Tag Archives: Laurie Sale

Latest Episode In The Brown Act Enforcement Project Targets Pacific Palisades BID For Secret Email Meeting Violation — They Do This Kind Of Thing All The Time But They’re So Incredibly Slow To Respond To CPRA Requests That I’ve Never Caught Them Within The Nine Month Enforcement Window — Until Now! — Smarmy Caruso Puppet And Self-Proclaimed Board Member Rick Lemmo Channels Donald Trump Even As He Aids And Abets Brown Act Violations — Typical! — Sad!

Yesterday morning the Pacific Palisades BID became the third lucky winner in our ongoing Brown Act enforcement project, following in the hallowed footsteps of the Byzantine Latino Quarter BID and the Studio City BID after them. I sent the BIDdies this demand letter, based as usual on the Brown Act at §54960.2, which gives civic outlaws like the Palisades BIDdies the chance to avoid getting sued back to the Stone Age by issuing an unconditional commitment never to break the same law again no more.

The Byzantinios caved and issued such a letter, and the Studio Citizens did too, at least with respect to three out of the four violations of which I accused them.1 And there’s a reasonable chance that the Palisadesean BIDdies will cave as well, in the fierce face of my ferociously convincing rhetoric. But maybe they won’t, cause BID boss Elliot Zorensky is a stone cold psychopath whose anger, it seems, has so far overmastered his prudence that he will cheerfully drown his own metaphorical babies merely in the hope of splashing some metaphorical bathwater on the metaphorical silken neckties of his quite literal enemies. Hard core, yes. Sustainable? Certainly not.

And of course, to faithful readers of this blog the fact that the Palisadeseans have violated the Brown Act won’t even seem like news. They are locally famous for scoffing in the face of the Brown Act. There was that time in January 2016 when they went and held a vote by email, and that other time in April 2016 when they went and held a vote over the telephone, and that other other time in April 2016 when Sue Pascoe of the Palisades News had the damn nerve to tell Laurie Sale that the Brown Act required them to post their damn agendas where people could see them and Laurie Sale flipped out and cried on Rick Scott’s shoulder all night long.

But the problem with all those episodes in relation to the enforcement project is that good old §54960.2 requires one to start the legal process with a demand letter sent within nine months of the violation. I made my first CPRA request of the PPBID in January 2017 but because they’re a bunch of law-flouting privilege monkeys, they didn’t hand over many if any records until July 2018,2 so that the Brown Act enforcement deadlines for all those 2016 violations were past before I even learned of them.

However, in that steaming heap of records that Elliot Zorensky handed over to me in July3 there was a crucial exchange of emails between Board members that adds up to a big fat violation of the Brown Act at §54952.2(b)(1), which says:

A majority of the members of a legislative body shall not, outside a meeting authorized by this chapter, use a series of communications of any kind, directly or through intermediaries, to discuss, deliberate, or take action on any item of business that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the legislative body.

And not only that, but the conversation took place in May 2018, so we are well within the nine month deadline. And it’s that conversation, the details of which are interesting in themselves and are to be found after the break, that forms the basis of today’s demand letter. The BID now has thirty days to respond or else we’re going to court, and you will read all about it here if you want to!
Continue reading Latest Episode In The Brown Act Enforcement Project Targets Pacific Palisades BID For Secret Email Meeting Violation — They Do This Kind Of Thing All The Time But They’re So Incredibly Slow To Respond To CPRA Requests That I’ve Never Caught Them Within The Nine Month Enforcement Window — Until Now! — Smarmy Caruso Puppet And Self-Proclaimed Board Member Rick Lemmo Channels Donald Trump Even As He Aids And Abets Brown Act Violations — Typical! — Sad!

