LOS ANGELES

ALPERN AT LARGE--There's something to be said for supporting a winning argument, and recognizing losing arguments when you see them.  In theory, we should not NEED Measure M (half-cent sales tax for transportation funding) to be passed. In theory, Sacramento should have kept its priorities of pensions for past employees balanced with funding for current employees and services. 

But Sacramento didn't, and despite the fact that state taxpayers throughout the economic and political spectrum are tapped out, we'll need to save ourselves in the City and County of Los Angeles. 

Which means that all the money that taxpayers are on the hook to pay for an unsustainable pension plan at the City, County and State levels (you can be BOTH pro-government AND recognize unsustainable financial/budget plans!) was, is, and will very much kill our ability to rely on Sacramento to do its job for schools, public safety, transportation, etc. 

So here's the WINNING argument in a nutshell … 

1. The overwhelming success of the Expo Line, with trains every six minutes; 
2. Public/private partnerships funding rail throughout the County; 
3. County transportation measures throughout the state;  

… show that Measure M is both timely and necessary for our county's economic future. 

Yet all the siphoning of state budgeting and other economic resources to public sector workers retiring in their 50's, and being paid for 30 or more years at a level we just CANNOT afford (not all retirees, but too many and without sufficient limit-setting) has led to: 

1) K-12 and community college taxes and bonds that have proven inefficient, and which are proof-positive that enrichment of certain small special interests, and not outcomes, is the ultimate goal of the "cottage industry" of the public education lobbies who (purportedly for the children) are driving this state into the economic ditch. 

2) A City, County and State bureaucracy that is anything but transparent, and which is milking small businesses dry and driving "good jobs" (solid pay and benefits) out of this state. 

3) A City of L.A. and State that has given the cold shoulder (or perhaps a more rude gesture or two) to law enforcement, and is more focused on bending the law, or ignoring the law altogether, rather than valuing law enforcement and those pleading for our society to adhere to laws.   

(For those who still give a rip about laws, and who still value law enforcement recommendations, please review my last CityWatch article) 

So the desire to pay for transportation/traffic measures has been thrown to the beleaguered cities and counties of our state, and woe be unto those of us who dare decry this violation of the budgetary and other rules of law and economics! 

Maybe the pessimists are right, and maybe they're not, when they proclaim that California is inevitably on its way to an economic crash (particularly when the inevitable next stock market downturn occurs and we discover there really are NOT enough rich millionaires to keep bailing us out), but: 

1) If the money is vague and probably will not be spent well, then vote NO. 

2) If we're already spending gobs of money on a given priority, and the past funding has been spent poorly, then vote NO. 

Hence it's clear that County Measure M is the only tax initiative that merits approval because it's transparent and defined, and has as its greatest opposing argument that it doesn't go far enough. 

Meanwhile, the City, County and State needs to perform a long-overdue clean up of their economic houses and spend more efficiently and sustainably rather than vomiting out another slew of tax, bond, or other fiscally-related measures and propositions. 

Vote YES on County Measure M, and vote NO on all other financial measures.

(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

Tags: Ken Alpern, election 2016, ballot measures, Measure M

CALBUZZ--Despite Nate Silver’s argument that we should leave the LA Times/USC Dornsife “Daybreak Poll” alone, this poor excuse for a survey has been so wrong so persistently – and has been so constantly cited by Donald Trump as evidence of his campaign success – that it’s time for the Calbuzz Green Eye Shade Division to call them to task.

We’d be tempted to accept Silver’s admonition that all you have to do is add 6 percentage points to Hillary Clinton’s standing in the survey to accommodate for its “house effect,” except for the fact that the survey continues to arrogantly insist that “This chart tracks our best estimate, over time, of how America plans to vote in November.”

World class flapdoodle So we’re sorry to say that our old friends David Lauter of the LA Times and Dan Schnur of USC will forever have to take responsibility* for the single most reckless name-brand survey of the 2016 election season. Even if they succumb to pressure from the polling world and re-weight their flawed sample in the coming weeks so that they end up in the ballpark (like Survey USA usually does), they will have overseen an entire season of faulty, misleading polling that has misinformed the public and given Trump false bragging rights and his allies false hope.

As of Wednesday, when most national polls by reputable organizations were showing Clinton leading Trump by 4 to 11 percentage points, the screwball LA Times/ USC Dornsife “daybreak” survey showed Clinton and Trump tied at 44% — after weeks of showing Trump leading Clinton by significant margins.

Garbage in... Why? Because they started with a faulty, pro-Trump panel of internet respondents, weighted their reported 2012 vote for president and then stuck with that panel as part of their methodology. Garbage at the start; garbage all throughout.

“What’s the source of the LA Times poll’s Trump lean?” Silver wrote. “There are good ‘explainers’ from The New York Times’s Nate Cohn and Huffington Post Pollster’s David Rothschild.   Long story short: The poll’s results are weighted based on how people said they voted in 2012. That’s probably a mistake, because people often misstate or misremember their vote from previous elections.^”

Here’s their graph:

Interestingly, the LA Times so did not believe its survey that coverage, by most of its fine political writers, have paid it no mind.

On Wednesday, Lauter himself tried to hide his paper’s miserable poll’s findings – a tied race — with a front-page story that focused on survey respondents’ expectations of who will win the race instead of their stated voter preference.

“More and more, his own supporters no longer think he can win, the USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Daybreak poll has found,” Lauter wrote.

Hide the turkey. Except that this was not a new finding at all. The survey’s respondents had consistently said they thought Clinton would win the race – with even larger proportions predicting her victory back in August. The story gave the Times an opportunity to use its miserable survey as a way to convey to readers the paper’s conviction that Clinton is actually leading Trump.

“The Daybreak poll asks people whom they plan to vote for and which candidate they expect will win,” Lauter wrote. “The question of voter expectations has often, although not always, proved to be a more reliable forecaster of election outcomes than asking voters their candidate preference.”

This is, on its face, an absurd argument. First of all, how would the Times know that asking voter expectations is “a more reliable forecaster of election outcomes” until they know what the outcome is? By comparing this question in their survey to other national polls? Second, why are they asking voter preference if they think it’s an inferior measure of election outcomes – which their own statement on the survey about their “best estimate” flatly contradicts?

This is a sneaky way to mask the findings of their flawed survey.

Piling it on. Then, on Thursday, Lauter wrote about how the poll stands up if it is re-weighted to discount USC’s original weighting for who candidates said they had voted for in 2012 — which was a dumb idea from the get-go. This is exactly the kind of legerdemain that Survey USA and other sleazy operations use to make their final polls look legit.

The re-weighting, by Ernie Tedeschi, an economist formerly with the Treasury Department “provides reassurance that although the poll differs from other surveys, its data about the trends in the election — the ups and downs in support for the two candidates — are consistent with what others have found,” Lauter wrote.

Oy. It was a bad poll design. USC and the LA Times are stuck with it.

* Lauter and Schnur get responsibility, but here’s how Lauter (LA Times Washington Bureau Chief) explained the origin of the survey in an email to us:

“The researchers at USC’s Center for Economic and Social Research https://cesr.usc.edu/, led by Prof. Arie Kapteyn, developed the poll. They based it on a very similar survey they did four years ago when they were at the RAND Corp. (That 2012 poll was one of the most accurate of the election year and the only major survey not to underestimate Obama’s margin). Dan introduced Arie’s team to those of us at The Times, and we were (and are) very happy to partner with them to publish the results.”

When we asked Schnur (director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics, USC Dornsife College) if he is responsible for his organization’s survey, he replied: “Jill Darling is the Survey Director for the Center for Economic and Social Research. I’m sure she’ll be happy to answer your questions. She can be reached at: [email protected]“

(Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine … long time journalists … publish the award-winning CalBuzz.com) 

-cw

VOICES--When it comes to public/private partnerships, the past four months have been a mixed bag for Milwaukee Bucks’ co-owner and recently exposed defrauder-of-LA-county, Wesley Edens. 

On the down side, Mr. Edens just got sent packing by the City of Atlanta where five golf course concessions crucial to one of Edens' most important investment schemes just met their maker.  

According to an email blast sent out this Saturday by the American Golf Corporation (the subsidiary through which Mr. Edens runs his golf investments), they "will no longer lease or operate" any of the city’s courses as of November 1st. That’s a big deal, because American Golf has been operating those courses for thirty years. The details of the ways-parting are murky but the big picture is clear. 

What has this got to do with LA? On the plus side for Wesley Edens, the profit margin on his golf operations in Los Angeles County and elsewhere around the nation have soared; as announced on a recent investor conference call. Newcastle Investment Corporation is now running a 25% profit margin on its gym-like membership program “The Player’s Club.” 

On the dark side of things however, that return violates the “reasonable profit margin” clause of Mr. Edens’ contracts with LA County. And, to no one’s surprise, so far not a peep from LA Parks and Rec. So the good times can continue to roll—especially if the County continues its non-enforcement of American Golf’s contractual obligation to disclose its Players Club membership revenue figures. 

Mr. Eden’s current good fortune doesn’t end there. He has been given a free pass on his ongoing violations of LA County’s minimum wage ordinance. At the time of this writing, to cite just one example, La Mirada golf course is advertising a job with an hourly rate below the mandated minimum wage. As of September 9, 2016, Brookside golf course—located in but not owned by LA County—was advertising on the American Golf website a job paying an hourly rate of $8. (Screenshots available upon request.) 

And so, while we want to express our heart-felt condolences to Mr. Edens on his recent losses in Atlanta, we also want to ‘congratulate’ him on his expert work in Los Angeles County. He should never forget that whatever may happen in other parts of the country, he's always welcome in the fiefdom of the LA County Supes of the Roundtable.  No mention yet of a possible Edens knighting.

(Eric Preven is a CityWatch contributor and a Studio City based writer-producer and public advocate for better transparency in local government. He was a candidate in the 2015 election for Los Angeles City Council, 2nd District. Joshua Preven is a CityWatch contributor and teacher who lives in Los Angeles.)

 –cw

DEMOCRACY REMEMBERED--The writer, politician, and anti-war activist Tom Hayden died yesterday at the age of 76, a year and a half after suffering a stroke. Now, as they say, he rests in peace—a man who devoted his life to making the world a place where the living can do the same. From helping to found the New Left in the 1960s right up to this turbulent election season, Hayden was a pillar of Democratic politics, a brilliant strategist and political thinker, and a leading advocate for a more just and equal society.

Here at The Nation we are especially saddened by the loss of a close friend. A longtime contributor to these pages, Hayden joined our editorial board just weeks before the attacks of September 11, which gave a new resonance to his life’s work. He attended most biannual meetings, often in person and sometimes by Skype, until September of 2015. His most recent piece for the magazine, published in April, was a moving essay about why he was supporting Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary: 

So here we are, at the end of one generation on the left and the rise of another. Both camps in the party will need each other in November—more than either side needs to emerge triumphant in the primary. We still need the organizing of a united front of equals to prevail against the Republicans. It will take a thorough process of conflict resolution to get there, not a unilateral power wielding by the usual operatives. It’s up to all of us.

Though an irreplaceable voice for peace has been silenced, there will be one more reminder of Hayden’s unsurpassed ability for making readers understand what it takes to hold the powerful to account. Next spring, Yale University Press will publish Hayden’s final book, Hell No: The Forgotten Power of the Vietnam Peace Movement. For now, here is a sampling of some of the important work Hayden published in our pages.

A month after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as president, Hayden wrote a cover story titled “The Future Politics of Liberalism” (February 21, 1981), which showed that there was much more to his vision of the United States that the limited set of issues that usually falls under the rubric of politics:

We need more than ever a participatory society in which persons of all life styles believe that they matter, instead of the escapist culture that absorbs millions in irrelevance. We cannot contend with the coming of external limits unless we delve more into our rich inner potentials.

