On Thursday night LA mayoral candidates allowed themselves to be grilled for nearly two hours on issues of neighborhood safety and violence prevention by four LA journalists.

Three of the four main candidates—LA City Controller Wendy Greuel, LA City Councilmember, Jan Perry and attorney and former radio host, Kevin James—submitted to questions by KPCC’s Frank Stoltze, the LA Times’ Jim Newton, Pilar Marrero from La Opinion, Stanley Willford from Our Weekly, and Nicole Chang from Korea Daily, who posed her questions via SKYPE. (Warren Olney from KCRW was originally scheduled to attend, but had to bow out.)

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck gave opening remarks then tossed out the first topic of the night when he said that one of the most important issues for him was whether or not the candidates intended to continue to support GRYD, the city’s gang violence prevention and intervention program that is presently housed in the mayor’s office.

Moderator Frank Stoltze made the question one step more specific and asked if the candidates would keep at least the current funding for the GRYD program and maintain the job of heading GRYD as a deputy mayor position.

Wendy Greuel said YES and YES, and followed up by saying that she planned to try to talk existing GRYD head, Guillermo Cespedes, into staying. (Cespedes was in the audience.)

Jan Perry also said YES, and talked about the need to address the trauma faced by kids in the city’s most violence-haunted communities. Kevin James was another YES, but stayed with his theme of the night, which seemed to be “Yes, but…. those City Hall insiders are doing a dreadful job, and can’t balance the budget,” or words to that effect.

In addition, James said that he thought there should be less use of former gang members as gang interventionists, that he would bring in respected community members that kids could look up to and relate to.

At this, the cadres of gang interventionists and community activists in the audience began visibly frowning.

Eric Garcetti had a conflict that night, and so was a No Show but sent his answer to Beck’s and Stoltz’s questions through civil rights attorney, Connie Rice, of the Advancement Project, who related that Garcetti would keep GRYD but move it out of the mayor’s office and, instead, establish it as a commission.

Rice made it clear that she thought the commission idea was a lousy one. In response to her follow-up questioning, all the candidates dutifully thought the idea lousy too.

“This is not something for a commission filled by part time people who have other jobs,” said James, and everyone nodded.

(WLA agrees.)

Other questions ranged from how many LAPD officers each candidate would pledge to keep (Greuel went for the full 10,000 while everyone else hedged), what they thought about gang injunctions and the gang database, and how they would lower crime in Koreatown.

By night’s end, the consensus of many of the gang interventionists and other local activists in the room seemed to be that Perry best understood the concerns of the city’s most violence plagued communities, but that they also liked Greuel, and thought her capible, yet felt that she needed to show up at a few more crime scenes and meetings in the ‘hood to gain credibility. Most thought Kevin James seemed sincere, and had interesting opinions on some topics, but was clueless on others and probably didn’t have a chance anyway.

(Since Garcetti wasn’t there he didn’t factor into the reviews.)

All I spoke with said they appreciated the fact that the candidates had been willing to hang out for more than two hours while these topics of high concern got laid on the table.

The forum was sponsored by the Advancement Project, the California Endowment, the California Wellness Foundation, Liberty Hill, the LAPPL, The Riordan Foundation, and a pile of others.

NEW REPORT LOOKS AT THE AFFECT OF VIOLENCE AND TRAUMA ON AMERICA’S KIDS

On Wednesday, the U.S. Attorney General’s Task for on Children Exposed to Violence presented its sobering report Defending Childhood.

After the first of the year, we’ll be looking much further into what we ought to be taking away from the report’s findings.

In the meantime, California Endowment Pres. Robert Ross writes for the Huffington Post about the importance of what the report has discovered.

Here’s a clip:

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….At one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Civil Rights took a hard look at school discipline policies and investigated how extreme rules using suspensions push students away from school and toward a life of crime. At the other end of the street, the Attorney General’s Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence released the findings of a year-long study, reporting on the latest research about the impact of trauma on children’s lives.

Taken together, the two issues sound an alarm for the ways our schools and neighborhoods push kids away from the things we all want and deserve — a good education, a safe neighborhood, and a chance at the American Dream. While all this may seem less immediate than the fiscal cliff, it is every bit as urgent.

