Monthly Archives: August 2017

Venice Beach BID

Venice Beach BID Still Not Operational Despite The Fact That Their Contract Was Attested More Than Two Months Ago — Mark Sokol Sent Out A Letter, Likely Ghosted By Tara Devine, Two Weeks Ago Begging For Patience And Donations And Offering A Freaking Unmonitored Email Account For Consolation!

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It’s been a long, long year for the Venice Beach BID, friends. Last August they had their first hearing but due to generalized arrogance they messed up the process and so the City Attorney called a do-over, which happened last November. For undisclosed reasons it took until June of this year for their administration contract to get signed and as of today they still have not commenced operations.

And evidently the property owners are getting restless out there on the very West side, because on July 31, Mr. Venice Beach himself, Mark Sokol, sent out a letter to the property owners (transcription after the break) begging their forbearance, asking them if they had any office space to donate, and telling them they weren’t going to get any money back even if the BID didn’t start working until freaking December cause that’s the way they roll.

And if you have questions you’re welcome, according to this letter, to send them to admin@venicebeachbid.com even though, and I am not making this up, no one checks that account. Just as an aside, not in the letter, but you may have more luck with tara@venicebeachbid.com or marksokol@hotmail.com or mark@mphotel.com or carl@lambertinc.com or sheumann@sidewalkent.com. Property owners were also offered a chance to sign up for a mailing list, although signups seem to be closed now. Anyway, there’s a transcription after the break, and I’m not sure what it all means, but it seemed important to publish it.
Continue reading Venice Beach BID Still Not Operational Despite The Fact That Their Contract Was Attested More Than Two Months Ago — Mark Sokol Sent Out A Letter, Likely Ghosted By Tara Devine, Two Weeks Ago Begging For Patience And Donations And Offering A Freaking Unmonitored Email Account For Consolation! →

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Cory Spencer v. Lunada Bay Boys

Lunada Bay Boys Plaintiffs File Motion Asking For $32,000 In Sanctions Against Charlie And Frank Ferrara And Their Lawyers Due To Their “intransigence and disregard for standard discovery protocol and obligations” And Their “failure to abide by the Court’s July 13, 2017 order” — Take That, Bay Boys!

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For background take a look at this excellent article from the Times on this lawsuit. Also see here to download all pleadings in this case.

Maybe you recall that on July 13, 2017, the plaintiffs in the Lunada Bay Boys case appeared before Magistrate Judge Rozella Oliver and complained that Charlie and Frank Ferrara weren’t complying with discovery obligations. This led to Oliver issuing a minute order directing that particular batch of Ferraras to “produce responsive documents from the cell phone imaging and responsive cell phone bills and records by 5 p.m. on Monday, July 17, 2017.”

Well, it appears, to no one’s surprise, that these Ferraras have not complied with this order. Thus, today, plaintiffs’ lawyers Samantha Wolff and Victor Otten filed a motion for monetary sanctions against both the Ferraras and their lawyers based on two allegations:

  1. Defendants Charlie and Frank Ferrara and their counsel willfully failed to preserve electronically stored information and failed to conduct their due diligence in responding to Plaintiffs’ discovery requests, resulting in the spoliation of critical evidence; and
  2. Defendants Charlie and Frank Ferrara and their counsel willfully failed to comply with this Court’s July 13, 2017 Order.


As usual, this motion comes along with a ton of interesting exhibits. Most of them in this case are meet-and-confer emails, progressively more exasperated on the part of the plaintiffs. There are links to everything after the break1 as well as some transcriptions. But first, here are links to what seem to me to be the most interesting items:
Continue reading Lunada Bay Boys Plaintiffs File Motion Asking For $32,000 In Sanctions Against Charlie And Frank Ferrara And Their Lawyers Due To Their “intransigence and disregard for standard discovery protocol and obligations” And Their “failure to abide by the Court’s July 13, 2017 order” — Take That, Bay Boys! →

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Business Improvement Districts, Los Angeles City Government

Apparently The City Attorney Of Los Angeles Has Opined That Business Improvement Districts Can’t Spend Money On Things That Aren’t In Their Management District Plans Unless The Plans Are Amended — At Least That’s What Shadowy BID Consultant Tara Devine Said In 2012 And Why Would She Lie About That?

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When business improvement districts in California are created, it’s required by the Property and Business Improvement District Act of 1994 at §36622 to file a so-called management district plan (MDP) with the City. This is meant to describe exactly what the BID is going to spend its money on, and it’s incorporated into the City’s Ordinance of Establishment, by which means the BID is created. It must be approved by the City Council, and the City has the power to revise it at will. The law makes it pretty clear that BIDs are actually forbidden from spending money on activities that aren’t in the MDP, although this facet of the law is generally ignored by the City.

