While the nation's leadership was gathered under the Capitol dome on Tuesday evening to hear President Obama's State of the Union speech, the civic leadership of Los Angeles was gathered at a bookstore to hear former Police Chief Bill Bratton.

Bratton is the coauthor, with Zachary Tumin of the Harvard Kennedy School, of the book "Collaborate or Perish!" a public policy guide chock-full of salient examples on how to get an entire organization to get on the same page to get things done, from an aluminum company to the LAPD.

The book alternates voice and examples from Tumin and from Bratton, and includes Bratton's accounts of a half-century of dysfunction in the LAPD, and how the cops and the community have come to an amicable teaming. He's especially forthright about the problems and resolution in the high-stakes 2007 MacArthur Park "May Day melee."

Not all of Bratton's examples came from the thin blue lines; he had praise for the Missoni fashion house's collaboration on a budget-priced line for Target. (His necktie was not Missoni but a fetching one nonetheless, with a pattern of moons and stars.)

I moderated the event with the authors at the Barnes & Noble store in the Grove, where the audience was standing room only -- or maybe saluting room only.

Just as cameras scanned the House chamber during the State of the Union speech and caught sight of Supreme Court justices and Cabinet members, anyone scanning this crowd would have seen:

Bratton's successor, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck; L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca; Andre Birotte, the U.S. attorney for Los Angeles; former Mayor James Hahn;  Police Commission President John Mack; LAPD advisor and former Police Commission President Gerald Chaleff; former police commissioner Ann Reiss Lane and her husband, Bert; police commissioner John Mack; assistant LAPD Chief Earl Paysinger and deputy chiefs Sandy Jo MacArthur and Michael Downing; and Carol Schatz, president and CEO of the Central City Assn. ("Collaborate or Perish!" uses the new policing model for skid row as one of Bratton's examples.)

In short, like the State of the Union speech -- in which one Cabinet member always stays home in case the unimaginable happens (this time it was Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack) -- I briefly wondered the parallel question: who in the LAPD senior staff wasn't at Barnes & Noble?

Outside the body politic were Bratton friends George Schlatter, the TV producer and director, and his wife, Jolene; film producer Arnold Kopelson; Barbara Davis, whose late husband, Marvin, had owned 20th Century Fox; Wendy Stark, daughter of legendary producer Ray Stark; and the ever-glamorous Angie Dickinson, who once wore a badge herself, in her TV roll on "Police Woman."

At a post-book-signing reception for Bratton and his wife, Rikki Klieman, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa put in an appearance, as did council member Tom LaBonge, who presented Tumin, a first-time L.A. visitor, with the LaBonge version of welcoming bread and salt -- a city proclamation and a loaf of pumpkin bread.

The host showed after all the other luminaries. He is the onetime president of the Police Commission and thus a Bratton collaborator himself, and the man who, with former baseball manager Joe Torre, just put in his bid for the Dodgers -– Rick Caruso.

The nosh served up for the fete: chicken skewers and mini-cheeseburgers. Not Dodger dogs. Not yet, anyway.

ALSO:

L.A.'s condom law hardly curtains for porn

The Supreme Court and the slaughterhouse

State of the Union: Mixing politics and policy

-- Patt Morrison

Photo: Former Police Chief Bill Bratton is seen in 2002. Credit: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times

Friday's Coffeebreak Quiz no doubt got you excited about Tuesday's Council District 15 runoff. The question: Which top deputy to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa donated to candidate and LAPD officer Joe Buscaino, and which contributed to candidate and state Assemblyman Warren Furutani?

The answer: Deputy Chief of Staff Matt Szabo gave to Buscaino, as reported to the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission. Deputy Mayor Larry Frank gave to Furutani, according to the same records.

Szabo was a spokesman for mayoral candidate Robert Hertzberg during the 2005 campaign that saw Villaraigosa elected. He later was a spokesman for then-Councilwoman Wendy Greuel (now city controller and a candidate for mayor) before joining Villaraigosa's officer as a deputy mayor for communications in 2006. He is now one of Villaraigosa's top aides, dealing with budget and communications matters.