It comes down to moving from a wasteful, privately oriented, self-indulgent existence to a more conserving, caring and disciplined life style. The cornerstone has to be a renewal of self-reliance, not the outmoded frontier fantasy of the Republican philosophers, but the reassertion of personal responsibility in everything from conserving resources to decentralizing services to keeping ourselves well through self-care to practicing a “right livelihood” in business. It is a change from planned obsolescence to the production of useful goods that last, from consumer madness to the achievement of inner satisfactions, from the opulence of Jay Gatsby to the frugal self-assurance of Henry David Thoreau.

More important than money and technique in elections is the factor of motivation and vision. The Democrats (or someone else) will return to national leadership when they are inspired again.

The following year Hayden was elected to the California state assembly, where he passed important bills on education and animal rights and participated in a US Commerce Department delegation to Northern Ireland. In 1992, voters promoted him to the state senate, and a few years later he began writing often for The Nation.

“Unfinished Business: Can We Beat the Special-Interest State?” (September 9/16, 1996):

Though for the next few months most progressives like myself will work to re-elect Bill Clinton and a Democratic Congress, it is not enough o beat back the Gingrichites only to return to the Democratic status quo. The next great debate, reminiscent of the sixties, should be over the values and direction of the Democratic Party. The fight will be for the soul of our politics, not a policy-wonk debate about training vouchers for jobs that may not exist. I would begin with a public demand to free the political system from the suffocating grip of special-interest money, thus opening the possibilities of building a sustainable economy and environment for the next generation, instead of dooming them to corporate downsizing, a public sector dominated by prisons and a planet degraded beyond repair.

Too many of our elders in the sixties discarded their rebellious children or remained silent when the time came to take a controversial stand against their government. The question haunts me: now that authority has fallen to this generation, how will we be different from our parents toward those downsized to despair?

Twenty years later, with the Clintons likely to return to the White House, it’s still a good question.

More important than money and technique in elections is the factor of motivation and vision.

In May of 1999, Hayden wrote about “The Liberals’ Folly” in supporting the Clinton Administration’s bombing of Kosovo. Drawing on his memory of the fight against the Vietnam War, Hayden said it was the job of liberalism to critique such military adventures abroad, not to support them when Democrats were in the White House. The “confident expectation of an early military victory,” Hayden wrote, “is sinking in a Vietnam-style quagmire. Their political fortunes in 2000 are fast becoming collateral damage.”

In 2002, Hayden reflected on “The Port Huron Statement at 40”:

Perhaps the most important legacy of the Port Huron Statement is the fact that it introduced the concept of participatory democracy to popular discourse and practice. It made sense of the fact that ordinary people were making history, and not waiting for parties or traditional organizations.

The notion was used to define modes of organization (decentralization, consensus methods of decision-making, leadership rotation and avoidance of hierarchy) that would lead to social transformation, not simply concessions from existing institutions. It proved to be a contagious idea, spreading from its academic origins to the very process of movement decision-making, to the subsequent call for women’s liberation.

These participatory practices, which had their roots in the town hall, Quaker meetings, anarchist collectives and even sensitivity training, are carried on today in grassroots movements such as the one against corporate globalization.

The strength of organizations like the early SDS or SNCC, or today’s Seattle-style direct-action networks, or ACT UP, is catalytic, not bureaucratic. They empower the passion of spontaneous, communal revolt, continue a few years, succeed in achieving reforms and yet have difficulty in becoming institutionalized.

But while hierarchical mass organizations boast more staying power, they have trouble attracting the personal creativity or the energy of ordinary people taking back power over their lives. Participatory democracy offers a lens for looking at all hierarchies critically and not taking them as inevitable. Perhaps the two strands–the grassroots radical democratic thrust and the need for an organization with a program–can never be fused, but neither can one live without the other.

The Port Huron Statement claimed to be articulating an “agenda for a Generation.” Some of that agenda has been fulfilled: The cold war is no more, voting rights for blacks and youth have been won, and much has changed for the better in the content of university curriculums. Yet our dreams have hardly been realized.

The Port Huron Statement was composed in the heady interlude of inspiration between the apathetic 1950s and the 1960s’ sudden traumas of political assassinations and body counts. Forty years later, we may stand at a similar crossroads. The war on terrorism has revived the cold war framework. An escalating national security state attempts to rivet our attention and invest our resources on fighting an elusive, undefined enemy for years to come, at the inevitable price of our civil liberties and continued neglect of social justice.

To challenge the framework of the war on terrorism, to demand a search for real peace with justice, is as difficult today as challenging the cold war was at Port Huron. Yet there is a new movement astir in the world, against the inherent violence of globalization, corporate rule and fundamentalism, that reminds us strongly of the early 1960s. Is history repeating? If so, “participatory democracy” and the priorities of Port Huron continue to offer clues to building a committed movement toward a society responsive to the needs of the vast majority. Many of those who came to Port Huron have been on that quest ever since.

Increasingly, Hayden turned his attention to how that quest could be linked up with similar ones around the globe, including among those dispossessed by the forces of neoliberal globalization. After attending the World Social Forum at Porto Alegre, Brazil, in early 2003, Hayden wrote that “an alternative” to global capitalism was emerging in Latin America:

Instead of NAFTA’s corporate escape from New Deal-style regulation, the new agenda would be an extension of the most progressive elements of the New Deal to global society, a new social contract in place of market fundamentalism. Globalization from the bottom up. Instead of NAFTA-style agreements that solely protect foreign investors, this alternative model would offer enforceable protections to workers, women and the environment as well–on both sides of the border. Instead of sweatshops and child labor there would be unions and literacy programs. Instead of damming rivers and slashing rainforests, there would be conservation programs for future generations.

As he concluded, “Powerful new coalitions for change are being birthed.”

The same week that issue of The Nation hit newsstands, the United States began bombing Iraq. As the war foundered and those promised WMDs mysteriously disappeared, an anti-war movement began to gain steam, and Hayden had plenty of wisdom to offer about how best to proceed. In “How the Peace Movement Can Win” (December 17, 2007), Hayden proposed engaging in a “domestic war” to take back control of the government in the 2008 elections and end the war. The United States was “approaching a similar chasm in public opinion” as the one that tore the country apart in the late 1960s. “With a majority of Americans wanting and expecting a withdrawal from Iraq, the outcome of 2008 may depend on who has the greater will to win.”

Another piece worth revisiting is Hayden’s essay from the Nation of April 16, 2012, “Participatory Democracy: From the Port Huron Statement to Occupy Wall Street,” in which he reflected on the similarities and differences between the two movements a half-century apart:

I don’t know whether history begins anew or just repeats its sputtering cycles again and again. What is clear enough is that the Occupy movement began without pundit predictions, without funding, without organization, with only determined people in tents, countless Davids taking on the smug Goliath in spontaneous planetary resistance. While Occupy could not and would not agree on making detailed demands, it did agree, as noted earlier, on “direct and transparent participatory democracy” as its first principle.

There is endless speculation these days about the future of Occupy Wall Street. Since I was pleasantly surprised by its birth, I am not one to predict its growth. I prefer to wait and see. Across the Western world, the smoldering division is becoming one between unelected wealthy and foreign private investors and the participatory democracies of civic societies with their faltering elected governments.

Hayden was critical, however, of what he saw as the Occupiers’ unwillingness to sully themselves by working with elected officials to enact at least modified versions of the sweeping changes they proposed. Among the new generation of activists, he said, there is a broad suspicion of seeking reforms that require alliances with top-down organizations, especially with progressive elected officials.

The same dilemmas arose in the ’60s in the relationships between SNCC and the national civil rights leadership, and between SDS and the liberal Democrats we blamed for starting the Vietnam War. In retrospect, however, it’s impossible to reach a majority, much less the 99 percent, while rejecting coalition politics.

Nevertheless, some Occupy theorists seem to believe they can do so. For example, Micah White, a brilliant editor at Adbusters, writes that “an insurrectionary challenge to the capitalist state” will be mounted by “culture-jammers” who create “fluid, immersive, evocative meta-gaming experiences that are playfully thrilling and [that] as a natural result of their gameplay” a social revolution will arise as “pure manifestation of an anonymous will of a dispersed, networked collective.” It is as if the pure insurrectionary act, memorialized as performance art, is more important than the construction of any alliances, or any consequences that flow from it.

Ultimately, however, he thought the two movements had much in common:

It is time for a participatory New Deal, to bring the banks and corporations under the regulations and reforms they have escaped through runaway globalization. This year marks the first presidential campaign in our lifetime when the gluttony of Wall Street, the failures of capitalism, the evils of big money in politics and a discussion of fundamental reform will be front and center in election debates. No doubt the crisis that gave rise to Occupy will not be fixed by an election, but that’s beside the point. Elections produce popular mandates, and mandates spur popular activism. It’s time to organize a progressive majority, and the vision and strategy of Port Huron is worth considering as a guide.

And so it still is. Goodbye, Tom.

(This rememberance was written by the Nation editors and published most recently at Common Dreams.  The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. )

-cw

@THE GUSS REPORT-In May 2014, the City of Los Angeles significantly doctored its pet adoption statistic without telling the public that it was doing it, let alone why. 

It was done with the knowledge of Mayor Eric Garcetti, his minions and more disturbingly, City Controller Ron Galperin who failed to address this (and other) fraudulent LA Animal Services activities in his bogus audit roughly one year later.

The reason why Garcetti did this was so that he could claim humane successes where programs either failed or where programs didn’t exist; and he did it to justify his rehiring of LAAS GM Brenda Barnette, who was all too happy to stay generously employed by Garcetti given her well-documented real estate struggles. 

The proof that Garcetti did this is as follows … 

Prior to May 2014, LA Animal Services records claimed that between July 1, 2009 and January 31, 2014 (a span of 1,675 specific days,) it adopted out 97,757 dogs and cats, not including any other types of animals in the shelter system. That claim is shown here on LAAS’s own spreadsheet. 

City Hall insiders knew all along that this was a false statistic because LAAS counted as “adopted” animals that it simply shuffled from cages in some LA city-owned shelter buildings to cages in other LA city-owned shelter buildings. No matter how you slice it, sitting in a government cage does not reflect the love or trappings of a dog or cat adopted into a family…but this was how Eric Garcetti, as City Council president and as Mayor, knowingly counted them during this time span. 

But suddenly, and stealthily, the statistic changed dramatically. 

In this subsequent LAAS spreadsheet, captured in June 2014, the claimed adopted statistic on the spreadsheet that used to be 97,757 was suddenly 92,580. 

How does an adoption statistic suddenly go down by thousands of animals? 

In fact, the number of animals Garcetti claimed were adopted during this time frame is even lower than that. To fully understand Garcetti’s ruse, we need to employ some nerdy math. 

In the second spreadsheet, the date-range includes February, March and April 2014. In order to make an apples-to-apples comparison of the same exact 1,675 days, the adoption figures for those months (which are in the red box) must be subtracted from the new 92,580 figure. The result: Garcetti and LAAS now claimed that it adopted out only 88,950 dogs and cats during this time.

That’s 8,807 fewer adoptions than the city previously claimed -- and without explanation. 

The city altered its adoption statistics with malice aforethought, too. In an April 22, 2014 email, David Zaft, the Garcetti-appointed president of the LAAS Commission wrote, “Assuming that the reports on the website are changed…and I agree with you that they should be…I believe it would be appropriate for some explanation of the change to be given.” 

But since animals are silent victims, and Zaft (as Commission president) controls what goes on the LAAS Commission agenda, to date, this has never been explained because it is the proverbial loose string on a sweater. Expose this, and you will expose the fake impound numbers generated – in violation of the city’s agreement with Best Friends – for animals who never set foot in any city shelter, as well as even deeper problems. 

As of October 2016, the Garcetti administration has no idea what became of those 8,807 animals, and has refused to honor CPRA requests because the wealthy, stealthy Best Friends organization is not held accountable (as all other rescue organizations are required to report) on where they shipped those animals which, in Best Friends case, includes sending them to high kill shelters in other cities and states. Garcetti may very well soon find the city sued over those records. 

Since the time that the statistics were quietly altered, Garcetti has repeatedly told the public “adoptions are up,” when all he did was lower the starting figure. In his world, it is better to make thousands of animals disappear rather than show up as kills on his statistics.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a contributor to CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640 and Huffington Post. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

GUEST WORDS-First let me declare that I am a liberal and a lifelong supporter of the Democratic Party. And I have voted for most tax increases in the past for schools, infrastructure and the like. 

