LA Public Library staffers seek apology for cancelled Read Palestine Week event
Los Angeles Public Library staffers this week began putting their names to a “solidarity letter” that seeks an apology from library administrators after the cancellation of a Read Palestine Week event that had been set for Dec. 6. The letter now has the names of 103 people as of Friday, Dec. 19.
The cancelled event was to have been a virtual, online talk between Palestinian American children’s book author Jenan Matari, and young adult author Nora Lester Murad, who is Jewish. The two authors spoke to The LA Reporter earlier this month about the cancellation. Both described what happened as censorship; library officials, meanwhile, responded by pointing to those authors’ books still being available in their collections to be checked out.
After the solidarity letter began circulating, Los Angeles Public Library City Librarian John Szabo issued his own letter, addressed to library staff. “As a department of the City of Los Angeles, the Library has a responsibility to remain nonpartisan and apolitical,” the letter says. It also explained that the event was cancelled due to “Matari’s social media posts related to October 7, 2023.”
For more about what’s in Szabo’s and the staffer’s solidarity letters, read the The LA Reporter story here.
LAPD finally makes it onto the Charter Reform Commission agenda, after director tells advocates they don’t have much time for it
The Los Angeles Police Department is one of the most high-profile departments in Los Angeles city government, and it takes up the biggest part of the city’s budget, as well as its liability costs.
And it might be one of its most politically powerful, with some of LA’s most powerful elected city leaders, such as those who sit on the City Council, questioning if they even have the power to tell the LAPD to stop attacking Angelenos and others during protests, and to not collaborate with federal immigration officials, who have been conducting indiscriminate raids and abducting Angelenos.
So it would make sense if the LAPD were among the first topics the Los Angeles Charter Reform Commission took up. The panel is tasked with finding areas of improvement in the city’s governance rules, and the LAPD’s governance structure, police chief hiring process and the officer discipline process are all laid out in the charter.
But it’s been strangely absent from the panel’s work in its first six months. The panel’s executive director, Justin Ramirez, even told advocates in August, that it might be too difficult to find time in the panel’s schedule to discuss the LAPD.
But after a campaign by members of the public and advocates to raise its importance, the LAPD, add the larger topics of policing and public safety, have finally made it to the commission’s agenda. Read the full story about that effort in The LA Reporter here.
And after a delayed start, the pace has been a bit blinding, with some commissioners on a smaller committee taking up the issue commenting this week they haven’t been given enough breathing room review the issue and prepare a set of recommendations for the full commission to consider. The topic has already been taken up in quick succession at the Dec. 11 and Dec. 16 meetings of the commission’s Personnel and Budget Committee meeting, and at a Dec. 18 full Charter Reform Commission meeting. Commission staff has promised there will be further opportunities in January, in the new year to dive deeper into the topic.
In the meantime, recommendations from advocates have come in, and can be found here and here. There are also recommendations from City Council member Eunisses Hernandez, Tim McOsker and Hugo Soto-Martinez.
The Ethics Commission gets tough with Councilman John Lee this week, hitting him with $138,124.32 in penalties
Los Angeles City Councilman John Lee on Wednesday, Dec. 17, was fined to the tune of $138,124.32 in penalties, by the Ethics Commission, for 10 counts of ethics violations in 2016 and 2017 related to expensive meals at LA restaurants, taking part in a poker night in Koreatown, and during two-day trip to Las Vegas.
Five of the counts have to do with allegations Lee misused his position and helped his then-boss, Council member Mitchell Englander, mis-use his city position. Since 2017, Lee was elected to replace Englander — who had resigned, and later was convicted to providing false information to the FBI in a investigation into that two-day Las Vegas trip — and then later re-elected to the job.
The other five of the counts was for accepting excessive gifts and not disclosing those gifts. The 123-report that was presented to the Ethics Commission ahead of this week’s vote contained details on the gifts that Lee had failed to disclose.
The account laid out in the report begins in 2016, when Andy Wang — a businessman who was interested in getting contracts with the city, including for projects to implement a facial recognition system — and a lobbyist he hired, Michael Bai, took then-City Councilmember Mitchell Englander and his staffer, John Lee, out to lunch at a couple of high-end Los Angeles restaurants, Yxta Cocina Mexicana and the Water Grill. Wang spent just under $1,000 for those meals with the city officials.
The same crew got together again in 2017, for poker at a Koreatown venue called Café La Vue. This time an architect Chris Pak who owns Archeon Group joined them. They spent two to three hours enjoying bottle service and entertainment by female hostesses, while playing poker. Wang estimated that night cost around $1,500 to $1,600.
Then in May 2017, Lee announced he was leaving his job in Englander’s office to be a consultant. His boss, Englander, texted Wang about going to Las Vegas. Wang and Bai made it happen in June, with the crew going to Vegas, where they stayed at Aria Hotel, where Wang had VIP status.
Wang gave Lee and others $1,000 each in gambling chips to play with at the casino. Lee lost his $1,000 in chips playing Baccarat. Then they had dinner at a Chinese restaurant called Blossom Restaurant where Wang ordered a comped dinner of shark’s fin soup that cost $1,280, some Kobe beef for $221, and Peking duck for $99 for a table of eight. For beverages, he ordered soft drinks, beer and some scotch. The total bill was $2,481.50. Lee recalled trying someone else’s bird’s nest soup, which he didn’t like. It turned out that while there had been shark’s fin soup, bird’s nest wasn’t actually one of the items listed on the dinner bill.
The grew then took a comped limo ride to MGM Grand Hotel where they partied at Hakkasan, a nightclub where they were served $24,000 of bottle service, paid for by Wang and Pak, that included high-end champagne and hard liquor that were brought in by female hostesses in a dazzling show of flashing lights. Wang and Pak left after the first night, but Englander asked Wang for a second night. Wang agreed and used his VIP status to comp Lee and Englander for the second night.
Thanks to what’s laid out in that report, and the Ethics Commission’s vote on Wednesday, Lee is now supposed to pay the $138,124.32. He has 21 days from the vote, or until January 7, to do it. But it remains to be seen if that will really happen. Lee said he intends to fight the Ethics Commission’s decision, characterizing the charges in a statement to The LA Times, as “baseless.”
Thank you for reading. If you have any tips, corrections, suggestions or musings for The LA Reporter, please send them to [email protected].
If you like what I do and want to keep The LA Reporter in the field, you can provide financial support to me here. And if you want a sticker with my logo on it, include your email in your Ko-Fi tip message to me! Feel free to make the message private.