The Daily Beast has a brand new profile of soon to be California First Lady, Anne Gust Brown, and her affect on the life and work of the governor elect. But before we get to the DB story, a few personal recollections on the same topic:

MY FIRST VERY BIG STORY AS A YOUNG AND NOT AT ALL EXPERIENCED JOURNALIST was a nationally syndicated interview/profile I managed to wrangle with then California Governor Jerry Brown in 1976 when he was running for president as a dark horse candidate. For a few months of that year, and a few amazing primaries, it looked like he might very well have a shot at being the nominee. But it was not to be. The Democratic party leadership preferred someone a bit more…um….controllable and Jerry’s style campaign played better in the east and the west than it did in the deep south.

During my reporting for that story, I followed Brown around through a variety of circumstances and I remember in particular one late night in the governor’s office when staff and legislators were trying to get Jerry through the process of signing or not signing a large stack of bills, which was a maddeningly slow affair because Brown’s instinctive intellectual curiosity, combined with with his notoriously whimsical attention span, caused him to question things that were often really not worth questioning, given the circumstances.

As the process dragged on and on into the wee hours, I remember one politico—either a staffer or a state senator, I can’t remember now— expelling himself from EGB Jr’s office, flushed and steaming. “We gotta get this guy a wife,” growled the man for the benefit of anyone who happened to be within earshot. “We got to get this guy a wife who will kick his ass!”

In the intervening years I’ve interviewed and/or reported on, or simply chatted with Jerry Brown many, many times, and have often thought back on the rightness of that remark. Not about the ass-kicking part, but the fact that, like certain kinds of very bright people, he needed some sort of grounding person in his life, somebody who would hold on to his kite string, a counterweight to bring him to balance.

Enter Anne Gust in 1990. After first dating, and then living together, she and Brown married in 2005.

I met Anne only once, when the three of us sat together during lunch at a benefit for the California relief organization, Operation USA, and the rightness of their pairing struck me immediately.

The impression was reinforced a couple of times when I was interviewing Jerry on the phone at his home office, and he needed to pause several times to interact with his wife and the interplay spoke volumes.

One of the most charming things about his election night speech, for those of us who have watched Jerry Brown for a very long time, was the way he credited Anne for his victory and nattered on happily about how she would be California’s first lady. He gushed really. Jerry forgot to be cautious, or hyper intellectual. He was instead publicly adoring. And it was great.

I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: for better and occasionally for worse, Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown, Jr. was and still is one of the brightest people in American public life. He is also one of the canniest, politically speaking.

But common sense? In the past, sometimes not so much.

As a consequence, both as a governor and also as a presidential candidate, and even during his time in Oakland, he would occasionally give rein to creative but poorly thought out actions on a whim (more often then not with the encouragement of his longtime Pre-Gust “closest adviser,” the interesting but decidedly peculiar, Jacques Barzaghi). Some of those actions were to Brown’s—and/or our—detriment.

That’s where Anne Gust Brown comes in. She is not only extremely bright herself, she is a very savvy professional—a lawyer and businesswoman—who worked for 14 years for The Gap, first as general counsel and then Chief Administrative Officer.

She clearly gets him and in no way tries to keep Jerry from being Jerry. But, when need be, she sits down firmly on the other side of his teeter-totter. To his credit, he is grateful for it.

By the way, I think if Jerry had been settled down and married to Anne Gust when he was running for president in 1992, the year that William Jefferson Clinton became the nominee, and eventually a two term president, we might very well have had POTUS Brown.

All these years after his first two terms as governor, Jerry Brown is about to embark on his third. It will assuredly be his most difficult, given the state of the state. But with just a little bit of luck—and a lot of Anne Gust Brown—it may possibly be his best.

OKAY, NOW BACK TO THE DAILY BEAST PROFILE OF ANNE GUST BROWN , whom writer Joe Matthews calls The Most Powerful Woman in California.

It’s a definite must read. And he might be right about that most powerful woman thingy.

Here are some clips:

The conventional wisdom has hardened quickly: Californians, in rejecting Silicon Valley CEOs Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, supposedly declared in last week’s elections that they don’t want corporate executives running their government.

Nonsense. California voters may have turned down the applications of Whitman and Fiorina for the governorship and a U.S. Senate seat, respectively. But in the very same election, they voted to put a female corporate executive from the Bay Area in charge of their state’s government.

