Councilmember Curren Price Court Watch, Day One (1/20/2026)
Gentle reader,
It has been a long time coming.
But this morning, in the preliminary hearing to determine if councilmember Curren Price’s public corruption charges can advance to trial, Deputy DA Casey Higgins brought several bankers boxes packed with evidence, then called two witnesses before Judge Shelly B. Torrealba.
Dave Bainbridge, down from Sacramento, testified during the morning session about the role of the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC), for which he serves as General Counsel, in monitoring and advising elected and appointed officials on how to fly right.
He explained what types and amount of income must be disclosed on an annual Form 700 and during election cycles, and the circumstances under which an elected official should recuse himself.
And he explained State law Section 1090, which bars officials from legislating or making contracts on matters in which they have an interest.
A long semantic argument concerned the way real estate investors use limited partnerships and other management structures that obscure ownership, an issue when a politician needs to disclose or recuse himself if their spouse has business interests coming up for a vote.
Bainbridge asserted that a politician should report the true source of the funds, but what is true was left to the reporter to decide. We were surprised by the vagueness of the FPPC’s instructions, and wonder if their policies have failed to keep up with current investment models.
Curren Price’s attorney Michael Schafler did an able job suggesting his client had trusted attorneys and staffers to handle his conflicts and reports, and mistakes were inadvertently made.
The question then turned to Price’s annual Form 700 filings, and the DA’s allegation of omitted clients from his wife Del Richardson’s business.
In response Schafler introduced two mutually exclusive methods of business accounting, cash basis vs. accrual, suggesting that an invoice issued during one reporting period, but paid during another, could explain away allegations that Price did not report all of his wife’s business income, and voted on matters where he should have recused himself.
As testimony shifted to a specific Thomas Safran development project, its invoices and payments spanning reporting periods, we wished we were in Federal court, where evidence under discussion is projected onto a screen.
Things got even more convoluted after lunch with the second witness, Paul Makowski, Chief Benefits Analyst for the City of Los Angeles.
Price is accused of embezzlement for putting Del Richardson on his plush City health insurance plan when they were not actually man and wife.
Makowski testified as to the process of adding dependents to an employee plan, the documents that must be filed, and what might happen if benefits staff observed contradictory information—like for instance a councilmember who claimed to be divorced but could not produce proof, and who appeared to have gotten married on multiple dates in different states to the same woman.
But it turned out that the DA had possession of many more documents than Price had ever showed to benefits staff, and that office was very trusting.
A troubling moment came when Makowski, who has been part of the City Family for decades, working in five different departments, spotted a disparity in the price of health insurance early in Price’s term, wracked his brain, and recalled that this was when the City was broke and employees were bring asked to pay a larger portion of their premiums.
It isn’t pleasant to think of one of America’s highest paid politicians wrongly obtaining medical coverage for a woman he wasn’t married to, while staffers paychecks shrunk and citizens endured civic austerity.
As the questions turned to Price’s alleged bigamy, and if he might have believed he was divorced when he was not, Judge Torrealba grew impatient and cut defense attorney Schafler off several times. Makowski had no knowledge of this relationship or its dissolution, and any further questioning was irrelevant,
The day ended with Deputy DA Casey Higgins asking Makowski what might happen when and if the City learned that an employee had wrongly claimed benefits. Makowski suggested there was a policy for dealing with that, but he didn’t recall it having ever been implemented.
How about Curren Price’s specific situation? The Los Angeles Times reported on his bigamous marriage in 2017 (a story actually broken by independent reporter Daniel Guss), and then the DA had subpoenaed Price’s benefits records.
So had the City investigated, asked Price to pay back the unearned benefits?
No, Makowski answered simply. The office hadn’t been aware of the 2017 news coverage—which doesn’t reflect well on the Times at all. Then with the criminal case, he’d gone to the City Attorney to see if anything ought to be done, and was advised to do nothing.
This is a stark reminder that the City looks after its own, no matter how badly they behave, and any reforms will have to come from without. This is a lesson we’ve learned from studying the 1930s citizen advocacy that brought down vice lord mayor Frank Shaw, a tale we tell on the new Hollywood Noir tour (next date 2/7).
That’s all for day one of Curren Price’s pretrial hearing. The estimated schedule is for more testimony on Wednesday 1/21 and Thursday 1/22, then back on Monday 1/26 through Wednesday 1/28, with the possibility of an additional day or two on dates TBD if witnesses take longer than planned.
Tomorrow, starting at 9am, we expect to hear from Samantha Rodriguez from the LA City Ethics Commission (we are not fans) on Price’s training on conflicts of interest, and from Del Richardson’s former employee Maritsa Garcia, who gave CD9 staff information about clients and income.
In days to come, we’ll hear from current and former CD9 staff about how they handled this information, disclosures and recusals.
And at some point, the testimony will concern the development scheme that intends to destroy the vacant, rent stabilized Selma Las Palmas Apartments across from Crossroads of the World, three gorgeous landscaped 1939 buildings that Price voted not to landmark even as his wife was cashing checks for successfully displacing 84 households.
It’s not lost on us, and shouldn’t be on you, that if you had a good arm, you could throw an orange from Selma Las Palmas and hit the Hollywood Center Motel, currently enmeshed in a blight and landmarking crisis that shocks the system.
Why are historic Hollywood buildings worth more vacant, burned down or demolished than occupied by Angelenos? We believe the answer has a lot to do with the votes that are central to the case against Councilmember Curren Price.
Watch this space for more court reporting, or come down to the courthouse and catch some of this historic case for yourself.
It’s all going down in Department 42 on the third floor of the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center, kitty corner from Los Angeles City Hall. It’s a secure building, so leave pen knives and pepper spray at home.
Saturday’s tour is Evergreen Cemetery, 1877, a stroll through L.A.’s biggest and most diverse burial ground, packed with interesting Angelenos, gorgeous monuments and offbeat lore. Come get to know the lively carnie folk who rest eternally beneath a prancing pink tiger, hear the lore of the unclaimed, meet the beautiful lady of the ivy and hear the tragic tale of Curren Price’s predecessor in office, Gilbert “The Zombie” Lindsay. Join us, do!
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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UPCOMING WALKING TOURS
• Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (1/24) • Alvarado Terrace & South Bonnie Brae Tract (1/31) • Hollywood Noir (2/7) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (2/14) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown L.A. (2/21) • Weird West Adams & Elmer McCurdy Museum Visit (2/28) • Film Noir / Real Noir (3/7) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood (3/14) • Bunker Hill, Dead and Alive (3/21) • Christine Sterling & Leo Politi: Angels of Los Angeles (4/4) • John Fante’s Downtown L.A. (4/11) • Early Hollywood’s Silent Comedy Legends (4/18) • Downtown Los Angeles is for Book Lovers (4/25)
CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS
Our friend Stephanie Paris has a short on the festival circuit called 1947, a moving mood piece about the lingering impact of Beth Short’s Black Dahlia murder on the burlesque players in her orbit, and on Angelenos long after. Here’s the trailer.
Why does the Los Angeles Housing Authority want to keep information about Section 8 vouchers and the waiting list from the ACLU? Is it incompetence or a cover up?
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This is what LAFD’s backhoe did to Hollywood Center Motel’s iconic 7-Up machine when the protected El Nido was wrongly demolished while under landmark protection on a rainy Sunday morning.
Stunning reporting. The detail about the benefits office not investigating after the 2017 Times story really encapsulates how citybureaucracy protects its own regardless of wrongdoing. I've seen this dynamic play out in other municipalities where the institutional reflex is always to circle wagons rather than enforce accountability.
Great coverage, please keep it going!