LOS ANGELES

THE CITY--While Angelenos are easily fooled, Wall Street is not. Wall Street does not buy the disinformation about a housing shortage. They know that Los Angeles has a 12% vacancy rate for apartments constructed in the last decade. Wall Street knows that means the City has been constructing too many new apartments. 

Wall Street knows that more people are moving out of the City of Los Angeles than are moving into the city, meaning, LA has a net exodus over new arrivals. The amount of empty housing increases, even if nothing new is constructed. Thus, Wall Street knows the exodus means the demand has slowed, while the number of available places has grown. 

Wall Street knows that developers with empty units cannot make their loan payments and that makes Wall Street unhappy. The developers are also upset. Like the species of sharks which must swim in order to breathe, developers must construct in order to survive. Any business facing a declining market for its product is doomed. The developers know that Los Angeles has “150 percent (5,874) of the units needed by above moderate income earners.” (11-17-2015 HCIDLA report to Mayor) 

In response to this excess capacity, the City has turned to subterfuge: 

(1) Tell Everyone That There Is a Shortage of Housing--Following the old adage, “figures don’t lie, but liars can figure,” they pretend that housing prices are soaring, therefore, there must be a shortage. Like I said, Angelenos are easily deceived, but Wall Street is not. Higher prices do not necessarily mean a shortage. And that is why Wall Street wants guaranteed bail-outs to fund additional construction. But more about the bail-outs later. 

(2) How Housing Prices Are Hyped--In calculating average prices, they throw in some super high homes such as the asking price of $85 million for Eddie Murphy’s old estate in Holmby Hills – as if mansions in Holmby Hills affect prices in East Hollywood. 

And there’s another scam on the public: the City reports the high advertised sales prices and high advertised rents as the amounts actually paid. The City gets this misleading data from real estate companies which have a vested interest in deceiving people into believing that prices are escalating. 

There are also machinations at the low end of the market. The City has torn down over 20,000 rent controlled units. Rent controlled units have lower rents and the older units with long term tenants have the lowest rents. The demolition of rent controlled units removes low end rentals from the equation. 

For example, let’s say the rent range is between the low rent of $20 and the high rent of $80. Then the average rent is $50. Tear down the $20 units, and the cheapest is now $30 so the new “average rent” is $55. Because rents have then increased by 10%, the City declares that there must be an increased demand. However, the reality is that the demand has not changed. Rather, the City has eliminated the apartments with the lowest rents.

(3) Create a Homeless Crisis--By tearing down rent controlled housing, the City throws thousands of people into the streets. Even if they could find a new rent controlled apartment, that unit’s rent would begin at market rate, which these people cannot afford.

Now, Wall Street sees a chance to make money on the backs of the poor. Here’s how the scam works:

(1) Publicize the Plight of the Homelessness--Garcetti excels at photo-ops. He may suck as a mayor, but when he’s in front of the camera, he is #1. These photo-ops then lead to a campaign to house the homeless. 

At this moment, Garcetti ignores the fact that LA has a plethora of empty apartments – where we could house all the homeless who want homes. Instead, the Mayor says that we must give hundreds of millions of dollars to his friends to build apartments for the homeless. I wonder if Garcetti’s friend and campaign fund raiser Juri Ripinsky, a federal felon who served two years in Leavenworth for real estate fraud, is in line for some of this free money. He got the lucrative Paseo Plaza Project in Hollywood back when Garcetti was City Council President. 

(2) Wall Street No Longer Likes Tax Rebates--There was a time when the City gave future taxes to the developers who would keep the sale taxes generated from the stores in their mixed-use projects. However, many of them collected no sales taxes because their retail space was vacant. Vacant retail space often means that many apartments are also unrented. The point of mixed-use projects is that the people who live in the building will shop at the stores. Wall Street knows that empty retail spaces portend disaster. As a result, Wall Street will no longer rely on sales tax rebates as providing the developer with the revenue stream to repay his loan. 

(3) The Garcetti Administration has a dilemma--The homeless are too poor to pay rents and the more affluent already have too many available apartments. Plus, each day Los Angeles is losing more and more educated and well trained people. This leaves us with a poorer population, many of them young and elderly. Neither the newborns nor the old are demanding new housing. 

Question: What can we do to keep Garcetti’s developer buddies in business? 

Answer: Pre-Arranged Wall Street Bail-Outs 

This solution is brilliant. In advance of a loan, the taxpayers will guarantee to bail out Wall Street. In this scam, the City itself borrows the money and gives it to the developers. That way, it’s the City that must repay the loans! 

Wall Street buys City’s bonds which the taxpayers repay. The developers are left out the equation -- except they get all the money. Developers form collapsible companies call LLCs and LLPs. After the developer’s company has distributed millions of dollars to the developer, his family and his friends, the company goes bankrupt. 

If the developer had borrowed the money directly from Goldman Sachs, then Goldman Sachs would be out hundreds of millions of dollars. But in this scheme, Goldman Sachs will have bought the City bonds and made no direct loans to the developers. So the City has to repay Goldman Sachs.   

That is why the City is floating bonds for projects with Affordable Housing. The public is easily fooled and doesn’t realize that it’s paying the bills. The harm here is greater than one first sees. When the City uses up its credit by issuing too many bonds, it must agree to pay higher rates of interest for additional borrowing. 

Thus, a secondary impact on the taxpayer is that the City cannot finance itself without incurring high debt. In anticipation of more of the City’s money going to pay off Wall Street, the City is already turning to rate hikes like the four year DWP rate increase, from which the City skims off 18%. The City also wants higher taxes to pay for transportation -- and eventually will want higher taxes for more police and paramedics. 

NYC is called The Big Apple. Soon, LA will be known as The Big Scam.

(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.

FINANCIAL STRUGGLE--With the demise of Air America, Current TV, and Al Jazeera America it looks like only Pacifica Radio is still standing. Here in Los Angeles many rely on KPFK 90.7 fm for information they just won't hear anywhere else. KPFK is one of the five Pacifica stations. 

Many have lamented the perpetual dysfunction and drama surrounding Pacifica. But Pacifica has somehow endured for almost 70 years. It's time to fix it. Actually, it's past time to fix it. The need for revitalization is urgent. All five stations are struggling financially but financial shortfalls at two of the stations are so severe that they are threatening the survival of the entire network. 

Also, Pacifica is currently being investigated by the California Attorney General, has lost its Corporation for Public Broadcast funding two years in a row (about $2 million lost so far) because of poor financial reporting and will probably lose CPB funding for the next fiscal year. It is also not up to date on other financial reporting to federal and state agencies. 

Pacifica's radio signal licenses are estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars. It would be tragic if they were lost. Progressive advocacy groups need media to project their messages. They court, beg and cajole mainstream media with mediocre results. Meanwhile, here is Pacifica, the naughty step child of the left, mostly abandoned by the groups and movements that could save it and build a powerful media force and, at the same time, increase their own clout. 

Here's a quote from the Pacifica Bylaws: "The Foundation is committed to peace and social justice, and seeks to involve in its governance and operations individuals committed to these principles."  

Let me say loud and clear that you are formally invited to join Pacifica governance. Yes, I mean YOU. What does that entail? Let me explain. 

Pacifica has democratically elected local boards that, in turn, elect members of the Pacifica National Board, which controls all its stations and assets. If competent and committed people are elected to these local boards there is a good chance that Pacifica could be fixed. 

Pacifica has been mismanaged and misgoverned. The Pacifica National Board has the ability to change the management of the Foundation for the better. If the Local and National boards were improved they could make the bold management changes needed and Pacifica could probably be repaired. It wouldn't be easy, but it could be done. There are elections for local boards at each of the 5 Pacifica stations. These elections began on June 1st. The local boards each elect 4 people to the Pacifica National Board. The first step is to elect competent people to the local boards who then elect their most qualified members to the National Board. It's as simple as that. 

There is a very short window for nominations to these boards. The nomination period has already started and ends on June 30th is scheduled to open on June 1st and only lasts for one month. It's extremely important that competent, committed people be elected to these boards. Elections are held every two out of three years. As there was an election in 2015, after this current election there won't be another one for 2 years. That means this election is crucial to the survival of Pacifica Radio! 

If you want further information, please don't hesitate to email me at [email protected]. Or you can go to Elections.Pacifica.org or to CandidateSlate.org.

(Grace Aaron is a Pacifica National Board Member (2008, 2009 and 2016, interim Exec Dir 2009.) The opinions expressed in this article are entirely her own and do not represent Pacifica Radio, or any faction, group or entity related or unrelated to Pacifica.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

JUST THE FACTS-It was Sunday morning June 12 when I learned from a radio report around 6:30 am that there was a massive shooting in Orlando, Florida. As the information was broadcast, I learned that this was possibly another terrorist attack on Americans at a soft target location. Reminding me of other recent attacks across the globe, I went to church at the 7:00 am service to offer prayers for those shot and killed and recovering from their wounds. 

Since the event was so recent, the priest did not mention the incident during the service. Following mass, I turned to my radio and learned the horrifying details as the news reports were coming in from the scene. The tragedy was now being described as the worst massive shooting in American history! 

During my 33 years of service with the LAPD, I often thought I had seen the worst of hostility and tragedy in America. Multiple shooting victims at various crime scenes, the North Hollywood B of A Bank shootout and thousands of victims killed in gang shootings over the years. 

The Orlando shooting reminded me of so many other terrorist shootings I have read about around the world. Incident after incident with innocent people including women and children killed by terrorist activity. The civil rights movement in America claimed the lives of many innocent men, women and children over the years. Riots across America claimed the lives of other innocent people. Chicago gangs have taken so many lives in turf battles. Being raised a Catholic, I have always respected people as people. It did not make a difference of the persons color, their religion or sexual orientation. It is and has always been about respect for people. All people. 

I will be saying prayers for those that have been killed and those suffering in recovery. The family members of all those impacted also need our support and prayers.

May the 49 that have died Rest in Peace in God’s hands. 

We also need to keep the police officers and sheriff deputies firefighters and paramedics in our prayers. Coming upon a scene with so many dead and injured people will have an impact on the safety personnel for many years to come.

May our elected government representatives work with our public safety personnel and establish safety and security in the lands of The United States of America. 

How many more TERRORISTS are out there looking for the next target? 

The FBI currently has hundreds of people under investigation for possible terrorist activity. We all need to support our law enforcement personnel in their mission of Protecting and Serving all of us in America. Remember that IF YOU SEE SOMETHING SAY SOMETHING. Law enforcement can’t do it without your help and assistance. 

In this particular case, the individual has been identified as Omar Mir Seddique Mateen. He carried out the carnage with a Sig Sauer MCX and a Glock 17.     

Terrorist activity in America and law enforcement’s ability to rescue victims that are being held in so many life-threatening situations.   

