Monthly Archives: May 2017

Business Improvement Districts, Central City East Association, Skid Row Neighborhood Council

Why Did Estela Lopez, Blair Besten, and Michael Delijani Meet With José Huizar Just A Few Days After Estela Lopez’s Infamous CPRA Request To Grayce Liu Asking For Records About The Skid Row Neighborhood Council?

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Perhaps you recall that on January 17, 2017, very soon after the friendly neighborhood zillionaires realized that Skid Row was trying to get its own neighborhood council and resolved to crush it by any means necessary, Ms. Estela Lopez, the famously Wicked Queen of Crocker Street, made herself a merry little CPRA request to Grayce Liu, she of the famed Department of Neighborhood Empowerment of the City of Los Angeles, asking for all manner of records to do with the Skid Row NC Formation Committee’s efforts. Well, what she was up to there is anyone’s guess, although the smart money is on yet another shenaniganistic anti-SRNC operation carried out at the behest of the zillionaire elite of whom she is so very willing a flunky.

But, perhaps as interestingly, it seems that by one day later, January 18, 2017, she, her counterpart from the Historic Core BID with the slightly less sinister smile, that is to say the famously batty little fusspot Blair Besten, and presumptively lunatic zillionaire developer, DLANCker, HCBID Board member, and shadowy heir to a DTLA real estate empire, Michael Delijani himself, right after that CPRA request went out, had arranged for a meeting with that well-known gentleman from sole to crown, clean favored and imperially slim, quietly arrayed, admirably schooled in every grace, the real power in Downtown Los Angeles, that is to say, Mr. José Huizar himself. Note that Patti Berman was NOT invited!

What they spoke of we will probably never know, and, untrue to form, I haven’t even any insinuations.1 What I have is this email chain and an unadorned, unedited, uncommented-upon transcription of it after the break. You, dear reader, are to make of it what you will.
Continue reading Why Did Estela Lopez, Blair Besten, and Michael Delijani Meet With José Huizar Just A Few Days After Estela Lopez’s Infamous CPRA Request To Grayce Liu Asking For Records About The Skid Row Neighborhood Council? →

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Announcements, Business Improvement Districts, Public Records Act Pragmatics

More than 200 MB Of New Hand-Scanned Documents From Figueroa Corridor BID and North Hollywood BID, Heavily Redacted For No Discernable Reason, But Interesting Nevertheless!

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For the last few months I’ve been posting a lot of records from:

But I haven’t discussed the fact that these releases weren’t complete. In each case, Aaron Aulenta of Urban Place Consulting, who seems to be in charge of both of these BIDs, claimed numerous exemptions to the Public Record Act and told me that there was a bunch of material that he was printing out and redacting by hand on the basis of these exemptions.

Well, for various reasons I wasn’t able to get over to the offices of the FCBID to look at this stuff until Tuesday. Aaron Aulenta was kind enough to let me scan it instead of paying the usual outrageous copying fees that BIDdies habitually claim to be allowed to collect, and, after some minimal processing, I’m pleased to announce that it’s now available on Archive.Org. There’s some pretty interesting stuff in there, but it turns out that in this case the most interesting stuff is what’s not in there.

That is to say, the most interesting aspect of this release is what Aaron Aulenta thought that he was justified in redacting. Perhaps you recall that the California Public Records Act only allows for material to be redacted or withheld if one or more of the explicit enumerated exemptions to be found in the statute applies. There’s one exception to this principle, to be found in the infamous §6255(a), which states:

The agency shall justify withholding any record by demonstrating that the record in question is exempt under express provisions of this chapter or that on the facts of the particular case the public interest served by not disclosing the record clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclosure of the record.

As you can imagine, BIDdies2 freaking love this last bit. It’s the most abused section of the law, with BIDdies, stoned out of their minds on white privilege and steeped in their delusional3 theory that laws are written and enforced for no better reason than to preserve and augment their power and wealth, claiming randomly that pretty much any piece of information they feel might embarrass them or their lackeys is exempt under this so-called public interest exemption.

For your future reference, there are at least two dispositive signs that this clause is being misused. First, they will refuse to state what public interest they feel is clearly being served by their withholding of the information. You’ll note that the law requires them to make this judgment on the particular facts of the case, which do not, can not, include a vague wave of the hand towards a claim of “I don’t heart that.”

