If you’re planning to attend today’s discussion between General Jeff and me about the Skid Row Neighborhood Council you may also want to download these materials:
That’s all, and I hope to see you this afternoon!
As you may be aware, the California Public Records Act requires the release of all requested public records unless some specified exemption to disclosure applies.1 However, it turns out that, according to §6254.5, if an agency releases exempt material to anyone they’ve automatically waived their right to withhold it from anyone else:
Notwithstanding any other law, if a state or local agency discloses a public record that is otherwise exempt from this chapter, to a member of the public, this disclosure shall constitute a waiver of the exemptions specified in Section 6254 or 6254.7, or other similar provisions of law.
But what happens if an agency releases the material by accident and then other people want it? In 2016 the California Supreme Court decided the issue in Ardon v. City of Los Angeles, holding that inadvertent disclosure didn’t waive exemptions. At that time, the court recognized the potential for abuse2 and warned:
Our holding that the inadvertent release of exempt documents does not waive the exemption under the Public Records Act must not be construed as an invitation for agencies to recast, at their option, any past disclosures as inadvertent so that a privilege can be reasserted subsequently. This holding applies to truly inadvertent disclosures and must not be abused to permit the type of selective disclosure section 6254.5 prohibits. The agency’s own characterization of its intent is not dispositive, just as it is not dispositive under the law of privilege.
Continue reading State Senator Bob Wieckowski Introduces SB-1244, Which Would Undo The Easily Abused California Supreme Court Decision In Ardon v. City of Los Angeles Holding That Inadvertent Disclosures Of Exempt Records By A Public Agency Did Not Waive The Exemption
General Jeff and I will hold a public conversation on Saturday, March 24, at 3 p.m. about various aspects of the Skid Row Neighborhood Council formation effort. It will take place at the L.A. Poverty Department‘s Skid Row History Museum and Archive at 250 S. Broadway 90012. The event is part of the LAPD’s Public Safety for Real project.
I hope you will join us! And turn the page for essentially the same description of the event that you can find linked to above.
Continue reading Conversation Between General Jeff And Me About The Skid Row Neighborhood Council — At The Skid Row History Museum & Archive On Saturday, March 24, At 3 p.m.
So the other day I got a metric doodieton of emails from the Downtown Center BID, published them all right here on Archive.Org, and have been gradually writing about item after item. Today’s item is, from one perspective, inconsequential albeit entertaining. From another point of view, though, it illustrates the utter flamingly shameless flagrancy of the Downtown zillionaire establishment’s hypocrisy when it comes to law and order.
These parasites3 expect everyone, especially the homeless population of our City, to follow the law to the very freaking letter while they themselves, it turns out, are somehow allowed to steal from their employer and only make retribution months later when their crimes are discovered and that, it seems, settles the issue. Homeless people are caught with stolen bicycles all the time. Just imagine if all they had to do at that point was tell the cop that they would return the bike to the owner and that act of contrition, even if it was only contrition after apprehension, would make everything be just fine!
Why aren’t Carol Schatz and Jessica Lall advocating for this kind of policy, since it’s evident that it’s what they use internally at the CCALA and the DCBID? Oh, right, I haven’t told you the story! Well, TL;DR is that it seems that on March 30, 2017 at 2:00 p.m. precisely, DCBID staff accountant Joan Noble emailed CCALA office manager Lena Mulhall and was all like “WTF?! What did you spend this $31.39 on??!” and Lena Mulhall was all like “Sorry! I’ll pay it back! Just tell me who to write the damn check to!!”
Naturally turn the page for transcriptions, more emails, and the full and complete story of how Lena Mulhall charged $31.39 worth of FedEx to her employer’s account to return some cosplay supplies to a retailer and didn’t reimburse the funds until more than three months later and then not until she actually got caught!
Continue reading Despite Law-And-Order Obsession Of Central City Association With Respect To E.G. LAMC §41.18(d) And Other Homelessness-Criminalizing Measures It Seems That Lawlessness Flourishes And Is Tolerated Internally In The Form Of Unauthorized Use Of FedEx Account For Personal Shipping By CCALA Office Manager Lena Mulhall, Reimbursed Only Upon Discovery, Which Hardly Counts As Contrition At All
Yesterday I loosed mere anarchy on the world in the form of about 3500 emails between the Downtown Center BID and the seething stew of evil goop known to the world as the Central City Association. The release came in two parts, the unredacted and also the redacted.
Now, I know that not everyone in the world is obsessed with these BIDdies as I am, so let me just remind you all that in September 2016, Queen of Downtown and Zillion Dollar Woman Carol Schatz retired from her lofty post as supreme commanderette of the CCALA. She subsequently anointed the former big bad bossietta of the South Park BID, Jessica Lall, as Princess of Downtown and Schatz’s successorette at CCALA, effective January 3, 2017.
