Did you even know that the members of our esteemed City Council all send one another and various other people gifts in the putative holiday season? Well they do, and evidently it’s just another thing that the pretty people do when they’re all drinking, thinking that they got it made.¹

The City Ethics Commission requires City officials to keep track of these presents, and so, in response to a CPRA request, I received these records from Chad Molnar the other day, despite his claim that fulfilling my more substantial requests would make CD11 constituents suffer. Perhaps he sent these items along because they aren’t likely to make the constituents, who thrive in darkness and secrecy and evidently include outlaw BID proponents Mark Sokol and Carl Lambert, suffer too much, because they have very little content. However, what they do have is fairly amusing. You can get them:

• Via the menu structure
• Directly from storage
• From Archive.Org

Another purpose of this post is to announce the reorganization of the menu structure, which was getting a little top-heavy. Also, the inauguration of our new CD11 Page, which doesn’t have much on it now, but it will soon, I hope. Turn the page for direct links to the gift journals along with a little bit of relatively restrained mockery.

• 2013-14 Gift Log — This is stuff that the CM received. Herein we learn that Englander gives candy and biscotti, whereas Huizar and Krekorian give alcohol. Also the L.A. Food Policy Council gives healthy snacks but Bonin sent them back, because God knows, he wouldn’t want the appearance of a conflict of interest if he ever told a kid to eat its broccoli.
• 2014 Holiday Gift Card List — This is stuff that the CM gave out in 2014. Herein we learn that Garcetti, Feuer, Galperin, and Bonin’s 14 co-conspirators get cards and gifts, whereas cops and secretaries get cards only.
• 2015 Gift Journal — More stuff that the CM received, but now with regifting data!! Herein we learn that e.g. the Los Angeles Police Protective League gave Mike a two pound box of See’s Candy and he regifted it to LAPD officers stationed at City Hall. Also, the Palisadian Post gave him a bundt cake from Homeboy Industries and he regifted it to CAO Miguel Santana. Also the Food Policy Council gave him more healthy snacks, this time a “Basket with Locally Made Pickles, Honey, Kale Chips,” but he didn’t send it back like he did before; instead he regifted it to LADOT staff. Finally, and possibly weirdest, Bob Blumenfield gave him something described as “Mike’s Photo on a Mug,” valued at $10. He didn’t regift it, but accepted it and sent a thank-you note. I’m not sure what it is exactly, but I am reasonably sure that it falls under CPRA’s definition of a public record at section 6252 as
  
  any handwriting, typewriting, printing, photostating, photographing, photocopying, transmitting by electronic mail or facsimile, and every other means of recording upon any tangible thing any form of communication or representation, including letters, words, pictures, sounds, or symbols, or combinations thereof, and any record thereby created, regardless of the manner in which the record has been stored.
  
  So you can make of that fact what you will!

Image of Mike Bonin’s trophy shelf is ©2016 MichaelKohlhaas.org.

1. Although a Bob Dylan reference might be somewhat impertinent, seeing as how Mike received a Jerry Garcia necktie on December 12, 2014 from his co-conspirator Joe Buscaino. But this is the best I could do along those lines and it’s not very good, sigh…