Frank, an attorney, labor activist and community organizer, has been with the Villaraigosa administration from the beginning. His portfolio includes neighborhood councils.

Photos: Joe Buscaino, left, and Warren Furutani. Credit: Robert Greene / Los Angeles Times

PREVIOUS COFFEEBREAK QUIZZES:

Name that questionable street banner

A banner month for the Golden Globes

--Robert Greene

Is grass always greener?  When you're talking about L.A. City Hall's lawn, the answer is clearly no.

Right now, thanks to months of occupation by Occupy L.A. protesters, City Hall looks like a Hancock Park fixer-upper: A hard-scrabble lawn behind K-rails and chain-link fencing.

What's worse, although the city is weighing its options, the cheapest landscaping solution -- and therefore the most likely -- appears to be grass. Which is also the dumbest solution.

Grass comes from England.  It likes water. And -- despite all of the faux-Tudor mansions in some of our tonier neighborhoods -- L.A. isn't England.  But we do like water, so much so that we're willing to steal it and pipe it in from faraway lands.

It's not as if we don't know what to do.  Heck, way back in November, Emily Green, who writes the Dry Garden for The Times, outlined in an Op-Ed piece  an ecologically friendly plan to re-landscape City Hall. And she made this sensible argument for it:

It comes down to this: If homeowners must abandon gratuitous shows of lawn, City Hall should too. If homeowners must learn to tend and appreciate native plant gardens, so should City Hall -- and Rec and Parks.

She was equally blunt about the argument that tough budgetary times require the use of grass:

This insistence that we cling to a wasteful model because conservation is too expensive doesn't scan. Whatever hard times the city faces, the real deficit isn't money. It's skill. The inertia isn't budgetary. It's cultural.

Until Occupy L.A. smothered it last month, lawn remained around Los Angeles City Hall in part because that's what Rec and Parks knows how to tend.

Still, money is a problem. The cost differences are dramatic.  As The Times story Monday said:

The cost of planting native grasses could run from $5 to $7 a square foot, said Cassy Aoyagi, owner of FormLA Landscaping in Tujunga and president of the Theodore Payne Foundation. The park's lawns covered about 75,000 square feet.

Her estimate includes grading, mulching, retrofitting the irrigation system, and planting a grass like Carex pansa, which looks like traditional turf if it's mowed, she said.

Having more native plants and a completely new irrigation system could cost $8 to $12 a square foot, she estimated. Traditional turf would average about $3 a square foot, she said.

But I think there's a way out.  Call it the 100% solution.

First, labor costs.  Here, we turn to the Occupy folks -- the self-proclaimed 99%ers.  You camped there.  You ruined the yard.  Now you need to help fix it. 

You may not have money, but you obviously have time on your hands, and presumably you can use a shovel, or a rake, or you can carry a plant or two. (And, if we have to, we have the names of those arrested.  We know where you live.  Don't make us come and get you.)

Next, real costs, for plants and the like.  Here, we turn to the enemy of the 99%ers -- the 1%.  Show the Occupy folks they're wrong about you. How about a few bucks for some native grass? A new irrigation system? A different tree or two? 

You can even show up and turn a shovel, get your picture taken with the mayor and City Council.

Finally, there's the "other percenters."  Like the landscape people, who are full of advice.  Folks like those at the Theodore Payne Foundation and the California Native Plant Society.

Talk is cheap. Why not turn your advice into a real plan?  Draw it up, then hand it to the city -- gratis.  Offer your expertise to the city -– and the Occupiers -– in installing it all.

And you farmers market folks who haven't been able to use the lawn in months.  I know times are hard, but maybe you could find a way to contribute -– either money or labor?  You say business is down in the new location, and you really want to get back to City Hall?  Well, as they say, there's no free lunch.