Childhood exposure to violence is a national epidemic. Every year, two out of every three of our children — 46 million — can expect to have their lives touched by violence, crime, abuse, and psychological trauma this year. It’s not hard to figure out the negative effects on society. The Task Force on Children’s Exposure to Violence describes something we all intuitively know: that witnessing traumatic events disrupts our ability to function in a healthy way, make good decisions, and move forward in our lives. For kids, the impact of trauma is even more pronounced.

Children exposed to violence are less able to concentrate in class. Their brains are consumed with processing the toxic stress in their lives and are not free to process the important things of childhood, like academic learning and developing critical interpersonal and life management skills.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m still absorbing the wealth of information from Wednesday and Thursday’s California Wellness Foundation’s Violence Prevention Conference. More on that in the weeks to come.

YES, THE JAILS COMMISSION STORY IS STILL COMING. (COLD-RIDDEN & STILL WRITING.) BUT, IN THE MEANTIME……

LAPD DOESN’T PLAN TO USE UNMANNED COP ‘COPTERS TO LOOK IN YOUR PERSONAL BACKYARD……YET (AREN’T YOU RELIEVED?)

The LA Weekly’s Dennis Romero has the story:

So cops can now fly unmanned aircraft known as drones, which could be used to peek into your backyard and maybe even into your window at night.

So will the LAPD, a pioneer in the use of helicopters for law enforcement, soon be buzzing drones over your house as you smoke your favorite herb and become paranoid with fear?

Not likely, cops tell us:

The department doesn’t really the see the advantage of using unmanned aircraft and has no plans to test them out, at least for now.

In fact, the LAPD’s biggest concern, as it has been in the past, is having its manned helicopter units collide with drones.

But you can chillax.

The man in charge of the LAPD’s Air Support Division, Capt. William D. Sutton, told us the department doesn’t yet see much advantage in using drones. He thinks their safety record isn’t satisfactory yet:

” Back east a department had purchased one and lost control of it. It flew into a vehicle. We’re going to see how it goes.”

The FAA this week said that police departments could test out surveillance drones as long as they’re lighter than 4.4 pounds and fly below a 400 foot ceiling.

Given the city’s budget constraints, the LAPD is no hurry to buy drones, even if the drone-making capital of the nation is right here in Southern California…..

Whew! (For now.)

TUESDAY, CITY COUNCIL VOTES TO FOLD THE GENERAL SERVICES POLICE INTO THE LAPD (DESPITE NEWLY CHALLENGING NAMING ISSUES)

The Daily News Dakota Smith has the story. Here’s a clip:

The Los Angeles Police Department will absorb the General Services police and security officers under a plan approved Tuesday.

The City Council voted unanimously to consolidate the two agencies, transferring the 220 officers and security guards from General Services to the LAPD.

With the move, the LAPD will take on the work of General Services police: patrolling libraries, City Hall offices and other city facilities.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa backed the merger, including the plan in his 2012-2013 budget.

At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Councilman Mitch Englander urged his colleagues to support the consolidation plan.

“This isn’t a divorce, this is a marriage,” Englander said. “And I say, Mazel Tov.”

Currently, General Services’ sworn officers carry guns and patrol the city’s parks, libraries, and City Hall offices and grounds. The security guards protect the Los Angeles Zoo, Convention Center and other facilities.

Following the consolidation – expected to take place July 1 – both groups would fall within a new department called LAPD’s Security Services Division.

Yeah. About that name. “The LAPDSSD” looks a lot like the hissing/yowling noise my cat makes right before coughing up a hairball. Do not even think of messing with the LAPD brand. Not possible. Don’t go there. Really.

JERRY BROWN CHANGES MIND AND DECIDES TO NOT CLOSE YOUTH PRISONS AFTER PRESSURE FROM COUNTIES

This has long been a split decision for most who assessed it, WitnessLA included but, of late, the consensus has been to leave a few of California’s youth prisons open for the thousand or so of the state’s most troubled law-breaking kids, mainly because the counties don’t yet have the facilities or the programs to adequately serve these kids, may of whom have challenging mental and emotional health issues. It appears that Governor Jerry has now come around to this position.

Karne de Sa at the San Jose Mercury News has the story. Here’s a clip:

Responding to pressure from probation chiefs, district attorneys and prison guards, Gov. Jerry Brown has done an about-face on a revolutionary plan to shutter California’s youth prison system that was once the nation’s largest — and arguably the most notorious.

