Know Jack? NO JACK.

I received an email from NO@KnowJackWeiss.com, and I wanted to share it with my supporters. It is republished below.

Know Jack Weiss.

NO Jack Weiss.

Installment #1:

Our City Attorney Matters

THE CITY ATTORNEY IS OUR LEGAL WATCHDOG

Perhaps you are counting on our City Attorney to protect us from hard core criminals. And to be our go-to-guy against gangs. You should know that the District Attorney, not the City Attorney, prosecutes felons. Ideally, our next City Attorney will be a master of the criminal law system and an aggressive partner to our District Attorney, but crime is only one of the responsibilities of the City Attorney. The City Attorney defends us in the hundreds of civil lawsuits filed against the City. And, every day, the 500 City Attorneys instruct our Mayor, City Council, Police Chief, and City Departments on their legal obligations to the public. The City Attorney is all that stands between us and a rogue City Hall that trades in political backslapping instead of what’s right.

THE CITY ATTORNEY DECIDES WHICH LAWS TO ENFORCE

And then there’s that other major responsibility. The City Attorney decides which of our laws to enforce. Did you ever wonder why that illegal building is still standing? Or why that sea of fresh billboards is in place? Or why the “club” down the street or that shuttered facility is home to activity at all hours of the day and night? The list goes on and on. You know the volume of unlawful, disruptive activity in YOUR neighborhood. Our City Attorney is tasked with enforcing our laws. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have our laws enforced?  All it takes is a City Attorney whose eye is on serving us, the public. All it takes is for US to elect a new breed of City Attorney. More to come…

Do NOT vote for Jack Weiss for City Attorney on March 3

Know Jack Weiss.

NO Jack Weiss.

Installment #2 of 7:

The Subject was Rape

RAPE VICTIMS COUNTED ON JACK WEISS FOR HELP

When he first ran for City Council in 2001, and again in 2005, candidate Jack Weiss made this pledge: he vowed to make the female victims of violent crime his priority. When he spoke to the National Council of Jewish Women, he reaffirmed his promise. But Jack’s post-election inaction was deafening. By September 2007, our expectations had dimmed. We sat with Weiss and a thousand others at the annual Santa Monica Rape Treatment Center brunch. Now chairman of the Los Angeles Public Safety Committee, Weiss had yet to lift a finger. Rape victims spoke movingly about their personal ordeals and heroism. Civic leaders told us about the volume of untested LAPD rape kits. Perhaps this time, on this late date, we could goad or shame Jack Weiss into action. We approached Weiss, yet again, for his help.

WEISS TURNED HIS BACK UNTIL RAPE COULD HELP HIM

Jack brushed away our September 2007 appeals like so many flies. That is, until late 2008, and the ramp up of his campaign for City Attorney. Jack Weiss and the City Council directed $250,000 from the City street furniture fund to test the waiting rape kits. Reports stated that as many as 20% of the DNA samples had degraded to unusable. Weiss publicly proclaimed himself the white knight, rescuing rape victims from the City’s dallying. We cringe at the avalanche of television ads broadcasting the “leadership” of Jack Weiss in the fight against rape. City Council Members Jan Perry and Dennis Zine, and rape victims, have called Weiss on his deception. Why did Jack Weiss make victims wait seven long years? Grateful for even his tardy, manipulative attention, they (and we) will never know. More to come…

Do NOT vote for Jack Weiss for City Attorney on March 3

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Know Jack Weiss.

NO Jack Weiss.

Installment #3 of 7:

One Man McMansion Band

LA: THE WILD McMANSION FRONTIER

You’re not surprised. Until 2008, there were few limits on the size of what could be built on a single-family residential lot in our City. This lack of regulation produced McMansions: grossly oversized houses that took away light, greenery, shade, and views, that hogged natural resources, that diminished every other home on their street. After each of our surrounding cities had imposed curbs on these Hummer-sized homes, the City Council pushed the LA Planning Department forward. The planners and Planning Commission held dozens of public meetings — more hearings than on any other topic. A proposal was drafted that would permit mansions to flourish, but that would prohibit the most outlandish abuses. Dozens of communities and hundreds of emails supported the new ordinance. Kudos! Consensus!

