All posts by Mike

Los Angeles City Council

Herb Wesson Has Evidently Completely Lost His Shit Due To City Hall Gadflies — He Introduced A Motion In Council Today To Amend Rules To Allow For Escalating Penalties For Disrupting Council Meetings — Just Like In Grade School — Almost Certainly A Violation Of The Brown Act And The State Constitution — But Herb Wesson Hasn’t Let That Stop Him In The Past So Why Would He Worry Now?

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UPDATE 2: This malcriado piece of crap has now received a CF number. It is CF 16-1104-S1. Subscribe and track, friends.

UPDATE: Emily Alpert-Reyes and David Zahniser, following up on my work,1 have published an excellent article in the Times on this very matter.

Herb Wesson, our putatively esteemed City Council president, is infamous for his inability to maintain his dignity in the face of criticism. He’s arranged for the City Attorney to trump up charges against Wayne Spindler, the guy with the puppets. He’s tried to instigate violence to cause the ejection of Armando Herman, the guy who makes faces. Wesson has spent years now tweaking Council rules to thwart members of the public who hurt his delicate feelings during public comment. His minion Mitch Englander, of course, is no better. The two of them even tried to amend the LAMC last year to make it easier to have putatively disruptive commenters arrested, although that particular unconstitutional abortion seems to have withered and died.

So it was shocking but not surprising to find this steaming little heap of a motion in today’s transmission from the City Clerk, wherein Wesson, seconded by Englander and a bunch of other folks who failed civics class, seeks to amend Council rules to allow ever-lengthening penalties for people who have been ejected from public meetings for disruption. If someone’s ejected from one meeting they’re ejected from all meetings for that day. The next time they’re banned for three days, and so on. You can read the entire text after the break.

The problem is that this rule almost certainly violates the state constitution, which guarantees via the Brown Act the right to attend and comment at public meetings. One can’t really be deprived of constitutional rights without due process, so Herb Wesson’s unilateral decision that one is being disruptive at one meeting can’t sensibly be enough to get one banned from other meetings. If this rule goes into effect it’ll give Herb Wesson the unilateral power to ban commenters from meeting for six days.

Of course there’s no principled distinction between six days and two weeks, between two weeks and a month, between a month and a year, between a year and forever. Obviously Herb Wesson doesn’t have the unilateral power to ban someone from public meetings forever, so he can’t do it for six days either. The Brown Act explicitly gives legislative bodies the power to clear the room for disruption, so obviously also the power to eject disruptive individuals.2 But there’s no law that allows the City Council to bar people from attending a different meeting because they allegedly disrupted an earlier meeting.

The state constitution, on the other hand, explicitly gives them the right to attend the later meeting. Now, of course, I’m not a lawyer, and I’m just shooting off my mouth about this, but you’ll see, I am correct. Turn the page for a transcription of the motion.
Continue reading Herb Wesson Has Evidently Completely Lost His Shit Due To City Hall Gadflies — He Introduced A Motion In Council Today To Amend Rules To Allow For Escalating Penalties For Disrupting Council Meetings — Just Like In Grade School — Almost Certainly A Violation Of The Brown Act And The State Constitution — But Herb Wesson Hasn’t Let That Stop Him In The Past So Why Would He Worry Now? →

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Fashion District BID, Lawsuits, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Fashion District BID Sued In Order To Enforce Compliance With The Public Records Act — Noted CPRA Attorney Karl Olsen Co-Counsels With Abenicio Cisneros To See That Justice Is Done In This Egregious Attempt To Withhold Information About, Among Other Crucial Matters, The BID’s Role In Torpedoing The Skid Row Neighborhood Council — Novel Legal Issues Raised Regarding The Effect Of The Municipal Lobbying Ordinance On CPRA Exemptions In Los Angeles

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On August 15, 2018, faced with Rena Leddy’s unhinged intransigence and chronic disregard of the law, I was forced to file a petition asking a judge to require the Fashion District BID to comply with the California Public Records Act. Most of the petitions I’ve filed recently have had only to do with BIDs ignoring my requests altogether1 but this one raises interesting and possibly novel issues of how exemptions to the CPRA are to be interpreted in general and in Los Angeles in particular. I’m represented by Abenicio Cisneros and Karl Olson.2