Second, they will state semantically empty summary phrases which purport to refer to actual exemptions but, in fact, do not. Aaron Aulenta’s favorite of these seems to be “the benefit does not outweigh the burden.” It’s not exactly clear what the hell he’s thinking when he says this, and getting my hands on all these redacted documents has made it less rather than more clear, as you will see from the specific examples to be found after the break.
Continue reading More than 200 MB Of New Hand-Scanned Documents From Figueroa Corridor BID and North Hollywood BID, Heavily Redacted For No Discernable Reason, But Interesting Nevertheless! →

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Los Angeles City Government, Public Records Act Pragmatics

In Yet Another Example Of Disdain For The California Constitution, LAPD Internal Affairs Finds “Insufficient Evidence” To Pursue CPRA-Based Complaint Against LAPD Discovery, Leaving ACLU’s April 2017 Lawsuit As Current Best Hope For Reform

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Maybe you remember that last October I complained to LAPD Internal Affairs about the fact that the LAPD Discovery Unit, which handles Public Records Act requests, was unbelievably, flamboyantly, egregiously, astonishingly remiss in their legal duty to provide requested records promptly. They routinely take more than 18 months to handle requests if they handle them at all.

The complaint was based on the theory that, since compliance with the Public Records Act is a fundamental constitutional right in California, and since Reverence for the Law is one of the LAPD’s core values, someone in the chain of command ought to be held responsible for LAPD’s flouting of this fundamental constitutional right. Well, a few weeks ago I received a determination letter from Internal Affairs on my complaint. They found sadly, that there was Insufficient Evidence to Adjudicate. So much for that theory!

Of course, the LAPD has a long and ultimately twisted relationship with both the Constitution of the United States and with the Constitution of California, from the depths of unrecorded history to 1923’s Liberty Hill Strike to the Consent Decree imposed by the Justice Department in response to innumerable instances of appalling misconduct to the long list of killings of unarmed people in the first decades of the 21st Century.
Continue reading In Yet Another Example Of Disdain For The California Constitution, LAPD Internal Affairs Finds “Insufficient Evidence” To Pursue CPRA-Based Complaint Against LAPD Discovery, Leaving ACLU’s April 2017 Lawsuit As Current Best Hope For Reform →

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Business Improvement Districts, Historical and Theoretical Perspectives, Hypocrisy

BIDs Benefit Immensely From Coercive Collection Of Mandatory Assessments And Complain Incessantly About Being Subject To The California Public Records Act. They Can’t Have One Without The Other, Yet Both Are Voluntary, So Why Don’t They Grow Up And Quit Whining About The Consequences Of Their Choices?

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A business improvement district (BID) in Los Angeles4 is a geographical area in which the owners of commercial property are assessed an additional fee for various services that aren’t provided by the City. These fees are collected either by the City of L.A. via direct billing5 or, more usually, by the County of Los Angeles as an add-on to property tax bills.

The state law authorizing BIDs requires each BID to be administered by a property owners’ association (POA).6 In the normal course of things these organizations are conjured up by the City at the time the BID is established, although sometimes previously existing nonprofits will end up as a POA. One example of this is the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which serves as POA for the East Hollywood BID, although it predates its existence.

The law requires these POAs to be nonprofits, although it doesn’t specify what kind of nonprofit they should be. For various reasons, at least in Los Angeles, they are usually 501(c)(6) organizations. Because the City is handing over what’s essentially tax money to these POAs,7 they have a great deal of control over their activities and what they spend their money on.
Continue reading BIDs Benefit Immensely From Coercive Collection Of Mandatory Assessments And Complain Incessantly About Being Subject To The California Public Records Act. They Can’t Have One Without The Other, Yet Both Are Voluntary, So Why Don’t They Grow Up And Quit Whining About The Consequences Of Their Choices? →

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Business Improvement Districts

The East Hollywood BID Is Conducting A Survey To Find Out What *YOU* Want To Rename East Hollywood! Enter Now To Give Your Thoughts And Possibly Win A $50 Starbucks Gift Card!! Cause Nothing Screams Freaking East Hollywood Like Starbucks, Amirite!?!?!

