Brainiac Mayoral Candidate Eric Garcetti Pleads Ignorance On Clear Channel Vote as Rival Emanuel Pleitez Files Ethics Complaint

Eric Garcetti

Read L.A Weekly feature article about inner-city success story Emanuel Pleitez.

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Emanuel Pleitez is now getting into the thick of a brewing scandal involving rival Eric Garcetti, who L.A. Weekly reported owned stock in Clear Channel Communications while at the same time voted in 2006 on a city matter that brought the company's subsidiary a huge financial windfall.

On Thursday, the Pleitez campaign officially filed a complaint with the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission, saying Garcetti should have recused himself from that vote. "Council member Garcetti tries to portray himself as so 'holier than thou,'" says Pleitez spokesman John Hill, "but the more you dig the more dirt you find."

Garcetti spokesman Jeff Millman responds: "This is not a conflict. Because Eric did not hold stock in Clear Channel Outdoor, he didn't know or have any reason to know that he had a financial interest."

Millman adds, "As is his practice, Eric cast his vote based on the public's best interest, informed by the City Attorney's strong recommendation to the City Council. The motion was introduced by other council members and the vote was unanimous."

The brouhaha revolves around Garcetti voting to approve a city settlement that allowed Clear Channel Outdoor and CBS Outdoor to each erect 420 digital billboards across Los Angeles.

You know, those huge blaring billboards that tell you to watch American Idol that night as you drive through rush hour traffic. The ones that sometimes blind you because they are so freaking bright. The ones that nearly anyone who sees them considers to be major blight in their neighborhoods. Those digital billboards.

Well, Garcetti said, yeah, go ahead and put up 840 of the godawful things all over Los Angeles -- a judge later voided that settlement, and that ruling is now going through the state appeals process.

L.A. Weekly's Gene Maddaus broke the news Wednesday that Garcetti owned stock in Clear Channel Communications, which holds Clear Channel Outdoor as a subsidiary, at the time of that vote.

Laughably, brainiac Garcetti -- who attended the Ivy League's Columbia University and was a Rhodes Scholar, who knows every little factoid and city policy known to man and loves to let you know that he knows -- told Maddaus he had no idea Clear Channel Communications "retained any control" over Clear Channel Outdoor.

What a hoot! The only problem is that he's running to be mayor of the second largest city in the United States with a population of nearly 4 million people. His pleading of ignorance is troublesome, to say the least.

If Garcetti truly couldn't connect the dots about Clear Channel, then clearly he's not as smart as he makes himself out to be, and we've already dealt with a mayor for the past eight years who didn't care about such details, which now has Los Angeles on the verge of bankruptcy.

Or Garcetti refuses to own up to his error in judgment and instead chooses to tell a fib. That's not so great either.

Pleitez is trying to get some mileage out of the Garcetti/Clear Channel controversy, but it looks as though his complaint with the Los Angeles Ethics Commission may add up to nothing.

According to an ethics commission official, who would not comment on Pleitez's filing, she says there is usually a statute of limitations of four years in these types of cases. Garcetti cast his controversial vote in 2006.

Contact Patrick Range McDonald at pmcdonald@laweekly.com.

Tags:

Clear Channel, Emanuel Pleitez, Eric Garcetti, ethics commission, mayoral race, Patrick Range McDonald

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James

Patrick Range McDonald you're a hack and your reporting is crap.

James

Patrick Range McDonald you're a hack and your reporting is crap. You constantly report on issue without checking the whole range of facts involved. For example, just days after you lame white-mans-guilt article about gentrification in Hollywood there was news of hate crimes against blacks by Mexican gang members in Compton. You didn't even bother factoring in the lack of unemployment and its influence on migration to California in the gentrification trend in Hollywood or the fact that so many families have moved to greener pastures in places like the Valley. Get a freaking clue! L.A. Weekly needs to stop hiring out-of-state transplants who are easily manipulated by special interests and race issues. Do every one a favor Patrick and take your pasty-face-white-mans-burden journalism back to Boston, New York or where ever freaking place you belong because when it comes to issues in L.A. you have your head up your rear.

Dante

1 Like

What Patrick Range McDonald won't tell you--because he's a dishonest hack--is that after Eric found out about this in 2006, he donated all of his ClearChannel stock to charity to ensure that there could be no potential conflict of interest in any subsequent votes on the billboard issue. This means that Patrick's accusation that Garcetti has not owned up to his error in judgment is simply false. He owned up to it, acknowledged it, and corrected it--which is the type of thing that a hard-hitting investigative journalist like Patrick should praise a politician for.

But you're not going to get that out of Patrick, because he hates Eric Garcetti for cleaning up Hollywood. And that means that no piece of coverage Patrick does on the mayoral race is going to be even remotely fair, because he has an agenda. And when the runoff comes down to between Eric and whoever else it is, you can expect Patrick to go hardcore for whoever Eric's opponent is. That's his M.O.

smm94

Ivy League is in itself an adjective, you don't need to turn it into a possessive, a la 'the Ivy League's.' It makes you sound like some angry Tea Party guy who's got a chip on his shoulder over how dumb he is. You may not realize this, but your entire 'article' relies on a tactic the Tea Party uses fairly often.

Step 1: lampoon some 'brainy' politician. Step 2: find some miniscule, isolated mistake that he's committed. Step 3: conclude that he either isn't as smart as he appears, or that being 'brainy' is a useless thing to be made fun of, or finally that he's playing stupid about his mistake and is, in fact, a criminal mastermind. This kind of thing is done to Obama all the time.

It would be more honest if you just endorsed Pleitez or Greuel, and then wrote your ramblings somewhere else on the internet where casual passersby won't mistake it for the news.