There are four classes of records at issue in this petition. Those are:3

  • Emails between the FDBID and either the South Park BID or DLANC
  • Emails in the possession of BID Board president Mark Chatoff
  • Emails between the BID and Urban Place Consulting
  • Emails in the possession of BID renewal committee chair Linda Becker

Rena Leddy claimed either that such records didn’t exist or that, if they did, the BID could withhold them on the basis of the so-called deliberative process exemption.4 In each of the four cases either there’s independent evidence that responsive records exist or else it defies belief that no records exist. For instance it is not plausible at all that Linda Becker, chair of the BID’s renewal committee, does not possess a single email relevant to the conduct of the BID’s business.5

Thus the petition focuses on debunking the exemption claims as it’s going to be hard for the BID to argue that no records exist. Turn the page for some details and some transcribed excerpts!
Continue reading Fashion District BID Sued In Order To Enforce Compliance With The Public Records Act — Noted CPRA Attorney Karl Olsen Co-Counsels With Abenicio Cisneros To See That Justice Is Done In This Egregious Attempt To Withhold Information About, Among Other Crucial Matters, The BID’s Role In Torpedoing The Skid Row Neighborhood Council — Novel Legal Issues Raised Regarding The Effect Of The Municipal Lobbying Ordinance On CPRA Exemptions In Los Angeles →

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Business Improvement Districts

Yet Another Egregious Violation Of The Brown Act By The Pacific Palisades BID In 2016 — If This Is Mike Bonin’s Idea Of A Good BID What In The World Would A Bad One Look Like — As Before Not One Board Member Objected To Illegal Votes By Email, Telephone — As Before Legal Action Is Time-Barred So Yet Again The Palisades BID Escapes Consequences Of Their Actions

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A couple weeks ago I published some evidence of mind-blowingly egregious Brown Act violations by the Pacific Palisades BID, which, what with Zeck Dreck (ret.) Laurie Sale’s twisted lurching obstructionism and Board Member and Caruso minion Rick Lemmo’s willingness to break the bank just to thwart my inquiries, has turned out, under the acrimonious influence of the world’s angriest CPRA lawyer, which is to say Carol F. Humiston, to be one of this City’s most difficult BIDs from which to obtain records in an orderly, prompt, lawful manner.

Nevertheless, persistence has paid off, and I did, eventually, this summer, obtain a big stack of goodies from these evil henchies up in Northwest zillionaireville and, as I said before, I’m gradually prepping this sizzlin’ hot mess of a production for publication. The text for today’s sermon is a series of emails from April 2016 showing yet another egregious1 Brown Act violation on the part of these littoral lunkheads. Here’s what went down. Laurie Sale2 emailed her damn Board on April 20, 2016, and this is what she had to say for herself:

From: Palisades BID <laurie@palisadesbid.org>

Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2016 11:26 AM

To: ‘Asvina Narain’; ‘Benjamin Gold’; ‘DeeDee West’; Don Scott; Elliot Zorensky; ‘Joyce Brunelle’; ‘Laurie Sale’; Lee Ford; ‘Lynn Borland’; Rick Lemmo; Shaun Malek; Susan
Carroll

Cc: ‘Sharon Shapiro’

Subject: SPECIAL MEETING OF PALISADES BID BOARD

Attachments: Agenda Special Meeting April 28, 2016.docx

Dear Board Members,

Elliot and I spoke about setting up a SPECIAL BID meeting for next Wed., the 27th at 8:30. We’d like to have a resolution (ACTION ITEM) about formally supporting the Caruso Project. As you know, there is still some local opposition, but all of the other community organizations have given their support, and we’d like to know your thoughts on the matter. There is a planning committee meeting on Thurs. the 28 th We’d like the Caruso folks to know where we stand, and so, have decided to call this meeting, prior to the planning meeting.

The agenda is attached, and, as you will see, it’s simply a one topic special meeting. We’d really appreciate your attendance if possible.