And I’m presently working on a project that requires a close reading of invoices submitted by Tara Devine2 to the South Park BID over the years, which I obtained last month as the fruit of a CPRA request.3 Although 2012 is outside the timeline I’m working on, I was fascinated to note that Tara Devine seems to have been engaged by the South Park BID to actually write that year’s annual planning report4 for them. One of the things that she billed for in the course of performing her contract to do so Tara Devine billed for was a conversation with accounting firm RBZ, since merged with Armanino, and the subject of that conversation was wholly new to me:
Continue reading Apparently The City Attorney Of Los Angeles Has Opined That Business Improvement Districts Can’t Spend Money On Things That Aren’t In Their Management District Plans Unless The Plans Are Amended — At Least That’s What Shadowy BID Consultant Tara Devine Said In 2012 And Why Would She Lie About That? →

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Business Improvement Districts, Fashion District BID

110 New Emails Between The City of LA And The East Hollywood BID Reveal Essentially Nothing About Anything, As Do The BID’s Bylaws — Also A Bunch Of Advertising Slash Branding Bullshit From The Fashion District Is Easy To Mock But Not So Informative After All

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Ah, friends, just another desultory announcement of yet another batch of public records obtained from our friends at the BIDs, the meaning of none of which is yet clear, but we don’t let that worry us here in MK-dot-Org-landia. Everything happens for a reason, as they say, and I’m sure all this junk is no exception and some day it will prove to comprise crucially important pieces in puzzles whose very existence is as yet undiscerned. But for now I’m just announcing its existence, and do with it what you will. Anyway, here’s what I got:

  • Emails between the East Hollywood BID and the City of LA — March 2017 through July 2017. There are 110 emails here, attachments are attached to the emails, it’s amazing how empty of content this batch is. About 84% of them consist of Nicole Shahenian trying to get people to use her new email at ehbid.org. I don’t know for sure but I’d bet money that she made this switch because of my CPRA requests. Also, Aram Taslagyan’s replacement as CD13 East Hollywood field deputy introduces himself herein, but I already forgot his name.

And turn the page for the rest of the junk and more random commentary!
Continue reading 110 New Emails Between The City of LA And The East Hollywood BID Reveal Essentially Nothing About Anything, As Do The BID’s Bylaws — Also A Bunch Of Advertising Slash Branding Bullshit From The Fashion District Is Easy To Mock But Not So Informative After All →

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Cory Spencer v. Lunada Bay Boys

Lunada Bay Boys Plaintiffs Motion To Compel Sang Lee And Jeff Kepley To Get Busy And Cough Up The Damn Discovery Is Denied On Highly Technical Grounds By Magistrate Judge Rozella Oliver

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For background take a look at this excellent article from the Times on this lawsuit. Also see here to download all pleadings in this case.

On Tuesday of this week, the Lunada Bay Boys Plaintiffs filed a motion asking magistrate judge Rozella Oliver to compel defendants Sang “Friend N A Pirate” Lee and Jeff “On Admin Leave” Kepley to get busy and comply with their discovery obligations. The very next day, Wednesday, August 9, Oliver issued an order denying the plaintiffs’ motions.5 As always, there’s a transcription of the order after the break. The reasons for denying the motions are pretty technical6 but seem to hinge on the principle that a decision on them is beyond the authority of the magistrate judge and the plaintiffs have to bring their motions to Judge Otero instead. Not much of a loss, then, it seems.
Continue reading Lunada Bay Boys Plaintiffs Motion To Compel Sang Lee And Jeff Kepley To Get Busy And Cough Up The Damn Discovery Is Denied On Highly Technical Grounds By Magistrate Judge Rozella Oliver →

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Cory Spencer v. Lunada Bay Boys

Lunada Bay Boys Plaintiffs Ask Otero To Deny Defense Motions Due To Evasion Of Discovery Obligations Which Made It Impossible To Meaningfully Oppose, Also Lengthy Excerpts From Sang Lee’s Deposition! Also Transcript Of A Mindblowingly Weird Telephone Conference With Rozella Oliver About Why Ferraras Didn’t Comply With Discovery Obligations!

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For background take a look at this excellent article from the Times on this lawsuit. Also see here to download all pleadings in this case.

This case is getting ultra-Byzantine, but if you’re following along, you may recall that the defendants have really not been complying with their discovery obligations. There’s a summary of some of the nonsense available. Also, all the defendants have filed motions for summary judgment, an outline of which and links to various stories on is also available. The Bay Boys based their motions for summary judgment on claims that the plaintiffs haven’t produced any actual evidence against them. At the time, plaintiffs’ lawyer Victor Otten warned them that their failure to comply would be grounds for moving to deny their motions.