Just four months ago, a small section buried in the governor’s belt-tightening budget caused a massive stir in the juvenile justice world. With annual costs per inmate at about $200,000 and its population down 90 percent from peak years, the youth prison system should stop accepting serious and violent youthful offenders beginning next year, the Brown administration concluded.

For prison reformers who have long battled 23-hour confinement, education in cages and endemic violence, Brown’s Jan. 5 recommendation to eventually shift all the young inmates to county facilities was a startling and welcome move.

But in a revision of the budget released Monday, the governor now calls for upending his previous plan. The change came about after howls of protest from corrections officials, who flooded Sacramento budget hearings with demands that the Division of Juvenile Justice, or DJJ, remain open.

Counties, already struggling with an influx of adult prisoners shifted to their watch under other state budget reforms, simply couldn’t handle these most-difficult youths, they argued. Prosecutors warned that without state-run youth lockups, more juveniles would be sent to adult prisons.

The cost per kid, however, is nuts, and has everything to do with union issues, plus lack of economies of scale, thus has to be rethought. Put another way, it does not—I repeat, NOT—cost more than $200K to house, educate, give programs and health care to, and adequately guard these kids. Period. That money is going elsewhere. If you’d like to know where, I’d start by calling these folks.

It wasn’t your usual book party.

For one thing, Monday night’s book launching event for civil rights lawyer Connie Rice’s new memoir, Power Concedes Nothing, was held at the LAPD’s headquarters, in the over-lit Compstat room, no less—i.e. the room where the cops go to hear a rundown on the latest crime statistics and ‘crime mapping.”

Moreover, the party was hosted by LAPD Chief Charlie Beck—who seemed mildly surprised to find himself in the book party hosting business. (Can you think of another instance where LA’s Chief of Police threw a book party? I can’t either. Go, Chief Charlie! Perhaps this could be the start of a new LA event trend: Law enforcement and literature.)

And then, of course, there’s the fact that the book details, among other things, the years that Rice spent suing the Los Angeles Police Department on a regular basis—and usually winning.

Still, Connie’s suing-the-LAPD days are now mostly in the past, and the mood in the Compstat room on Monday night was so upbeat it sometimes bordered on love fest-y. (As you’ll see from the rough snippets of iPhone videos above.)

Those in attendance were a mix of law enforcement and city government types, plus a smattering of criminal justice-leaning authors and journalists—nearly all of whom passed up the red and white wine for glasses of fizzy water. (Helpful party tip: Always drink less than the cops in the room.) U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte, showed up, as did City Controller Wendy Greuel, and LAPD command staff types like Deputy Chief Pat Gannon of South Bureau, and department spokesperson, Commander Andrew Smith (who was the LAPD guy you saw most often on TV throughout the whole LAPD/Occupy thingy.)

Journalist/authors Joe Domanick, Jesse Katz, and Jon Weiner, made appearances, as did Christine Pelisek from the Daily Beast, KPCC’s Frank Stoltz, KCET’s Judy Muller, the LA Times’ Pat Morrison, Sue Horton, Susan Brenneman and Deborah Vankin.

Among the others who stood around book-buying, appetizer-munching and gossiping were Police Commission head, John Mack, LA Gang Czar Guillermo Cespedes, Gerry Chaleff, who used to administer the federal consent decree for the LAPD but now has been appointed by Chief Beck as the Special Assistant for Constitutional Policing—meaning he’s supposed to be the guy tasked with making sure that LAPD officers don’t go around violating anybody’s Constitutional rights, and community activists, like Alfred Lomas, of LA Gang Tours.

City Councilman Tom LaBonge offered the night’s weirdest compliment to Rice, when in a moment of unchecked effusiveness after presenting her with an honorific city proclamation, he leaned into a microphone and told her, “You remind me of William Mulholland!”

(In case you’ve forgotten, Mulholland was the ultra powerful 1920′s era head of the Department of Water and Power on whom the John Huston-played villain of the movie Chinatown, Noah Cross Hollis Mulwray, was supposed to have been, in part, based.*) After Police Commission head John Mack began looking meaningfully at the City Councilman, and making subtle “cut it” motions, LaBonge tried to clarify things by shouting, “Forget Chinatown! Everybody drinks water.” Or something to that effect. Then he wisely divested himself of the microphone.

Still, everyone seemed to take LaBonge’s outburst as a quirky representation of the pleasant ebullience that characterized the night.