Not this time. 

I’m fed up with our political “leaders” and their patrons – developers and union interests that treat local politics as their piggy bank. We’ve all seen the absurdly lavish salaries, from the DWP to City Hall, and the shockingly generous pensions and lifetime health insurance they bestow upon themselves. Personally, I just received notice of a 29% increase in my health insurance. And yet I am being asked to fork over more taxes? 

I don’t think so. Not until some balance returns to the system. 

The problem is corruption across the whole spectrum of local government that sees the few (the political class and their patrons) benefit off the backs of millions of taxpayers who get no say, and no seat at the table. 

It was reported that Herb Wesson (president of the City Council) abruptly cut off the public commentary phase at a recent hearing. As in: please shut up and go away you annoying peons.  Arrogant? You decide. 

I live on the eastside and read recently that the city has simply given up on EVER repairing the concrete streets we have in this part of town because they are too expensive to fix. Huh? The city to whom I pay thousands each year in property and other taxes can’t do the most basic thing like fix the streets? 

So that is why I am asking you: why continue to be a sucker? 

Why continue to be an enabler? Why not stand up and say: no more tax increases until some balance finds its way back into the equation. 

Ask yourself this: what are the great ideas our local public servants have in mind for the gigantic sums of money they haul in now? (LA City alone has an $8.7 BILLION budget). Fix our streets? Repair sidewalks? As if. 

No, they want to commit billions to bringing the Olympics here and removing concrete from the sides of the LA River -- concrete installed to control flooding, which the LA Times just reported remains a long term threat. 

It’s just plain nuts. LA is like a homeowner whose house has holes in the roof, termites, leaky plumbing – and decides to build a shiny new pool! It would be funny except it isn’t anymore. 

The joke is on us unless we speak up and demand they begin to address OUR basic needs. If not we’ll find ourselves living in a third world city with ruble for streets, failed infrastructure, and banana republic politics. 

Oops. We’re already there. 

So I am voting against most tax increases, and I urge you to do the same until some accountability returns to the system. And it’s not just on philosophical terms. It’s also on the “merits” and fine print of most of these issues. 

Case in point: Measure M. 

I’m all for a wise and sensible plan for a comprehensive public transportation system for LA and surrounding cities, and could support a tax increase to achieve this. But the key phrase is “a wise and sensible plan.” 

Measure M is neither. Forget the fact that we are being asked to increase our sales tax to a full 2% of every dollar spent -- FOREVER. As in no sunset clause. As in: this-tax-will-never-ever-ever-stop. Forever. Taylor Swift should write a song about it. 

But my fundamental problem is not with the tax. It’s with what’s planned for it. 

Basically the idea is to build a few more choo-choo trains. This when Metro admits there has been a 10% drop in transit boardings from 2006 to 2015 despite a 9 BILLION dollar investment. They like to point to a small uptick of ridership on the new Red line, without explaining how the last 9 billion they spent led to a 10% DROP. Despite population grown in the millions? 

We have at least 1200 square miles to serve in the greater LA region. Rail transit works well when areas served are geographically dense, and riders are close enough to walk to stations. But this will never be the case in LA. 

The whole multi-billion dollar scheme is based on a faulty premise and last-century thinking. 

I have a radical proposal: forget choo-choos. We should embrace next-century thinking. Why not think outside the box and invest in a system of automated, driverless units that work like Uber. Call them transport pods.   Get Elon Musk and the best minds from Silicon Valley to design a “driverless, people mover system” that carries 6-8 people each. It could be like a small van with three rows of seats. And they would be electric. 

We could afford tens of thousands of these for less than the price of a few absurdly inefficient trains. They could roam they city 24/7 like Uber drivers do now, and you would hail them with an app. There would be a share component so that open seats would be matched with other riders coming and going. Plus there would be room for transporting groceries etc. And they would take you from point to point. 

Far fetched you say? 

Uber’s driverless cars will be on the road within five years.   This plan could be up and running in ten years or less, DECADES sooner that the choo-choos proposed and we could have an emission free, smart system that would really work. 

Forget last century thinking and wasting billions on a system destined to fail. Vote No on Measure M, and take a hard look at the other tax increases they want you to approve. 

And pass the stoopid test.

(Michael Wilson is a director and producer who has lived in Los Angeles for thirty-five years.)

-cw

VOICES OF THE PEOPLE--Councilmember David Ryu’s recent letter to the City’s Planning Land Use Management committee (PLUM) stating he cannot support the new Frank Gehry project at 8150 Sunset was welcome news to everyone who opposes the project. Lots of people and groups have contacted the Councilman in an effort to help him understand just how bad this project really is.

While I know some believe this is an effort on his part to continue negotiating with the developer and that, ultimately, he will support the project, I see it differently. I see it as a fulfillment of the Pledge he signed while running for office. His statement, “I want to be clear that I will not support a de facto revision to the Community Plan for this area. Zoning and the General Plan must be respected,” is unambiguous and leaves no room to tinker around the edges. 

However, no one should be under any illusions that the Planning Department and the City Attorney will second David’s position. The City has thrown in with the developers and thrown down the gauntlet challenging its residents, its rules and its laws. Today it is happening in Hollywood; tomorrow it could happen anywhere -- even in your neighborhood.

Part of the difficulty that the Councilman, his staff and the community have had to struggle with is the spin put on it by the Planning Department’s Major Projects Unit. This has created a fog obscuring the truth, allowing the City (CPC) to disregard the law and approve the project.  

When I was first asked to look at the project it was described as “almost by-right” with an SB 1818 (density bonus) twist. I accepted that as a working premise but soon realized it was not the case. The first aspect of the project that caught my eye was the proposal to close a section of southbound Crescent Heights without going through a street vacation process. I didn’t think that was possible and brought in a friend for a second opinion. She agreed with me but what we didn’t know then was that we had just fallen down the rabbit hole. In the months that followed, we dug and dug to uncover the history of the site and surrounding neighborhood in order to properly evaluate it. It was not easy but we finally got to the core of the issue and guess what? The project as presented is anything but “almost by-right” and cannot be built. Furthermore, the City’s cavalier attitude towards the Alquist-Priolo Act’s requirements will put people’s lives at risk during an earthquake.

The core of the issue is that the zoning on the site limits the buildable area to a 1:1 Floor Area Ratio not the 3:1 tripling they are trying to get through using SB 1818. There is a “D” development limitation on the site which is public knowledge but what was unknown until now is that the limitation (1:1 FAR) was imposed as a CEQA Mitigation during the 1988 Hollywood Community Plan update. The planning department has to know this but they continue to ignore that fact. We were told that the City Attorney’s office had convinced everyone including Councilman Ryu that we are wrong and will lose any lawsuit we file. We are used to hearing that and continue to prove them wrong. Fortunately it appears that the Councilman saw through the spin the City was putting out and decided not to support the project.

The only way this project can be built in its current form is for the City to remove the “D” condition. In order to do that the City must find that the conditions that caused the CEQA mitigation in the first place no longer exist. As the EIR for the 1988 Community Plan stated, the 1:1 FAR limitation is linked to “an effort to make the transportation system and other public facilities and service systems workable.” The 1988 EIR noted that, under the 1973 Plan, “this level of development activity has resulted in significant burdens on the traffic circulation system within the Community Plan area, as well as other adverse impacts on public services and infrastructure. Development activity has also resulted in numerous land use conflicts and incompatibilities reflected in parking problems, aesthetic impacts, light, shade-shadow impacts of new larger buildings on existing lower density properties, the removal of architecturally or historically significant buildings, among other impacts.” 

Does anyone seriously believe that the issues that required the current CEQA mitigations no longer exist in Hollywood? Compounding the problem is that there is already another project in the queue (7500 Sunset Blvd) which is a mirror image of 8150. Councilman Ryu and the community need to understand that the entire commercial stretch of Sunset between West Hollywood and LaBrea has the same “D” Limitation zoning as 8150 and those buildings will fall one by one if he does not get this right. Instead of the 1 and 2 story commercial buildings that now line the boulevard serving the community there will be 6, 8, 15 story mixed use projects. You will get more market rate apartments, a few affordable units, ground floor national chain restaurants and lots and lots of cars pulling in and out of those buildings. This is virgin territory to the development community and they are all watching what happens here. 

What will happen when the project goes to the full Council? That is the great unknown. Will the other members vote to support the project against the Councilman’s wishes? I cannot remember a time that has happened. But I am willing to bet that it could happen here because the development community wants it to happen. This is a modern day gold rush and they can’t wait to stake their claim to the newest bonanza.

If the other councilmembers do disrespect the Councilman and his constituents I hope he has a long memory and lets them know that payback will come when they least expect it. In the meantime we must support his efforts to stop this and every other project on Sunset with the “D” limitation. 

The court decision on 8150 will prove that the City is wrong and put an end to this madness but the community cannot wait for that to happen. They must start organizing now to stop 7500 Sunset if the Councilman is not able to do it on his own. 

In the meantime, I want to make a suggestion that the Councilman use some of the office’s discretionary funds to consult with a private CEQA attorney to verify that what we have put into the record is correct. He will probably need to keep that attorney’s number on speed dial if he wants to protect his constituents until the court decision is rendered.

(Jim O’Sullivan is one of the Fix the City founders and President of the Miracle Mile Residential Association.)  Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

LATINO PERSPECTIVE--Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump called Mexican immigrants rapist, and criminals but in reality very few Mexican immigrants fall into this category. The vast majority come to our country to better their lives for themselves and their families. They are law abiding, pay taxes, and hard working individuals. 

I think that now more than ever it’s important that Latinos and Hispanics show the country what we are made of. For today I couldn’t find a better example than Dodger’s pitcher Julio Urias … the youngest in MLB postseason history and … Mexican. 

Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Julio Urias stepped in for relief in game 5 of the National League Division Series. He helped defeat the Washington Nationals, and because of his winning performance, he was the starting pitcher in last Wednesday’s game 4 of the Championship Series against the Chicago Cubs. The Chicago Cubs won that game 10-2. 

Now the Cubs are heading to the World Series for the first time in 71 years breaking a baseball curse. What a bummer for Angelinos but nevertheless a big victory for our young Mexican star. 

Urias told the Associated Press through a translator "I felt the adrenaline when I was on the bench," "I felt it in Washington, but then I knew that it was something that I could handle and something I could do. I know that I can do it again." 

On May 27, Urias made his debut in New York against the Mets. He was 19 years old at the time and the second teenager to start in the majors this century, joining Felix Hernandez who debuted at the same age in 2005. 

Urias made 15 starts for Los Angeles before finishing the regular season at Triple-A Oklahoma City. In all, he's had four stints with the Dodgers in his first season, and Los Angeles has limited him to 16 innings since Sept. 1. 

"That's how it's been all year. The decision has been the team's," he said. "The only thing that's important is to be in the mentality of go out there, do my job, and that's really what matters." 

Urias hadn't been expected to arrive so early in the season; manager Dave Roberts had anticipated him being a September call-up. 

"It's been incredible," Urias said. "As a ballplayer, I set goals for myself ever since I came to the United States. My goal originally was to set foot on a major league mound and to pitch at a big league level. I did that in May, and now to be able to have this opportunity and to be called on to start, it's great." 

We may have a new Fernando Valenzuela in the making. Now more than ever Latino/Hispanic Americans and immigrants must show the rest of the country what we are made of, that we are just like any other group of Americans, a community that contributes, that works hard for our families and our country. That we are successful even in America’s pastime baseball. Our hope is that he will make us proud, and continue through baseball making America great. Mucha suerte muchacho!

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

–cw

MEMO TO LAT COLUMNIST MICHAEL HILTZIK: In your Sunday, October 22, 2016, column about Measure HH in Beverly Hills, are you sure you only talking about Beverly Hills. There are numerous identical issues in your article with Rick Caruso's planned 20+ story luxury project at 333 South LaCienega, at the site of the former Loehman’s. store. 

