Tag Archives: Andrew Thomas

California State Government, Downtown Center BID

Business Improvement Districts And A Bunch Of Backwater Small Towns Oppose Assemblymember Todd Gloria’s AB1184 — Which Will Require Local Agencies To Retain Emails For Two Years — Read Their Letters Of Opposition And See What Shameless Liars They Are — Especially Suzanne Holley Of The Downtown Center BID — Who Argues With A Straight Face That Allowing Them To Delete Emails Will Increase Public Access To Information Because They Will Only Save The Important Stuff — By The Way Though I Have Proof That Holley’s BID Has Intentionally Deleted Very Important Emails In The Past — Icky Sticky BIDdie Boy Andrew Thomas Of Westwood Village BID Also Opposes — And He’s Also An Email Deleting Liar

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Assemblymember Todd Gloria introduced AB 1184, which would clarify an ambiguity in state law by requiring public agencies to retain emails for a minimum of two years. You can read my earlier article on it here. Well, on Wednesday the bill was amended1 and passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee with a 10 to 1 tally in favor.2 It’s really worth reading the Judiciary Committee Counsel’s analysis of the bill, by the way.

And I also have copies of support and opposition letters. Powerful support comes from the California News Publishers Association and the First Amendment Coalition. Here are their letters:

☆ California News Publishers Association support for AB1184
☆ First Amendment Coalition support for AB1184

The opposition letters are predictably stupid, self-serving, and dishonest. They mostly take the position that it will cost too damn much to store two years worth of emails. Obviously, though, none of them provide any evidence because it’s just not true.3 Here are the links:

☆ City of San Carlos opposition to AB1184
☆ City of West Hollywood opposition to AB1184
☆ Various BIDdie Associations opposition to AB1184
☆ Downtown Center BID opposition to AB1184

And, probably unsurprisingly, this last one, penned by Downtown Center BID executive director Suzanne Holley, already known to be one of the most mendacious of an exceedingly mendacious crew of Los Angeles BIDdies, is perhaps the most twisted, the most dishonest, and the most ineffective, it turns out, out of all of them. There is a transcription after the break, but behold a few highlights with commentary and counterpoint.

Suzanne, why is your BID opposed to this? “Agencies would be forced to maintain an onerous amount of data.” And why is this not in the public interest, Suzanne? “the public would need to sort through thousands of emails to find the relevant needle in the haystack.” Suzanne! See that little box in your email client with a magnifying glass in it? If you put words in there and click on something the computer will sort through the emails for you! I use mine all the time!

Explain again, Suzanne! “Requiring the retention of tens of thousands of emails will bury relevant information…” And what is your answer to this imaginary problem, Suzanne? ” we believe the bill can be amended to ensure that the retention only apply to information relevant to the public business.” Of course, Suzanne, the problem is that on your scheme, YOU would be the one who decides what the public business is when obviously it’s the public that needs to decide.

And what kind of stuff would Suzanne delete if allowed? Here’s what she says doesn’t need to be retained: “Every email, regardless of how irrelevant would need to be retained. … Even an email asking a colleague out to lunch would fall under the purview of this bill.” See? Suzanne is asking the public to trust her to determine which emails it’s in the public interest to retain. She seems to be saying she’s just going to delete a lot of emails about lunch dates.

Leaving aside serious arguments that such emails may be very important indeed, let me tell you a little story about what kinds of emails Suzanne Holley actually does in fact delete. Remember all those emails I got in 2017 about BID involvement in the destruction of the Skid Row Neighborhood Council? That Jason McGahan, then of the LA Weekly, used in his blockbuster article? That are now evidence in the lawsuit against the City for illegally tampering with the subdivision election? Well, I got the first batch of those emails from Suzanne Holley at the Downtown Center BID.
Continue reading Business Improvement Districts And A Bunch Of Backwater Small Towns Oppose Assemblymember Todd Gloria’s AB1184 — Which Will Require Local Agencies To Retain Emails For Two Years — Read Their Letters Of Opposition And See What Shameless Liars They Are — Especially Suzanne Holley Of The Downtown Center BID — Who Argues With A Straight Face That Allowing Them To Delete Emails Will Increase Public Access To Information Because They Will Only Save The Important Stuff — By The Way Though I Have Proof That Holley’s BID Has Intentionally Deleted Very Important Emails In The Past — Icky Sticky BIDdie Boy Andrew Thomas Of Westwood Village BID Also Opposes — And He’s Also An Email Deleting Liar →

