Here’s a quick summary of the background. BID formations are required by the Property and Business Improvement District Law of 1994 to be supported by a report prepared by a licensed engineer.1 Putatively licensed engineer Ed Henning wrote the report for the ill-born Venice Beach BID.2 The California Board for Professional Engineers regulates the engineering profession and can investigate allegations of incompetence or negligence. Ed Henning’s report for the Venice Beach BID is awful, negligent, and incompetent. The fact that this nightmare of a BID was established on the basis of this horror show of a report is another sprinkling of salt on the writhing slug into which the money-driven fucked-upification of Venice has transformed my heart.
A complaint was made against Henning by a citizen of Venice but was rejected by the Board without being read because they claimed that writing BID reports didn’t constitute the practice of engineering. After a great deal of discussion with BPELSG executive officer Ric Moore, he agreed that in the future his office would not dismiss such complaints unread and therefore I took the time to submit a complaint against Henning to the Board.3 You can get a copy of the complaint itself here on Archive.Org.
Well, that was in August 2018 and I heard nothing and I heard nothing and I heard nothing and a couple of times I sent polite little emails to Mr. Ric Moore just asking him could he confirm that he’d received the complaint and so forth and I heard nothing and nothing and nothing. Until this afternoon, which is when I received an email from our old friend Ms. Tiffany Criswell.
And Ms. Tiffany Criswell’s email informed me that not only had they received the complaint but that it had been given a code number and, most interesting of all, that the “complaint has been referred to an independent Expert Consultant for review.” Ms. Criswell was also careful to state that it’s essentially going to take forever to review and I shouldn’t hold my breath and so on. But damn! It feels like quite an accomplishment even to get this far. After the break you can read a full transcription of this email from Tiffany Criswell.
From:
Criswell, Tiffany@DCA <Tiffany.Criswell@dca.ca.gov>
To: ■■■■■■■■■@■■■■■■■■■.org
Subject: Complaint against civil engineer Ed Henning
Date: Friday, December 07, 2018 4:38 PM
Dear Mr. ■■■■■■■■■:
Mr. Moore has forwarded me your request for an update on the status of your complaint. Please accept my apologies for failing to provide you acknowledgment that we have received your complaint against Mr. Henning and that it is currently being processed. Your complaint has been referred to an independent Expert Consultant for review. The case is assigned Complaint Case No. 2018-12-346, for reference, and I am the staff currently assigned to the matter. We will notify you upon completion of the case investigation. Please be advised that complaint investigations can be lengthy, and we do not yet have an expectation as to when it will be completed.
Sincerely,
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Tiffany Criswell – Enforcement Program Manager
Board for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, and Geologists
2535 Capitol Oaks Drive Ste 300, Sacramento CA 95833
(ph) 916.263.2273│(fax) 916.263.0899
Here is what the BPELSG’s logo really looks like before I noised it all up.
- See §36622(n).
- And lots of other BIDs over the years.
- Most of the introduction to this post is copied verbatim from the post linked to right there. The facts haven’t changed and I don’t see the point in writing a new summary.
