Tag Archives: Jessica Lall

Los Angeles City Government

The Central City Association Held Secret Members-Only Meetings With Mike Feuer And Eric Garcetti In October And November — Attendees Included Tom Gilmore — Patti Berman — Sara Hernandez — And The Usual Gang Of Downtown BIDdies And Zillionaires Complaining About Homelessness — And Defunding The Police — And Regulations And Codes — They Really Really Hate Regulations And Codes — Featuring The Inimitable Blair Besten As Self-Proclaimed Expert On “Street Homelessness” — And Plenty Of Other Aggressive Lunacy

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You might want to meet with Eric Garcetti but Eric Garcetti doesn’t want to meet with you. John Motter told that story recently in the essential Knock LA. And it’s not Garcetti’s problem, honestly. It’s all you. There are plenty of folks he will very gladly meet with, like e.g. members of the Central City Association. And in secret no less, as he did on November 16, 2020. Mike Feuer did the same thing on October 8, 2020.

And what were these luminaries talking to CCALA about in these top secret meetings? I’m glad you asked! I recently obtained copies of CCALA supreme commander Jessica Lall’s confidential members-only briefing notes for these two meetings that reveal quite a bit about what went on.1 Here are links to the original Microsoft Word files and PDF versions2. HTML transcriptions and images appear below as well:

嬄   Feuer Meeting briefing notes — DOCX ◈ PDF ◈ JPG ◈ HTML

嬄   Garcetti Meeting briefing notes — DOCX ◈ PDF ◈ JPG ◈ HTML

You should read the originals, also. They have a lot more stuff in them than I discuss here. The notes include brief agendas and a list of goals. For instance, Garcetti:
Continue reading The Central City Association Held Secret Members-Only Meetings With Mike Feuer And Eric Garcetti In October And November — Attendees Included Tom Gilmore — Patti Berman — Sara Hernandez — And The Usual Gang Of Downtown BIDdies And Zillionaires Complaining About Homelessness — And Defunding The Police — And Regulations And Codes — They Really Really Hate Regulations And Codes — Featuring The Inimitable Blair Besten As Self-Proclaimed Expert On “Street Homelessness” — And Plenty Of Other Aggressive Lunacy →

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Business Improvement Districts

South Park BID Board Member Terry Rubenroit Used Central City Association Chief Jessica Lall’s Name In Vain — While Importuning Deputy City Attorney Gita O’Neill Not To Settle Mitchell V. City Of LA — So Jessica Lall Had To Fire A Thunderbolt Down From Her Heavenly Perch And Smite The Holy Crap Out Of Terry Rubenroit — Who Says She Learned Her Lesson Because She Knows What All These Downtown Zillionaires Know — That It May Be Safe To Ignore Jesus But It’s Not Safe To Ignore Jessica Lall

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Of course you’re aware that the City of Los Angeles agreed on March 6, 2019 to settle the monumental civil rights case Mitchell v. Los Angeles brought against it on behalf of homeless people whose property has been seized and destroyed by the police and other agents of the City. Settling was the only prudent course for the City to take because the City, clearly and provably guilty of all they were accused of, was going to lose and lose big if it went to trial.

That this is so has been clear enough to all sane observers at least since 2016 when the federal court issued a preliminary injunction preventing the City from seizing the property of its homeless victims. But of course, in the City of Los Angeles not all the observers are sane, and thus at least since the Summer of 2018 the certified domestic terrorist organization known as the Central City Association of Los Angeles led a concerted lobbying effort to convince the City to take the case to trial rather than settling.

And one of the effects of this campaign and its fairly crazed propaganda was the sorry spectacle of zillionaires and their minions swarming by the tens and dozens to every possible public forum where they could bitch, moan, and piss about how settling Mitchell would cause typhus epidemics, leprosy, locust plagues, an oversupply of crack-smoking prostitutes, and wanton smiting of presumptive unsmitables. The commentary spanned the entire gamut of zillionaire affective styles, all the way from slavering insanity to third generation liberal-inflected psychopathy.

And one of the favored means by which these kings and queens of our City make their displeasure known is by writing to their pet officials and demanding meetings. Just for instance, behold this pallid little number by South Park BID Board member Terry Rubenroit to Deputy City Attorney for the Placation of Rich People WRT Homelessophobia Gita O’Neill. Also be sure to behold the fact that Rubenroit CCed Jessica Lall, who is Eternal Queen of Downtown but not in a good way Carol Schatz’s handpicked successor to the CCALA throne.

