City Council's Real Estate Development Racket Exposed in Bombshell Court Filing... or Eunisses, You Didn't!
Gentle reader,
We write in haste because holy cats, does all of Los Angeles need to see the Petition for Writ of Mandate that was filed with the Superior Court yesterday by CEQA super lawyer Jamie T. Hall!
[Update 9/6/2023: The Real Deal has picked up this story. Update 8/22/2024: former California State Senate majority leader Gloria Romero is alarmed by the implication that deputy City Attorneys are making public policy different from what L.A. councilmembers campaigned on, and that policy making tramples on open meeting law. Update 12/23/2024: As Crane Boulevard neighbors and the City reach an agreement that Crane will not file an additional lawsuit over City officials’ unlawful use of disappearing Gchat messages if the City Attorney investigates the practice with the aim of halting it, the Los Angeles Times finally picks up this bombshell story we broke on 8/9/2023, though they do not link to any court filings. Update 10/24/2025: The Daily News reports on Crane Boulevard’s writ of mandate filed over the disappearing Gchats, an unlawful policy which was only halted in the aftermath of the January 2025 Palisades Fire.]
In this 59 page document—prepared on behalf of the aggrieved residents of Crane Boulevard in the Mount Washington neighborhood, who are rightly concerned that a huge new house on the bare, steep east hillside on their narrow residential street could put them in danger in the event of a landslide or earthquake, but whose appeal was rejected—Hall blows the lid off the conspiracy that preservationists have long suspected was operating openly among senior staff and elected officials in Los Angeles City Hall.
Although there are some loud YIMBYs on the internet who, with no knowledge of this unique location, will tell you that the Crane Boulevard residents are bad people for questioning new construction, in fact they’re acting out of reasonable, prudent experience. Instead of listening and learning, city staff are actively working against their interests. As Hall states in his Petition, this is not normal.
Here’s what the neighbors know: after heavy rains in February 1969, Rainbow Avenue, a nearly identical narrow hillside street a few blocks away, collapsed and slid 100 feet down the mountain, taking many homes with it.
The displaced residents formed an advocacy group and lobbied Washington D.C. to enact policies that would make their fellow citizens safer. The Rainbow Avenue Disaster Committee would be horrified to know that, 54 years later, the greatest threat is coming from L.A.’s own elected officials.
But it is. According to attorney Hall’s Petition, there is no such thing as a properly noticed public hearing or a fair assessment when a high dollar real estate project is proposed. Instead, council staff engage in illegal discussions in person and on shared documents hosted illegally on cloud storage devices, to ensure that the personal wishes of their boss are conveyed to the PLUM Committee—before that body meets.
And when they meet, the fix is in. The PLUM Committee’s hearings are entirely scripted by staff—including the pre-arranged votes that conform to the wishes of the councilmember in whose district a project is proposed. In the case of Crane Boulevard, that councilmember is self-described “reformer” Eunisses Hernandez, but they all do it.
The existence of a script perhaps explains why, unlike other city meetings since 2020, PLUM hearings have been conducted with audio only for members of the public tuning in remotely, even as stray references by meeting participants made it clear that they are on video and can see each other.
After listening to a number of PLUM hearings, it was obvious to us that something screwy was going on. But without a video stream, it was hard to tell exactly what. So last November, we filed a public records request for the video of the PLUM hearing where Mitch O’Farrell engaged in anti-democratic shenanigans around his failed landmark nomination for The Complex at 6480 West Santa Monica Boulevard; the city unconvincingly claims no video record exists. (Our live narration of this demented PLUM hearing is on Facebook and Twitter.)
And now we understand why they turn the public cameras off: PLUM participants are doing a table read of a script prepared by their staff, and as anyone who has watched L.A. River Follies knows, Mitch and his fellow council crooks can’t act.