The name of Anne Gust Brown, a former top lawyer and executive for The Gap, wasn’t on the ballot, but it might as well as have been. She served as de facto campaign manager for the campaign of her husband of five years, the once and now future Gov. Jerry Brown. And by all accounts, she will serve as his top aide (albeit on an unpaid basis) as he runs the government.

That’s why no one batted an eye when Governor-elect Brown suggested this week that he may not bother appointing a chief of staff. The statement only seemed to confirm that Anne Brown will be in charge, even if she doesn’t hold the title. This would be nothing new. She performed a similar role during Brown’s just-completed four-year term as California attorney general.

[SNIP]

Even Brown’s GOP opponent Meg Whitman, when asked during a debate this fall what she admired most about Brown, responded: “I really like his choice of wife. I’m a big fan of Anne Gust.”

Me too.

SPEAKING OF PROFILES….MAYOR’S CHIEF OF STAFF, JEFF CARR

In case you missed it, Tuesday’s LA Times profile of Antonio Villaraigosa’s chief of staff and former LA gang czar, Jeff Carr, by Patrick J. McDonnell is worth reading if particularly you have an interest in the ins and outs of city government.

It’s a fairly friendly profile, written in a fashion that, allows some room for criticism, but will likely alienate no one.

Still, doing the piece was a good idea, as Carr is an interesting person in the city’s landscape, and someone with an ambition to eventually move up the ladder in California’s political world, so best you get to know him.

TRUTANICH’S GRAND JURY

Tuesday the City Council is tentatively scheduled to discuss SB 1168, the bill that would allow City Attorney Carmen Trutanich to have his own grand jury. The bill has passed the state senate and with a trip to the state assembly still ahead.

The City Council will decide whether or not it is in favor of the bill. Councilmembers Jan Perry and Bernard Parks are strongly opposed, and would like the idea to be put to a vote of the residents of Los Angeles.

COUNTY SUPERVISORS EXPECTED TO VOTE $400,000 TO SETTLE JUVENILE HALL MEDICAL NEGLIGENCE/WRONGFUL DEATH LAWSUIT

Also on Tuesday, the LA County Supervisors are scheduled to vote to settle a lawsuit brought by the parents of Tremayne Cole.

The bare bones of the case, which is expected to be settled for $400,000, are as follows:

According to the county’s own report, on February 5, 2008, a short, skinny, 14-year-old boy named Tremayne Cole was placed in one of LA County’s juvenile halls, Los Padrinos. Four days later, on February 9, Tremayne complained of a bad headache, a tooth ache, and he was running a fever. Although he was given medication, he was reportedly not seen by either a doctor or a dentist until around February 17 when he had grown so sick that he was transferred to LA County-USC hospital. Tremayne died of complications of meningitis on March 4, 2008.

Tremayne’s parents allege that the adults in charge dropped the ball on their son pretty much at every step.

Really, all we’re asking for is a little of the much promised transparency and accountability.

It’s a season of ongoing budgetary nightmares. LA’s libraries are losing one-third of their staff. Even the city’s firefighters are taking budget hits. However one of the few programs or agencies in all of Los Angeles that has not seen its funding slashed is the city’s $26 million plus Gang Reduction and Youth Development program—or GRYD.

This is not to suggest that the city doesn’t need every penny of that GRYD money. Even after LA’s drop in crime, Los Angeles is still the gang capital the nation. Gang violence takes lives, wrecks futures, fills prisons and causes staggering levels of measurable PTSD in school-age kids who live in gang-intense neighborhoods.

In truth, $26 million is not all that much considering the gravity and complexity of the problem.

Yet the very scarcity of funds is a big part of the reason why the community at large deserves to know exactly what we’re getting for our prevention/intervention millions now that we are two years into the mayor’s GRYD strategies—which is precisely why WitnessLA and Spot.Us have hired Matt Fleischer to find out under the banner of the LA Justice Report.

Matt’s been digging up a lot very intriguing information already. (The fruits of his labors will appear later this summer.)

But, as he digs and explores, it has been a bit vexing to find that the least cooperative people have been those in the mayor’s GRYD office.

Take for example the issue of the evaluation:

As part of its mandate, GRYD has contracted with the Urban Institute to conduct an evaluation of the various GRYD programs’ for performance and efficacy—for a fee of $900,000. The gang programs were officially moved to the mayor’s office in July of ‘08 and here we are in late June of 2010. Yet, thus far we can find no one outside of GRYD who has seen any part of any kind of an evaluation.

And GRYD ain’t sharing.

In fact, every time Matt asked for any information whatsoever regarding the UI evaluation city officials switched on their vague-afiers.