The cheery mood may have, in some ways, had to do with the fact that, unlike many book parties, where the point is to support (or meet) the writer, on Monday night, in addition to coming to support Connie, most everyone seemed to be really anxious to read Rice’s book—if they hadn’t already.

It is, as the subtitle says, “one woman’s quest for social justice in America….”—meaning it is a personal account, told through the lens of Rice’s specific experience and perceptions. Yet, much of it is also a book about certain events in Los Angeles in the last few years that many of those in the room felt they had, in some way had a part, or at the very least lived through and cared very much about—things like the battle to transform the LAPD and the struggle to get a handle on the gang violence that was corroding the emotional health of many LA neighborhoods.

In other words, they—we—think and hope that Connie’s book will add a new valuable puzzle piece to the communal puzzle that is the unfolding history of Los Angeles—a history that all of us get to claim.

PS: I’ve not yet read Connie’s book (as I just got it Monday night) but, like the rest, I’m looking forward to doing so. I’ll report back to you here when I do.

NOTE: I’LL HAVE MUCH NEWSIER NEWS TOMORROW, AND THEN A NEW JAILS/LASD STORY LATE IN THE WEEK.

NOTE 2: I hopelessly bollixed up the Chinatown characters when I first posted this. According to the zillion essays analyzing Robert Towne’s amazing script, Huston’s character Noah Cross plus Cross’s business partner in the film, Hollis Mulwray, collectively represented William Mulholland. (And many of us have eyed the DWP with suspicion ever since.)

Although prospects had looked bleak for months, when four out of five of LAX’s wildly lucrative food and beverage contracts were finally handed out on Monday afternoon— an unexpected beneficiary of the decision is Homeboy Industries’ popular and unique Homegirl Cafe.

In a decision that seems to have been complicated by more than the usual number of lobbyists, personal agendas, and multiple conflicts of interest (see stories byDavid Zahniser and Gene Maddaus for some of those specifics), the special five-person LA City Council panel known as the Board of Referred Powers decided (in a 4-1 vote) to award four of the five of LAX’s wildly lucrative food and beverage contracts and, at the same time, to throw out the bid by the celebrity-packed group that was originally the front-runner in the contract contest.

The fifth contract will likely be rebid in the near future and it is hoped that the whole five contract food and beverage package. (plus three additional airport vendor contracts) will be up for approval by the full city council in about a month.

(For some of the finer details on the contract squabbles, and the tortured road to Monday’s contract awards see the LA Times story, the Daily Breeze coverage, and the article in the LA WAVE.)

The Homegirl Cafe—one of Homeboy’s six businesses— is among the vendors included in the bid put forth by Miami-based Areas USA, which was originally figured to be a dark horse. When Areas USA was selected, that meant that Homegirl Cafe was too—along with other food purveyors like downtown Los Angeles steakhouse Engine Co. 28 and Culver City-based gastropub Ford’s Filling Station.

Although it is known for the fact that it trains and employs young women recovering from gang life and/or incarceration, Homegirl Cafe is also an excellent and uniquely LA food purveyor in its own right. (Homegirl describes its fare as “Latina flavors with a contemporary twist.” ) Its fully organic menu features delicate-flavored dishes designed by Chef Patricia Zarate using vegetables and herbs from its own organic garden and other local farms.

Father Greg Boyle was also among those who spoke to the panel at the meeting that concluded late Monday afternoon. When I saw him later on Monday night (at an unrelated gathering), he was extremely pleased, as would be expected, but still seemed a bit stunned by what, for Homeboy, is a very happy turn of events—yet well deserved in terms of the quality of the cafe itself.

The fifth and final contract was not awarded Monday after a winning bid involving some of LA’s best known chefs (Nancy Silverton, Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken) was unexpectedly tossed out because of a possible conflict of interest that the LA city attorney’s office believed might trigger a court challenge and thus fatally delay the entire LAX project.

A clearly disappointed Silverton also spoke at the Monday’s meeting. “I want to warn you, If you don’t you’ll help us, the people of L.A. and the visitors to L.A. may be stuck with food choices and food quality that are currently available to them at every off-ramp on every freeway across America.”

(Well, not exactly. Nancy, we love you but you aren’t the only food game in town. Sorry.)

