstanding about how lawmaking works in California.

If anything, the number of ballot measure committees suggest the very opposite of what outraged news reports and goos goos want you to think. The truth is not that too many California politicians have such ballot measure communities. The truth is too few politicians have such committees.

You read that right. BANG reports that just 32 legislators (out of 120 in the California legislature) control ballot measure committees; and only four of the seven state constitutional officers do. That’s scandalously low in California, for one simple reason:

If you are going to make laws in this state, you must be constantly plotting, strategizing and accounting for potential ballot measures. Because California’s ballot initiative process is just so powerful. A measure passed by the voters can’t be undone except by another vote of the people—that inflexibility distinguishes California.

For California lawmakers, this means that any of their policy efforts can be stymied, pressured – or undone permanently – by one ballot measure. In that context, it’s fair to ask if the 88 legislators who don’t have ballot measure committees are doing their jobs.

Such committees constitute a very basic defensive tool. Legislators who are serious about legislating must show strength and constantly be courting donors not merely in support of his or her re-election but in defense of their legislative agenda. You want to build up a fund to show your enemies you’re ready for a ballot fight; and you might want to court or sideline interests or donors that might bring forth a measure that could frustrate your goals.

That’s why the good government attempts to distinguish, as the BANG analysis does, between ballot measure committees giving to ballot campaigns and spending and maintenance of donors are ludicrous. Both donor maintenance and actual ballot contributions are both part of the same game.

In fact, good, strong preventive maintenance of donors is more important — and should be proactive. You don’t want to give to ballot measure campaigns (and so it’s natural, and not corrupt as the goo goos suggest, that 25 of these committees haven’t sent money to ballot measure campaigns). You want to prevent such campaigns from happening in the first place so that your legislation doesn’t get locked into the permafrost of California’s constitution or initiative statutes.

When you understand that legislators with these committees are merely doing their jobs, what then explains the outrage? Part of it is reflexive dislike of anything involving money in politics. But a good part of it is politics by Common Cause and other interest groups, whose power derives from the notion that they represent the public interest and are a check on corruption.

Such groups want leverage and power over politicians, and they themselves use the ballot measure process—making them potential competitors with the pols. Indeed they’ve used the ballot to pursue measures like the redistricting commission, which took power away from politicians, and created more power and influence for the good government folks themselves.

In this context, the expressed outrage about ballot measure committee is disingenuous, and strategic; the goo goos blast politicians for trying to do their jobs when what you’re really doing is constraining their power (and they are already very constrained) and enhancing your own power. Media outlets need to be smarter about giving good government the platform in their stories to speak as a voice of authority; they are just another contestant in the contest for ballot power in California. They shouldn’t be allowed to pose as the good guys.

The hard truth is that California’s ballot initiative system doesn’t leave any room for good guys. It’s all about power—and locking in your preferences.

Now, let’s take a step back. Is it good that our ballot initiative reality forces politicians to have these committees and do this extra fundraising? Of course not. Our inflexible system forces politicians to the ballot, both for defense and offense. And when elected officials use the ballot, that’s not really direct democracy –it’s a plebiscite. And that’s dangerous.

But the way to respond to that is not to attack politicians out of context. After all, they didn’t create this system—voters and interest groups did, often through ballot measure. The goal should be to make the ballot system more flexible.

There are two essential reforms. First, make it harder to change the constitution by initiative. And second, let politicians amend statutes passed by ballot initiative as if the statutes were any other law. That, in turn, would reduce the need for politicians to have ballot measure committees, since they could still change voter-approved laws that went too far without having to play the ballot game themselves.

Such changes would bring California more in line with other states and countries, and would make our system more rational. But in California, the people in power see the rational as unrealistic. These reforms aren’t. In fact, making the ballot initiative process more flexible would have natural allies and financial support. Including from the candidate-controlled ballot measure committees.

(Joe Mathews writes California Connected for Zocalo Public Square. This column was posted at Fox and Hounds.) 

