April 2011 Archives

Union workers in Los Angeles will pay more toward their health and retirement benefits under a deal approved Friday by the City Council that will help chip away at next year's $457 million budget shortfall.

The deal was struck with 14 of the 18 groups in the Coalition of City Unions. Employees in the unions that rejected the proposal will have to take as many as 42 furlough days by July 2012, although the council has proposed reopening negotiations in the hope they'll reconsider their opposition.

"We have accomplished here, through talks over a negotiating table, what no other city or state has been able to do," council President Eric Garcetti said. "We managed to implement structural pension reform for our employees.

The California Department of Finance released figures Friday showing the state's population grew less than 1 percent in 2010 - one of the smallest increases in modern history.Daily News.

The population in the Golden State was estimated at 37,511,000, an increase of 287,000 residents - or .77 percent - from the previous year. Los Angeles also had meager growth, with an increase of 0.4 percent to 3,810,00, an increase of 17,000 from 2009.

Finance Department spokesman Daniel Shiya said California is no longer a magnet for new residents because of its double-digit jobless rate and lack of new housing.

"Itacy and their impact on policy.

Leaders of Los Angeles Unified's administrators and police unions tentatively agreed this week to taking 12 furlough days to help the district close a $408 million budget deficit and sources close to negotiations said Wednesday that more unions are expected to join them.
Connie Llanos in the Daily News.
But district officials are concerned by the progress of the negotiations with the teachers union, L.A. Unified's biggest. The union claims that LAUSD has overstated its budget deficit by $150 million by counting a loss of state revenues twice.

"We are willing to accept necessary sacrifices to bring back our members, but we can't determine what those are without reliable budget information," said A.J. Duffy, president of United Teachers Los Angeles.

A federal judge has invalidated a state law that makes Boeing Co. responsible for decontaminating its portion of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory to standards that are stricter than national cleanup guidelines. Susan Abram in the Daily News.

U.S. District Judge John F. Walter overturned Senate Bill 990, saying it improperly singled out the former rocket-engine and nuclear test site for special treatment. The 2007 law tightens the standards for chemical and radioactive cleanup at the lab, and makes the state Department of Toxic Substances Control responsible for overseeing the work.

Officials with Boeing heralded the ruling, saying the company has always planned to clean its portion of the field lab to standards sufficient for the land to eventually be used as open space for residential projects.

Los Angeles' municipal workers have agreed to pay more toward their retirement and health costs in a major breakthrough to help balance Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's proposed $6.9 billion budget for next year. Daily News.

The agreement by 14 of the 18 bargaining units in the Coalition of City Unions is expected to save upwards of $200 million in the 2011-12 budget and guarantee that workers who approved the pact they will not face additional furloughs this year.

"We voted with the best interests of Los Angeles residents in mind," said Tim Butcher, a heavy-duty truck operator with the Bureau of Street Services and a member of the coalition's bargaining team. "The changes to our contracts will end furloughs immediately, and that means we can get back to work for the people of this city."

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa hits the road again -- this time to Chicago.
The mayor is traveling as part of his duties for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, a job that will take even more time when he takes over vas president of the group.
While in Chicago, he will also meet with Mayor-elect Rahm Emmanuel.
Villaraigosa is to return to L.A., on Friday, only go head out again for Washington, D.C.

Less than two weeks after taking the helm of Los Angeles Unified, Superintendent John Deasy is adding six-figure positions to his reorganized management team - a move he says will help the district meet his ambitious performance goals. Connie Llanos in the Daily News.

The nine administrative jobs are being added even as the district faces a $408 million budget deficit and 5,000 teacher layoffs next year.

But Deasy said the shakeup will not drain the district's general fund - in fact, it will save $25,000 - because it also involves eliminating some jobs and reassigning current personnel.

A divided county Board of Supervisors moved Tuesday to take a more active role in running two troubled departments, shifting some authority away from Chief Executive Officer William Fujioka. Christina Villacore in the Daily News.

The supervisors voted 3-2 to draft an ordinance requiring the Children and Family Services and Probation departments to report directly to the board instead of to Fujioka.

The ordinance, if approved in two weeks, would allow the board to hire the heads of both departments. That power is currently held by Fujioka.

The City Council on Tuesday approved a contract extension for Los Angeles' red-light traffic cameras, giving proponents three more months to persuade officials to permanently continue the controversial program. C.J. Lin in the Daily News.