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California State Government, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Letters Of Support And Opposition To Senator Bob Wieckowski’s SB518 — Which Would Eliminate 998 Offers In California Public Records Act Cases — Set For Hearing Before Senate Judiciary Committee On April 23 — Which Is This Tuesday! — Predictably The Main Opposition Is From The California Downtown Association — Which Represents Bad BIDdies All Over The State — And From A Bunch Of Other Similarly Situated Groups

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I wrote a couple of months ago about Senator Bob Wieckowski‘s SB 518, which would make a fairly technical albeit quite important improvement to the California Public Records Act. In short this bill would disallow the use of Code of Civil Procedure §998 in CPRA lawsuits. As I said, it’s a fairly technical matter, but it’s well-explained here on Wieckowski’s fact sheet:

The purpose of a §998 offer is to encourage settlement by providing a strong financial
disincentive to a party, whether it be a plaintiff or defendant, who fails to achieve a better result than that party could have achieved by accepting the opponent’s settlement offer. For example, if a defendant makes a §998 offer that is rejected and the
plaintiff fails to obtain a judgment that is more favorable than the offer amount, then the plaintiff is not entitled to post-offer costs and must pay the defendant’s post-offer costs.

But this kind of hardball negotiating tactic can have really negative public policy consequences in CPRA cases. Government agencies sometimes make 998 offers that would require requesters to settle for fewer than all the records they’re entitled to where refusing the offer puts the requester in jeopardy of having to pay significant costs.

As you probably know, though, there are an awful lot of government agencies who just really do not want to comply with the public records act. In my experience these include BIDs, Charter Schools, the City of Los Angeles, and various state agencies. Not all of these have actually made 998 offers to me, but certainly some of them have. And the problem is only going to get worse as the word spreads amongst the agencies.

That’s why it’s not surprising to find that the most significant opposition to Wieckowski’s bill comes from a coalition of lobbying groups representing BIDs, rural jurisdictions, and other small-scale public agencies, surprisingly led by our old friend Andrew Thomas of the Westwood Village BID. Their letter is absolutely full of lies, although I suppose it’s worth reading if you want to see what these people are paying their lobbyists to write.

The main point seems to be that they’re getting sued all the time because the CPRA currently makes it too easy to sue them and SB 518 would only make things worse. Obviously, though, and unmentioned by them in this letter, is the fact that if they would just comply with the law rather than spending many thousands of dollars learning how to evade it, they would never get sued at all. That, though, is clearly not the solution they’re looking for.

There is some significant support for the bill as well. Here’s a letter from the National Lawyers’ Guild Los Angeles, and another letter from Jeffer, Mangels, Butler, & Mitchell. Also worth reading, and there’s a transcription of the NLG-LA one after the break. The bill is coming before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, April 23. I’ll let you know what happens!
Continue reading Letters Of Support And Opposition To Senator Bob Wieckowski’s SB518 — Which Would Eliminate 998 Offers In California Public Records Act Cases — Set For Hearing Before Senate Judiciary Committee On April 23 — Which Is This Tuesday! — Predictably The Main Opposition Is From The California Downtown Association — Which Represents Bad BIDdies All Over The State — And From A Bunch Of Other Similarly Situated Groups →

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Business Improvement Districts

Emmy Winning Studio City BID Zeck Dreck Dr. John Walker Ph.D. Is Quitting — Mike Bonin Field Deputy Taylor Bazley Applied For His Job — Listed Shadowy Venice Beach BID Boss Tara Devine As A Reference — John Walker Told Hiring Committee What A Loser Tara Devine Is And Maybe Her Recommendation Wasn’t Valuable — And She Wasn’t Returning Their Calls Anyway — Plus Kerry Morrison Was All Like Taylor Who?!?! —It Seems That The Position Is Still Unfilled — Except That These BIDdies Violate The Brown Act Constantly So They May Well Have Filled It In Secret

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Right now there is no BID more interesting to me in the entire City of Los Angeles than the Studio City BID. I mean, I dropped by one of their furtive little meetings last month and one of their directors, famously angry clown Matthew Dunn, was so rattled by my presence that he stormed out of his own meeting.1 And then they committed such an astonishing series of so very flagrant violations of the Brown Act that I was forced to send them a demand letter asking them to pinky swear that they’d never do it again.

