LOS ANGELES

POLITICS AND THE COURT--Donald Trump’s disgraced lawyer, Roy Cohn famously said, "F*** the law, who’s the judge!"

CALBUZZ-Recent focus on the deranged views voiced by U.S. Rep Marjorie Taylor (Marge) Greene has elevated “QAnon” to a household word.

EDUCATION POLITICS-Teachers unions are under attack, as our well-founded concern for our students, their families, and yes, ourselves, is being portrayed as a political powerplay, or worse.

HELP FOR HOMELESS-At tomorrow’s Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Kathryn Barger will introduce a motion, coauthored by Chair Hilda L. Solis, that looks to identify commercial real estate property across Los Angeles County that could be repurposed for critically needed temporary housing for people experiencing homelessness as well as for long term affordable housing.

EDUCATION POLITICS — On Feb. 10, Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer rejected District 15 Councilman Joe Buscaino and District 1 Councilman Gil Cedillo’s motion to sue the Los Angeles Unified School District to force the unsafe reopening of school campuses (“in-person instruction immediately”) even as more variants are found spreading in the community that are far more contagious than the original coronavirus. 

THE DOCTOR IS IN--Is it possible to demand our schools reopen while being adamantly pro-teacher/education?

MY TURN--Fund raisers on the Right and on the Left know that the best way to raise vast sums of money is to claim an existential threat to their base.

CLIMATE POLITICS-Ecocide is the destruction of large areas of the natural environment as a consequence of human activity. 

EASTSIDER-Best explanation of how overnight parking on LA City Streets has been enforced was given to me by a fellow journalist who blogs at michaelkohlhaas.org.  

GELFAND’S WORLD--"There are two numbers you need to know about climate change. The first is 51 billion. The other is zero." 

ENERGY POLITICS-The powerful oil industry lobby in California in 2020 spent less on lobbying in California than it did in 2019,

PLANNING WATCH-The Los Angeles City Planning Department recently announced that it is terminating work on its long-stalled Purple Line Extension "Transit Neighborhood Plan" (TNP).

THE DOCTOR IS IN--I will be the first doctor, civic activist, humanist, and father/husband to proclaim that the COVID-19 has been inappropriately utilize to further agendas (and I really don't care if that offends anyone...

MY TURN--The inherent power in being a judge has always attracted sadistic predators and Los Angeles is no exception. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--Remember when conservative politicians wrapped themselves in the anti-crime image, complaining to the public about how robbers and murderers were getting off on technicalities? 

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