The LAPD and Department of Transportation, which have touted the 32 cameras as life-saving tools, will have to come up with more data to address a host of lingering questions about whether the program is the most cost-effective way to improve motorist safety.

In the meantime, the 90-day extension to the $15 million contract, which would have expired April 30, will cost about $750,000.

The city Department of Transportation was criticized Tuesday for failing to aggressively pursue chronic parking ticket offenders, resulting in the loss of roughly $15 million in revenue. Daily News.

Parking enforcement officers have the authority to "boot" or impound vehicles that have at least five unpaid parking tickets, but failed to do so nearly 75 percent of the time, said an audit by Controller Wendy Greuel said. Nearly $19 million is owed by these scofflaws.

The audit also found that DOT officers failed to use license plate recognition systems that could help identify vehicles with outstanding tickets.

A proposal to create a "collections sheriff" to round up past-due tax revenue from Los Angeles businesses and residents was criticized Monday as being too loosely defined and lacking measurements for success. Daily News.

At an unusual joint meeting of three City Council committees, members asked for a report to provide information on what the job would entail, how it would be staffed and funded, and how officials would be able to measure its effectiveness.

"This is a very loose plan," said Councilman Dennis Zine, head of the council's Audits and Governmental Efficiency Committee. "It seems like it's a job that the city controller and Office of Finance should be doing without hiring someone else."

The man in the hoodie skulked around a building, then spray-painted his tag onto the back wall of a business. Susan Abram in the Daily News.

He thought no one was looking.

But the bulbous lens of a surveillance camera recorded his every move and beamed the images to the LAPD's Mission Division.

A month after voters approved creating a new watchdog for the Department of Water and Power, city officials are trying to sort out how to get started, acknowledging the ballot measure left most of the bureaucratic details to the City Council's discretion. Daily News.

City Council members were told Monday that one of the first questions for them to decide is how to create the citizens commission that will hire the first executive director of the DWP's new Office o

While thousands of other Los Angeles high school students romped Friday on the last day of spring break, nine study nerds in Granada Hills huddled inside a war room of desks. Dana Bartholomew in the Daily News.

For the state champion Academic Decathlon team at Granada Hills Charter High, gunning for a national title this week meant a collective battle of the books during the break.

"Let's win this," declared Joon Lee, 18, of Northridge, a polymathic "A" student reviewing to the sound of techno music at a campus devoid of other students.

Continuing efforts to scale back a controversial practice, Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy has terminated the contracts of 19 district construction consultants over the last four weeks, the Daily News has learned.Connie Llanos in the Daily News.

The 19 consultants, including project managers, office engineers and a graphic designer, were being paid amounts between $163,000 and $416,000 a year - in some cases surpassing Deasy's own annual salary of $275,000.

"I am responsible for managing how our dollars are spent and I intend to take that responsibility very seriously. ... We are scrutinizing every penny we have," Deasy said.

A majority of Oakridge Mobile Home Park residents would support a plan to allow 60 homes there to be rented as affordable housing units, based on two surveys taken recently. Daily News.

The 208-acre mobile home park in Sylmar, which lost nearly all of its 600 units in a wildfire in 2008, is now trying to lure new residents to generate much-needed revenue. Many residents who lost their homes in the fire used their insurance money to buy single-family homes outside the park, taking advantage of plummeting home prices at the time.

As a result, occupancy is very low. But a city plan to buy 60 mobile homes and use them as affordable housing units was criticized by some residents, who said it would change the owner-occupied character of the park.

Tipoff: It's city budget tiime. Again.

CULVER CITY - Preaching the theme that his work is not yet finished, President Barack Obama told a crowd of supporters Thursday night at Sony Pictures Studios that he needs their help to protect the changes he has begun to make in Washington, D.C., by propelling him to another term. Daily News

Obama told the crowd of about 2,500 that he has shared their frustration at the pace of changes he promised to make during his 2008 campaign, but he rattled off what he believed were his successes and his belief that the country is moving in the right direction.

Tired of paying $4 and up for a gallon of gasoline? Daily News.

Well, the Department of Water and Power has a deal for you if you're willing to buy an electric car.

Starting May 1, the DWP will offer rebates of up to $2,000 for the cost of installing an electric charger for buyers of electric vehicles.

"Charge Up L.A." will provide rebates to the first 1,000 DWP customers who apply for the break and agree to install a rapid charger for qualifying electric vehicles. The goal is to eventually provide rebates to as many as 5,000 customers, said Ron Nichols, the DWP's general manager.

