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.1 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.→
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 online1 but there are some summary notes on what went on. In particular, the ordinance passed includes an instruction2 to:
REQUIRE the City Clerk to sign off on Proposition 2183 ballots and support petitions for property-based BIDs, unless the Council directs otherwise.
Valley Village speaks truth to power.Last Thursday, September 8, a group called Save Valley Village filed a petition with the LA County Superior Court (hat tip to Scott Zwartz at Zwartz Talk for breaking the story) alleging that the members of the Los Angeles City Council are violating not only their oaths of office, but a State law, when they pay one another “deference” by never voting against anything that any of them propose within their districts.
The whole thing is worth reading and will be totally convincing to anyone who has ever watched our Council in action. The fact that there is some covert agreement among the Councilmembers is transparently clear. Here’s how SVV’s complaint describes it:
The Councilmembers of the Los Angeles City Council operate according to an agreement, i.e. The Vote Trading Pact, not to Vote No on any Council Project in another council district and said agreement by its very terms requires reciprocality, also called mutuality, whereby the agreement not to Vote No by one Councilmember is given in exchange for the other Councilmember’s not to vote No on a Council Project in his/her council district. Some have described the Vote Trading Pact as an agreement to Vote Yes for all Council Projects, and it has been described as taking the format of, “If you scratch my back on my Council Projects, I will scratch your back on your Council Projects.” Others refer to the agreement as one of deferring or respecting the decision of the Councilmember in whose district the Council Project is located. All the phrases describe the same Vote Trading Pact.
Councilmember David Ryu has described the Vote Trading Pact as one of “respect” for other Councilmember’s Council Projects and in return he expects the same “respect” for his Council Projects.
“For someone to come in at the tail end and to disagree with my recommendation after meetings with the community on dozens of occasions and with other city departments and after I have involved stakeholders,” doesn’t make sense, he said. “I might make a decision…and my colleagues respect it. Even if they might disagree with my decision, they abide by it because they were not there during those community meetings.” Los Feliz Ledger September 1, 2016
How does Holly Wolcott know in advance how the City Council is going to vote? Inquiring minds wanna know.
NOTE: This is apparently true, and Yo! Venice has the story along with a statement from Mike Bonin.
According to a Facebook post by Abbott Kinney,
BREAKING NEWS Re: the proposed Venice BID – Because the City shut off public comment, they gotta START THE WHOLE PROCESS OVER. Via City Clerk Holly Wolcott:
“The Ordinance of Establishment was adopted in Council last week. However, in light of concerns relative to the public hearing and to ensure all speakers are heard, we plan to repeal this ordinance and start the process over. This will mean a new Ordinance of Intention and a public hearing approximately 45 days from when the new ballots and packages are mailed. I do not have an actual date at this time.”1
This report is consistent with LAFLA’s objections to the process, and if true, is a major victory for anti-BID forces. Although I don’t know for sure I would bet it’s unprecedented in the history of BIDs in Los Angeles. The moral is decidedly NOT that the City made a sporadic mistake in this particular BID formation process. The moral is in fact that the City makes mistakes, breaks the law, cuts corners, all the freaking time, but generally no one is watching so their errors have no consequences. The moral is that if people watch closely they will find fatal errors in all of the City’s shenanigans.
The same is true for BIDs. They can barely open their mouths without saying something racist, they can barely run a meeting or email a Council member without breaking the law.2 They’re not used to scrutiny, and even their reactions to scrutiny just end up sinking them deeper into their morass. So the real moral is: SCRUTINIZE!
All signs indicate that, despite the evidence of this picture, we haven’t seen the back of shadowy BID consultant Tara Devine (or whatever her name is) yet, friends!Just the other day we wrote a detailed analysis of shadowy BID consultant Tara Devine’s hot mess of a public comment at last Tuesday’s City Council hearing on the establishment of that revanchist-zillionaire-instigated nightmare zombie horror show known as the Venice Beach Business Improvement District. In that essay, because we are fair, because we are balanced, because we love the truth, we noted in response to Tara Devine’s claim that her name was indeed Tara Devine that:
“We here at MK.org are as fair and as balanced as any other fair and balanced news source. When our subjects say something true, we don’t hesitate to showcase it. As far as we’ve been able to determine, her name is, in fact, Tara Devine.”
