The CRA/LA City Council Swap -- Followup
January 16th, 2011 | 2 Comments
I truly think that the Mayor, Council and CRA thought that they could sneak through their Billion Dollar plan to evade Governor Brown's proposed elimination of CRA's. Under more normal circumstances, the Council has done this kind of bureaucratic manipulation before with no one the wiser. See my earlier post on the NELA Project Area -- First Steps.
Evidence of the hasty nature of this "Special Meeting" when there was no "Emergency" according to the CRA/LA's City Attorney, lies in the documents and posting. The notice was posted almost nowhere 24 hours in advance of the meeting, with no documents available online at all. Equally telling, as we walked into the meeting on Friday morning, the only backup document available had a list of projects without any dollar amounts included! Obviously no one was expected to figure out that the attachment equalled $885 million dollars, or $930 million dollars, or anything at all.
During the meeting itself, a document with dollar amounts was in fact handed out to the Commissioners but not made available to most of the public. Evidently that document totalled some $930 million, forcing the Chair to make a motion to cover the slight $45 million dollar discrepancy.
It was also evident that the Commissioners were not prepared to debate or discuss in any detail the fact that their motions were designed to set up a shell company. That entity's sole purpose would be to grab the approximately $1 billion dollars worth of projects on the list of the CRA/LA, and shield those funds from anything that the State of California could do to eliminate the CRA by legislation.
Check out the video of the meeting posted by Ron Kaye. It's pretty clear what was happening.
And if you go back to the caption of the Agenda of this single issue meeting, it is very clear that it appears to talk about a "Co-Operation" agreement with the City, not the setting up of a whole new entity:
"AUTHORITY TO EXECUTE A COOPERATION AGREEMENT WITH CITY OF LOS ANGELES FOR PAYMENT OF APPROXIMATELY $885 MILLION FOR COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH CERTAIN REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY FUNDED CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT, PUBLIC IMPROVEMENT AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING PROJECTS LOCATED WITHIN THE CURRENTLY DESIGNATED 31 REDEVELOPMENT PROJECT AREAS."
I ask you: if you were to read the caption above as a reasonable person, would you think that this Item had anything to do with setting up a new corporation and hiding a billion dollars of tax revenues in it? I didn't think so either. And if you add the misleading caption together with a Special Meeting being held less than a week in advance of the regularly scheduled CRA/LA meeting on January 20th, with no declaration of emergency AND you add in the fact that the Chair at the last minute made the compound motion that actually did the deed of authorizing such an entity together with requiring that Ms. Essel head whatever it may be called AND you compare the motion that was passed against the Agendized Item... well, I think you get the drift. It may well be that the City Attorney who saw no Brown Act violation will be tasked with defending his advice in another forum.
Just to make all of this more fun, I have a question for you. If this goes to the City Council as is, and the CRA/LA's City Attorney says everything is hokey dory, and a Council Member (hint, hint) asks if this package and process violated the Brown Act, does the City Council's City Attorney have a conflict of interest?
Now I don't know about you, but when a City decides that they have to put the fix in before the State can stop them, there is something inherently fishy about the whole deal. And in a nice piece by Jessica Garrison of the Los Angeles Times this Saturday, it is clear that the CRA/LA and City Council did not expect to be called out so quickly.
It will be very interesting to see how fast this item gets moved forward and buried in an LA City Council Agenda for fast track passage. Fortunately for us all, people are watching this time.
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ron kaye part 2 craby seeker9003380 views
Go Angelenos! Root out the crooks. Eli is a shanda; he brings a legacy of disgrace. Stuffing $52 M into his own pockets.
On March 8, 2011, Vote out the crooks -- LaBonge, etc. and then recall Trust Fund Baby Garcetti.
RickLeeAbrams 1 year ago