Former Mayor Richard Riordan is scheduled to weigh in early on the 2013 election and endorse Austin Beutner in the race for mayor,
It is not a major surprise since it was Riordan who recruited Beutner to serve as first deputy mayor for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to help with business development.
However, Riordan also is close to developer Rick Caruso, who is also considering a run for mayor when the seat is open because of term limits.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is poised to unveil a $6.2 billion city budget Thursday that would restore library hours and retain LAPD's manpower while cutting spending in most other municipal departments.Daily News.

The financial plan proposes closing a gap of $400 million to $500 million by asking Los Angeles' employee unions to contribute more to their pension funds. If they refuse, city workers will likely be ordered to take up to 36 furlough days.

The proposed budget is less than the current $6.8 billion plan and includes spending cuts in nearly every department.

Faced with the prospect of further budget cutbacks, two county supervisors Tuesday proposed a new plan to control the rapid growth of welfare payments to the poor.Christina Villacorte in the Daily News.

Supervisors Don Knabe and Michael Antonovich proposed a motion to reduce the cost of administering the state-mandated but county-funded general relief program.

The program provides payments of $221 a month to indigent single adults - mostly the homeless - who have no source of income and who do not qualify for any other state or federal benefits.

The Los Angeles Police Department on Tuesday continued to defend its use of the controversial and costly red-light traffic camera program, but with time running out on the contract, the Police Commission punted the issue to the City Council.C.J. Lin in the Daily News.

In an unusual split vote, the civilian oversight panel moved 3-2 to approve an LAPD response defending the red-light program against criticisms raised in a recent report by a motorist advocacy group. That report, "Safer Streets in Los Angeles," questioned the need for a red-light program and called for better traffic engineering countermeasures and more study before extending a contract for cameras at 32 intersections.

Los Angeles County's chief executive officer unveiled a $23.3 billion proposed budget Monday that closes a $221 million gap mostly through one-time solutions, while avoiding new furloughs or laying off county workers. Christina Villacorte in the Daily News.

Even though it represents a $1 billion drop in spending compared to last year, Chief Executive Officer William Fujioka called the plan a "balanced budget without a critical reduction in services of any sort, and (one that) also avoids any major layoffs."

But he also acknowledged that it does not factor in potentially dramatic cutbacks in funding from the state and federal governments that have yet to be determined.

NORTH HOLLYWOOD - An economic aftershock of the Great Recession has quietly crushed more than a half-billion dollar redevelopment project for Laurel and Valley plazas in the East San Fernando Valley. Gregory J. Wilcox in the Daily News.

The project, totaling more than $600 million when approved in the middle of the last decade, would have turned the south side of the intersection of Victory and Laurel Canyon boulevards into an oasis of shops, restaurants, movie theaters, a park and 742 condominiums, townhouses and apartments.

Today it's the intersection of broken promises.

Tipoff: Some in movement say he has asked too much.

There was no "aha moment" that made Ramon Cortines decide to become a teacher.Connie Llanos in the Daily News,

In fact, the man who many call a quintessential educator abandoned the classroom after three years to become a real estate developer. Using his impressive energy reserves - the same that helped him wrangle sixth-graders at his first teaching job in Monterey - he set himself on a path toward a promising construction career.

But as he retires as superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District - and walks away from an education career that's spanned six decades - Cortines can't imagine how his life would have turned out had he not returned to education.

When fire swept through the Oakridge Mobile Home Park in 2008 and destroyed hundreds of homes, owners of the Sylmar residential park believed it could be restored to its former thriving state.Daily News.

But as the recession steamed ahead and property prices plummeted, many Oakridge residents took their insurance payouts and bought single-family homes at steep bargains in the nearby community.

Los Angeles Unified officials Tuesday unveiled a new way to measure the success of teachers and principals, releasing their own version of the controversial value-added method of analyzing test scores.Connie Llanos in the Daily News.

The academic-growth-over-time formula looks at how much students improve year-to-year, based on how they have done in the past.

It then predicts how each student should do, based on factors like socioeconomic status or special needs, to gauge a teacher's effectiveness.

During a passionate discussion Tuesday, the Los Angeles Unified school board urged its employees to quickly agree to an emergency budget plan that could save the district up to $304 million next school year.Connie Llanos in the Daily News.