JACK WEISS: KING OF THE McMANSIONS

You’re still not surprised. The proposed new law then began a slow and painful death. It stalled for more than six months. Why? Councilman Jack Weiss became a one man band in favor of McMansions. Check the record for yourself.  Weiss single-handedly held the matter in committee so that it could not be voted upon by the very same City Council whose members had initially pressed the Planning Department into action. He publicly lobbied against passage. No other Council member stepped in to ally with Weiss; he had threadbare public support. So, we ask ourselves, who or what motivated Jack Weiss? Today, Los Angeles forbids wildly excessive homes. The effort to get this measure adopted nearly undid the neighborhoods, which kept the measure alive through countless additional rounds of hostile hearings, courtesy of Jack Weiss. More to come…

Do NOT vote for Jack Weiss for City Attorney on March 3

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Know Jack Weiss.

NO Jack Weiss.

Installment #4 of 7:

A Tale of Two (Century) Cities

PARADISE FOUND: CENTURY CITY

Until our current worldwide economic meltdown, the real estate market in Los Angeles was red hot. Post 9/11 brought us the gold rush of 1849 all over again. Buy some land. Convince the City Council to double, triple, or even ten-fold its zoning and make your fortune. Nowhere was this gold rush more in evidence than in Century City. This mostly “office park” had not realized the promise of its specific plan zoning of the early 1980’s. The original idea had been to tie the growth of Century City to the number of car trips that its few streets could accommodate. But by the mid-2000’s, planning had moved beyond simply counting cars to the notion of mixing uses for the purpose of shrinking the overall number of vehicle trips. Dozens of developers perked up their ears.

PARADISE LOST: CENTURY CITY

Briefly, good news. Girding for a half dozen gargantuan development proposals, the homeowner associations surrounding Century City formed a collective. They called on the developer of two new towers offered for Avenue of the Stars at Constellation. With the traffic-relieving “subway to the sea” still just a twinkle in the Mayor’s eye, they swallowed, and negotiated neighborhood protections with the developer: $5 million to be paid into a fund monitored by the California Community Foundation. Its beneficiaries were specifically named and allocated neighborhood improvements. How smart! Followed by lasting bad news: Jack Weiss arrived to witness the happy resolution. He dismissed the collegial round table, announcing to his astonished constituents that his office would control and earmark all money. City Hall lobbyists spread the hushed word that homeowners were seeking personal payoffs. Litigation ensued. The coalition went home, some deflated, others nearly destroyed. Goodbye community-designed mitigation fund. Hello unchecked development. More to come…

Do NOT vote for Jack Weiss for City Attorney on March 3

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Know Jack Weiss.

NO Jack Weiss.

Installment #5 of 7:

Backrooms and Billboards

IT’S NO ACCIDENT: LA IS AMERICA’S BILLBOARD CAPITOL

It’s like that shell game that you were suckered into in your youth. Ready? In 2002, our City Council banned new billboards and all upgrades to existing billboards. They adopted a billboard inspection and illegal billboard removal program. The billboard industry sued. Because LA had followed the tried and true model of other cities, we were winning in court! But wait. In 2006, the City settled. We simply folded our tent. The City Council gave the billboard industry the right to install 840 digital billboards at locations of the industry’s choosing. Not a single public discussion. All closed doors. We were represented by two lawyers in the negotiating room that day: current City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and City Attorney candidate Jack Weiss. The digital signs began sprouting up in 2007 and 2008, followed by public outcry. We learned that no inspection or removal of billboards had taken place. We met a new enemy, supergraphics, those huge tarps now affixed seemingly everywhere. We realized that LA is the laughing stock of the billboard industry.

MEET JACK WEISS: THE BILLBOARD INDUSTRY’S BEST FRIEND

And where is Jack Weiss today? He is calling press conferences to talk tough against billboards. But talk is cheap. Where was Weiss when your neighbors, instead of the City, began an inventory of our illegal billboards? We guess he was out raising campaign contributions. Where was Jack when digital billboards popped up in your backyards? We guess he was diverting your attention to supergraphics while hiding from his backroom blessing of the deal that gave the digital signs life. Where is he on the subject of enforcing our billboard laws? No guessing required. Jack is aggressively pressuring City Hall to rewrite all of our billboard rules, when all we need are strict standards for sign districts and penalties and enforcement for the laws we’ve got. Jack’s proposal contains billboard-friendly loopholes the size of Mack trucks, such as its grandfathering of many pending applications for flashy sign districts. More to come…

Do NOT vote for Jack Weiss for City Attorney on March 3

Note: Our unsubscribe feature was not working properly until Friday. With apologies for the tech failure, please bear with us and unsubscribe again if you have previously done so.

