Garcetti's vision thing hits sort of a wall in City Hall

A piece by LA Times City Hall reporter Emily Alpert Reyes takes a look at the dynamic in the building between Mayor Eric Garcetti and the City Council members who have a good bit of the available power (when Herb Wesson shares with them) but other agendas. The effect, Reyes writes, is that Garcetti's inclination to enthuse about vision and technology runs up against the politicians who "have more pressure to be mindful of a wide array of local dissenters, including the taxi industry, hotel workers and housing activists." A City Council committee on Tuesday gave its go-ahead for opening up LAX to Uber and driver services like it, but the debate is an example of how the mayor and the city council come at issues like Uber and AirBnb from different directions.

For Garcetti, "the politics of this is pretty clear. People like this," said former county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, now an adjunct professor of history and public policy at UCLA. "And you don't get in the way of something people like."

As if to underscore that point, Airbnb recently released a survey that showed 3 out of 4 voters in L.A. were in support of allowing its rentals.

Garcetti also has political connections to the sharing economy: One member of his transition team, Joshua Perttula, now heads a lobbying firm that counts Lyft as a client, and his legal counsel, Rich Llewellyn, is married to an attorney whose firm represents the same company. (Garcetti spokeswoman Connie Llanos said Llewellyn recuses himself from decisions involving ride-sharing.) And City Hall watchers say the man the Huffington Post once dubbed the "hipster mayor" is more attuned to the sharing economy than some on the council.

"His inner circle is all young technology adopters," said Lisa Gritzner, a lobbyist representing Uber and HomeAway, another vacation rental website.

In a separate piece, Times columnist Sandy Banks calls out Garcetti and City Hall for making promises and pronouncements they never intend to actually keep because they are not possible: Housing every homeless veteran by the end of this year, a stop to killing dogs and cats in animal shelters by 2017, an end to traffic fatalities by 2035.

Really, Los Angeles?

You can call me a cynic, but I'm tired of high-minded claims that aren't backed up by sound and realistic plans.

Feel-good promises and grand intentions do not a vision make. They just obscure the messy details and costly trade-offs of complicated problems….

"To rally people around something, you have to promise that you're taking out all the risks," said USC psychology professor Norbert Schwarz. "When you say the risk will be a little less likely if they do this, that's not a goal that is highly motivating."

She could also have blamed LA voters (if she can find any…) and the local enthusiast-sphere for letting pols get away with saying basically anything, so long as it sounds upbeat or cool enough.