Okay, so we were all geared up, popcorn in hand, waiting for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to announce his selection for Chief of Police on Monday. We were primed. We were deliriously anticipatory. We had paper streamers and noisemakers and were entirely prepared to whoop and holler supportively for whichever of the three he named: Charlie Beck or Jim McDonnell or Michel Moore.

Furthermore, we really, really felt we knew who it was going to be. We’d done our reconnaissance flights, read the I Ching, laid out the Tarot, swirled some tea leaves, thrown some bones. We figured our analysis was a Las Vegas oddsmaker’s sure thing. And we surmised that the decision had likely been locked and loaded for a while—even though the mayor made a big To-Do about calling everyone back for interviews on Sunday, and everything.

But, whatever. We liked each of the candidates a lot and were going to be happy whichever way it went.

Then came the word that, no, there wasn’t going to be a Monday announcement after all. The clay was still wet, the cake hadn’t risen, the pot hadn’t boiled, the stone had yet to be carved.

The mayor was still thinking.

The selection was now to be made public on Tuesday.

What’s this?! Tuesday? Was it really possible that AV was still undecided?

We were confused.

Then we talked to persons with cooler heads than our own (who also happened to be in something of a position to know). And they laid it out succinctly.

The mayor is not dithering. This isn’t indecision, or extended contemplation. It is stage management.

In part, Antonio is milking the moment. But the delay is more than that. AV is making it clear that it is he who is making this decision. Not the police commission. Not Bill Bratton. Not….fill in the blank with any number of prominent names who have been energetically lobbying behind the scenes for this candidate or that one.

Moreover, by delaying a day, Antonio is flashing a message in neon letters to the chief-to-be, that it is to the mayor—not anyone else—that the new head of the LAPD will owe his job.

Yeah, it’s a power play, with a liberal sprinkling of narcissism thrown in.

On the other hand, he who takes the credit also gets the blame if things go wrong. And, with the plethora of challenges presented by the present economy (double-digit unemployment, a sinking city budget, shredded social safety nets, looming prisoner release) a hell of a lot could go wrong under any chief. So, if Antonio is gambling a pile of political capital on the bet that he and the new C.O.P. will be able to continue to make things go right in the post-Bratton realm of protect and serve, one cannot honestly say that is a bad thing.

It’s even, kind of, you know, leader-ish.

Okay, then, see you Tuesday. Same time, same place, same noisemakers. New popcorn.

Okay, Gavin Newsom has dropped out of the race for California Governor, for “family” reasons (AKA bad polling numbers).

Meg Whitman is a rich witch [It's Halloween and that's a technical term.] who believes she can buy an election, can’t remember when she last voted and won’t show up for debates. (In terms of her chances to win the 2010 race: Ebay, shmEbay. Snowball meet hell.)

Thus far, the rest of the Republican field—Tom Campbell and Steve Poizner—ain’t strong enough to stand up to the once-and-would-be-future Gov: Jerry Brown who, even though he’s an old guy, he still has enough energy to lite several medium-sized cities and is running an excellent pre-campaign campaign, what with all his high profile nabbings of mortgage fraudsters and other nasty types.

But, then also yesterday there was the kerfuffle bannered on the front page of the SF Chronicle, about how Jerry’s press guy illegally taped a conversation with a reporter and now, as it turns out, a lot of conversations with reporters.

Quite a scoop—except that painting the taping as illegal is quite a stretch.

Federal law says that if one side knows about the taping, the other side doesn’t have to know. However, yes, California law requires that both sides must know, but only if the conversation is a “confidential communication.”

California penal code defines “confidential communication” as:

….any communication carried on in circumstances as may reasonably indicate that any party to the communication desires it to be confined to the parties thereto, but excludes a communication made in a public gathering or in any legislative, judicial, executive or administrative proceeding open to the public, or in any other circumstance in which the parties to the communication may reasonably expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded.

An on-the-record interview for the purposes of later publication does not snugly fit within the covers of confidential.

On the other hand, if you are working for the state’s top cop and you do this stuff without mentioning it to those whom you are recording, and then defend yourself by saying, “you guys do it so we get to,” you look like an idiot.

