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March 29, 2019
Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Bonin has a perceptive take on why city government has such trouble getting anything done -- income inequality and economic and social class differences.
The impact of this gap has been obvious for some time. Government's failure to provide for the disabled, mentally ill and substance abused people who make up the homeless population is a graphic example. The fortunate don't want to share their neighborhoods with housing for these people.
Bonin discussed this Friday at a Los Angeles Current Affairs Forum luncheon at the Palm downtown, arranged by public affairs consultant Emma Schafer, who also runs the Emma's Memos website.
Bonin talked about his advocacy of the plan, beloved by Mayor Eric Garcetti, to put bike lanes on some heavily used streets. This, advocates say, would reduce traffic, and encourage use of bikes and public transportation. Some neighborhoods and businesses are strongly opposed but Bonin said he's gotten a positive reception for the bike lanes he has backed in Mar Vista, a neighborhood in his Westside district.
"The rationale behind a lot of these projects is safety," he said. He said there's an economic class factor involved. Bonin said that those mostly likely to die as pedestrians or occupants of cars are children, the elderly, the disabled and the foreign born.
Look at a map of the city, he said, and you will see that the neighborhoods with the highest number of deaths are the poorest. Any measurement of poverty correlates with such deaths. For example, neighborhoods with few markets -- the so-called "food deserts" -- have a high number of deaths.
Another proposal where the debate is being influenced by income inequality is for congestion pricing, levying a fee for driving in congested areas. The Southern California Assn. of Governments has proposed a study of creating one of those zones in Bonin's district.
Residents would have to pay just 10 percent of the $4 fee and workers in the area 50 percent. Bonin, who opposes the idea, said rich Brentwood residents would get off almost free while their gardeners and housekeepers would pay much more.
Class differences such as these, seldom mentioned in city hall debates, help explain the fury that makes compromise so difficult.
March 21, 2019
When you stay at a hotel, or throw a big event there, you usually don't get out the door without paying.
That wasn't the case with Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson and other prominent L.A. politicians who threw big fund raising events at the downtown Luxe City Center Hotel and didn't receive a bill until the Los Angeles Times' intrepid reporting duo of David Zahniser and Emily Alpert Reyes asked them about it. Their inquiries jogged sluggish memories and the politicians paid up.
The amounts, as detailed in Thursday morning's paper, were not big compared to the total campaign contributions of the developers racing to build high rises in downtown Los Angeles or the billions spent for such projects. Wesson and Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez paid their $3,026 bill two weeks ago for an event held last April. "They're not the only politicians to go months or, or even years, without paying the hotel," the reporters wrote. "A Times review of campaign records found no evidence of payment by at least seven politicians involved in three separate fundraisers at the Luxe, whose owners spent several years seeking city permission to redevelop their property...After the Times inquired about the lack of payment, participants in those events said they were paying the bill or planned to do so."
As I said, these amounts are fairly piddling compared to the huge amounts being made by downtown developers and to their generosity toward politicians. "The community remains red hot and the skyline is filled with cranes. Thousands of housing units are coming online," the Downtown News reported this week.
For those who have watched downtown mired in disrepair and were afraid to venture there, this is good news. Unfortunately, like all good news from city hall and its environs, it's coming at some cost. The FBI is investigating possible city hall corruption, including two businessmen connected to the Luxe redevelopment project. In addition, developers have been given subpoenas from a federal grand jury seeking information about their relationship to council members.
How this will all end is unclear. But so far, the probe has focused badly needed light on the close relationship between city hall and the downtown developers. The Times' revelation about the Luxe affair is just another example of that relationship.
For politicians, the lesson of the Luxe is clear: Even if the innkeeper is your best buddy, remember to settle the bill before you leave.
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