Shadowy BID Consultant Tara Devine seeping toxic waste from every pore at the August 23, 2016 meeting of the Los Angeles City Council.Shadowy BID consultant Tara Devine, of shadowy BID consultantcy Devine Associates, slithered up out of the depths in which she habitually dwells to make a rare public appearance before the Los Angeles City Council on August 23, 2016, pleading for the Councilmembers to give life to the stitched-up-out-of-corpse-parts monster known as the Venice Beach BID which she’s been nurturing in her subterranean lair for many months now.
Mike Bonin speaking in favor of the Venice Beach BID in Council on August 23, 2016, mere minutes before accusing BID detractors of “malignant dangerous defamation.”Yesterday the Los Angeles City Council heard protests against the proposed Venice Beach Business Improvement District. You can watch the whole thing here. There were impassioned public comments and a lot of heckling. Also, on Monday Laura McLennan of CD11 gave me over a hundred pages of material on the VBBID, which is worth looking at. After the public comment, Mike Bonin gave a speech about why he supported the BID, which is my topic for today. You can jump directly to Bonin’s remarks in the video and as always, you can find a transcription at the end of the post. I’m just going to address a few of Bonin’s comments in detail:
Holly Wolcott, Clerk of the City of Los AngelesOne of the advantages that zillionaires have over humans with respect to City politics is that they can hire innumerable minions to keep up with the firehose of crap spewed forth by City Hall, certainly in an effort to keep the minion-deprived majority too busy to address everything. Which is my half-serious, half-silly1 excuse for only having noticed this evening the two matters addressed in this post.
First we have Council File 14-0903, in which Holly Wolcott asked for and received an “amount not to exceed $100,000 …for a period of two years with two one-year extensions to assist with the creation and implementation and coordination of a Public Information Campaign” having to do with how fricking great BIDs are for the City of L.A. Additionally they’re getting “an amount not to exceed $150,000 … for a period of two years with two one-year extensions to assist with the creation and implementation of a capacity building and leadership training series relative to business improvement districts and create public/private partnerships with other nonprofit organizations..” None of this seems like very much money given (a) the amount of truth they’re going to have to overcome in order to achieve the first goal and (b) the amount of sheer incompetence and bloody-mindedness to achieve the second. Brace yourself for the incoming propaganda!
Marqueece Harris-Dawson is an American hero.Yesterday the Planning and Land Use Management Committee heard the Cosmo Club’s appeal of the Zoning Administrator’s revocation of their conditional use permit. See the whole thing here, with a very short second part here. Also, the Council file is here. This is the second in the ongoing series of Hollywood clubs that cater to minorities being targeted for elimination by Kerry Morrison, the Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, the LAPD, and CD13 rep Mitch O’Farrell. The racist nature of this anti-nightclub campaign is revealing itself to the public, as dirty secrets will do, so this hearing drew some protesters who stated clearly, articulately, just exactly what is going on in Hollywood. Also, although L.A. Times reporting on this issue to date has been sporadic and radically incomplete, I spotted the incomparable Emily Alpert-Reyes exchanging contact information with Cosmo Club attorney Mike Ayaz after the hearing, so maybe something interesting is forthcoming.
There are links to a number of highlights at the end of this post, but the hearing was particularly rich, and I’m going to have to cover it in increments, starting at the end. If you’re not familiar with the situation, you can read up about it here and also here.1 But here is the short version of how we got to this point: Kerry Morrison, her BIDs, and Peter Zarcone decided to destroy a bunch of nightclubs in Hollywood. Mitch O’Farrell told City Planning to get on it. They did, and the City Council will vote in favor of Mitch no matter how bogus the evidence is because they also want to exercise unilateral control over every aspect of everything in their districts, which they can only do with the connivance of their colleagues. Marqueece Harris-Dawson didn’t play along at yesterday’s hearing, which, although he was merely doing his job as a Councilmember, is very brave, since if he does it too often the zillionaire elite will certainly take away his seat in 2019.