And man, when it comes to his CPRAiatic duties, SCBID zeck dreck Dr. John Walker Ph.D.2 is a freaking pain in that thing that writers often resort to mentioning pains in for metaphorical purposes, but once in a while a few items trickle through the border wall as they did yesterday when he, or at least his pocky little minion Damian Gatto, sent over a few righteous goodies! And amongst these was this announcement from June 2018 in which the Studio City BID gave notice to the BID Consortium that it was hiring a replacement for Emmy-winning Zeck Dreck Dr. John Walker!! There is a transcription of this remarkable document after the break.

And then the applications started rolling in! The first applicant I have information about was evidently Ms. Vicki Nussbaum, who used to be the executive director of the Sherman Oaks BID and may still be for all I know, but is at least also the executive director of the Century City BID.3 You’ll hear more about this lady’s application quite soon, but not today.4

And the next applicant that I know anything about is our old friend Taylor Freaking Bazley! That’s right, Mike Bonin’s creepy little field deputy for Venice, deeply implicated in the horror show that is the Venice Beach BID, is out looking for another job! Do his friends at CD11 know about this?! Probably not, because he obviously isn’t using them as references! You can read everything I know in this September 12, 2018 email from SCBID Board member Ben Besley5 to John Walker, Board president Tony Richman, and fellow hiring committee members Barry Wise and Dean Cutler.

Here’s the story in brief, and you will find detailed discussion and transcriptions of all relevant emails after the break! About a month ago Taylor Bazley interviewed for the job. After his interview he sent a sycophantic thanks-friend! email to Board president Tony Richman about how the committee’s shit smelled like roses and so on.6 Also, he seems to have given shadowy BID president Tara Devine’s name as a reference. The hiring committee evidently found it difficult to get in touch with Tara Devine. Finally, Ben Besley got an email from admin@venicebeachbid.com, a well-known pseudonym of Ms. Tara Devine, splaining that Tara Devine was too busy to talk to him right now but maybe later!

Then John Walker weighed in with a story about how TD was being investigated for not spending BID money properly and also how the SCBID didn’t hire her to be their renewal consultant because she charged too damn much. He closed this defamational little missive with the defamer’s favorite excuse: “This is not meant to sway your investigation but I think you should be aware of some history.” So yeah, just another example of how the Los Angeles BID world is like one big seething daisy chain but without the sex.7 Turn the page for transcriptions of all relevant material!
Continue reading Emmy Winning Studio City BID Zeck Dreck Dr. John Walker Ph.D. Is Quitting — Mike Bonin Field Deputy Taylor Bazley Applied For His Job — Listed Shadowy Venice Beach BID Boss Tara Devine As A Reference — John Walker Told Hiring Committee What A Loser Tara Devine Is And Maybe Her Recommendation Wasn’t Valuable — And She Wasn’t Returning Their Calls Anyway — Plus Kerry Morrison Was All Like Taylor Who?!?! —It Seems That The Position Is Still Unfilled — Except That These BIDdies Violate The Brown Act Constantly So They May Well Have Filled It In Secret →

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Business Improvement Districts, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Newly Published Emails From Westwood Village BID Reveal Lobbyists’ Interest In Westwood Neighborhood Council Subdivision Process — BID Zeck Dreck Andrew Thomas’s Clueless Ideas About Role Of BIDs In Civic Life — Michael Skiles Gets Cast As The Savior Of His People And Finds That, In His Opinion Anyway, The Role Really Suits Him! — Oh, P.S.! In His Crack-Headed Zealous Attempt To Obstruct My Free Inspection Of Records Andrew Thomas Ends Up Costing The BID $4.50 Per Page For Me To Obtain Copies For Free

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I published a first batch of emails from the Westwood Village BID last month, and they’re available here on Archive.Org. As you’ll recall, Andrew Thomas, duly following the nonsensical instructions of the BID’s lawyer, the ballistical barrister of Burbank and anger-management poster child, that is to say Ms. Carol F. Humiston,1 insisted on printing out 90% of these emails, crossing out about one email address per page to justify his unsupportable foolishness, and then proposing to charge me $0.10 per page for copies of the paper.

