Absence makes the heart grow fonder as I found Tuesday when I returned to an old haunt, Los Angeles City Hall.

I had spent several years there, off and on, for the Los Angeles Times and was happy when new assignments—columnist, city editor—took me elsewhere. How many budgets and planning beefs can a person cover? Five years as a post retirement city ethics commissioner gave me a real inside look and strengthened my resolve to stay away from city hall as much as possible.

But I needed to return to gather material for a profile I am doing for the UCLA magazine Blueprint on City Council President Herb Wesson. I realized I couldn’t understand Wesson without observing the council and the committees he controls.

I sat down toward the back of the chamber, behind the five or six gadflies who annoy the council members by haranguing them on many isssues. One wore a Batman mask. Another’s face was covered by strips of cloth that looked like bandages, as if he had suffered a serious injury. One, a ventriloquist, carried a small teddy bear up to the podium. He let the bear speak in a squeaky voice. I had known the dean of the gadfly corps, John Walsh, for years and used to receive many angry critiques from him. John looked older and walked slower than the last time I saw him. But so do I.

The big issue before the council was a $1.2 billion bond proposal for the November ballot designed to help build housing for the homeless. It passed 14-0 and I thought the council members were a bit too self congratulatory about their action. Another council vote would be needed. Left unanswered was how to finance to treatment, rehabilitation and education services for those in the housing. And who would build the housing? But some congratulations are in order. City hall is rousing itself from years of inaction and beginning to do something about homelessness.

At lunchtime, I checked out the Grand Central Market on Broadway, another old haunt. I’ve heard and read how the old place has been transformed into a foodie heaven. It’s not heaven but vendors sell oysters, fish and chips, craft beer gourmet-sounding hamburgers, McConnell’s Fine Ice Cream, and deli from Wexlers. Being a traditionalist, I had a beef torta and diet Coke at Roast to Go, in business there since 1952. Quite good. On the way out, I passed up the Press Brothers one-day juice hybrid cleanse for a mere $30.

I encountered my friend Patt Morrison near the Times and chatted briefly. I had no desire to visit the paper, now under the corporate name Tronc, and didn’t feel any emotion walking past a place where I had spent so many years. In this particular case, absence hasn’t made the heart grow fonder.

Back in city hall, I attended a meeting of the council’s Planning and Land Use Committee. In my day, it was known as the PLUM committee, because the council members were assured of plum campaign contributions from developers. I’m sure such crude behavior is scorned by this generation of lawmakers.

By chance, housing was the main item on the PLUM agenda. Hollywood residents unsuccessfully appealed the council decision to allow a boutique hotel to be built on the site of an old apartment house on Cherokee Avenue near Franklin.
Protesters objected that the action was symbolic of city government’s allowing the loss of affordable apartments, thus worsening the affordable housing shortage.

In the morning, I had seen the big picture, with discussion of the big housing bond issue to build housing In the afternoon, I had seen the flip side from the ground up in Hollywood, with the council permitting badly needed apartments to be eliminated.
As expected, there are no magic solutions. Still, It was an interesting, enlightening day and I’ll make it a point to come back.

In one of his first appearances before the lobbyists, lawyers, consultants and others who live by their ability to influence city hall, Los Angeles City Councilman David Ryu didn’t make it easy for his audience. He tackled some of the big issues confronting city hall and dug into them deeply, more deeply and even more deeply.

Ryu, elected last year, is definitely a policy guy. This wasn’t a bad thing since there were plenty of wonkish people at the Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum luncheon at the Palm Thursday. Usually, the speakers give a policy once over and let the audience return fairly quickly to their jobs of influencing public officials. This time, they got an urban affairs seminar. From their questions, they seemed to be interested.

His presentation reflected his background. As a senior deputy to then Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Burke, Ryu handled a wide range of social and economic problems, including two of the most intractable--homelessness and mental illness. Now, as a councilman, he’s in the middle of the development controversy as the representative of the 4th District, a center in battles over high rises in Hollywood, Koreatown and other areas. And as a Korean American, he is part of the increasing Asian American influence in politics and government.

He said that cooperation in the past few months between the historically feuding county and city governments have produced some good ideas and useful programs for the homeless. Ryu said, however, “Money alone isn’t going to solve homelessness.” The more than $100 million in Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s new budget, he said, is “like a scratch on a window.”

Then he tackled a controversial aspect in the discussion of treatment of the mentally ill, who made up a large segment of the homeless. He spoke of the hard work of outreach workers who try to persuade the mentally ill to accept treatment or apply for housing. “It takes 10 outreach attempts to convince a (homeless) person to have a cup of coffee with them (the workers),” he said.

Ryu moved on to the problem of mentally ill young people who leave parental supervision at 18 and then refuse their parents’ orders or advice to be treated. He said “now, it is almost impossible get a conservatorship over the mentally ill,” a status that would permit relatives or guardian to order them into care. For the young mentally ill, he said, the answer might be to extend parental authority to order treatment to the age of 26—the age children are eligible for care under Obamacare.

He appeared to be thinking of giving government more power to impose care on the mentally ill, a stand that would put him in conflict with civil libertarians who oppose such steps.

On development, Ryu, elected on a platform of helping neighborhoods who feel oppressed by over-development, said he is spending time with developer and neighborhood advocates and his “top priority is to rebuild the community’s trust.” He said he opposed an initiative, scheduled for next year’s ballot, that would impose a moratorium on some housing developments. “I’m not supporting governing by initiative,” he said.

When we chatted afterward, he said he hoped his remarks hadn’t been too long and complicated. Not at all, I said. I’m interested in all that stuff. And I thought the audience was, too.