March 2008 Archives

Councilman Steve Haderlein is trying to get the word out about tonight's meeting by Beverly Hills developer DS Ventures, which will feature a discussion of future plans for the former St. Luke Medical Center campus.

Haderlein said he only found out about the meeting after receiving an e-mail from a resident. The developer has apparently advertised the gathering by distributing door hangers among neighboring residences.

"Due to the significance of the project, the Vice Mayor encourages all interested in the developer’s plans to attend the meeting this Wednesday evening," wrote Haderlein's field representative, Rhonda Stone, in an e-mail.

Nat Reed, a representative for the developer, said in a letter that tentative plans call for using the site for senior housing and medical offices. Meetings have also been held with representatives of the Pasadena Health Department and Huntington Hospital about the possibility of incorporating an urgent care center into the development plans.

The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. at St. Luke, 2632 E Washington Blvd. in northeast Pasadena.

Just as my colleague Tania Chatila found out (see her and Jennifer McLain's Leftovers from City Hall blog), when you write about cities trying to tell pet owners what to do about their pets, you are gonna get a spirited response.

Here are a few comments from folks reacting to Pasadena's proposed law to require spaying and neutering of all pit bulls and pit bull mixes in the city:

"My neighbor has a pit bull and my new dog is a lab-pit mix. Both of them are wonderful dogs, loving animals with no mean bones in their bodies. YET I have met Chihuahuas and smaller dogs that would tear you apart if you met them.

"I don't mind taking precautions on animal population. My 12 year old Labrador was not neutered and I can honestly say he never got out and became a father, nor was he vicious to any person, child or other animal.  I just think that focusing in on one breed (results in) a Pit Bull being targeted as an unfriendly breed."

Shane Goldmacher blogs on the Sacramento Bee's Capitol Alert that Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-Pasadena, was notified of his removal from the chairmanship of the Higher Education Committee via an after-hours fax received by his office on Thursday night.

Portantino also told Goldmacher he "can't imagine how" his removal could have anything to do with his candidacy for the speakership. Portantino was one of the top candidates favored to replace outgoing Speaker Fabian Nunez, but lost his bid to Nunez's hand-picked successor and lieutenant in the Assembly, Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles.

Portantino said he was "confused" and "very disappointed" by Nunez's decision, and that as far as he knew his leadership of the Higher Education Committee was in line with the expectations of Nunez and other top legislators.

Portantino and L.A. Assemblyman Hector De La Torre, another top candidate for the speakership, where removed from their committee leadership posts late Thursday by Nunez. The speaker's office did not provide a reason for the removals.

But at least one high-ranking legislative aide I spoke to said such retribution was common in Sacramento's backroom succession fights.

"When you play high-risk games you have to be prepared to pay high-risk consequences," said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "That is why you have to learn to count to 50 percent -- plus 1 very quickly. Your life depends on it."

But the aide also said Portantino would likely bounce back quickly, in great part due to his fund-raising prowess.

"That is a skill the speaker and leadership will not allow to go astray," the aide said.

Stay tuned tomorrow for Alison Hewitt's story about reaction from local legislators to Portantino's removal, and its potential effects for San Gabriel Valley representation in the Capitol.

 

The Sacramento Bee's Capitol Alert blog is reporting that Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-Pasadena, has been stripped of his chairmanship of the Assembly Higher Education Committee.

This appears to be the first sign of fallout from Portantino's failed candidacy for the speakership. Back on Feb. 28 we speculated on what kinds of repercussions Portantino -- and by proxy, the Valley -- might face after Portantino lost his challenge to Speaker Fabian Nunez's handpicked successor, L.A. Assemblywoman Karen Bass. Losing speakership candidates have faced similar punishment before, but we hoped the relatively peaceful nature of the Nunez-Bass transition might have proved benign to Portantino and other challengers.

Apparently not so. Capitol Alert is reporting that besides Portantino another challenger, Hector De la Torre, has also been removed from the head of the powerful Assembly Rules Committee. It seems that both assemblymen were part of an opposition group of Democrats that had joined to try to thwart Nunez's attempt to have Bass selected as speaker through a procedural maneuver. But De La Torre and Portantino weren't the only ones involved in opposing Bass, so it is unclear why they were the only ones singled out so far.

Will Portantino's loss of clout in Sacramento affect the Valley's already meager chances of attracting state funding in an already dismal fiscal climate? My guess is yes. Higher Education is an important committee, and first to be affected may be our local community colleges like Pasadena, Citrus and Mt. SAC, as well as other universities and assorted students and faculty, whom have just lost a powerful local advocate in the capitol.

A group of students at Mt. Sierra College in Monrovia has gone viral in its fight to get the Gold Line extended from Pasadena to Montclair.