-cw

A Potentially Devastating Blow to the Anti-Vaccination Movement

GELFAND’S WORLD--In a recent column (see the subsection titled Another dog that didn't bark), I mentioned that the new state law mandating vaccination of school age children seems to be going into effect smoothly, with generally high levels of compliance. I speculated that the most extreme anti-vaccination parents were managing to obtain vaccine exemptions for their children by going to a few pediatricians -- the ones who are willing to play the game of declaring nearly normal kids to be medically ineligible for vaccination. 

Perhaps I spoke too soon. 

In that earlier piece, I mentioned that until recently, anti-vaccine parents didn't even need a doctor's note. They just needed to sign something called a personal belief exemption (PBE). I speculated that use of the PBE was often just the result of parental tardiness rather than of deeply held anti-vaccination beliefs. Parents who had neglected to keep their children's vaccinations up to date found that they could still get their children enrolled in school. They just had to sign a piece of paper (the PBE). The new law makes this impossible because the PBE has been abolished. We are now seeing the effect. Parents either have to make an appointment with an expensive pediatrician or make the effort to get the kids their shots. A lot of parents now are just taking their kids to the shot clinic. 

But then there are the more extreme anti-vaccinationists, the ones who blame childhood vaccinations on all manner of ailments including autism. They have to deal with the issue in some other way. Home schooling is one permissible option. Going to a cooperative pediatrician who is willing to write a vaccine exemption letter is another possibility. 

The most famous of those pediatricians is Dr Bob Sears (photo above) of Orange County. Sears is the author of a book on vaccine resistance and was an outspoken opponent of the new state law, SB277. 

The same day that my original column was published, a legal bombshell hit the anti-vaccination community. Bob Sears was charged with negligence by the state medical authorities. 

I won't go into a lot of detail about the charges, except to point out that they involve a parent who obtained a vaccine exemption for a two year old infant. The charges imply that Sears did not follow an adequate level of medical care in his evaluation of the child. The charges make it clear that the state authorities consider Sears' performance to have been negligent (an important word in the practice of medicine), at a level that is bad enough to justify the state taking action against his right to practice medicine in California. 

The story was considered big enough to make the news in the Orange County Register and the L.A. Times, and from there to local radio. It expanded to become a worldwide internet discussion. That the state's action is more than just a complaint about medical incompetence was explored in the opening paragraphs of Matt Hamilton's story in the Times

Dr. Bob Sears, an Orange County pediatrician and nationally known critic of vaccination laws, faces the loss of his medical license after the state medical board accused him of improperly excusing a toddler from immunization and endangering both the child and the public. 

The Medical Board of California contends in legal documents released Thursday that Sears committed “gross negligence” and deviated from standard practice when he issued a letter in 2014 prescribing no more vaccines for the child. 

In other words, the state of California is going after Sears because of his approach to childhood vaccination. We can paraphrase the state's message to California doctors as follows: You can write vaccine exemptions when they are medically indicated, but you have to follow the principles and standards of accepted medical practice. Doctors who wish to continue playing the vaccination exemption game will probably be able to do so, but they will have to document each exemption by taking a medical history, examining the patient, and keeping adequate records. You might say that the state of California is requiring that vaccine exemption needs to be considered just as seriously as you would consider a possible case of pneumonia in a young patient. 

Some critics are going to point out that the state of California is being tougher about vaccines than it is about marijuana use. It's no secret that getting a certificate recommending the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes is simply a matter of visiting one of the clinics that advertises for your business. Some of these clinics have actually used signs the size of small billboards to bring in the marijuana users. 

Others may recall the days during the Viet Nam War when young men sought exemptions from the draft. There were a lot of doctors who were sympathetic and would supply a letter to your draft board if there was some finding that could justify a draft exemption. It was obvious at the time that some doctors pushed the limits of medical science in writing those letters. 