A little while ago, Jerry wisely suspended the staffer, Scott Gerber.

Which brings us to…….Antonio.

I heard late on Friday afternoon that after the twinned news announcements of Gavin’s bow out, and Jerry’s guy’s Nixonian moment, there was chatter among high level staff in the Villaraigosa’s office about what a “great governor” the mayor would make.

One assumes that this is merely wishful thinking, and that Antonio and his people are not (gulp) actually contemplating such a move.

It is just wishful thinking, right Mr. Mayor?

Homeboy Industries is still struggling financially (I’ll get back to that in a minute), but a some very good news was officially announced this past Friday at the downtown LA Ralph’s supermarket.

It seems that the Ralph’s folks were looking for some special products for the deli section of their store on West 9th Street so they approached Homeboy Industries with the idea of distributing some of the homemade salsa made by the organization’s Homegirl Cafe and Catering Service.

(NOTE: Homegirl Cafe’s chief chef, manager and founder, Patty Zarate, is an enormously talented creator of unique recipes, so the Ralph’s people were able to combine a good deed with a really great product choice. Your classic win-win. )

The upshot is that, starting last Friday, both mango and the hotter morita salsa from Homegirl are available behind the downtown Ralph’s deli counter. And if that works out, the idea is that Ralph’s will contract for more products.

Both the Downtown News and the LA Times have more on the story.

The Downtown News reported that even Mayor Villaraigosa dutifully turned up at Friday’s press conference for the new salsa deal, and that, although he liked both sauces, he preferred the morita “because it’s hotter.” (I do too.)

It was definitely nice to know about the mayor’s salsa preferences. But I wish some enterprising reporter from either the Times or the Downtown News had asked the mayor why—after his office has repeatedly promised cash-strapped Homeboy Industries $340,000—last time I heard, no money has yet materialized. (Actually the mayor’s office originally promised $500,000, but why quibble?)

By the way, I just noticed that NPR’s Mandalit del Barco recently did a very nice interview with Homeboy Industries’ director and founder, Father Greg Boyle. For those of you who have never seen or heard Father Greg speak, it would be worth your time to click here and listen. Because of the nature of the show she was doing, Mandalit came at the interview from a faith based direction, but Greg went somewhere else with it.

At the time that the interview had occurred, he had just come back from officiating at his 168th funeral for a young person that he knew and liked shot to death in the streets of LA because of gang violence. In this instance the kid was one of the Homeboy bakers. This was very much on his mind as he talked.

(photo from Eric Richardson’s photostream on Flickr)

You want outrage? Try the pedophile protector and the mayor.

Antonio Villaraigosa, showing the wild imagination and creativity too often missing from City Hall, tried hard this week to share his outrage over an L.A. firefighters’ union mailer that contains some low-quality photos of last year’s fatal Metrolink crash.

He even magnified the allegedly offensive photo by three times in a failed effort to prove that an unprincipled union, in a nasty budget fight, lost its moral compass and showed “body parts” of crash victims. But there are no body parts. When magnified, the photo shows a blood-stained sheet covering the body of a Metrolink engineer who died. But that didn’t keep the mayor from using the term “body parts” so many times I thought he was inventorying talent at a local TV station.

“When you see these images – body parts strewn on the ground — they’re absolutely unacceptable,” Villaraigosa told City Hall news conference. “They’re beyond the pale. They’re irresponsible and people should be held accountable for them, it’s as simple as that.”

The mayor was venting. Too bad he lacks a strong staff member who could keep him from going public with his mistaken photo criticism. I understand his frustration at seeing signs posted outside fire stations across the city, blaming his budget-cutting for endangering the public, but doesn’t this guy keep a scrapbook like the rest of us? He should turn to the page that shows similar photos used during last year’s successful lobbying efforts of well-connected Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills for a new hospital wing.

One key difference, of course, doesn’t show up in any photo. Unlike the firefighters’ squabble, the fight over the hospital expansion brought in campaign contributions.

