Neighborhood Council leaders will hold a press conference at 5:30 p.m. Monday outside the Braude Center at Van Nuys City Hall to offer solutions to LA’s budget crisis and call for full community involvement. At 6 p.m., the City Council Budget Committee chaired by Bernard Parks will hold its first in a series of public hearings on the crisis.

Here are proposals that NC Budget Representatives drafted Saturday at the conclusion of a series of meetings of the BudgetLA Committee and the Saving LA Project. Many of them are in line with the proposals jointly put forth by the business community.

1) Pension Reform:Increase employees contributions to reflect market
rates

Time is of the essence.  The longer we delay pension and benefit
reform, the greater the odds for bankruptcy.  The tipping point may
be closer than we think.

15) The committee urges the city council, the Mayor, The CAO, and
the controller not to employ gimmicks, no half way measures, no stop gap
measures and no deferring to the future unless all avenues of the fix
have been explored, analyzed and implemented.

Doesn’t the goodness of the people count for anything or is this a godforsaken town beyond redemption?

I believe that the people must count or I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing anymore than thousands of other people from all walks of life who have worked so hard for so long in the face of the imperious indifference of the city’s leadership and the failure of its policies.

We deserve better than what we’ve gotten from the influential and powerful who ignore the desires and values of the people of Los Angeles and sell out the public interest to the various special interests who benefit so handsomely from their mediocrity and pretense of public service.

Starting Monday at 6 p.m. at Van Nuys City Hall, a new era could begin when Bernard Parks’ Council Budget Committee starts a series of hearings around the city on this year’s massive deficit and next year’s shortfall that is even worse.

Bankruptcy is a certainty unless drastic steps are taken that should have been taken a long time ago. The future of the city depends on what those steps are and whether they succeed in regenerating our neighborhoods, rebuilding our economy and repairing the damage they have done.
 
At Saturday’s joint meeting of the Saving LA Project, and Budget Committee formed by LA Neighborhood Council Coalition and the NC budget advisory group, there was an overwhelming consensus that what the Mayor and Council are proposing will have catastrophic consequences.

At least 1,000 layoffs on top of 1,200 vacant job eliminations and expansion of the sweetened retirement program from 2,400 to 2,763 would compound the impact on public services, especially since they have protected revenue-producing positions at the expense of those that serve the general public.

They threw out a grab-bag of proposals to raise every fee that they can, to transfer every body they can to special funds or proprietary departments, to loot every dollar they can from those same areas and, worst of all, to sell off the city’s assets that provide long-term revenue and public value.

The zoo, golf courses, theaters, parking structures and meters, information technology, property management, the convention center, Van Nuys Airport and Ontario Airport are all on their list for privatization or sale.

They have framed the issue solely as a question of whether or not hiring police officers should continue and they are trying to cut deals with the business and labor communities to support them in their doomed enterprise.

The public is left out in the cold, except for the mayor’s budget survey that makes a mockery of public concerns and the opportunity Monday in Van Nuys, and on Feb. 22 at Hamilton High on the Westside, on March 8 at El Sereno Recreation Center on the Eastside and on March 22 at the CD9 City Hall

Activists at Saturday’s meeting offered dozens of suggestions to reduce city spending, create efficiencies, focus on critical services but much of the discussion was focused on public employees pensions — an unfunded liability that has taxpayers on the hook for $10.5 billion on top of the $400 million deficit forecast for next year, $775 million the year after, $875 million the following year and over $1 billion after that.

What came out of the community meetings was an emphasis on significant pension reform, zero-based budgeting of all departments, an end to gimmicks that mask the problems and, most of all, a seat at the table of power where decisions are being made.

None of that is where City Hall is headed.

SEIU union leader Julie Butcher sent out an email Sunday saying that another letter has surfaced from the Mayor and Council instructing City Administrator Officer Miguel Santana to open talks on Friday with labor on leadership’s plan for “mass privatization, benefit cuts… pension reform.”

“We’ll continue to insist the city act to fully implement our agreement as quickly as possible, to maximize smart ideas, & to act strategically & quickly (yeah, right!)…Collect & investigate all rumors.  They’ll be wild & varied,” she said.

A dissident SEIU group is questioning where this is all leading.

“Good grief. Are our contracts with the City written on toilet paper, or what? There are all the indications that our jobs, livelihoods, families and futures are being played with, fast and loosely,” wrote long-time union steward Dan Mariscal

The unions have every right to be concerned and so do ordinary citizens.

LA belongs to all of us. It is not the private property of the politicians, developers or any other narrow interest.