With this background in mind it turns out that this little gem from February 6, 2017, is not, by far, the least interesting item in the new release. In short, what happened is that on January 13, 2017, just ten days after she assumed the throne, Jessica Lall made an appointment to go to City Hall on February 9, 2017 with Carol Schatz, presumably to get shown the ropes and be introduced personally to the tame Councilpets by the master Counciltamer herself.
Of course, February 9, 2017 was a Thursday, which revealed Jessica Lall to be the inexperienced ignoramus that everyone Downtown mostly knew that she was.4 Carol Schatz, though, as much as this faux pas might have made her wish she’d elevated anybody but Ms. Jessica Lall to the crown, gritted her teeth and decided to teach her error-prone little protégé a lesson. Fortunately for us and for history, she did this via an email.
Now, if you are, as I am, a normal human being, those last sentences may well be completely unintelligible to you. Turn the page for transcriptions of everything along with the details of why you should never go to City Hall on a Thursday and how Carol Schatz schooled the newly-minted Princess in the inscrutable folkways of those who are paid to influence!
Continue reading Lobbyists Are Made, Not Born — How Carol Schatz, The Zillion Dollar Queen Of Downtown, Is Raising Up Her Newly Anointed Little Princess Jessica Lall In The Methods And Practices Of The Influence-Peddling Trade
This is just a short note to announce that I recently received a ton of records from Suzanne Holley of the Downtown Center BID. These are ostensibly all non-exempt emails between the Central City Association of Los Angeles and DCBID staffers from July 1, 2016 through January 31, 2018. You can get most of them here on Archive.Org. That set includes a bunch of PDFs I exported as well as an MBOX file that will give you access to the attachments.5
Suzanne also saw fit to redact 134 of these emails. She supplies them as MSG files, which I guess are binaries of some sort and not easily edited, so she prints them to PDF and redacts with some kind of PDF editor.6 You can find these 134 additional emails here on Archive.Org. There are a bunch of really important items here that I’ll be writing about over the next week7 but I just want to leave you with one hilarious item about music streaming. Turn the page for a transcription.
Continue reading Downtown Center BID Sunday Afternoon Document Dump! Thousands Of Pages Of Emails To/From The Central City Association! Zillionaire Secrets, Such As They Are, Laid Bare For All To See!
It’s well known in the anti-BID community that the City of Los Angeles is fully committed to the completely false story that a BIDs is formed by a spontaneous upswelling of property owners, uninfluenced by the City and completely outside of the City’s power to direct. Of course, as I said, this is a lie, and there’s plenty of evidence that it is a lie. State law not only gives the City the absolute right to determine everything BIDs do with their money but the City is not shy about exercising this right when necessary.
And there are plenty of concrete proofs that it’s actually the City of Los Angeles that creates BIDs. From then-CD13-rep Jackie Goldberg’s tireless efforts to form a BID in Hollywood in the mid 1990s to Eric Garcetti’s and Mitch O’Farrell’s almost decade-long quest to put together a BID in Echo Park to CD9 repster Curren Price’s strongarmed extortion of a South LA car dealership to get seed money for a BID along MLK Blvd. to CD11 rep Mike Bonin’s mendacious little flunky Debbie Dyner Harris’s multi-year involvement with the Venice Beach BID formation effort, the City is the motivating force, I’d venture, for every damn BID we have now and are gonna have in the future.
But every case I know of has involved the local Council District. This isn’t just my imagination, either. It’s reflected in these BID formation guidelines, published by the Los Angeles City Clerk‘s BID office, which state unequivocally that the BID formation process begins when: An individual, or a group of individuals (“proponent group”), or a Councilmember, desires to investigate the possibility of establishing a BID in a given area.
Consequently, what a surprise it was to find a set of emails between Andrew Said, who is neighborhood prosecutor for the Rampart Division, and Mike Russell, director of the Wilshire Center BID, which feature Andrew Said asking for Mr. Mike’s advice on how to start a BID in Westlake. The emails, which are part of a larger set I received yesterday,8 are available here on Archive.Org. Turn the page for transcriptions and some more discussion of what this might mean.