So what do you say, L.A.?  Can I get a green thumbs-up?

ALSO:

Repairing Occupy L.A. damage to City Hall lawn could cost $400,000

Occupy L.A.: Free speech is free

Ted Rall cartoon: The trouble with suing Occupy L.A. protesters for $2.35 million

--Paul Whitefield

Photo: The city now has to decide whether and how to replace the once-lush lawn around City Hall, killed by months of protesters living there. Credit: Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times

How does a voter, or an editorial board, judge the quality of a candidate? Raising issues and asking the candidates to talk about them is important, of course. But I've often found it more enlightening to ask candidates about issues they bring up themselves.

It's fine, for example, for a candidate to mention a recent news item, especially one that has the public riled, such as the $1.2-million severance payment to the departing director of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, or  HACLA, and the lavish meals and junkets that the oversight commission took at public expense. That shows the candidate is up on the news. But ask what it is that went wrong, and how common it is, and what he would do to fix it -- then the response may reveal how well he or she really understands. Was the candidate just seeking cheap applause by demonstrating outrage? Or has there been serious thinking about the issue?

When members of The Times' editorial board interviewed City Council candidates Joe Buscaino and Warren Furutani, we didn't bring up the HACLA scandal; they did. So what was their analysis of the problem?

The Times has endorsed Buscaino, but on this issue both candidates were disappointing. It would have been OK if they weren't familiar with the issue and said they had to pass on answering the question. But remember, they brought it up. And it would have been OK if they had opinions that differed from ours; the point was not to see whether they agreed with us but whether they knew what they were talking about.

Or am I being too hard on them? Judge for yourself; Here are audio excerpts of questions from me and from Editorial Page Editor Nicholas Goldberg, and partial transcripts of the candidates' responses. Below that is a summary of the HACLA issue.

Listen: Buscaino on HACLA

Is there a problem? Is there a problem? I think with HACLA I would like to see more representation from property owner's side as well. Not just -- it's very heavy on the tenant. You have the tenants being the voice. I'd like to see more of a balance. It's not happening, and that's something I look forward to addressing or questioning if indeed I become elected.

Listen: Furutani on HACLA

The public perception of it, though. I'm sure legally in the contract everything's there. There's gonna be no lawsuit after this is done. But in terms of public perception; if the public doesn't realize that that's in fact what's happening. And then you add to it dinners and lunches and junkets, going on trips. All of this is a package; we go, uh huh, there it is again. That's what's wrong with it.

The problem is people have to know, people have to be aware of what goes on in government, and we have to be transparent. Now bringing the best talent to Los Angeles is always difficult in terms of how you attract them. Housing costs are very high; living costs in L.A. are very high; how you bring a superintendent, how you bring a chancellor, how you bring a professor to the University of California, how you bring executives. This is a difficult situation. It's something though we've got to explain better to the community so they know if you want this, if you want government to do this, if you want the best talent, it's going to cost you....

And in terms of that reality, whether you want to bring the top professors to the UC system, we have to explain that to the public so they know what they're paying for, and what in fact they're going to get as a benefit. And some of this other thing, though, in terms of the overall, the public perception: "It was a boondoggle, here they go again." That's what's wrong with it.

The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles uses federal money to operate public housing projects and other subsidized housing programs in Los Angeles. Its controversial executive director, Rudy Monteil, was fired as KCET-TV's "SoCal Connected" reported on the spending practices of HACLA staff and commissioners. Monteil then was granted a severance package amounting to $1.2 million. The Times editorialized that the problem was a lack of mayoral oversight. Read The Times' news stories here:

L.A. council members call for more control over housing authority

Mayor's staff was told of housing official's payout

Villaraigosa didn't know about agency chief's payout, aide says

Ousted L.A. Housing Authority chief leaves with $1.2 million

Los Angeles public housing authority fires its CEO

Members of Los Angeles' housing board say they'd welcome a city audit

Dust-up with picketing tenants puts L.A. housing authority chief in spotlight

L.A. housing official sought to evict nine tenants who protested at his home

MORE FROM THIS SERIES:

