LOS ANGELES

PENNY WATCH--It’s no secret that the City of LA is in a budget crisis. With the onset of the pandemic, revenues from hotel and sales taxes disappeared, and our elected officials are raiding the reserve fund to make ends meet.

@THE GUSS REPORT-Not all Los Angeles government corruption takes the form of envelopes of cash in casino bathrooms, thousands spent on dinners and bottle service and a "therapeutic massage" up in the comped suite facing the Vegas Strip.

LA’S HOMELESS STUDENTS--How do you sleep at night is a question more than a few homeless students from Los Angeles City College would like to put to the Councilmember in CD13 and the rest of City Hall.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING-A little more than a year ago, Zillow, the real estate site, came out with an eye-popping statistic: between 2010 and 2019, renters in the United States paid landlords a staggering $4.5 trillion.

THE DOCTOR IS IN--Human beings are both the most rational and most irrational beings on this planet.

A PLEA TO THE LA COUNTY BOARD AND THE LA CITY COUNCIL--In this grave hour, I send out to my two favorite jurisdictions, this message, written with the same depth of feeling for each of you as if I were able to cross your threshold and speak to you myself.  Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, in-person meeting has been impossible.

For the second time, an insufficiency in both the quantity and quality of public comment opportunities for the people of LA County and the City of Los Angeles has been identified.  

This coming week the Board of Supervisors has canceled its regular open meeting on Tuesday 9:30am and replaced it with a special closed session.

The County, with 11 million residents, has reduced by half the number of open public meetings it holds to two a month and inexplicably has limited general public comment to just 60 minutes total, including general public comment and comment on agendas that often contain more than 60 items

The City Council has indefinitely canceled Friday meetings and decided to limit the total time for public comment from its 4 million residents to 35 minutes, that's including general public comment and any comment on agenda items.

An actual and existing controversy exists between us because we contend, and the City and County dispute, that their actions and inactions described herein (but also, that will be elaborated on elsewhere) violated and continue to violate the Trifecta of open government laws.  The California Constitution (Art. I § 3(b)(1) and (2)) and the California Public Records Act (Government Code § 6250 et sec.) and the Ralph M. Brown Act (Government Code §54950). 

We seek a judicial declaration that the City and County have violated and/or continues to violate constitutional, statutory, administrative and common law provisions requiring the agencies to provide the public with access to duly requested records such as a) Miller Barondess Invoices  b) metadata for County Board meetings as provided by City and Los Angeles County MTA  c) AT&T invoices billing for teleconferencing services for the City, the County & Los Angeles County MTA.

If the decision to deny copies of public records is a discretionary act, then the City and County have abused that discretion.  At this point, there is no plain, speedy, and adequate remedy at law other than this action.

Over and over again, we have tried to find a creative solution to the differences between our understanding of the open meeting law in California; but it has been in vain.

We have been forced into a struggle, for which we are called, to meet the challenge of a principle which, if it were to prevail, would be fatal to any scheme of truly open government.  It is a principle which permits the local elected officials to cancel their public meetings and replace them with Special closed session meetings.  

Even when they do post regular meeting agenda, the Board does not provide a Brady Bunch grid on Zoom so that the public is able to “retain control of the instruments” and be sure our officials are listening and not simply bossing around staff in their pajamas.

Such a principle, stripped of all disguise, is surely the mere primitive doctrine that "the inconvenient public" is unimportant,.  If this principle were established throughout the county, the freedom of the people to participate would be in danger.

“The people do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”  (Government Code §54950)

But far more than this, the people of Los Angeles need to know that our leaders do not actually believe that we are so collectively dim, that we would accept the current status quo. 

For the sake of all that we ourselves hold dear, and of the greater good, and the importance of delivering withering broadsides to our badly corrupted local officials, it is unthinkable that we should refuse to meet this challenge.

It is to this high purpose that we now call on the public to make this cause their own.  We ask them to stand calm and firm and united in this time of infuriating litigation.  Please do not send money, but feel free to send suggestions to the City Clerk holly.wolcott@lacity.org or Executive Officer [email protected]. 

The task will be hard. There may be a period of discomfort, but the fight can no longer be confined to the darkened corridors, we can only do the right as we see the right, and reverently commit ourselves to ensure our right to redress grievances, occasionally with music.

In service, we have already initiated contempt proceedings against the City of Los Angeles for denying public comments at a Special Planning and Land Use meeting chaired by Marqueece Harris-Dawson of February 4th, 2021.  We are all beyond excited to have, Scott Marcus, acting Chief of City Litigation assisting by answering the allegations.

For all the named and unnamed in this action, we humbly request a recording of all Zoom proceedings be created and posted.  If one and all we keep resolutely faithful to inspiring and improving rather than insulting and humiliating, ready for whatever service or sacrifice it may demand, then with Judge Patricia D. Nieto of Los Angeles Superior Court Dept. 24, we shall prevail.

I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the State of California that the foregoing is true and correct.  Please offer sometimes to meet and confer.

Eric Preven

Dated:   February 14, 2021

Pretext

Contempt

(Eric Preven is an occasional contributor to CityWatch.)

-cw

TALKING TRANSIT-The editors in the February 1, 2021 edition of the Los Angeles Times wrote that covered bus shelters are needed to improve the quality of riding buses.

CLIMATE POLITICS-If Oumuamua is the real deal, meaning an alien craft, then Earthlings are doing some really weird stuff on the scale of alien intelligence.

RANTZ & RAVEZ-When you drive around Los Angeles City or neighboring communities in LA County, you will find countless homeless encampments in streets, on sidewalks, in parks, along freeways, and in many other areas in both commercial and residential. 

PLANNING WATCH-When I started this column, I devoted many critical articles to McMansions. My Beverly Grove neighborhood was and still is an epicenter of mansionization.

OTHER WORDS-What is it about billionaires and multimillionaires that make them so clueless about the impacts of their greed? 

NEW GEOGRAPHY-California’s coastal urban centers, once the ultimate land of opportunity, suffer notorious traffic congestion, unaffordable housing, and a social chasm defined by a shrinking middle class, a small wealthy sector, and a sizable population seemingly locked in poverty.

GUEST WORDS--On the second day of Trump's impeachment trial Wednesday, a parade of eloquent, impassioned Democrats showed chilling video, told harrowing stories, cited ever-damning tweets, and offered "definitive proof that what broke into the Capitol last month was a hunting party.

GELFAND’S WORLD--The Republicans in the U.S. Senate are in kind of a lose-lose situation.

PEACE VOICE-Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

EASTSIDER-We know that enough ink and electrons have been spent arguing about what the Ralph M. Brown Act means for Neighborhood Councils to fill a small library.

RAISING THE WAGE-If it’s passed by Congress, President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 relief proposal would do a lot more than fund relief payments and vaccine rollouts.

MY TURN--There is no gainsaying that Rep. Ramin (Jamie) Ben Raskin’s (D-Maryland) Tuesday, February 9, 2021 presentation was masterfully brilliant. 

SOUTH OF THE 10-Inglewood Treasurer Wanda Brown has filed a $10 million claim against the city of Inglewood, Mayor James T. Butts Jr., and all members of the city council for retaliation, emotional distress and wrongful discharge. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--Among the bigger stories of the new year, certainly the biggest so far has been the ability of the Democratic caucus in the U.S. Senate to maintain its unity.

HUMAN RIGHTS-“It is long past time for. . .a sea change in the United States’ approach to national and human security. . .”