I know it is last minute, but if you CANNOT attend, would you please email me with your written support or opposition to having the BID officially support the project. You may also call in to the meeting, at 8:30, and become part of the discussion, if you wish. Here is the number for the conference call:

Dial-in Number: ■■■■■■■■■
Access Code: ■■■■■■■■■

Also, at 8:00 on Wed., the folks from Spectrum, who are doing the power washing, will be there, so we can take photos for the press, and well be able to witness the completion of our first BID project.

Please rsvp to me

Thanks,

Laurie

No doubt you’ve spotted some problems here, and there are others that become clear only on reading the responses. Turn the page for links to emails, transcriptions, and discussions of all the juicy illegal details!
Continue reading Yet Another Egregious Violation Of The Brown Act By The Pacific Palisades BID In 2016 — If This Is Mike Bonin’s Idea Of A Good BID What In The World Would A Bad One Look Like — As Before Not One Board Member Objected To Illegal Votes By Email, Telephone — As Before Legal Action Is Time-Barred So Yet Again The Palisades BID Escapes Consequences Of Their Actions →

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Venice Beach BID

Donald Duckworth Was The Very First BID Consultant Involved With Venice Beach BID Formation — In June 2014 Debbie Dyner Harris Introduced El Duckie To Carl Lambert — Meetings Were Held — Duckworth Drafted Petitions And Gave Advice — Then El Duckie Seems To Have Stopped Returning Carl Lambert’s Emails —Then Nothing Until Tara Devine Took Over — Reason For That Not Yet Clear

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The story of Tara Devine and the Venice Beach BID has been told repeatedly and in great detail starting in 2016 when the ultimately successful push to establish this most-despised of Los Angeles BIDs1 was revived. But the pre-2016 history remains obscure, not least due to zeck dreck Devine’s obstreperous obstructionism with respect to providing public records.2

Of course, everything about this BID is interesting,3 so what a pleasant surprise it was to find in a recent release of goodies4 by BIDdological freak show specimen Donald Duckworth a series of emails from 2014 showing that when Mike Bonin first kicked off the Venice Beach BID formation process his staffie Debbie Dyner Harris turned to El Duckworth to hook up with criminal conspirator and founding BIDfather Carl Freaking Lambert to get the job done. Internal evidence strongly suggests that this was the beginning of the modern VBBID formation process.5 Strangely, Estela Lopez, the wickedest woman on Skid Row, was also slated to be involved.6

The story begins on June 5, 2014 when Debbie Dyner Harris emailed El Duckworth with a little proposition:

Hi Don. I hope all is well. The Councilmember is hosting several property owners and business owners along Ocean Front Walk in Venice at a meeting this Monday, June 9, to discuss creating a BID. He was wondering if you’d be able to attend, to help answer any questions on the creation and operation of a BID, and providing your insight. We will be joined by Miranda Paster of the City Clerk’s office, as well as the founding director and the current president of Central City East’s BID.

I am sorry for the late notice, we’ve been trying to develop our agenda. It will be held this Monday, June 9, at 9:45am in our Westchester community room. I hope you can make it!

Thanks,
Debbie

And turn the page for the rest of the story, along with links to and transcriptions of the evidence!
Continue reading Donald Duckworth Was The Very First BID Consultant Involved With Venice Beach BID Formation — In June 2014 Debbie Dyner Harris Introduced El Duckie To Carl Lambert — Meetings Were Held — Duckworth Drafted Petitions And Gave Advice — Then El Duckie Seems To Have Stopped Returning Carl Lambert’s Emails —Then Nothing Until Tara Devine Took Over — Reason For That Not Yet Clear →

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Homeless Issues

Miguel Santiago’s BID-Inspired Horror-Show Anti-Homeless Bill Is Dead For This Year — It Would Have Made It Far Easier To Intern Homeless People In Los Angeles County — Placed On Inactive File Yesterday As Legislature Adjourns For The Year

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In January of this year Assemblymember Miguel Santiago introduced AB-1971, which was meant to expand the legal definition of a gravely disabled person essentially to allow at-will internment of homeless human beings. This pernicious nonsense was eagerly supported by Los Angeles City Councillors and their BIDdie co-conspirators. The bill met vigorous opposition from homeless people, their advocates, civil rights supporters, people who see how such a law could be weaponized against the elderly, and so on. A coalition of the sane, that is.