If we want to assert that the people are the bosses, we need to demonstrate we are as serious as the unions and the insiders protecting their interests.

I hope of lot of ordinary people will join the budget team activists at the news conference Monday before the hearing begins and demand that the public, the people who pay the bills, have a right to direct involvement in all talks on how LA gets through this crisis.

The Mayor and the Council have forfeited their right to assert they represent the people by their irresponsibility. If the residents of this city met with the unions and with business to try to figure out what we can do to save LA from the downward spiral it’s on., we would find better solutions to the problems than we will from the charade being put on by the politicians.

This is our LA and if we don’t fight about this and protect our interests, we are as much to blame as anyone.

(REPUBLISHED FROM OURLA.ORG)

Paul Krekorian got a lesson Friday in how City Hall works when his
colleagues on the City Council rejected his committee report for the
City Clerk to come back on Tuesday with options on how the newly-formed
Westwood Neighborhood Council could hold an election by July.

As chairman of the Education and Neighborhoods Committee, Krekorian proposed a series of steps
for the City Clerk to take in response to widespread criticism of the
process for holding NC elections between March and July, including
giving each council the power to decide on term limits and use
volunteer poll workers.

The only controversy was over
Krekorian’s recommendation the the City Clerk “report on the
feasibility of including the newly-certified Westwood Neighborhood
Council in the City Clerk’s upcoming 2010 Neighborhood Election cycle,
and on a process by which new certified neighborhood councils will be
included in the City Clerk’s neighborhood election process.”

Krekorian
offered a reasoned case on why several options should be considered
because of cost and expediency to allow for Westwood to be able to
elect its board in the coming months rather than wait two years for the
next NC election cycle.

Westside Councilman Paul Koretz would
have none of it, insisting the City Clerk would just come back next
week with reasons for “why it can’t be done.”

He was backed with
vehemence by Richard Alarcon, whose right to hold office has been
questioned by District Attorney investigators who served search
warrants based on a tip that the councilman doesn’t actually live in
the Valley district he represents.

So the issue was whether
the City Clerk’s office had to be ordered to do its job or whether it
could be trusted to provide reasonable alternatives for Council
consideration, a small point to be sure.

The vote was 10-1
against Krekorian — a rare lack of unanimity that was in a sign that
the Council’s political agenda now includes pleasing the NC movement
and a lesson for Krekorian that he will find himself isolated and
without support if he tries to buck the sytem when larger issues come
up.

“As you know we have a problem this year and it’s not going to get better in 2010-11 and onward. The picture is not very bright.” — Interim City Administrative Officer Ray Ciranna, May 5, 2009.

“This is just the beginning, next year is worse.” — Assistant City Administrative Officer Tom Coultas, Dec. 12, 2009

Don’t blame the bureaucrats for this City Hall financial crisis that will force drastic action to avoid bankruptcy. Blame your elected officials who failed to heed the warnings and follow their advice, and hold them accountable
.

Here’s a retrospective on what was reported and recorded here, starting with this video and article on May 5 of last year, showing how the mayor and City Council failed in their duties to deal with the financial crisis despite being told over and over that hard decisions were needed.

MAY 5, 2009:
City Council to Unions: Your Jobs or Your Money

MAY 13, 2009:

10,000 LAPD Cops or Thousands of Layoffs? Buyouts or Layoffs? City Council’s Fictitious Budget

MAY 18, 2009

Scandal, Failure, Anger, Bankruptcy: Will the Public, Unions and City Hall Partner for a New LA

MAY 19, 2009

Back Slaps, High Fives, Heroes — and Catastrophe for LA

MAY 21, 2009

Wendy Watch: Is the New City Controller Right in Calling the Budget “Fiscally Responsible”?

JUNE 3, 2009

Shared Sacrifice: You Pay More and Get Less

JUNE 18, 2009

City Budget Mysteries: Dire Consequences of City Hall’s Nasty Money Games

JUNE 24, 2009

Is This What They Mean By Shared Sacrifice?

JUNE 26, 2009

An Offer They Can’t Refuse: Council Gives City Unions What They Want

JULY 3, 2009

The Sweetheart Deal: City Hall Will Beg, Borrow and Steal to Protect Unions

JULY 19, 2009

All They Want Is Your Money…

AUGUST 3, 2009

Play Now, Pay Later — The Road To Ruin

AUGUST 4, 2009

UPDATE: The piecemeal disclosure of the city’s financial troubles continued Thursday morning with City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana reporting tax revenue has come in $186 million below the budget with sales taxes down 16 percent versus the budget forecast of 6 percent. “The city hasn’t seen this since the Great Depression,” Santana said., after his letter outlining options from city officials was leaked..