Some ignorant American government officials with no military or law enforcement experience have pressed law enforcement agencies to return surplus military equipment that was supplied for the protection of the public. To be politically correct, some agencies were forced to return the military vehicles and other specialized equipment. While public safety personnel may not use the specialized military equipment on a daily basis, when they need it to protect American people and they need it now and not later. Isis is a threat to all Americans and America. We need to push the Federal Government to supply our local public safety personnel with the military equipment they need to protect and serve our communities.               

I thank those of you that have taken the time to email me your thoughts and comments. I try and reply to each of you when time permits. Your comments are welcome at [email protected].

(Dennis P. Zine is a 33-year member of the Los Angeles Police Department and former Vice-Chairman of the Elected Los Angeles City Charter Reform Commission, a 12-year member of the Los Angeles City Council and a current LAPD Reserve Officer who serves as a member of the Fugitive Warrant Detail assigned out of Gang and Narcotics Division. He writes Just the Facts for CityWatch. You can contact him at [email protected].)

PLANNING POLITICS--The Los Angeles Department of City Planning has done some crazy stuff in the past several years. Greenlighting skyscrapers that would be built on top of fault lines. Allowing developers to knock down affordable housing to build new luxury units. Continuing to hand out liquor permits in high-crime areas, even after LAPD Chief Beck wrote a letter asking them to cool it. I’m so used to the DCP doing things that are either irresponsible or totally irrational that I thought nothing they did could surprise me anymore. 

But I was wrong. 

At the beginning of May I was going through my inbox when I came across a hearing notice for a 21-story hotel that’s been proposed for the corner of Sunset and Cahuenga (graphic above)st. That caught my attention. I live in the area, so I know the intersection well. I scanned the hearing notice, and was surprised to see that the DCP was handling a project this large with a Mitigated Negative Declaration. 

For those of you who aren’t familiar with this process, here’s a quick summary. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires that project applicants complete an Initial Study to determine if there will be significant impacts on the environment. There are three possibilities. If there are no significant impacts, it can be handled with a Negative Declaration. If there are significant impacts but they can be mitigated, a Mitigated Negative Declaration (MND) is used. If there are significant impacts that can’t be mitigated, then the project requires a full Environmental Impact Report (EIR). Doing an EIR is a long, complex process. It can be difficult and costly for developers, and many would rather skip it if possible. 

R.D. Olson is the developer behind this high-rise hotel, and they obviously didn’t want the hassle of doing a full EIR. Lucky for them, the DCP was only too willing to oblige, and chose to handle the process quickly with an MND. In my opinion, this was completely inappropriate for a project of this size, especially considering the entitlements the developer was requesting. Check out R.D. Olson’s wish list. They’re asking for…. 

A Vesting Zone and Height District Change and an increase in Floor Area Ratio (FAR) of up to 6 to 1. 

A Conditional Use to permit the sale and dispensing of a full line of alcoholic beverages. 

Reducing required setbacks on the sides and rear of the project to zero. 

Seems like the developer is asking for a lot. But let’s skip that for the moment, and take a look at the way the DCP has handled the approval process so far. 

The hearing to consider approving all these entitlements and the adoption of the environmental document was scheduled for May 25. On May 4, I e-mailed the staff contact to ask if I could get a copy of the MND. He replied the same day, saying that the MND wouldn’t be ready for a couple weeks. That bothered me, because it meant the public would only have a week to study the document before the hearing. I wrote back expressing my concern, and asking if I could see the Initial Study. No answer. A few days later I wrote again. Still no answer. After another few days I wrote again. This time I got a response, but the staff contact made no mention of the Initial Study.

I finally realized that e-mailing was a waste of time, and I made an appointment to go to the DCP to look at the case file. On Friday, June 20, I made the trip to City Hall and rode the elevator up to the Department’s offices. A young woman handed me the file and showed me to a conference room. I sat down and started flipping through the documents. I was hoping that since the hearing was only five days away the MND would be available. No such luck. But what really surprised me was that in looking through the file I didn’t see any sign of the Initial Study. 

Let me state this another way. In five days the DCP was going to hold a hearing to consider approval of a 21-story hotel in a busy urban area that required major entitlements, and the environmental documents required by state law were nowhere to be found in the case file. 

But I did find another document that was pretty interesting. The traffic analysis for the project was done by Linscott, Law and Greenspan. They studied six intersections in the vicinity, including Cahuenga at De Longpre, Cahuenga at Sunset, and Cahuenga at Hollywood. Now anybody who’s driven north on Cahuenga or east on Sunset during weekday rush hour knows how bad the congestion is. Cars are often backed up for blocks. But according to Linscott, Law and Greenspan, all three intersections get an “A” for Level of Service (LOS) during the PM rush hour. Let me give you the definition of “LOS A” from the Highway Capacity Manual: "Free-flow conditions with unimpeded maneuverability. Stopped delay at signalized intersection is minimal." 

It’s clear that the analysis offered by Linscott, Law and Greenspan has some serious problems. But you’d never guess that from the Traffic Assessment prepared by the LA Department of Transportation (DOT). They say, "....[T]he proposed development is not expected to result in any significant traffic impacts at any of the six study intersections identified for detailed analysis. The results of the traffic impact analysis, which adequately evaluated the project's traffic impacts on the surrounding community, are summarized in Attachment 1." 

The other aspect of this project that really worried me was the liquor permit. In recent years the DCP has approved numerous liquor permits for clubs, bars, restaurants and hotels in the Hollywood area, apparently unconcerned about the high-crime rate associated with local nightlife. But LAPD Chief Charlie Beck was so worried about this practice that he wrote a letter to the DCP in October 2014 to express his concern about the “oversaturation of ABC [alcoholic beverage control] locations” in the Hollywood area. In his letter, Beck said that the high number of businesses serving alcohol was putting a strain on police resources, and listed some of the problems associated with local nightlife, including robberies, thefts, fights with serious injuries, shootings and rapes. 

I wanted to talk about all these issues at the hearing, so I showed up at City Hall on May 25. I was surprised when the hearing officer opened the proceedings by announcing that they were doing things a little differently for this project. Since the MND wasn’t ready yet, this would just be a preliminary hearing. Later, when the document had actually been completed, the DCP would schedule another hearing. This was a first for me. I’d never heard of such a thing before, but I guess they finally realized that giving the public the opportunity to comment on a document before it was actually released didn’t make a lot of sense. Also, it would have made it very easy to challenge the DCP’s determination. 

So after listening to the project reps give their spiel about how great this hotel would be, I got my chance to talk. I told the hearing officer I thought an MND was inadequate; I said I believed the traffic analysis was seriously flawed and explained that I was worried about approving yet another full alcohol permit in an area that clearly had serious problems related to nightlife. 

And that sparked an interesting discussion about the permit. The project reps assured me that this hotel would not be creating undesirable impacts. The clients they wanted to attract were business travelers, not night clubbers. There would be no parties on the rooftop deck. There would be no DJs. There would be no live music. This hotel was going to be geared toward the upscale business class. Any fears about the project adding to the problems caused by the party scene were completely unfounded. 

At the time, I bought it. But then I remembered that I’d seen a post on Urbanize LA announcing the project. According to that post from August 2015, no operator had yet been named. I contacted both the developer and the DCP to ask if Olson had signed an agreement with someone to run the hotel. No response from either. Why is this a concern? Because the operator will be the one to determine who the hotel caters to and what kind of clientele they want to attract. 

R.D. Olson isn’t going to be running the show. Any promises they make about how the hotel will be run are meaningless. And the DCP knows that. Lately they’ve been making a practice of handing out liquor permits to developers instead of business owners, which means there’s no way to assess the impacts and no meaningful way to attach conditions governing the use of the permit. 

Why am I going on at such length about this proposed hotel? Because it’s a beautiful illustration of just how bad things have gotten at the Department of City Planning. We have the decision to use an MND for a project that clearly requires an EIR, the bizarre plan to hold a meeting to consider a document that wasn’t even finished, the absurdly inaccurate traffic analysis, and the approval of a full liquor permit with no clear idea of how the business owner will use or abuse it. When you add all this together, it seems to me that the Department’s highest priority is serving the developer. 

The substantial impacts this hotel could have on the community have all been brushed aside to speed the approval process. I get the impression that the folks at the DCP feel like they can just disregard state law. And even worse, it seems to me that they’re completely oblivious to the public’s interests here. I get the feeling that they just don’t care. 

This is what planning looks like in the City of LA these days. A shoddy, haphazard process driven by developers with deep pockets. This is just one hotel in Hollywood, but there are people all over LA who are frustrated by the DCP’s apparent lack of concern for their communities. 

Last Thursday, I wrote again to the staff contact to ask if the next hearing had been scheduled. You won’t be surprised when I tell you I haven’t heard back yet.

NOTE: If you’re interested in talking to the DCP about this project, here’s the case number: CPC-2015-2893-VZC-HDCUB-ZAA-SPR

(Casey Maddren was born in Los Angeles and has lived here most of his life. He tries to capture as much of the city as he can in his blog, The Horizon and the Skyline.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

PLATKIN ON PLANNING--We don’t know how future historians will assess the political careers of Governor Jerry Brown, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, and LA Councilmember Gil Cedillo, but they should at least receive a footnote for their contribution to the slow by steady descent of the Democratic Party. 

This chapter begins with Jerry Brown’s proposal to “streamline” housing production in California by forbidding local authorities from undertaking any zoning or environmental reviews of proposed housing projects that conform to local zoning. 

Just to show he means business, the Governor doubled down on his proposal with an ultimatum to the State Legislature. He would not fold $400,000,000 for existing State affordable housing programs o the State budget unless the Legislature agrees to his approve his Streamlining Affordable Housing Approvals Bill. 

Some cities, unions, and many environmental organizations oppose the Governor’s approach, but in Los Angeles, Mayor Garcetti and Councilmember Gil Cedillo, signed a joint statement of support. In Cedillos’ words, he supports the Governor because Brown’s program is a market-based approach to California’s housing crisis. (As a footnote to a footnote, Gil Cedillo was also co-chair of the Bernie Sanders’ campaign in Southern California, even though his market-based solutions to affordable housing are the antithesis of Senator Sanders’ unreconstructed New Deal political approach public policy). 

On this account, Cedillo, like Garcetti and Brown, is correct. The Governor proposal is a market-based solution to California’s housing crisis. But, otherwise, these three pols are flat out wrong about the housing proposal, such as one conspicuous detail. There is no evidence that the Governor’s bill will produce the affordable housing that California needs. While it might produce a few thousand affordable units here and there, the real beneficiaries will not be lower and middle income families that need affordable housing, but the investors and contractors building the housing, since most of the units will be sold for California’s soaring market prices.  

The profit margins of the developers will go up because in many municipalities they will no longer need to submit their projects for design review, environment review, and then be subject to lengthy public hearings, debates, and appeals that increase their costs. 

This also means that the market value of their properties will increase because the cost of pulling permits and constructing housing on it will go down. Like any formal or informal up-zoning program, property values will increase. This, not affordable housing, is the real importance of this amazing money machine. It makes money for owners of commercial property under the cover of an affordable housing program in which only five percent of their units need to be affordable. 