And yesterday, that’s exactly what happened. Victor Otten filed this motion for administrative relief, claiming that the failure to comply with discovery has not only made it impossible to reply effectively to the motions for summary judgment, but in fact created the very grounds on which those motions rely:

Plaintiffs’ motion is made on the grounds that, due Defendants’ wrongful withholding of discovery—including withholding discovery that Magistrate Judge Oliver ordered them to produce—Plaintiffs have not had the opportunity to present the entirety of the factual record in opposition to Defendants’ motions. Indeed, Defendants’ basis for summary judgment is a purported lack of evidence; but to grant summary judgment at this stage would be to reward Defendants’ discovery misconduct.

The plaintiffs’ motion is based on Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 56(d), which states in part:

If a nonmovant shows by affidavit or declaration that, for specified reasons, it cannot present facts essential to justify its opposition, the court may … defer considering the motion or deny it …

A hearing on this motion is scheduled for September 5, 2017 in James Otero’s courtroom 10C in the First Street Federal Courthouse. The hearing on all the motions for summary judgment is scheduled for 10 a.m., and some of the paper filed yesterday gives 10 a.m. as the time for the motion to deny. One of the filings gives the time as 9 a.m. That’s probably wrong, but I don’t know for sure.

And there was a bunch of other good stuff filed as well. One of the two absolutely do-not-miss items are a transcript of a telephonic conference with magistrate judge Rozella Oliver concerning Charlie and Frank Ferrara’s failure to comply with discovery orders. This features defense attorney Tiffany Bacon and a bunch of deeply lame excuses for noncompliance. The judge seems dumbfounded that an actual professional lawyer would make these excuses out loud.

Plaintiffs’ lawyer Victor Otten also makes a plausible accusation that the defendants conspired to destroy evidence and an impassioned plea for sanctions against them. The other essential item is a set of lengthy excerpts from Sang Lee’s deposition including a bunch of really damning emails, some of which are quoted in the cartoon above. Turn the page for brief descriptions and links to a bunch of other items.
Continue reading Lunada Bay Boys Plaintiffs Ask Otero To Deny Defense Motions Due To Evasion Of Discovery Obligations Which Made It Impossible To Meaningfully Oppose, Also Lengthy Excerpts From Sang Lee’s Deposition! Also Transcript Of A Mindblowingly Weird Telephone Conference With Rozella Oliver About Why Ferraras Didn’t Comply With Discovery Obligations! →

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Cory Spencer v. Lunada Bay Boys

Lunada Bay Boys Plaintiffs File Motions To Compel Defendants Sang Lee And Jeff Kepley To Produce Records, Allege Malicious Destruction Of Evidence, Ask For Sanctions And Attorneys’ Fees! Hearing Set For September 6

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For background take a look at this excellent article from the Times on this lawsuit. Also see here to download all pleadings in this case.

A constant theme in the Lunada Bay Boys zillionaire surf thuggery case has been the glacially like-teeth-pulling pace at which the Bay Boys7 have complied with their discovery obligations. The parties have had innumerable telephonic hearings with the Honorable Rozella Oliver, magistrate judge in the case, who has had order meet-and-confers, and order the parties to submit briefs on their attempts to get through discovery, and issue orders, and issue even more orders.

Well today, at least with respect to defendants Sang Lee and Jeff Kepley, matters have evidently reached the point that the plaintiffs have filed motions to compel production of discovery materials and they’re also asking for fees and costs. Here are copies of the two motions along with associated so-called proposed joint statements, which are actually more interesting, containing as they do the facts behind the motions:

The issues, in short, are as follows. With respect to Sang Lee, he improperly withheld text messages, produced an unintelligible privilege log, lied about what he redacted, and so on. With respect to Jeff Kepley, he produced the wrong stuff, produced it in the form of unsearchable image files,8 made improper arguments for not producing stuff, and, crucially, never produced the phone records of various PVE cops who are alleged to be asshole buddies with the Bay Boys.

A hearing on these motions is scheduled for Wednesday, September 6 at 10:00 a.m. in Judge Rozella Oliver’s courtroom F on the 9th floor of the Spring Street federal courthouse at 312 N. Spring Street. Also, a bunch of fairly interesting supplementary material was filed in support of the motions, and you can find links and brief descriptions after the break.
Continue reading Lunada Bay Boys Plaintiffs File Motions To Compel Defendants Sang Lee And Jeff Kepley To Produce Records, Allege Malicious Destruction Of Evidence, Ask For Sanctions And Attorneys’ Fees! Hearing Set For September 6 →

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Business Improvement Districts

San Pedro BID Renewal Petition Drive Materials Available Including Blank Petitions And Information Sheets