Mr. Caruso has pledged $500,000 to the condo association at the adjacent Weatherly Tower if he gets approval for his project. When suggested that he lop off some floors to make the building less obtrusive, he stated, "It doesn't pencil out."  As my mother used to say, "Nebbuch," Yiddish for awww, too bad.  

Mr. Caruso wants the Loehman’s parcel to be rezoned, and he is trying mightily to push approval through before the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative comes to the ballot on March 7, 2017.  Why do you think he is in such a hurry?  

Mr. Caruso's drawings illustrate a green space at the promontory of the property, much like the proposed Beverly Hills project, and like the proposed Beverly Hills green space, the "park" will be available only selectively to tenants of his very high end apartments and to customers of the proposed street level restaurant and stores - not to the public.  Patrolling security will filter others from using the space, and it will be closed at night.  

Oh, but Mr. Caruso has promised that he will install a plaque at sidewalk level thanking the local homeowner's association for their cooperation.  That's a great sop, isn't it?  Install a plaque that can be urinated upon by passersby in exchange for local agreement to build 20 stories in a low rise and mid-rise corridor, and nearby 1-2 story residential neighborhoods. 

Armistead Maupin wrote of "Tales Of The City".  You need to write about "Tales Of Our Broken City".  I ask you Mr. Hiltzik, how much more money does a billionaire need?  

(Toby Horn serves on the board of the Beverly Wilshire Homes Association, which has hired an attorney to challenge any City Council parcel-specific legislative actions that will permit the Caruso project.)

-cw

DEEGAN ON CALIFORNIA-In California, smoke is in the air, along with a warm glow of anticipation, as voters are asked to legalize weed statewide by voting “yes” on Prop 64, the California Marijuana Legalization Initiative. 

From the “Golden Triangle” at the northernmost edge of the state, to the Mexican gateway at our state’s southern extreme and from the ocean to the deserts and the Sierras, weed is consumed by Californians daily. It’s illegal under Federal law, but legal for some under a state law that allows for the dispensing of “medical marijuana.” 

If passed by the voters on November 8, Prop 64 will allow anyone age 21 and older “to possess one ounce of cannabis for recreational use, and to grow up to six plants for cultivation.” It’s an honor system; nobody can imagine these restrictions will be binding or really enforceable. 

But what else do we need to know? What might we not be considering beyond just the headlines? Will unanswered questions about the marijuana ballot proposal be a “buzz kill” to the high life? Growers, dealers and consumers may rejoice, but there is a whole as yet unformed infrastructure that is still wide open for review. 

What are we looking at? There are farm-workers and growers, the taxman, the bankers, the Feds, felons, cartels, vapers, quality control, producers and abusers…plus lots of weed. Figuring out how to tax, regulate and control marijuana will have to follow its legalization. 

The “Golden Triangle” of Mendocino, Humboldt, and Trinity counties, situated contiguously north to south at the very top of the state -- with two of them fronting the Pacific Ocean where fresh, moist air helps cultivation, similar to the wine counties south of the triangle -- is allegedly the largest cannabis-producing region in the United States and possibly the world. This is where urban legend supposes that 60 percent of the nation’s herb may be grown. The problem with illegal trade, though, is that there are no metrics that quantify the scope of production at this “ground zero.” Note also that the votes for passage will be harvested from the major population centers like the SF-Bay area, Los Angeles and San Diego. 

Proponents for the “get high on weed” campaign run the gamut, trying to appeal to everyone. Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, who is possibly running for higher office, has endorsed legalization. (He wants to be Governor in 2018 and a victory for Prop 64, a campaign that he is so closely identified with, could boost his chances.) Newsome chaired the state’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Policy (BRC) to study legalization. Stoner Tommy Chong (“Dave’s not here”), whose personal brand promotes getting high, already markets “Chong’s Choice, a line of flower buds” in Washington state where weed is legal. The California Democratic Party and the California Nurses Association union are among the many other supporters. The “no” group is politically non-partisan, including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) and the California Republican Party, along with many law enforcement agencies. 

Giving the people what they want -- there are many who like getting high often, sometimes daily -- is not such a bad idea, especially if the state can monetize it and bring in new tax revenues. Long ago, the “sin taxes” on tobacco and alcohol were enacted to make what some considered morally dubious products acceptable. It was a balancing act in which the known risks of tobacco and alcohol were offset by the cash revenues they could bring into state and local economies. 

Legalization of pot was on the California ballot in 1972 via Prop 19; it was defeated by a not-even-close seven percent spread. But that was before medical marijuana, drug courts, drug diversion programs, the boom in drug recovery programs and the general decriminalization of marijuana for personal use were part of the picture. 

Two states, Colorado and Washington, have recently legalized marijuana without dire consequences. Colorado voters overwhelmingly approved a “Rocky Mountain high” by a landslide thirty-nine point spread; and Washington state’s voters emphatically voted yes for legalization with a seventeen point spread. California Proposition 215, the Medical Marijuana Initiative was passed by the voters in 1996. 

But, before you vote “yes” on Prop 64 for legalizing pot, here are some questions to think about – a possible hangover from any marijuana high:

• Big Tobacco - Will small producers be protected by encouraging a “craft” production paradigm (like craft beer), or will Big Tobacco be allowed to dominate the production process?
• Growers - Who can grow weed? How do we keep this a “down home” business and not have the grower community be swamped by carpetbaggers rushing into the state, like some reenactment of the 1849 California Gold Rush? Will a residency period be required?
• Labor - Will the marijuana industry be labor-friendly? Does marijuana cultivation and processing need to be unionized to protect workers’ rights and provide for collective bargaining? For mom and pop growers, probably not. But for Big Tobacco-like growers, probably yes.
• Taxation - How will cannabis be taxed, and where will the tax revenues go? Taxation is one of the most compelling reasons to legalize weed. Colorado, with 12% of our state’s population, collected $1 billion in marijuana tax last year, reports Fortune magazine. 

Is it conceivable that Golden State weed sales could provide the state with billions of dollars of tax revenue annually? Today, “sin taxes” (taxes on cigarette and alcohol sales) are projected in the state budget to bring in under one-half-billion dollars in revenue. Weed, with potentially billions in taxes, would be the biggest sinner/winner of them all. What to do with the tax, and the numerous claims for a piece of it, will be very important. Careful thought must be given to programs that can benefit from the new revenue stream so the state doesn’t just rely on drug taxes the way addicts rely on drugs.

• Banks - How to deal with the Feds and banks? Federally insured banks will likely not allow drug money to process through their systems, because possession of weed, or drug money, is against federal law. A banking alternative needs to be created to eliminate the dangers associated with a cash business. Medical marijuana dispensaries are routinely robbed of both their cash and their merchandise. That cannot be allowed to happen here.
• Cartels - What about the Mexican drug cartels? How will they react to the possible evaporation of the currently illegal market to which they are the principal suppliers? Legalization may shut off the demand for their product, or, if they feel threatened by market forces, force them into aggressive tactics to preserve at least a market share, if not their dominance of it. They could copy new templates for quality control, create their own branding, and push their product through their well-established underground distribution networks, seriously underselling California growers and denying the state treasury of sales and excise taxes.
• Felons - Will ex-felons be allowed to be employed in the marijuana industry? The cultivation and marketing of weed will be a big business, with or without Big Tobacco, and this new industry may grow into a large employer. Will any of the thousands who have been convicted of marijuana-related crimes be allowed employment? The BRC says let them work. What will lawmakers say?
• Vaping and the contact high - How will weed and vaping commingle, as vapers exhale lungs-full of pot smoke into the general population? Some may like the unexpected “contact high,” but it’s a public safety issue.
• Medical use - What should be done about pricing so as to stabilize both the medical and recreational marijuana markets? With a pricing imbalance, one sector or the other could inflate demand in order to force up prices.  
• DUI - What to do about people driving while stoned? How long does the effect of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, the primary psychoactive, mind-altering ingredient found in the cannabis plant) stay in the blood system, and what impact will that have on a field sobriety test that could come days after use of weed? What about people, many of them, that smoke weed daily? Should they be allowed to drive if they ingest more than a threshold level, and what would that level be?
• Purity - How to tell what’s in your weed? Microsoft may have an answer to this with a software program that tracks marijuana plants from “seed to sale” that will keep tabs on sales and commerce. If industry standards are agreed on by a yet to be formed trade association, Microsoft’s software could include those quality designation labels as part of their tracking system. This would give the retailer and consumer a complete provenance record from planting the seed to inhaling the smoke.
• Water--Where’s the water coming from to irrigate pot cultivation in the midst of an ongoing drought? 

Lots to think about as you consider your vote on Prop 64. And there’s more to it than the stoner generation’s anthem (dating back to 1966 and held sacred ever since) penned by newly minted Nobel Laureate Bob Dylan: “Everybody must get stoned.”

(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.

REQUIEM FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS IN LA-Golden ages fade and the glory that was Rome is no more. When did Romans first realize that their fate had been sealed? I suppose some Romans still don’t admit it. After all, the city is still there. 

When did Los Angeles transition from being the nation’s premier destination city to being our number one exodus city? Do such things actually have definitive dates? Probably not. 

Two things are clear: (1) Los Angeles has turned the corner and is well on the road to decay, and (2) on November 8, 2016, it will pass the point of no return. 

The most fatal blows to Los Angeles have happened over the last decade, especially as the Family Millennials have realized over the past few years that starting a family in a cramped apartment next to a freeway in one the world’s worst school districts was not the best course for them. 

Not only does Los Angeles have the worst traffic in America and Europe, but its infrastructure has decayed and we lack the money to repair roads, sidewalks and water mains without billions in higher taxes. The courts have taken the decisions out of our hands. The City lost a $1.3 billion lawsuit to repair sidewalks last summer. The City had ten years’ warning that this bill was coming and that it needed to tend to its infrastructure, but chose instead to give its tax dollars to real estate speculators. 

As child is told, a stitch in time saves nine. But unfortunately, giving hundreds of millions of available dollars to councilmembers’ developer cronies prevented us from repairing our infrastructure at a time when the cost would have been much lower. 

We have seen what happens when the government fails to tend to business. California had decades to fix its criminal justice system, but the construction companies that built the prisons and the prison guard union that staffed the prisons wanted more and more incarceration. Law and order judges, looking to get promoted, railroaded more and more people into prison. So, money went into locking up people rather than for programs to reduce crime in the first place. Then, the federal courts stepped in and told us we had to reduce the prison populations. 

As a result, we have started releasing criminals into our communities and this November we are being asked to release more criminals in order to relieve prison overcrowding. The government officials had decades to jettison the brutal system which essentially manufactured hardened criminals. But that was called being “soft on crime.” So, we made the prisons worse which made the inmates more lethal upon their release. We could have devised a system like Germany or Israel that did not brutalize inmates. But reform cost money and places like Los Angeles had different priorities.   

In Los Angeles, the number one purpose of the City Council is to divert as much revenue to the real estate speculators as possible with no regard as to how much harm that does to the rest of society. The City knew its policies were driving businesses away, but nothing deterred the endless gifts to the developer cronies of the LA City Council. Other business people know that LA provided them one of two unacceptable futures: (1) a city with a wrecked infrastructure or (2) a city with considerably higher taxes and fees to repair the infrastructure. Eventually, Los Angeles got both. 

What rational person wants to stay in a city with horrible schools, a decayed infrastructure, and a corrupt city government that runs Los Angeles like a feudal fiefdom? Our city council is so corrupt that everything passes unanimously -- it operates according to an illegal vote trading deal in which each councilmember agrees to always vote “Yes” for any project another council member wants; in return, he will vote “Yes” for every other city councilmember’s project. That’s why everything passes unanimously. Just read Penal Code 86 -- yes, it is very hard to read, but you will see that it criminalizes the way the Los Angeles City Council operates. 

Don’t expect the courts to do anything -- the judges know on which side their bread is buttered. Otherwise, this criminal enterprise would not have been operating for over a decade! 