Last month, in a particularly cynical move, the bill was amended to only apply in Los Angeles County. However, even that concession to the opposition evidently wasn’t enough to save it. Yesterday, on the last day of the 2018 legislative session, the bill was placed on the inactive file. I don’t pretend to understand much about the arcane workings of the legislature, but it seems that this means it’s not dead, it could come back for further politicking next year, but that it’s not going to pass into law in 2018 and therefore will not take effect in 2019.1

Of course the bill’s supporters presented it publicly as a compassionate measure to save homeless people who would otherwise die on the street. Regardless of their stated intentions, though, it’s clear that, if passed, this bill would have given police and BIDs a powerful tool for clearing homeless people off the streets and into carceral institutions, the better to effectuate their goal of cleansing the streets of Los Angeles of people who they see as no better than trash.

This perspective is supported by the lists of opposers and supporters, consisting of mostly governments, police, and Kerry Morrison’s wholly-controlled subsidiaries, which you will find after the break.
Continue reading Miguel Santiago’s BID-Inspired Horror-Show Anti-Homeless Bill Is Dead For This Year — It Would Have Made It Far Easier To Intern Homeless People In Los Angeles County — Placed On Inactive File Yesterday As Legislature Adjourns For The Year →

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Los Angeles City Government, Venice Beach BID

Tara Devine Accuses Rita Moreno Of Harboring Prejudice Against The Venice Beach BID And Of Badmouthing Her And Her Damn BID To Property Owners — And Of Being Too Dumb To Understand BIDs And Of Not Being Able To Read — Rita Moreno Accuses Tara Devine Of Badmouthing The City To Property Owners — Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?! — Oh, And More On Tara Devine’s September 26, 2017 Surgery, The Swiss Army Knife Of Excuses For Nonperformance Of Contractual And Statutory Obligations

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As you no doubt recall, in April 2017 I was forced by the weirdo intransigence of Ms. Tara Devine to file a writ petition against the Venice Beach BID because they could not, would not, comply with the damn public records act for essentially years on end. And in June Tara Devine started handing over records, with more handed over in July. She’s evidently producing a batch a month even though she promised more, because just the other day I got a set of 284 emails between her and the City of Los Angeles, and I published them as usual on Archive.Org for your edification and pleasure.1

And there is a lot of good stuff in this set, but first a little more background. You will, of course, recall that the Venice Beach BID, despite being funded by the City starting in January 2017, didn’t even have a Board meeting until January 2018 and didn’t begin providing services until many months after that. This series of egregious failures led to a great deal of tension between the BIDdies and the City. So much so that in May 2018 the BIDdies got called on the carpet at City Hall and were also forced, much against their will, to refund all the money they’d collected for 2017.

And it seems that, obviously at least in hindsight, these serious consequences in 2018 arose from a great deal of tension between the City and the BID in 2017. The text for today’s sermon is a series of emails from October of that year between Tara Devine and Rita Moreno of the City Clerk which demonstrates exactly that.

It all started when Rita Moreno asked Tara Devine why the BID didn’t even have a working phone, which was forcing the City to field the outpouring of complaints from property owners who had paid a ton of money but were receiving nothing for it. Tara Devine, as is her angry and unprofessional little wont, flipped out on Rita Moreno, and the whole vitriolic exchange with links and transcriptions is right after the break!
Continue reading Tara Devine Accuses Rita Moreno Of Harboring Prejudice Against The Venice Beach BID And Of Badmouthing Her And Her Damn BID To Property Owners — And Of Being Too Dumb To Understand BIDs And Of Not Being Able To Read — Rita Moreno Accuses Tara Devine Of Badmouthing The City To Property Owners — Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?! — Oh, And More On Tara Devine’s September 26, 2017 Surgery, The Swiss Army Knife Of Excuses For Nonperformance Of Contractual And Statutory Obligations →

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Business Improvement Districts, Los Angeles City Council

