Los Angeles Politics Hotsheet for Friday

Hey ese who is this pendejo Carmen Trutanich?

Ah man that dude is bad news man.  Gives me a headrush!

A City Clerk's report finds that if Los Angeles switched to a vote-by-mail program voter participation could increase but so would costs and the chances for voter fraud.  Still the Clerk feels that vote-by-mail might be an effective method to conduct special elections such as next Tuesday's race in CD2.  However vote by mail gives an advantage to candidates funded by special interests such as unions and developers as a vote by mail effort is highly expensive for candidates. 

If you want to buy some medical marijuana as a Christmas gift you still have time.  The City Council has again postponed a vote on the dispensaries. Clowncilman Ed Reyes expects no action until some time in the new year.  No truth to the rumor that Reyes will make a cameo appearance in the next Cheech and Chong movie.

Yet another photo opp for the Mayor and Hamburger Jan Perry.  This time is the annual holiday kick-off at LA Live.  You may remember the Mayor headlined last year's less than spectacular tree lighting with Britney Spears and Adam Carrolla at the venue, then brand new. 

Sunland-Tujunga activists produce a fabulous TV commercial supporting Paul Krekorian for CD2.

I recap my predictions for 2009 and gear up to prognosticate into 2010.

Mayor Sam's Hotsheet for Monday

Jason Mandell writing in the LA Weekly asks the question if CD2 run-off candidates Paul Krekorian and Chris Essell will support so-called "clean money" efforts for campaign financing, noting that former candidate Michael McCue has actively been pushing the issue for some time.  Advocates for this scheme however can't explain how campaigns would be publicly funded particularly when the City coffers are emptying fast.  One small error in Mandell's story was that in addition to Essel and Krekorian there were eight "neighborhood candidates" in the race; actually that would be seven.

Another photo-op and 89% time for Mayor Villaraigosa: He was out with a group of celebrity chefs encouraging Angelenos to dine-out more often. Wonder how that extends to the thousands of city workers who will soon be laid off due to the Mayor's overspending in his first term?

Law enforcement authorities recyently raided two homes owned by State Senator Roderick Wright as part of an LA County District Attorney investigation into his legal residency.  However it may not have any impact as experts say that state law does not require state legislators to actually live in their district once they are elected.  Further, even if the District Attorney is able to prosecute Wright it will be up to the Legislature itself to actually remove Wright.

The Latino Politics Blog once again on the story when it comes to controversial Orange County Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez.  This time it concerns the case of a former aide to Sanchez who recently received probation after pleading guilty to theft charges.  Caroline Valdez admitted to stealing office funds as well as forging Sanchez's signature for a bonus.  Interesting however it the blogs take on the position.  Adriana Maestas sees Valdez as a victim of Sanchez who plucked Valdez out of ASU prior to graduation, introducing her into the pressure cooker of Washington, DC on a $30K annual salary.  That may be true but nonetheless Valdez is an adult and should know the difference between right and wrong no matter how grim and unfortuante her circumstances.  Plenty of other young people do.

And finally, a public service note.  The LA Fire Department is encouraging parents to make sure televisions and other appliances are properly secured as to avoid injury to their children. According to the LAFD blog "Thousands of preventable injuries - including more than a dozen deaths, occur each year when children climb, fall against or pull themselves onto "unsecured" furnishings, often in an attempt to access a television or other heavy appliance."

Mayor Sam's Hotsheet for Wednesday

More excellent reporting from the Latino Politics Blog. A recent post notes that the state legislators who drive the three most expensive government provided vehicles are Senator Ron Calderon, Senator Gil "Two Bill Gill" Cedillo and Senator Dean Florez, who according to the LA Times drive a Cadillac STS, a Lexus 400H and a Lexus LX 400 respectively, all on your dime. The blog couldn't have put it any better when they said "I think that in a climate where so many of us are penny pinching, asking students to make sacrifices or go without summer school, Cal Grants, and face fee increases at public colleges and universities, it certainly leaves a bad taste in the mouths of Californians to have to foot the bill for luxury cars for the state’s already well compensated elected leaders."

Once again William Bratton proves he doesn't get the LAPD or Los Angeles tradition and screws over the men in uniform.  This time he's going against the wish of the both the LAPD union and the film industry by banning retired LAPD officers who work film shoots from wearing LAPD uniforms.  Instead Bratton wants the officers to wear something resembling some local business improvement "safety ambassadors" wear.  The film industry is right to concern than when dealing with issues on a film location the officers wearing the new uniforms won't command the same respect.