Hall writes: “In sum, the City’s heretofore undisclosed pre-PLUM process is an elaborate dress rehearsal, and the public PLUM meeting is a cynical ballet performed by elected and appointed City public officials pursuant to a script written by the City’s bureaucrats. This is not normal.”
Hall’s Petition describes, but does not reproduce, smoking gun emails which the City Clerk’s office apparently released accidentally, and which the City Attorney’s office now seeks to claw back. (Funny how this keeps happening—makes us wonder if there are people in City Hall who are engaging in their own quiet form of activism through document release. If so, we thank them for trying to keep the city honest, and hope they will stay safe and keep screwing up.)
There’s something that’s special about the Crane Boulevard project. The million dollar view that this giant house would block includes the tower of the Southwest Museum, the city’s first museum that was established by our preservation hero Charles Fletcher Lummis and his pals.
That museum is empty, thanks to the city’s disgraceful failed stewardship. How amazing would it be if community members on the next hill over succeed in taking out City Hall’s garbage and giving Angelenos a chance at honest representation, fair hearings and land use decisions that make sense rather than just making lots of money?
So thank you, Crane Boulevard Safety Coalition and Jamie T. Hall. May your Petition be the wedge that breaks open the rotten machine once and for all, lets in the light and gives us Los Angeles leaders and civil servants who are on the side of the Angels and not the other guys.
yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
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UPCOMING BUS & WALKING TOURS
• Charles Bukowski’s Los Angeles Bus Tour (Sat. 8/12) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice Crime Bus Tour (Sat. 8/26) • Pasadena Confidential Crime Bus Tour (Sat. 9/9) • Franklin Village Old Hollywood Walking Tour (Sat. 9/16) • University Park Walking Tour (Sat. 9/23) • Weird West Adams Crime Bus Tour (Sat. 9/30) • Eastside Babylon Crime Bus Tour (Sat. 10/14) • The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain’s Southern California Nightmare Bus Tour (Sat. 10/21) • The Real Black Dahlia Crime Bus Tour (Sat. 10/28) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 Walking Tour (Sun. 10/29)
The FBI prosecuted Councilmember Huizar because he interfered with the scripting at PLUM. Once a councilmember agrees to a project, that's supposed to satisfy of "One and Done Rule." One council member bribed and the developer is guaranteed that his project will get unanimous approval at city council. The role of PLUM was to hold so-called public hearings in order to avoid them at city council. Huizar ( and Englander) however would interpose delays at PLUM and often seek more niceties from the developer. In fact, to cur favor with important constituents it is even rumored that sometimes Huizar took citizen's comments seriously! Yes, he had the gall to take citizens' complaints seriously!!! Of course, it seemed that we wanted more than just at the developer address the citizens' complaints.
Well, this was an intolerable breach of the One and Done Rule. Huizar when so far as evening holding up a project at City Council for proof that Ellis Act fees had been paid to poor people. The FBI had no choice but to prosecute Englander and Huizar; they were endangering how LA City Council had become a criminal enterprise to make developers and their politico allies wealthy
Since I was a teenager, I've involved in various aspects of the organized Jewish Community which entails more than just being Jewish. During the horrible character assassination of the three Mexican city councilmembers, the organize community remained silent. There were a few Jews who helped or at least gave moral support from behind the scenes, but I will not name them as it would only harm them. UCLA was not innocent as it knew what was happening and refused to take action; it took was too woke to do anything. See District Judge Mark Scarsi's court's decision.
The character assassination of the three city councilmembers and the failure of the Jewish community to stand up for the Truth was a sad dereliction of duty of the organized community. I used to be the assistant areas director for AJC LA. Thus, I know what we would have done years ago. Our failure to speak up on behalf of the victims is linked to how some major Jewish institutions, e.g. ADL and AJC, have sold out to Wokeism.
When it comes to the long standing corruption at LA City Hall, race, creed, color, gender sexual orientation, etc plays no role. Some councilmembers eagerly fill their pockets with loot, but even those who do not accept bribes support the corrupt One and Done Rule.