Some Insight Into How Mike Bonin Arranges For Business Improvement Districts To Present His Policy Positions To The Public Is Provided By A Moderately Bizarre Email Exchange Between Don Duckworth And Bonin Chief Of Staff Chad Molnar On Mike Bonin’s Position On Street Vending Opt-In Versus Opt-Out And Requiring Vendors To Obtain Property Owner Permission — After Which Don Duckworth Wrote To His Bosses On The BID And As Good As Accused Mike Bonin Of Being A Whiny Little Baby

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Oh, man! Don’t you hate it when you tell your followers and minions and networkers that your Councilmember supports some policy position and then his chief of staff flips out on you and “requests” that you eat your words and you have to do it cause if you don’t the Council District might cut off the flow of zillion dollar bills pouring down on you and the damn zillionaires as whose henchman you serve from the heady cornucopian heights of the fourth floor of 200 N. Spring Street?1

What?! That never happens to you?! Well, it certainly happens to BIDdological freak show specimen Donald Duckworth like, all the freaking time. This is the story of one such episode from 2017 having to do with street vending, which began on January 11 when 2017 Donald Duckworth sent out the Westchester Town Center BID‘s Winter 2016 newsletter.

It contained a typically stupid but essentially innocuous article on the infamous CF 13-1493, which is, of course, the street vending matter. I don’t have the original email attached to which he sent the thing, but he also forwarded a copy to Rita Moreno of the City Clerk’s office. And therein we find the following exhortatory paragraph, which evidently accompanied the newsletters sent out to the BIDs willing minions:

We are sending the newsletter now so that our readers have an opportunity to voice their preferences with respect to the proposed City action that is being supported by Councilman Mike Bonin. Think of taco carts, fruit vendors, and cheap merchandise together with all of the litter, sidewalk mess, and clutter caused by vendors that don’t pay rent, taxes, or fees as the brick and mortar stores they are competing against do. The Westchester Town Center BID has requested our Councilman to not force street vending on the community of Westchester and to require property owner approval before any vendor could set up shop in front of their property. If some neighborhoods want it fine, but we don’t think Westchester is one of those places. The Neighborhood Council and Chamber of Commerce have agreed. How fair is it to require property owners to repair their sidewalks but not allow them to have a voice in whether or not someone can set up a business there?

Well, it seems that Councilmember Mike didn’t like this claim that he was in favor of the street vending apocalypse2 and he called Donald Duckworth on the morning of January 12, 2017 and was all like hey dude, not right and therefore apologize. And Donald Duckworth, whose job is to bring home the bacon rather than to aggravate the pigs, begged forgiveness and agreed to correct the damn record. And the whole detailed story along with links to and transcriptions of the emails and other records can be found directly after the damn break!
Continue reading Some Insight Into How Mike Bonin Arranges For Business Improvement Districts To Present His Policy Positions To The Public Is Provided By A Moderately Bizarre Email Exchange Between Don Duckworth And Bonin Chief Of Staff Chad Molnar On Mike Bonin’s Position On Street Vending Opt-In Versus Opt-Out And Requiring Vendors To Obtain Property Owner Permission — After Which Don Duckworth Wrote To His Bosses On The BID And As Good As Accused Mike Bonin Of Being A Whiny Little Baby →

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Skid Row Neighborhood Council

On March 14, 2017 Grayce Liu Was Already Working Out Details Of Online Voting For The SRNC Subdivision Election With Everyone Counts Two Weeks Before City Council Even Approved The Plan — Obviously We Already Knew Representative Democracy In Los Angeles Is Highly Stylized Semantically Empty Performance Art Rather Than A Deliberative Or Even A Political Process — But Usually It’s Not Thrown So Boldly In Our Faces

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I recently received almost three hundred pages of emails from 2017 between Los Angeles City Clerk Holly Wolcott and Department of Neighborhood Empowerment boss lady Grayce Liu. These are available here on Archive.Org. There’s a lot of quite interesting material there, most of it far off my beat, but there’s this one item in particular which is quite relevant.

It’s a March 14, 2017 email from Grayce Liu to Bill Kuncz of Everyone Counts informing him, among other things, of the fact that the City of Los Angeles would be using online voting for the April 6, 2017 Skid Row Neighborhood Council subdivision election. She told him “… that we would be able to move forward with using the online voting and voter registration platform for our subdivision election in a few weeks.”