So the Mayor has supposedly found private funds to pay the parade to mark the LA Lakers World Championship yet he says even if he hadn't located the donor cash he would have spent City funds anyway.  The Mayor also claims the parade will earn $15 million for the City.  Questions: 1) Who is funding this parade and what do they get for it, 2) Where does the Mayor get off saying he'd spend the funds anyway and, 3) Who really believes this parade will generate $15 million in taxes for the City?

The DWP implemented a "cash for grass" program and no its not related to this photo.  Homeowners who replace their lawn with water saving plants, rocks or cement will get $1 for every square foot of thirsty lawn they remove. Of course, the DWP is playing a bit smart here; if you haven't been watering your lawn and its already dead they won't pay you to remove it.

Neighborhood Councils are among those invited to a "volunteer appreciation picnic" organized by the Mayor on June 27th. No word on how much this costs or who is paying for it but a memo sent by Villaraigosa staffer Antonio Sanchez includes the real reason why the event is being organized: "We hope to organize a picture with neighborhood council members and the newly elected City officials."  There you go. One giant photo op.

What if Villaraigosa Was Doing A Photo Op And No One Was Listening - Would it Still Be a Photo Op?

Mayor V in Another Celebrity Photo Op

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa w/ Will.i.Am, Big Boy on Day of service from Erik Garcia on Vimeo.

After the Rain

JM, Townsend Avenue, EagleRock, 11.30.07

We Install Your Toilets!

Part and parcel of the problem with local government is not a lack of resources or even ideas. No, its a failure of leadership. This failure extends not only to a lack of action but probably even worse self-aggrandizing action that is really non-action by our elected officials. Quite frankly, they're often blowing smoke up our ass.

Case in point is the Mayor's $168 million plan to fight the ever increasing scourge of gang violence in Los Angeles. David Zahniser writing in the LA Weekly blows the cover off this bogus, flawed and downright silly program the Mayor hopes to ride to getting his picture in the paper and becoming Governor, perhaps even President someday.

Zahniser does probably what no other publication in Los Angeles did - got off his ass to take a look at the program.

As it turns out, nearly $150 million is money the city already spends on existing programs. And many of those initiatives are only tangentially related to the difficult work of eliminating street gangs, including such things as boat trips for fifth-graders in the Los Angeles Harbor to the ramped-up deployment of park rangers at the city’s biggest parks (are street thugs roaming Griffith Park and no one warned us?).

Indeed, not only is the Mayor's spending all jacked up (more on that in a minute), apparently really very little thought has gone into the plan. When the Mayor was introducing his plan at his "State of the City" speech at a local high school, he wrongly cited that very school as having a gang problem.

And the most bizarre aspect of the program, the Mayor is going from cleaning toilets to installing them. That's right over $1 million will be spent on having gang members install no-water toilets at city facilities:

And that gets us to the most intriguing weapon in the mayor’s $168 millon anti-gang arsenal: water-saving urinals. As in, the self-cleaning kind that rely on — yipes! — suction instead of water. The mayor’s 41-page gang proposal promises to spend $1.2 million on the Water Demand Management Installation Program. Or to put it another way: the Department of Water and Power will teach the city’s youth to install water-efficient urinals and sprinklers in public parks.

Yet not one municipal facility or park in the City of Los Angeles has plans to install the toilets, except for by the Department of Recreation and Parks at Taylor Yard and a department official told Zahniser “But that would only be as an experiment, and we haven’t done that yet.”

Even when these programs are directly tied to gang intervention, they tend to be colossal wastes of money. The long fabled "LA Bridges" program has spent over $100 million in ten years and gang violence is worse than ever.

Even more so than the toilet scheme is another aspect of the "plan," the City's "Junior Golf" program. As Zahniser notes, the $9 million program allows 350 children to play golf at Griffith Park. An admirable activity, but that equates to about $26,000 per child. That's actually a bit more change than annual tuition for a child at the prestigious private Brentwood School, which has graduated notables such as actor Fred Savage, author Andrew Breitbart and members of the band Maroon 5. Instead of building toilets or playing golf, sending 350 kids to elite private schools could probably do more to keep them out of gangs, but I digress.

As it is, the plan has been harshly criticized by attorney Connie Rice, who is seen as sort of a guru on the gang question. Rice released her own plan earlier this year from which the Mayor plagiarized a good portion but didn't provide the funding Rice proposed. Zahniser points out that Rice is reserving a nuclear option; suing the City for not adequately spreading anti-gang resources across the city.

In the end, the Mayor has created a plan out of whole cloth: tossing in existing programs and services (many of which are questionable as to their direct connection to anti-gang efforts) and grafting on a few other items which are bizarre at best and shameful at worst.

But hey - it got the Mayor a lot of photo ops!