The plan, presented to LAUSD's nine employee unions last week, asks all district staff to take 12 furlough days next year - a move that would require cutting the school calendar by a week for the third year in a row. | Related story: "LAUSD unveils plan to evaluate teachers, principals"

Pledging to take a more active role in collecting outstanding debt, the new head of the City Council's auditing committee said Tuesday he will launch a concerted effort to identify parking lot operators who owe the city millions of dollars.Daily News.

"The parking lot operations are primarily a cash business," said City Councilman Dennis Zine. "I will work on ways to end the fraud with this business."

Past studies have shown the city is owed up to $23 million in uncollected taxes.

The city Ethics Commission approved a deal Tuesday for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to pay a $20,489 fine for failing to report receiving free tickets to concerts and other events, a day after a state commission authorized a similar penalty on the mayor. Daily Nwes.

The two panels determined that Villaraigosa had improperly accepted or failed to report 33 free tickets to events such as Lakers games, the Academy Awards and a Shakira concert.

The state Fair Political Practices Commission had agreed on Monday that Villaraigosa pay a $21,000 fine, a record amount for that type of offense.

Kam Kuwata, one of the top political consultants in Los Angeles, was found dead in his Venice condominium, officials said Monday.

Kuwata, 57, had been involved in some of the state's and city's most prominent campaigns, most notably helping run efforts for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, former Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn and the effort to defeat San Fernando Valley secession in 2002.

He had been involved in politics for all of his adult life, from his days as a student at the University of Southern California and later moving on to work for former Sen. Alan Cranston, D-Calif.

A victim of its own success, the Department of Water and Power announced Monday it is putting its popular Solar Incentive Program on a 90-day hold to determine the future of the program.Daily News.

"It clearly is time to pause and review our program incentive levels," DWP General Manager Ron Nichols said. "We need to be smart about how we provide incentives and that starts with ensuring that we are doing so in a fiscally responsible manner."

The program, which was placed on hold starting last Friday, provided rebates to people who installed solar panels on their homes.

One thing is certain about the Department of Water and Power's massive effort to convert more power generation to renewable sources and meet clean water standards: It will cost money. Daily News

And if the DWP is going to sell the rate hikes needed to pay for all this to a skeptical public and City Council, it's going to need a lot of help from its newly established Office of Public Accountability.

Voters on March 8 overwhelmingly approved Measure J to create the office and appoint a ratepayer advocate, who will review all rate increases.

Tipoff: Mayor to return to familiar theme of educations.

Van Nuys Airport traffic has taken a nose dive over the past decade, with blame being placed on everything from poor management and high rents to a precipitous decline in propeller planes. Dana Bartholomew in the Daily News.

Once the nation's busiest general aviation airport, Van Nuys has watched its traffic shrink by half over the decade to levels not seen since the early 1960s.

Some say that Van Nuys Airport - the economic engine of the San Fernando Valley - is in a state of economic emergency, with airplane business at top airport companies down 30 percent to 45 percent.

Airport officials say the poor economy has led to a few tough years, but say the facility could be poised for a revival.

Finally, some good news for the Los Angeles area's housing market. Gregory J. Wilcox in the Daily News.

Housing prices are not in another free fall.

At least not yet.

"You don't have a double dip from our perspective. You just have a lot of worried people," said Paul Blitzer, managing director and chairman of the Price Index Committee responsible for the Standard & Poors Case-Shiller Home Price Index.

Even after multiple revisions to seismic codes, thousands of buildings in Los Angeles remain vulnerable to earthquakes, a leading expert told the City Council Friday. Daily News.

Lucy Jones of the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena, said the earthquakes in Japan and Chile demonstrated the need to adopt new building codes in Los Angeles that could affect 8,000-9,000 historic and older buildings.

"We know a major earthquake is inevitable," Jones said in an appearance timed with the release of a USGS-American Red Cross report on the lessons learned from the 8.8 magnitude 2010 Chilean earthquake.

As the City Council prepares to appoint the panel that will redraw Los Angeles' electoral boundaries, the chairman of the Citizens Reapportionment Committee appointed 10 years ago warned them to be ready for passion and politics. Daily News

John Emerson, who now serves as chairman of the Music Center board of directors, said members of the city redistricting panel should be aware it will take hundreds of hours on the project and that - in the end - they may end up pleasing no one.