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Well, dang, friends! How time does fly! It seems like only yesterday that we here at MK.Org secret headquarters were sitting around the metaphorical fire just mocking away at Hollywood Hotel über-düber-Führer Jeff Zarrinnam’s weirdo plans to rebrand-slash-restyle East Hollywood as Ee-Ho or some such nonsense. But in fact, it has been almost a month.

However, it is well-known that rust never sleeps and neither do freaking real estate boosters. Thus it’s certainly no surprise to find that the good old East Hollywood BID is moving on up with its plans for the grand East Hollywood rebrandarama. They have a freaking Survey Monkey up! And, at least for now, you can take the survey! And enter to win a Starbucks gift card!! For Fifty! Freaking! Dollars!! Turn the page for your chance to WIN WIN WIN!!!
Continue reading The East Hollywood BID Is Conducting A Survey To Find Out What *YOU* Want To Rename East Hollywood! Enter Now To Give Your Thoughts And Possibly Win A $50 Starbucks Gift Card!! Cause Nothing Screams Freaking East Hollywood Like Starbucks, Amirite!?!?! →

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Announcements, Business Improvement Districts, Downtown Center BID, Fashion District BID

Sunday Morning Document Dump: Emails From Fashion District, Figueroa Corridor, North Hollywood, Downtown Center, Also Fashion District Transactions February Through April

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Greetings, friends! If you’ve been wondering what you were going to do this morning after finishing off the Times crossword8 here are a bunch of new public records for your reading pleasure. There’s no single document here that’s mind-blowingly important, but, as I have mentioned many and many a time, we all are strong believers around here in the Mosaic Theory of Intelligence Gathering, and these are just more puzzle pieces, some of them quite important qua puzzle pieces!9

And turn the page for more emails: North Hollywood BID, Figueroa Corridor BID, and our old friends, the Downtown Center BID!
Continue reading Sunday Morning Document Dump: Emails From Fashion District, Figueroa Corridor, North Hollywood, Downtown Center, Also Fashion District Transactions February Through April →

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Skid Row Neighborhood Council

Is Stealth Skid Row Zillionaire Developer Capital Foresight Behind Shady Anonymous Ad Hoc Delaware-Registered Anti Skid Row Neighborhood Council Front Entity United DTLA? All Signs Point To Yes.

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You may recall that about three weeks ago I published a bunch of emails from the Fashion District BID concerning the opposition to the Skid Row Neighborhood Council formation effort. For better or for worse, I’ve been so busy lately, what with the SRNC appeal hearing and various issues related to shady practices in anti-SRNC lobbying efforts, that I haven’t had time to write much about the actual content of the emails.

But there is some interesting stuff in there, including some highly suggestive, although unfortunately inconclusive, clues to the real-life identities of whoever is behind the shadowy “entity,” United Downtown LA, incorporated on March 3, 2017 in that notorious paradise of corporate anonymity, the state of Delaware. For instance, there are a number of emails from Scott Gray, director of operations of the shadowy real estate zillionaire conspiracy known as Capital Foresight.

Capital Foresight is famous for its putatively adaptive reuse projects on Skid Row, and thus is highly interested in the project approval process. A Skid Row Neighborhood Council would ostensibly have some clout with the City,12 and that could well threaten big-dollar projects in Skid Row, of which Capital Foresight has many. Thus did Scott Gray tell the Downtown News that the SRNC would be “a huge symbolic blow against growth and development,” although it’s probably not symbolism that he’s worried about.

And thus it’s no surprise, really, to find Scott Gray and a number of his Capital Foresight cronies, including shadowy CF founder Naty Saidoff, involved at the very beginnings of public opposition to the SRNC in March 2017. Turn the page for a chronological analysis of some of the emails and a good circumstantial argument for Capital Foresight being the moving force behind the anonymous anti-SRNC front group United DTLA.
Continue reading Is Stealth Skid Row Zillionaire Developer Capital Foresight Behind Shady Anonymous Ad Hoc Delaware-Registered Anti Skid Row Neighborhood Council Front Entity United DTLA? All Signs Point To Yes. →

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Municipal Ethics, Skid Row Neighborhood Council

Complaint Filed This Morning With City Ethics Commission About Liner Law’s Failure To Disclose So-Called United DTLA As Client. Also Matthew Nichols Appears To Have Lobbied Before Incorporation Of United DTLA, Possibly Requiring Disclosure Of Actual Human Clients As Well

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Last weekend I outlined what seem to be serious violations of the Municipal Lobbying Ordinance by registered lobbying firm Liner Law and its sleazeballs-for-hire Rockard J. Delgadillo and his creepy little sadly-not-imaginary playmate, Mr. Matthew T. Nichols in the course of the zillionaire downtown real estate cabal’s cowardly moronic greedheaded campaign against the Skid Row Neighborhood Council. Well, this morning I finished up an actual complaint on this matter and filed it with the Ethics Commission, and it is available on Archive.Org for your reading pleasure!