Endorsements and the Jan. 17 runoff

Questions, and frustration

Voting now underway

When Warren Furutani met Joe Buscaino

Watts and Not-Watts

Harbor Gateway, the city on a shoestring

 -- Robert Greene

Photos: Candidate Joe Buscaino (top) and Warren Furutani (bottom) make calls on Nov. 8, the day of the primary election in their race to be elected to represent the 15th District on the L.A. City Council. Credit: Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times

City Council districts change every 10 years as lines are redrawn to reflect demographic shifts recorded in the decennial census. This decade's current redistricting effort is now underway. But except for gaining or losing a few blocks at the far northern end, where Watts joins South Los Angeles and the central city, Council District 15 doesn't change. It can't, and it won't, because it has nowhere else to go. It's fenced in by the harbor on the south and the very strange shape of the city boundaries from there northward. Unless more territory is annexed to or detached from Los Angeles, this district will look pretty much the same in 50 years as it does today.

Take a look at these maps of the City Council districts today, in the 1990s, the 1980s and the 1970s (maps courtesy of the city's excellent Bureau of Engineering online map gallery). Not much change, save for some gradual addition in territory linking Watts to Harbor Gateway.

Politically, too, it's a somewhat odd district. San Pedro may be in some respects the city's most conservative enclave after the far northwest San Fernando Valley. But it's a conservatism built on and tempered by a strong union presence in the port, and when joined with more liberal voters in Watts and Wilmington, this district is one of the few in the city that is just as likely to choose a liberal Democrat, a conservative Democrat or a Republican.

Janice Hahn, a Democrat who left the office earlier this year after her election to Congress, was one of the council's most liberal members. She was elected in 2001 in the same election that made her brother, Jim Hahn (also a liberal Democrat), mayor. Janice Hahn succeeded Rudy Svorinich, a Republican; Svorinich in turn defeated Republican Joan Milke Flores in 1993 in the post-riot election that saw voters elect Mayor Richard Riordan, Los Angeles' first GOP mayor in decades.

Flores had been secretary, planner and then chief of staff to City Council President John S. Gibson Jr. before succeeding him on the council in 1981. Gibson, a Democrat, represented the 15th District for 30 years, from the 1950s into the 1980s. In the early part of his term he was deemed one of the council's few liberals. The city's politics changed over the decades, but his didn't, and Gibson left the council as one of its more conservative members.

Both candidates vying for the post in the Jan. 17 runoff -- LAPD officer Joe Buscaino and Assemblyman Warren Furutani -- are Democrats. Furutani has the support of much of the Democratic Party establishment, including the Los Angeles County Democratic Party and elected Democrats such as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, county Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, City Council members Bernard C. Parks and Paul Koretz, and a bevy of lawmakers in Congress and the Legislature. He also has labor backing from the politically influential UNITE HERE Local 11, representing hotel and restaurant workers. On Thursday, he won support from the city's largest civilian public employee union, SEIU Local 721. The union, a major player in City Hall, backed firefighter and union activist Pat McOsker in the Nov. 8 nominating election.

Buscaino is backed by his own union -- the Los Angeles Police Protective League -- and decline-to-state-party City Atty. Carmen Trutanich and Councilman Dennis Zine. Add support from Democratic council members Tom Labonge and Jose Huizar, and the Los Angeles County Young Democrats.

The candidates split endorsements from construction and building and trade unions and teacher unions; United Teachers Los Angeles is going with Buscaino, which is interesting given that Furutani is a former school board member. But all in all, does Buscaino's backing represent a slightly more conservative shade of Democrat than Furutani's? Yes. And no. But perhaps we can say Furutani's people are more the entrenched political establishment and Buscaino's are more the insurgents, or at least the outsiders? Kind of, sort of. It's the 15th District. It's complicated.