Is Dr Bob Sears doing anything all that different or all that worse than the medical marijuana certificate mills or the anti-draft doctors of the 1960s? There is a pretty good case that from the public health standpoint, he is. The medical board's position about Dr Sears endangering the wider public, in addition to the specific child, makes exactly that point. It's also obvious that unvaccinated children are at increased risk of catching whooping cough and other contagious diseases. 

What about the political and social implications of the state's action? 

The charges against Sears cannot help but create a stultifying effect on pediatricians who have been merchandising themselves as anti-vaccine practitioners, and on those who have been considering doing so. They are all thinking things through very carefully at the moment. The upside to writing slightly spurious vaccine exemptions is to build one's medical practice and to gain the gratitude of anti-vaccine parents. The downside is the possible loss of one's career. 

Dr. Sears responded to the public thrashing by announcing the charges on his internet page. This resulted in angry (and anguished) comments by his supporters. For people who really believe that vaccination can lead to autism, Dr. Sears was their life preserver in a sea of hostility. They don't want to lose him. 

The effect of the state's action, however well justified, is to further stimulate the fight that for one brief moment seemed to be dying down. Some pediatricians willing to deal with anti-vaccine parents may figure out how to walk the tightrope and write those exemption letters. Others may figure out that it's not worth the effort. But no licensed physician in the state of California is likely to run an anti-vaccine exemption mill in the way that the medical marijuana mills have been run. 

Hillary gets pneumonia 

Late night comedians will be dusting off the Prevnar jokes. Unlike Vince Foster, she didn't get this one done. (If you didn't see the commercial, this line will be meaningless to you.) Reporters will explain to the Libertarian candidate that laryngitis is not a city in the middle east. Some comedian who went to college will connect Bill Clinton with the word pneumococcus. 

But I'm going to treat this illness as an experiment. You see, I have no reason to assume that the diagnosis of pneumonia is anything but 100% true. What reason would they have to fake it? She's been coughing, weak, and feverish for days or weeks, and her doctor confirmed the diagnosis. 

But my prediction is that within hours, we will be deluged with speculations about what Hillary has, why the pneumonia story serves a villainous end, and how the subterfuge is being managed by the mass media. The paranoia will flow and burst into flame. Figure Wednesday at the latest.

 

And because we are imagining this now, before it has taken off, we can treat it as a new episode of Hillary Derangement Syndrome (HDS). The point of our observing HDS after the pneumonia diagnosis is that it will demonstrate how unbelievable all those previous episodes of HDS were.

 

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for City Watch. He can be reached at [email protected]

-cw

Will LA City Council and Mayor Garcetti Approve a Scary ‘Black Lung Loft’ Next to the 101 Freeway?

VOX POP--AMCAL Multi-Housing, Inc. wants to build 335 apartments next to the 101 Freeway in Woodland Hills, although scientific studies have shown that freeway-adjacent housing, also known as “Black Lung Lofts,” can be extremely unhealthy for children and pregnant women. Since the mega-project seeks height district and zone changes, the developer needs approvals from the LA City Council and Mayor Eric Garcetti. What will they do?

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Where the Hell is the Outrage! Transparency Bills Fail Leaving Calif Beach Biz Behind Closed Doors

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW-Two bills that would have improved transparency at the California Coastal Commission were defeated last week, disclosing a slant toward business, labor, and pro-development interests. A third measure that would mandate one of the commission’s fifteen members to be from a low-income minority community that is impacted by environmental problems did pass the Assembly and is headed for Governor Brown’s desk. 

Senate Bill 1190, sponsored by Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara), would have banned ex-parte contacts between commissioners and developers, lobbyists, environmentalists and others with an interest in the commission’s decisions. Forty-seven assembly members voted against the bill, with 21 abstentions. Only twelve members supported the bill. 