The cost of housing in Los Angeles is sky high and we know the reason. The Villaraigosa and Garcetti Administrations launched a war on single family detached homes. Look at the ratio of land cost to construction costs for single family homes in Los Angeles versus the ratio in Dallas. In Dallas land-construction costs are about 1:9, but in much of Los Angeles, it is nearly flipped, e.g. 6:1 (San Francisco allegedly has 8:1.) No city where land to construction costs are close to 5:1 can house a middle class population. The population splits between hordes of poor and a few elite and we are left with a diminutive middle class. 

The biggest fraud is the claim that we need to construct apartments to satisfy housing demand. There is virtually no demand for apartments. In fact, we have a glut of apartments. The only people who benefit from apartments are the people who own the land on which apartments are constructed. We could build one million apartments in Hollywood and it would do nothing to solve the lack of affordable detached homes. 

Family Millennials who want a home with a yard with a few fruit trees and decent schools where criminals don’t prowl the streets move away from Los Angeles. You can build two million apartments in Hollywood and the Family Millennials will move away faster. For Los Angeles, Density is Death. 

The idea that we should construct subways and train systems to convey more people into the Basin is absurd. The main problem with LA is that we located far too much office space in DTLA, in Bunker Hill and in Century City. Why would any rational Millennial double his or her commute time with a train ride when he orshe can simply move to Nashville and purchase a nice home at 1/3 the price? 

Los Angeles has known for over 100 years that trying to retain office space in the Basin was a disastrous option. Subways and trains do not shorten the commute time. The Garcetti Administration feeds us bogus figures by omitting the time it takes to walk to the subway and then to walk to the office. They ignore the lack of flexibility when you cannot stop at the gym on your way home from the office or you cannot pick up your dry cleaning. Subways do not detour three blocks to Ralph’s if you need a few items for dinner. 

The claim that freeway commute times will be 15% less is a lie. If one thinks that the Garcetti Administration would not tell outright lies, one needs only to read Judge Goodman’s January 2014 decision on the Hollywood Community Plan case where he said that Garcetti’s data was “fatally flawed” and “wishful thinking”; that’s polite legalese for “a pack of lies.” 

Fixed rail transit is for poor people – that’s the main reason people who drive cars will vote for Measure M. They have been deceived into thinking that the poor people will use the subways and light rail lines, making the freeways less crowded. Guess what? The freeways and surface streets will be more crowded if Measure M passes. Here’s why: 

As soon as they pass a multi-billion dollar bond to construct a subway, we will face a multi-billion dollar annual operating deficit over and above what it costs to construct the subways. NYC’s subway runs at an operational annual deficit of $8 billion. Right now, the entire LA City budget is $8 billion. 

NYC’s subway runs that huge deficit and look how crowded Manhattan is. That’s the choice the Garcetti Administration is giving Angelenos -- an unbearable multi-billion annual deficit or turn Hollywood, Westwood and Reseda into Manhattan. But, if we did super-densify those areas, we’d still have an unbearable operating deficit. It is simple math. Only by increasing population density near the subways to Manhattan levels is there any hope of having enough people live close enough to the subways to reduce such a large operating deficit. 

Thus, as soon as people approve mass transit, the city will claim we need tens of thousands more people per square mile in order to pay for the subways, trolleys and trains. If more people do move into apartments near subways and train stations, they will bring their cars with them, greatly increasing traffic congestion. That is why Judge Chalfant threw out the Millennium Towers in Hollywood – it would make traffic congestion on the streets and the 101 Freeway unbearable. 

The reality is that Garcetti cannot force people to stay in LA with its horrible schools and escalating crime when the middle class can simply move to Austin, Texas or Atlanta, Georgia or Nashville, Tennessee and get a better job and a wonderful home in a crime free area with an excellent school system. 

Sad to say, the polls indicate the voters will pass Measure M; and they will approve Housing Measures JJJ and HHH giving billions of dollars to developers to cram more and more dense apartments into Hollywood, Valley Village, Boyle Heights and the West Side, etc. As long as you’re relatively young, single and still renting, that’s fine. If you’re family age and middle class, you can simply move away, leaving a declining tax base to pay the ever heavier taxes that are deterring new businesses from coming to Los Angeles. The vicious downward spiral has already begun -- Los Angeles has lost more businesses than any other urban area. That’s what it means to be an exodus city. 

The decision that Los Angeles is no longer a viable place for a family has been made thousands of times over the last several years and it is clear the exodus will accelerate as more Millennials enter the family age range. Passage of these ballot measures on November 8 will only hasten their departure.

(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.

READ EM AND WEEP--These two bulletins from the City News Service are real and edited only for space. 

October 14, 2016, City News Service 

Four City Council members will begin a weeklong trip to Europe Saturday for a Cisco Systems-led tour of two cities where private citizens and governments have connected the internet into various household objects and day-to-day functions. 

Executives with the telecom hardware giant will show council members Bob Blumenfield, Gil Cedillo (photo above), Curren Price and Mitch Englander around Hamburg, Germany, and Copenhagen, Denmark, said company lobbyist Arnie Berghoff. 

The “smart and connected cities” tour will include a stop at Hamburg’s inland port, which has been fully automated, he said. In both cities the council members will meet with elected and other government officials, he said. 

Berghoff said Cisco will not be paying for the council members’ trip-related expenses. 

October 18, 2016, City News Service 

Los Angeles City Council meetings for the rest of the week have been canceled because not enough members will be in town to attend them. 

Five council members are out of town, leaving just nine City Council members to attend meetings, which is not enough for the required quorum. 

Council members Bob Blumenfield, Gil Cedillo, Mitchell Englander and Curren Price are in Europe this week taking part in a Cisco Systems-led tour of Hamburg, Germany, and Copenhagen, Denmark.  

There are a total of 15 City Council seats, but one has been vacant ever since former Seventh District councilman Felipe Fuentes stepped down last month to go work for a Sacramento lobbying firm. 

Some City Council committee hearings will still go on, depending if a quorum can be reached. 

These two bulletins from the City News Service are real and have only been edited for length and the insertion of links to related campaign finance and lobbyist activity posted at the Ethics Commission website.  

There are many who think the councilmember’s travel costs might be better spent on a ‘Priority-Setting 101’ workshop for our city leaders.

(Eric Preven is a CityWatch contributor and a Studio City based writer-producer and public advocate for better transparency in local government. He was a candidate in the 2015 election for Los Angeles City Council, 2nd District. Joshua Preven is a CityWatch contributor and teacher who lives in Los Angeles.)

 –cw

RISEMBERG FOR THE RECORD--“Duty Now for the Future” was the title of a Devo album from way back in ’79, and of course it was redolent of the cynicism and pure snark that pervaded much of New Wave. 

But we can look at the phrase a little differently today, now that Bernie Sanders has shown us that the “Audacity of Hope” Obama spoke of can really make things better…if we raise the level of audacity. 

Sanders really did fail to gain the nomination; there was no fix. He says so himself. But he got close. Just as Trump’s swell of race-driven nationalism (and when have we seen that before?) exposed the morass of fascism that underlies much of the US mindscape, so Sanders’s progressive populism showed us that our diverse polity has stronger urges towards compassion than towards hate.

Hillary Clinton, however much, and for whatever reasons, you may dislike her, will keep us from going backwards eighty years and to another country. Meanwhile, we can work on the future—a future in which the human scale supersedes the economy of scale.

This future is beginning to blossom in the most unlikely of places: Germany—a country with a history of militarism , fascism, and corporate domination, but one now the world leader in modern environmentalism. A country which is likely to pass a law banning all new internal-combustion vehicles by 2030, and one which recently ran a full day almost entirely on renewable electricity. Clean energy is real and routine in Germany. 

It’ snot coincidental that the Green Party holds significant power in Germany. And they got there by running candidates for councils and mayor’s office in towns large and small for decades.

Doing the groundwork, in other words.

Here’s where you come in. Because “third party” candidates will get nowhere nationally till they get somewhere locally. And you’ve got one running for City Council right here in your own front yard. (You may have encountered him literally in your own front yard in recent weeks!)

Joe Bray-Ali, owner of the Flying Pigeon bike shop, former white-hat developer, once an aide to an Assembly member, and now candidate for City Council, is running in District 1, which he’s called home for over a decade.

A true progressive, champion of local businesses and neighborhood empowerment, safe streets and transportation diversity advocate, and probably the one soul who knows the LA Municipal Code better than anyone else.

You want a future that belongs to neither the pinstripes nor the brownshirts? Bray-Ali is your man. But he won’t get into the council chambers unless you vote for him.

Look at his campaign website, and you’ll see why you want him to win. 

So get ready to vote for the next four years in November…and for the next forty in March, when the city votes for local offices.

And sling Joe a bit of cash if you can. Or better yet, volunteer, hit the streets, and change the world.

One council seat at a time.

EXPOSING THE LOOPHOLES, BACK DOORS, TRAP DOORS AND CROSSED FINGERS--In nearly every election in California, there's a ballot measure that uses the tricks of phrasing I have long dubbed “And Other Uses” to obtain riches for people who don't deserve them and haven't earned them. 

When I was the news editor, and then managing editor, of LA Weekly for nine years, my favorite story that dug into the loopholes and scams lurking on our California ballots was “Reading the Fine Print: How to spot the Loopholes, Legal Doozies and Loose Phrasing in California's Ballot Initiatives.” 

In the article, I explain how millions of dollars from the voter-approved “Housing and Emergency Shelter Trust Fund Act of 2006” got diverted away from the desperate and the poor, by Los Angeles elected leaders, into spending on glitzy sidewalk upgrades and other fixes to the posh Figueroa Corridor leading to Staples Center. 

How on Earth did billionaire Phil Anschutz's fantastically profitable Staples Center, which former City Councilman Joel Wachs fought long and hard (and sucessfully) to deny public subsidies, end up benefitting from a crucial bond measure meant to help battered women and the homeless? 

“And Other Uses.” 

Every year, there's a ballot measure jammed with loopholes, back doors, trap doors and crossed fingers that can be mined later for somebody else's profit. Typically, the news media do not call out these loopholes. Journalists are busy, they don't notice, they don't get to page 38 in a ballot measure's endless jargon. Whatever. 

This November 8, Measure JJJ is the whopper of the season, at least in Los Angeles County. A disaster. A canard. I could go on. 

Let's call JJJ what it is: a Jargon-Jammed Joke. It pulls an inexcusable trick on voters by promising something LA needs, “affordable housing.” 

I know a lot about Measure JJJ because it wasn't primarily written to build affordable housing — it was written by City Hall's most connected insiders, to hurt the ballot measure for which I am now the campaign director, the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, which will appear on the ballot in March of 2017. 

We at the Coalition to Preserve LA, backers of the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, got calls about JJJ's underlying purpose back in February. At that time it was dubbed “Build Better LA.” We knew it was coming. And we knew its final language was approved by the most connected people in town. We knew it wasn't primarily about “affordable housing.” 

The crafters of JJJ were out to kill our City Hall reform effort — we want to reform the backroom wheeling and dealing at City Hall, a broken and rigged system in which the richest developers in the nation are being allowed to ignore local zoning rules, destroy our neighborhoods, gridlock our streets, and displace thousands of longtime L.A. residents. All in service to erecting luxury housing towers, luxury housing megadevelopments and other luxury glass boxes. 

But the City Hall insiders who wrote JJJ failed to stop us. And now their tainted measure is on the November ballot, not an “affordable housing” measure, but a literary miracle of ways to reword and massage the long-proven “And Other Uses” loopholes and trap doors to achieve something other than “affordable housing.” 

The Coalition to Preserve LA has published our position paper against JJJ on our website, 2PreserveLA.org. 

Below, then, are the 5 Fatal Loopholes that void every promise made by Measure JJJ about “affordable housing” and “local-hire” jobs. 

1) The “We don't think this developer is making enough profit” loophole

Under JJJ, developers can ignore your community's zoning to build hundreds of huge, and thus more profitable, luxury towers that aren't allowed under the rules — as long as they promise to add some affordable housing. This promise is false. The City Council can declare the developer is not making “a reasonable return on investment” and then undo the affordable housing promise. (JJJ Section 5, A, g) 

2) The “Forget about building affordable housing — just pay City Hall a 'fee'” loophole

Under JJJ, no affordable units have to be built inside these new towers at all, as long as the developer pays an “in lieu” fee after refusing to build affordable housing units. This in-lieu amount is unknown to voters, it will be announced after the election — by the developer-cozy City Council. (JJJ Section 5, A, b3.) 