Furthermore, as demonstrated by John Schwada in CityWatch, the City of LA’s Housing Department is notoriously incompetent in keeping track of these affordable units. Based on the research for this article, we can expect that many of these affordable units will not be included in the City inventory of affordable housing available to the public.  

What else do we know about the Governor’s public rationale for his amazing money machine? 

We know that the boosters of all such market housing programs invoke several axioms of classical economics. They portray them as if they are irrefutable truths, rather than quasi-religious dogmas masquerading as social science “laws.” For example, these market fundamentalists, whether Democrats like Brown, Garcetti, and Cedillo, or Republican, repeatedly invoke the “law” of supply and demand. Their claim is that if market regulation of land use is removed, developers will rush in to build much more housing. They then argue that once this housing boom produces a surplus of pricey housing, the price of all housing will decline and some of it will become affordable. 

Of course, those who live in Los Angeles know their claim is utter nonsense. In Los Angeles new, expensive housing is infill housing, and it often displaces older, lower-priced housing, including certified affordable housing. Furthermore, even when the expensive housing has high vacancy rates, such as the current 12 percent, the landlords do not slash rents or purchase princes. Instead, they just hold out longer for tenants, sometimes sweetening leases with a signing bonus, microwave oven, or free cable. 

Even in the worst cases scenarios, such as the Savings and Load crisis of the 1980s and 1990s and the Great Depression that began in 200, the investors successfully turned to the Federal Government for massive bailouts when they went belly-up. The S and L crisis ended up costing the Federal Government over $132 billion, while the Great Depression financial sectorbailouts, as I have previously written, totaled about $13 trillion. 

The markets alternatives of selling building or units at a loss, or slashing condo prices and rents is hardly a wise business option when Uncle Sam offers this type of a helping hand. Likewise, the option of subsidizing borrowers so they could renegotiate delinquent mortgages hardly makes financial sense when compared to a bailout 

Another supposed iron economic “law” is filtering. According to this doctrine, today’s pricey housing will become tomorrow’s affordable housing. In the case of Los Angeles, however, when pressed to show where yesterday’s pricey housing has become today’s affordable housing, the adherents come up dry. Through CityWatch, and sometimes directly I have repeatedly asked, “Where is the affordable housing in Los Angeles that filtered down from once expensive housing?” Is it the gentrifying areas of Highland Park and Boyle Heights? The Historical Preservation Overlay Zones in the West Adams district? The once-upon-a time bohemian neighborhoods of Venice, Silverlake, and Echo Park? Trendy areas like the Arts District and Koreatown? 

(Since I post my email address at the end of every CityWatch article, just let me know where downward filtering is happening in Los Angeles.)

As we wait for these locations to be listed, it is painfully easy to document the counter-example of LA’s many gentrifying neighborhoods where previously affordable housing has filtered upward to become expensive. While gentrification now goes by many names, the best known and most controversial are spot-zoning, spot-planning, mansionization, small lot subdivisions, and Transit Oriented Development (TOD). 

Another often repeated market claim is that zoning and environmental reviews so stifle the production of affordable housing that developers must turn to the City Council for spot-zoning and spot-planning laws. Even though I have also repeatedly asked for evidence of this in my City Watch columns, so far only one person gave me an address that checked out. Like my question for evidence of filtering in Los Angeles, all lines are open and operators are waiting. 

The lack of any serious data for these repeated claims about market magic to address the housing crisisis no mystery, however, and I think this might explain why: 

Profit maximization. Investors of all types, big and small, want to make money, and affordable housing doesn't sufficiently fill their wallets. Even in a city like Los Angeles, where there is massive demand for affordable housing, and many locations where contractors could build by-right, investors are ignoring the supposed law of supply and demand. 

Political influence. Investors have substantial political influence through their donations. When they are subjected to market busts, they ask for and receive financial bailouts, even if it costs trillions of dollars and requires the government to run the printing presses 24/7. In slightly more flush times, like the present, they settle for favorable legislation, like the Governor Brown’s 

Cost of War.  The New Deal programs that built affordable housing (in theory, still championed by Bernie Sanders) through the Federal Housing Authority were sacrificed to sustain high levels of military spending. This process began during the Vietnam War and continued to the present day. Furthermore, alternative local sources for affordable housing funds in California, Community Redevelopment Agencies, were dissolved in 2012.

(Dick Platkin reports on city planning issues in Los Angeles for CityWatch. He is a former LA City Planner and current advocate planner.   He welcomes comments and corrections at [email protected].) 

-cw

GUEST WORDS-- Since joining the LA County Board of Supervisors 18 months ago, I, along with my colleagues on the Board, have taken a series of steps to build prosperity and economic security for residents by raising the minimum wage and establishing programs to promote social enterprises, help small businesses thrive and prevent people from falling into homelessness when they encounter short-term financial crises, like the loss of a job or a catastrophic medical condition.

Last week, the Board took another significant action to try to stabilize and empower low-income households in the county.  Fifteen percent of our residents live below the official poverty line, but more than three times that number (49%) lack sufficient savings to live above the poverty level for three months if they lose a job or suffer a financial emergency. These residents don’t hold sufficient household wealth to weather even a brief financial storm.

Twenty-eight percent of County households either don’t have a bank account or rely on check-cashing stores and payday lenders with high interest rates. Those dramatic numbers led to the Board voting to establish a Center for Financial Empowerment which will help thousands of families reduce their debt and save money. 

The Center for Financial Empowerment will coordinate and promote the many existing financial services already available for low-income residents such as financial literacy, free tax preparation, accessing appropriate benefits and helping consumers manage their debt.  Similar Centers have been established in Boston, Chicago, New York, Oakland, San Francisco, and Seattle.

In LA, the Center will initially prioritize two populations: families and young people. According to a New America Foundation report, low to moderate income County residents fail to claim more than $370 million in Federal EITC funds each year. The Center for Financial Empowerment will focus on ensuring that County families tap a greater share of that EITC funding. 

In addition, the Center will target young people, 18 to 24, who are just entering the job market and starting families. Over the last decade, San Francisco’s Office of Financial  Empowerment has helped more than 75,000 “unbanked” San Franciscans open safe, affordable bank accounts, and more than 22,000 college savings accounts have been opened for public kindergarten students.

I am very grateful for the support of my colleagues, especially Supervisor Hilda Solis, who co-authored the motion that established the Center, and to Citi Community Development which will provide significant financial support for the first year of the County’s pilot.

I am hopeful that these new County efforts will help more and more families build the kind of household wealth that will allow them to send children to college, purchase homes and start new businesses!

(Sheila Kuehl is LA County Supervisor for the 3^rd District. The Supervisor is an occasional contributor to CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

SORTING OUT THE STATISTICS-The recent primary offered signs of improvement for California’s abysmally low voter turnout. Recent elections have seen some of the worst turnout in the state’s history. The 2014 election cycle was particularly dismal, but 2012 also set a new low for a presidential primary election. Moreover, California has been lagging behind other states in both registration and turnout. 

However, there has been a large surge in new registrants over the last few months, and the California Secretary of State currently estimates that almost 9 million Californians participated in the 2016 presidential primary election, compared to only 4.5 million in 2014 and 5.3 million in 2012. 

If we look at the share of voting-eligible residents who have registered in time for each of the last 18 primary elections, California’s registration rate has always fallen within a fairly narrow band—from a low of 66% in 1988 to a high of 75% in 1996. 

In this context, the 2016 registration rate might be seen as a disappointment. Compared to the same point in the 2012 primary election cycle, the registration rate has remained largely unchanged, though it is still comparatively high when viewed in the context of the past several decades. 

How can we square this result with the reported surge in new registrants? The registration rate typically drops some between elections as county registrars purge voters who have moved or died from the registration rolls, and relatively few new voters sign up to take their place. This decline was especially large between fall 2014 and the beginning of the primary season this year. Given that baseline, a flat registration rate is consistent with a surge of new registrants, and must be considered something of a success. 

More to the point, these registrants turned out to vote at a higher rate than we have seen in any primary since 2008. The estimated 8.9 million ballots translates to a turnout rate of about 50% among registered voters. That sits comfortably in the broad average of California’s presidential primary turnout, and marks a considerable improvement over 2012. 

In fact, California’s presidential primary turnout now shows no clear sign of decline since 1984; it may even be holding its own relative to other states. But midterm turnout is a different story. There is a much longer downward trend for such elections, both viewed on their own and relative to trends in other states. 

On balance, there are signs of recovery from the low turnout levels of 2012 and 2014, despite concerns that California’s late presidential primary would discourage participation. Whether this improvement will be sustained into the fall—and whether things will turn around for mid-term elections in 2018—of course remains to be seen.

(Eric McGhee is a research fellow at Public Policy Institute of California where this was originally posted. He focuses on elections, legislative behavior, political reform, and surveys and polling.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

LA PULSE: Mischa Haider writes in today’s CityWatch in response to the Orlando shooting tragedy: ‘My heart is exploding with love and grief for those who have died and are dying, and it is also burning with anger at those who perpetrate, encourage, and enable these atrocities. I am left wondering, amid all the prayers and mourning, wherein lies the responsibility and who is to blame?’

Angelenos … and other Americans … are left wondering in the Orlando aftermath, WHO IS TO BLAME?

You are invited to provide your thoughts in this CityWatch LA Pulse survey.

[sexypolling id="7"]

(Note: LA Pulse is not a scientific survey. It is an instant sampling of the mood and thinking of readers on timely news subjects.)

LATINO PERSPECTIVE--A growing number of new Latino voters in Los Angeles and California are registering as “Non-Party Participants,” in a rebuke of the Democratic Party. 

I found a really interesting article written by Amanda Gomez from PBS last week in which she argues that the Democratic Party is relying on Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric to drive up Latino turnout this fall. But while conventional wisdom holds that most new Latino voters will register as Democrats, an increasing number in California and I have to add Los Angeles — a key state in the battle over immigration — are actually opting out of the two-party system altogether, a troubling sign for a Democratic Party that has long taken the Latino vote for granted, Gomez suggests. 

Since 2008, California — which holds its Democratic and Republican primaries on Tuesday — has seen a 35 percent spike in people registering as “No Party Preference” voters, instead of as Democrats or Republicans. California’s new nonpartisan or no-party voters are primarily young and Latino, according to Paul Mitchell of Political Data, a California voter information and political campaign management group. 

“As cities get more heavily Latino or Asian, [the] rate of nonpartisan registration rises significantly, while Democratic registration is flat-lined and Republicans are losing voters,” Mitchell said. 

The surge of Latino no-party voters in California isn’t surprising, given that many come from families whose parents do not have strong ties to either major political party. Often, their parents were born outside of the country or are less interested and involved in U.S. politics, said Mark DiCamillo, a senior vice president at Field Research, a California-based polling firm. 

Still, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Latino turnout this election is less of a pledge of allegiance to the Democratic Party, and more of a vote against Trump. And beyond the implications for 2016, the no-party voter surge reveals an important generational divide among Latinos like Betsy Avila, which could impact Democratic candidates for years to come.