Jackson’s bill had an endorsement from the Coastal Commission and was passed in the Senate but the measure faced resistance in the Assembly from a roster of organizations, including the California Farm Bureau Federation, the California Chamber of Commerce, the Western States Petroleum Assn., and the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, as well as the California League of United Latin American Citizens and lobbyist Susan McCabe who represents development interests.

The bill’s opponents used the “free speech” argument alleging that the ban would restrict labor representatives, developers and others from providing their views to commission members. The California Coastal Act requires commissions to stick to issues like public coastal access and environmental issues, not business or economic benefits. If commissioners do not follow these guidelines, their decisions can be challenged in court. 

Supporters of the bill state that most ex-parte contacts are between commissioners and developers looking for approval along California’s coastline, which can impact the fairness of subsequent proceedings. In lieu of ex-parte meetings, developers and others, they say, should address their concerns during public hearings and not behind closed doors.

Assembly Bill 2002, sponsored by Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) and Assemblyman Mark Stone (D-Monterey Bay), would have required anyone who lobbies the Coastal Commission to register with the state and to disclose clients with business before the commission. The bill would also have fast-tracked reporting of ex-parte meetings and made the disclosures more accessible to the public.

The measure faced an uphill battle due to the two-thirds vote requirement, as it would have amended the Political Reform Act. The bill failed to pass in the Senate. Opposition to the bill included lobbyists, construction, real estate and agricultural interests, the same groups that also worked to defeat the ex-parte bill. 

The beleaguered Coastal Commission has been under scrutiny by courts and the media for its lack of transparency in reporting ex-parte meetings or reporting them late and without much detail, all of which appear to violate statutory requirements. Just over two weeks ago, Spotlight on Coastal Corruption and attorney Cory Briggs filed a lawsuit in San Diego County Superior Court, alleging that five coastal commissioners (Chairman Steve Kinsey, Erik Howell, Martha McClure, Wendy Mitchell and Mark Vargas) had violated ex-parte disclosure rules 590 times. 

Until we see complete transparency and a ban of ex-parte meetings, the Coastal Commission will answer to special interests with deep pockets. Our miles of coastline will be up for grabs, sold to the highest bidder. You could lose you California beach. I ask again, where the hell is the outrage!?

 

(Beth Cone Kramer is a Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

Vote Trading, Secrecy and LA’s Culture of Criminality

CORRUPTION WATCH-CityWatch has had a few articles recently about the harm which secrecy does to our society. On September 5, 2016, Daniel Guss described, in “Garcetti Playing Dirty Pool?”  the behind the scenes attack on John Vidovich of the Los Angeles Fire Department. It seems his misdeeds were reduced to the number uninspected buildings in Los Angeles and trying to save the homes and lives of those living in the Hollywood Hills near Lake Hollywood. 

On the same day, CityWatch ran a piece about the harm that the Brown Act’s secrecy causes by permitting city government to hide its corrupt machinations from the public. 

CityWatch has also written more than a few times about the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative that calls for no more secret meetings between developers and city councilmembers. 

A major factor in this widespread secrecy is the unanimous voting at City Council where all items pass unanimously. As reported by the Los Feliz Ledger, Councilmember David Ryu admits that it is futile to vote No since all the other councilmembers will vote Yes. Ryu’s reasoning seems to be: What sense would it make to expose the dirt behind the scenes when each councilmember is obligated to vote Yes? 

A Case Study of Secrecy and How It Pollutes Society 

Let’s take a look at just one case of secrecy that shows the relationship between not only the secret dealings between developers and city councilmembers, but illustrates how the entire system is enveloped in a cloud of criminality. We shall analyze the secret dealings between Councilmember Krekorian’s Office, City Planning and the developer to see how Marilyn Monroe’s home was demolished and how the entire system, including the courts, closed ranks to protect the criminal voting system at City Hall. 

Developer Purchased Marilyn Monroe’s Former Home, Knowing its Historical Significance 

The listing for the family home at 5258 Hermitage Avenue in Valley Village included the express statement of that it was the former home of Marilyn Monroe. Thus, when the developer bought the property, he already knew he had a problem. 