The students, twentysomething telecomm, multimedia and graphic majors from throughout the Valley, have created a campaign that combines graphic elements like posters and postcards with a robust Web presence featuring an Internet site, MySpace and Facebook pages to promote construction of the proposed $1.4 billion light rail line. The project is currently stuck in limbo, with the Metro Board of Directors balking at placing it on the agency's long-range plan -- a crucial step in order to leverage about $320 million in federal funds to complete the first leg to the Azusa/Glendora border.

The Web site, www.iwillride.org, showcases the clever marketing techniques the students came up with to promote their cause, with reverse-psychology style pitches like "Efficient Travel is Overrated" and "The San Gabriel Valley is Not Important" (both with the caveat, "Let's Beg to Differ") cleverly drawing viewers into the argument. There are also opportunities to sign a petition to ride the Gold Line once built (38 signatures collected already -- many from non-students -- even before the campaign has officially launched) as well as a chance to post one's own YouTube video lauding the benefits of light rail.

Check it out, these kids are really geared up and they've effectively taken their enthusiasm into the brave new world of 21st century, electronic grassroots activism. The students got limited assistance from the Metro Gold Line Foothill Construction Authority, the agency trying to build the line. But the help was consultative in nature; everything from the Web site to the graphics and content was generated by the students themselves:

www.myspace.com/iwillride_goldline

Facebook: Gold Line

The Metro Board will meet again in June to finalize its long-range transportation plan. If it does not include the Gold Line at that point, the project will likely get delayed at least another year (it is already one year behind its initial end-of-2008 kickoff target). That means service to Azusa/Glendora won't happen until at least 2012 (original target date 2011) and the line won't reach Claremont until at least 2015.

At the same time as the city is being named one of the 50 greenest in the country by Popular Science magazine (look out for Janette Williams' story on this later today), Pasadena City Hall got a very different kind of green in the form of a brand new ATM machine. The device, located in the elevator lobby next to the historic building's grand entrance at 100 N. Garfield Ave., will be feted with a grand opening ceremony this morning featuring refreshments and speeches by Mayor Bill Bogaard and Pasadena Federal Credit Union President Ron Berry, whose company will actually own the ATM.

Until now, City Hall patrons had to shlep a whole block away to withdraw money or make deposits at a cash machine.

As an interesting aside, Berry recently left the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group after many years as the company's vice president of production (and all around nice guy).

Sorry about the delay getting this post up; I had to review my tape recording of Saturday's meeting. I had to record it because my daughter kept making me take her outside to play hide-and-seek in our City Hall's majestic courtyard, on that beautiful spring-like winter California morning (hey, YOU try to get a weekend babysitter on a reporter's salary!).

Those attending Saturday's community meeting about the city manager selection process could be divided into two categories: those openly lobbying for the police chief and Interim City Manager Barney Melekian, and those advocating for a comprehensive, nationwide search taking into account a variety of factors including previous city management experience.

Some of the criteria thrown out by various speakers included proven experience in everything from urban and open space planning to environmental and business issues. Several spoke against selecting someone with a "top-down" management style.

None of those issues would seem to favor a person with a strictly law enforcement background, with its focus on public safety issues and its hierarchical, military-style structure.

Former city staffer Juliana Delgado, who said she had worked for four city managers including one from a law enforcement background, said the person selected should "not be someone who is untested" and suggested the council look at what city that person came from, what their accomplishments were there, and their longevity in the city manager position.

But several others argued that Melekian was already the right person for the job. Joe Brown, president of the NAACP Pasadena Branch, said the chief's proven track record of community service, ability to promote dialogue with the various racial, ethnic and demographic groups in the community and his experience in administering a major police department's budget all make him an ideal candidate.

The meeting was well attended, with the 40 or 50 people in City Hall's Council Chambers comprising the largest community input meeting attended by Bob Murray, the consultant hired by the city to conduct the city manager search.

Murray, who has 20 years as a recruiter and has helped place more than 200 city managers, said the search will be conducted based on the needs and expectations of city leaders and the community, and not by any internal criteria developed by his firm as a standard blueprint for city manager searches.

"Meetings like this will really drive that effort," said Murray, who also led the police chief search that put Melekian in office.

If meetings like Saturday's are a key component of the search, then a single one is not enough, said former Councilman Paul Little.

"If community input is so important, there needs to be more," said Little, speaking on behalf of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce. He also questioned why the meeting was not televised. No explanation about that during the meeting.

Councilman Victor Gordo said he planned a meeting about the city manager search in his own district, in addition to any other community meetings the city may host in the future.

Mayor Bill Bogaard said residents can also submit comments, questions and suggestions about the search at the city's Web site at http://www.ci.pasadena.ca.us/. Click on the "City Manager Recruitment Survey" link. Bogaard said that as of Saturday nearly 20 comments had been submitted via the Web.