And please don’t take this post as support of the firefighters’ union position in the ongoing negotiations over the city’s tight budget. No one in their right mind believes the city would fail to adequately respond to a disaster as grave as the Metrolink crash that killed 25 people. Most likely, the pampered union doesn’t want to wean its members from outrageous overtime and six-digit salaries.

For more deserving objects of outrage, I suggest that the mayor pick on the bad cardinal, whose Pedophile Protection Program remains in the crosshairs of a grand jury. Or take on Sheriff Lee Baca, who criticized a jury verdict in a deputy-involved Compton shooting and appears to support fatally shooting an armed man in the back.

Or, if he still has that magnifying glass handy, I’d be happy to share my grainy photos shot from a grassy knoll in Dallas in 1963.

Embedded in the middle of the mayor’s S.O.C. speech, there was one innocent sounding paragraph that has 76 of the city’s important community agencies in a justifiable state of panic. The paragraph was this one:

We are going to better connect help to the people who need it by creating 21 Family Source Centers located in our hardest-hit neighborhoods. Where people will be able to seek assistance for themselves and their families, file for critical tax credits, access affordable medical care, and benefit from programs at every level of government – and all on a single form. Each year, this program will serve at least 50,000 people.

Here’s the problem. Those nice, spanking new (as yet to be built) “Family Source Centers” will need to be funded.

And funding, in case you haven’t noticed, is a bit tight these days. So to create his new pet one-stop shopping centers, the mayor reportedly intends to yank funding from a money cache known as the Community Development Block Grant fund.

Unfortunately, that money is funding the aforementioned 76 existing organizations and has been, in many cases, for over 20 years. In some cases 30 years. We’re talking about an impressive list of service providers that range from well-known day care centers, homeless shelters, senior care centers, pre schools, mentoring programs, after school programs, low-cost legal services, services for persons with disabilities, jobs programs……and on and on and on.

These are proven programs that are already woven into the fabric of the communities they serve. They provide services on which the poorer communities have come to depend. In other words, they cover many of the same neighborhood needs that the mayor wants to provide in his new Family Source Centers. Except that they don’t have “City of Los Angeles” over their doors, as one mayor’s office staffer helpfully pointed out when questioned about the funding switch.

Now these 76 neighborhood organizations are being told, “Bub-bye. Lovely knowing you. Must run. I’ll be taking your bank account with me.”

Put another way, the mayor seems to have decided to reinvent 21 nice new wheels all monogrammed with his name…and to do so he’s tossing out the existing working wheels, which does not sound terribly wise—and is, one would guess, a lot more expensive.

Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, he gave it. It was pretty good. Antonio can be quite moving when he puts in the effort. The man does, after all, have skills. And, since he is planning to run for Governor, he did put in the effort.

The LA Times has a nice rundown on the main part of the speech, which had to do with what the city was going to do to help itself and its residents survive this economy. (You can find the speech in full after the jump.)

Apart from the economy et al, there was one other significant section of the speech. And that was the last big section, the stuff about education.

Antonio praised charter schools in a big way—in particular Green Dot and its takeover of Locke High School—which, now that it is eight months into its first school year, can be tentatively labeled a real and very heartening success, even though it is still early days.

AV also praised the new Alliance charter that has opened up to rave reviews on the Cal State LA campus.

Rather than fight the charters, Villaraigosa made clear that the district must actively partner with them—thus giving a loud message to the union leadership (We’re talking to you, Mr. Duffy) that they need to get over their charter aversion and start making some deals.

None of this was new. Antonio was just swaying to the popular music of the moment, educationally speaking, and telling us to sing along.

But he assuredly set the right tone. Charters are the reform leaders right now. Anybody paying attention knows that. But the mayor saying so gave it a nice official stamp.
Read the rest of this entry »

There has been a lot of chatter about those who will run (or are already running) for Governor when Arnold terms out in 2010.

In this morning’s LA Times, Tom Hayden lays out the reasons why our newly reelected mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, will assuredly run for governor, why we shouldn’t try to stop him. And what is likely to happen if and when he does.

