LOS ANGELES

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-In the fanciful world of high school and college “civics” and political science classes, government is portrayed as a neutral force blindly balancing many competing interest groups. While a few gullible students might fall for this claim, a quick look at the City of Los Angeles puts this notion to rest. 

POLITICS-Does Tuesday’s election of Doug Jones as Alabama’s first Democratic U.S. Senator in more than two decades signal the beginning of the end for Donald Trump? Have enough voters who embraced Trump’s anti-Washington rhetoric finally awakened from the fevered dream of draining the swamp? Or was the defeat of Roy Moore an electoral aberration? 

CORRUPTION WATCH-All educated people have heard Lord Acton’s quote from 1887, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” One interesting aspect of Lord Acton’s statement is that it took thousands of years for someone to concisely state what everyone knew. It’s the lesson behind Sodom and Gomorrah where the judges were named Liar, Deceiver, and Perverter of the law. Socrates’, Plato’s and Aristotle’s discussions on how to bring together wisdom and power yielded no solution. As the Arab political philosopher al-Farabi noted in his parable of the pious ascetic, the corruption power brings taints even the righteous. (The ascetic had to lie by acts of deception to save his life.) 

SMALL BIZ WATCH--As sexual harassment allegations spread to more individuals and industries, the sad facts are coming out regarding treatment of women at work that many have known about for decades. It’s easy to point to more “glamorous” enterprises like entertainment, investment, culinary, tech, politics, fashion, and think that these “ego-head” movers and shakers are getting their due. In the days to come #MeToo will certainly spread to less glamorous industries and less prominent transgressors, and many industries and localities will have unfortunate and distressing sexual harassment accounts to deal with. 

PREVEN REPORT-How is charging admission to a public museum not the same thing as charging admission to a public library? 

PERSPECTIVE--Remember being taught about the Boston Tea Party? The patriots of Boston finally had enough taxation without representation. Well folks, get your tea bags out and ready. 

GELFAND’S WORLD--The pharmaceutical industry sued the state of California on Friday. You see, California recently passed a law that would require the drug companies to give advance warning before they raise prices substantially. Under California's new law, drug companies are at least supposed to provide some advance notice and to explain their reasons. So as night follows day, the pharmaceutical industry filed suit, wrapping themselves in the Constitution and various other sacred obligations. 

CLIMATE POLITICS--At a moment when firefighters—and anyone who lives and breathes in Southern California—could use a break, the atmosphere is about to double down.

CAL MATTERS--With sexual harassment and assault allegations ricocheting through the state Capitol, two female lobbyists say they soon faced the consequences of speaking out—a state senator who suddenly wanted to avoid meeting with them.

ALPERN AT LARGE--As stated in my last CityWatch article, Los Angeles City and County is using its successful 2028 Olympic bid to accelerate the many Metro projects that have been delayed to 2035 or beyond.

DEEGAN ON LA-Are protections to control alcohol permits that had been approved and put in place by neighborhood councils with community input and city approval being diluted? This is what community activists are saying: City Attorney Mike Feuer has been allowing City Planning to remove, reduce or modify conditions without notifying the neighborhood councils and the original stakeholders involved in the creation of these conditions in the first place, leading to the very negative impacts those communities have been trying to avoid. 

At issue are Conditional Use Permits for Beverage (CUBs) that set the conditions for establishments selling alcohol in communities. 

Has this been happening because the City Planning Department does not loop in the relevant stakeholders about proposed changes? Or, is it because the City Attorney has advised that City Planning can let these agreements be reduced or lapse without further discussion and approval? 

A group of Westside activists feels this erosion stems from unilateral actions taken by the City Attorney. 

They take serious issue with City Attorney Mike Feuer who they have met with at least three times, but say they have gotten nowhere. The activists allege that the City Attorney is unilaterally approving these rollbacks which, in their view, should only be able to be approved by the City Council, after review by the community. 

When asked about this, a spokesperson for the City Attorney told CityWatch, “We cannot discuss any confidential advice we may have given a client.” 

Activist Wendy-Sue Rosen of the Brentwood Residents Coalition provided CityWatch with the context of the issue: “For decades, applicants for Conditional Use Permits for Beverage (CUBs) routinely engaged with community organizations and stakeholders to gain support for their CUB applications by agreeing upon land-use conditions designed to mitigate adverse impacts on the surrounding neighborhoods. The cooperative process worked—CUBs were granted and neighborhoods were protected. Then, in 2012 the City Attorney’s office reversed that process with no notice to the community, no instruction from the City Council, no opportunity for public input.” 

“The Coalition,” Rosen continues, “had three in-person meetings with City Attorney Mike Feuer. We came away very concerned and surprised that the City Attorney seemed unwilling to exercise the City’s police powers to protect neighborhoods. It was alarming that the City Attorney was allowing CUB holders to break the promises they made to obtain their permits.” 