3) The “Forget the affordable housing, forget the fee, just pay a 'surcharge'” loophole

Under JJJ, developers can refuse to pay even the modest in-lieu fee, and opt for a Deferral Surcharge — a price to be set later by the City! This Deferral fee amount, unknown to voters, does not have to be spent on affordable housing. The City Council can divert this cash to pay city employees for running L.A.'s rent-stabilization program — jobs the City must already pay for, by law. (JJJ Section 5, A, c2) 

4) The “L.A.'s Affordable Housing Trust Fund is a piggy bank” loophole

Under JJJ, the city's Affordable Housing Trust Fund does not have to be spent on affordable housing. The fund can go to whatever the politicians decide. City Hall's ability to raid our housing construction funds is set out in JJJ as “such other housing activities as that term shall be defined.” (JJJ Section 5, B, c) 

5) The “We say we'll create local jobs, but not a single local hire is required” loophole

Under JJJ, contractors need only “make a good-faith effort” to hire residents of L.A. or people living within 5 miles of a proposed luxury skyscraper or a proposed massive luxury complex, a toothless and meaningless standard that will never be met. (JJJ Section 5, A, g). 

Please enthusiastically vote No on JJJ on November 8. It wasn't meant to fix a problem. It was meant for other uses.

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

-cw

PLAYTIME AT CALPERS (Part 2)-- Back in the day, CalPERS had a national reputation as the best run, most socially conscious pension fund in the US. However, things began to change by 2000, as returns diminished and “pay to play” allegations began to surface. 

The Backdrop-Indictments--Ultimately it emerged that Fred Buenrosto, CEO of CalPERS, and former Board Member Alfred Villalobos had started playing footsie with each other by engaging in falsifying documents and corruption and bribery, as was finally charged in a series of indictments. These schemes started around 2005 and continued until they were caught. Matters clearly came to a head when, as the schemes unraveled, Mr. Buenrosto suddenly decided to “retire” in 2008. 

When the heat ratcheted up and it was clear that an illegal conspiracy was in the offing, CalPERS, in the best tradition of large institutions, hired a white shoe corporate law firm (Steptoe & Johnson) to whitewash the mess. And this they did -- putting as happy a face on it as money can buy. Reading their final Report, it is obvious their job was to make everyone still employed look good, and then to come up with “go forward” recommendations. None of that finger-pointing stuff for them. Not bad for $11 million in fees. 

The CalPERS Staff--Key to this or any other story involving billions and billions of dollars of public money, is the staff. After all, the Board can only effectuate their will through their staff, and it is therefore the staff that is at the heart of the issues facing CalPERS. 

Marcie Frost - CEO (as of October 3, 2016)--Marcie Frost is a veteran public pension manager from the State of Washington. She served as the Executive Director of the Washington State Department of Retirement Systems (DRS) prior to being selected as the successor to Ann Stausboll. 

At this point, it would not be fair to say anything more, since she has only been on board for a brief time. In fact, when I clicked on her photo under “Executive Officers” on the CalPERS website last week, I got a 404 error message of “page not found.” 

So let’s see what she’s inherited.

Ann Stausboll – CEO--Ann Stausboll (photo above) served as CEO from the demise of Fred Buenstroso in 2008 until August of this year. The LA Times hailed her as the change agent to overcome “steep losses” with the fund, even as they glossed over the criminal scandal of Buenstroso and company. 

Stausboll, however, was no newcomer to either CalPERS or government. She had previously worked for CalPERS in the 1990s, when the General Counsel was Richard Koppes, later with the big time politically connected law firm, Jones Day. And when Phil Angeledes became State Treasurer, Stausboll left CalPERS to become a Deputy Treasurer and General Counsel from 1999 to 2004. 

In 2004, Stausboll returned to CalPERS as their Chief Operating Investment Officer, and twice during that period was the CIO. 

Bill Lockyer, who was Treasurer in 2008 and sat on the CalPERS Board, was quoted as saying that “the Board liked her because she is a team player.” 

As we shall see, this becomes important because she has appointed virtually all of the current Executive Team to their positions during her tenure; she has also created the current Executive Officer structure. 

Ted Eliopoulos, Chief Investment Officer--Stausboll appointed Ted Eliopoulos as CIO in 2014. He started out as an attorney with Latham & Watkins, another of the California power elite law firms whose progeny populate California government. Not coincidentally, he too worked for California Treasurer Angeledes, and became Chief Deputy Treasurer from 2002-2006. And oh, by the way, he was the designated representative for the Treasurer on the CalPERS Board during this time.

In 2007, when Stausboll was back at CalPERS, Eliopoulos came on board as Senior Investment Officer for the Real Estate Division. Under her tutelage he moved from SIO for Real Estate to SIO, and then to SIO for all of the Real Assets Investments. 

Douglas Hoffner - Deputy Executive Officer, Operations & Technology--Ann Stausboll appointed Mr. Hoffner to this position in mid-2012. Douglas started out in politics for then Assembly member Fred Aguiar (R-San Bernardino). He also became the Executive Director of   & Associates, handling two trade associations (California Building Officials, and the Roofing Contractors Association. 

He then worked for 2 years as ‘Assistant Director of Legislation’ for the CA Department of General Services, and moved up to a Deputy Cabinet Secretary under the Schwarzenneger Administration. From there he moved over to the CA Labor and Workforce Development Agency, where he was tapped by Stausboll. 

Obviously a politically connected Republican type, Ann Stausboll had him named Interim CEO of CalPERS after she announced her retirement effective August 2016. 

Matthew G. Jacobs - General Counsel--Mr. Jacobs came to CalPERS via the big time global corporate sector, namely DLA Piper, LLC. They play with the care and feeding of large corporations; they claim, “we also advise governments and public sector bodies.” The scant information that is readily available would seem to indicate that his area of expertise was in federal litigation. 

Cheryl Eason - Chief Financial Officer--Cheryl Eason became the first CFO for CalPERS in 2012. Prior to that, she worked for the Manitoba Lotteries Corporation, and then the British Columbia Pension Corporation. The newly created position was designed to provide oversight of budgeting, accounting, risk compliance, pension contract management and prefunding. 

In March of this year, CalPERS announced the creation of a new position reporting to Ms. Eason. Marlene Timberlake D’Adamo is now the new Chief Compliance Officer, a position advertised as strengthening the “Pension Fund’s transparency, accountability and ethics.” She comes from PNC Bank in Philadelphia where she worked in Portfolio and Risk Management. 

Donna Lum - Deputy Executive Officer, Customer Services and Support--A longtime employee, Donna Lum started as the IT person for the CA Department of Education Department of Toxic Substances Control. In 1999, she came to CalPERS and served as Chief of the Benefit Services Division before being promoted to Deputy Executive Officer for Customer Services and Support, the division that handles administration of retirement and health account benefits and the associated customer services. 

Doug P. McKeever - Deputy Executive Officer, Benefit Programs Policy and Planning--Mr. McKeever came to CalPERS from the Department of Corrections and Mental Health, where he was Director of Juvenile Programs & Director of Mental Health. He is lead for dealing with the health benefits function of CalPERS, such as contracting out health plans, long-term care, retirement planning and research. This function involves some 1.4 million people and more than $8 billion per year. 

Brad W. Pacheco - Deputy Executive Officer, Communications and Stakeholder Relations--Originally coming from the CA Association of HMO’s as its Communications Director, Mr. Pacheco joined CalPERS in 1995. Essentially the PR person, he was promoted to the newly created position of DEO, Communications and Stakeholder Relations in 2015. 

As such, he is responsible for the CalPERS websites, social media, video, media relations and employee communications -- not to mention that he now deals with public record act requests, not a success story for CalPERS in the past. 

The Takeaway--Clearly, after being promoted to CEO in 2008, Ann Stausboll created a whole new structure for her executive team and personally populated it with her picks. This is important for a couple of reasons. First, most of the key management players on the Board Administrative side were simply not around at the time of the corruption scandals involving Messrs. Buenrosto and Villalobos. Also, Eliopoulos, Hoffner, and Jacobs all had heavy political and corporate backgrounds. 

Second, having personally created the structure and filling it with her choices, there was little likelihood that any of her staff would say anything to the Board that was not previously vetted by her.

So here’s the question: Why did Ms. Stausboll suddenly announce her retirement in August of this year at age 59?

(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-Deregulation, the elimination of governmental review of private investments, many of them speculative, has benefited a small percentage of high stakes investors, while inflicting tremendous social costs on the rest of the population. In fact, the dramatic increase in inequality in the United States over the past three decades closely tracks the many types of deregulation implemented by the Federal government and local municipalities. While the resulting economic hardship became painfully obviously in the Great Depression of 2007-8, when unemployment, bankruptcies, and foreclosures soared, the sordid history of deregulation is much worse.

A quick Google search for “failures of deregulation” reveals thousands of articles, including the airline industry, stock market, banking, telecommunications, electric power generation and distribution, and agriculture. But, most of these discussions overlook deregulation at the municipal level, which is a national policy easily observable in American cities, such as Los Angeles. 

Last week in my CityWatch column I blasted the White House Affordable Housing Tool Kit for offering nothing more than old, recycled calls for municipal deregulation. If followed, its impact and probably its intent would be a lifeline to real estate speculators who extensively donate to Democrats in local and state elections. I also linked the local deregulation that the White House extolls to the long history of ineffective, market-based, affordable housing programs, including LA’s, around since the 1980s. In nearly 30 years they have not produced any net gains in affordable housing, just increased levels of overcrowding and homelessness.  

During those three decades political cronies, from Mayors Bradley to Garcetti, have reaped many financial benefits from municipal deregulation, but that is about it. In fact, I would not be surprised to learn that the many Los Angeles Times articles alleging totally fictitious benefits of zoning and planning deregulation – usually the construction of affordable housing – are linked to these same cronies. Like the Gipper, these articles whistle the same old song of deregulation despite a flood of data that it is only a boon for market housing, especially luxury housing. 

More specifically, how does deregulation actually take place in Los Angeles? 

Spot-zoning: The most common form of local deregulation is the extensive up-zoning and up-planning of private parcels through the legislative actions in the sights of the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative. The City’s elected officials bend over backwards to adopt spot-zoning changes and General Plan Amendments that green light larger real estate developments for individual parcels. These special laws then allow property owners to dodge future public notices, hearings, debates, appeals, CEQA, as well as additional property taxes on the increased value of their land. Such a deal! 

Re-code LA: The most grandiose effort to deregulate zoning is re:code LA.  When completed, it will redefine local zoning for most of Los Angeles by establishing a greater latitude of permitted uses. This approach is called form-based zoning, and it is a citywide approach to eliminate the need for real estate speculators to apply for zone changes or variances to build structures that are not currently allowed by-right. Like spot-zoning, this massive, citywide rezoning program allows property owners to avoid future discretionary actions, environmental reviews, and increases in property taxes. 

Community Plan Updates: The long-stalled program to update LA’s General Plan by attaching extensive zoning and planning amendments to Community Plans is now resuming, with a focus on the downtown. These complex amendments run on for many pages and substantially increase the by-right population density and building intensity for hundreds of private parcels. Once adopted as an appendix to Community Plans, they not only allow a greater range of uses and building sizes, but also exempt countless parcels from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) by eliminating the need for future discretionary actions. 

CEQA “Reform:” Another broad brush form of deregulation is efforts to weaken the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), such as annual proposals from the Governor and State Legislature to streamline environmental reviews and appeals. In his latest “reform” initiative, Governor Jerry Brown proposed a statewide ban on additional zoning reviews for residential projects that conform to local zoning. 

