Tag Archives: Linda Becker

Fashion District BID, Lawsuits, Public Records Act Pragmatics

Fashion District BID Sued In Order To Enforce Compliance With The Public Records Act — Noted CPRA Attorney Karl Olsen Co-Counsels With Abenicio Cisneros To See That Justice Is Done In This Egregious Attempt To Withhold Information About, Among Other Crucial Matters, The BID’s Role In Torpedoing The Skid Row Neighborhood Council — Novel Legal Issues Raised Regarding The Effect Of The Municipal Lobbying Ordinance On CPRA Exemptions In Los Angeles

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On August 15, 2018, faced with Rena Leddy’s unhinged intransigence and chronic disregard of the law, I was forced to file a petition asking a judge to require the Fashion District BID to comply with the California Public Records Act. Most of the petitions I’ve filed recently have had only to do with BIDs ignoring my requests altogether1 but this one raises interesting and possibly novel issues of how exemptions to the CPRA are to be interpreted in general and in Los Angeles in particular. I’m represented by Abenicio Cisneros and Karl Olson.2

There are four classes of records at issue in this petition. Those are:3

  • Emails between the FDBID and either the South Park BID or DLANC
  • Emails in the possession of BID Board president Mark Chatoff
  • Emails between the BID and Urban Place Consulting
  • Emails in the possession of BID renewal committee chair Linda Becker

Rena Leddy claimed either that such records didn’t exist or that, if they did, the BID could withhold them on the basis of the so-called deliberative process exemption.4 In each of the four cases either there’s independent evidence that responsive records exist or else it defies belief that no records exist. For instance it is not plausible at all that Linda Becker, chair of the BID’s renewal committee, does not possess a single email relevant to the conduct of the BID’s business.5

Thus the petition focuses on debunking the exemption claims as it’s going to be hard for the BID to argue that no records exist. Turn the page for some details and some transcribed excerpts!
Continue reading Fashion District BID Sued In Order To Enforce Compliance With The Public Records Act — Noted CPRA Attorney Karl Olsen Co-Counsels With Abenicio Cisneros To See That Justice Is Done In This Egregious Attempt To Withhold Information About, Among Other Crucial Matters, The BID’s Role In Torpedoing The Skid Row Neighborhood Council — Novel Legal Issues Raised Regarding The Effect Of The Municipal Lobbying Ordinance On CPRA Exemptions In Los Angeles →

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Fashion District BID

Pardon Me, Would You Have Any Grey Poupon? Wildly Inappropriate Hilarity At FDBID Board Meeting About Burn Treatment For BID Security Guards Reveals Not Only That Zillionaires Don’t Care A Whit About The Well-Being Of The 99.9% But Also That They Actually Are Perversely Obsessed With Mustard Varieties — BID Operations Director Randall Tampa Admits That The Point Of Arrests Of Homeless People Is To Harass Them Rather Than To Enforce The Law, Asks Property Owners To Tell Tenants They Won’t Even Have To Testify In Court If They Report The Homeless

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Well, yesterday I was blessed6 to attend a meeting of the good old Fashion District BID, and you might even have noticed that I uploaded video7 and wrote a long and hilarious8 post about it. But these meetings are so rich in a weirdly Freudian way that there’s a neverending fount of subjects bubbling up from each and every one, and yesterday’s was no exception.

For instance, watch and listen here as unexpectedly professional Director of Operations Randall Tampa informs the BIDdies whose minion he is about an elderly disheveled white arsonist loose in the district.9 At one point, it seems, the arsonist lit a dumpster fire and BID security were the first on the scene. I’ll let Randall Tampa take it from here:

And in one case [the fire location] was a twenty yard rollup that was under a building. And our safety team smelled it, got there, saw it. And they wheeled the trash bin out. And they actually burned their hands. But the fire department got there, put it out, told them to put mustard on their hands. I guess that’s the new cure for minor burns.

And turn the page for some discussion, another episode from the meeting, and a complete transcription of Randall Tampa’s remarks.
Continue reading Pardon Me, Would You Have Any Grey Poupon? Wildly Inappropriate Hilarity At FDBID Board Meeting About Burn Treatment For BID Security Guards Reveals Not Only That Zillionaires Don’t Care A Whit About The Well-Being Of The 99.9% But Also That They Actually Are Perversely Obsessed With Mustard Varieties — BID Operations Director Randall Tampa Admits That The Point Of Arrests Of Homeless People Is To Harass Them Rather Than To Enforce The Law, Asks Property Owners To Tell Tenants They Won’t Even Have To Testify In Court If They Report The Homeless →

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Fashion District BID

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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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,10 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.11

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.12

That bit consisted of director Brian Taban, vice president for covert creepy operations at über-shady real estate firm JADE Enterprises,13 bitching and moaning to Rena Leddy14 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.”15

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.16 Also, be sure not to miss aggressively splenetic crackpot Linda Becker aggrievedly announcing to the world that the meeting was being recorded17 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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Fashion District BID

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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The other day we wrote about Thursday’s fun-filled18 meeting of the Fashion District BID‘s most funnest committee ever, which is to say, the Marketing Committee.19 Today I have a couple more interesting episodes to present to you!

First, Chardonnay-swilling scarf monster20 Rena Leddy began a little discussion with her gang of half-witted henchwomen, notably Laurie Sale, Laurie Rosen, Linda Becker,21 Mark Levy,22 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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