[Originally posted on Mayor Sam Nov. '06]
REGARDING AB 1381: Here's something that pisses me off, and demonstrates how the Mayor inappropriatley advances his agenda like a three card monte dealer on Times Square.]
FROM: LA WEEKLY, The Z Files This Just In: Voters Snookered
(By DAVID ZAHNISER Wednesday, November 8, 2006)
As it turns out, those who want honest and accountable government have taken matters into their own hands. One day before Tuesday's election, the Los Angeles Unified School District filed an ethics complaint against Villaraigosa and the massive fund-raising apparatus he assembled in his drive to obtain power at L.A. Unified. [And this week, City Council voted to reserve the right to spend $100,000 to defend Antonio's AB 1381 court challenge, which ISN'T supposed to happen. See ZD story below.]
Villaraigosa raised $1.1 million, one-fourth of it from powerful Westside developers, for his Mayor's Committee for Governmental Excellence and Accountability, the political team of campaign consultants, opposition researchers and lawyers that helped him win passage of a bill in Sacramento that gave him new powers at L.A. Unified. The mayor registered his committee as the type that gives money to ballot measures, then spent the special-interest money on a Sacramento lobbying blitz instead, said Fred Woocher, an attorney representing L.A. Unified.
If Villaraigosa wanted to spend money on lobbying, he would have had to do so through his officeholder account which, under city law, can collect only $75,000 per year, Woocher said. Instead, Villaraigosa blew the lid off those fund-raising limits by raking in six-figure contributions for his ballot-measure campaign, said Woocher, who sent a letter to the Ethics Commission and the Fair Political Practices Commission asking for an investigation.
"This sham has permitted the mayor to accept huge campaign contributions from persons with business before the City of Los Angeles, circumventing the intent of city law to prevent precisely such "pay for play politics," Woocher wrote.
FULL STORY: http://www.laweekly.com/news/z-files/this-just-in-voters-snookered/14976/
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