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Crusading Palisades Journalist Sue Pascoe To Palisades BID In 2016: You’re Violating The Damn Brown Act By Posting Your Agendas Where Disabled People Can’t Freaking See Them — Zeck Dreck Laurie Sale To Rick Scott: “I Feel Like [Following The Law] Is Just Silly” And Plus This Lady Is Really Mean! — Rick Scott To Laurie Sale: We’re Not Your Damn Lawyers So Figure Out Your Own Damn Problems

Someone recently obtained a bunch of emails from 2016 between Laurie Sale of the Pacific Freaking Palisades BID and Rick Scott of the City Clerk’s office who is, it seems, the BID’s analyst.1 The goodies were passed to me and I uploaded the whole batch of them to Archive dot Org for your edification and titillation, and click here to browse through ’em!

And as you know, the Palisades BID, besides being generally creepy and rather floridly delusional, has proved itself unable to comply even minimally with California’s twin government transparency ordinances, the California Public Records Act and the Brown Act. I’ve written a little about their struggles with CPRA compliance2 and a little more about their struggles with Brown Act compliance, like see this episode and this especially nutty and horrific episode.

So with all of that in mind it was pleasant but not really a surprise to find this little gem of an email exchange in today’s yield. It all began when Sue Pascoe, editor of the famously floofball advertiser known as the Palisades News, emailed Laurie Sale, now retired zeck dreck of the BID, telling her that it was a violation of the Brown Act’s agenda posting requirements to post the agenda in a place that was not handicapped accessible.

Rather than asking a lawyer as anyone with any sense and some assets to protect might do, Laurie Sale emailed Rick Scott of the City Clerk’s office asking him for advice and basically saying that Sue Pascoe was a big meanie and why should the BID have to follow the damn law anyway? Then Rick Scott wrote back and told Laurie Sale that he wasn’t a lawyer and couldn’t give advice. What else did she expect? Turn the page, as always, for transcriptions of everything!
Continue reading Crusading Palisades Journalist Sue Pascoe To Palisades BID In 2016: You’re Violating The Damn Brown Act By Posting Your Agendas Where Disabled People Can’t Freaking See Them — Zeck Dreck Laurie Sale To Rick Scott: “I Feel Like [Following The Law] Is Just Silly” And Plus This Lady Is Really Mean! — Rick Scott To Laurie Sale: We’re Not Your Damn Lawyers So Figure Out Your Own Damn Problems

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Summer Of 2017 — Pacific Palisades BID Decides To Try To Collect Full Assessments From LAUSD — Which Does Not Pay Them To Any BID In Los Angeles — BID President Elliot Zorensky — His Burgeoning Paranoia In Full And Ample Abundance — Tells Laurie Sale That Miranda Paster Is Fighting Against The BID — And Also Goes Behind Laurie Sale’s Back To Negotiate With The City — Making Her Look Even More Foolish Than Even She Could Reasonably Pull Off Under Her Own Power

It’s well known to local BIDdologists that the Los Angeles Unified School District doesn’t keep pace with its companions amongst City entities, no doubt because it hears the beat of a distinctly different drummer.1 For instance we’ve seen recently how the LAUSD even voted against renewing a bunch of BIDs! Not only is it impossible to imagine the City of Los Angeles doing such a thing2 but it’s actually illegal for the City Clerk to vote against BIDs unless the City Council specifically authorizes it, and how is that ever going to happen?

And somewhat famously, the LAUSD evidently voids all its BID petitions by inserting some kind of unauthorized limiting clause. However, these symptoms of the LAUSD’s idiosyncratic attitude towards BIDs are minor quirks compared to the radical agenda set forth in this 2003 memo on LAUSD BID policy.

There’s a lot going on in that memo, but the first thing to look at is the fee schedule on the last page. The short version is that the LAUSD has unilaterally decided that it will not pay the entire amount of its BID assessments. Instead, they pay between 15% and 50% depending on a number of factors regardless of what the BID has decided to bill them.

And evidently BIDs around Los Angeles have just learned to slurp down that bitter draught, because what else exactly are they going to do about it? They have no power to make the LAUSD pay so they have to be content with what they can get rather than what they should get. That is, evidently most BIDs have so learned. The ones run by the marginally competent, the marginally sane, the marginally realistic, and so on. In short, the ones not run by Elliot Zorensky and Laurie Sale of the marginally famous Pacific Palisades BID.