The group that includes Silverton et al, plus Boyle Heights’ la Serenata De Garibaldi and the local favorite Bertha’s Soul Food, is expected to rebid for the final contract.

(Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have Homegirl and some of our LA star chefs, La Serenata and Bertha’s Soul Food? )

In the meantime, it feels great to cheer Homegirl’s well-earned victory.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The article below is Part One of WitnessLA’s two-part investigation into how the city of Los Angeles spends its $26 million per year in gang violence reduction dollars.

This investigation was reported and written by Matt Fleischer (and copy edited by Craig Gaines). It is the first effort to come out of the LA Justice Report, which was created through a partnership between WLA and Spot.Us.

You’ll find that both sections of this series are quite critical of multiple aspects the gang programs that have operated under the umbrella of the mayor’s office for the past two years—and with good reason. We went to great lengths to get documents and information that the mayor’s people made clear they did not want us to have. Much of what Matt found at the conclusion of his digging and reporting is, we believe, cause for concern–and rigorous rethinking.

However, just to be clear: our criticism does not suggest for a minute that the $26 million in gang dollars is not worth spending. All that money and more is needed to address the fact that hundreds of thousands of LA kids feel unsafe walking to school because of gang violence. But it is essential—particularly in these budget strapped times—that those much-needed funds are spent in ways that are measurably effective in addressing the problems for which they were allocated.

To that end, we give you Part One of Follow the Gang Money. We’ll have Part Two in a couple of weeks.

Then in September, we’ll have a wrap-up that looks at where we go from here.

FOLLOW THE GANG MONEY: PART ONE:

Are LA’s Gang Prevention Strategies Excluding the Kids Who Most Need Our Help?
by Matthew Fleischer

On a hot day in early May, nearly 200 gang-reduction experts under the umbrella of the city of Los Angeles’ Gang Reduction and Youth Development program, or GRYD, gathered in the LA City Council chambers to fight for their jobs. There were too many intervention workers, some of them former gang members with extravagant tattoos and shaved heads, to cram into the rows of seats in the City Council chambers, so they spilled into the hallways instead, greeting each other fondly and chatting nervously about their fates. With the city facing a $212 million budget shortfall, the City Council was looking to do some serious fiscal trimming, and GRYD’s $26 million in operating funds were slated for the shears.

As the council meeting came to order and the public comment period began, these men and women stepped to the microphone at the center front of the chambers and told stories of bullets whizzing, children dying and the great risks they took in their daily lives to keep their communities safe. In between their testimonies, a sprinkling of tweedy academic types from the administrative ranks of these same gang-reduction programs came forward to bolster the street workers’ pleas with facts and figures.

No money should be slashed from GRYD, each of them said, in one impassioned way or another. Despite its budget woes, this is one program cut Los Angeles cannot afford.

“We’re saving lives,” was the common refrain.

Last to speak, and most eloquent, was civil rights attorney and gang intervention expert Connie Rice, whose 2007 Advancement Project report, “A Call to Action,” was part of what triggered the formation of GRYD in the first place. More recently, Rice and her Advancement Project have been tapped to run the city’s Los Angeles Violence Intervention Training Academy (LAVITA)—which is attempting to train and professionalize gang intervention workers. “We are celebrating low crime, but in the hot zones, kids still dodge bullets,” said Rice. “These [gang workers] are the people who keep the kids safe. The GRYD office is absolutely essential. We just spent $7 million for a reptile enclosure. I’m happy for Reggie [the alligator], but we need to save our kids first.”

Although some of the city council members fully intended to snip GRYD’s funds, Rice made her pitch with the knowledge that the program enjoys the unequivocal backing of LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Ever since his school reform efforts sputtered and stalled, Villaraigosa has taken to GRYD as his new flagship policy effort. He routinely touts it as “among the most innovative in the U.S.,” and has the habit of making lofty claims about GRYD’s impact: “The program has reclaimed our city for our citizens.”

Within days of the City Council hearing, the mayor, Connie Rice and the rest of the GRYD network got their way: GRYD would receive full funding for another year, which in 2009-10 amounted to $26 million, $18.5 million of which came directly from LA’s general fund. In the following weeks, virtually every other program in the city would be cut amid LA’s budget crunch—the library system, city attorney’s office and even the LAPD’s counterterrorism task force among them. GRYD was among the few allowed to remain intact.

It was a major political victory for Villaraigosa and Gang Reduction and Youth Development.