Know Jack Weiss.

NO Jack Weiss.

Installment #6 of 7:

Follow the (Dirty) Money

LAW, POLITICS, DIRTY MONEY

A war chest of more than $1 million. That is the size of the gift from developers and their special interest teams to Jack Weiss in support of his campaign for City Attorney. Shocked? You ain’t seen nothing yet. Walk back with us to 2001. Attorney Jack Weiss was making his first bid for elected office. The election turned on 369 votes. Jack Weiss won. Three years later, in 2004, the vice president of developer Casden Properties and 14 of the firm’s subcontractors pled “no contest” to charges that they had laundered money to the 2001 Weiss campaign. The illegal dollars were delivered in envelopes each labeled “Casden.” Estimates of the total laundered amount range wildly, from $20,000 to $90,000. Neither figure includes the bonus dollars of public matching funds that Jack received for each dirty contribution. Trivia buffs: care to add insult to injury? This was the self-same 2001 campaign where Weiss unlawfully failed to register each one of the 23 mass mailers that he sent out to tout his candidacy.

MEASURE A MAN BY HIS DEEDS

Jack Weiss rose to this day, to this race for City Attorney, on the back of his cloudy 2001 City Council victory. The record of the 2004 no-contest proceedings raised devastating questions about what Weiss knew and when he knew it. We are ashamed to report that the City Ethics Commission never answered those questions. But we can tell you two things. One, the laws of the City of Los Angeles require the return of dirty money and the corresponding matching funds. Two, Jack Weiss never returned a single penny. This sounds unbelievable, but it is true. What does Weiss say? He mumbles about the passage of time and the closing of the specific fund into which these sums were deposited. He says nothing about the opportunity he has had to raise money to clear this record, to do the right thing. So we have a question of our own: How can someone ask to oversee our laws who is himself unwilling to live by them? More to come…

Do NOT vote for Jack Weiss for City Attorney on March 3

Know Jack Weiss.

NO Jack Weiss.

Installment #7 of 7:

The Man and His Record

COMPARE: WHAT A RECORD OF PUBLIC SERVICE LOOKS LIKE

As City Hall watchers, it is easy to become shrill and cynical. But do not give in to the temptation to dismiss our indictments of Jack Weiss as the unavoidable stuff of politics as usual. His practices dip well below that dismal standard. Consider for one moment the selfless accomplishments of just a few of his City Council colleagues: Bill Rosendahl’s campaign on behalf of the tenants of Lincoln Place; Ed Reyes’ championship of a revitalized LA River; Jan Perry’s one woman effort to solve the desperation of Skid Row; Wendy Greuel’s stand up opposition to Home Depot; Tom LaBonge’s daily vigilance to preserve Griffith Park; Eric Garcetti’s leadership of the design “walkability” teams in Hollywood; Greig Smith’s refusal to go along with the sprawling possibility of Las Lomas. Forgive us for the partial nature of this list.

WE DESERVE BETTER: THE UNACCEPTABLE JACK WEISS RECORD

Contrast those stories with the accomplishments that define Councilman Jack Weiss. He has an inexcusable attendance record; we would be fired for failing to show up for work one-third of the time. A mind-numbing 20,000 of his Council District constituents signed petitions last year to recall Weiss for his disservice in office – the recall supporters numbered more than 70% of the voters that had once elected him. We challenge you to locate causes beyond real estate development that Jack has advanced as a Councilman prior to this campaign season. You will be hard pressed to locate them.  On his history of disrespectful treatment toward his colleagues and constituents, we leave it to others to bring those messages forward. We ask only that you educate yourself. Then vote on March 3. Make an informed, heartfelt choice for the important post of City Attorney. With thanks for reading.

Do NOT vote for Jack Weiss for City Attorney on March 3