EIR Exemptions: Complimenting these statewide efforts to erode CEQA are local efforts, most notably Statements of Overriding Considerations. These are City Council legislative actions that grant building permits to mega-projects even though their Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs) document serious environmental impacts. A stroke of the pen and a majority vote whisk away these adverse environmental impacts with lofty – but unverified -- promises of future jobs and transit ridership. 

Zoning and Development Streamlining:  Year-after-year, like CEQA reform, development streamlining has remained a key priority at City Hall. The actual streamlining, though, only proceeds in small increments, such as the creation of an Expediting Unit in the Department of City Planning. It is here that the City’s zoning specialists advise applicants who have paid extra case processing fees on the best way to quickly get their pet developments through the project review process. 

Restricted case notifications: Ideally, all discretionary actions should mail hearing notices to every resident and property owner within a 500 foot radius of a project. In practice, though, many projects only send notices to adjacent properties. This truncated noticing process reduces participation in hearings and appeals for Specific Plans and Historical Preservation Overlay Zones with review boards, Community Design Overlay Districts, and SB 1818/Density Bonus projects. 

SB 1818/ Density Bonus is a nearly bullet-proof quasi-zone variance process for many residential projects. Any developer of apartment buildings can apply for on-menu “incentives” to eliminate zoning requirements in exchange for the inclusion of a small percentage of affordable units. Even though this legislation is considered a discretionary action, there are no mandatory findings, no effective right of appeal, and no field inspections. Unlike most other discretionary actions, these cases also do not require posted or mailed notices. If immediate neighbors do not happen to catch a project’s environmental notice in the Thursday Los Angeles Times, the first time they would learn of a nearby SB 1818 density bonus project is when they receive a written determination in the mail. Considering that nearly all such determinations grant additional height that adversely impacts neighbors, this amounts to a gag order on critical comments. 

Reactive code enforcement: In Los Angeles, bootlegged structures, such as illegal signs and garage conversions, are widespread. Since LA’s Department of Building and Safety (LADBS) does not proactively cite code violators when City staff observes infractions, the default is reactive code enforcement. The public submits the locations of code violations to LADBS, and the violators are then occasionally issued citations. But, there are rarely consequences, such as prosecution or city-ordered demolitions, when the contractors fail to comply. The result is that LA is filled with illegal buildings and signs. In effect, the City’s failure to enforce its own land use and building laws results in extensive deregulation. 

Easy discretionary actions. The approvals that the Department of City Planning grants to projects that violate zoning and planning laws are called discretionary actions. They are almost always “approved with conditions,” such as restrictions on hours of operation. But, there is no reliable authority at City Hall to enforce these extensive conditions, which means they are really sops intended to assuage project critics. 

General Plan negligence. In California every city must have an up-to-date and comprehensive General Plan that is regularly monitored. In LA most of the General Plan’s elements are out-of-date, and the City has deliberately refused to monitor the General Plan’s components since the late 1990s. While City Planning is beginning to update LA’s General Plan, other than housing data, the General Plan’s monitoring program has so far been ignored. 

The cumulative effect of these many forms of local deregulation is to make real estate speculation the default city planning process in Los Angeles. Carefully planned and monitored growth of public and private areas has been replaced by unplanned growth resulting from multiple investors’ disconnected, short-term efforts to maximize financial return on individual parcels. While these investors do well, the public pays a tremendous price. It takes the form of strapped public services, slow fire and paramedic responses, crumbling infrastructure, unsafe buildings, traffic congestion, sound and air pollution, and esthetically grim corridors and centers. 

(Dick Platkin is a former Los Angeles City Planner who reports on local planning issues for CityWatch. Please submit any comments or corrections to [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

SPECIAL REPORT--Public support for the legalization of recreational marijuana in the U.S. is at a historic high—so to speak—of 60 percent, according to a new Gallup poll just released. 

The results come just as a growing number of states vote to legalize recreational marijuana, with another five states casting ballots on the issue this November. Local surveys indicate the efforts are likely to pass in Arizona, California, Maine, and Massachusetts. Nevada, the final state considering legalization, seems more conflicted. (Voters will also decide on medical marijuana questions in Arkansas, Florida, Montana, and North Dakota.)

A Pew Research Center poll released last week found similar results. 

Gallup first asked the question in 1969 and found that public support for legalization stood at 12 percent. It increased slightly to 28 percent during the mid-'70s, but fell back down during the "Just Say No" anti-drug era of the '80s and wavered around 25 percent in the '90s. But it has climbed steadily since 2000, paving the way for an increasing number of states to legalize recreational marijuana, and in 2013 reached a majority for the first time.

The survey also found that young adults overwhelmingly back legalization, with 77 percent of people aged 18-34 expressing their support. But older generations increasingly favor it too, with support at 45 percent among people aged 55 and older.

Politically, the group that favors legalization the most is Independents, who poll at 70 percent support, up from 47 percent in 2003 and 2005. The next is Democrats, at 67 percent, up from 38 percent during that same time period. Republican support has more than doubled, polling now at 42 percent versus 20 percent in 2003 and 2005.

The pollsters said the numbers were particularly important with regards to California's legalization effort. The bottom line, Gallup says, is that California is a political trendsetter in the U.S.—so if it passes there, many other states will likely follow.

"As more states legalize marijuana, the question of whether the drug should be legal may become when it will be legal," Gallup's managing editor Art Swift explained in a write-up of the poll results.

In this election alone, "[t]he percentage of Americans living in states where pot use is legal could rise from the current 5 percent to as much as 25 percent if all of these ballot measures pass," he wrote.

(Nadia Prupis writes for Common Dreams … where this report was first posted.)

-cw

EDUCATION POLITICS-I was at the Los Angeles school board meeting for 10 hours yesterday. I missed the morning session, figuring that since the charter approvals were on the consent calendar, there wasn’t much point. I was right; in one vote, the district lost nearly 6000 students to charter approvals. I guess UTLA made the same calculation because they did not show up either. Four charter revisions or renewals were approved and one new charter got the green light. Eight more charters--including four KIPP--were publicly noticed for hearing next month. 

Parent activist Carl Petersen joined me for the last half. All three Magnolia Charters were denied renewal. So they will likely appeal their case to the County, which rarely rejects charters. I don't know what was in the report that was not made public (why?) but even charter champions Monica "Cradle of Reform" Garcia and Ref "Never met a charter I didn't like" Rodriguez voted them down. The report that was public contained a letter from State Superintendent Tom Torlakson telling Magnolia that it was in violation for failing to respond to repeated requests for information.  Still, Caprice Young told a television news reporter that Magnolia had provided everything the state requested, the state gave Magnolia a "clean bill of health" and that she thinks LAUSD just does not want good charter schools. 

Citizens of the World charter was approved to expand from elementary to middle school. It is located within three miles of five other LAUSD middle schools. For an introduction to their citizenship, take a look at this 1 minute video clip in which they explain that they're the vibrant vine strangling the dying tree of Stoner Elementary School. 

Carl and I were two of only three parents at the board meeting advocating for district schools among nearly 200 people in attendance. Dozens more charter supporters had been bussed and waited outside. That’s what happens when a school is threatened with shut down. I guess when LAUSD starts closing our schools, parents might start showing up to board meetings, too. We shall see. We shall see very soon.

UTLA finally showed up in the form of one person, its president. He did not speak even though "labor partners" are allowed to speak on any agenda item. This plays into the charter lobby's favorite device: the fictional teachers-against-parents narrative, always claiming that it’s just doing what parents want.

For the evening session, we parents were only allowed one public comment for the entire meeting even though there were nine agenda items. Carl focused on details of El Camino and the harassment he has been subjected to since blogging about them. There was a collective, audible cringe from El Camino supporters when he approached the podium.

I implored the board to stand up for neighborhood schools and reminded them that they were our only hope because the CCSA has the governor on speed dial. That comment might be why the CCSA started following me on Twitter last night.

One charter dad told the board that it should not oversee charters due to its "implicit bias" on account of the district competing with charters for tax payer dollars. But, he said, don't worry. We're going to get the law changed. In the meantime, here's a great NPR story for that dad to find out what implicit bias really is. 

Here is Howard Blume’s report. I’m sure KPCC will have one later today. LA School Report will have several. That’s what they do to influence opinion. They tell the charter story over and over until people believe it.

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

ANIMAL WATCH--This week is Urban Wildlife Week, culminating with ‘P22 Day’ on Saturday October 22^nd, a day-long celebration of Los Angeles’ most famous feline resident.

P22 is a 7-½ year old mountain lion living in Griffith Park, right in the heart of the city. His story is so captivating and inspirational I felt he deserved his own documentary feature film, “The Cat that Changed America”, which has just been submitted to the Sundance Film Festival, as well as other major film festivals in the US. When the trailer was released on social media last weekend, it rapidly reached an audience of 30,000 people, adding to P22’s already established fan base. 

P22 was born in the Santa Monica Mountains west of Downtown LA, and he had to cross two of the busiest freeways in the country, the 405 and the 101 to arrive in his new home in Griffith Park. In doing so, he travelled through one of the most densely populated areas, through Bel Air and Beverly Hills, and came within a couple of miles of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Incredibly no one saw him. Los Angeles is one of the few urban cities to have large carnivores living within its city limits.

“He’s called P22 because he is the 22^nd puma we’ve captured in our study,” says wildlife biologist Jeff Sikich from the National Park Service. Jeff has been radio-tracking P22 ever since his first discovery in 2012, and the National Park Service biologists are conducting extensive studies into the Mountain lions of the Santa Monica mountains, looking at their genetic diversity and issues of connectivity.

For four years now, Jeff has been following P22 in Griffith Park, monitoring his movements and finding out about his habits. P22 like all mountain lions is secretive and nocturnal, so filming him for the documentary was the biggest challenge. Mountain lions are called ‘Ghosts Cats’ for good reason. They are shy of people, incredibly elusive, and difficult to track. Luckily photographs and footage of P22 was filmed on camera traps, provided by the Griffith Park connectivity study as well as the National Park Service. Cameras were placed along trails. Hundreds of pictures were taken of the wildlife coming in and out of Griffith Park, including bobcats, skunks, deer and coyote.

As a natural history film maker myself, I first became aware of P22 when he was photographed for National Geographic magazine, walking in front of the Hollywood sign. But it was only after speaking to wildlife biologist Miguel Ordeñana, who captured the first photograph of P22 on one of his camera traps - “It was the biggest discovery that no one expected” - did I uncover the extent of his incredible journey.

Yet despite P22’s celebrity living in the shadow of the Hollywood sign, and becoming a symbol for urban wildlife, he is now trapped in the park. He’s hemmed in by freeways and the urban sprawl, and will probably die a lonely bachelor. It’s very unlikely that another mountain lion will make that journey and survive.

P22’s plight has aroused the sympathy of not only conservationists but also anyone who hears of his story. “Angelenos love him,” says Beth Pratt, the California Director for the National Wildlife Federation. “Who can’t relate to being dateless on a Friday night and stuck in traffic?”

The territory range of a mountain lion is 200 square miles, and males will fight to the death over territory. As a young male, P22 had no choice but to leave his birthplace in the Santa Monica Mountains and strike out to find a territory of his own. “He’s the Neil Armstrong of his kind,” says Beth. “He made a journey into the unknown.” It was a miraculous but hazardous journey, as mountain lions die on our freeways as they try to disperse.

Beth is spearheading the “Save LA Cougars” campaign to raise over $55 million to build a wildlife crossing over the 101 freeway at Liberty Canyon, near the place where P22 was born. “I’ve been working in environmental conservation for 25 years now and the Liberty Canyon crossing is the most inspirational thing I’ve worked on – it’s also maybe the most challenging,” says Beth. In order to stay on target, the campaign’s near term goal is to raise $10 million by 2017, and the balance by 2019 for the crossing to be completed by 2021. But Beth is confident that they will raise the money needed.

Part of the fundraising is happening this week with a 40-mile hike, which is starting at the proposed site of the Liberty Canyon wildlife crossing in Agoura Hills, and will take three days. “We’re going to hike the backbone trail in the Santa Monica Mountains,” says Beth. “Then we start getting into towns, cities and roads. In the morning of the fourth day, we’re going to end up in Griffith Park, pretty much where P22 entered. This will show what P22 had to go through to get here.”