The mayor flits from photo op to photo op, tweeting all the way about the fantastic job he’s doing leading the city’s efforts to deal with the rain while the City Council spends endless hours debating the virtues of marijuana and lactation rooms.

And the first the public knows about plans to sell off airports and other assets comes from a leaked memo.

Nero would be proud to know that his legacy of imperious and incompetent leadership is still alive after all these years.

This is how you ruin a city, not run it. If there honor among these thieves, hari kari would be their only redemptive option. Maybe that’s what they intend by committing political suicide like this.

The city is in dire straits, the result of years of giveaways to unions, subsidies to developers, heavy spending on social welfare programs while the streets, sidewalks, water pipes and electrical grid deteriorated.

They are giving new meaning now to what we have long known: City Hall is for sale.

But now it’s not the corruption of political money and the “juice” that feeds a complex network of politicians and their gofers, lobbyists, lawyers, consultants, PR manipulators, contractors, unions and all the others who live off the public treasury.

Now what’s for sale are parking structures, Van Nuys and Ontario airports and whatever else they can find a buyer for to keep the cash flowing to avoid bankruptcy.

What’s next the DWP and LAX, the zoo and Convention Center?

Or will laying off 1,000 city workers, presumably with golden handshakes, on top of the 2,400 retiring with sweetened pensions be enough?

“Revenues are significantly lower than original projections and we are
prepared to make tough decisions, including layoffs and cuts in
less-essential city services to our constituents,” states a letter
being circulated among city leaders. A draft copy was obtained by The
Times.

“We will consider the elimination, consolidation, or outsourcing of
city assets and services, furloughs and layoffs where permissible,
continued managed hiring with consideration of a hard hiring freeze and
public-private partnerships that will generate revenue.”

The RonKayeLA/OurLA news desk got a call the other day from a reporter asking questions about our mayor’s travels, obviously hoping to put together a piece accusing Antonio of globe trotting while the city sinks deeper into economic depression.

These hit pieces are clichés: They don’t take much work and they’re almost impossible to disprove.

But as far as this dog is concerned, Antonio could travel to the moon first-class – and bring girlfriend Lu Parker and her dog Monkey – if it meant more jobs for Los Angeles.

If you haven’t noticed, it’s gruesome out there. The jobless rate in LA is now at 13.4 percent. Grrrrrrrr!

Don’t think it’s that bad?  I heard of somebody who put an ad on Craigslist last week for a barely paid intern and got applications from as far away as Georgia – and that was from a lawyer.

And for all the talk about how Bill Bratton eliminated crime, three guys robbed the Tiffany jewelery store at 6:30 last night – in the Westfield Century City shopping mall! (Three hours free parking but I’m sure they didn’t spend that long there.) Who knows about the culprits’ job status, but if we don’t do something soon, LA could end up being more dangerous than downtown Johannesburg. (Guess we’d have to lure Bratton back.)

That’s why I began growling and barking this morning when I read that Antonio cancelled a trip to Washington to deal with unemployment because it’s raining.  

OK, I know it’s raining pretty hard (I spend a lot of time in the doghouse in the backyard), but it’s not like the mayor’s going to jump into a swollen storm drain and save a puppy – unless it’s Monkey — even if he is in better shape because of meatless Mondays and yoga.  

He’s staying because he doesn’t want to miss the opportunity for press conferences wearing one of those cool firefighter turnout coats he looks ridiculous in.

Antonio was going to Washington to, among other things, lobby for what’s called the 30/10 Initiative, which, simply put, means we’d do the three decades of transit work approved by you folks in Measure R in just one decade.

The proponents of this plan say it would create 127,800 transit construction jobs in Los Angeles County alone and at least 2,800 permanent operations and maintenance jobs.

That’s a lot of kibble on a lot of tables.  Let’s get the guy on a plane – now!

Meanwhile, the mayor did find time though to appear on an episode of “All My Children,” which just moved production to LA.  That creates some jobs and our newly svelte mayor (meatless Mondays and yoga) loves the attention.

Maybe that’s why he and the Council are today ordering everyone in city government to do cartwheels for Hollywood. We need more production jobs in LA and the mayor will probably get an Actor’s Equity card for being so helpful.

Woof!

I’m not calling for drug testing of elected officials but watching the City Council sometimes I think they must be high on something.

There they were Tuesday going around and around for the umpteenth time about “medicinal marijuana,” listening yet again to repetitious pleas for LA to become a sanctuary city for potheads and fretting over how many, how far, how long and the minutiae of an ordinance they still don’t understand.