And that, friends, was Rubenroit’s first mistake! And her last! Jessica Lall flipped out on her and told her to never ever ever do that again because it messed with the incomprehensible-to-minions-such-as-Rubenroit eleven dimensional chess being played by Lall and her elite peers on the eleventy-first floors of the skyscraping towers of Downtown Los Angeles. And then Rubenroit rolled over and bared her throat in a quantum-level appeasement display! And then Lall accepted her submission! Read on for transcriptions of all of it!
Continue reading South Park BID Board Member Terry Rubenroit Used Central City Association Chief Jessica Lall’s Name In Vain — While Importuning Deputy City Attorney Gita O’Neill Not To Settle Mitchell V. City Of LA — So Jessica Lall Had To Fire A Thunderbolt Down From Her Heavenly Perch And Smite The Holy Crap Out Of Terry Rubenroit — Who Says She Learned Her Lesson Because She Knows What All These Downtown Zillionaires Know — That It May Be Safe To Ignore Jesus But It’s Not Safe To Ignore Jessica Lall →

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LAUSD

Johnathan Williams Of The Accelerated Schools Charter Empire And Marie Rumsey Of Zillionaire Terrorist Front The Central City Association Of Los Angeles — Working Together To Destroy Public Education In Los Angeles — One Of Their Weapons? — Commercial Real Estate Of Course — With Guest Appearances By Nightmare Zillionaire BID-Adjacent Clown Crew — Tom Gilmore — Adele Yellin — Steve Needleman — Wayne Ratkovich — Who Should Mostly Be In Literal Chains Rather Than Email Chains — But Here We Are In 21st Century Los Angeles

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As you may recall, I got interested in charter schools in Los Angeles during the recent UTLA strike, and after learning that they are subject to the California Public Records Act I submitted a bunch of requests, and after a little amateurish obstructionism the goodies are starting to trickle in.3 Today’s installment is this small set of emails between Johnathan Williams, founder and head honcho of charter school empire The Accelerated Schools, and various people associated with zillionaire terrorist front group The Central City Association.

And one thing I’ve been learning recently, confirmed by these emails, is that there’s an extensive nexus of relationships among BIDdies and Charterites. BIDdies and their hired guns, like e.g. Jessica Lall and Noel Hyun of the CCALA, serve on many a charter school board. Their companies fund charters, arrange their real estate deals, introduce their executives around in the local zillionaire communities, and so on. Ultimately this shouldn’t have been a surprise to me, although it was.

Both BIDs and charter schools serve the zillionaire privatization agenda. Both are attacks on the public realm, seeking to destroy it so that it can be replaced with private institutions even more firmly under direct zillionaire control. The emails at hand give the tiniest glimpse into this world, just consisting of zillionaires and charterites passing names and email addresses around trying to find a place where the staff of one of Williams’s schools, the Wallis Annenberg High School, can hold a two day retreat.

But don’t be turned off by the triviality of the subject. The real story here is the existence of the network that allows such transactions as these to be negotiated seamlessly, effortlessly, genially, without friction. The shared presupposition of the value of charter schools revealed by the fact that no one questions it. That’s ultimately what we’re learning about, and such knowledge, like all knowledge worth having, comes a speck at a time. Until a vast panorama is revealed, like pointillism. Turn the page for transcriptions and links to the emails!
Continue reading Johnathan Williams Of The Accelerated Schools Charter Empire And Marie Rumsey Of Zillionaire Terrorist Front The Central City Association Of Los Angeles — Working Together To Destroy Public Education In Los Angeles — One Of Their Weapons? — Commercial Real Estate Of Course — With Guest Appearances By Nightmare Zillionaire BID-Adjacent Clown Crew — Tom Gilmore — Adele Yellin — Steve Needleman — Wayne Ratkovich — Who Should Mostly Be In Literal Chains Rather Than Email Chains — But Here We Are In 21st Century Los Angeles →

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Business Improvement Districts, Downtown Center BID, Fashion District BID, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance, Street Vending

How Kerry Freaking Morrison Found Out About Senator Ricardo Lara’s Street Vending Bill In January 2018 And Told No-Epithet-Yet Suzanne Holley, Chardonnay-Swilling Scarf Monster Rena Leddy, And Batty Little Fusspot Blair Besten All About It And Suzanne Freaking Holley Went And Told Carol Freaking Schatz, The Zillion Dollar Woman, Who Subsequently Swore A Solemn Oath To Destroy SB 946

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Just another quick note from all them DCBID emails I’ve been dining out on for weeks now. It’s inconsequential in one sense, but on the other hand, it illuminates how information spreads among the zillionaire flunkies who run this City’s BIDs. Here is the original email chain, and I’m just going to lay it on you without commentary. Or without much, anyway.

