The Tuesday Council meeting on the MMD issues of amending the ICO and hearing some of the applications was for the most part overshadowed by the City Employees pleading, informing, requesting, demanding and threatening during the public comment that centered on the actions, the proposed furloughs and potential layoffs.
The sheer numbers of hardship exemptions, well over 500 pending, is going to be a task for the Council members and the PLUM (Planning and Land Use Management) committee chaired by Ed Reyes. Since late 2007 when the ICO (the moratorium) became effective, not a single hardship exemption was heard by the PLUM committee or the Council. The "Exemption" carries with it no standards or guidelines of any specific nature. The inclusion of the guidelines was done at the direction of the City Attorney (Rocky Delgadillo) and he's been on shaky ground as an authoritative source of information since at least that time. One CM mentioned during the Council meeting that maybe they should not have relied solely on the City Attorney's advice. Too late now.
Some of the Council members were in agreement that there were more MMDs for Los Angeles that they would like. But the added comments that they will cast a "No" vote when deciding the hardship exemptions is a little disturbing since the idea of deciding on matters by a public entity is that it will be done fairly by them, and at least it will have an appearance of following due process. Announcing a vote before hand like that without even hearing any facts of a particular case is a pretty good indication that you have a sham process and comments like the ones made on Tuesday can create the possibility of more potential litigation and supply the ammo, as well. Sometimes people need to say nothing, and the City Council is the unlikely place to see that kind of self-restraint happen.
Well, that's still an open matter and speaking of shams, there will be more applications for "hardship exemptions" filed before it finally does take effect, which is not just yet. I said the Council members shouldn't prejudge a matter, but there's a lot of filings just to try to make some money off the situation that create the overkill of MMDs. The Council members just have to sort out what is there.
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