It was in draft form, they said, so they couldn’t give him that.

Now, granted, the evaluation is a 3-5 year project, which means that every interim report is, by definition, a “draft” until 2013 or 14 or whatever, when there will be a final report. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t reports at the one year mark. Surely GRYD wants to know—and would want us to know—that they are on the right track with their $26 million worth of gang violence prevention and intervention strategies. Matt said that a draft of the evaluation would fine. Anything would be better than nothing. At this, the GRYD people remembered urgent business elsewhere and stopped replying to his requests altogether.

Just out of curiosity, I called a contact who is an insider at the LA City Council. I reasoned that since the council is responsible for approving all GRYD’s city funds, surely a well-placed person in the council offices could get some kind of interim evaluation at this point. Nope, they’d asked for it, he said. And so far, nada.

“The council gets quarterly reports,” he said, “but they don’t say much.

He reminded me that one of the selling points for moving LA’s gang dollars away from the city council and putting the money all under the single roof of the mayor’s office was to insure that the program would be more accountable and transparent than the city’s previous gang violence reduction programs had been. (cough) LA Bridges (cough, cough).

“Well, the mayor is two years into having all the money, and we’ve not seen a lot of either transparency and accountability,” he said grumpily. “They aren’t very good at collaborating either. As a result, if you as a taxpayer ask me what you’re really getting for your money, I can’t really tell you.”

Okay, we aim to change that. That’s what Matt’s reporting for WLA and Spot.Us is all about.

IMPORTANT NOTE: You can do another round of free “donations” to Matt’s investigation for WLA the LA Justice Report by doing the following:

* going to Spot.Us
*Login/Register on Spot.Us (upper left hand side.)
* hit the EARN CREDITS button
*answer three anonymous questions about how reporters and techs might better collaborate.
*scroll down and choose the LA Justice Report when you’re prompted to select how to use your credits.
*hit the APPLY CREDITS
*Then confirm it at the prompt.

That’s it. You pay nothing, and our reporting fund gets ten bucks!

The Los Angeles City Council approved much of mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s proposed budget on Monday afternoon.

Library hours were cut, day care eliminated, 761 city positions were slashed-–with a possible road back on some of the jobs if unions will approve a five percent pay cut to their employees. For the moment, however, the LAPD is guaranteed a sworn force of 9,963 officers.

Rick Orlov reports for the Daily News:

Villaraigosa also sent a somber message to the council, praising them for their efforts, but saying more needs to be done. “We can do better than the budget I originally proposed, but we cannot do it without significant structural cost-saving measures from our labor partners,” Villaraigosa said, adding he wanted to also move ahead with pension reform. Union leaders said they were not prepared to make any further reductions in their pay, saying their workers had passed on pay raises last year and for this coming year.

City officials, however, said without concessions workers will face layoffs or 16 to 26 furlough days. Rough projections show that if all city workers, including police and fire, take a 5 percent cut, the city could save $123 million. If only civilian workers take a 5 percent reduction, it would mean $63 million in savings.

Council member Tony Cardenas and Richard Alarcon managed to find away to put back into the budget money to keep Northeast Valley Animal Shelter and to replace the $1.3 million in cuts from the city’s gang intervention and prevention funding that had been marked for slashing.

However, both Antonio Villaraigosa and some of the council members attempted to delay the vote to allow time for further union talks. Yet the majority prevailed.

The LA Times reports about the ploys to avoid taking the vote:

Opponents of the cuts tried to circumvent the vote by adjourning the meeting ahead of schedule. That proposal failed on a 9-6 vote. Alarcon, Huizar, Hahn, Wesson and council members Paul Koretz and Paul Krekorian voted in favor of adjournment.

David Zahniser and Phil Willon have more.

REVISITING THAT MILLION $ BAIL FOR THE SUPERGRAPHIC OUTLAW

If you’ll remember, last month, I objected mightily to the one million in bail that City Attorney Carmen Trutanich requested and got for supergraphic super-scofflaw, Kayvan Setareh, but then I began to wonder if the matter wasn’t a bit more complicated than I’d hastily portrayed.

Neon Tommy reporter Chris Pisar looked more deeply into the issue and came up with a well-balanced report that informs you—then allows you to make up your own mind.

Here’s a clip from the heart of the story:

…That leads us to the real question at hand: does the $1 million dollar bail set by Judge Escobedo fit the crime and circumstances or is it excessive?

When asked if the bail fir the crime, Laurie Levenson, law professor at Loyola Law School, had this to say:

“Of course no, that bail is high even for murder,” said Levenson. “That was off the charts.”