On January 31, 2018, the incomparable Emily Alpert Reyes emailed Kerry Freaking Morrison thusly:

From: Alpert, Emily mailto:Emily.Alpert@latimes.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2018 9:23 AM
To: Kerry Morrison <Kerry@hollvwoodbid.org>

Subject: State bill on street vending

Hi Kerry — I hope all is well! I was curious for your thoughts on this state bill that would override local regulations on vending:

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB946&search_keywords=vendor

I’m at ■■■-■■■-■■■■. Thanks!

Emily

Did Kerry Morrison answer her? Well, I don’t know, but I will say that Emily Alpert Reyes published a fine article on Lara’s bill on February 2, and Kerry Morrison is not quoted in it. In any case, we do know that Kerry Morrison read the email because …. turn the page if you want to find out!
Continue reading How Kerry Freaking Morrison Found Out About Senator Ricardo Lara’s Street Vending Bill In January 2018 And Told No-Epithet-Yet Suzanne Holley, Chardonnay-Swilling Scarf Monster Rena Leddy, And Batty Little Fusspot Blair Besten All About It And Suzanne Freaking Holley Went And Told Carol Freaking Schatz, The Zillion Dollar Woman, Who Subsequently Swore A Solemn Oath To Destroy SB 946 →

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Downtown Center BID, Street Vending

Of Course Carol Schatz Is The Queen Of Downtown But She Might Also Be The King Solomon Of Downtown Cause She Sure Knows How To Split A Damn Baby! Or — Assistant Queen Of Downtown Suzanne Holley Wants To Know Who’s Gonna Pay The Damn Lobbyists!

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Just what you have all been waiting for, friends! More tales from the massive DCBID document dump of a couple weeks ago. It truly is the gift that keeps on giving!4 And yeah, from one point of view this is yet another inconsequential bit of floof like our recent story about Lena Mulhall, CCALA office manager, using the office UPS account to ship various personal cosplay-linked merchandise hither and yon. But from another, it’s more than consequential, it’s essential evidence of … but of course, you have no idea what I’m talking about cause you haven’t seen the damn email.

You can read the whole chain here or, as usual, turn the page for a transcription. Anyway, remember Laura Mecoy? She’s the hotcha lobbyist who runs a shady little op out of the South Bay known as Mecoy Communications5 who got Kerry Morrison and Carol Schatz a sitdown with the L.A. Times Editorial Board over the street vending issue, giving them an opportunity to spew their poisonous puke all over the table at First and Main.6

And of course, she don’t do that kinda jive for free. After all, she’s a storyteller! A professional storyteller!! And the workman is worthy of her hire, ain’t she? So who’s going to pay her damn bills!? Well, of course, turn the page to find out!
Continue reading Of Course Carol Schatz Is The Queen Of Downtown But She Might Also Be The King Solomon Of Downtown Cause She Sure Knows How To Split A Damn Baby! Or — Assistant Queen Of Downtown Suzanne Holley Wants To Know Who’s Gonna Pay The Damn Lobbyists! →

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Downtown Center BID

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

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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.7 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 →

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Announcements, Downtown Center BID

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!

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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.8

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.9 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 week10 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! →

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Downtown Center BID

Press Relations Master Class With Flying Copy-Pasta Monster Carol Schatz And Her Pet Editor-Slash-Fluffer Jon Regardie As Well As About A Thousand Mostly Useless Emails From Her Weirdo Fiefdom, The Downtown Center BID, With Special Bonus Showing Self-Proclaimed Downtown News Senior Reporter And World’s Most Journalistic Attack-Labradoodle Eddie Kim Pleading For Access!

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First the substance. I just uploaded about a thousand emails between the Downtown Center BID and either Kindel Gagan or the Downtown News. There are a few other kinds of items in there as well. This material came to me as MSG files and I converted it into an MBOX and also exported the emails individually as PDFs. If you have trouble getting the attachments out of the MBOX file drop me a line and I’ll get you started. Now on to the mockery!!

First of all, take a look at this item from February 2017: Nicole Kuklok-Waldman and Kate Hennigan Join Kindel Gagan. A run-of-the-mill announcement that two more urbanist-capitalist-developerist plague-carrying zombies have sold what passes for their souls by becoming partners at Kindel Gagan, a lobbying firm that’s so deeply fucked up that I can’t even think of nasty names to call it because none of them are even close to nasty enough:

Kindel Gagan is pleased to announce that prominent land use attorney Nicole Kuklok-Waldman and City Hall and public affairs veteran Kate Hennigan have joined the firm. Nicole and Kate bring a combined 20 years of successful land use and public affairs consulting experience, greatly expanding the firm’s capacity to serve our clients.

