Perhaps they were inspired by their distinguished predecessors on Santa Monica College’s Broad Stage, which have included the Shakespeare’s Globe Theater actors. Maybe it was the large and attentive audience. Whatever the reason, Sheila Kuehl and Bobby Shriver gave sharp and articulate performances in last Friday night’s debate, showing clear differences between the candidates for the Third District supervisorial seat.

They covered much ground in their hour-long debate, sponsored by Cal State LA’s Pat Brown Institute of Politics, the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles, and KABC. Shriver was his usual bouncy self, smiling, mugging and waving to friends in the audience when he arrived on stage. When he came up with a zinger against Kuehl, he smiled in appreciation of his own wit. Kuehl was her usual serious self, although she smiled occasionally, as if aware of her need to overcome a reputation of being a policy drudge. After she accomplished a good verbal hit against Shriver, she, too, flashed a look of appreciation at her wit.

The most significant difference was over an issue that hasn’t received much media attention, but illustrates the wide gulf between the business community and organized labor—and Kuehl and Shriver. It is about pay, pensions, and other benefits for the county’s approximately 100,000 employees. Business fears the county could be irreparably damaged by overly generous pay and benefits. The unions disagree.

A board known as the Employee Relations Commission is supposed to settle labor-management disputes. In the past labor and management had to agree on the three board members. Feeling that the arrangement gave labor veto power over the three seats, permitting it to win most cases, the supervisors changed the rules. They decided to allow labor to appoint one commissioner, the county chief executive another with the third member named jointly. Business groups cheered, feeling the new arrangement would weaken labor. The furious unions fought back, trying to undo the action with a state legislative bill by Assemblyman Reginald Jones-Sawyer, but Governor Jerry Brown vetoed it.

The dialogue between Kuehl and Shriver about the commission provided a good look on how they would vote on labor-management issues that will be contentious in county government over the next several years.

“The way it was, the unions supporting Sheila won 90 percent of the time,” said Shriver, taking the side of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and other business groups. Kuehl, backed by labor unions, said supervisors “don’t need to be at war with our employees.” She objected to Shriver’s use of the word “win,”, saying the reason the commission has upheld employees in disputes is because the commissioners believed their stories.

If Kuehl defeats Shriver in the November 4 election, it would give labor a 3-2 edge on the board of supervisors, which would be crucial in future debates over pensions, wages and other big employee expenses. Kuehl would be aligned with Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who was heavily backed by labor when he was elected, and union favorite Hilda Solis, who was elected in the primary. If Shriver defeats Kuehl, it would give business three friendly supervisors—him, Mike Antonovich and Don Knabe. On the present board, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky tends to be a swing vote on such issues.

This issue, hardly known or understood by the public, is another reason why the outcome of the election is so important.

A conversation with City Atty. Mike Feuer is a trip through the nitty gritty of city government, starting with dangerous sidewalks and including graffiti prevention. medical marijuana regulation and aid to prostitutes who want a better life.

I visited Feuer last week in his office in city hall east, the 16-story annex across Main Street from city hall. We had run into each other at a party, and he invited me to stop by and chat. I’ve known him since he was a young attorney running Beth Tzedek, a community organization, which provides legal aid to low-income older people. Later, I followed his career as a member of the state assembly and the city council. I was interested in his view of his current job.

He was energetic, enthusiastic and immersed in the details of policy. He wanted to sell me on his agenda and made sure he got through his points in the 45-minute interview.

Close to Feuer’s heart are his neighborhood prosecutors, deputy city attorneys who are stationed full time around the city. He aims to increase the number from the eight under his predecessor, Carmen Trutanich, to 21, with one in every police division. They go after quality- of- life offenses, small crimes that, when added up, drive people crazy.

With the prosecutors guiding them, police, residents and business people try to work things out at the neighborhood level with a goal, Feuer said, of “restorative justice” rather than jail time. A vandal might be given a choice of cleaning up his or her mess rather than being prosecuted. “If you complete the program, we won’t prosecute you, if you don’t we will,” Feuer said. The prosecutor arranges the terms helped by possibly the property owner, cops as well as neighborhood residents who have volunteered to assist.

Another example is prostitution. In the San Fernando Valley, repeat offenders were given a choice of jail or participating in a program run by the Mary Magdalene Project, which is dedicated to helping women leave the street life. “We’ve had 121 prostitutes enter the program and 108 completed it,” Feuer said.

Feuer is also in charge of enforcing the city medical marijuana law, enacted by the voters in 2013. It limits marijuana dispensaries to those operating since 2007, keeps them away from schools, parks and residential areas and closes them between 8 p.m. and 10 a.m. There were hundreds of them operating before Proposition D passed, and the measure’s goal was to reduce the number to less than 140. Given the dispensaries’ determination to fight back in court, and their tendency to move around, that may be difficult to attain. But Feuer said the city has closed 386 in the past year.

Not even his enthusiasm could provide much comfort to me on the broken sidewalk issue. My wife and I weave our way through cracks and hillocks created by tree roots on our morning walks while ducking self-involved, texting Westside drivers. Making it home is a miracle. Nothing can be done about the situation, Feuer said, until a suit against the city is settled, an action brought by disabled people unable to navigate the obstacles. Until then, city money set aside for repairs remains unspent.