Avila, a 28-year-old artist in Los Angeles, says she updates her Mexican-born parents regularly on the state of the presidential election. There isn’t a dinner-table discussion that goes by without election talk, Avila said. 

But in these discussions, Avila said she often finds herself explaining the intricacies of U.S. politics to her parents. “It goes beyond English to Spanish. I provide nuance,” she said. 

Avila cited Sanders, who relies on numbers and catchphrases like “the 99 percent” and “the 1 percent” that can mean little for immigrants without being placed in historical context. 

That disconnect is readily apparent in Los Angeles County, which has the largest Latino voter bloc in the state. More than one-third of the residents in the county are immigrants. The number of new no-party voters in Los Angeles is growing daily, according to Diana Colin, the director of civic engagement at the Coalition of Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles, a nonprofit that runs a voter registration program. 

“California has come a long way since Prop 187,” said Colin. “But Latinos in California have not forgotten.” 

Still, Democrats are going to have to work harder to convince Latinos to remain in the party. Until that happens, the number of no-party voters could keep growing. 

“The Democratic party should have California Latinos’ unwavering support,” said Jose Parra, the CEO of Prospero Latino, a left-leaning political consulting firm in Washington, D.C., “but it doesn’t because the party has not [done enough] to sustain it.”

(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 who serves as Vice Chair of the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Coalition and sits on the board of the Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council representing Larchmont Village. He was a candidate for Los Angeles City Council in District 4. Fred writes Latino Perspective for CityWatch and can be reached at: [email protected].)

-cw

REALITY POLITICS, LA COUNTY STYLE--Election campaigns contain a bit of Shakespearean drama as they deal with many aspects of human nature, but the fractured headline of this piece refers not to Shakespeare’s play but the question labor faces because of an unusual outcome in a Los Angeles County supervisorial race. 

In the Fifth Supervisorial District overseen by Republican Michael Antonovich for 36 years, most political experts thought that Antonovich’s successor would be a Republican. Labor agreed and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and public employee unions stacked dollars behind their preferred Republican candidate, Kathryn Barger, Antonovich’s Chief of Staff. So much mail was sent out on behalf of Barger by the unions that she could direct her campaign cash to buying expensive Los Angeles television. 

Barger finished first on primary day. The surprise was who probably finished second and made the run-off. 

While five fairly well-known Republicans were vying for the seat, one Democrat also was invited to the debates because he was endorsed by the LA Democratic Party. On Election Day, Democrat Darrell Park grabbed the second spot—for now at least. He only leads Republican state senator Bob Huff by 417 votes with all the precincts counted, but there are outstanding ballots. 

Labor backed Barger because they worked with her during her stint with Antonovich creating compensation packages among other things. 

During a debate for supervisor, the five Republicans and one Democrat were asked how they would handle their responsibilities given that there would probably be four liberal Democrats on the five-member board serving with the winner of the Fifth District. The Republicans all gave an answer along the lines that they can work across the aisle. When it was Park’s turn he said, ‘If I win there will be five liberal Democrats on the Board of Supervisors.’ 

What is labor going to do if Park holds onto the second spot? 

Much media attention has been focused on business’ decision to search out moderate Democrats in hopes of coming up with an acceptable alternative to a liberal Democrat in races certain to be won by a Democrat. In LA, labor attempted the reverse, looking for a Republican they could work with. 

Labor wasn’t the only one that attempted to make a pragmatic decision. Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, the most liberal supervisor on the board also backed Barger, as did Barger’s boss, Antonovich. 

Now labor faces the possibility that a Democrat more to their liking is in the finals. Rusty Hicks, head of the labor federation told the Los Angeles Times that it was too soon to decide whether the federation would change horses for the November election. 

As for candidate Park, his good fortune could put him in a position of honorificabilitudinitatibus, a term meaning “the state of being able to achieve honors,” the longest word Shakespeare ever used, which appears in the play, Love’s Labour’s Lost.

(Joel Fox is Editor of Fox & Hounds … where this piece was first posted … and President of the Small Business Action Committee.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams. 

VOICES-The post began “A very important election is coming up and we need a change. I am talking about the Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council election.” 

As a sitting board member, I sighed. The allegations went on providing more than a little misinformation about what has transpired in terms of current board activities and Tiny Houses in particular. 

I should not be surprised or dismayed by the blatant misrepresentations being passed along as truth, but I am. 

Still, I am even more concerned that the skills (technical and soft) and resourcefulness of the candidates seeking board membership are seen as irrelevant in this selection cycle. 

The City defines the role of neighborhood councils as bodies in which “Neighborhood Council participants are empowered to advocate directly for real change in their communities.” 

The key word in that definition is ADVOCACY. In fact, it should be clear that the councils have almost no formal power beyond: 

1. Acting to influence the policy decisions/votes of the elected and salaried officials who represent the citizens of Los Angeles and
2. Disseminating information to the community to increase overall civic engagement. 

The level of personal vitriol directed at the current board (comprised of pure volunteers) makes absolutely no sense in light of the very limited power and minimal budget given the neighborhood councils. 

The board is also not authorized to behave as personal henchman carrying out the agenda of any singular constituency. The commitment must be to effectively advocate for solutions and services in this very diverse community. 

Advocacy requires more than emotional responses to the challenges that face this community. The work should be pragmatic and involve recommending solutions that address root problem(s) rather than simply assuaging individual feelings. Real skills and resourcefulness is needed. 

Given the upcoming urban renewal plans for this community, board members who understand recent innovations in community development, business, transportation, quality of life improvements and social services are needed. They should be people who are more thoughtful than incendiary. 

“Thoughtful” is less exciting, but it will certainly lead to better long term results. 

A key attribute of an effective board member is the willingness to help this community face the changes that are coming and do so in a way that moves the community forward as one rather than as polarized factions. 

Board members must be able to see from more than one point of view, analyze data to support information based decision-making and communicate complex policies in simple terms. 

This is indeed an important election….I have been in San Pedro for 10 years now and have heard many times how neglectful the city is with regard to this community. 

Clearly, angry protests and emotional pleas for respect, change and attention are not being heard by City Hall. Take a chance on different results by doing something different. 

Vote based on actual candidate qualifications and a correct understanding of the role of your neighborhood council. Then get involved and stay involved. 

Help your neighborhood council agendas not be hijacked by single issue constituencies. There is much to do and the future can truly be bright.

(Debra Hunter is a member and a candidate for Central Neighborhood Council. This article was posted originally at Random Lengths.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW-I woke up to a CNN notification this morning that a gunman had opened fire and taken hostages in an Orlando nightclub, the worst mass shooting in the history of the United States. As most know by now, Omar Mateen stormed Pulse Nightclub at about 2 am with an automatic rifle and a handgun that he had purchased legally only last week, according to Bureau of Alcohol Assistant Special Agent Trevor Velinor.

Three hours later, a SWAT team had entered the nightclub and Mateen was shot dead after an exchange of fire with eleven Orlando police officers and three Orange County sheriff’s deputies. About 300 people were in the club at the time of the shooting. 

According to NBC News, the New York-born Mateen had sworn allegiance to the leader of ISIS during a 911 call right shortly before the shooting and the massacre is being investigated as an act of terrorism. Seddique Mir Mateen, the shooter’s father said his son had become angered after seeing two men kissing a couple of months ago and he believes that may be related to the shooting.

A few hours later, I received another push notification that the Santa Monica police had found weapons, ammunition, and the materials to build a pipe bomb in the trunk of James Howell, an Indiana man who planned to attend the LA Pride festival in West Hollywood. Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks tweeted that the suspect had told an officer that he wanted to harm the “Gay Pride event.” 

Santa Monica police were responding to a call about a suspected prowler in the vicinity of Olympic and 11^th Street when they encountered Howell, who said he was waiting for a friend. Officers found three rifles, including an assault rifle, ammunition, and a five-gallon bucket of tannerite, an ingredient that could be used to make a pipe bomb when they inspected his car. 

Federal and local law enforcement made the decision not to cancel the annual parade, which was held under tightened security. It is not believed this incident and the Orlando massacre are connected. 

LA Pride went on, colored by the sadness surrounding Sunday morning’s massacre but with hope, a celebration of pride and acceptance. From the Super Bowl and the Oscars to events like Pride, large gatherings garner worries that terrorists, ISIS sympathizers, or a lone domestic terrorist will strike. We can’t put our lives on hold because then fear and hatred win. So, we’ll move forward, acknowledging and shedding a tear as we do for each massacre and murder. We can hope that we never get so immune to death by violence, that it no longer means anything, while at the same time, refusing to put a stop on our lives because of potential threats of violence. We cannot accept violence, whether by an ISIS sympathizer, a lone perpetrator of hate crimes, a disenfranchised person, or anyone else.

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

TRANSPORTATION POLITICS--I was impressed (and a little saddened) over the past few months with both the optimism and the disappointment being generated by the opening of the Exposition Light Rail Line to Santa Monica.   

There is, overall, an excitement that enhanced mobility and alternative commuting now exists in the Westside, but the lack of parking and access to the Line, coupled with the perception of overdevelopment that might even be enabled by the Line, raises all sorts of concerns and cynicism as well. 

In my last CityWatch article, where I raised the alarm over the insulting and woefully insufficient City of LA's sidewalk "fix", there has been a remarkable consensus among my grassroots colleagues that this "fix" has really hurt the cred that the City needs more than ever. 

Enter the upcoming November countywide transportation tax initiative, and the unresolved and even worsening budgetary problems that the City of LA has, that leaves us with the following key points that will be critical for the transportation efforts of ten years ago to continue this November and for years to come: 

1) Credibility is key, and transparency is key.  Lose them, and you've lost the voters/taxpayers of the City and County of LA. 

The 2008 Measure R countywide sales tax was as credible and transparent as any tax initiative I have ever seen in my life.  We were told what we were going to get with that money, and it was fairly straightforward to learn which city and project would be funded by a given amount of money. 

"Measure R-2", as this November measure is being called by its backers, must do the same.  Overall, it has created the same sense of transparency as its predecessor by its backers, but questions to the broader electorate still remains.  What are the freeway/road projects that will be expedited by the November measure...or is it all rail projects?  And which projects will be prioritized first? 

For those of us who know the difference between Measure R-2 and what a Metro Long Range Transportation Plan is, that's an easy question to answer:  funding and prioritization of projects (and the .awarding of project planning and construction to contractors) are different things.  But we can do better in explaining that to taxpayers and community leaders who aren't transportation wonks. 

And while we're on the subject of transparency and credibility, let's underline a key point that Friends4Expo Transit leaders learned quickly:  the Expo Line CANNOT be promised to reduce traffic--it can only offer commuters another alternative to getting to where they want to go.  The same can and should always be said for other rail lines. 

2) The inefficient, if not downright corrupt, politics of the City of LA is undermining the credibility of the County's transportation efforts. 