The main problem with this, of course, is that the question of allowing online voting didn’t even come before the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners until March 20, 2017. It didn’t come before City Council’s Rules and Elections Committee until March 22, 2017, and it wasn’t finally approved by City Council until March 28, 2017.

You may well remember that at that March 22, 2017 meeting José Huizar announced his decision to allow online voting by reading a pre-written statement, showing conclusively that he’d made up his mind even before hearing public comment. This email shows that he’d made up his mind at least eight days before the meeting even took place.

To be sure, there’s nothing illegal about this behavior. There’s possibly nothing even immoral about it. But in the culture of the Los Angeles City Council, where no one votes against their colleagues’ desires for intra-district issues, it makes it even more glaringly clear that our local representative democracy is not functioning at all. A couple of zillionaires went to see Huizar in January 2017 and convinced him to destroy the SNRC and that’s all it took.

The decision was essentially finalized at that point with no public input, no deliberation, and no chance that wiser heads on the City Council would prevail. There are no wiser heads.1 No one even had the decency to tell Grayce Liu to wait for the formalism of City Council approval before acting on Huizar’s unilateral decision. Sadly, it’s business as usual. Turn the page for a transcription.
Continue reading On March 14, 2017 Grayce Liu Was Already Working Out Details Of Online Voting For The SRNC Subdivision Election With Everyone Counts Two Weeks Before City Council Even Approved The Plan — Obviously We Already Knew Representative Democracy In Los Angeles Is Highly Stylized Semantically Empty Performance Art Rather Than A Deliberative Or Even A Political Process — But Usually It’s Not Thrown So Boldly In Our Faces →

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LAPD, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Thousands Of Pages Of 2016 LAPD Emails Shed Light On Hollywood Nightclub Racism And Creepy Cop Tricks — Including Targeted Enforcement Against Minority-Serving Establishments — Sending People “To Jail Before They Commit Crimes” — Explicit Targeting Of Putatively Chronic Offenders — Not To Mention Bizarro-World Redaction Policies Which Shed Some Light On The LAPD’s Contempt For The Public Records Act

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Friends, cast your minds back to the Spring of 2015! Kerry Morrison’s various BIDs were all in a psychotic tizzy about dark-skinned people coming to Hollywood on the weekends to drink and dance and have some damn fun. Kerry Morrison and her yes-mob started a campaign against the nightclubs on Hollywood Blvd whose patrons were insufficiently lacking in melanin.1 This led, by the Fall of 2015, to Hollywood’s itchy skritchy little Council-snitchy, the one, the only, Mitch O’Freaking Farrell, starting a high-profile public campaign to shut down every nightspot that made Ms. Kerry Freaking Morrison wrinkle her freaking nose in disdain.

There was some pushback from the club owners in 2016, e.g. from the owner of the Rusty Mullet, whose lawyers played video from this blog at a Council hearing, and the organizers of the #blackhollywoodmatters campaign who, notably, convinced Marqueece Harris-Dawson to vote against the wishes of his smarmy little buddy from CD13 in a committee hearing, although naturally he reversed himself at the full Council vote. But in the usual way of things these minor victories didn’t have much of an effect,2 and by the end of August 2016 Kerry Morrison was, like Grendel’s momma, sitting around her reeking lair counting her ill-gotten victories on her poisonous and twisted little talons.

Around this time, that is, in August 2016, I filed a public records act request with the LAPD asking for emails related to these matters. And because the LAPD is basically a criminal conspiracy with respect to CPRA and just will not comply with the freaking law, which is why they get sued under the CPRA all the freaking time, it took them two whole years to hand over the goods. But they finally did produce thousands of pages3 and I recently published the whole pile on Archive.Org for your pleasure and edification.