Of course, they can’t prevent one from inspecting for free,2 and thus, because I now understand the issues involved in the whole Westwood Forward debacle far better as a result of reading the records I already obtained,3 and could therefore benefit greatly from additional review of this material, I zipped out to the Village yesterday morning to look through the goodies yet again!

And although in June, when we first began this quiet slow motion struggle, Andrew Thomas, in clear violation of the law, forbade me from photographing records, evidently Ms. Carol Humiston has cleared that up in his minionesque little mind, and so now, while he and his security guard are sitting there burning $125 per hour watching me inspect, I am able to copy the records for free.4

And that’s exactly what I did yesterday morning, and I came away with 44 pages of exceedingly interesting material, which you can peruse here on Archive.Org. It’s all good stuff, and I’ll be writing about all of it eventually, but today there are three especially interesting subjects to cover. They’re outlined in the headline, of course, and turn the page for the gory-glory details!
Continue reading Newly Published Emails From Westwood Village BID Reveal Lobbyists’ Interest In Westwood Neighborhood Council Subdivision Process — BID Zeck Dreck Andrew Thomas’s Clueless Ideas About Role Of BIDs In Civic Life — Michael Skiles Gets Cast As The Savior Of His People And Finds That, In His Opinion Anyway, The Role Really Suits Him! — Oh, P.S.! In His Crack-Headed Zealous Attempt To Obstruct My Free Inspection Of Records Andrew Thomas Ends Up Costing The BID $4.50 Per Page For Me To Obtain Copies For Free →

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Business Improvement Districts, Public Records Act Pragmatics

How Andrew Thomas And Carol Humiston Conspired To Spend At Least A Thousand Dollars Of Other People’s Money All To Teach Me A Lesson About The Costs Of Exercising My Rights Under The Public Records Act — How’s It Working Out For Them? — Probably Not So Well In The Long Run

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NOTE: This post is turning out to be way longer than I thought, so I figured I’d better link to the actual public records it’s based on up here at the top. New for your perusal and edification are three contracts between the Westwood Village BID and various persons, including Exec Direc Andrew Lloyd Thomas and the BID security provider. Read ’em and weep, friends.

While you all have been enjoying my recent reporting on the Westwood Village BIDdies and their conspiracy with a bunch of UCLA students who feel like the boring homeowners on the Westwood Neighborhood Council don’t approve of enough liquor licenses and happy hours in the Village and whatnot, there has actually been a whole other story seething below the surface, some aspects of which I am writing today to tell you about!

You see, this isn’t just about me, the California Public Records Act, and Andrew Thomas, but also about Andrew Thomas’s lawyer, Carol Humiston, the ballistic barrister of Burbank.1 Carol Humiston,2 who lawyers for a lot of BIDs, has this CPRA system which she evidently believes is going to learn me not to bother her clients any more.3 Well, aside from the fact that no one’s managed to learn me anything since about 1974, her fanaticism ends up needlessly costing her clients a ton of money.4 Continue reading How Andrew Thomas And Carol Humiston Conspired To Spend At Least A Thousand Dollars Of Other People’s Money All To Teach Me A Lesson About The Costs Of Exercising My Rights Under The Public Records Act — How’s It Working Out For Them? — Probably Not So Well In The Long Run →

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Business Improvement Districts, Los Angeles City Government

How Andrew Thomas, The Icky-Sticky-Ooky-Pooky Exec-Direc Of The Westwood Village BID, Conspired With Michael Skiles To Hold The North Westwood NC Subdivision Election On A Weekday — And How The City Clerk Ruled Out Multiple Election Days Due To Security Concerns — Which The City Government Probably Gleefully Intended For The Skid Row Subdivision Election

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You may recall that I recently received a moderately sized set of public records from the Westwood Village BID, some of which I wrote about the other day. You can look at the whole collection here on Archive.Org,1 and one of these is the text for today’s sermon, a conversation amongst Michael Skiles, Grayce Liu of the Department Of Neighborhood Empowerment, and Lisa Chapman, president of the Westwood Neighborhood Council.

There’s a transcription and more commentary after the break, of course, but here’s a brief summary of what went on. Lisa Chapman wrote to Grayce Liu telling her that she heard Michael Skiles say that Westwood Forward did not choose the date of the election, which was not on a weekend as NC elections usually are. Grayce Liu wrote back in her inimitably condescending manner saying some nonsense that sane people can barely credit.