It's not worth dragging old issues into the weeds, but it is worth mentioning that the City and County of LA are two separate levels of government...and is a reality that by far too many Angelenos and other County residents don't get.  Ask a City resident who their "supe" is, and he/she might tell you that he/she prefers salads to soups.  Ask a resident of a South Bay or Southeast LA County City who their mayor is, and he/she might respond that it's Eric Garcetti. 

So the best thing that local (and big) cities can do is to make sure that their city's transportation needs will be met.  As a Long Beach kid who now lives in LA, I understand and respect different perspectives within our county...and in our City of LA, it's the sidewalk fix (some stretches done in 2 years, some in 5 years, but the whole enchilada in 10 years) that has to be funded and lionized by any Measure R-2. 

Furthermore, the need for Planning and developers to create projects that are truly legal (yes, following environmental and engineering laws aren't just an old-fashioned fad, but it's supposed to be mandatory), and to fund transportation impacts that big (and even small) projects create, will be necessary to avoid souring tax-weary voters this November.   

It's not perfect, but the Bundy/Olympic development planned for the current Martin Cadillac site is an example of both good will on the part of its developers (compared to Mr. Alan Casden, they're angels), and the demands of Mike Bonin and the CD11 office to derive a project that's truly transit-oriented, has affordable housing, and has transportation mitigation efforts funded to improve the community.  It's still too darned big for many local residents, but at least Mike Bonin "gets it" with respect to credibility and transparency. 

But does Herb Wesson and the rest of the LA City Council "get it" with respect to credibility and transparency? 

3) Not all development has to be on the Westside and West Valley--and suburban work/home commutes need to be reduced for the betterment of all LA County residents. 

Issues raised by those promoting the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative--which has its core paradigms the insistence that the City of LA follow its own laws with regards to Planning and Development--include the big question of why there isn't more development south of the I-10 freeway.  After all, if Downtown LA is undergoing a housing and business renaissance, then why can't South LA? 

Similarly, why shouldn't LA City, as well as the San Gabriel Valley, take advantage of the Foothill Gold Line to create more jobs and transit-oriented development along its major new commercial/residential corridor?  Do all jobs need to be within LA City limits? Can't rail commuting allow suburban commuters better new options if they do work within LA City limits? 

When the planned Metro Rail/LAX People Mover connects LAX to the countywide rail system, the unfinished Green Line segments in the South Bay and Norwalk will be potentially explosive new regions that want "in" to the Metro Rail network. 

So not only should City Planning recognize the need to avoid undermining transportation efforts with unsustainable overdevelopment, but we all need to recognize that trying to cram or redo more housing/development in the Westside and other congested regions is the same as rotating chairs on a sinking Titanic.  There is a LIMIT to what we can build in certain overbuilt portions of the City...so the need to develop south of the I-10 and outside City limits is immediate and mandatory. 

Funding and construction efforts come in cycles and waves, and it's possible that the desire for more transportation initiatives is very different than what it was ten years ago. Yet the opportunity very much exists if both hope and credibility are adhered to by those truly seeking transportation/mobility enhancements as a vehicle to improve all of our lives...and by those willing to really do what it takes to sell that hope and credibility to their fellow LA City and County taxpayers.

(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

PERSPECTIVE--I am all for saving everything that is left of historic Hollywood. But the Hollywood sign is an exception.

The original sign read Hollywoodland and was known as the Hollywoodland sign. It was constructed to encourage homeowners to live in Hollywoodland beginning in 1923. It’s gone.

The Hollywoodland sign fell down so many times they removed the “land” part forever in 1949 and rebuilt only the “Hollywood” part.  Ever since then, it has been attached and represents another area directly south of the sign led by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. In 1973, this sign was declared a Los Angeles Cultural Monument. This sign is gone too because it fell into disrepair.

The Hollywood Chamber requested and received permission to rebuild the sign with private donations in 1978. The Hollywood sign was demolished completely and rebuilt on a new foundation. For three months the crown of Mt. Lee had no sign. It completely disappeared off the hillside.

The current sign has nothing original nor historic to it. It’s a billboard that sells a brand that is not associated with Hollywoodland. By 1986, it was so covered in graffiti that the Hollywoodland Homeowners Association had to force the city to clean it up regularly.

The sign represents the Hollywood business district to the south where much of the historic fabric has disappeared since 1986– especially around Highland and Vine. The current sign represents this “new” Hollywood, our local ‘Manahttan’ where no one can see the sign because of all the over-development. (Although I suppose if you move into one of the new luxury apartments you could pay for a great view of the sign.)

It makes more sense to move this sign where people can access and see it safely and more easily. Especially since it no longer represents the neighborhood it is destroying. Why not move it near a local subway stop? Visitors can even climb on it if they sign a release. We could dedicate the hole it leaves on the hill to parkland for our precious wildlife.

Or if we keep the sign, let’s add the “land” so it at least it replicates the original sign and reads the historically correct “Hollywoodland.” Visitors will learn a little of LA’s history when they come through here.

(Gregory P. Williams has written and self-published two books on Los Angeles history, The Story of Hollywood (winner of National Best Books 2007) and The Story of Hollywoodland. He wrote his first book in 1980 for Jim Henson’s Muppet Press, The Case of Missing Hat, published by Random House. A native of Hollywood, Greg’s paternal grandparents came to Hollywood from Greece in the early part to the twentieth century and ran a grocery store at Sunset Boulevard at Gordon. Greg was born and raised in Hollywoodland.)

VOICES FROM THE SQUARE--A good part of what was so distressing about this month’s active shooter episode at UCLA was the familiarity of it all.

The death of William Klug, a brilliant and affable young professor, at the hands of a mad former graduate student, was the chief tragedy. But as our campus was taken over June 1 by a veritable army of armed law enforcement personnel in helicopters, police cars, and trucks, I couldn’t help but think: Here we go again.

The sight of high school and college campuses in lockdown, with one or more active shooters terrorizing hundreds or thousands of students, has become normal. Since 2013, there have been 186 school shooting incidents, according to the Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that began compiling school shooting statistics after the Sandy Hook, Connecticut, massacre in 2012. Last year alone saw more than 50 school shooting incidents, 23 of which were on college campuses. 

In a society facing an epidemic of gun violence, universities are, at their best, havens of freedom—sites of the free exchange of ideas, free and open interchange between diverse groups, and free movement across the sovereign campus island. But our freedom is being eroded as we hunker down in preparation for the next burst of deadly fire. Indeed, the vigilance with which we act on our campuses today takes a toll on that exhilarating sense of liberation—from ignorance, bias, and convention—that the university once offered.

I remember well the sad realization I had after Sandy Hook, that it now made sense to introduce active shooter preparation training for the UCLA History Department, of which I served as chair from 2010 to 2015. In 2013, we had our first preparedness session with an officer from the University of California Police Department. The announcement to our faculty, staff, and students noted that:

An “Active Shooter” is defined as a situation where one or more suspects participate in a random or systematic shooting spree, demonstrating intent to continuously harm others.

It’s an unfortunate sign of the times that we need to think this way, but it is very important that we be as prepared as possible for such an event. In that kind of situation, there are specific things we can do to protect ourselves and those around us.

In point of fact, the randomness of these acts constrains our ability to protect ourselves. If we are in the wrong place at the wrong time or are the intended target, there is little to be done. Nonetheless, the active shooter trainer tried to prepare those in attendance for what to do: run from open spaces, closet yourself in your classroom or office, lock the door, turn off the lights, and keep silent.

These are all sensible suggestions. But I was struck, after a second preparedness session, by the indeterminacy of what to do in a situation in which you find yourself in the same room as shooters. The options, as the UCLA Emergency Management webpage tells us, are three-fold: “Stay still and hope they don’t shoot you, run for an exit while zigzaging [sic], or attack the shooter.” 

Fortunately, most of us never have and never will have to face that rather harrowing set of choices. In the meantime, we on college campuses usually put this prospect out of our minds. The more vigilant among us may pay increased attention to our immediate environs, locate exits in rooms, or even run through versions of game theory as we contemplate escape scenarios in our minds.

My own sense of vigilance was heightened during the time I served as department chair, especially when I would meet with irate and sometimes disturbed students. I would ask staff colleagues adjacent to me to pay special attention to any abrupt noises. I would also sit relatively close to the students and follow their hand movements in order to be able to act quickly if they took out a weapon.

I chided myself for engaging in this kind of suspicion-ridden activity, for it seemed to violate the basic trust that underlies the teacher-student relationship. And yet, I couldn’t stop myself from going through a mental checklist of preventative measures.

This is our reality now. Of course, we should follow the Australians and set in place tighter regulation of gun ownership. And of course, we should develop far better strategies and devote far more resources to help those with mental illness. These are absolute no-brainers. What more needs to happen to demonstrate their necessity?

Active shooter preparedness sessions are highly imperfect. They reveal that emergency management is an art, not a science. But these sessions are the best we have at present. And it is all the more important to undergo such training in the absence of far-reaching policy changes necessary to reduce the number of shootings.

In the meantime, even as we know that there will be more episodes, we must fight against the understandable impulse to constrain ourselves even further by censoring our words or altogether altering the ways we interact with colleagues and students out of fear. Difficult as it may be, we must endeavor to preserve that essential freedom of mind and movement that propels the university to do its important work for students and society alike.

(David N. Myers is the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Professor of Jewish History at UCLA. This piece was posted first at Zocalo Public Square.) 

-cw

VOX POP--In certain circles in Los Angeles, William Witte, chairman and CEO of Related California, is known as the “mega-developer.” It’s easy to understand why. He and his outfit, which is part of the nationwide development firm Related Companies, have contributed an eye-popping $118,550 to LA political candidates since 2000, according to the city’s Ethics Commission. It’s the way development is done in Los Angeles — spread around major cash at City Hall to get big favors in return. 

Witte, in fact, has personally contributed $51,500 out of the $118,550 — the rest was given by Related employees. In addition, since 2003, Related has paid City Hall lobbyists a whopping $837,381 to schmooze City Council members and bureaucrats at city agencies such as the planning department, according to the city’s Ethics Commission. 

In all, Related has shelled out $955,931 to win over politicians and bureaucrats at LA City Hall.

It should come as no surprise then that the LA City Council recently voted, unanimously, to give Related and Witte a financial aid package worth $198.5 million so the mega-developer could finish a “high-profile” downtown LA hotel project, according to the Los Angeles Times. 

That move by LA politicians didn’t come without controversy. Related Companies has a massive operating portfolio worth more than $20 billion. The city, on the other hand, has an annual budget of around $8.6 billion. 

Regardless, elected officials decided to give Witte and Related a $198.5-million aid deal in the form of subsidies and loans so it can build two towers, which includes the hotel, across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall. 

Related is a major player in the glitzy Grand Avenue Project, which seeks to turn that part of downtown into a play zone for the extremely wealthy. The hotel that Related wants to build will be geared towards the super rich. The developer has already contributed tens of millions to the city for the construction of Grand Park, a fancy public space that’s part of the Grand Avenue Project. 