There was the sober Senior Assistant City Attorney Jane Usher maternally answering the same questions about there is buffer between pot shops and residences, 500 feet from hospitals and schools and how there’s a cap of 70 with loopholes for 116 more.

No, the law doesn’t allow sales for cash. It’s the compassionate use act for really sick people who can work together in a cooperative to grow pot and share it with each other. Nothing more, not the back door legalization and proliferation of 600 to 1,000 dispensaries the Council allowed to flourish.

Ed Reyes was rebuffed when he tried to end the latest round of posturing because Bill Rosendahl needed to puff up his chest and get something off it.

Cowards, he called his colleagues and everyone else who doesn’t criminalizing marijuana had destroyed America. Crazy, he called them. He was a man in need of a sedative, Herb Wesson suggested since he violated the rules of decorum and mutual respect.

Paul Koretz was as confused as ever about the rules he was voting on and what they meant. Jose Huizar was absolutely against increasing the number of pot shops and then amended the Rule of 70 to allow up to 186.

Richard Alarcon was truly amazing for a man under criminal investigation for lying about living in the district he represents when he doesn’t and then telling a ridiculous story about how a homeless nut broke into his abandoned house he claimed as residence, trashed it even as he was buying and installing new locks on the doors.

Surely DA Steve Cooley will need the help of Sherlock Holmes to solve “The Case of the Locksmith Squatter.”

Alarcon seemed to want to close all the existing pot shops and let hundreds, maybe thousands, of hospices and elder care facilities to grow their own marijuana, presumably to keep the old and sick folks stoned instead of sedated.

If all that was bizarre and symptomatic enough of what’s wrong at City Hall, Tony Cardenas stole the show with this one: He wants a “public option” like in national health care with the city getting into the business of growing and selling pot so it can reap the windfall profits and stave off bankruptcy.

Not to worry, the new pot law was a done deal even though they scorned Jane Usher and her boss, Carmen Trutanich, for showing them how to get out of the mess they created just as they did with the billboard fiasco.

The ordinance was approved 11-3 with Pro-Pot Rosendahl dissenting along with Bernard Parks and Jan Perry because they thought they might get too many of the 70 or 186 and destroy the street trade.

Finally, the LA City Council took steps Tuesday to bring an end to the proliferation of pot shops and get sale and distribution of medicinal marijuana under control.

The ordinance will come back for a final vote next Tuesday but implementation could still be many months away and most clinics facing closure likely will remain in business throughout this year.

The Council action comes 14 years after 55 percent of California voters approved the Compassionate Use Act, seven years after the Legislature enacted the Medical Marijuana Act and three years after the Council adopted an interim ordinance.

In theory, the ordinance caps the number of dispensaries at 70, an average of two for each of the 35 community planning areas (see chart below) or one for about 60,000 residents. But the size of the planning areas varies dramatically so some would not have any and others as many as five or six.

But the Council built in a number of variables to the cap, allowing all 137 to potentially stay open and allowing others that closed to possibly reopen under some conditions, bringing the number to 186.

A number of late amendments, proposed Tuesday after months of debate and endless hearings, were referred to committee for consideration.

For a list of how many pot shops are allowed in each of the 35 community planning areas, go to OurLA.org

I’m jealous!

According to a bizarre puff piece in the Dog Trainer over the weekend that provided the citizens of LA details on our mayor’s diet, exercise regime and love life, his girlfriend’s dog is spending time at Getty House.

In fact, former beauty queen and current TV reporter Lu Parker even did a photo shoot in the backyard with her new pal, Monkey. Check it out on her personal blog.

This is really getting cuter than a Labrador puppy.

According to the Dog Trainer , Antonio has lost some weight.  He runs on a treadmill – symbolic, I guess, of the progress he’s made fixing our budget mess – and has added yoga and stretching to his routine, and he alternates weight and cardiovascular training in his workouts.

“I’m also eating healthier and eating less, including meatless Mondays,” Villaraigosa told hard-hitting Trainer reporter Phil Willon, who added, “It’s probably no coincidence that Parker, whom the mayor has been dating since March, is a vegetarian and avid runner.”

Both Monkey and I are “rescues,” which means we were “adopted” by our current owners after getting dumped by our former owners.

Monkey ended up with a former Miss USA who dates the mayor. I ended up with a former newspaper editor who picks on the mayor.

I figure that gives us a lot in common.

So I figure it would only be fair if Antonio invited Ron and me over to the house for a photo shoot in the backyard.   We could frolic for a while for the camera, and then Monkey and I could eat some of the meat the mayor’s skipping on Mondays while Ron and he fight about the DWP and the budget.