Michael Skiles wrote to Grayce Liu thanking her in his inimitably sycophantic manner and explaining that weekday elections were agreed on by him and Andrew Freaking Thomas, who sane people want to know why is this guy involved at all? What, we all want to know, do BIDs have to do with making detailed decisions like this about NC matters?

Then, the absolute kicker, Grayce Liu wrote back to Michael Skiles stating that the City Clerk forbade subdivision elections to be spread out over multiple days “because of voter security issues.” Of course, this is horrific and shocking given that for the Skid Row NC subdivision election Grayce Liu herself allowed putative pop-up polls to take place on multiple days in multiple locations including restricted access buildings emphatically NOT open to the public. And now no one at the City can actually audit the votes cast in that election, which suggests strongly that there were very serious, as yet undiscovered, “voter security issues,” which no one at the City cares about.

But of course, “voter security issues” are going to be cosmically important in elections like this Westwood one, where zillionaires and their financial interests fall on both sides of the question. In a case like Westwood, because zillionares disagree, every vote truly does count, so the most secure practices must be followed by the City, and the City recognizes this. In a case like Skid Row, where the zillionaires were unified on one side, voter security would have just gotten in the way of stealing the election. Anyway, read on for the details.
Continue reading How Andrew Thomas, The Icky-Sticky-Ooky-Pooky Exec-Direc Of The Westwood Village BID, Conspired With Michael Skiles To Hold The North Westwood NC Subdivision Election On A Weekday — And How The City Clerk Ruled Out Multiple Election Days Due To Security Concerns — Which The City Government Probably Gleefully Intended For The Skid Row Subdivision Election →

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Business Improvement Districts, Los Angeles City Government, Public Records Act Pragmatics

One Outcome Of The Unholy Alliance Between North Westwood Neighborhood Council Subdivision Advocate Michael Skiles And Icky-Skicky Biddy-Boy Andrew Thomas Was That Skiles Changed The Bylaws To Give Zillionaires Even More Representation Just Cause Thomas Asked Him To — Which Might Be The Kind Of Thing That Andrew Thomas Wants To Cover Up Via His Myriad Surreal CPRA Violations — Although That Relies On Dubious Assumption That The Guy Feels Shame

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Maybe you heard about the movement to subdivide the Westwood Neighborhood Council and form the North Westwood Neighborhood Council. This subdivision was led by UCLA students calling themselves Westwood Forward, with incipient philosopher Michael Skiles, whose academic specialty is, of all things, action theory, at the helm. The City held an election in May and the subdivision was approved.

However, unlike the heartrending pain created by the sinister schemings of zillionaires in Skid Row and environs last year, the local Westwood zillionaires were all eleventy jillion percent in favor of this particular subdivision. The reason seems to be a widely shared perception that students will be much more in favor of building more residential megaplexes and handing out more liquor licenses than the mostly über-füddy-düddy single family house dwellers on the regular Westwood NC have proved to be over the last few decades.1

Knowing all this, it occurred to me in March 2018 that the Westwood Village BID might be involved in this whole subdivision thing and, with that in mind, I fired off a CPRA request to them asking for the goodies. After many painful months of lawyers, recriminations, stupidity, frustration, and whatever,2 Andrew Thomas, the BID’s ickety-skickety executive director finally coughed up some small percentage of the records to which I’m entitled.

Check out the whole collection here on Archive.Org. In particular, though, for tonight’s sermon, take a look at this little gem (of which there is a transcription after the break), which reveals Andrew Thomas as the puppet master pulling the strings that make Michael Skiles dance. And the tune he’s dancing to is, you’ll not be surprised to learn, all about more seats for zillionaires on the new neighborhood council’s board of directors. And Michael Skiles not only dances to the tune, but he dances like he likes dancing! He’ll go far in academia, friends.
Continue reading One Outcome Of The Unholy Alliance Between North Westwood Neighborhood Council Subdivision Advocate Michael Skiles And Icky-Skicky Biddy-Boy Andrew Thomas Was That Skiles Changed The Bylaws To Give Zillionaires Even More Representation Just Cause Thomas Asked Him To — Which Might Be The Kind Of Thing That Andrew Thomas Wants To Cover Up Via His Myriad Surreal CPRA Violations — Although That Relies On Dubious Assumption That The Guy Feels Shame →

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