If you read my earlier article most of this material will be familiar to you, but there’s at least one major new thing, which only occurred to me yesterday. Recall that according to Delgadillo and Nichols, the client who was paying them to oppose the Skid Row Neighborhood Council was a shady anonymous Delaware-incorporated LLC known as United DTLA. According to Delaware state records, United DTLA was incorporated on March 3, 2017.

Matthew Nichols monitoring a City meeting on SRNC formation on February 15, 2017, almost three weeks before United DTLA was even incorporated. This is potentially huge! Click to enlarge.
This means that if and when Liner, Matthew Nichols, and Rockard Delgadillo file their required client disclosures for lobbying that they carried out after March 3, they’re going to disclose nothing more than United DTLA, that shady anonymous Delaware corporation. However, that shady anonymous Delaware corporation did not exist on February 15, 2017, on which day Matthew T. Nichols attended a Town Hall meeting about the Skid Row Neighborhood Council sponsored by the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. And according to the definition of “lobbying activity” found in the Municipal Lobbying Ordinance at LAMC §48.02, the following is included:

… attending or monitoring City meetings, hearings or other events.

So if Matthew Nichols was carrying out compensated lobbying activities on February 15 but his putative client wasn’t even conjured into existence until March 3, he’s going to have to disclose someone other than United DTLA. And what’s the chance that this other client will be anonymous? Very low, I’m guessing, since if the zillionaires already had an anonymous entity through which to hire lobbyists, why would they go and invent a new one a few weeks later? I suppose we’ll find out, although don’t hold breath, friends. The Ethics Commission moves slowly, but it certainly does move.

And another newly uncovered bit of information is that both Delgadillo and Nichols not only attended the March 22, 2017 meeting of City Council’s Rules and Elections Committee, but they both spoke. Although Nichols didn’t say much. His entire speech is quoted in the cartoon that decorates the beginning of this post. As a special bonus for reading this far, turn the page for images of the speaker cards filled out by these two dimwits and also actual audio recordings of their comments!
Continue reading Complaint Filed This Morning With City Ethics Commission About Liner Law’s Failure To Disclose So-Called United DTLA As Client. Also Matthew Nichols Appears To Have Lobbied Before Incorporation Of United DTLA, Possibly Requiring Disclosure Of Actual Human Clients As Well →

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Municipal Ethics, Skid Row Neighborhood Council

Lobbying Firm Liner LLP And Lobbyist Matthew Nichols Seem To Have Violated The LA Muncipal Lobbying Ordinance While Working Against The Skid Row Neighborhood Council On Behalf Of Shady Delaware-Incorporated Anonymous Shell Corporation United DTLA And It Appears At Least Plausible That Rocky Delgadillo Did Also

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The Los Angeles Municipal Lobbying Ordinance, known to the cognoscenti as the MLO and found at Article 8 of the LAMC,13 regulates professional paid lobbyists in the City of Los Angeles.14 It also regulates so-called lobbying firms, which are companies that employ lobbyists to lobby on behalf of paying clients.15

One requirement that the MLO puts on lobbying firms and lobbyists is registration with the City.16 In particular, it is required17 that:

A lobbyist or lobbying firm shall register each client on whose behalf or from which the lobbyist or lobbying firm receives or becomes entitled to receive $250 or more in a calendar quarter for engaging in lobbying activities related to attempting to influence municipal legislation.

Note also that you might rightly wonder if the Skid Row Neighborhood Council Formation process counts as “municipal legislation.” It does, but the reason’s a little technical.18 Also, note that Liner LLP is a lobbying firm and they filed the required registration form for 2017, listing all their clients. And, although Rocky Delgadillo is employed by Liner, he’s not registered as a lobbyist himself. However, when he wrote his famous letter to DONE advocating against the SRNC he wrote as a Liner employee.