At this late date, of course, and this was doubtless the City’s intention, the battle for the soul of Hollywood Blvd is pretty much over, with the reprehensible frightening whitening brightening of its nightlife essentially complete. However, history is interesting as well as political science, so I plan to write on these emails from time to time as there’s a lot of really disturbing and important material in there. The texts for today’s sermon come from this set here, and turn the page for the details!
Continue reading Thousands Of Pages Of 2016 LAPD Emails Shed Light On Hollywood Nightclub Racism And Creepy Cop Tricks — Including Targeted Enforcement Against Minority-Serving Establishments — Sending People “To Jail Before They Commit Crimes” — Explicit Targeting Of Putatively Chronic Offenders — Not To Mention Bizarro-World Redaction Policies Which Shed Some Light On The LAPD’s Contempt For The Public Records Act →

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Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Los Angeles City Government

In 1995 The City Attorney And The Fair Political Practices Commission Both Agreed That BIDs Were Government Agencies And Their Board Members Were Public Officials Subject To The Brown Act And The CPRA — So When Aaron Epstein Sued The City And The Hollywood BID In 1999 Why Did The City Take Kerry Morrison’s Side Even Though They Already Knew Epstein Was Right? — Probably Yet Another Case Of Yielding To Her Every Damn Whim No Matter How Dire The Consequences — Ironically The Same Lawyer, Patricia Tubert, Argued Both Contradictory Sides Of The Dispute

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I’ve written many times about the monumental case Epstein v. Hollywood Entertainment District BID and will, I have no doubt, write about it many more times to come. The issue in 1998 was that Hollywood property owner Aaron Epstein thought that he ought to be able to attend BID meetings whereas executive director Kerry Morrison, then at the very dawn of her BIDdological career but as characteristically secretive as ever, refused to let him in to watch his money being spent.

He sued in 1999, claiming that the BID1 was required to comply with the Brown Act by virtue of §54952(c)(1)(A), which makes an entity of the following type subject to its transparency requirements:

A board, commission, committee, or other multimember body that governs a private corporation, limited liability company, or other entity that … [i]s created by the elected legislative body in order to exercise authority that may lawfully be delegated by the elected governing body to a private corporation, limited liability company, or other entity.

The case yielded a monumental opinion from the Court of Appeal, dripping with sarcasm and barely disguised contempt for the weak arguments of the defendants. It’s worth reading in its entirety, or take a look here for selections. But for our purposes here it’s enough to know that both the BID, driven by Ms. Kerry Morrison and her absolute disgust at the possibility of public oversight of her publicly funded activities, and the City of Los Angeles in the person of then-deputy-City-Attorney Patricia Tubert, argued vehemently that the BID was not in any way subject to the Brown Act.

So what a surprise it was, the other day, to obtain a copy of this 1995 report from the Los Angeles City Attorney, authored by none other than Patricia Tubert, which explicitly stated that in the opinion of the City Attorney BIDs were in fact subject to the Brown Act, exactly as the Court of Appeal ruled in 2001 over the City’s objections. And attached to this report was a 1994 opinion issued by the Fair Political Practices Commission in response to an explicit request from none other than the Los Angeles City Attorney which reached precisely the same conclusion.

And not only that but both agencies agreed that BID board members are in fact public officials with respect to these laws and also subject to state prohibitions on conflicts of interest.2 So it’s really a mystery now why in 1998 when Aaron Epstein wanted to attend BID meetings the City of Los Angeles didn’t just tell Kerry Morrison and her infernal board of directors that they had to let him in. Why they spent three long and undoubtedly expensive years defending a position that they already knew to be wrong.

At this late date and because the attorney client privilege between the City and the City Attorney is doubtlessly implicated, we are probably never going to know for sure why they made the obviously wrong decision to defend an indefensible position. But if they were thinking about Kerry Morrison and her weirdo schemes back then like they are now, and why wouldn’t they have been, they wouldn’t have needed any more of a reason beyond Kerry Morrison’s request. Shameful. And harmful. But not a surprise. Turn the page for selected transcriptions.
Continue reading In 1995 The City Attorney And The Fair Political Practices Commission Both Agreed That BIDs Were Government Agencies And Their Board Members Were Public Officials Subject To The Brown Act And The CPRA — So When Aaron Epstein Sued The City And The Hollywood BID In 1999 Why Did The City Take Kerry Morrison’s Side Even Though They Already Knew Epstein Was Right? — Probably Yet Another Case Of Yielding To Her Every Damn Whim No Matter How Dire The Consequences — Ironically The Same Lawyer, Patricia Tubert, Argued Both Contradictory Sides Of The Dispute →

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