But how exactly does a judge determine what the bail amount should be?

The state starts with a bail schedule that outlines what the bail amount should be for a particular crime, said Patricia Kelly of Los Angeles County Superior Court Media Relations. There is also a committee that makes a recommendation to the district attorney or whoever the prosecutor is.

The key is that it’s only a recommendation, not a cut-and-dried figure.

In order to better understand the open interpretation of bail amounts, we first need to take a look at California Penal Code 1275(a), which outlines four main criteria for setting, reducing, or denying bail: the protection of the public, the seriousness of the offense charged, the previous criminal record of the defendant, and the probability of his or her appearing at trial or hearing of the case, with public safety being the top concern.

Seeing as how Setareh was booked on three misdemeanor counts all but rules out the probability of his bail being set so high due to the “seriousness of the crime.”

The same goes for Setareh’s potential as a flight risk. As a prominent businessman facing only a few misdemeanor charges, the risk does not outweigh the reward.

So what about Setareh’s criminal history?

Setareh has been arrested four different times in the last 15 years, including his most recent arrest on February 26, but has only been convicted of one count, according to Los Angeles Superior Court documents.

That was a misdemeanor conviction back in July of 2002, in which Setareh was arrested for failure to comply with city regulation on graphic ads. He was charged with two similar counts in December of last year but the charges were dismissed.

While he does have a criminal history, it is hardly enough to warrant such a lofty bail.

That leaves us with the issue of public safety….

And public safety is a crucial point. Read on.

JUSTICE 4 JUSTICE

I’ll have a follow-up to this story next week, but in the meantime, Neon Tommy’s Kevin Grant has this very good report on the anger, confusion and upset that was felt by students at the under-enrolled Green Dot charter, Animo Justice, after they learned that their school was being shut down.

(LAT Howard Bloom’s back story on the issue is here.)

Here’s a clip from Kevin’s story:

Read the rest of this entry »

After a meeting that lasted seveTuesday, the LA City Council decided to act sensibly by voting to allow retail dispensaries to continue selling medical marijuana. According to John Hoeffel of the LA Times, the Los Angeles City Council is also strongly considering a draft ordinance that may cap the number of shops in the city between 70 and 200.

The CC did not not shy away from going head to head with LA’s city attorney, Carmen Trutanich, over the regulations and the interpretation of the law.

Here’s more from Hoeffel.

City Atty. Carmen Trutanich and L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley had pressed the council to explicitly ban the sale of marijuana, saying that the state’s medical marijuana laws do not allow it and citing several recent court decisions to back up their argument.

The contentious issue snarled the council’s efforts to develop an ordinance, with members caught for months between their desire to provide access to marijuana for patients who need it and their reluctance to reject the advice of their own attorney.

But the council stripped out language that would bar sales and replaced it with a provision that would allow “cash contributions, reimbursements and compensations” for actual expenses, as long as they comply with state law. The law has been interpreted differently by medical marijuana advocates and law enforcement officials….

There’s more.

Sanity prevails.

PS: It is interesting to see where City Council member Dennis Zine was on the issue in this interview two and a half years ago, when the city was planning to settle on regulations immanently.

The process of selecting a new Los Angeles Chief of Police has just entered phase two. The candidates for chief who will advance to the next stage of the selection process all were notified on Thursday.

In phase one, 24 candidates—13 from within the department, elevenfrom outside—filled out an application that included a bunch of term paper-ish essay questions, in which candidates were asked to describe their ideas about and experience with around a half dozen issues that are part of a chief’s job—matters such as dealing with unions, new technology and so on.

The applications were reviewed by LA City Personnel Department General Manager Margaret Whelan and her team.

And out of the pile of applications, Maggie Whelan (a surprisingly powerful person about whom we know nothing) was to choose between six and twelve candidates.

The next step was for that list of 6-12 to be passed along to the LA Police commission, who will interview the candidates.

That long list is whittled down to the short list of three candidates who are then passed to the mayor with a recommendation.

None of the candidates were told how many were on that pre-short list.

I’ve spoken to two of the candidates who are moving to the next round.

My guess is that(in alphabetical order) Charlie Beck, Sergio Diaz, Jim McDonnell, Mike Moore, Sharon Papa, Earl Paysinger are on the list. Yet there will likely be some surprises.

I’ll let you know when I know for sure who’s on.

I do know that the interviews will be on October 21 and 22.

Good luck to all concerned, and good luck to us.

(David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News)