I think it’s only fair.  After all, Getty House belongs to all of us.

Woof!

The end is near for the Daily News and several other newspapers in the LA market owned by Denver’s Dean Singleton, the Denver media mogul whose holding company is filing for bankruptcy.

Many papers in the MediaNews chain ran a company press release that buried the bankruptcy, saying Singleton’s holding company, Affiliated Media, had cut a deal with creditors holding nearly $1 billion in virtually worthless paper.

The deal will leave Singleton and his management still in charge but in control of only 20 percent of the stock. That will reduce the burden of debt to just $165 million, according to the Wall St. Journal, which the company’s value at $200 million and noted it is the seventh newspaper company to file for bankrupty, including the LA Times and Orange County Register.

The WSJ reported what the MediaNews announcement did not: What Singleton plans to do now.

“Singleton said he wanted to try to be the aggressor in merging newspapers…cleaning up the company’s debt load allows him to help lead newspaper-industry consolidation,” the WSJ reported.

“People in the industry have pointed to MediaNews’s paper in St. Paul
and the Star Tribune in Minneapolis as potential candidates for a
combination, as well as to adjacent papers in Southern California
published by MediaNews, Tribune Co. and Freedom Communications Inc.
There are potential regulatory hurdles to some newspaper combinations.”

When asked which newspapers might be combined, Mr. Singleton answered: “You can look at the map.”

If you look at the LA map you will see Singleton owns the South Bay Breeze, the Long Beach Press-Telegram, the Whittier Daily News, Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Inland Valley Bulletin and San Bernardino Sun.

In the past 10 years, Singleton has tried to consolidate many operations of those papers, then backed off and tried various other strategies without success, hit hard by the decline of newspapers and more recently the recession.

The Hearst Corp. has been his principal benefactor over those years, buying the Daily News offices and other property from MediaNews and partnering in some newspapers. The WSJ, in reporting details about the bankruptcy, said Hearst had a $400 million stake.

What the implications of the deal and Singleton’s “merger” and consolidation” comments is this: There just isn’t enough money in newspapers to allow for competition, even the pretense of competition.

Hearst and MediaNews own almost all the newspapers in the Bay Area, for instance, from San Francisco to San Jose, Contra Costa and Oakland — all of them crippled by debt and falling revenue.

The entire LA market is owned by MediaNews and Tribune Co., throw in the bankrupt Register and you have Orange County with options on San Bernardino and possibly Riverside County.

It’s noteworthy that the San Diego Union-Tribune ,bought last year cheaply without heavy debt, is believed to have become profitable again after staff cuts and scaling spending to revenue..

That is the point. One paper without competition can thrive for a good many years even in the face of the Internet and the lack of younger readers. Two or more cannot.

So look for deals quickly.

It’s not a coincidence that the Times just took over printing the Wall St. Journal and others papers, forcing it to move to early deadlines as the Daily News did several years ago.

The predicate of the deals are already in place and you can be sure a lot of negotiations have been going on behind the scenes for a long time.

The only obstacle to the Times taking over the whole LA market and potentially salvaging the existing papers nameplates in localized editions is the U.S. Justice Department and laws against monopolies.

As someone who worked in corporate journalism for four decades and bristled against its homogenizing of the news, you can take my word for it that there hasn’t been much competitive journalism in newspapers for most of those years.

The corporate rules of journalism sucked the life out of newspapering, eliminating the kind of robust wars when there 12 newspapers in New York, eight in LA, six in Chicago with multiple owners and very different points of view.

One monopoly newspaper in major cities is sustainable and should have been done several years ago before staffs were gutted, talent and skill lost and the value to readers diminished.

Many will lament the loss of competition but competition has been an illusion for years and there should only be a brief mourning period for newspapers that lived a long and prosperous life and died of old age.

One healthy mainstream corporate newspaper can do things we will never be able to achieve on the Internet.

Most of all, they can provide a singular place for a shared experience available to everyone for an overview of who and what we are, an overview sanitized by the so-called objectivity they provide.

And they will have the resources to send teams of reporters out on the big stories like earthquakes and catastrophes of one sort or another and to develop staff with highly specialized skills and experience in specific areas.

The real question is whether they will provide an over-arching vision that will bring vast and complex metropolitan areas together.

For our city, that has always been the problem. The Times has failed to offer a vision of greater LA that is inclusive and reflective of the incredible complexity of the region, geographically, ethnically, demographically and all the social, cultural and political ways we differentiate ourselves.

That is where the value to readers and advertisers is — and where the money is for publishers.