The mayor reacted to the news with a celebratory tweet: “Our GRYD programs WORK—gang crime is way down and more kids have a way out of the gang life.”

A two-month investigation by the LA Justice Report, however, has revealed that the mayor and the City Council’s confidence in GRYD’s central programs isn’t grounded in quantifiable facts. In truth, no one knows if, how well or how poorly GRYD is working—not the mayor, not the police, not GRYD itself.

Power and accountability have been consolidated in the mayor’s office, but there is still no way of determining whether the program is effective. And there are many indications that methodological errors have been made that have cost—and continue to cost—the city millions of dollars.

A recent audit by LA City Controller Wendy Greuel stated that, after nearly two years, GRYD, much like LA Bridges, still has no adequate evaluation of its effectiveness, or lack thereof—despite the city’s spending $525,000 (with another $375,000 soon to be paid out) for an assessment report from the Urban Institute (UI).

“We had years of a feel-good program under LA Bridges,” Greuel says. “Now we’ve spent more than $500,000 on a tool to see what’s working, but we still don’t have that yet.

“Transparency is the biggest problem we face.”

But while Greuel placed most of the blame on the irritatingly secretive assessment conducted by the UI, the Justice Report found the real failings to be not with the UI researchers’ evaluation of the GRYD programs, but with the programs themselves. Though it took weeks and multiple California Public Records Act requests, we acquired a copy of the UI’s 60-page evaluation and found it most revealing. After speaking with the UI head evaluator and two independent evaluation experts, we have learned that UI had a perfectly acceptable methodology in place. GRYD, however, has been hampered by serious bureaucratic blunders, prime among them poorly negotiated contracts that resulted in the loss of a year of data.

But beyond pure evaluation and data-collection screw-ups—of which there have been plenty—the Justice Report discovered gang prevention programs that may be systematically excluding many of the kids that most need their help and intervention programs that are based on a model that has little or no proven success. Further, the programs may fail to emphasize the most basic services that have been shown to help the men and women in LA’s most violent, troubled neighborhoods leave gang life behind.

As with many city and county problems, the situation is complex, so bear with us. Policy analysis can be wonky at times. But this is no academic exercise. LA is the gang capital of America, and the stakes of the gang-reduction debate are measured in blood.

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.

THE GUTSY LESBIAN GIRL, THE CREEPY FAUX PROM, AND THE SOMEWHAT HAPPIER ENDING

A new chapter just occurred in the case of Constance McMillen, the Mississippi teenager who made national news when she was forbidden to take her lesbian girlfriend to her high school prom. (She was also forbidden to wear a tux to the prom and told she had to wear a dress—demonstrating that the school is not only mean and discriminatory, but also fashion clueless.)

Constance did not quietly go away, but challenged the school’s policy. And the ACLU backed her up. (Go, Constance!)

When faced with a possible discrimination lawsuit, Itawamba Agricultural High School got freaked and canceled the official school prom.

After a federal court ruled sorta for McMillen, saying she should have been able to bring her girlfriend, a private prom was scheduled—which then saw fit to adopt the same no-same-sex-dates-or-girls-in-tuxes rules. It too was canceled.

There was still more kerfuffle and prom three—another private prom—was scheduled. It looked like there would finally be a happy ending.

But when McMillen and friend and a couple of kids with disabilities showed up at the local country club for Prom 3, they found that they were alone. The event was a decoy prom. All the other Itawamba promsters were at Prom 4, a private, parent-organized no lesbians invited prom.

When this news broke, a number of writers found themselves thinking really mean thoughts about the kind of adults who would pull such a fantastically creepy stunt.

Finally, this Friday, the AP has reported that Constance and date are invited to a gala dinner dance in San Francisco organized by The National Center for Lesbian Rights and to be held on May 1.

The group is paying to fly Constance and date in to SF and their executive directer has said the NCLR plans to give her “a weekend she’ll never forget. It will make all these other proms and fake proms fade into distant memory.”

Good. Hope so. She’s earned it.

THE MAYOR DITCHES THE FURLOUGHS, FINDS NEW CITY BUCKS, MAKES NICE WITH THE COUNCIL…WHILE CITY HALL WATCHERS GET MOTION SICKNESS & THROW UP ON THEIR SHOES

Is it me or are the rest of you suffering from fiscal whiplash with this latest news?