Tom isn’t always right about absolutely everything all the time (We have been known to squabble genially when we are on gang panels together.) But he’s a big brained guy and as smart and savvy a political analyst as any you’ll ever meet. And this is an opinion piece worth reading.

Also, this morning I was musing to myself about what Laura Chick is going to be doing with her time once she’s no longer the controller, and now that she’s said she won’t be running for Wendy Greuel’s spot on the City Council.

Then as I was reading Hayden’s piece, I got it. DUH! We all know she plans to run for mayor when AV leaves. Well, if he does indeed run and is elected governor, she will run to replace him. And she has an excellent shot at winning.

Okay, well that’s one question answered anyway.

Here’ are some clips from Tom’s Op Ed:

Now that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has won reelection, he will immediately take steps, at least behind the scenes, to run for governor of California. Those who hope otherwise have little understanding of the man or California politics.

There is a path to victory in the Democratic primary for Villaraigosa if he runs against three white male candidates: former Gov. Jerry Brown, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Lt. Gov. John Garamendi. Villaraigosa will be able to claim the Latino vote — roughly 28% of primary voters — thus needing only an additional 12% to reach the 40% probably needed to succeed in a divided field. In a two-way race against Brown, on the other hand, Brown wins.

Villaraigosa, a former state Assembly speaker, has a plausible rationale. State government is more dysfunctional than ever, a mess directly attributable to Proposition 13. Then Gov.-Brown declared himself a “born-again tax cutter” and supported Proposition 13 when it passed in 1978. As a result of Proposition 13, property taxes are practically frozen not only for homeowners but for giant corporations and agribusinesses. And although it takes a legislative majority to grant a tax break, the measure requires an impossible two-thirds vote to repeal one. Consequently, state and local budgets are locked in a downward spiral, regardless of whatever stimulus funds come from Washington.

These and other dysfunctions of the state can be addressed only by calling a California constitutional convention, or so Villaraigosa might plausibly argue. He can point to many past accomplishments in his brief tenure as speaker, including historic school and environmental bonds.

This is not an endorsement, but a prediction. If Villaraigosa finally decides not to run for governor, it won’t be because he doesn’t want to. It would be because polling shows it is impossible, a career-breaker. But in a field of four, his chances look good.

Four-year-old Roberto Lopez is the latest symbol of a dying newspaper. The little boy was shot and killed as he walked with his sister to a community center near their Angelino Heights home around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Where did the Los Angeles Times play the story? Page B3 in my edition. It should, at least, have been the dominant story on the cover of the California section and knocked off a timeless feature about a fire-gutted Montecito monastery’s efforts to rebuild.

Instead, we get a short story, with no photo of the boy. No interviews with family, friends or neighbors. No neighborhood scene. Times’ editors should have followed the example of LAPD’s Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger, who told their reporter: “We’re throwing everything we have at this investigation.”

I’m so over blaming Sam Zell for every shortcoming of our once stronger daily; rarely great, just stronger. Reporters and photographers out to save their jobs from impending layoffs should have carpooled to the scene and produced an in-depth series of stories and hoisted them on their editors in time for today’s paper. Too bad a tipster couldn’t have phoned in an erroneous report of a celebrity spotted in the neighborhood. Maybe the sleepyheads on Spring Street will recover in time for Thursday’s paper. To its credit, the paper’s Web site shows some progress on the story, with video from Tribune’s KTLA. Still, it seems like their overdosing on sedatives in the Times newsroom again.

The criminal enterprise known as L.A. Unified, which should be overseen by a panel of federal judges, took steps to can 2,300 teachers if the nightmarish budget comes true. Where did the story run? Page B-4.

The Times should run front-page stories every day on the latest news of the budget debacle. Include email addresses, home phone numbers and home addresses of every GOP legislator who refuses to act responsibly and raise taxes. (OK, I hear you on the home addresses.) Interview the constitutents of these backward-thinking lawmakers to see if these cavemen really represent their views.

Even the governor, who continues to steal transit money, is calling for tax hikes. The same governor who would have billions more to spend today had he not slashed the car tax upon taking office in 2003.