Continue reading First Known Instance Of Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office Involvement In BID Formation Revealed By Emails Between Rampart Neighborhood Prosecutor Andrew Said And Wilshire Center Director Mike Russell About How To Get A BID In Westlake
So as you’re probably aware, the staff of this blog is involved in any number of interminable legal battles with various BIDs across the City of Los Angeles for the sole reason that, being zillionaires and therefore suckled on white privilege and Satan’s wine, they cannot, for the damn life of them, just follow the freaking law. And some astonishingly large percentage of this City’s BIDdies are represented in their CPRAfactions by self-proclaimed Hollywood Superlawyer Jeffrey Charles Briggs.9
Therefore it is not unusual for me to sit down in front of the computer to spend a pleasant hour or so arguing with BIDdies about how they better start handing over the damn goods or else …10 and to spend like 80% of that time swapping electrons with the notorious JCB himself. And I have to say, it’s pretty fulfilling, cause the guy has a hair-trigger temper and I get three points11 every time he loses it.12
So anyway, right now we’re into it about the issue of whether two different versions of an email, with different metadata but the same body content, are distinct records or not. He says no, they’re the same. I say yes, they’re different.13 And he’s maintaining his untenable position for two distinct clients. First, the East Hollywood BID and second, the Hollywood Media District BID. And, my friend, turn the page for more snide remarks, evidence that Mr. JCB reads this blog and quotes it, and, de natch, transcriptions galore!
Continue reading Self-Proclaimed Hollywood Super Lawyer Jeffrey Charles Briggs Adorns His Professional Emails With Quotes From This Blog!! Tacit Endorsement Of Us? Irresistible Freudian Urge To Reveal His Hidden Forbidden Feelings? Stockholm Syndrome? All Of The Above?? Enquiring Minds Wanna Know!!
Well, yesterday I was blessed14 to attend a meeting of the good old Fashion District BID, and you might even have noticed that I uploaded video15 and wrote a long and hilarious16 post about it. But these meetings are so rich in a weirdly Freudian way that there’s a neverending fount of subjects bubbling up from each and every one, and yesterday’s was no exception.
For instance, watch and listen here as unexpectedly professional Director of Operations Randall Tampa informs the BIDdies whose minion he is about an elderly disheveled white arsonist loose in the district.17 At one point, it seems, the arsonist lit a dumpster fire and BID security were the first on the scene. I’ll let Randall Tampa take it from here:
And in one case [the fire location] was a twenty yard rollup that was under a building. And our safety team smelled it, got there, saw it. And they wheeled the trash bin out. And they actually burned their hands. But the fire department got there, put it out, told them to put mustard on their hands. I guess that’s the new cure for minor burns.
And turn the page for some discussion, another episode from the meeting, and a complete transcription of Randall Tampa’s remarks.
Continue reading Pardon Me, Would You Have Any Grey Poupon? Wildly Inappropriate Hilarity At FDBID Board Meeting About Burn Treatment For BID Security Guards Reveals Not Only That Zillionaires Don’t Care A Whit About The Well-Being Of The 99.9% But Also That They Actually Are Perversely Obsessed With Mustard Varieties — BID Operations Director Randall Tampa Admits That The Point Of Arrests Of Homeless People Is To Harass Them Rather Than To Enforce The Law, Asks Property Owners To Tell Tenants They Won’t Even Have To Testify In Court If They Report The Homeless
Today I rode the good old Metro Line 45 North on Broadway to the freaking Fashion District BID board of directors meeting. And all I have to say to you all, my loyal readers,18 is that if you enjoy reading this blog, you owe me freaking big time for the crapola I sit through on your behalf just so we can all get a little giggle and a little spine-chill from the weirdly tedious yet terrifying antics regularly to be experienced at these people’s damn meetings.19
So I did record the entire damned meeting, and you can watch it here on YouTube and if you care about freedom at all you can also watch it here on Archive.Org. The whole thing was essentially as tedious as one might expect, with most of the interesting action taking place before the meeting was convened, so I didn’t get it on tape.20
That bit consisted of director Brian Taban, vice president for covert creepy operations at über-shady real estate firm JADE Enterprises,21 bitching and moaning to Rena Leddy22 like this: “It’s impossible to find a construction lender at reasonable rates Downtown. You can’t find a lender that’s comfortable lending forty, fifty million dollars these days.”23
But it wasn’t all a waste of time! Most interestingly, LAPD Super Duper Cop Mark Reina gave a long update on plans to shift the Northern boundary of Newton Division so that the Fashion District will lie entirely within the Central Division. You can watch and listen here, and turn the page for some discussion.24 Also, be sure not to miss aggressively splenetic crackpot Linda Becker aggrievedly announcing to the world that the meeting was being recorded25 Continue reading Fashion District BID Board Meeting!! Chunkheaded Semigroomed Yobbo Thuggy-Boy Mark Chatoff Presides Over Kooky White-Privilege-O-Rama As LAPD Honcho Mark Reina Gives Jeansy-Creamsy Update On Pending Poverty-Crime-Associated Newton Division Border Shift Moving FDBID To Zillionaire-Associated Central Division — Meanwhile, Linda Freaking Becker, If You Don’t Have Something To Hide, Like Your Pathetic Performance As BID Renewal Boss, Why Are You So Afraid Of Being Videotaped?! — Also Rena Leddy Appears In Public With No Scarf!!!