Although the City still has failed to provide all the documentation about the contacts between Councilmember Krekorian’s office and the developer, during litigation a significant email was discovered from the developer’s attorney to City Planning stating: 

From: Mary Neifert <[email protected]>

Date: Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 1:03 PM, Subject: 5258 Hermitage Historical Assessment

To: [email protected]

Hi Tom,

The APC appeal hearing is

Per your suggestion last month, the owner of 5258 Hermitage Avenue had a historical assessment done on the property to defend against the appeal on file. I have attached it hereto for your review. Hopefully it can be included in your report to the Committee. Please contact me if you need any further information. 

This email was not shared with the public. Not only does it tell us was there was prior contact between the developer and City Planning, but it also reveals that City Planning had expressly asked the developer to prepare a biased report against finding any historical value to Marilyn Monroe’s former home. In case anyone questions whether this communication between the developer and City Planning was intended to be secret, the attorney concludes with: 

The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential and may be protected attorney work product or subject to the attorney client privilege. If you are not the intended recipient, kindly notify Mary Neifert immediately by telephone at **** - or by e-mail at****.com. Please also destroy all copies of this message and any attachments hereto. 

While the City has chosen to keep the prior contacts between Councilmember Krekorian, City Planning and the developer secret, it is clear that prior to receiving any data about the property’s historical status, City Planning was asking the developer to provide a slanted report on which the Planning Department’s Ken Bernstein could then rely to claim that there was no historical significance to Marilyn’s home.   

In what type society is the City allowed to be the biased and dishonest advocate for a developer who wants to destroy a historic structure? On April 9, 2015, we found this email from City Planning’s Ken Bernstein. 

Ken Bernstein <[email protected]> Zhu, Apr 9, 2015 at 12:47 PNI

To: Tom Henry <[email protected]>

Cc: Tom Glick [email protected]>, Lambert Giessinger <[email protected]>

Thanks, Tom, for checking back with us on this — I hadn't noticed that the APC hearing was happening today. Yes, we reviewed the ARG historic resources assessment, found it complete, and agreed with the findings.

understand from Lambert that another consultant, Charlie Fisher, may raise the argument that Marilyn Monroe was first discovered during the period she lived at this property, but I would agree with ARG's conclusion that this alone isn't sufficient to make the building eligible for designation.

Ken, Ken Bernstein, AICP, Manager, Office of Historic Resources. & Principal City Planner, Policy Planning 

Ken Bernstein’s office, which had requested the biased ARG report, agrees with the report’s conclusion, despite the fact that he has learned that the community will be submitting a report from noted historian Charlie Fisher. Nonetheless, without bothering to wait for the Charlie Fisher report, Ken Bernstein agrees that the home is not significant.   

About one hour later at 1:49 pm, and before that afternoon’s meeting of the Area Planning Commission, Ken Bernstein re-writes his email with some interesting changes. 

On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 1:49 PM, Ken Bernstein <[email protected]> wrote: 

Tom,

I wanted to let you know that the Office of Historic Resources' staff did review the historic resource assessment for 5258 Hermitage, prepared by Architectural Resources Group. We found the report to be thorough and complete, and concurred with the report's findings. While we understand that Marilyn Monroe was initially "discovered" to begin her modeling career while living at this property, this alone is not sufficient to qualify the property for historic designation. Our eligibility standards for Survey LA, our citywide historic resources survey, are consistent with the guidance from the National Park Service: properties achieving eligibility for designation due to their association with historic persons should be those associated "with a person's productive life, reflecting the time period when he or she achieved significance." Because this property is from the earliest stages of Monroe's career, and she was not discovered at this particular site, the historic association at this site is not sufficient to meet designation criteria.

