L.A. City News · @lacitynews
29th Jan 2011 from Twitlonger
INVESTIGATORS, READ THIS FROM 3RD FLOOR FLY:
Maneuvers at midnight
Here is one example of how sponsored bills shape the process of lawmaking — allowing private agendas to overwhelm the public interest.
In 2007, the Legislature took up a bill to authorize the spending of a $2.8 billion affordable housing bond approved in a voter referendum. The bill initially sought to ensure that projects would be efficient and geographically diverse, and that they would reduce homelessness.
But at the urging of a lobbyist for the sports and entertainment giant Anschutz Entertainment Group, a different, sponsored version of the bill suddenly appeared — amid a flurry of bills on the last days of the legislative session. Several legislators whose names were attached to the bill dropped off, leaving only Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, as legislative backer of the amended bill. It cleared the Senate after midnight, and the Assembly at 3:26 a.m.
Hugh Bower, the lead staff member of the Assembly Committee on Housing and Community Development, was stunned when the bill came up that night; he had been told the issue was dead. There was such chaos, Bower recalls, that one committee member still thought the next day that the amended bill had died.
What was Anschutz’s interest? Its version of the bill allowed some affordable housing funds to be used for parks, landscaping and fancy sidewalks in the neighborhood around the company-owned Staples Center in downtown L.A.
Anschutz insisted its changes would let any “Business Improvement District” — a specially created association of property owners and government agencies — apply for the funds. But only the district near the Staples Center did, receiving the maximum award of $30 million.
Christine Minnehan, director of legislative advocacy for the Western Center on Law and Poverty, lamented the award, saying many affordable housing projects were awarded less than half that amount.
She called the outcome “a theft of public funds, and a deception of the voters.”
http://laudyms.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/lobbyists-making-legislators-obsolete/
January 29, 2011 12:38 PM
original post: http://ow.ly/3MBid