Tag Archives: California Constitution Article XX Section 3

LAPD, Municipal Ethics, Public Records Act Pragmatics

I Asked LAPD For Copies Of Their Official Podcast — LAPD Discovery Boss Kris Tu Refused To Hand Them Over — And Then Made Up A Bunch Of Obvious Lies About Why He Could Not Produce And Was Not Required To — And Then Told Me Actually He Could Produce Two Of Them — But I Would Have To Pay Five Dollars For A CD — Which He Would Mail To Me Or I Could Pick It Up In Person — All Of Which Is Not Only A Violation Of The CPRA — But Also Of The Los Angeles Governmental Ethics Laws — So I Filed A Complaint Against Him With The City Ethics Commission — And Also With His LAPD Supervisor — I Am Hoping That Such Complaints Will End Up Being An Alternate CPRA Enforcement Mechanism In The City Of Los Angeles

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UPDATE: This story is about my attempt to get copies of 24 episodes of an LAPD podcast. LAPD has so far refused to produce them to me but I independently found a way to download them from the Department’s podcast host. I uploaded all 24 to the Internet Archive and you can get copies at this link.

This is a story about two things. First, yet another instance of the Los Angeles Police Department violating the California Public Records Act in yet another completely novel way.1 Second, about a new tactic I thought of to enforce CPRA compliance by the City of Los Angeles in general and LAPD in particular, that I am trying out for the first time.

The idea is that some of the City’s violations of the CPRA are specifically designed to hinder me personally and that this is a violation of LAMC 49.5.5, which forbids misuse of official position to create a private disadvantage. On Friday, July 31, 2020, I filed a complaint against LAPD Discovery supervisor Kris Tu on this basis. Read on for details!
Continue reading I Asked LAPD For Copies Of Their Official Podcast — LAPD Discovery Boss Kris Tu Refused To Hand Them Over — And Then Made Up A Bunch Of Obvious Lies About Why He Could Not Produce And Was Not Required To — And Then Told Me Actually He Could Produce Two Of Them — But I Would Have To Pay Five Dollars For A CD — Which He Would Mail To Me Or I Could Pick It Up In Person — All Of Which Is Not Only A Violation Of The CPRA — But Also Of The Los Angeles Governmental Ethics Laws — So I Filed A Complaint Against Him With The City Ethics Commission — And Also With His LAPD Supervisor — I Am Hoping That Such Complaints Will End Up Being An Alternate CPRA Enforcement Mechanism In The City Of Los Angeles →

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Business Improvement Districts, California State Government

Remember Those Underpass Homeless Encampments Outside The South Park BID Boundaries? — The BID Is Not Only Paying Staff To Photograph Them — Also They Are Paying Staff To Lobby Miguel Santiago’s Office To Get CalTrans And CHP To Clear Them Out — Why Is A Member Of The California State Assembly Ignoring The BID’s Lawless Behavior? — Probably For Money, Doncha Think? — Or Because — With The Recent Fall Of The House Of Huizar — Santiago Feels His Path To CD14 Is Wide Freaking Open

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OK, remember how there are these underpasses with a bunch of homeless encampments in them that are not in the South Park BID but the BIDdies wanted to clean them up anyway except Ellen Riotto said they couldn’t cause it was against the law but then she sent her staffies out to gather photographic evidence of the encampments which is clearly also against the law? OK, this is another episode in that story!

And it’s worth taking a moment to review just why the BID can’t spend money on stuff going on outside its boundaries, never forgetting for a moment that dedicating staff time to a matter is spending money on it, which is to say the money paid the staff member. It’s all due to the Property and Business Improvement District Act at §36625(a)(6), which states unequivocally that:

The revenue from the levy of assessments within a district shall not be used to provide improvements, maintenance, or activities outside the district or for any purpose other than the purposes specified in the resolution of intention

Oh, also, keep in mind that the problem, from the BID’s point of view, with these underpasses is that the City of LA seems not to be allowed to evict homeless people from under them, evidently because it’s state property under there. Thus Caltrans and the Highway Patrol somehow have to do it, and the BID just doesn’t have the influence with them that they do with the City, I guess, which apparently makes it a separate and ongoing problem for the BID.

So the other day I received a big pile of emails from the Parkies comprising correspondence between them and any email address at ca.gov or its subdomains. You can gaze lovingly upon the whole steaming heap of them here on Archive.Org. And amongst these are email after email after email between South Park BID staff and staffers in the office of Assemblymember Miguel Santiago, in whose district the BID situates, having to do with those damn underpasses.

That is to say there is plenty of evidence in there of repeated violations of §36625(a)(6). But who does one complain to about it? We’ve already seen that the Los Angeles City Clerk, which putatively oversees our BIDs, will take complaints about insufficient brutality towards the homeless, but not, it seems, about violations of the law by the BIDs themselves. And it’s disconcerting to say the least to see an actual Assemblymember conspiring to violate the laws which he and his colleagues have sworn to defend.2

Although I suppose it’s not surprising that Miguel Santiago would be involved in such a scheme, given his demonstrated proclivity for selling the best interests of the people of California down the river just cause some BIDs asked him to. As I’ve said many times, I wasn’t cynical at all before I started learning about BIDs, but the BIDdies have made me so. Turn the page, if you will, for as much of the chronology as I have, links to the emails, and a few select transcriptions.
Continue reading Remember Those Underpass Homeless Encampments Outside The South Park BID Boundaries? — The BID Is Not Only Paying Staff To Photograph Them — Also They Are Paying Staff To Lobby Miguel Santiago’s Office To Get CalTrans And CHP To Clear Them Out — Why Is A Member Of The California State Assembly Ignoring The BID’s Lawless Behavior? — Probably For Money, Doncha Think? — Or Because — With The Recent Fall Of The House Of Huizar — Santiago Feels His Path To CD14 Is Wide Freaking Open →

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