Follow LA Observed on Twitter here
♦ The Daily News talks up public financing of city election campaigns, but ethics commissioner Bill Boyarsky—who proposed it—writes in the LAT that he's getting tired of wasting his time: "I tend to hate the Ethics Commission. Driving home from City Hall, I'm often so mad that I have to take care not to whack another car on the Santa Monica Freeway."
♦ Calabasas' smoking ban makes the New York Times, and could be the best thing ever for the Sagebrush Cantina, which has an outdoor smoking patio a few foot outside the jurisdiction of the Calabasas City Council.
♦ An Orange County surgeon and his buddy get their giggles by causing pretty cool UFO sightings.
♦ Would you believe 2,000 condos and apartments, plus a W hotel, at Hollywood and Vine.
♦ One reason LAPD crime stats are so low: new rules for counting assaults.
♦ Russian woman Lidiya Grigoryeva won the Los Angeles Marathon, just ahead of men's champion Benson Cherono of Kenya.
♦ City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's office decided not to go after Regency Outdoor Advertising, a major campaign contributor, despite never interviewing key witnesses who said the firm improperly vandalized trees that may have blcoked its billboards at LAX, the Times says.
♦ Mayor Villaraigosa leaked out a few more details of his school governance thinking—elected but diminished school board, appointed Superintendent reporting to him—in advance of this week's trip to New York City to see how it's done there.
♦ Now that the City Council plans to meet regularly in Van Nuys and has video hookups to the Valley, San Pedro wants in too.
♦ "I hired Mr. Pellicano because he told me he could listen in" to the young woman's phone calls, a Valencia businessman told a federal judge in pleading guilty and becoming the fourth person to implicate Hollywood investigator Anthony Pellicano in illegal wiretapping. Also: Hollywood divorce post-Pellicano.
♦ The Times followed up Saturday with a story on Thursday night's Los Angeles Political Roast.
♦ The city will put less trash into Sunshine Canyon and pay $5 million more for the privilege. It sort of mollifies the Granada Hills Nimbys.
♦ Rob Kendt opens his NYT piece pegged to the New York opening of the play "Fahrenheit 451" with an anecdote about Ray Bradbury's short story "The Pedestrian" growing out the author being stopped by the LAPD while walking on Wilshire in 1947: "Even then, it seems, nobody walked in Los Angeles."