The interview over, we shook hands and I left. Maybe what Feuer told me wouldn’t have been hot news for city hall regulars. But as an infrequent visitor, observing the place from the outside, I found the session illuminating, a feeling I bet many Angelinos would share.

The relationship between a newspaper and its hometown is hard to define. But it is very real, especially in this place of many hometowns with few institutions to hold them together. That’s why Jim Newton’s departure from the Los Angeles Times is such a serious loss for both the newspaper and the Los Angeles area.

Newton, who left to teach and edit a journal at UCLA, wrote a weekly column on the editorial pages about the politics, government and public policy of Los Angeles and the myriad communities that surround it. As editor at large, he brought his experience and knowledge to the paper’s editorial board. He is also co-author of “Worthy Fights,” the new book by Leon Panetta, former defense secretary and CIA chief.

In clear, strong language, Newton’s columns explained the ties that both bind and separate communities. This is what he wrote about the delivery of water to Los Angeles: “The system's brilliance is that a snowflake can fall in the Sierra, trickle down the western slope, drift through the Bay Delta and into the state water system and then travel hundreds of miles and over mountains to Southern California. The system's delicacy was on display this month when that melted snowflake burst through a broken water main on Sunset Boulevard and ended up in a flood at UCLA.”

He explained vast and too-often dysfunctional systems that serve all of Los Angeles County. In Newton’s columns we met foster parents Heather Whelan and Carrie Chung and learned of their troubles with Los Angeles County foster care. He wrote: “Over the past three years, I've spent a lot of time in the Los Angeles foster care system -- in courtrooms and waiting rooms, with children and lawyers, birth parents and foster parents. And while I can't say whether Whelan and Chung are the exception or the rule when it comes to how the county's Department of Children and Family Services relates to foster parents, I can say that there are persistent breakdowns in communication between social workers and foster parents -- and that kids are suffering as a result.”

He was able to write with such authority because he had covered it all as a reporter, ranging from the criminal courts and police to the well off and privileged in Brentwood. As a columnist, he continued this kind of reporting, traveling through the region to interview people, finding out about their hopes and fears, accomplishments and failings.

The Times covers local politics and government, often with
fine reporting. But there’s not enough of it. Cutbacks, layoffs and forced retirements have drastically cut the staff and sapped morale. Reporting is challenging enough but it’s really hard knowing that every week or month might be your last at the paper.

And the diminished staff doesn’t have enough veterans. Much of the work falls on inexperienced reporters who haven’t built a connection to the communities they cover. All of them are besieged with demands from editors to get something hot for the web site, to produce more “eyeballs”, aka readers.

Stories of local government and politics have a hard time winning a spot in this competitive and confused news market place. But can be done. All you need are reporters with skill, curiosity, and the ability to tell a story—and editors who stand behind them.

Newton was that kind of reporter, an example to young reporters who might be considering a career path that starts at city hall. When the bosses let him leave, it was a sign that they don’t consider city hall or other halls of government important or interesting. It also showed they don’t understand the Times’ role in bringing together this complex region and explaining it to the readers

The Times’ greatest publisher, Otis Chandler, knew this and it was foremost in his goals for news coverage. That concept was drilled from the top down to newcomers like me when I first arrived in 1970, trying to crack the secrecy of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. My editors made sure I knew I was doing important work.

Now the Times has a new publisher, Austin Beutner. He didn’t get off to a good start by losing a superstar local political columnist like Newton. Maybe he’ll learn from his mistake.

o - o - o - o

Editor's note: Here's the full memo sent to the newsroom about Newton's departure from the LA Times, signed by Beutner and Nick Goldberg, editor of the editorial pages.

From: "Goldberg, Nick"
Date: October 6, 2014 at 3:41:11 PM PDT
To: AllLosAngelesTimesEmployees
Subject: Editorial Pages Update

After 25 years at The Times - his anniversary was last week -- Jim Newton is leaving to take a job at UCLA. Jim has been a journalist of the first rank, an immensely supportive co-worker, a great friend to many of us, and a role model as well. He’s a doggedly hard worker, an extraordinarily fast writer, a clear and incisive thinker and a stalwart Times partisan.

We all know his resume: He’s been a reporter, bureau chief and editor. He served as editorial page editor and, most recently, as the paper’s editor-at-large, writing a weekly column about Los Angeles politics. What’s truly amazing is that he not only racked up well over 2,000 bylines during his years at the paper, but also found time, in between, to write biographies of Earl Warren and Dwight Eisenhower. His third book, written with former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, will be published this week.

Jim has moderated countless debates and made innumerable television and radio appearances. He’s taught journalism students and helped re-write our ethics code. He was part of The Times’ Pulitzer-winning coverage of the L.A. riots in 1992 and the earthquake of 1994.

His accomplishments are many, too long to list. But mostly, Jim’s been a warm and generous colleague. Congratulations to UCLA for snagging him, but he’ll be sorely missed here.

Austin and Nick