Ken, Ken Bernstein, AICP, Manager, Office of Historic Resources & Principal City Planner, Policy Planning 

Here we see secrecy in action. Any mention of Charlie Fisher and his report has been deleted. Ken Bernstein, who is the Manager of the Office of Historic Resources, is concealing that fact that there will be another historic report with a different conclusion. Wouldn’t one think that the Area Planning Commission would like to know that there is contrary report?   

While Ken Bernstein refers to the ARG (Architectural Resources Group), one could never find that Ken Bernstein allowed the Area Planning Commission to see the ARG report. Thus, we have double secrecy: The actual ARG report and the fact that it had been solicited to be biased are withheld from the Area Planning Commission. It turns out that the ARG report contained many facts which showed that the property had historical significance and that its conclusion was not supported by its facts. Thus, one may reason that the contents of the ARG report were kept secret from the Area Planning Commission because the Commission disagreed with Mr. Bernstein and it might decide that the city should conduct a study of alternatives to demolishing the home. 

SaveValleyVillage Sues the City of Los Angeles 

SaveValleyVillage sued the City and the developer over destruction of Marilyn’s Valley Village home due to its failure to proceed in the correct legal manner. For the legal case, the city was required to identify all pertinent documents so that they could be included in the Administrative Record on which the court would base its opinion. 

Did City Planning provide any copy of the ARG Report on which Ken Bernstein said he relied? No. Although the city certified that it had produced everything, the ARG report remained secret. Ken Bernstein also failed to provide the City Attorney’s Office a copy of the Charlie Fisher report which explained why the property had historical significance. Thus, City Planning had cleansed the Administrative Record of any historical report from which SaveValleyVillage could argue that the property had historic significance. Also, there is no reason to believe that the City Attorney’s Office knew about the missing documentation. 

After SavevalleyVillage had submitted its brief to the court, the City saw that a member of the public had attached the crucial four pages of the Charlie Fisher report to an email and that those four pages, which had not been routed through Mr. Ken Bernstein, had made it into the Administrative Record. 

This breach of secrecy was devastating to the developer and to Ken Bernstein’s opinion. The only factual evidence in the Administrative Record supported the position that Marilyn’s home had historic significance. 

Then and only then a miracle occurred: the City Planning “discovered” the ARG report. Despite the fact that SaveValleyVillage had already submitted its brief and had laid out its entire case for all to see, the court thought that it should consider the ARG Report. The court believed that if Ken Bernstein had the opportunity to review the ARG report in secret and to conceal the ARG Report from the Area Planning Commission and keep it out of the Administrative Record, then the court should most certainly rely on that secret document. Why, anything less would be unfair.

In rendering his August 29 decision, Judge Fruin relied on a case from August 12, 2016 even though the briefing in his Marilyn Monroe case had been completed in July.

The Criminogenic Nature of Los Angeles Culture 

Members of the public need to understand the criminogenic culture that permeates Los Angeles. The lynchpin in this criminal culture is the vote trading pact which Penal Code § 86 criminalized in 2006. 

If city councilmembers were free to complain about and vote against a developer who secretly colluded with the Department of Planning to destroy Marilyn’s home, then Councilmembers such as Paul Krekorian might not feel so secure in being able to subvert the law. Without the City Council’s criminal voting pact, Councilmember Krekorian would have had to risk the project’s being voted down due to the illicit manner in which the council office, city planning and the developer conspired to destroy the property. 

The public needs to understand the vital importance that the criminal voting pact plays in Los Angeles. It allows every councilmember to know that no matter how illegal a project may be, no matter what may have transpired in secret behind closed doors, his or her project is guaranteed unanimous support. What good is secrecy between the council offices, city planning and developers when it can be brought into the open during a public debate a city council? 

If the City had followed CEQA and issued an Environmental Impact Report concerning the limited issue of the historic significance of Marilyn Monroe’s home, one CEQA alternative would have been to move the small structure to another location. For example, the Lasky Production Barn was moved from Gower Gulch in Hollywood to opposite the Hollywood Bowl. 