And here is where today’s story begins! It seems that last summer this pair of super-geniuses, almost certainly at the behest of Elliot Zorensky, the superest super-genius of them all, decided that they were going to get that damnable LAUSD to pay the damn money that they damn well owed to the damn BID! Never mind that this was a path every other BID in this City of Angels feared to tread, Elliot Freaking Zorensky was going to rush in! Turn the page for the play by play!
Continue reading Summer Of 2017 — Pacific Palisades BID Decides To Try To Collect Full Assessments From LAUSD — Which Does Not Pay Them To Any BID In Los Angeles — BID President Elliot Zorensky — His Burgeoning Paranoia In Full And Ample Abundance — Tells Laurie Sale That Miranda Paster Is Fighting Against The BID — And Also Goes Behind Laurie Sale’s Back To Negotiate With The City — Making Her Look Even More Foolish Than Even She Could Reasonably Pull Off Under Her Own Power

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Yet Another Egregious Violation Of The Brown Act By The Pacific Palisades BID In 2016 — If This Is Mike Bonin’s Idea Of A Good BID What In The World Would A Bad One Look Like — As Before Not One Board Member Objected To Illegal Votes By Email, Telephone — As Before Legal Action Is Time-Barred So Yet Again The Palisades BID Escapes Consequences Of Their Actions

A couple weeks ago I published some evidence of mind-blowingly egregious Brown Act violations by the Pacific Palisades BID, which, what with Zeck Dreck (ret.) Laurie Sale’s twisted lurching obstructionism and Board Member and Caruso minion Rick Lemmo’s willingness to break the bank just to thwart my inquiries, has turned out, under the acrimonious influence of the world’s angriest CPRA lawyer, which is to say Carol F. Humiston, to be one of this City’s most difficult BIDs from which to obtain records in an orderly, prompt, lawful manner.

Nevertheless, persistence has paid off, and I did, eventually, this summer, obtain a big stack of goodies from these evil henchies up in Northwest zillionaireville and, as I said before, I’m gradually prepping this sizzlin’ hot mess of a production for publication. The text for today’s sermon is a series of emails from April 2016 showing yet another egregious1 Brown Act violation on the part of these littoral lunkheads. Here’s what went down. Laurie Sale2 emailed her damn Board on April 20, 2016, and this is what she had to say for herself:

From: Palisades BID <laurie@palisadesbid.org>

Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2016 11:26 AM

To: ‘Asvina Narain’; ‘Benjamin Gold’; ‘DeeDee West’; Don Scott; Elliot Zorensky; ‘Joyce Brunelle’; ‘Laurie Sale’; Lee Ford; ‘Lynn Borland’; Rick Lemmo; Shaun Malek; Susan
Carroll

Cc: ‘Sharon Shapiro’

Subject: SPECIAL MEETING OF PALISADES BID BOARD

Attachments: Agenda Special Meeting April 28, 2016.docx

Dear Board Members,

Elliot and I spoke about setting up a SPECIAL BID meeting for next Wed., the 27th at 8:30. We’d like to have a resolution (ACTION ITEM) about formally supporting the Caruso Project. As you know, there is still some local opposition, but all of the other community organizations have given their support, and we’d like to know your thoughts on the matter. There is a planning committee meeting on Thurs. the 28 th We’d like the Caruso folks to know where we stand, and so, have decided to call this meeting, prior to the planning meeting.

The agenda is attached, and, as you will see, it’s simply a one topic special meeting. We’d really appreciate your attendance if possible.

I know it is last minute, but if you CANNOT attend, would you please email me with your written support or opposition to having the BID officially support the project. You may also call in to the meeting, at 8:30, and become part of the discussion, if you wish. Here is the number for the conference call:

Dial-in Number: ■■■■■■■■■
Access Code: ■■■■■■■■■

Also, at 8:00 on Wed., the folks from Spectrum, who are doing the power washing, will be there, so we can take photos for the press, and well be able to witness the completion of our first BID project.