In the end, Related stands to make millions upon millions in profits from the Grand Avenue Project.

Still, when a developer throws around $118,550 in campaign contributions at City Hall, a huge favor like the $198.5-million financial boost is almost expected in return from LA politicians. 

Clearly, LA’s development system is broken, and it’s one that needs honest, meaningful reform. That’s what the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. 

Through the measure, which will appear on the March 2017 ballot, citizens will finally be given the tools that will level the playing field when it comes to how LA’s neighborhoods will be developed. Greedy developers will no longer have outsized influence on City Hall’s rigged development-approval process. 

But with so much money on the line, developers will do everything they can to beat down our community-based movement and try to defeat the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. So join our cause by clicking to our Act page right now, and following and cheering our efforts on Facebook,  Twitter and Instagram. You can also send us an email at [email protected] for more information. 

Together, we can create the change that LA needs! 

(Patrick Range McDonald writes for 2PreserveLA.org ... currently spearheading the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GELFAND’S WORLD--Here's to all the Bernie Sanders supporters on the morning after the night before. You've got the political hangover of all time. You came so close, within a couple of hundred delegates, and then the roof fell in. On June 7, Hillary Clinton won four states out of six, including the big prizes, New Jersey and California. We've known for months that the only way Bernie was going to have any kind of chance at the nomination was to sweep most or all of the last dozen primaries by big numbers. He didn't even come close. 

You are also getting whined at, guilt-sucked, and somberly advised to get over your Bernie obsession and get on the Hillary Clinton train. The people who are giving this advice are right, but for all the wrong reasons. Here is the real reason. 

You say you want a revolution. But the movement is suddenly without an immediately obtainable goal. Taking the 2016 presidential election is no longer a possibility. The question for the Sanders supporters is whether you actually heard what Bernie has been saying, because if you did, you will realize that the revolution of which he speaks is a lot bigger than his would-be presidency. It requires getting major bills through both houses of congress, it requires a president who will sign them, and it requires a Supreme Court that won't find excuses to undermine every reform. 

How could that be accomplished? What will it take to make the revolution happen? 

Let's be blunt and not nibble around the idea of what is needed. Millions and millions of new voters need to get in the habit of voting in every election -- not just in the search for a miracle president every four years, but in every single election, from the off-year congressional votes, to your City Council selection, to your state legislative representatives and your governors. Nothing less will suffice. 

It's necessary to take back the governorships and state legislatures in states that have gerrymandered congressional districts to the advantage of Republicans. Just remember that in the last midyear elections, the Democratic congressional candidates as a group got more votes than the Republicans, but the Republicans got control of the House of Representatives. That's the effect of the redistricting of 2002. The 2020 census will prompt a lot of redistricting in advance of the 2022 elections. The state level races that lead up to the 2022 redistricting have to be one of the major targets of a political revolution. 

Winning congressional seats, especially in less gerrymandered districts, is another task. We can start now and build on our successes, but it won't happen if the liberal residents of this country allow themselves to be bamboozled into the fashionably cynical belief that all politicians are the same, and that it doesn't help to vote. 

It's true that any one vote doesn't count if we only think of ourselves as individuals on the losing side. That's the wrong way to think about coalition building. You have to think of yourselves as small parts of a winning coalition. If any one of us who votes were to miss voting this time around, it wouldn't change the outcome. Elections aren't won by a single vote very often. But elections can be lost by a few thousand votes and, once in a while, by a few hundred votes. You have to think of yourself as one element of a winning coalition, because when enough people choose to avoid participating in the coalition, we lose. 

The great mass of us, as active voters, would certainly hold the controlling power. You as an individual have to set aside your personal doubts and egotism and join in a mass movement that will potentially go on for a decade or two or three. It has to be a solid commitment by enough people who agree to become chronic voters. 

Here's the not-so-secret fact about Bernie's promises. He would never be able to do all those things like bringing Wall Street under control or creating a truly universal health care system all by himself. Some of it would require active participation by both houses of congress. It's true that a liberal Democrat as president can do some things administratively, but the larger body of work requires a groundswell in the American political landscape that leads to big legislation. 

Such a groundswell is not an impossibility. The large fraction of the American people who don't vote routinely, or vote only in rare presidential elections, have it within their power to effect the revolutionary change that Sanders calls for. But they have to do it as a collective effort, and they have to do it by voting. 

One of the other secrets of making this kind of revolution work is that you have to keep at it, election after election, even in those elections when the guy representing your party isn't your favorite person in the whole world. But if you and your neighbors vote routinely in a way that makes your district into a solid Democratic Party district, then you can afford to replace the less useful representatives with people more to your liking. This is nothing more than what the Tea Party voters have been doing to Republicans in their own districts. 

The trick is to build party control over the district first, and only then mess with the candidates' lineup. The Republican Party lost a couple of critical U.S. Senate seats a few years ago by ignoring this concept. 

The final secret of making the revolution work is that you don't accept the argument that we can live with a Donald Trump presidency because Hillary isn't perfect enough. That's a version of the argument that there is no difference between the parties. If you can convince yourself of that, you're not paying attention to the details that affect your neighbors' lives, things like being able to buy medical insurance at $150 a month instead of $3000 a month. Even if it means nothing to you, it means a whole lot to the ten million plus people who now have this advantage. And if you want to argue that the European systems are better, that's a fair statement, but will you sit idly by in implicit acceptance of our status quo, or will you work to bring the U.S. up to the level of France and Switzerland? 

Yes, we all agree that the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is imperfect. It would make a lot more sense to modify it so it provides universal coverage for all U.S. residents. Another useful modification would be to abolish the current billing system and replace it with revenue from income taxes and tariffs. These will be evolutionary changes in a system that was created in the belief that it would gradually improve. That's how Medicare and Social Security developed -- out of small beginnings -- and we have the ability to bring Obamacare into a more civilized form. 

But this evolution of our medical care system, an essential part of the political revolution, will be damaged if the Republicans get a chance to abolish it in the way they have promised. They want to take us back to the miserable system we had just a few years ago. One part of the political revolution is keeping the improvements you have just achieved, even improvements that are incomplete. 

Especially improvements that are incomplete . . . those are the foundations from which we can build the future that we speak of when we talk about the political revolution. Even revolutions can be incremental. In the U.S., they are almost always incremental. 

Another example: Bernie Sanders points out, rightly so, that our legislative system has been corrupted by the need for campaign money. This is something that is reversible. It would definitely take acts of congress, which means that we and the new voters have to do all that voting, until the ruling philosophy of this generation's leaders is replaced. Perhaps that won't take place until we have a new generation of leaders, or perhaps some of the current group will take the hint when liberal Democrats start filling seats previously held by conservatives. In either case, we have to make that generational switch happen. 

But we also need to have a Supreme Court that won't arbitrarily overturn these much needed reforms. That means we need to elect a Democrat as president right now, because the Republican candidate has already explained the kind of people he would nominate to the Supreme Court, and it isn't a pretty sight. 

So anybody who wants the political revolution but doesn't think Hillary Clinton lives up to your standards, think of it like this. If you allow Clinton to be defeated due to your lofty ideals, you are doing the one worst thing to do if you hope that eventually the political revolution will happen. Instead, we will be taken backwards and Citizens United will remain the law of the land. There needs to be a law that legislative control over campaign spending is legitimate, and we can't afford another 20 years of reactionary control over the Supreme Court if we hope to effect necessary changes such as this. 

I should point out that you don't actually have to be registered as a Democrat, at least in California, to join the political revolution. Registering as No Party works just fine, because our Top Two primary system gives you the chance to participate. That's exactly what I do, and it works just fine for me. 

I'd like to finish by linking to a slightly different approach by Marc Cooper. It's a little more radical sounding, but I'd like to think that it gets to about the same place, namely that people newly engaged in the system should stay engaged. I'm a little more optimistic about a Clinton presidency than Marc, but the differences don't matter, because the Donald Trump alternative is simply unacceptable. 

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

-cw

PRIMARY POSTSCRIPT--It is no surprise that Assembly Member Patty Lopez advanced to the finals in the 39th AD. More on that later in the article.

Henry Stern’s path to the general election in the 27th Senate District was less certain.

There was no doubt that Republican Steve Fazio would make it, but most figured a Democrat would come in second due to the large field of Democratic candidates carving up the vote. Instead, he surprised by finishing first with 31.2% of the ballots cast, almost a full point ahead of Fazio and well ahead of his chief Democratic challenger, Janice Kamenir-Reznik. **

Reznik held an advantage over Stern early in the evening when absentee ballots weighed heavily.

Two key endorsements abandoned Stern for Kamenir-Reznik: former County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and current Supervisor Sheila Kuehl. Despite those two big name defections, Stern prevailed and appears to have a lock on winning the general. Fazio’s support is unlikely to grow significantly to where he can give Stern a run for his money. Supporters of the other candidates are likely to line up behind Stern, who is a senior staff member of Fran Pavley, the termed-out, current office holder.

The race makes you wonder about the value of endorsements from individuals

I had the pleasure of discussing a number of issues with Stern a few weeks ago. He is someone who appears to be receptive, especially on issues with a direct impact locally. 

Patty Lopez (photo above left), the Rocky of local politicians, appears to face a similar challenge to the one which confronted her back in 2014. Her opponent, Raul Bocanegra, a favorite of the establishment, with the backing of the State Democratic Party, and who outspent Lopez 10 to 1, finished the night with 45% of the vote. Lopez garnered 27%.

With that kind of spending and structural advantage, earning measurably less than a majority is unimpressive and points to vulnerability in the general for Bocanegra. He had almost 63% of the vote in the 2014 primary before falling to the Lopez’ indomitable grassroots push in the general, when he ran as the incumbent. He starts off in a weaker position this time around.

If Lopez can attract support from the pool of voters who supported other fine candidates in the primary, then Bocanegra could be in for a long night on November 8. A loss would all but destroy his aspirations to regain a seat anywhere. It is hard to raise money from deep pockets when you have burned through a small fortune in back-to-back losing efforts.

**Note: The percentage of votes received by Stern as reported above reflect only LA County. The District includes a portion of Ventura County. Fazio finished with 37.5% and Stern with 26.5%. Both will still advance to the general election where Stern is likely to win, as many of those who voted for other Democratic candidates in the primary will tend to support him.

(Paul Hatfield is a CPA and serves as President of the Valley Village Homeowners Association. He blogs at Village to Village and contributes to CityWatch. The views presented are those of Mr. Hatfield and his alone and do not represent the opinions of Valley Village Homeowners Association or CityWatch. He can be reached at: [email protected].)

-cw

APOLOGIZING FOR THE MILITARIZATION OF THE LA’S SCHOOL POLICE--Come on, they aren’t tanks, they’re armored rescue vehicles. And the, uh, grenade launchers would only be used to launch teargas canisters. When necessary. And the M-16s? Standard police issue.