Beth will be leading the 40-mile hike from the site of the wildlife crossing, and will be wearing a mountain lion radio collar so people can track her movements online. She’ll also be carrying a cardboard cutout of P22, inspired by one of the National Geographic photographs.

"It's going to be an inspirational journey for many people," says Miguel. "They are going to be inspired by the places they visit and the people that they see. There are a lot of people along the way who care about wildlife, especially urban wildlife like P22.”

The hike is going to end on October 22^nd, because it’s 22, and P22 day. As Beth says, “We’re going to celebrate with a day-long festival of music, arts and celebrity and fun.” Gerry Hans, President of Friends of Griffith Park agrees, “We’re really happy that the culmination of P22 day and P22 walk is going to happen right here in Griffith Park.”

 Working with LA based cinematographer Alex Rapaport, the aim of my film is to raise awareness for the plight of mountain lions living in Los Angeles, including the issues of fragmentation and connectivity.

But that’s not the only dangers that urban wildlife is facing. Over 80% of mountain lions are said to have ingested rat poison in some form, whether it is by catching and eating raccoons and coyotes that have consumed rats which have eaten the poison.

The effects of anticoagulant rodenticides are devastating upon wildlife; the animals bleed internally, they suffer side effects like mange, and die a slow and agonizing death.  Poison Free Malibu who I interviewed for the documentary, are grass roots activists who have done incredible things to ban rodenticides in shopping centers and housing associations.

The hope of this film is to bring attention to the mountain lions suffering from both rodenticides and lack of connectivity. A new study suggests that mountain lions could die out in the next 50 years because of inbreeding, lack of genetic diversity and connectivity. Many people, including Los Angelenos are unaware of the problems facing their big cat neighbors.

“The Cat that Changed America” will be released next year and you can see the trailer on Youtube or on the film’s website. P22’s celebrity has influenced people to change our thinking and see cities as acceptable places for wildlife to thrive. I know that Angelenos and the rest of the world will fall in love with the story of a cat who can't find a mate.

(TONY LEE is an award winning producer and director who has been making films for over 25 years. He has developed successful formats for television and has worked with high profile talent in the UK and US. Tony has worked in California for 2 years for National Geographic Television and in New York City for Animal Planet. He produced and directed The Cat That Changed America.)

-cw

CONSTRUCTION POLLUTION-The Sunset Coalition is hoping a San Francisco appeals court ruling will soon validate a health standard for protecting children against cancer that will have the collateral effect of forcing reductions in the size of the Archer School for Girls expansion project in Brentwood. 

To accomplish this ambitious effort to out-flank the Los Angeles City Council’s controversial approval of Archer’s $100 million expansion project, the Coalition recently filed an amicus (friend of the court) brief in a San Francisco lawsuit. That lawsuit opposes a plan to build an 18,000-seat sports arena for the Golden State Warriors basketball team across the street from a children’s hospital. 

“We are supporting the San Francisco case because we believe it can result in a court order establishing a standard for protecting the health of children that will be of tremendous value in our lawsuit against Archer,” said Coalition attorney Doug Carstens, author of the amicus brief. Shortly after the Los Angeles City Council – led by Brentwood councilman Mike Bonin - and Mayor Eric Garcetti approved the Archer project in Aug. 2015, the Coalition and others sued, claiming the project violated city zoning rules and state environmental law. 

“It is outrageous and unacceptable that Archer and the city leaders have failed to use the best, most up to date science, to ensure that the over-large Archer expansion project does not illegally expose local residents, but especially Archer’s own schoolchildren, to dramatically increased risks for cancer,” said Carstens. 

The cancer risks will be particularly acute during construction of the Archer project, the Coalition maintains. 

“The construction activity will create toxic air quality conditions that students and residents will have to breathe,” said Wendy-Sue Rosen, co-chair of the Sunset Coalition, a non-profit advocacy group set up originally to limit the size of the Archer project. 

“About 500 young girls will be on the campus for two full school years during the proposed construction,” said Zofia Wright of the Sunset Coalition. “In addition, at least 250 residents who live in the immediate area will also be affected – especially any who are elderly or infirm. The health of these people should not be put at risk.” 

The risks are related to the NO2 (nitrogen dioxide is the major pollutant resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels) and toxic particulate contaminants that will be emitted by construction vehicles, said Carstens. 

The massive Archer expansion project, scheduled to begin in May 2017 and last for at least 36 months, will involve over 260,000 construction vehicle traveling to and from the Archer worksite, including 9,000 cement truck trips and 10,000 extra-large haul tractors with double trailers. Other heavy equipment will also be operating on the site during construction. 

In the San Francisco and the Archer lawsuits, the opponents have alleged that the offending projects and local authorities failed to properly disclose to the public the increased health risks, especially to children, posed by the large building projects. Moreover, they allege, the projects fail to include ways to mitigate the health risks. 

“What we’re talking about are violations of basic environmental rules requiring disclosure and mitigation of harmful effects,” said Carstens. 

In the San Francisco and Archer lawsuits, it is alleged that, based on new scientific findings, the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) has developed guidelines for protecting the health of children, and that those guidelines have been ignored by Archer and the city of Los Angeles (and by the Warriors arena developer and San Francisco authorities). 

Those new scientific findings concern the breathing rates of children. Children, in effect, inhale and exhale air at greater rates than do adults. Thus, when there are contaminants in the air, children take in more of those contaminants than adults (as a proportion of their body size). In addition, scientific evidence has demonstrated that children are more susceptible to toxins than adults. As a result, OEHHA has lowered the threshold of acceptable exposure to airborne toxins for children based on the new breathing rate data. 

“The science is very clear and the OEHHA’s guidance is very clear but the developers and elected officials overseeing their projects have ignored them,” said Carstens. 

Expert analysis using the new OEHHA standards shows that cancer risks for schoolchildren during the most intense periods of construction will be far greater than the risks permitted by Los Angeles’ own health policies, said Carstens. 

The San Francisco case has been set for oral arguments on Nov. 16 in the 1st District Court of Appeals. Opponents have claimed the city’s review of the Warriors arena project failed to quantify and mitigate the project’s greenhouse gas emissions and to adequately inform the public about cancer-causing toxic air contaminants. 

The city approved the vehicle-intensive Warriors project for construction just across the street from the University of California at San Francisco Children’s Hospital and from residential housing for UCSF students and their families. An analysis using updated breathing rates for children showed the air pollutants from the arena project would increase the cancer risk for children residing nearby by 71 percent.

(John Schwada is a former investigative reporter for Fox 11 in Los Angeles, the LA Times and the late Herald Examiner. He is an occasional contributor to CityWatch. His consulting firm is MediaFix Associates.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

DEEGAN ON LA-Just think of Bambi, and you have a pretty searing image of what can happen to wildlife when our tinder-dry hillsides ignite with flames, as they often do, especially in these drought-parched days. 

Humans have equally stressful times living in the same tinderbox, but help is available to them by way of robo-calls and mass media warnings. A “yes” vote on propositions FF and GG on the November 8 ballot will enact a parcel tax (that only certain hillside property owners will be asked to pay,) bringing more help to protect the hillside built and wildlife environments – areas where there is a special need for increased fire prevention and more park rangers. 

“The hillsides and canyons of the Mulholland Corridor east and west of the 405 are facing significant challenges,” said Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) Ranger Walt Young, who has been patrolling Mulholland Drive for more than 22 years. “After five years of drought, soil moisture is at a record low. Traffic has doubled in just four years, and the risk of dangerous activity is compounded by the surge in use of the scenic overlooks and other parklands. Funding from measures FF and GG will allow the MRCA to increase ranger patrol to seven days a week along the Mulholland Corridor, increase fire prevention and high alert fire patrols, and provide opportunity to acquire open space to protect wildlife and prevent development.” 

Measures FF and GG ask selected hillside residents that are covered by each ballot proposition to vote on a parcel tax “...to maintain and conserve local open space, wildlife corridors, and parklands; acquire and protect additional lands from development; improve fire prevention including high fire alert patrols and brush clearing; protect water quality in local creeks; and increase park ranger safety patrols.” 

Measure FF, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority-Area 2, is for the hillside communities of Woodland Hills, Encino, and Tarzana, and would implement a $15 special tax for ten years only, providing $241,000 annually with all funds spent locally in the area. 

Measure GG the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority-Area 1, is for the Santa Monica Mountains and Hollywood Hills east of 405 freeway, and would implement a $35 special tax for ten years only, providing $995,000 annually, with all funds spent locally. 

Speaking about the value of FF and GG, Alison Simard, Chairperson of Citizens for Los Angeles Wildlife (CLAW) told CityWatch, “The wildlife don’t get the robo-calls that it’s red flag day, or the urgent messages that it’s time to get out. It’s hard for them to find their way out so they stay put. All the more reason protecting wildlife habitats and connectivity are so important to maintain.” She added that “there’s also an acquisition piece to these ballot measures, so there’s a chance that money can be used to purchase open space to protect wildlife habitat.”

What is surprising about this ballot measure is that it highlights a little-known agency (the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority) and funding mechanism (the Mello-Roos state law) that is the only game in town for this sort of contingency. That the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) exists, at all, and that it can take steps to put funding measures on the November 8 ballot is actually a pretty neat thing: they identified a need, such as fire prevention, additional park rangers and protection and possible expansion of wildlife corridors, and then organized a ballot measure to fund it; even more precisely, they targeted it to have the measure funded only by a select group of parcel owners in designated districts. Its closest analog may be a business improvement district. 

Councilmember Paul Koretz (CD5), whose district has a significant portion of the hillside that is covered by Props FF and GG, believes that these measures will help. "I strongly support measures GG and FF, which implement a modest special tax in the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Areas, one East of the 405 and one West. They fund maintaining and conserving local open space and wildlife corridors, acquiring and protecting land from development, improving fire protection, protecting local water quality, and increasing local park ranger safety patrols,” says Koretz. 

“I was involved in passing a similar measure around 15 years ago, which primarily saved the Briar Summit area from becoming a large development of single family homes, and instead protected open space and critical wildlife corridors. It was a great success and a blessing for hillside residents. I believe these measures will be as well.” 

Just what is the MRCA/Mello-Roos combination? Is it a model that can be replicated in other instances and circumstances? The funding capability comes from Mello-Roos, a state law that was enacted after Prop 13 seriously curtailed property tax income. Mello-Roos provides for a “parcel tax” (not a tax levied against assessed value of the property, but on the “parcel”) – a financing vehicle that creates “Community Facilities Districts” to raise money through special taxes for improvements in the district. Two-thirds of the voters in the district must approve measures for passage. 

The Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) is a local government public entity that was established in 1985 as a partnership between the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state agency established by the Legislature, and the Conejo Recreation and Park District, along with the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District, both of which are local park agencies established by the vote of the people in those communities. 

The role of the MRCA is the “preservation and management of local open space and parkland, watershed lands, trails, and wildlife habitat.” It also provides ranger services for almost 73,000 acres of public lands and parks that it owns and that are owned by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. 

“There’s not lots of city effort towards conservation, so we’re lucky to have these (FF and GG) boundaries established by state legislators” offered Tony Tucci, Co-Director of CLAW and a board member of the Bel Air Beverly Crest Neighborhood Council and a fan of the “community facilities districts” that Mello-Roos creates. He says the funds generated by Props FF and GG are “a local tax that stays local, and creates a great local investment.” Some people are repelled by taxes, but Tucci reports that “...there’s been no published opposition against the measures. What’s refreshing to hear from residents, when we talk about these measures, is that there’s never a negative response. People think it’s low cost for fire prevention.” 

For the “Bambis” in our hillsides, ballot measures FF and GG can also be seen as a wellness tactic and a preventative measure to cut down on reckless firebugs (a tossed cigarette can instantly create an inferno.) These measures will provide more ranger patrols, increased fire protection, and protection and maybe expansion of their wildlife corridors. Props FF and GG are equal-opportunity winners -- benefitting all hillside residents, whether human or wildlife.

(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.