ALSO:

Council District 15: Endorsements and the Jan. 17 runoff

Buscaino outraises Furutani

Buscaino, Furutani appear headed toward runoff

--Robert Greene

Get ready soon for end-of-the-year features on the biggest news stories of 2011. But not yet. First, the biggest non-stories (or stories that ought to have been non-stories) of 2011, and what they really mean:

Riverside supervisor proposes creating separate "South California."

It was big news coast to coast, even though everyone knew it would never happen. What it really means: (1) Everyone loves breakup stories, and this was the best one from California since Arnold and Maria; and (2) Inland Empire Republicans became disoriented upon discovering that there are actual consequences to cutting the vehicle license fee. Several Riverside County cities were threatened because there wasn't enough VLF money for them, and they thought breaking away might somehow make more money appear.

Audit finds 1,000 sex offenders in homes of foster children!

Some state officials really messed up! Heads must roll! Except, well, no, the cross-check of sex offender addresses with foster homes showed that maybe eight registered sex offenders had connections (were related to the owners, for example). Not good, but eight is still not 1,000. Uncorrected stories remain on many news sites, along with other misinformation gleaned from the report. What it really means: (1) The Bureau of State Audits knows how to get headlines, even if it doesn't really know how to do an audit; and (2) Outrage is exciting. Corrections are boring.

Sacramento is transferring more than 4,200 offenders to L.A.!

That assertion was made by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to describe "realignment" of public safety. Not true. No offenders have been or will be transferred to Los Angeles. Some who were to be released here on parole will now be released here on "community supervision," another type of parole. Offenders are coming to the same place, at the same pace, as always. The county may not be up to supervising them properly, so realignment is indeed a public safety issue, but anyone being let out of prison and returning to Los Angeles would have been coming here anyway. What it really means: Either (1) Realignment is hard to understand, and even the mayor is confused; or (2) The mayor knows how to use fear to garner attention and maybe some state funding.

The jails are rapidly filling up!

All those new convicts under realignment are being sent to county jail instead of state prison, and the jails are bursting at the seams! Except they're not. Sheriff Lee Baca, with all his problems at the county jails, is keeping the daily census of inmates just about constant. Yes, he does this by releasing people before their full sentences are served, and that's not good; and yes, he has pretty much unfettered discretion of whom to release, and when, with only sketchy guidelines or oversight -– and that's not good either. But the jail population is not exploding. What it really means: (1) Baca is so secretive or inept in keeping track of his jail population that it's easy to misunderstand whom he's holding; and (2) Fear of crime is always a crowd-pleaser.

Michael Jackson's killer lucked out because of realignment!

Dr. Conrad Murray was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to four years but is expected to serve only two. But that has nothing to do with realignment or jail crowding; it's the law. Convicts are eligible for up to 50% off on their sentences when calculated time for good behavior and for work. Maybe that should be called a two-year sentence so the public truly understands, but no one here got away with anything. Of course, Baca could decide to release Murray whenever he wants (see #4 above). What it really means: (1) Sentencing laws aren't that easy to understand; and (2) Even now, Michael Jackson keeps us guessing.

ALSO:

PHOTOS: Conrad Murray trial

California prisoner realignment is no cause for panic

CARTOON: Greetings from Republican utopia 'South California'

--Robert Greene

Cartoon: Ted Rall / For The Times

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and several other Los Angeles leaders became the latest folks Monday to demonstrate either that they don't understand how AB 109 public safety realignment works, or that they do but they're only too happy to scare the public into believing hordes of new criminals are coming to town if it suits their political purposes.

"Through the Public Safety Realignment Act, Sacramento is transferring more than 4,200 offenders to L.A., and not a single dollar to help with the burden," Villaraigosa said in a statement delivered at a morning news conference. Elsewhere in the statement, he referred to the "transfer of prisoners to cities."

No, Mr. Mayor. That's fear-mongering, and it's false. No inmates are being transferred to cities.