What a journey these Los Angeles teenagers, and the civil rights group Fight for the Soul of the Cities, had, to get from there — the ho-hum justification by (good Lord) the city’s school district police force, for the accumulation of surplus Defense Department weaponry — to here:

“Our recent meeting and dialogue has led me to review my actions as Board President during this difficult period. Upon reflection, I failed to understand the amount of pain and frustration our participation in the 1033 program could cause in the community and especially with our partners from the Dignity in Schools Campaign and the Fight for the Soul of the Cities...”

These are the words of Los Angeles School Board President Steve Zimmer, speaking in genuine anguish as he acknowledges that militarizing school district police has, to put it mildly, a serious downside. He continues, in his letter last month to the Labor/Community Strategy Center, parent organization of Fight for the Soul of the Cities:

“I now understand that especially in the context of the many conflicts between law enforcement and communities of color across the nation, our participation in this program may have created perceptions about the role of our district and our school police that my silence exacerbated. . . . I now understand that even the possession of such weapons in the context of this moment damaged trust that we now must all work to rebuild. Please accept my apology...”

This is an extraordinary victory — possibly the first of its kind in the nation.

It’s a victory for civil rights. It’s a victory for kids. But primarily, it’s a victory for absolutely basic common sense. The Los Angeles School Police Department — a police force whose sole responsibility is to maintain order in the public schools — has returned all the weapons, including grenade launchers, a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle (i.e., a tank) and 61 M-16 automatic rifles, which it had obtained under the controversial 1033 program, to the U.S. Department of Defense.

It provided proof that it did so. And it apologized — to the children and teenagers in the Los Angeles Public Schools. The apology was an acknowledgement — oh, so painfully rare in 21st century America — that real order isn’t a matter of armed domination. It was an acknowledgment that education requires trust and trust is annihilated by the appearance of a military dictatorship.

The struggle with the School Board over this began in 2014, shortly after members of the civil rights group had gone to Ferguson, Mo., to show solidarity with the protests over the police shooting of Michael Brown.

“We come back from Ferguson and find out they have a tank, grenade launchers — it was a declaration of war,” Manuel Criollo, director of organizing at Fight for the Soul of the Cities, told me.

And thus began almost two years of sit-ins and protests. Hundreds of students participated. They refused to compromise or accept half-measures from the school board. “First they got rid of the grenade launchers,” Criollo said. “In the winter of 2014, they got rid of the MRAP tank. By early 2015, they argued that the M-16 was a standard police weapon. They said, ‘We no longer have military weapons’ — even though the M-16 is considered a cruel weapon by the Red Cross.”

But the students didn’t give up. When the School Board finally said it got rid of all its Defense Department armaments, they still weren’t satisfied. They demanded proof, and an apology. At a board meeting last February, “the activists spoke over the Pledge of Allegiance and demanded to be heard before other business could proceed,” according to the Los Angeles Times. The meeting was canceled. 

And proof eventually came, and so did Steve Zimmer’s remarkable acknowledgment that militarizing the school police force had been a mistake, wrecking that invisible and crucial quality called trust — wrecking the school system’s relationship with the communities it served.

As I read his letter of apology, I honor its painful honesty — “I failed to understand the amount of pain and frustration our participation in the 1033 program could cause in the community” — but at the same time I feel a stunned despair that such a decision was made in the first place. Indeed, the more I think about it, the more it rips my heart to shreds. Yes, yes, I understand that maintaining order in a big-city school system is an enormously difficult, complex undertaking. But, to reach out for tanks and grenade launchers?

Apparently the only assistance coming from the national government is military. There is zero peace consciousness at this level, zero guidance except to prepare for war.

As Criollo pointed out, the Los Angeles Police Department (which is separate from the Los Angeles School Police Department) and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have thousands of M-16s and other equipment — MRAPs, a helicopter — from the 1033 Program.

“From our point of view, they’re on tactical alert to go to war with their own people,” he said. “We’re living in a country that’s not guaranteeing us a job, not investing in education. But trillions are invested in the military. This shows where their priority is. I think they’ve given up helping communities uplift out of poverty.”

I don’t think the nation has lost its way, but I think the government has.

(Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. Contact him at [email protected] or visit his website at commonwonders.com.)

-cw

BILLBOARD WATCH--The political debate over allowing new digital billboards in L.A. has little to do with issues like traffic safety, light pollution and energy use. In fact, it’s not even a debate in the classic sense but can be characterized as an interplay of two powerful desires. Clear Channel and other big billboard companies badly want to put up the electronic signs on city streets and freeways and the City Council desperately wants to find new sources of revenue. (Photo above: This Clear Channel digital billboard was shut off by court order in 2013.)

The stakes for the billboard companies are high. Digital billboards are big moneymakers, which means the companies are pulling out all the stops to sway the City Council in their favor. They’ve tacitly admitted that some of their existing billboards are blight by offering to remove them. They’ve promised free space both to city agencies and private organizations for public service messages. And most significantly, they’ve dangled the sweet-smelling carrot of revenue sharing in front of councilmembers’ noses.

The council, needing money to fix the city’s crumbling infrastructure and address it’s dire homelessness problem, is all ears. Or to be precise, those councilmembers who have never had angry calls from constituents about brightly-lit, constantly changing ads for fast food, movies, TV shows, and other commercial products and services hanging in the sky outside their windows 24 hours a day.

For those unfamiliar with the sometimes dreary history of billboard regulation in the city, Clear Channel and CBS Outdoor—now Outfront Media—converted 100 of their conventional billboards to digital before the City Council took heed of citizen complaints and called a halt in 2008 to further conversions. Four years later, the courts found that the city’s 2006 action allowing the conversions was blatantly illegal and ordered the signs shut off.

Faced with the loss of millions in revenue, Clear Channel cranked up a public relations and lobbying onslaught aimed at convincing city councilmembers to change course and allow the company to turn many of the digital billboards back on as well as put up new ones. Outfront joined that effort, along with the city’s third major billboard industry player, Lamar Advertising, which recently sued the city in an unsuccessful attempt for permits for 45 new digital billboards in West LA, Silver Lake, Eagle Rock, and the San Fernando Valley, among other areas.

The premises of this campaign were amply visible at a May 24 meeting of the City Council’s PLUM committee. Taking up citywide sign ordinance revisions that have been on the table in one form or another for seven years, the committee heard from a parade of billboard industry lobbyists and representatives of business, labor, and non-profit organizations all reading, sometimes literally, from the same script.

Digital billboards stimulate business activity, produce jobs, protect public safety, promote good causes, and offer a source of revenue for city programs and services. The five councilmen on the committee are educated and intelligent, and undoubtedly know that the first four claims are questionable at best, but the vision of money flowing into their districts without a dreaded debate over fee or tax increases is compelling. Furthermore, those aforementioned 100 digital billboards were clustered in only five of the 15 council districts, and guess what? None of the current members of the committee represented those districts, which means that their office phones never rung with constituent complaints about a billboard pouring out an endless loop of bright, eye-catching ads on their neighborhood streets.

But just how much money are we talking about? Tens of millions? Hundreds? Enough to fix the streets and sidewalks, build housing for the homeless, hire more police officers and firefighters?

To date, there hasn’t been any public discussion about the number of digital billboards that might be allowed, or what percentage of revenue from those billboards Clear Channel and others would be willing to share with the city. According to the city’s Chief Administrative Officer (CAO), the gross receipts, or business tax paid by billboard companies over the past three years ranged from $580,000 to $700,000. That works out to a gross annual revenue of $164 to $196 million per year.

Billboard companies are typically secretive about the amount of money they make from individual billboards, but figures from rate schedules available online as well as statements from company executives indicate that a digital billboard could generate at least six times the revenue of a conventional billboard of comparative size and location. A lot of money, in other words, but just how much the city might expect to get its hands on remains unknown, at least to the public.

Another question awaiting answer is how the city intends to permit new digital billboards or conversions of existing billboards, given that these are now prohibited. The City Planning Commission last year approved sign ordinance revisions allowing such billboards in a limited number of sign districts in high-intensity commercial areas such as downtown, Universal City, Warner Center and LAX, but PLUM committee members reacted to that restriction as if a dead skunk had landed on their desks, holding their collective noses, figuratively speaking.

One proposal floating about City Hall would allow companies to apply for conditional use permits to put up new digital billboards. For anyone new to City Hall nomenclature, that process is essentially as it sounds, where a proposed use is permitted by the city with conditions, on a one-by-one basis. In the case of a digital billboard, those conditions would ostensibly regulate location, size, height, brightness, rate of message change, and hours of operation.

Another possibility, repeatedly mentioned by Clear Channel lobbyists at public meetings, is for the city and billboard companies to enter into relocation agreements, as allowed by state law. How this would work in practice isn’t totally clear, although the ultimate objective would be to get a bunch of those digital billboards now dark or displaying static ad copy back into operation at new locations.

A third way has been proposed by City Councilman Paul Krekorian, who isn’t a PLUM committee member. His idea is to allow new digital billboards in exchange for revenue sharing and the takedown of existing billboards, but only on selected city-owned properties. The idea has generated some interest, although the billboard industry clearly doesn’t like the restriction, because lobbyists and their cohort of supporters in business and labor always speak in public meetings of the need to allow digital billboards on both public and private property.

At the May 24 PLUM committee meeting, there was also a brief discussion of the possibility of raising the gross receipts tax on billboard companies, and whether or not such a tax increase would have to be approved by voters. It wasn’t clear if that tax increase would be an alternative to allowing new digital billboards, or just another revenue source.

There is an elephant in the PLUM committee’s meeting room that members have been doing their best to ignore, although one did allude to it at the May 24 meeting. That is the legal jeopardy the city could be flirting with if it allows a significant number of new digital billboards outside those limited sign districts.

In 2002, the city approved a ban on new off-site signs, with exceptions for sign districts, specific plans and development agreements. The ink was hardly dry on the ordinance before legal challenges were filed in both state and federal court, and at one point the city was defending itself against more than a dozen lawsuits claiming that these exceptions rendered the ban unconstitutional.

After untold hours of labor by the City Attorney’s office, stacks of motions, and drawn-out hearings, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had the final word, ruling that the exceptions didn’t render the sign ban unconstitutional as long as they could be shown to further the city’s interest in promoting traffic safety and improving aesthetics. But that ruling which struck joy in the hearts of those working to protect the visual environment from saturation by commercial advertising came with a caveat.

In a 2013 report to the PLUM committee, City Attorney Mike Feuer referred to a warning from that court that too many exceptions could render the off-site sign ban vulnerable to legal attack. Those exceptions, he wrote, could mean that the ban “would no longer adequately improve aesthetics and traffic safety and would thus be invalid under the First Amendment.”

Feuer pointed out that the sign ordinance revisions then being considered by the committee addressed this issue by limiting the number of sign districts and their locations to high-intensity commercial areas zoned regional center or regional commercial. That’s what the City Planning Commission affirmed last year, and what the PLUM committee summarily rejected when it took up the matter earlier this year.

