Long-time readers of this blog will recall that on October 23, 2014, Sharyn Romano of the Hollywood Beautification Team essentially confessed on camera that she turns a blind eye to the criminal activities of her subordinates. We spent the last month feverishly anticipating the minutes of that meeting, wondering what fantastical description of this faux pas might be presented.

The safest thing, and what we were expecting, would have been to just not mention the hateful affair at all. Meeting minutes are a record of what was done in the meeting rather than a transcript of everything that was said. Since Sharyn’s report didn’t contain any action items it would have been totally reasonable to just note that she gave a report. But, for whatever reason, that’s not what happened.

You can read the minutes here. The salient bit is this:

She continued by reporting that recently in the BID there has been an increase in the number of shopping carts, either empty and just left or containing homeless individuals’ belongings. Romano reported that it is illegal to remove a homeless individual’s contents and she will verify that her workers did not remove any.

The principle of charity leads us to forgo an interpretation of this that involve literal evisceration of the homeless by removal of their contents, but there is no rational accomodation of the meaning that allows us to read this as an accurate reflection of what Sharyn said,¹ which was:

And we cleaned up a homeless encampment, a small one, and then…I’m a little hesitant to talk about the homeless encampments and the…five issues where we found homeless belongings in parks that were left there because legally we’re not allowed to touch them and we’re supposed to be walking away from them. My crew didn’t tell me if they did that or not so I assume they walked away. [laughter from audience]

And what did the Board do? What every Board everywhere usually does. Mike Malick asked for a motion, one was made and seconded. The Board approved the minutes without correction. Watch it happen here. If Sharyn’s “crew” did throw away the stuff it was a classic third-rate burglary. The Board tipped over a domino by escalating it to include a cover-up. Now we wait to see where the chips fall.

1. Sharyn’s entire report is here, if you want to verify that she said nothing about verifying anything.

Image of Richard Nixon cornered by the liberal media is in the public domain because it was made by an employee of the federal government as a part of her official duties. But we got it from the Wikimedia Foundation, and you can too!