It seems that—surprise—the city doesn’t have to renege on its bills, or close itself down for four out of every seven days of the week, or dress up in thigh-high bad girl boots to solicit funds on darkened, grungy street corners. (Okay, that wasn’t literally mentioned, but close.) On Thursday the mayor looked again through his figurative sock drawer and found a wad of money stuffed way at the back corner—and we were saved! Saved, I tell you!

Or something like that.

Maeve Reston at the LA Times has the details.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has backed away from his call to shut down some city departments two days a week, using positive news about the city’s budget crisis to downplay a threat that had become increasingly difficult to sustain.

“To all of our surprise, we’ve gotten an increase in revenues of $30 million more from property tax than we expected,” Villaraigosa said Thursday, two days after announcing the move might be necessary as soon as Monday to prevent the city from running out of money.

With the unexpected revenue and the City Council’s budget-balancing moves, “We might not be out of cash after all,” the mayor said.

Uh, Mr. Mayor, we’re really glad it worked out and all that. But, given the events of the past couple of days, we also feel a little bit, you know, jacked around.

Read the rest.

THE LA TIMES WEIGHS IN ON THE FED COURT’S NET NEUTRALITY DECISION

I’ve been meaning to post on this all week. Glad the LA Times spoke up on the matter. Here’s the opening of Friday’s editorial:

A federal appeals court reined in the Federal Communications Commission this week, ruling that it overstepped its authority when it penalized Comcast for surreptitiously disabling a popular technology that let people share files online. But the ruling did not quell the commission’s interest in regulating the way Internet service providers such as Comcast manage their networks. Instead, it set up a potential fight over whether the commission’s regulatory authority should be expanded, either by Congress or the commission itself. We think the best course is for lawmakers to give the FCC clear but limited power to preserve the openness that has made the Internet not just a hotbed for innovation but also the most important communications medium of our time.

At issue is “net neutrality,” which is the idea that companies selling high-speed Internet connections should treat all legal websites and online offerings equally.

Read on. This is a vitally important issue.

Meanwhile, the FCC strikes back after the fed court decision.

“Can you believe it? We’re in the middle of a drought, and the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A.” Chinatown

Except in our case, we’re in the middle of a drought and a budget crisis, and our fired—excuse me—recently resigned head of the DWP, David Nahai, is not drowning in the least. Instead he’s swimming happily in our public money.

Yes, Nahai is still leaving the job, David Zahniser reports at the LA Times, but he’s getting a big, yummyparty favor as he goes out the door in the form of a “consulting fee,” that happens, coincidentally, to be the exact same dollar amount as his former salary—namely $27,000 and change per month. He will receive said amount weekly until the end of the year. The only difference is that Nahai he no longer has the irksome task of actually running the DWP to earn his monthly $27,000.

“There’s nothing nefarious about it, nothing complex about it. This is a reasonable business decision, nothing more than that,” [DWP commission President Lee Kanon Alpert] said. “David’s resigned, and we need his institutional knowledge for the next few months.”

News flash, if you have to keep the departing head of a public agency on salary for a ridiculous rate because he’s the only guy who’s got the requisite “institutional memory” to know where to find the executive restroom keys, or whatever, what does that say about the former exec’s management style?

(HINT: Nothing good.)

Later on in the conversation with Zahniser, Alpert further clarified the reasons for shoveling money Nahai’s direction:

“He may have knowledge we want to pick his brain on,” Alpert said.

Oh, okay, well, now that explains everything!

Ron Kaye broke this story over the weekend, and is in high dudgeon about Nahai’s golden handshake—with good reason.

Meanwhile, on other priorities-challenged fronts, Meg “I-don’t-need-to-vote-in-elections-because-Sonny-Bono-didn’t-vote-either” Whitman, has announced plans to fire at least 40,000 “selfish and arrogant” state workers when she’s governor (excluding the prison guards, naturally). George Skelton has some choice words about that.

photo from the Jewish Journal

The fight continues.

First let me apologize mightily for not researching this part of the issue more rigorously myself. I’m smack in the middle of figuring out final grades for my USC and UC Irvine journalism classes, and those tasks hold the high card with my time for the next couple of days.

So instead of any pithy opinions from me, we have a new volley from the participants, or rather from their spokespersons.