“The hardest thing is going to be to change the mindset here. For the first time in a long time the city is going to be forced to change the way it does things. The most fundamental thing is to change the mindset of those who work in the city. We serve business. They’re our customers as opposed to the other way around.” — Austin Beutner, Economic Czar for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

With all his experience and business acumen, financier Austin Beutner is off to a roaring start as LA’s economic czar — the man entrusted by the political, business and civic elite with the task of creating thousands of jobs using the vast resources the city.

Beutner acknowledges it is an impossible job without getting the mayor and other elected officials to reverse the direction of their politics and policies to create a business-friendly city as his paraphrase of President Calvin Coolidge’s famous quote that “the business of America is business” shows.

But Coolidge, in his 1925 speech on freedom of the press, provided a very different context to his remark than is generally understood:

“We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want very much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. I cannot repeat too often that America is a nation of idealists. That is the only motive to which they ever give any strong and lasting reaction.”

I have no idea whether Beutner embraces the point Coolidge was making but it is precisely why LA is in the economic fix it is in.

The people have been and still are left out in the cold.

The truth is the political, business and civic elite have for too long operated as if they can build a great city without appealing to the idealism of the people.

We can build skyscrapers and luxury entertainment districts. We can build a hundred new schools. We can pour our wealth into massive public works projects and subsidies to developers. But we can’t get traffic moving, or educate our children or create good-paying jobs or healthy neighborhoods.

In fact, we have done the opposite.

Unemployment and poverty have soared, good businesses and middle-class residents have fled the city and the discontent of the people is fueling a movement for change. City Hall may have no way out of its financial crisis without filing for bankruptcy and the feeble steps that have been taken have caused chaos in nearly every city department.

All that we know about what is planned is that Beutner will have the wealth of the DWP, harbor and airport at his disposal and the authority to force planners, code enforcers and other city workers to speed approval of whatever job-creating efforts he can develop.

What’s missing is what has always been missing: The people.

Nothing succeeds in any enterprise without a shared vision that grows out of a dynamic dialogue that energizes everyone involved and energizes their creativity.

City Hall is afraid of the people because it doesn’t want to do what the people want. So our officials play political games and manipulate the issues to disarm the populace and keep the people weak and disorganized.

But it isn’t working anymore. The people are getting stronger and better organized, anger and frustration have a way of causing that to happen.

The result is we are headed for a collision that will not solve our problems.

It’s all so unnecessary.

Beutner has reached out to the business community. You can be sure he will talk to labor leaders. It isn’t too much to ask for him to start to listen to the people, to bring them into the conversation about how we save LA.

He can do what our elected officials have failed to do, tap into the idealism of the people and make their needs and values part of the agenda to turn LA around..

When I first came to town, the big issue was forced busing under court order intended to integrate the schools.

Roberta Weintraub and Bobbi Fiedler on one side hollering about preserving neighborhood schools. Jackie Goldberg and Rita Walters on the other yelling about racial equity.

It was the start of “white flight” from the schools — and the city — that now, 30 years later, has become “middle class flight from the schools and the city.

We’ve spent billions and billions of our money to build new schools and fix old ones. We’ve ended forced busing and brought back neighborhood schools and pretty much ended year-round calendars.

Yet, most schools are racially impacted and outcomes in terms of test scores and dropout rates are abysmal and many parents are choosing to transport their kids to schools outside their neighborhoods in hopes of getting them a better education and keeping them safe.

We’ve gone through close to a dozen superintendents. We’ve tried school-based management and LEARN and gone back to top-down management. We’ve created mini-districts and dissolved them. We resisted independent charter schools and then embraced them as a means of breaking up the mammoth and dysfunctional district school by school.

And now we’re giving parents the rights to close down failing schools and rebuild them the way the want and opening the door to teachers, non-profits and everywhere else with an educational theory to start their own public schools.

Maybe the problem isn’t governance, as a friend of mine who’s closely followed the devolution of LAUSD has long argued. Maybe it’s a teaching and learning problem and somethiing more.

The something more was visible in Howard Blume’s story in the Times today about how LAUSD laid off thousands of teachers and other employees and still overspent its budget for salaries by an astonishing $200 million.

What’s even more incredible is that the army of bureaucrats in LAUSD don’t know how they did that and apparently didn’t want us to know since the internal audit was completed a month ago and probably wouldn’t have come out at all without the efforts of a good reporter.

Superintendent Ramon.Cortines offers little insight beyond “we’re cleaning it up.”

Inspector General Jerry Thornton is somewhat more helpful.

“The system is broken,” he said. “We really don’t have adequate position control and we don’t know
where our funding comes from for all these positions.