The meeting wasn't without some levity, provided by (who else?) Aaron Proctor. The former mayoral candidate and current Pasadena blogger extraordinaire gave a top 10 list of people the city should not select to replace retired City Manager Cynthia Kurtz. Among them: Cal Worthington, the sixth Doctor Who, and the perennially in trouble former Councilman Isaac Richards (or Haqq, or whatever he goes by nowadays). And Proctor was the only one to openly oppose Barney.... the Dinosaur, not Melekian.

Former Star-News star reporter and Tribune politics editor Gary Scott recounts how he was hilariously pulled into a small-town Wisconsin feud between an anonymous blogger and a paranoid, overzealous police chief. Local blog Foothill Cities also features prominently in this zany saga.

I was wrong about there not being penalties for omitting occupation from 460 forms. This is from the list of instructions issued by the FPPC to help candidates fill out their 460s:

Contributions from Individuals: When itemizing a contribution from an individual, also disclose the contributor’s occupation and the name of his or her employer. If the contributor is self-employed, provide the name of his or her business. If the contributor is not employed, enter “none.” It is not necessary to enter occupation and employer information for other types of contributors (such as business entities). New Requirement (All Committees): A contribution of $100 or more must be returned to the contributor within 60 days if the contributor’s address, occupation and employer information is not obtained.

So if we are talking about individuals, they always have to provide an occupation, even if they are self employed (name of their business). Business entities and organizations, of course, have no occupation to list. But it sounds like anything more than $100 received from an individual without "obtaining" their occupation has to be returned.

That term "obtained" sounds to me like a loophole. It could be interpreted thus: I "obtained" the contributor's occupation when he or she gave me the money, I just didn't "list" it. If the official is called on it, he or she can simply show their books, note that they knew the occupation of the donor but forgot to list it, and then amend their 460 forms. 

Centinel over at the Foothill Cities blog is at it again, this time putting up campaign finance breakdowns and visualizations for Jacque Robinson and Steve Madison.

Centinel points out that an interesting number of Robinson's contributions come from outside the Pasadena area, some even from outside the state (that puts Bogaard's single outside contribution from Colorado in perspective). He also finds that, as is usually the case, many of the donors do not list their occupation, hence the large chunks of donors whose occupations are unknown. This has been the norm for me in researching 460s from Glendale to Glendora; it seems like there are no penalties for contributors not listing their occupation. I've never heard of a complaint to the Fair Political Practices Commission, the state's campaign policing agency, alleging a lack of listed occupations on 460 forms. I guess in most cases it doesn't matter what the contributor does -- unless of course they work for a major developer or other entity with business in the city, which is why it should be mandatory for those fields to be filled out.

Another interesting example from Madison's forms: he received $1,000 from Berkshire-Hathaway's Charlie Munger, who is worth nearly $2 billion. Munger was one of Madison's top 10 contributors. Of course to him, dropping a grand is like buying a cup o' java.

In furtherance of its progressive reputation, Pasadena's City Council looked ready Monday night to approve a resolution in support of an initiative that would take away state legislators' powers to remap their own districts and instead place the power of redistricting in the hands of an independent, citizens' commission. Here is a sneak preview of the story we are running tomorrow:

PASADENA - The City Council is aiming to be the first in the state to endorse a plan to change the way state assembly and senate districts are drawn up.

The council,at the prompting of Councilman Chris Holden, voted unanimously Monday to draft a resolution in support of the California Voters' First initiative. The initiative, sponsored by the government watchdog group California Common Cause, would take redistricting power away from the legislature and put it into the hands of an independent, 14-member citizens' commission.

Kathay Feng, California Common Cause's executive director, said the initiative would prevent incumbent legislators from meeting behind closed doors to draw up district lines that would be favorable to them come election time.

"The only way to make sense of (the current districts) is to explain them as incumbent protection plans," said Feng, adding that the group is currently collecting signatures in an attempt to place the initiative on the November ballot.

If Pasadena endorses the proposal, it would become the first city to join a movement that already has drawn support from the League of Women Voters, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and former Democratic State Controller Steve Westly. Feng said Speaker-elect Karen Bass has also expressed support for redistricting reform proposals.

Similar proposals have failed at the ballot box in years past, and a legislative attempt to couple redistricting reform with the recently defeated Prop. 93 term limit measure was also unsuccessful.

Councilman Steve Haderlein also told Feng that he "looked forward to supporting (the resolution) when it came back to the council at Monday's meeting. Councilwoman Margaret McAustin also said she would support such a resolution.

What's the importance of Pasadena's endorsement in this case? After all, folks have been fighting -- unsuccessfully -- for redistricting reform for decades (a good history of redistricting reform efforts in recent decades can be found here. A good roundup starts on page 16).

