Shadowy BID consultant Teresa “Tara” Devine has what it takes! She is evidently 15% likeable, honest, and infested with what passes for integrity in BID consultancy circles.If you follow BIDs in Los Angeles you will know that the process for creating a new one is so fraught with weirdo technicalities that when a Councilmember wants to form one in their district, not only do they have to get together a bullshit astroturf front group made up of major campaign contributors, but they also have to hire a consultant to guide the BAFG through the labyrinth. Of course, this is anything but an adversarial process, and success is pre-ordained. However, if the requirements imposed by the State of California are not adhered to somewhat scrupulously, the new BID will be vulnerable to challenges by non-mainstream anti-BID malcontents.1 Thus the City has an interest in making sure that these consultants are competent.2
This (decontextualized) image from an email to CD13 staff suggests that despite the City’s rhetoric on the matter, their policy towards people living in encampments is not all sunshine and outreach.My recent success in using CPRA to get advance notice of an encampment clean-up from the City reminded me that I had a number of emails to/from Council District 13 organizing such operations between January and April 2016 that I still hadn’t prepared for publication.4 So I spent this morning getting them into shape and putting them up on the Internet. This material sheds new light on the City’s still-mysterious encampment-breaking system. Also, some of the attachments to these emails reveal crucial information about the computer database(s) used by the City to coordinate the process. I discuss this matter, along with some other issues, after the break. Meanwhile, here are the locations of these emails:
On the Internet Archive — As usual, this has the advantage that you can get the whole batch via BitTorrent if that’s useful. By later today, also, there should be OCRed PDFs there, and text versions.
Heather Holt, long-suffering executive director of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission.A couple weeks ago I published an open letter to various City politicians asking them to return shady contributions to their campaigns by shady Venice Beach Business Improvement District proponents Carl Lambert and Mark Sokol. There’s been no discernable response so far, but it’s important to remember that at least as far as I can tell the politicians didn’t actually break the law by accepting the contributions. In fact it was Sokol and Lambert who broke it by making the contributions.
The relevant laws are Section 470(c)(12)(A)(i) of the City Charter,7 which says:
The following persons shall not make a campaign contribution to any elected City official, candidate for elected City office, or City committee controlled by an elected City official or candidate: A person who bids on or submits a proposal or other response to a contract solicitation that has an anticipated value of at least $100,000 and requires approval by the City Council.
I understand. … The police protected you and there were courts of law. You didn’t need a friend like me. But, now you come to me, and you say: “Councilman O’Farrell, give me justice.” But you don’t ask with respect. You don’t offer friendship. You don’t even think to call me Godfather.This is just a brief episode from the saga of the cat-kicking K-Town slumlord Bryan Kim and his unholy compact with Mitch O’Farrell’s office to trade lunch money for homeless encampment clean-ups. It seems that on March 11, 2016, while Bryan Kim was still negotiating the terms of his on-demand encampment clean-up with CD13 staff, he asked CD13 scheduler David Cano for a meet with the CM himself, Mitch O’Farrell, in the first of this series of emails:
As discussed, I’d would [sic] like to request to meet with Councilmember O’Farrell re:The Homeless Encampment issue near LA City College to see how we can collectively work together on short term and sustainable permanent solution.
Well, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about these City Government types, it’s that they never do anything on their own. Always, it’s consultations, consultations, consultations.8 So eight minutes later David Cano wrote to Aram Taslagyan and strongarm O’Farrell consigliere Marisol Rodriguez:
Thoughts? D.O. time?
Dear kitty-cat, TAKE THAT, YOU HOMELESS P.O.S.!!! Sincerely, Mitch O’Farrell and your friends at CD13.I wrote some time ago about how CD13 staffer Aram Taslagyan organized an on-demand homeless encampment clean-up at the behest of scumbag cat-kicking Koreatown slumlord Bryan Kim, who needed it done really really fast because he had some kind of inspection forthcoming. Well, yesterday,10 I managed to get copies of some new emails between Bryan Kim and various CD13 staffies on the subject.11 In particular, on March 27, 2016, Bryan Kim wrote to CD13 District Director Marisol Rodriguez12 under the subject Recognizing Aram Taslagyan, stating e.g. that13
Aram did a great job demonstrating professional excellence and swiftly took comprehensive action to utilize his alliance with other groups such as LAPD, Sherrif, groups among others. I applaud his great effort for taking care (completely clearing all homeless encampment issues.