As for the City’s permitting the public forum, which an EIR would have provided, Judge Fruin wrote: 

Petitioner suggests that the structures, or at least the back house in which Norm Jeane and her mother-in-law lived, could have been moved to a different location and serve as a Hollywood attraction. See rd Am. Pet. @ 21:23-25 and 22: 2-6; see also Pet. Br., p.8 and Reply Br., p.8. (Moving a structure to a different location is considered to diminish its historical integrity. [bold added] August 29, 2016 Statement of Decision page 8 ¶2 

Thus, Judge Fruin seems to believe that considering the historic value of Marilyn Monroe’s Valley Village home would have been a waste of time since moving a historic structure “diminishes it historical integrity.” Apparently, smashing it to smithereens so that not even a match stick size parcel of wood remains is a suitable option to relocating the home. 

Judge Fruin shows no concern about Mr. Bernstein’s secrecy or his own reliance on a report which the developer’s own attorney admits was asked to be biased against finding the property to have historic significance. In some judicial systems, judges question the reliability of such evidence. 

Could there be any stronger judicial support for secretive collusion between a developer and the City than relying wholeheartedly on a secret report that was solicited to be biased and withheld from the Administrative Record? 

Secrecy and the culture of criminality go hand in hand.

 

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

Point & Counterpoint: No Matter the Name, ‘Black-Focused Housing’ at Cal State LA is Still Racism

NO ON BLACK HOUSING-To quote the late, great Martin Luther King, who deserves his own holiday as much as any President, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."  Well, at CSULA, we've got no dream … we’ve got a nightmare:  a New Racism, as repugnant and dangerous as any Old Racism we've ever seen. 

I'm sure there are a few "diversity" types or "social justice warrior" types, who will defend the "living learning community" of black-focused housing at Cal State Los Angeles, and to those creepy types I wish them all the racist monikers and scorn they richly deserve. 

Shall we have separate bathrooms and water fountains for African-American students, but this time of

THEIR choosing to make it all "better"?  How about black robes with eyes cut out, for good measure, so those living at the black-focused housing can recognize a fellow self-excluded member and feel "safe"?  

Perhaps we can have some "white-focused" housing, too, now that we're going "full-on racist"? 

Yes, these ARE very harsh criticisms and statements, but after a half-century of our nation fighting to create a melting pot in America, which Martin Luther King and his heroic team of TRUE "social justice warriors" fought to make real in the United States (and not just diversity among white/European backgrounds), this regressive CSULA housing experiment is such a horrific step backwards that it should be stopped altogether. 

As a physician who worked for outreach to minority students to attend my medical school in Texas, and who still advocates for more medical Spanish and cultural sensitivity to be taught to medical professionals, I've also observed the need for patients and professionals alike to get over their cultural differences. 

We're "culturally-sensitive," which is smart and just, but are we as a society brave and demanding of our need to get over those cultural barriers, and to emphasize that there's only one race--the human race? 

And that we're of one people--the American People--in this nation? 

The only exclusive/cultural needs that might be open for housing is for those based on gender and sexual preference ... although those, too, have their risks in a society that has to live with and work with each other.  So while LGBTQ and single-sex housing might make for greater comfort to those living there, it's best for all of us to end bullying and fighting to coexist. 

College is supposed to prepare us for the real world, and any successful American will not get to his/her goals without confronting the differences and similarities of our fellow human beings.

Certainly, any black student who truly wants to succeed will have nothing to do with this form of housing--which is publicly-funded, and should be subject to appropriate rules and governmental oversight. There remains the option of black colleges, but sooner or later there comes a time when anyone and everyone must choose to address and (hopefully!) befriend ALL our fellow Americans. 

There is an answer to this nightmare at CSULA, and it's premised on the "community" being open to all students (there is a waiting list, however): 

It is my hope that all Asian, Latino, and white students truly interested in learning about the segment of our nation who happens to be African-American apply to live there.  Let diversity really work, and let enough non-black students attend so that the "safety" of an all-black-only student housing community is prevented ... because that "safety" can only lead to racial division (which we do NOT need!). 