Really makes you want to read on, does it not?! Turn the page for Carol Schatz’s deeply professional response to this nonsense, as well as some foofraw about Jessica Lall’s takeover of the Central City Association and also some trivial bullshit from putatively journalistic attack puppy Eddie Kim.
Continue reading Press Relations Master Class With Flying Copy-Pasta Monster Carol Schatz And Her Pet Editor-Slash-Fluffer Jon Regardie As Well As About A Thousand Mostly Useless Emails From Her Weirdo Fiefdom, The Downtown Center BID, With Special Bonus Showing Self-Proclaimed Downtown News Senior Reporter And World’s Most Journalistic Attack-Labradoodle Eddie Kim Pleading For Access! →

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Announcements, Business Improvement Districts, Downtown Center BID

More Than Ten Thousand Emails! Downtown Santa Monica BID And Downtown Center BID! Two Unbelievably Rich Sets Of Records!

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This is just a short note to announce two massive sets of emails that I’ve obtained over the last couple weeks. There’s so much material here that it’s taken an unusual amount of time to get it processed and published. I will be writing about this material over the next few weeks. There’s so much, and it’s so rich, that it’s going to take me a while to get it all sorted out, so I thought it’d be best to make it available to you right away:

  • Downtown Santa Monica BID — Emails between the City of Santa Monica and the Downtown Santa Monica BID from January 1 through September 8, 2017.
  • Downtown Center BID — Assorted emails from the Downtown Center BID, mostly from 2017.

Like I said, there’s so much here that it will take a while to get it sorted through. Meanwhile, though, turn the page for some interesting stuff you can begin to look for on your own.
Continue reading More Than Ten Thousand Emails! Downtown Santa Monica BID And Downtown Center BID! Two Unbelievably Rich Sets Of Records! →

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Fashion District BID, Municipal Ethics, Venice Beach BID

President Tara Devine Begged Fashion District To Hire Her For BID Consulting At $72,000 But They Hired UPC At $55,000 Instead Even Though Estela Lopez Really Loves President Devine And Steve Heumann Had “Front Row Seat” To President Devine’s Work In “Impossible” Venice — President Devine Admits Against Interest That Purpose Of BID Consulting Is To “Effectuate Approval” Of Municipal Legislation

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As you may recall, I’ve been studying the relationships between BIDs and the consultants they hire to guide them through the process of establishing or renewing their BIDs. As part of this work I discovered, e.g., that the Fashion District BID is paying $55,000 to FDBID Executive Directrix Rena Leddy’s former employer Urban Place Consulting for renewal services. But before the Board hired UPC they, acting as the fiscally responsible grownups they are, for whatever reason, presumed to be, solicited proposals from the City’s various BID consultants.

And, although it’s probably not such a surprise given how few BID consultants there are in this City, it turns out that famously shadowy BID consultant Tara Devine submitted a proposal! She didn’t get the job, though, possibly because her bid was almost $20,000 higher than UPC’s. And there are many things to be learned from this document, not least of which is the fact that Tara Devine, utilizing the grammatical voice known technically as “unhinged third person,” refers to herself throughout as “President Tara Devine.”11

The most important information in the document, though, has to do with the scope of services, which contains crucial information for my ongoing project of turning BID consultants in to the Ethics Commission for failing to register as lobbyists. One necessary element of the registration requirement, found in the Municipal Lobbying Ordinance,12 is that a lobbyist be employed “…for the purpose of attempting to influence municipal legislation on behalf of any person.”13

BID renewal requires the City Council to pass two distinct ordinances,14 and this fact is a key element of my my general argument that BID consulting is lobbying. But how much more effective than me arguing for this position to just have President Tara Devine admit herself, in her own words, that when a BID hires her as a consultant they are hiring her to get some legislation passed. Given this admission against interest, she’ll have a hard time arguing that she’s not a lobbyist:

Coordination with City Clerk, HCED Chair, Council President, and Council District 14 to effectuate scheduling and approval of:
o Ordinance of Intention
o Ordinance of Establishment
o Prop 218 Ballot Issuance

Anyway, the whole document is well worth your time to read, although most of it’s merely mockable rather than substantial. Turn the page for transcriptions of some selections, including a bunch of risible testimonials from President Tara Devine’s cronies in BIDlandia and their comments, as filtered through her considerable third-person ego, about her work in Venice and elsewhere.
Continue reading President Tara Devine Begged Fashion District To Hire Her For BID Consulting At $72,000 But They Hired UPC At $55,000 Instead Even Though Estela Lopez Really Loves President Devine And Steve Heumann Had “Front Row Seat” To President Devine’s Work In “Impossible” Venice — President Devine Admits Against Interest That Purpose Of BID Consulting Is To “Effectuate Approval” Of Municipal Legislation →

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