“There’s no suggestion of impropriety or fraud. We didn’t see people being paid who aren’t working or who aren’t there.”

There it is, the smoking gun. Incompetence is the problem and all the experiments, all the money haven’t fixed it.

That’s why parents rights, charters, anything that frees parents, teachers and principals from the reign of incompetence seems like a step in the right direction.

I spoke with a principal recently whose grade school test performance has soared from the mid-400s to over 800 in the last 10 years and heard how creating a shared vision and empowering teachers and supporting them was responsible for the improvement.

That’s the heart of the matter as far as I’m concerned. It’s what makes any enterprise successful: Shared beliefs, individual empowerment, strong leadership.

I call it democracy and I don’t see why those with power in LA are so afraid of it, so resistant to embrace what makes America what it is — or at least what it was.

After decades of a failed experiment in municipal socialism, Austin Beutner looks like just the right man for the job of reviving LA’s sagging economy from the tornado of mismanagement and poor leadership that has hit it, a steal at $1 a year.

He is the man who the mayor says “led a team that helped the Russian people in their transition to a market economy” after the fall of communism. If that doesn’t convince you. consider that he made a goodly chunk of his fortune as an investment banker and expert putting people to work in Third World countries with an abundance of cheap labor.

A Third World economy, cheap labor and all the assets of the DWP, harbor and airport to work with — it’s right up Beutner’s alley.

You can gamble your tax bill on his ability to wipe the nearly 14 percent jobless rate, put the 200,000 people who have abandoned even looking for a job to work, balance the city budget and erase the $10.5 billion city pension debt.

It’s only a matter of time before he leads us to that somewhere over the rainbow and becomes  known as the Wizard of LA.

There are a few obstacles he will have to overcome, however, like the ambitions of the mayor and council to stay on the public dole for the rest of their lives without actually doing anything for the public benefit.

Can the Wizard of LA find a brain for Scarecrow Tom LaBonge (who wants to be mayor), a heart for Tin Man Dennis Zine (Controller) and courage for Cowardly Lion Bill Rosendahl (US Senator)?

If he does, he still faces the challenge of getting help from Good Witch Glinda (Lt. Gov. Janice Hahn) to help Dorothy (Mayor Jan Perry) and Toto (Assemblyman Richard Alarcon) to get back home to Kansas or wherever they’re from.

Surely the Wicked Witch of the West (Mayor Wendy Greuel) or is it Mayor
Eric Garcetti will have a lot say about what he is trying to do,
especially if it makes any sense.

No, it’s not going to be easy, what with the yellow brick road all cracked and broken and the Emerald City flooded by bursting water mains.

But he does have help from the man who counts, a mayor so desperate to be Governor or Senator or Ambassador or just plain rich like him that he swears on the stack of bibles and promises to give him all the support he needs no matter what.

Of course, his promises in the past have proven to be about as valuable and reliable as AIG securities.

No matter. The Wizard can fix it all if only everyone really believes it’s possible.

And that’s the twist in this little story that makes it all just a fantasy.

This cast of characters has betrayed the public trust. Nobody believes anything they do is for anyone’s benefit but their own and the people who put them on the public stage.

It’s simply a question of faith and you got to wonder if the Wizard of LA even has clue about that..

“The Filter with Fred Roggin” is being broadcast for the first time on Channel 4 today at 11:30 a.m. (after a six-month test on digital cable) and as luck would have it Jack Weiss and I wound up as facing off as competing commentators in the opening segment.

The fast-paced, innovative news show is broadcast live at 7:30 p.m. on NBC’s digital Channel 225 Monday-Thursday and for now is being re-broadcast the following morning on Channel 4.

I thought you might be amused to how the man I called “Public Enemy No. 1” during the City Attorney’s race (imagine what he’s called me) and I performed.

What, Me Worry?! from Michael Cohen on Vimeo.

While most of America tuned into football and the “Simpsons” 20th anniversary special on Sunday, the lines were being drawn for the political battle that will determine the future of Los Angeles.

The mayor, with his proclivity for the rich and their lifestyle, named a wealthy equity firm manager, Austin Beutner whose name has not come up in the public pension fund scandal, to run his economic development program using the Airport, Harbor and DWP to create jobs and keep the city out of bankruptcy.

It will be interesting to see how he skirts federal, state and local laws that the city has run afoul of in the past in its efforts to raid these proprietary agencies’ funds for uses that are outside their public missions.

On the other side of the battlefield, more than 75 Neighborhood Council leaders met in Hollywood for some three hours to confront the truth that all their talk over the last 10 years meant next to nothing since nobody at City Hall listens.