Zeroing in on the role of the City Attorney, Rosen said, “In Westwood, an applicant for a CUB negotiated with the Westwood Community Council and local stakeholders to gain their support, agreed to a set of land use and public safety conditions, and obtained the benefit of the permit. Then they came back later, not to the Community Council, but to the West LA Area Planning Commission to ask for the removal of the conditions they had previously agreed to. At the hearing the City Attorney instructed the Commission they were required to remove the conditions.”  “The City Attorney is clearly setting public policy. That is the job of the City Council. This supposed “policy change” came with no notice to the community, no opportunity for public input, and no consideration by City Council. We were just told this is how it is,” concluded Rosen. 

Stepping into the dispute is Councilmember Paul Koretz (CD5) who represents significant parts of the westside, including Westwood. On November 28, he introduced a motion addressing complaints from neighbors reporting that too often the Planning Department was removing neighborhood protections from the establishments that sell alcohol that had been initially been put in place as part of agreements to issue the license in the first place – resulting in problems in their neighborhood. 

“It has been brought to our attention," said Koretz, "that the Planning Department has been removing conditions without notifying the original stakeholders involved in their permit approvals leading to the very negative impacts that we've been trying to avoid. I believe that it is the local community's right to be involved in the decision-making process of how the sale and service of alcohol impacts their communities. They have intimate knowledge of the issues specific to their neighborhoods and, therefore, their volunteer hours of effort and input should not be erased with the stroke of a pen.” 

A spokesperson for Councilmember Koretz told CityWatch that “the Councilmember wants to make sure a balance is being maintained, and that we want our small businesses to thrive within the communities they serve but not unduly impacting neighborhoods by reversing previously agreed upon traffic, noise, hours of operations and parking mitigations to name a few.” 

The matter is currently with the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) committee for deliberation.   No hearing date has been set.

(Tim Deegan is a long-time resident and community leader in the Miracle Mile, who has served as board chair at the Mid City West Community Council and on the board of the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition. Tim can be reached at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

-cw

BE GREEN--Just two months after a 14-blaze firestorm ravaged Northern California, at least five fires are burning across more than 83,000 acres in Southern California, destroying dozens of structures and forcing tens of thousands of residents to flee their homes.

PREVEN REPORT-Today the LA City Council moved forward with its confusing and dumb plan to allow for the opening on January 1, 2018 of legal recreational pot shops. 

ALPERN AT LARGE--While not giving anyone a "pass", it's safe to say that Metro still enjoys the reputation of a reformed agency that is trying to do its best by the taxpayers and commuters of LA County.  Compared to other public agencies, it's responsive and responsible and tries to do what it's told ... including the construction of infrastructure projects that should have been built decades ago.

WHY THE RESISTANCE GROWS--“It was so pitiful — city planners asked us for our 'feelings.' They rushed past open space so fast I was embarrassed,” observed Patricia Bell Hearst, chair emeritus of Hillside Federation. 

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-At the height of the previous anti-Russian cold war, roughhewn anti-Communists, like J. Edgar Hoover, wrote long forgotten tracts, like his masterpiece, Masters of Deceit. He told “real Americans” about telltale signs that slick-talking liberals sneaking into their circle of friends might really be clandestine Reds. Picking up his theme, in 1949 RKO Studios produced I Married a Communist, but it was such a dud that the studio renamed the film, The Woman on Pier 13.   A half-century later, acclaimed writer Phillip Roth wrote a sarcastic novel with the same name, “I Married a Communist.”  

RANTZ AND RAVEZ-Without Justice in our society – and particularly in the Criminal Judicial System -- there is a strong tendency by some members of society to resort to misguided vigilante justice or, as it states in Exodus 21:24, to demand an eye for eye, a tooth for tooth, a hand for hand, a foot for a foot. 

YES IN MY BACK YARDERS ON THE MOVE-Of the fifteen bills in the “housing package” signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown on September 29, the one that got the most attention in the media was State Senator Scott Wiener’s SB 35—and for good reason: SB 35 goes a long way toward “putting teeth” in California’s Regional Housing Needs Allocations, the number of housing units that each city’s and county’s zoning must accommodate. Moreover, the bill’s provisions for “by-right” approval of certain multi-family, infill developments both circumvent the California Environmental Quality Act and eliminate negotiations with developers over community benefits.

BELL VIEW-This one goes way back. When I was about 8 years old, I got together with my friend up the street, Davy Dexheimer, to play Hot Wheels. We set up a track down Davy’s long driveway and raced our cars against each other. Davy had quite the collection, and one in particular caught my eye. So, when we were packing up our things at the end of the day, I pocketed one small car and headed home. 

EASTSIDER-Everyone knows about the plight of the folks living around Porter Ranch, and how well SoCalGas has treated them. Now it appears that all DWP customers will be receiving a “gift” from the Gas company that we really, really are not going to like! 

REMEMBER ENRON?--Los Angeles’ escalating housing costs are not due to impartial market forces, but rather, the product of judicially sanctioned corruptionism. Hillel Aron and Jason McGahan, in their November 29, 2017 article, What Happens When Wall Street Is Your Landlord?   describe the personal pain and suffering that is increasingly befalling Angelenos.