Four City Council members have been caught up in the same inquiry that resulted in Mayor Antonio Vilaraigosa paying $42,000 in fines for tickets he received.
Council President Eric Garcetti and Councilmen Tony Cardenas, Jose Huizar and Herb Wesson also will have to pay fines for tickets they received.
Garcetti is paying $4,800 for tickts in 2007 to the Academy Awards and Emmy Awards.
Cardenas is paying $2,500 for tickets to the 2008 Academy Awards and Emmy Awards.
Huizar is paying $2,100 for his tickets to the 2007 Academy Awards.
Wesson is paying $3,900 for tickets to the BET Awards shows in 2007,. 2008 and 2009. Wesson did not use the tickers, but gave them to family members.
The fines are to be considered next week by the city Ethics Commission.

In a bid to save thousands of jobs and preserve school programs, Los Angeles Unified officials began negotiating an "emergency budget plan" with employee unions this week that could save the district up to $304 million. Commie Llanis in the Daily News.

Drafted by incoming LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy, the plan would ask most district employees to take up to 12 furlough days next year, a move that would require cutting the school calendar by a week for the third year in a row.

The plan also suggests borrowing from other district accounts, including from LAUSD's health and welfare benefits reserve and unused workers' compensation funds.

It was more a matter of luck - mild winter temperatures and strong winds - than any comprehensive planning which allowed Los Angeles to meet the goal of generating 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources last year, City Controller Wendy Greuel said Thursday.Daily News.

"While the DWP's unaudited numbers state that they achieved the goal of 20 percent renewable energy by 2010, it appears that this was likely due more to luck than to strong planning and policies," Greuel said, in an audit of the Department of Water and Power's Renewable Portfolio Standard.

"If temperatures and wind rates had been at expected levels, the department would have only achieved an 18 percent renewable energy portfolio."

The potential shutdown of the federal government could have wide-ranging effects in Los Angeles, where nearly 50,000 federal workers are based.Daily News.

National parks in the region, like the Channel Islands and Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, are expected to close. Officials at the downtown federal courthouse are looking at a plan to potentially shut down civil cases, while criminal cases would continue.

Local airports and the Port of Los Angeles are expected to continue functioning as normal, though their employees may be strained if a shutdown continues and they are not receiving paychecks.

Half a dozen San Fernando Valley schools have added themselves to a growing list of campuses asking to secede from Los Angeles Unified, presenting charter plans during a public hearing Tuesday.Connie Llanos in the Daily News.

The schools are seeking status under a hybrid model of "affiliated" charters, allowing them to essentially keep one foot in the district and one out.

"This is the best of all worlds ... almost too good to be true," said Mary O'Neil, a third-grade teacher at Calabash Elementary, one of the Valley schools seeking to become affiliated charters by next year.

An extension of up to three months for an expiring contract for the city's controversial red-light camera program was approved Tuesday by the Los Angeles Police Commission as it continues to sift through conflicting reports on the system's impact on public safety.
C.J. Lin in the Daily News,.
The commission is set to discuss the issue in the coming weeks when the LAPD responds to a negative report titled "Safer Streets in Los Angeles" that recommends scrapping the program in favor of tweaking traffic engineering measures. For example, it proposes lengthening yellow signals and implementing an all-red-light phase to let cars clear the intersection.

The Department of Water and Power would save $440 million over three years by chopping everything from new hires to holiday lighting under a severe cost-cutting plan outlined by its new general manager Tuesday.Daily News,

The proposal would help the utility reduce the need for future rate increases, according to General Manager Ron Nichols, who was hired three months ago.

Nichols said his goal is to cut spending while meeting DWP's obligations to provide water and power to its customers and comply with environmental mandates.

\
Neighborhood councils make recommendations
The city should do more to collect money it is owed and become more efficient, according to a white paper released on Tuesday by members of the city's neighborhood councils. Daily News,

The Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates, a group of 20 neighborhood council members, have met for several months to examine the city's budget and ongoing structural deficit.

"From what we have seen, there is not a revenue deficit, it is an expense problem," said Jay Handel, of West Los Angeles, chairman of the budget panel.

he earthquake and tsunami in Japan will have a major impact on Los Angeles tourism and local businesses for months to come, with any recovery not expected until the end of this year, city officials said Monday. Daily News.

In a hearing by two City Council committees, economists and city officials said the full impact might not be known for months.

Councilman Richard Alarcón, chairman of the Jobs and Business Development committee, asked for weekly updates on how the situation was developing.