Yesterday I posted an email from Laura Chick’s communications director, Rob Wilcox who was replying to comments made last week by Rocky Delgadillo’s communications director, Nick Velasquez, about how many times Chick had or had not audited Delgadillo in the past.

Later yesterday, Velasquez came back with a rebuttal, which is posted below:

Enough with the straw man fallacies, Mr. Wilcox.

Let’s stick to the facts.

Over the past 7.5 years, the Office of the City Attorney has been subjected to 33 fiscal audits by the City Controller. That’s right, 33.

The majority of these audits fall under the Controller’s Internal Control Certification Program (ICCP) — a comprehensive audit of various components of our Office’s financial operations.

The ICCP provides Departments/Offices that successfully pass the audit with more flexibility and independence in the way they do business.

The ICCP is not a one time deal. The Controller reviews and scores the Departments’/Offices’ fiscal operations several times each year in follow-up audits.

If a Department does not pass, fiscal certification is taken away and more restrictive financial controls are put in place.

Prior to 2001, the Office of the City Attorney had failed its ICCP audits and had not achieved fiscal certification.

In 2002, under a new administration, the Office of the City Attorney became certified (passing the ICCP audit) and has maintained such certification since, passing every one of the many ICCP audits conducted in subsequent years.

The Controller’s Office has conducted the ICCP reviews/audits more than two dozen times over the last 7.5 years in the City Attorney’s Office alone. All data released by the Controller’s auditing staff is available upon request.

In addition to these ICCP audits, a petty cash audit, Dispute Resolution Program audit and Bank Account audit have been conducted as well, bringing the total number of audits to 33 over the past 7.5 years. 33 audits.

Nick Velasquez
Director of Communications
Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office

Alright, gentlemen (and Madam Controller), I humbly recommend that, before we take this line of discussion any further, perhaps everyone could take a minute in the office and do, say, 100 stomach crunches and four or five sets of pushups.

Admittedly, it won’t solve the To Audit or Not to Audit question, but at least it will promote upper body strength, muscle tone and cardiovascular health, all worthy goals to which to aspire as we bushwhack through this holiday season on our way to the brave new year.

Last week I again reported on the large and ongoing legal spat between LA City Controller Laura Chick and LA City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo over whether or not it is legal for Ms. Chick to do performance audits of city programs, most specifically, an audit of the workers’ compensation methods being used in Delgadillo’s office.

Now the fight is also continuing through their surrogates.

to wit: after my post, the City Attorney’s director of communications, Nick Velasquez, wrote me with some corrections , which I put up here. (Note: You must scroll to the bottom.)

Velasquez wrote, among other things, the following:

With regard to oversight of this office, the Controller has conducted more than 20 financial audits of this office over the past 8 years, and we have passed each one with flying colors. Any suggestion that there is no oversight of this office or accounting of its spending is totally false. It is an effort to confuse the issue and the voters.

The Charter allows the Controller to conduct financial audits of other elected officials. The Charter does not, however, allow the Controller to conduct performance audits of other elected officials – which would allow one elected official to evaluate the performance of another elected official. The Charter reform commission correctly saw that evaluation as the job of the voters. They also recognized the potential for political mischief-making by a politician charged with evaluating the performance of other politicians.

More recently, I received a note from Laura Chick’s director of communications, Rob Wilcox, in which he took issue with what Mr. Velasquez had written. Here is the main part of the note:

I must respond to Nick Velasquez ‘s unfounded comments on behalf of the City Attorney’s Office and set the record straight..

The Controller’s Office has not performed 20 fiscal audits of the City Attorney in the last eight years, it has conducted only two. They are as follows:

*** ICCP Follow-up Audit
*** Financial Audit – Report on Dispute Resolution Program

These reports are posted on the Controller’s website with all the over 150 audits released by Controller Chick at www.lacity.org/ctr .

Each and every one of those audits is impeccable and have stood the test of time bringing important improvements, efficiencies and savings to the City of Los Angeles.

It is unfortunate that the City Attorney’s Office feels it necessary to impugn Controller Chick’s integrity and character by personal attacks. The public deserves more than this kind of mud-slinging.

The City Controller is the independently elected Taxpayer Watchdog, and though Mr. Delgadillo would like this watchdog muzzled, she will continue her fight for transparency and accountability wherever that may take her.

Clearly both men cannot be right. So perhaps some neutral party would like to clarify?

In any case, with rare exceptions more transparency is always better.