NOAH PATRICK PFARR

As if city leaders aren't doing the same.

So the LAPD just nabbed one (allegedly) conniving city employee on suspicion of "stealing more than 800 gallons of gasoline over a three month period of time" and selling it on the black market.

Michael Anthony Lee, a 12-year veteran of the Department of Recreation and Parks who worked at the Algin Sutton Recreation Center, was jailed along with L.A. resident Shane Anthony Gansterer yesterday.

But what about the $6.9 million in taxpayer-funded city gas that remains unaccounted for?

More >>

Mayor Sam

Councilman Huizar is running this show.

What happened behind closed doors at yesterday's L.A. City Council meeting?

Given the whole closed-door thing, it's hard to say. What we do know is that before L.A. City Council President Herb Wesson formed a secret huddle that lasted for over half an hour, a soft/sane proposal for pot-shop regulation by Councilman Paul Koretz still had a shot at making its way into ordinance.

But by the time the closed session let out...

More >>

Images Money

Other people's money. It's so fun to play with. Especially when it's yours.

Let us explain: Today city controller Wendy Greuel said her latest audit has discovered that more than $7 million worth of fuel costs have gone basically unexplained at City Hall.

That's your tax money at work, and it's enough to hire lots of cops and firefighters. And it's gone, in the ether like smoke after a fire:

More >>

Think like St. Francis of Assisi

This is important. The future of Los Angeles is on the line. Do we have your attention? Good. You need to put your thinking caps on for this one...

Imagine you are Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. You showed a lot of promise back in 2005, but you got caught up in mugging for the cameras and flying around the world like a millionaire and you lost focus.

Then with only a little more than a year left in office, the image of St. Francis of Assisi, a man who dedicated himself to selflessly serving humanity, appeared to you in the sky as you sun-bathed in the backyard of the mayor's mansion. You realized you need to stop thinking about yourself and only do what's best for Los Angeles. But what should you do?

More >>

Villaraigosa.

Another year, another budget deficit.

As we head into summer L.A. City Hall will face a $200 million deficit. That said, revenues are improving, and the budget might be turning a corner for the better. Still, the mayor has been opening up the process to you, the citizen, and once again has asked what your priorities are.

Antonio Villaraigosa's recently released annual budget survey says ...

More >>

City Hall East.

The city of Los Angeles, like the rest of the world, has been having money problems the last few years. So much so that some even predicted that City Hall could go bankrupt.

Maybe L.A. has turned a corner, because L.A. City Controller Wendy Greuel says things are looking up for the next fiscal year.

Greuel says that L.A. will see a massive ...

More >>

ultimateebookstore.com

Lost to the wind.

Ah, but how quickly Los Angeles city officials forget the pact they made with the fed-up peoples of Occupy L.A.!

At a City Ethics Commission meeting today, a proposal to more than double the campaign-contribution limits for City Councilmembers and other elected officials was almost passed by the four commissioners.

But thanks to 300 angry emails and a rowdy herd of public commenters...

More >>

Carmen Trutanich

​City Attorney Carmen Trutanich announced Thursday that his office is suing Northern Trust, a firm that manages investments for the city pension fund, in an effort to recoup $95 million in market losses.

"I'm coming," Trutanich said. "We're coming. And we want our money back."

If Trutanich prevails in the lawsuit, he can expect a substantial windfall for his own office. Trutanich could collect attorney's fees, plus significant civil penalties that would be split between his office and the county.
More >>

Austin Beutner

​Two top strategists have left Austin Beutner's campaign, in the first major shake-up of the 2013 race for L.A. mayor.

Ace Smith and Sean Clegg stepped down just a few days before the next campaign finance reports are due.

The news was first reported by the L.A. Times' David Zahniser, who surmises that the split was tied to Beutner's jobs speech last week, in which he offered an "increasingly harsh" critique of L.A. City Hall. (Smith and Clegg go way back with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.)

But Clegg rejects that analysis. And indeed, if anything, Beutner's critique of City Hall was not harsh enough.
More >>

The ouster of Occupy L.A. left City Hall Park with dirt where once there was turf. And when ideas started coming in about what should be done to restore the landscape that adorns the symbolic center of the city, the range of opinions was something akin to those within Occupy L.A.: widely varied, with a generally progressive bent.

In gardening terms, "progressive" means less grass and more drought-tolerant and native plants. The fear, however, was that the city, bureaucratic and broke, would blow the opportunity to reboot the garden and just go with the least expensive and most traditional option: planting another flat, green sprawl. After all, grass is the cheapest to install and the easiest to maintain.

More >>