And what are Bryan Kim’s hopes for the future?
As of 4 days later there has still been no recurrence of them revisiting on Vermont and Marathon.
We hope to continue vigilant and collective efforts as I am in contact with Braille, LACC, local and community patrons to closely monitor any future outbreak, for which I will let Aram and lapd know.
For a chamber of horrors, City Hall sure has beautiful interiors.I mostly have refrained from writing about the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative because it’s too far off our beat.14 However, the Brown Act is very close to our core subject matter. So imagine my surprise on discovering Council File 16-1054, in which Council is holding a closed session to discuss the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative under section 54956.9(d)(4) of the Brown Act, which states that a closed session can be held when:
Based on existing facts and circumstances, the legislative body of the local agency has decided to initiate or is deciding whether to initiate litigation.
This clause has the dubious distinction of being the only reason for closing a session which is effectively uncheckable. All other reasons either require an existing lawsuit, which must be named in the agenda, or some kind of personnel action or other concrete action which must be reported publicly at the end of the closed session. For the “initiation of litigation” exception, though, there’s no way at all to check if they’re not just making it up. Even if they never sue anyone, they can always say that they were considering it and decided not to sue. If a local agency is willing to lie, and the Los Angeles City Council surely is, this is the clause to use to hold unauthorized closed sessions. Which is certainly what they’re doing here. I mean, who are they going to sue because the NII qualified for the ballot? So what secrets are they going to discuss this Friday? How they’re going to fund their 2017 campaigns if they can’t approve more mega-zillionaire mixed use monstrosities? Continue reading How to Evade the Brown Act: The City Council is Having a Closed Session on Friday, September 30, to Discuss the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative Because Mike Feuer Wants to Sue Somebody Over It. Yeah, Right.→
There aren’t nearly enough pictures of Ron Galperin on this blog.You may recall that I’ve been writing about potentially illegal campaign contributions made by Venice Beach BID propenents Mark Sokol and Carl Lambert. That’s the supply side. Tonight I’m hitting up the demand side. Here are PDFs of three letters I sent this evening (all cc-ed to Mike Feuer just in case), and you can read the one to the nine sitting members of the City Council who accepted donations from Sokol and Lambert below. I hope to have a complaint in to the City Ethics Commission by the end of the week.
Mike Bonin 2013 Campaign ad showing candidate with high-roller campaign contributors Mark Sokol and Carl Lambert.I reported a couple of weeks ago that as late as two months ago, Mike Bonin aide Debbie Dyner Harris had refused to tell Becky Dennison of Venice Community Housing the names of the three members of the Board of Directors of the Venice Beach Property Owners Association. Dyner Harris even sent an email to shadowy BID consultant Tara Devine asking for permission to share the names, which Devine evidently didn’t give, because Dyner Harris didn’t give up the names. Well, I’ve been asking CD11 for the names as well, and after a long three weeks, for whatever reason, Debbie Dyner Harris emailed me this morning and told me that the Board of Directors presently consists of Steve Heumann, Carl Lambert, and Mark Sokol.
Steve Heumann was not a surprise, as his name appears as agent for service of process on the POA’s registration with the State.15 But the other two are of great interest indeed. I recently wrote about how Carl Lambert’s campaign contributions to Mike Bonin and Eric Garcetti probably violated City campaign finance laws, but that argument wouldn’t fly if he weren’t on the Board. Since he is, I’ll be reporting him to the City Ethics Commission in the next few days.
Holly Wolcott explaining why she votes.You may recall that last month I raised the question of where the City Clerk gets the authority to vote all of the City’s property in favor of establishing BIDs. That the Clerk does this is undisputed. It’s so reliable that BID proponents are famous for gerrymandering in as much City property as possible to improve their chances of hitting the 50.1% approval needed to start the BID formation process.
Well, of course, I filed a CPRA request on the matter and Miranda Paster, however conflicted her interests may be when it comes to her darling baby BIDs, is by far one of the most reliable and honest City officials with whom I deal with respect to public records, yesterday pointed me to the now twenty year old Council File 96-1972. This file is too old to have documents online16 but there are some summary notes on what went on. In particular, the ordinance passed includes an instruction17 to:
REQUIRE the City Clerk to sign off on Proposition 21818 ballots and support petitions for property-based BIDs, unless the Council directs otherwise.