State inmates who are released on parole already come back to their home communities. For a third to a half of all such inmates, home has always meant Los Angeles County. Some of those parolees/probationers always caused problems when they got here and have become an additional burden on law enforcement. Some have always become part of the homeless population. They still will. There is nothing new here. They're not coming any faster than they did before.

The change wrought by AB 109 is that instead of reporting to state parole agents, these released offenders will begin to report to county probation officers. Same number of offenders, same rate, same flow, same communities. They just call a different number or check in at a different office.

Newly convicted felons (although not those convicted of committing serious, sexual or violent crimes) will now go to county jails instead of state prisons. Maybe they'll now be housed at Castaic (county) instead of Lancaster (state). So? Is that what the mayor means by "transferring more than 4,200 offenders to L.A."?

If the mayor really wanted to come clean on the nature of the problem, he'd note that there is in fact some serious concern that Sheriff Lee Baca's now-empty jails in Castaic and elsewhere may eventually fill up, and that county officials might make mistakes about who can be released with an ankle bracelet, to make room, and who must be kept behind bars. But that's hardly the same thing as saying current prisoners are being transferred to cities.

As for Sacramento (as if it were some outside entity, and not part of a continuum that includes City Hall and county government) failing to send any money, that's also completely untrue. If he were being straightforward, Villaraigosa would have acknowledged that there is in fact money coming with the probationers and new prisoners -- nine months' worth of it. The state budget calls for the pot of funds to be replenished each fiscal year, but county leaders correctly demand something more solid -- a constitutional guarantee. Gov. Jerry Brown has promised to put one on the November 2012 presidential ballot.

Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck wants to put 150 cops on a special detail to handle realignment problems -- but, importantly, not because we're getting a new influx of criminals (again, same number of parolees as always, coming to the same place as always, at the same pace as always) but because Los Angeles County government may be simply too much of a mess to handle the job the right way. The county recently fired hundreds of probation officers while hiring hundreds more. The Board of Supervisors reportedly fired the chief probation officer. But that says more about the house of horrors that is Los Angeles County government than it does about realignment. Other counties appear to be up to their new tasks.

Brown and state lawmakers knew that it would cost counties far less to house prisoners and supervise probationers than it costs the state, in large part because of inflated state contracts with the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn. They added up county costs of supervising probationers and housing inmates and saw that they could save money by sending that same amount -- plus a bit more -- to the counties along with the new responsibilities. That's what they're doing. City leaders had the same head-start on preparing for realignment as counties did, but they seem to have just discovered it today.

The real failure of realignment comes from the unsubstantiated belief that counties are better suited and more motivated than the state to provide rehabilitation programs. They aren't. Probationers and others released from prison and jail will face the same thing here they always have -- virtually nothing: no jobs, no training, no housing, no counseling, no drug treatment -- nothing to prepare them for life of freedom and responsibility. In short, we're prepared to fail them the same way we've been failing them for years, only now we will be doing it with local government instead of state government.

Instead of complaining, again, that Sacramento has "balanced its budget on the backs of cities," Villaraigosa ought to be clamoring for smarter spending on the county level and offer some participation from his own city government in programs that ease reentry from prison life to their communities.

ALSO:

Probation's problems

Sacramento's inmate dodge

What's going on at our jails?

L.A. supervisors' inconvenient public

Criminal justice: These guys are in serious need of marriage counseling

--Robert Greene

Credit: Steve Yeater / Associated Press

Remember when a Gold Card meant you had really good credit?

Remember when a disabled placard meant you actually were disabled?

Remember when people had integrity?

All I can say is, it's a good thing the Judgment Day prediction turned out to be wrong, because there would have been a lot of parking scofflaws in California in general and L.A. in particular who would've been left on the ground when the rapture started.

