Author: Ron Kaye

Radio talk show host Kevin James — the lone outsider and dark horse in the mayor’s race — announced today he has $500,000 in pledges for this campaign.

On Monday, LA Times columnist Jim Newton offered his thumbnail appraisal of the seven insider candidates, ranking County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, a former Councilman, as the “front-runner” if “he jumps in — really and truly in,” a leap of faith he has shied away from repeatedly over the last couple of decades.

The LA Weekly is polling political observers for how they rate the candidates.

It’s kind of funny when you think about it.

Cross-posted at RonKayeLA.

Police
Chief Beck says it’s the only fair and humane thing to do.

The mayor
says it’s "justice"

But what
does the City Council or Police Commission say about the LAPD’s new policy, its
protocol, for allowing unlicensed drivers to walk away from the scene of their
crime.

Not just
walk away, actually, but ride away in the company of a licensed driver, not
even the car’s owner as required by law, when they’re stopped by police instead
of having the car impounded.

It’s like
putting a gun back in the hands of a violent suspect after he’s been subdued
and writing him a citation for an infraction.

Cross-posted at RonKayeLA.

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck hit a raw nerve with his decision Friday to stop the practice of impounding for 30 days cars driven by unlicensed — and usually uninsured — drivers who are stopped at sobriety checkpoints.

His policy change, made on his own authority, was taken after meeting with immigration rights advocates who complained the impound policy was unfair to illegal immigrants since they are not allowed under state law to get licenses and causes them great hardship .

An article about his decision was printed Saturday in the LA Times, generating 527 comments by Monday morning, most of them unsympathetic to illegal immigrants and highly critical of the chief whose new policy requires officers to allow unlicensed drivers a "reasonable" period of time to get a licensed driver to the scene to avoid being towed.

Cross-posted at RonKayeLA.

Taking their contempt for the public and the law to new heights, Los Angeles city leaders will carry out an election day theft of nearly $1 billion in taxpayer money, jeopardizing the governor’s budget-balancing plan and running roughshod over even the pretense of deliberative processes.

The CRA Board — at a special meeting called with just 24 hours notice — unanimously approved Monday some $100 million in projects and deals to cement them in stone just three days in advance of Gov. Jerry Brown’s deadline for the Legislature to put his budget plan — spending cuts, tax extensions and abolishing the 400 community redevelopment agencies across California.

At the same time, State Controller John Chiang released a scathing audit of the LA CRA and 17 other CRAs in the state finding "reporting flaws, substandard audits, questionable payment practices
and an inappropriate use of affordable housing funds, according to the Sacramento Bee.

The report also
found no clear methodology or data to measure claims of job creation or other economic benefits to the state.

Cross-posted at RonKayeLA.

Poor planning, frivolous spending and shoddy work dog the sprawling system’s bond-financed construction program. Those are the headlines online on Part One of the LA Times powerful week-long investigate series by reporters Michael Finnegan and Gale Holland who examined what LA Community College District have done with the nearly $6 billion in taxpayer construction bonds.

The series is backed by interactive map, graphic on what each college got and a chart of the to 10 contractors and how much money they have donated to board members and to get the bond issues approved by voters.

With the election for four of the seven LACCD Board seats coming March 8, the series is a bombshell that ought to guide voters to cast ballots for fiscally responsible candidates like Lydia Gutierrez, Joe Essavi, Joyce Burrell, Erick Aguire and write-in candidate Mark Isler instead of the slate of candidates backed by the unions and developers.

They are Mona Field, Steven Veres, Miguel Santiago and Scott Svonkin. They must be held accountable or we are complicit in the waste, efficiency and corruption.

Cross-posted at RonKayeLA.

It doesn’t take a brilliant sleuth like Sherlock Holmes to solve the Case of the Bankrupt City.

It’s not a mystery. You just have to look at the record of City Hall’s artless deals, its giveaways public moneydow to unions, billionaires, developers, Hollywood, contractors and a lot of other special interests with few, if any, benefits to the general public.

Cross-posted at RonKayeLA.

Gov. Jerry Brown set off howls across the state with his assault Monday on Community Redevelopment Agencies and Enterprise Zones — the instruments that have so long been abused by local politicians to enrich developers by robbing the public of good schools and quality services.

Our own Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Brown’s proposal to “completely eliminate the Redevelopment Zones and State Enterprise Zones is a non-starter.”

Added Christine Essel, CEO of CRA/LA: “Governor Brown is proposing to dismantle an economic tool that has a 60-year track record of success in creating jobs and stimulating economic activity across the state.”

That should be easy to test:

Are luxury hotels, luxury entertainment projects and luxury skyscrapers more valuable in economic and quality of life terms than cops on the streets and libraries that are open and programs in the parks for kids”

Does it help the working poor struggling for a better life in Boyle Heights to fill their neighborhood with housing for the city’s derelicts, mentally disturbed and hopelessly poor?

Understand how it works: The CRA takes over huge areas of the city and subsidizes development and then keeps the incremental increases in property taxes, often using eminent domain power to seize private property which it gives as a gift to private developers to build projects nobody wants except the people who profit from them.

Cross-posted at RonKayeLA.

In returning from a long book-writing sabbatical, LA Times stalwart Jim Newton spent several weeks talking with “more than two dozen influential Angelenos — current and former politicians, labor leaders, environmentalists, neighborhood activists and bureaucrats.”

On Tuesday, his first column was published. The subject was Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the headline was “How Disappointing.”

“Criticism from his longtime foes wasn’t unexpected. They regard the
mayor as selfish, arrogant and ineffective. But his longtime backers
weren’t much happier. They complain that he’s been an incompetent
manager and has squandered the public’s initial enthusiasm for him. They
too are astounded at his preening self-indulgence.

“Neighborhood activists think he is labor’s agent, determined to feather
the nest of public employees in exchange for political support from
unions. Labor representatives find him two-faced, reneging on deals and
sloughing off basic management responsibilities. Environmentalists say
he’s all talk. Conservatives deplore him; liberals are tired of him.
Politicians believe he’s principally driven by his pursuit of higher
office,” Newton wrote.

In the end, Newton offers more of a prayer than an analytical insight: “Villaraigosa has gifts of leadership and ability, and the time to take
advantage of them. The city needs him to focus and deliver on his word.”

Cross-posted at RonKayeLA

At the height of his power when the leadership of LA still was driven by a vision of greatness for the city as well as greed for themselves, Tom Bradley pushed through a 1978 Charter measure that barred the use of public funds to support the 1984 Olympics because he knew it was the only way the people of the city would support it.

It was a great Olympics by any measure, hugely profitable, a grand spectacle and dire warnings about traffic gridlock never materialized because trucks were banned from freeways during rush hours and major companies staggered their work hours.

Oh, what happy days those were!

It’s been a long downhill slide ever since as the commitment to public benefits has disappeared from the agenda of politicians and the civic and business leadership, resulting in thwarted demands from the people for major reforms from Valley secession to devolution of power through a borough system.