Los Angeles Politics Hotsheet for Friday

 

While the battle between Carmen Trutanich, Jan Perry and AEG over the expense of the City for the memorial service for Michael Jackson continues one Los Angeles resident has stepped up in a unique way.  Jose F. Vallejo has filed a $3.3 million lawsuit against the Jackson estate claiming as a taxpayer he has standing to make the case.  Should Vallejo be successful any judgment awarded by the Court would go to the City general fund.

 

SLAP happy plan checking NIMBYs in Los Angeles go apoplectic over billboard advertising but the City of West Hollywood is considering a plan that might put a little cha-ching into the City coffers.  The owner of a building on Beverly Boulevard is offering WeHo $20K a month for the next twenty years, as well as some free public improvements, to hang supergraphics on two sides of the property. 

Here's yet another boondoggle the City is considering - putting a park over the 101 Freeway through Hollywood.  Just to speak to the cost is one thing, the safety is a bigger issue.  If the park goes Nimitz Freeway in the next big earthquake or little kids get cancer from diesel fumes who is going to pay?

Here's yet another rumor from an extremely reliable source.  Southern California ICE spokesflack Virginia Kice allegedly employed an illegal immigrant for years but fired her upon getting the ICE job. Shades of the Clinton cabinet!

Jay Leno may be coming back to late night, perhaps even to the Tonight Show.  With Leno's 10 pm show performing poorly in ratings, as well as the Conan O'Brien Tonight Show, NBC TV affiliates are screaming bloody murder.  Daily Variety reports NBC has confirmed that Leno has been offered either a half hour show at 11:35 daily or to just take the Tonight Show back. 

Boondoggle Alert: Hollywood Freeway Park?

This has got to be the dumbest idea I have heard yet.

A bunch of folks in Hollywood with apparently not much else to do have proposed building a City Park over the Hollywood Freeway.

If we're going to double deck freeways, it needs to be for adding capacity to freeways for the traffic we already have. Though the supporters of this mega-boondoggle insist there is no formal opposition to the plan, I am certain most of the folks who sit in traffic on that freeway on their way to work every day would find it similarly preposterous.

A park similar to this was built in Seattle over Interstate 5 in the 70s. It eventually became a haven for drug dealers and crime.

Lets not even get into all the other reasons why the park project could be potentially dangerous.

This $200 million project is not solving any societal need; nor is there any great mass of people calling for it. Apparently the people pushing this are completely out of touch with reality.

Yes, there is a need for parks and open space. Los Angeles actually has more than many cities. But this is just absolutely ridiculous. The truth is the program is corporate welfare for developers in Hollywood who want to spike up the value of their developments. Well you can do that, but not on my dime.