As Times staff writer Martha Groves reported Sunday: 

Fraudulent use of disabled parking placards -- those blue or red badges that allow motorists to park for free or in specially reserved spaces -- has exploded in the last decade, according to state motor vehicle officials. With 1 in 10 California drivers now legally registered to carry the passes, transportation experts say abuse has become commonplace. At any given moment, on any given street, more than a third of the vehicles displaying the tags -- and parking without paying -- are doing so illegally, say officials with the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

We all have our stories of suspected abuse of those little placards: Mine involves a family of four who parked their SUV in the handicapped spot at Mammoth all week while they hit the slopes. Maybe, of course, it was something I couldn't see -- but they all seemed pretty darn healthy as they piled back in the SUV after a hard day skiing.

But what I mostly wondered was, where did the disabled guy whom I saw skiing that day park?

Handicappedgate, of course, came on the heels of Gold Cardgate, the cozy little program that L.A. City Controller Wendy Greuel blew the whistle on last week. 

Turns out city officials were shocked! shocked! to learn that there was a special desk to deal with disputed parking citations. Not fair, declared Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

"Discontinue the Gold Card Desk immediately," Villaraigosa directed in a letter to the city transportation department's interim general manager, Amir Sedadi. The mayor also told Sedadi to "establish a uniform system accessible to everyone for contested parking citation intake and adjudication."

Wow. That's real leadership: the mayor telling a city department chief to do the right thing and treat everyone the same.

Next thing you know, our civic leaders are going to start paying for their own tickets to concerts and sporting events and the like.

Certain law-and-order commenters on these stories, of course, suggested that a little jail time might straighten people out. But with Monday's Supreme Court decision  that California must release thousands of convicts due to overcrowding, that's obviously a nonstarter.

But California's a true democracy. We have ballot initiatives on practically everything (see Tim Rutten's column on San Francisco's bid to outlaw circumcision).

So let's hear from you, California. 

First up, "Joe Poe":

I think the handicapped should get the closest spaces, but not for free. This would dissuade many of the evil freeloading phonies. Also think public shaming is in order for the phonies. Wearing sandwich board reading "I Took Advantage of the Disabled" and parading up and down Rodeo drive should be the punishment!

Your turn, "hey zeus":

Is there some sort of sale on high-horses today?  We're talking about parking, you self-righteous nit wits.  The city charges money just for the right to STOP your vehicle and get out at your destination... and we're supposed to feel remorse for circumventing this scam?  Somehow this has become about morality?  We are talking about PARKING.  These are laws that need to broken.  We should be cracking down on parking enforcement, instead of attacking the few people smart enough to get around it.  Maybe if the city took the money they waste on meter maids, and spent it on less dispicable ways to earn revenue, this wouldn't be an issue to begin with.

Finally, "tomdavis":

This is just another sign of the moral decay of our society.

OK, direct democracy has, um, certain limitations. Although I do kinda like the sandwich-board idea.  And I couldn't disagree more with "hey zeus," who is probably the same guy who cut me off on the freeway the other day.

In the end, "tomdavis," though a bit overdramatic, may get my vote.

Instead of laws, maybe we could try just a little common courtesy, a little integrity? 

It couldn't hurt. And if you need an extra incentive, remember that Judgment Day prophecy has been changed to Oct. 21.   

RELATED:

Know thy neighbor

America the stony-hearted

In L.A., no more 'Gold Cards'

-- Paul Whitefield

Photo: David Wisansky, an investigator with the California Department of Motor Vehicles, speaks with Magdalene Osherenko as he confiscates her disabled parking placard during a sting operation along Camden Drive in Beverly Hills on May 22, 2011. Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles

"The mayor is afraid. Very afraid," Simone Wilson begins in an LA Weekly post that pokes fun at Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s proposal to build a 6-foot-high fence in front of his official residence, Getty House, in Windsor Square. She goes on:

Indeed, we're having trouble thinking of a single instance in which the mayor was subjected to some danger that the rest of Los Angeles hasn't been subjected to as well.