Please rsvp to me

Thanks,

Laurie

No doubt you’ve spotted some problems here, and there are others that become clear only on reading the responses. Turn the page for links to emails, transcriptions, and discussions of all the juicy illegal details!
Continue reading Yet Another Egregious Violation Of The Brown Act By The Pacific Palisades BID In 2016 — If This Is Mike Bonin’s Idea Of A Good BID What In The World Would A Bad One Look Like — As Before Not One Board Member Objected To Illegal Votes By Email, Telephone — As Before Legal Action Is Time-Barred So Yet Again The Palisades BID Escapes Consequences Of Their Actions

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Pacific Palisades BID In 2016 — Newly Obtained Emails Reveal The Most Egregious Violation Of The Brown Act I Have Ever Seen In The Wild — Zeck Dreck Laurie Sale — Who Sadly Is Highly Unlikely To Be Prosecuted For Her Criminal Ways — Conducted An Actual Vote On An Actual Motion By Email — Not One Single Board Member Objected — The Statute Of Limitations Has Run So They’re Not Going To Jail — But Obviously They’re Still Going To Hell — Cause There Ain’t No Statute That Can Limit The Freaking Wrath Of God!

I know some of you out there have been remembering such classics as the story of the angry scary fat black homeless male man or the story of the gang members escaping the seething urban hellscape of Santa Freaking Monica and thereby wondering just why it is that it’s been since March freaking 2017 since I last posted any full frontal mockery of the halfwits-by-the-sea out in Northwest Zillionaireville. I’m speaking of course of the Pacific Palisades Business Improvement District, Mike Freaking Bonin’s platonic ideal of a good BID.

And it’s certainly no coincidence that my last few posts about these coastal dimwits had to do with Laurie Freaking Sale’s weirdo Humistonian CPRA aggression. For instance there was the incident of Ms. Laurie Sale’s being too busy to follow the law, a theory which doesn’t work so well for non-zillionaires.1 Then there was the case of board member Rick Freaking Lemmo explaining how they were going to spend 3% of their annual assessments on lawyers to keep records out of my hands.

Well, it turns out that that’s not working out so well,2 because earlier this week I took a trek all the way out to the damn Palisades on public transit3 to finally inspect some records after fifteen tooth-pullingly painful months trying to talk some sense into Ms. Laurie Sale and then a few more months of my lawyer trying to talk some sense into the world’s angriest CPRA attorney, Ms. Carol F. Humiston.4

And good lord, friends! The craziness in these records is beyond fever pitch! It’s beyond Ebola pitch! Can’t easily be measured by disease slash pitch comparisons is how crazy it is! For various technical reasons it’s going to take a long time to prep this steaming pile o’ puckey for publication, so I’ll be dribbling it out a bit at a time. Today’s installment consists of 44 pages of emails amongst the BID Board, which can be found here on Archive.Org.

And amongst the millionish sharp little shards of crazy to be found here is the single most egregious violation of the Brown Act that I’ve ever known to be committed by a BID.5 In January 2016 BID zeck dreck Laurie Sale6 emailed her board with a motion to approve a contract and one by one they all voted yes by reply-all. This is beyond bad, beyond obvious. Turn the page for a discussion of the section that this violates, of what can be done about it now,7 and transcriptions of and links to all the evidence.
Continue reading Pacific Palisades BID In 2016 — Newly Obtained Emails Reveal The Most Egregious Violation Of The Brown Act I Have Ever Seen In The Wild — Zeck Dreck Laurie Sale — Who Sadly Is Highly Unlikely To Be Prosecuted For Her Criminal Ways — Conducted An Actual Vote On An Actual Motion By Email — Not One Single Board Member Objected — The Statute Of Limitations Has Run So They’re Not Going To Jail — But Obviously They’re Still Going To Hell — Cause There Ain’t No Statute That Can Limit The Freaking Wrath Of God!

