"L.A. City Council waives Grammy fees.
Despite facing a $433-million hole in the city's budget for next year, the council agreed to waive $124,163 in fees associated with the Grammy Awards, which will be held Feb. 8."
By Maeve Reston January 14, 2009, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-grammyfees14-2009jan14,0,5107264.story
It's about time that the L.A.T. stopped letting all the Council's wasteful slickness get by the people's notice. For years, the L.A. TIMES ignored sneaky maneuvers that had been going on commonly and at regular frequency at City Hall, undertaken at will by the office holders. Without any source for providing reports to the general public in common English, a lot of this simply slipped in under the radar.
In the last year, with the addition of a few reporters who don't appear to be dazzled by these politicians, a lot of stories have begun to reach the surface in the L.A. TIMES that present a more realistic picture of the wheeling and dealing that goes on in city politics
Still, it's not the LAT that does the best job consistently. That role has been long held, almost as a monopoly, by the L.A. WEEKLY. The L.A. WEEKLY continues to delve into the political mire and bring stories that obviously wouldn't fit into the campaign brochures or video clips that run during election drives. (Much credit to reporter David Zahniser of the LAT who formerly was L.A. WEEKLY's lonely star city hall reporter.)
You can read the complete story yourself to see "money waste in action" at the link above. One revelation in the story that happens commonly at awards events the goody bags from assorted sponsors, called "gift bags," that contain extremely expensive items, very often reaching the $30,000 range, that are given to the various attendees, usually prominent ones (as if they needed such gifts.) SOMEbody is making some money here for that to be don, but it surely is NOT the City of Los Angeles.
The story brings up another name from Tuesday's post here. It was Zuma Dogg, who made his comments to the City Council on Tuesday very loudly and clearly in opposition to granting a waiver. And this is where you can see things going quickly into City Council's version of "autopilot." Right after the comments were done, the Council took the vote and guess what? It was another vote of "unanimous" approval, as is the usual case in Council's voting. What great group of watchdogs of the taxpayer dollars we have there on Spring Street. It's always as if the Council members are being kept in some soundproof room so that not ONE WORD of public opposition before they vote. And maybe with their rude inattention, that mght be their excuse, but I believe that it's simply that decisions happen before that time.
The phrase "a done deal" comes to my mind when the Council holds these phony sessions to take in the views of the public that they promptly ignore, or, sometimes, the council president, Eric Garcetti, offers some gentle comments along the lines of stroking, and THEN, ALL Council Members present will still ignore those comments that were just spoken, as they cast votes as fast as they can, in their all-for-one style.
The views of Mayor Tony were conveyed in the story by Matt Szabo, his spokesman, who makes statements so that Tony doesn't have to risk exposing himself to being questioned on his views or actions, and when he wants to avoid "misspeaking" on matters. Szabo's comments on behalf of the Mayor were fairly clear,
Well, that's one of the commonly presented styles of operation for that office. Mayor Tony could just tell the City Council what he wants and they would follow it. He's the one that they follow for nearly all purposes. If Tony wants something, they're on it. Who do you think gave the direction to find more ways to "generate more revenue" that brought such a rush to create the changes taxes and fees for residents and businesses that make life in L.A. cost us more, regardless of the impact it has on such people of low or fixed incomes?[H]e believes that the city's "fee waiver policy is clearly broken and needs to be
fixed.""At a time when we could be facing a half-billion deficit, the council
absolutely must reform a policy, which costs the city upward of $5 million a
year," Szabo said.
The council members continue to reinforce their position with the Mayor at every opportunity. Have you heard the way the reference items during council meetings when there's a connection to the Mayor? "This is brought under the great leadership of Mayor Villaraigosa," or, "...Our great Mayor is doing a fine job for us in (fill in the activity)..." Such self-indulgent baloney is too often taken for the truth by those who only casually observe these events.
It's all P.R. coming from the Mayor's office at a time when the city election is less than 2 months away. Tony is looking for his second term and he's done a "great job" in his first term to show why Tony's bid for a return to that office should be REJECTED. Any candidate for mayor would be hard pressed to do a poorer job than Tony has done during his first term.
Visit City Hall and you will most definitely find that the council members are actually quite a RUDE bunch. They don't have much or any attention focused on the speakers until their own motions come up. Very frequently they are seen having their own private conversations going on at the same time as members of the public are using their 2-minute alloted time to speak on a matter. That routine inattention is something that doesn't show up in the online video coverage of meetings.
As I repeat from earlier items, Council Members don't pay attention to the small guy (and that means you and me) at least they are not paying any attention to do something of benefit to the small guy, UNLESS there is some clout behind them, like a community group, OR a union (but then we cross over into another kind of special interest group when unions enter the picture, becoming another one of the "big" guys).
The Grammy Awards Show obviously have a superior rating with city hall that places it well above us. They easily get the Council Members to give up some big bucks at a time when tax dollars have become scarce and new taxes and fee expenses for the residents and businesses (other than the Grammy Awards) can't be boosted fast enough- after all, it's not the council members' money being given away. Wouldn't that be a very different picture if that happened?
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