Oh right -- librarians and city workers with picket signs. Scary stuff, really: In April, the library folk went so far as to sit on the mayor's lawn, where they brought out the big guns -- BOOKS -- and read them aloud to children.

What Wilson doesn't let readers in on, however, is that Villaraigosa doesn't own Getty House; it belongs to the city, and it is his residence only as he serves his term as mayor. The fence also wasn't his idea; it came from the LAPD via the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. And,the mayor hosts dignitaries, who may also have special security needs. So, it's really not about an outsized ego.   

Nevertheless, Wilson has a bone to pick, and so do the folks who live in Windsor Square and object to the fence's height.

Weighing in on Wednesday, here's what our editorial board had to say in Fence-in the mayor:

It's difficult to argue against the Department of Homeland Security and the Police Department saying the official residence of the most public elected official in the second-biggest city in the country needs a 6-foot-high fence. He could move, and some of his neighbors have mused out loud that perhaps he should. But Getty House is the official residence of the mayor. It doesn't belong to Villaraigosa; it belongs to the city. And it's nice to think that the mayor of Los Angeles -- a city with an abysmal record of preservation -- lives in a historic residence in a historic community that neighbors pride themselves on protecting.

RELATED:

Villaraigosa: How disappointing

United Teachers Los Angeles dukes it out with Mayor Villaraigosa over education reform

Sizing up Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa [Video]

--Alexandra Le Tellier

Photo:  Getty House in Windsor Square.  Credit: Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times

In a December speech heard around the halls of LAUSD, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa charged that United Teachers Los Angeles was the biggest obstacle to education reform.  Ouch. With L.A. schools' dismal ranking and graduation rates, he implored the teachers union to join the education reform team. Rather than going the "united we stand, divided we fall" route, however, he embarrassed the union. From the full transcript: 

When we fought to change the seniority-based layoff system that was disproportionately hurting our neediest students, the teachers union fought back.

When we fought to empower parents to turn around failing schools and bring in outside school operators with proven records of success, the teachers union fought back.

And now, while we try to measure teacher effectiveness in order to reward the best teachers and replace the tiny portion who aren't helping our kids learn, the teachers union fights back.

It's not easy for me to say this. I started out as an organizer for UTLA (United Teachers Los Angeles), and I don't have an anti-union bone in my body. The teachers unions aren't the biggest or the only problem facing our schools, but for many years now, they have been the most consistent, most powerful defenders of the unacceptable status quo.

"These charges are all despicable lies," said Randy Childs, a teacher and UTLA member. In a commentary for SocialistWorker.com, he wrote, "[I]n the real world, UTLA fiercely supports -- and has spent years fighting for -- a whole array of school reforms that support student learning and would tremendously shake up the actual status quo in education."

Joining the backlash are UTLA chapter chair Kirti Baranwal and Gillian Russom. "Just because we oppose some of the ideas that the mayor calls 'reform' -- evaluating teachers based on student test scores, charter school takeovers and eliminating seniority protections -- he accuses our organization of opposing educational change," they wrote in Friday's Op-Ed. "We question whether his 'reforms' are intended to improve education or to scapegoat teachers. What we want instead are reforms that will allow us to better meet the needs of all of our students in the public schools. We ask the mayor, how is this a partnership when instead of helping to foster school-based reform, you use your position as a bully pulpit to attack our union?"

Whether Villaraigosa's speech will have any real impact remains to be seen. "He's the invisible man," a veteran of local government told Jim Newton for a recent column about the mayor. "He has no impact."

While UTLA and Villaraigosa engage in a tug-of-war, readers such as "tomdavis" have given up on our public schools. "We took our kids out of public schools and put them into a no-nonsense, no-frills private school," he writes on our discussion board.  "They're getting a great education. I wanted my kids to go to public schools, but I can't allow them to be used as lab rats while government officials and the teachers unions try to figure out what went wrong."

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-- Alexandra Le Tellier   

Photo: Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa speaks during an interview with the Associated Press in its Los Angeles bureau. Credit: Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press