History of a sort was being made as they began to develop strategies to turn talk into action, starting with demanding a direct role in budget decisions — the deepening crisis the city faces after years of overspending and overtaxing.

The mayor’s answer is to sell off parking structures and other assets, to pay off workers to retire and to loot the DWP in particular to subsidize businesses to locate or expand in LA.

The result is chaos in nearly every city department as senior staff retires, escalating deficits, soaring rates and nothing but a wing and a prayer that the flight of the middle class and good-paying jobs will somehow end if enough money is pumped into the economy.

At the LA Neighborhood Council meeting Sunday, LANCC President Len Shaffer laid out the framework of the discontent
and need to take a more dynamic position at the outset of the meeting
at the Hollywood Community Center.

There was a clear consensus that the residents of the city want an entirely different conversation — one that focuses on basic services and the quality of life, one that actually would help businesses to thrive and make LA attractive to investors without having to pay them to set up shop.

The first step is to demand “a seat at the table” in budget discussions as Dr. Dan Wiseman plans to do today before the Council Budget and Finance Committee

“They
(NCs) want Ex Officio status at the City Council, Council Committee, Task
Force and Departmental meetings so that they can fulfill their
Chartered responsibilities:
1. .to promote more citizen participation in government
2. to make government more responsive to local needs
3. to present to the Mayor and Council an annual list of priorities for the City budget
4. to monitor the delivery of City services in their
respective areas and periodic meetings with responsible officials of City departments.”

To mobilize support, Hollywood bike activist Stephen Box, following the pattern that helped defeat Measure B a year ago, last night launched BudgetLA.org to coordinate organizing efforts and provide up-to-date information.

Noting that the mayor’s Budget Survey is a farce, Valley Village blogger Paul Hatfield pressed for a campaign to get thousands of people to refuse to answer and of the multiple choices and only fill out the comments sections with their views about the city’s spending priorities and how to deal with the deficit.

There was the usual anger and discontent about cracked sidewalks and untrimmed trees, about the lack of cops and the deterioration of neighborhoods. But there was more.

There was a video Michael Cohen put together for CityWatchLA that showed the courage Department of Transportation GM Rita Robinson and Assistant City Administrative Officer Tom Coultas have shown in publicly saying the steps the mayor and City Council have taken in the face of their soaring deficits have disastrous consequences that will be even worse next year.

And how Council Members like Bill Rosendahl don’t have a clue about what their irresponsibility has wrought.

And then businessmen activists Jack Humphreville and Doug Epperhart laid out just how disastrous the city budget problems are and how they escalate in the years ahead — $4 billion in the general fund, nearly $11 billion for city pensions. .

It went around the room with everyone poring out their specific grievances until Westside restaurateur Jay Handall passionately argued for focusing on the budget details and a strategy force discussions on how to really fix what’s broken, and spoke out against plans to sell or lease city revenue assets. Last March, the NC Budget Advisory Committee he serves on was recommended the city declare a fiscal emergency, combine agencies, avoid selling assets and reduce salaries by 10 to 15  percent among other steps — many of which the city ignored or was slow to move on.

Kevin James, the KRLA radio talk show host who launched a coalition last week to change LA and got 1,000 members in just a few days, spoke of the need to organize people behind and get media attention.

Councilman Paul Koretz, just over pneumonia, sat through the session and so did Bong Hwan Kim, the head of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, and his predecessor Greg Nelson and DONE Commission member Linda Lucks

An aide to City Controller Wendy Greuel was there looking disheveled and impatient that he was missing the NFL playoff game and so was a young aide to the mayor who fled after a few minutes, apparently satisfied that it was just another meeting of crazies, gadflies and mad men and women, people of no account in the high stakes game of profiteering off the public’s money.

After 90 minutes I’d heard enough to know that the NCs were crossing the line. They were ready to act.

Others in the city outside of the NC organization are ready to organize what amounts to a citizens’ political party and I’m ready to join with them, with LANCC, with anybody else who wants to seize power and topple a regime of insiders who for too long have lived high and mighty on the public dole and failed to deliver a city that works for its people, or provides for their future.

Just last week, the state of California enacted into law the right of parents to have a say in how their children our educated.

I say this is America and we have a God-given right to have in say in government. It’s as basic a civil right as there is, the right of everyone to fully participate in government.

Next Saturday, these issues will come up again at the CityWide Alliance of NCs and at the Saving LA Project meeting that will follow it.

Let’s get it together and get on with the fight to show City Hall they are servants of the public and we are the bosses.

made last Tuesday and hardly anybody noticed, which was City Hall’s goal.