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Fashion District BID Board Meeting!! Chunkheaded Semigroomed Yobbo Thuggy-Boy Mark Chatoff Presides Over Kooky White-Privilege-O-Rama As LAPD Honcho Mark Reina Gives Jeansy-Creamsy Update On Pending Poverty-Crime-Associated Newton Division Border Shift Moving FDBID To Zillionaire-Associated Central Division — Meanwhile, Linda Freaking Becker, If You Don’t Have Something To Hide, Like Your Pathetic Performance As BID Renewal Boss, Why Are You So Afraid Of Being Videotaped?! — Also Rena Leddy Appears In Public With No Scarf!!!

Today I rode the good old Metro Line 45 North on Broadway to the freaking Fashion District BID board of directors meeting. And all I have to say to you all, my loyal readers,1 is that if you enjoy reading this blog, you owe me freaking big time for the crapola I sit through on your behalf just so we can all get a little giggle and a little spine-chill from the weirdly tedious yet terrifying antics regularly to be experienced at these people’s damn meetings.2

So I did record the entire damned meeting, and you can watch it here on YouTube and if you care about freedom at all you can also watch it here on Archive.Org. The whole thing was essentially as tedious as one might expect, with most of the interesting action taking place before the meeting was convened, so I didn’t get it on tape.3

That bit consisted of director Brian Taban, vice president for covert creepy operations at über-shady real estate firm JADE Enterprises,4 bitching and moaning to Rena Leddy5 like this: “It’s impossible to find a construction lender at reasonable rates Downtown. You can’t find a lender that’s comfortable lending forty, fifty million dollars these days.”6

But it wasn’t all a waste of time! Most interestingly, LAPD Super Duper Cop Mark Reina gave a long update on plans to shift the Northern boundary of Newton Division so that the Fashion District will lie entirely within the Central Division. You can watch and listen here, and turn the page for some discussion.7 Also, be sure not to miss aggressively splenetic crackpot Linda Becker aggrievedly announcing to the world that the meeting was being recorded8 Continue reading Fashion District BID Board Meeting!! Chunkheaded Semigroomed Yobbo Thuggy-Boy Mark Chatoff Presides Over Kooky White-Privilege-O-Rama As LAPD Honcho Mark Reina Gives Jeansy-Creamsy Update On Pending Poverty-Crime-Associated Newton Division Border Shift Moving FDBID To Zillionaire-Associated Central Division — Meanwhile, Linda Freaking Becker, If You Don’t Have Something To Hide, Like Your Pathetic Performance As BID Renewal Boss, Why Are You So Afraid Of Being Videotaped?! — Also Rena Leddy Appears In Public With No Scarf!!!

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Chardonnay-Swilling Scarf Monster Rena Leddy And Her Gang Of Halfwit Henchwomen Discuss How To Market Fashion District Artsy-Shartsitude, Showing How They Subvert The Rule Of Law, Undermine Civil Society, And Betray The Social Compact For Far Less Than 30 Pieces Of Silver — Not To Mention Long-Awaited Proof That Creak-Voiced Marketing Queen Ariana Gomez Is Really Truly Smarter Than Kylie Freaking Jenner!

The other day we wrote about Thursday’s fun-filled1 meeting of the Fashion District BID‘s most funnest committee ever, which is to say, the Marketing Committee.2 Today I have a couple more interesting episodes to present to you!

First, Chardonnay-swilling scarf monster3 Rena Leddy began a little discussion with her gang of half-witted henchwomen, notably Laurie Sale, Laurie Rosen, Linda Becker,4 Mark Levy,5 and Ariana Gomez, about how to market the arty-shartsy side of the Fashion District. You can watch it here if you have the stomach for it. There’s no transcription after the break, cause really, it’s too inconsequential to bear.

The main thing about it, though, is its absolutely puerile triviality. They’re all like “EEK, there are galleries, let’s promote them! There are murals, OMG!!” BIDs do an awful lot of this kind of jive, where they take the products and activities of actual human beings, bleach them into a kind of blindingly inoffensive white soup, and then natter on about how unique it all is and how they can use it for their branding efforts or whatever.