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This is just a quick note to announce the availability of a first batch of renewal materials from the San Pedro Historic Waterfront BID. They’re available here on Archive.Org. These are from the petition phase, where property owners holding $1 more than 50% of the total assessed value have to petition City Council to renew their BID. I’m collecting material like this as part of a long-term project to send out countermailings when BIDs send out mailings in favor of establishment or renewal. They uniformly send blank petitions on which the only choice is to vote yes. See this sample, for instance.9

I think it would be reasonable, effective, and entertaining to send out petitions on which the only choice was no. Of course, the way the petition phase of BID renewal/establishment is structured, not voting is the same as voting no, but nevertheless, it would be politically valuable to see that property owners have a choice. In order to carry out this plan, it will also be necessary to have quick access to natively formatted copies of the mailing lists that the BIDs use. They have historically been exceedingly reluctant to give up this information.

You may, e.g., recall the fact that it took me five months of nagging Miranda Paster at the City Clerk’s office to get her to give me the mailing list for Venice Beach.10 In that case as in every other case where I’ve actually managed to obtain mailing lists, it came too late to be useful. But at some point, and this is the main reason this is a long term project, I will have convinced the BIDdies11 that they have to hand over mailing lists promptly so that they’re still politically useful.

Naturally, when sending out alt-petition forms, it will be necessary to send out alt-propaganda. Just take a look at the San Pedro BID’s info sheet that they sent out along with the petitions. Count the lies. Imagine an alt-petition that not only invites property owners to vote no on the BID but also informs them what their money’s really being spent for like, e.g., to to keep criminals from getting arrested because they can’t put out their own damn dumpster fires!

Every BID wastes its money on exactly that kind of nonsense, never publicized. This kind of campaign probably won’t stop any BIDs, but it may well increase the protest rate, which would be interesting indeed! And turn the page for links to all the items with a little bit of commentary.
Continue reading San Pedro BID Renewal Petition Drive Materials Available Including Blank Petitions And Information Sheets →

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Business Improvement Districts, Municipal Ethics

In Which I Present A General Argument That BID Consultancy Is Lobbying Activity In Order To Simplify And Regularize The Process Of Reporting BID Consultants To The Ethics Commission For Failure To Register

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It’s a long term project of mine to turn in as many BID consultants as possible to the City Ethics Commission for failing to register as lobbyists. So far, though, I’ve only managed to report Tara Devine for her work on the Venice Beach BID because the work is so involved. Such a report has two essential components:

  1. An argument that BID consultancy satisfies the definition of lobbying activity found in the the Municipal Lobbying Ordinance at LAMC §48.02.
  2. An argument that a specific BID consultant was paid for sufficiently many hours over sufficiently few months to trigger the registration requirement found in the MLO at LAMC §48.07(A).

It occurred to me recently that the first argument will be the same for all BID consultants, and that therefore it would be possible to streamline the reporting process by writing it up in a generic format that would apply to any given BID consultant. So that’s what I did, and you can read the result here. I will be using this to make a number of complaints against BID consultants in the near future, which I will report on here.

Meanwhile, if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can find explanations of everything after the break, along with a fairly detailed summary of the argument that BID consultancy qualifies as lobbying under the MLO.
Continue reading In Which I Present A General Argument That BID Consultancy Is Lobbying Activity In Order To Simplify And Regularize The Process Of Reporting BID Consultants To The Ethics Commission For Failure To Register →

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Cory Spencer v. Lunada Bay Boys

Lunada Bay Boys Plaintiffs File Tons Of Stuff In Opposition To Individual Defendants’ Various Motions For Summary Judgment Including Excerpts From The Long Awaited Deposition Of Jalian Johnston!

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For background take a look at this excellent article from the Times on this lawsuit. Also see here to download all pleadings in this case.

You may well recall that recently all the defendants in the Lunada Bay Boys case filed motions for summary judgment:

And this afternoon the plaintiffs filed their opposition to all these motions along with a ton of supporting paper. The opposition is well worth reading, and there are selections after the break. There’s also a list of all the other documents filed, and if you only read one of these, make it these selections from Jalian Johnston’s deposition. You may well remember that it was close to impossible to schedule this damn depo. Well, for sheer weirdness, it was worth the wait.

Some items are quoted verbatim in the cartoon at the head of this post, but there’s lots, lots, lots more in there. It’s also worth taking a look at the Plaintiffs’ Additional Material Facts in Opposition, which constitutes a good guide to all the dozens of other items filed tonight and previously.
Continue reading Lunada Bay Boys Plaintiffs File Tons Of Stuff In Opposition To Individual Defendants’ Various Motions For Summary Judgment Including Excerpts From The Long Awaited Deposition Of Jalian Johnston! →

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