It’s almost certain that Liner received the negligible sum of $250 from their client, United DTLA, for their services. According to the MLO,19 then, Liner is required to disclose “The client’s name, business or residence address, and business or residence telephone number” as well as “The item or items of municipal legislation for which the firm was retained to represent the client.” But look again at Liner’s registration form. There is nothing there about their client, United DTLA.

Naturally, though, it’s possible that lobbying firms might add clients after they file their annual registrations. In this case they registered on January 1, 2017, but certainly didn’t start representing United DTLA until around February and quite possibly not until March. The law has a procedure for this kind of thing:20
Lobbyists and lobbying firms shall file amendments to their registration statements within 10 days of any change in information required to be set forth on the registration statement.

Take yet another look at Liner’s registration form. You can see that it was amended on April 27, which is long after Liner’s representation of United DTLA began, but there is no mention of this client. This is the first likely violation of the MLO arising from Liner’s anti-SRNC work.
Continue reading Lobbying Firm Liner LLP And Lobbyist Matthew Nichols Seem To Have Violated The LA Muncipal Lobbying Ordinance While Working Against The Skid Row Neighborhood Council On Behalf Of Shady Delaware-Incorporated Anonymous Shell Corporation United DTLA And It Appears At Least Plausible That Rocky Delgadillo Did Also →

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Business Improvement Districts, Skid Row Neighborhood Council

Patti Berman, Estela Lopez, Rena Leddy, Unite DTLA, Rocky Delgadillo, Tentatively Foiled In Their Evil Plan: Skid Row Neighborhood Council Victory In Sight As Hearing Panel Recommends Do-Over Of One Sort Or Another!

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Some guy whose name I didn’t catch last night at the SRNC appeal hearing speaking what evidently passes for truth in some circles these days, although I’m not sure what circles those are.
Background: Last month the Skid Row Neighborhood Council failed to be formed and then General Jeff Page, head of the formation committee, and his colleague Katherine McNenny discovered some very shady looking activity and filed an appeal with the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. You can also read a more balanced version of the story by Gale Holland of the Times.

Last night a panel consisting of three neighborhood council presidents from around the City heard General Jeff’s appeal of the election that defeated the Skid Row Neighborhood Council separation from DLANC last month. You can read the whole appeal here, including DONE boss Grayce Liu’s recommendations to the panel. The gist of it is that someone sent around an email that looked like it came from DLANC urging people to vote against the SRNC. If this had been a candidate for a neighborhood council office this evidence would have been enough to incur sanctions from the City based on the rules in the official election manual.

As it was, though, the panel unambiguously recommended that DONE either hold another election without the exceedingly contentious online voting that was unaccountably allowed in this election.21 Note that you can also read a less impressionistic version of this story than mine by Gale Holland, writing in this morning’s Times.

The hearing panel.
The meeting was well-attended and the level of interest and excitement was high. Unfortunately I had to leave after only three hours, long before anything was decided, but what I did see was well worth the trip. Most exciting was the public comments, which, at least while I was there, were all but one in favor of Skid Row. They were insightful, heartfelt, moving, convincing, enough to restore understandably flagging faiths in democracy. The one guy who was against the new NC was…well, his comments are summarized in the image that appears at the start of this post. It may seem like a joke, but it was not.

I’m pleased to note, also, that at least one public commenter mentioned my recent public records request on the SRNC, connecting up the immoral, probably illegal anti-partition campaign with the nefarious activities of Downtown Business Improvement Districts and their cross-appointed-to-DLANC executive directors Rena Leddy and Estela Lopez. Even puppet-wielding crackpot Wayne Spindler, evidently seeing the gravity of the situation, laid his creepy-moronic pig-performance aside and said something important in favor of the SRNC, and was applauded. Anyway, that’s the news. Find a little unfounded speculative nerdview material after the break.
Continue reading Patti Berman, Estela Lopez, Rena Leddy, Unite DTLA, Rocky Delgadillo, Tentatively Foiled In Their Evil Plan: Skid Row Neighborhood Council Victory In Sight As Hearing Panel Recommends Do-Over Of One Sort Or Another! →

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