And that would all be fine, maybe a little irritating or cookie-toss-inducing, as that kind of tin-eared jargonistic verbal outsplorching will be. It would be, that is, if it were all these BIDs were up to. But it’s not all they’re up to. Not even close.
Continue reading Chardonnay-Swilling Scarf Monster Rena Leddy And Her Gang Of Halfwit Henchwomen Discuss How To Market Fashion District Artsy-Shartsitude, Showing How They Subvert The Rule Of Law, Undermine Civil Society, And Betray The Social Compact For Far Less Than 30 Pieces Of Silver — Not To Mention Long-Awaited Proof That Creak-Voiced Marketing Queen Ariana Gomez Is Really Truly Smarter Than Kylie Freaking Jenner!

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Oh Snap, You Sap! Generation Gap Crap Map App Flap As BIDdies Yap — Executroid Directrix Rena Leddy And Marketing Creak-Talk Queen Ariana Gomez (Who Dumped Snapchat Before Kylie, She’s That Freaking Smart) Explain To Dumb-As-A-Bag-Of-Kidney-Stones Laurie Sale About Kids These Days — And Rena Leddy Makes Big Brother Look Sane: Proclaims Hate Is Love, Slavery Is Freedom, War Is Peace, Streets Closed To The Public Are Public Space

I mean, we spill an awful lot of electrons around here yammering on about the sheer fuck-witted stupidity of our white supremacist BIDdie friends, but somehow the unmitigated bag-of-kidney-stones level dumbness on display at these people’s meetings still has the power to astonish.1 Evidence for this claim? Witness, if you will, this recent meeting of the Fashion District BID‘s freaking marketing committee, kindly recorded for your viewing pleasure2 by one of our long-time correspondents, the mysterious Mr. Mike.

Most of the meeting consisted, as usual, of creak-voiced FDBID Marketrix Extraordinaire Ariana Gomez3 yammering on about web freaking analytics, affinity freaking groups, in-freaking-fluencers, social freaking media freaking blah-de-freaking-blah-blah-blah, and the usual sort of jive one might expect to be emitted by a bunch of BIDdies all hopped up on managerial jargon and an unshakably delusional sense of the depth, value, and intrinsic rightness of their own objectively bizarro world-view. There were at least a couple of non-coma-inducing episodes as well, though!

First, Fashion District Board of Directors member, part-time executive directrix in her own right, and by far the least brilliant bulb in the metaphorical Fashion District chandelier, the inimitable Ms. Laurie Sale, started a flap about some map app crap and was dealt a slap by the generation gap. Watch and listen here, and turn the page for some mockery and the usual transcription.

Second, Rena Leddy,4 who in the past has somehow managed to pass fairly successfully as a sane person, gave up on that whole pointless charade and took a great deal of time out of everyone’s lives to explain how that periodic BID-sponsored black mass known as the Urban Dinner Party celebrates a lack of public space by reserving a public street for a private party, forbidding the public from even entering it without a pricey ticket, and how this somehow turns the closed-off street into public space.5 Watch and listen here, and, as above, turn the page for some mockery and the usual transcription.
Continue reading Oh Snap, You Sap! Generation Gap Crap Map App Flap As BIDdies Yap — Executroid Directrix Rena Leddy And Marketing Creak-Talk Queen Ariana Gomez (Who Dumped Snapchat Before Kylie, She’s That Freaking Smart) Explain To Dumb-As-A-Bag-Of-Kidney-Stones Laurie Sale About Kids These Days — And Rena Leddy Makes Big Brother Look Sane: Proclaims Hate Is Love, Slavery Is Freedom, War Is Peace, Streets Closed To The Public Are Public Space

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Newly Obtained Documents Reveal That The Hollywood Media District BID Is Paying Urban Place Consulting $1,550.35 More Than The Fashion District BID Is Paying For Renewal Services Because UPC Is Billing Assistants At 20% More! Jeff Briggs Supplies Unredacted UPC Labor Matrix Without Requiring A Freaking Demand Letter! Aaron Aulenta Isn’t As Much Of A “Tech Dinosaur” As Previously Claimed!