The issue of allowing exceptions to the sign ban for the purpose of raising revenue was directly addressed in an earlier ruling by the appeals court in a case called Metrolights vs. City of Los Angeles.  That lawsuit claimed that the city’s billboard ban was rendered invalid by the fact the city allowed thousands of exceptions in the form of ads in bus shelters, kiosks, and other items of street furniture.

The court ruled in favor of the city, saying that having a uniformly designed street furniture system could be shown to enhance traffic safety and aesthetics. However, the court warned that other purposes could undermine the off-site ban, specifically mentioning the raising of revenue, which “by itself perfectly legitimate state action, does not allow a state selectively to prohibit constitutionally protected conduct.”

Deputy City Attorney Michael Bostom also addressed the subject of getting revenue from digital billboards at a City Planning Commission meeting last year. Referring specifically to the proposed conditional use permit process, he said that while people tend to think of billboards as “a panacea for solving revenue problems in the city” the actual issue of generating revenue from signs is “highly complex.” He likened allowing new digital billboards in exchange for revenue to giving a developer permission to put up a building on private property only if the city was given one of the units in the building.

And at the last PLUM committee meeting on May 24, Councilman Felipe Fuentes alluded to a “privileged” communication to the committee from the city attorney’s office on May 16 about the “perilous ground” the city could be on through discretionary actions allowing new digital billboards. The four other members were presumably aware of this communication, although none commented on it.

Rewriting the sign ordinance was initiated by the PLUM committee in 2008. Of the current members, only Chairman Jose Huizar was on that committee, but he ought to remember that the major rationale was stopping the onslaught of legal challenges that were threatening to make the city wide open to new billboards, supergraphic signs, and other forms of outdoor advertising.

But that was obviously before the discussion was taken over by those who don’t see this advertising as something to be strictly limited and contained, but as a cash cow for the city.

Coming soon: LA’s Digital Billboard Debate, Part II: Sham Democracy

(Dennis Hathaway is the president of the Ban Billboard Blight Coalition and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected].) 

-cw

GUEST WORDS--The word fascism has been widely bandied about during the current US presidential campaign, especially in negative campaigning against Donald Trump, the likely Republic candidate. Trump has been compared to Juan Peron and Benito Mussolini because of his flamboyant personal style and his racist comments. Those labeling him a fascist or neo-fascist point to his rampant bigotry against immigrants in general, and Muslims and Mexicans in particular, through proposed entry bans, wholesale roundups, mass expulsions, border walls, and labeling Federal judges as biased because of their ancestry. 

This is certainly part of what has constituted fascism in the past, and they also have precedents in American history, such as the Palmer Raids in the early 1920s, the incarceration of Japanese Americans at the beginning of WWII, and mass expulsions of Bracero program workers in the late 1940s and 1950s. 

But, we need to remember that history is definitely much better at helping us understand the present than accurately predicting the future. So what do our history books tell us about Mr. Trump, other Presidential candidates, such as Hillary Clinton, and the prospects for fascism in the United States? 

In the past, fascism, as it appeared in Italy, Spain, and Germany, was far more than anti-immigrant nativism and bigotry against religious minorities emanating from street thugs. In the 1930s it was a top down answer to deep political and economic crises at the national and global levels. It strengthened the executive function of government at the expense of its legislative and judicial functions. It also included intense patriotism, glorification of an idyllic past and intense state and street opposition to organized labor, liberals, socialists, and communists. Its program has also always included preparation for and pursuit of aggressive foreign wars, which is why some analysts surprisingly focus on Hillary Clinton’s militarism as another fascist danger in the United States. 

In terms of actual American precedents for fascism, we need look no further than the World War I administration of President Woodrow Wilson, the former Democratic governor of New Jersey. After his 1916 election as an anti-war candidate, he not only led the United States into “the war to end all wars,” but also successfully promoted three draconian bills through Congress: the Espionage Act, Sabotage Act, and Alien Act. These laws banned open opposition to US participation in WWI and to military conscription. As a result, many critics of the war were sent to jail and not released until the 1920s. Some of these provisions remain on the books, and the Obama Administration has frequently used the Espionage Act to prosecute government whistle blowers. 

President Wilson also promoted anti-Black racism by barring Blacks from entering the front door of the White House. He then hosted a White House screening of D.W. Griffith’s pro-KKK movie, The Birth of a Nation, a key step in the nationwide revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the late teens and early 1920s.   Wilson also used the Justice Department’s affiliate, the American Protective League, to set up a massive domestic spying operation, as well as to bombard the American public with pro-war, pro-conscription propaganda through his Committee for Public Information.  

Since the US has already had one serious brush with fascism, several renowned novelists have imagined what a fascist United States would look. This is why Sinclair Lewis wrote his book about US fascism, It Can’t Happen Here, in 1936, when memories of WWI were still fresh. Later Phillip Dick wrote The Man in the High Castle (1958), which imagined the U.S. occupied by Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. Most recently, in 2005, Phillip Roth wrote The Plot Against America. He carefully researched fascistic trends of the 1930s and devised a plot in which Charles Lindberg was elected President in 1942 and then signed anti-intervention peace treaties with both Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. While Roth’s fascist U.S. did not have a domestic Holocaust, it did have anti-Jewish pogroms. 

So, this brings us the second decade of the 21^st Century and the obvious question asked by Sinclair Lewis 80 years ago: Could it happen here? My answer is yes, and it could happen if either candidate becomes the next US president, a thesis that might surprise many readers. 

Pre-Conditions of Fascism already underway 

Based on historical patterns, many pre-conditions for fascism are already present. 

• War: Our troubled planet already is reeling with military conflicts, and they are drawing in the current super-powers, China, Russia, Europe, and the USA. Other countries, like Japan, are re-arming, and many countries, like Germany and France, have growing nativist and anti-refugees movements. In this climate, it is easy to imagine many scenarios of extreme racism and military escalation drawing in many more countries, such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia into Syria.
• Economic Crisis: While we do not yet have a global depression, many key countries are economically stumbling. China, Russia, Japan, most of Europe, South Africa, and Brazil are all suffering from economic stagnation or recession, including rising unemployment. In all of these countries, and many more, much deeper economic and political crises are either already present or knocking at the door.
• Weak Recovery: In the US, the “recovery” is the weakest since WWII.  Since the Great Recession of 2008-9, it has failed to take off even through the Federal Reserve Bank has kept interest rates at historically low levels and pumped over $4 trillion into the economy through Quantitative Easing.
• Security State: In the US the trappings of a strong and increasingly authoritarian executive function of government are already in place. It is called the Security State. The NSA collects details on all telecommunications, and the US Post Office scans all mail. Furthermore, in the name of fighting terrorism, the Bush and Obama administrations have whittled away at many civil liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
• Nativism: As anti-immigrant and anti-refugee nativist movements and policies grow in Europe, they also have their counterpart in the United States. It is not only Trump’s rants about Mexicans and Muslims, but also the government’s creation of enormous barriers to political asylum seekers from Syria and Iraq, as well as the Obama Administration’s record levels of incarcerating and deporting immigrants and refugees fleeing to the United States.
• Police Surveillance: These trends are also visible at the local level through police department SWAT teams, police intelligence divisions, and fusion centers whose purpose is to monitor potential terrorism. It includes the LAPD’s Suspicious Activities Reports, whose vague terrorism indicators include people taking photos of public buildings and overheard conversations about public officials.
• Corporatism: Another historical feature is extensive collusion between corporations, finance, and government. This was not only obvious in “too big to fail,” a Federal government program that pumped $13 trillion in public bailout money into the banking system according to Bloomberg News, but also the Justice Department’s failure to prosecute the Wall Street executives who played a leading role in the financial collapse of 2008-9.
• Militarism: A final component that intertwines with the security state is the warfare state. The total US military and security budget has exceeded $1 trillion per year for the entire decade, when all military-related categories are included. Part of this warfare state is active participation in many military conflicts (Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia), but also local training and US military bases in nearly 200 countries. 

With so much already in place, and with so many pre-conditions emerging, based on historical models, what should we expect? As the cliché goes, the answer is complicated, but it clearly depends on how rapidly the Federal government moves on foreign wars, economic austerity, surveillance, and mass deportations. If they get little push back, trends might proceed slowly. But, grassroots movements, like Black Lives Matter, already exist, and opposition to economic austerity, militarism, racism, nativism, police violence, and spying and surveillance, is likely to grow. 

The larger and more successful these movements, the greater the chance of authoritarian responses, such as those during WWI and the Cold War. We also know that fascist regimes have used street thugs, like those attacking counter-demonstrators and minorities at Trump rallies, and when they could not find or rouse them, they simply turned to Plan B, using cops as agent provocateurs and vigilantes. 

One scholar of potential fascism in the United States, Bertam Gross, in Friendly Fascism, argued that American fascism would have traits not found in Germany and Italy. For example, elections could be retained, such as in Iran. In this case, a Council of Experts vets all candidates for the Iranian Parliament and Presidency. While Iran does have political diversity and a high-level of voting, the approved candidates range from the far right to the center right. How different would this be from the upcoming Presidential election in the United States, featuring a closeted white nationalist, Republican candidate, Donald Trump facing off against a center-right military hawk, Democrat Hillary Clinton? 

Bracing for the Presidential election 

If there is a take-way from the discussion, it is that the term fascism needs to be grounded in historical analysis, and that it should not be restricted to one Presidential candidate, Donald Trump. At this point deepening global military and economic crisis could easily converge and draw in the United States with responses that would include some or all features of fascism. 

This is why the November election is, of course, important, but why it is incorrect to claim that a Trump victory ushers in fascism, while a Clinton victory blocks it. Independent of either candidate, the basic trends and the basic government institutions are already in place. After all, fascism cannot be reduced to a blowhard or military hawk winning a presidential election or a group of street thugs rushing the podium, grabbing the microphone, and then using the trappings of power to plunder the economy, attack the public, and scapegoat minority groups. Fascism utilizes all the institutions of the public and private sectors, including the military, the police, the spy agencies, the courts, and the media, to resolve a deep economic and political crisis. 

But, we also know from the historical record that fascist regimes do not exist in a political vacuum. Their freedom of action is limited because of foreign and domestic opposition. The Third Reich collapsed after 13 years when the Allied armies converged on Berlin in the summer of 1945. Mussolini might have been victorious in the 1920s, but the Italian partisans executed him and then hung him by his heals 20 years later at a gas station in Milan. 

So, if you are following this Presidential election closely and harbor legitimate concerns about fascist trends in the United States going into high gear after January 2017, then you need to pay close attention to and support the many types of opposition movements. These include organizations addressing civil rights, civil liberties, privacy and surveillance, climate change, economic inequality, health access, education access, police violence, military spending, foreign wars, and much more. They might be drowned out by election news until November, but they are here to stay, and their political role can become extremely important. 

They, just as much as any regime in Washington, will determine the long-term historical outcome of this election.

(Victor Rothman lives in Los Angeles. He can be reached at [email protected].)

-cw