According to Douglas Johnson of the Rose Institute for State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College, the fact that a local, progressive and diverse city government supports such an effort takes the wind out of the sails of opponents of redistricting reform, who say such initiatives are merely an effort by Republicans to improve their election chances and climb out of the minority in the Legislature.

"It's hard to cast Chris Holden as an advocate of the Republican Party," Johnson said.

Councilman Sid Tyler, also expressed support for the initiative. But he had his doubts about whether an independent citizens' commission could be guaranteed to be truly impartial in the redistricting process, despite the many restrictions imposed by the initiative (forbidding current, former and future - to a certain extent - elected officials from joining the commission, as well as their staffers, family members, consultants and major campaign donors).

Feng's explained that merely moving the redistricting process from the back room to a public forum, and having commissioners and their staff present their ideas in front of the community, would prevent them from even suggesting the types of blatantly gerrymandered districts that have been created in the past. But that wasn't enough for Tyler.

"The concern is that the people that have done the work, know the issues... are likely to be on the scene, either as commissioners or consultants or attorneys," Tyler told me. "I am not so sure that simply appearing before the (commission in public) is necessarily enough to prevent somebody from having a significant impact on the way districts are structured."

But he admitted that the current way of doing things is flawed and that he supported the initiative in concept.

Are the legislators taking advantage of their power to redraw their own district maps? You be the judge. Here are a few examples from the last redistricting process in 2001:

-- State Senate District 24, coveted by then Assemblywoman Gloria Romero, was redrawn to exclude the home of then-Assemblywoman Judy Chu, who was also considered a contender for the senate seat. Romero went on to win the district (and the Senate Majority seat). Chu is now chairwoman of the state Board of Equalization.

-- Then state-Senator Richard Alarcon of Los Angeles, now a Los Angeles City Councilman, was planning on moving to a new home in Toluca Lake at the time the reapportionment was being devised. But his prospective home was not part of his 20th Senate District. When the districts were finalized, a thin sliver of land protruded from the 20th District to include -- surprise! -- the neighborhood Alarcon was planning on moving into.

-- According to Johnson, a similar "finger" of land was extended from the Long Beach district that would eventually be occupied by then-Assemblywoman, now Senator Jenny Oropeza. Oropeza's home was located at the very end of that finger.

As Feng notes, one only has to look at the odd, contorted shapes of the current districts to know that there is something fishy going on.

"What we got here is.... failure to communicate."

-- The Captain, "Cool Hand Luke"

Councilman Sid Tyler channeled the warden from the classic Paul Newman film during last night's City Council meeting, complaining that he had to hear about Friday's lockdown at Blair High School from television media reports.

"We have a written policy that council members are to be notified when we have an incident of this magnitude," Tyler told Assistant City Manager Julie Gutierrez (Barney Melekian was absent from the meeting). "Hopefully this was just an oversight."

Councilman Victor Gordo also complained that he wasn't notified of the incident and that his field representative at at the scene said the communication problems seemed to extend to officials' dealings with parents who had gathered in a panic to pick up their children at the school.

"There wasn't even a bullhorn readily available to communicate with the large crowd," Gordo said. "So maybe we need to review this incident."

Gutierrez admitted there had been a problem in passing on information to council members and their field representatives.

Dauntless civic crusader Centinel over at the Foothill Cities blog (along with reader AA) has been able to tame the bane of every local government reporter and concerned citizen: The dreaded Form 460.

These are the forms used by all state elected officials to report their quarterly campaign contributions and expenditures. Until now, anyone interested in finding out who gave what to which politician had to go to their local city clerk's office and rifle through page after page of at times incorrectly filled out and chicken-scratch covered forms. And if you want to make copies, you better have your wallet (or purse) handy.

Well Centinel and AA have done all the work for the rest of us, at least when it comes to Mayor Bill Bogaard in Pasadena. Their handy database covers 2006-07 and allows the user to not only go through the mayor's list of contributors, but to "visualize" the data using various parameters including zip code, occupation, name, etc. For example, a cursory review of the data set reveals that most of the mayor's contributions came from the 91105 zip code in West Pasadena, and that retirees made up the largest identifiable group of the mayor's contributors based on occupation ($16,500).

Having myself gone through enough 460s to choke a large elephant, I can say these two should be commended for the time and effort that it has taken to put this information together. They promise additional data sets in the weeks to come, and I look forward to them eagerly.

Centinel also notes the excellent system in place over in Los Angeles, where all campaign filings are done electronically and can be sorted by a variety of criteria, for free, by the public at http://ethics.lacity.org/efs/. I have to agree that a city of Pasadena's stature should look into investing into a similar system. Even neighboring Glendale has a rudimentary electronic database of scanned 460 forms which can be accessed here. Of course, one has to go through each candidate's full filings in order to find the information one needs (and deal with the chicken-scratches along the way), but it sure beats schlepping down to the city clerk's office.