The education of what it is like to grow up black in America is fundamental to all of us.  And ditto to learn what it is like to grow up Latino, Asian, and even white (which ranges from Italian to Greek to Jewish, just as "Latino" ranges from Mexican to Cuban to Peruvian). 

The medical group I work at, and the other medical groups I worked at previously, had black, Latino and Asian leaders ... but the ethnic background was de-emphasized in favor of excellence. 

There's a time when we need to talk, and to debate, and to learn.  Then there's a time to act, and to live, and to make a stand. 

I'll go with the time-tested and time-proven "melting pot" of what best makes our nation special.

The New Racism at CSULA is as repugnant and deserving of scorn as any Old Racism.  It stinks, and belongs on the trash heap of failed ideas as much as Jim Crow laws, Socialism, Fascism, and Communism.

I'll stick with MLK's ideals, and eschew the KKK ... in whatever hellish form any wannabe separatist, racist new trend may show up.  Black separatism is as pathetic as any White separatism. 

Hey, CSULA!  Show some real "character" and end this form of New Racism! 

 

(Ken Alpern is a Westside Village Zone Director and Board member of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC), previously co-chaired its Planning and Outreach Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of its MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He is co-chair of the CD11Transportation Advisory Committee and chairs the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at  [email protected]. He also co-chairs the grassroots Friends of the Green Line at www.fogl.us. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Mr. Alpern.

-cw

Point & Counter Point: 'Black Only-Housing' by Cal State LA Makes Sense

YES ON BLACK HOUSING--California State University of Los Angeles was right to establish black-only residence areas for its students.

In November 2015, the Black Student Union at Cal State LA wrote a letter to University President William A. Covino explaining feelings of victimization that they had experienced on campus.

The letter, found on the Afrikan Black Coalition’s website, reads, “Racially insensitive remarks, and micro-aggressions, by professors and students create a learning environment that is not conducive to the overall learning atmosphere. This presents unnecessary barriers to the success of Black students here on campus.”

In addition to the students’ accounts of racism on campus, the letter contains a list of demands to resolve some of the issues, including black-only housing options.

“WE DEMAND the creation and financial support of a CSLA housing space delegated for Black students and a full time Resident Director who can cater to the needs of Black students,” wrote members of Cal State LA’s Black Student Union.

After feeling victimized due to racial prejudices, members of the union were justified in their request for segregated housing.

The Mission Statement of Cal State LA’s Housing Services Program reads, “As a community of scholars in support of the University, we endeavor to build residents’ capacity for academic achievement, leadership and global citizenship.”

Housing Services cannot complete this goal if residents are feeling attacked in their own homes.

Members of the Black Student Union also conveyed the need for more affordable housing options.  In their letter to President Covino, the students said that Black-Only Housing options would provide African-American students with more affordable living options on campus.

Cal State made the right move by responding to the demands sensitively.

According to College Fix, the university is opening the Halisi Scholars Black Living-Learning Community for the first time during the 2016 Fall Semester. The community “focuses on academic excellence and learning experiences that are inclusive and non-discriminatory,” said Cal State LA spokesperson Robert Lopez in an email to College Fix.

The LA-based university is not the only college to offer segregated housing options for black students. UCONN, UC Berkley, and UC Davis have residence halls that provide black students the opportunity to form living arrangements with each other.

The addition of the Halisi Scholars Learning Community could contribute to awareness of the racially-charged problems that plague the campus. In addition to black-only housing, the Black Student Union demanded that all faculty and staff complete cultural competency training.

Perhaps the combination of the new living and learning options and increased cultural awareness on the university’s campus will provide a more inclusive atmosphere for all students.

(Mark Jones posts at Opposing Views  … where this piece originated.)

-cw 

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