You may recall that as part of my long term project to turn as many BID consultants as possible in to the City Ethics Commission for unregistered lobbying, I’ve been trying to track down consulting contracts and other such evidence. I obtained a lot of excellent information from the San Pedro Historic Waterfront BID and, after a prolonged struggle, chronicled in excessive detail here, I obtained an unredacted copy of Urban Place Consulting’s contract with the Fashion District BID.

In the course of that whole mishegoss I had to overcome FDBID executive directrix Rena Leddy’s ultimately untenable position that the so-called “labor matrix,” a chart which detailed how much time UPC meant to spend on each aspect of the BID renewal process and how much they were to be paid for it,1 was a trade secret. Among the many cogent arguments we used2 was the evident fact that labor costs couldn’t possibly be trade secrets because UPC would of necessity have to share them with prospective clients before a contract was signed. This was a purely logical argument, but now, thanks to a huge trove of records shared with me this evening by the Media District BID and relating to their renewal process, also being handled by UPC, I have definitive proof.
Continue reading Newly Obtained Documents Reveal That The Hollywood Media District BID Is Paying Urban Place Consulting $1,550.35 More Than The Fashion District BID Is Paying For Renewal Services Because UPC Is Billing Assistants At 20% More! Jeff Briggs Supplies Unredacted UPC Labor Matrix Without Requiring A Freaking Demand Letter! Aaron Aulenta Isn’t As Much Of A “Tech Dinosaur” As Previously Claimed!

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The Hollywood Chamber Of Commerce Amended Its Lobbying Registration Form in April 2017 And The Only Change Was The Date They Qualified — More Interesting, Though, Is The Fact That They Consider Their Pro-Establishment Advocacy For Jeff Zarrinnam’s Inchoate Hollywood-Western And Route 66 BIDs To Be Lobbying Activity

It’s well-known that the Municipal Lobbying Ordinance requires lobbyists of all stripes to register with the City Ethics Commission. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce is no exception to the rule.1 They are also required to amend their registration forms if there are any material changes in the information provided.2

And as you know if you follow this blog, I find everything to do with lobbyists in Los Angeles fascinating, and thus I haunt the Ethics Commission’s lobbying pages, poring over the alphabetical lists of individual lobbyists and of lobbyist firms and employers to see if anything’s changed or if something is newly interesting.

And lo! Last night I noticed that our old friends, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, had amended their registration form on April 28. Here are the two forms:

Well, I stared and stared and stared at those two forms just trying to figure out what had changed. Eventually I noticed that the original form had January 31, 2017 as the date they’d qualified as a lobbying entity3 whereas the amended version had January 1, 2017 as the day of qualifying.

One of the Hollywood Chamber’s registration forms superimposed on the other with 38% opacity so that it’s clear that the only difference is in the qualifying date. Click to enlarge, of course.
There’s a lot of information on the forms, though, and I didn’t feel confident that the difference I’d noticed was in fact the only difference. I wasn’t sure what do to until this morning, when it occurred to me that if I put both pages into the GIMP, superimposed one on top of the other, and then faded the opacity up and down I’d be able to notice what changed.4 And it turns out that in fact, it’s correct that the only change was the date of the Hollywood Chamber’s qualifying as a lobbyist.

Which leads irresistibly to the question of why Leron Gubler and/or Nicole Shahenian, who are the Hollywood Chamber’s two registered lobbyists, felt the need to make this tiny change. Read on for speculations and some other chit-chat about the fact that Leron Gubler lists the establishment of the Hollywood Western and the Route 66 BIDs as issues the Chamber is lobbying for this year.
Continue reading The Hollywood Chamber Of Commerce Amended Its Lobbying Registration Form in April 2017 And The Only Change Was The Date They Qualified — More Interesting, Though, Is The Fact That They Consider Their Pro-Establishment Advocacy For Jeff Zarrinnam’s Inchoate Hollywood-Western And Route 66 BIDs To Be Lobbying Activity

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