Debate about the safety of fans at Dodger Stadium continued this weekend, as a county supervisor said he wants better security at the ballpark, and the team owner said proper security was in place when two fans beat a San Francisco-area fan nearly to death. Daily News wires.

The victim's paramedic partner has set up a bank account to help pay medical expenses for the critically-injured Santa Cruz resident, and to help take care of his wife and two small children.

No new medical news was available Sunday about Bryan Stow, 41, who was hospitalized in medically induced coma. Doctors on Friday removed part of his skull to relieve pressure from swelling of the brain and were considering removing one of his frontal lobes, his family said.

Homeowners in rustic La Tuna Canyon are raising a stink about proposed septic tank charges. Dana Bartholomew in the Daily News.

The Sun Valley canyon is among the last bucolic hideaways across Los Angeles not hooked up to the city sewer system - and whose septic tanks have been deemed "high risk" to local waterways or drinking water wells.

Either the homeowners pay hundreds of dollars to inspect or fix their tanks, according to a proposed city ordinance mandated by the state, or they could pay tens of thousands to link up to the sewer.

Tipoff: Biz Fed brooadens role in local politics.

In July, the Daily News launched a two-month long series of editorials taking on Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for his apparent mid-term malaise. In the series, which wrapped up in September, we outlined seven areas of city services/departments that were in serious crisis and needed his special attention. Then we assigned a grade of the mayor's performance in each, ranging from "excellent" at the high end and "dismal" at the low end. Daily News

As many as 41 children in Los Angeles County are believed to have died of abuse or neglect in 2010, even after the county Department of Children and Family Services had investigated their home situation, according to a report released this week.Christene Villacorte in the Daily News.

The report was requested after several years of controversy over whether the department's policy of trying to keep children with their families, rather than force them into foster care after an allegation of abuse, was resulting in more deaths.

Overall the report found a decline in deaths of children whose cases had been brought to the attention of DCFS over the last five years, from 69 in 2006 to 41 in 2009 and in 2010.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Friday he has agreed to pay $42,000 in fines to settle state and city ethics probes into his acceptance of unreported free tickets to sporting and other events. Daily News.

He will pay a record fine of $21,000 to the state Fair Political Practices Commission and $20,849 to the city Ethics Commission.

In separate inquiries, the panels determined the mayor improperly accepted free tickets to 33 of the 3,000-plus events - sporting, cultural, civic and community - he attended between 2005 and 2010.

In 21 cases, he failed to report the events - including Lakers games, the Academy Awards, a Shakira concert, and the American Idol finale - as gifts.

With the contract for the city's much-criticized red-light cameras coming up for renewal this month, a stinging report that recommends scrapping them could hurt LAPD efforts to continue the program. C.J. Lin in the Daily News.

The report's main conclusion is that if the costly system were shut down, all traffic engineers would have to do to improve traffic safety is extend the length of yellow signal lights at intersections.

"There is a very good chance someone is going to be forced to run the red light because the yellow timing is too short," said Jay Beeber, a Sherman Oaks resident who wrote the report, "Safer Streets in Los Angeles."

The developer of a proposed downtown football stadium must ensure no city money will be needed for the project and that it will create new jobs and tax revenue, officials of the mayor's Blue Ribbon Commission said on Friday. DailyNews.

The panel issued a statement following a series of hearings held around the city about Staples Center owner AEG's plan for a downtown stadium to lure back an NFL team.

"A new stadium and events center has the potential to transform Los Angeles," the statement said. "The city should only support this project if we are certain it can be completed without taxpayer funds, traffic impacts are (resolved) and the promised jobs go to Angelenos."

The food fight at Los Angeles International Airport is getting even more political. Art Marroquin in Daily News.

In an unprecedented campaign that's quickly heating up, one concession company recently placed a newspaper ad to solicit support from the business community.

And a second bidder is using the political clout of a former mayor in its effort to snag at least one of three dining contracts up for bid at LAX.

"Based on our experience last year, we fu

The backers of two rival NFL stadium proposals squared off Thursday, each defending their plan as the best for the city and the most likely to lure professional football back to Los Angeles.Daily News,

Majestic Realty Vice President John Semcken said his company's plan to build a 75,000-seat venue in Industry, 15 miles east of Los Angeles, would draw fans to the city without exposing it to any development risks.

AEG operations chief Dan Beckerman countered that his company's proposal for a stadium in downtown Los Angeles is the better option because it also entails the renovation of the adjacent Convention Center.