When Democrats Collide
Oh, Felipe Fuentes – never mind the number of years in California’s term limits law. You may have just taken a big step toward creating your own personal term limits.
Fuentes was elected to a seat in the Assembly from Sylmar just over a year ago. He had served in City Hall and gotten endorsements there, but now he’s courted some hefty opposition from the city council and the Board of Supervisors.
He’s put forth a law that would help a campaign donor to build 229 houses on a certain unnamed parcel of land – identifiable as the 63-acre Verdugo Hills golf course that isn’t even in his Assembly district. And he’s written a ‘’poison pill’’ into his bill that would tie the hands of the city of LA if it tries to mess with the project.
Here’s Patrick McGreevey’s story in Sunday’s paper:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-build9-2008jun09,0,4425307.story
City council member Wendy Greuel sounds disgusted at what it sounds like what she considers a greenmail tactic – my word, greenmail, not hers – and says this is about the developer trying to get a better price to sell the land to the city for the open space that residents have been clamoring to save.
And it is not auspicious for Assemblyman Fuentes that city council members and the Board of Supes – powerful allies to have in your camp come re-election time, and formidable opponents to be ranged against you -- are lobbying the Legislature to kill what they surely regard as a high-handed end-run on their authority and their turf.
Will Fuentes fold his hand on AB 212 and come back into the political fold? Will he stick to his guns? Tune in next time and find out on ``As the Capitol Dome Turns.’’
-- Patt Morrison
Come on, Patt, if the voters in Fuentes''s district had any sense, he wouldn't be there in the first place.
Posted by: Observor | June 09, 2008 at 10:01 AM
Patt, this Council outrage seems a little disingenuous of the City Council members, since they so rarely consider citywide impact of development themselves. In city development decisions, the member in whose district the project will go gets complete deference from the rest of the Council.
The Legislature is simply doing to the Council what the Council routinely does to the city Planning Department.
Yes, there's a charade of hearings, and of study by the Planning Department (particularly when the developer wants zoning variances to make the project larger than the zoning currently allows, which is usual). But ultimately if the Council member favors what the developer wants, that's what the Council approves. Thus it has long been in Los Angeles.
I was recently witness to one such decision in the Planning and Land Use Management Committee. It raised the number of condos allowed in a development (The Camerford Lofts on Melrose, at Larchmont) from the allowed-by-right 50-something to 90-something. No low-income units, no traffic mitigation. The committee dismissed without comment the planning department's proposed compromise of 62 units, despite concerns about congestion, scale and the low-income housing destroyed to make way.
Ironically, one reason given for allowing the larger construction was that LA's local zoning plans may soon be reconsidered. Yet Councilwoman Greuel is enraged that the current zoning plan was not followed in Fuentes' bill.
No wonder LA's streetscapes, and streets, are in such disorder.
Posted by: Judy Dugan | June 09, 2008 at 02:37 PM