Forgive me, L.A. Times, for suggesting you step up your game. You probably think what I’m calling for sounds like advocacy journalism and would force you to surrender your objectivity, an outdated term that only provides an excuse for your failure to inform a community about the meaning of events and issues.

Tell me, what’s your objective view of a bankrupt state that fails to meet the needs of its young and its most needy residents?

And what does your objectivity say about the sad end of 4-year-old Roberto’s life? How are we to cope when you don’t tell us more about him, our city, our struggles and our future?

While you think about it, leave a red rose on Roberto’s shrine. It’s OK to mourn while you ponder questions for Chief Bratton and the mayor.

LA GANGS, PARKS….AND THE CRIME RATE:

According to the LA Times, Antonio Villaraigosa says that the drop in gang crime this summer is due to the launch of the first stage of his gang programs, which consisted of—among other things—-keeping parks in eight specifically targeted gang-haunted areas open late and offering programs in those parks during the summer months. (The parks went back to their usual hours as of Labor Day.)

So here’s my question: Since the mayor is, in fact, in charge of Parks & Rec why has the city not made keeping those parks open late, complete with youth programs, a major priority during the school year? Why just for the summer months? If reducing gang violence is a major issue in our fair city, and giving kids something else to do is helping, why stop now? Surely it can’t be that expensive.

Or was the parks program simply a cosmetic gesture in the direction of gang “prevention” and “intervention designed to give the mayor a, you know, cosmetic victory for the first stage of his gang program—-when the real credit for the drop belongs to the LAPD putting more officers on the streets in those eight areas? (Which, admittedly, the mayor strongly supported.)

Just asking.

**************************************************************************************************************

MLK-HARBOR HOSPITAL…..AGAIN

Yes, all hospitals have problems and, yes, even gold-standard Cedars Sinai nearly killed Dennis Quaid’s infant twins accidentally, but honestly, people.

Los Angeles needs Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital generally, and the city also needs the hospital to eventually reopen it’s emergency center, but reports like the one released Monday do not help. According to the LA Times:

More employees at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital have significant criminal histories than Los Angeles County officials have previously disclosed, according to a report released today by the auditor-controller.

The report found that 152 of the 1,604 employees working at King in August 2007 had criminal or arrest records.

This is not to say that people with criminal records cannot be hired. But the way the hospital handled the vetting (to use the word-of-the-month) is not exactly confidence building, given the administrators many broken promises.

The report also says, according to the Times, that:

…King staffers often deliver patient care that is inferior to the care provided at other county facilities because the exams that assess their competency are weaker and managers improperly allowed staffers to take the exams numerous times until they passed.

Great.

More LA city issues—schools, gangs and immigration—when I get back on Wednesday.

And book a seat for Bill, too.

Dear Honorable Mayor V:

I’m one of the few people in Los Angeles who are happy you’ve been out of town so much this year. I applauded your efforts on behalf of Hillary. It’s important to get a Democrat in the White House to reverse years of neglect of urban problems and mass transit needs. And I even buy your justification for the quarter-million-dollar junket to Israel.
So, as a supporter of your travels, I am hoping you can squeeze in one little in-state trip to the capitol of your dreams this Tuesday. That’s right. Get yourself to Sacramento in time to testify before the Assembly Public Safety Committee on behalf of Gloria Romero’s bill that would end our secret police state. We want to restore some degree of openness to LAPD misconduct hearings. To make it easy for you, I’ve listed Southwest Airlines early-morning flights and provided the link to online reservations. Also, this is not the first time I’ve nagged you about this. I pestered you here and here. So get packing!

Happy travels, Mr. Mayor.

Los Angeles to Sacramento:
2625 6:00am 7:15am Nonstop 1:15 $149 $134
2284 7:45am 9:00am Nonstop 1:15 $149 $134
2357 9:40am 10:55am Nonstop 1:15 $149 $134
328 11:55am 1:10pm Nonstop 1:15 $149 $134

Go online and book your flight: /www.southwest.com/cgi-bin/showItinerary

Very Truly Yours,
L.A. Sniper