Why do we repeatedly elect officials who lack the talents and discipline to properly represent Los Angeles? The current crop of Los Angeles City Council members are great examples of this. Most, but not all are recycled state senators and assemblymen. We have two such retreads right here in the Valley.
Tony Cárdenas who represents Encino, Van Nuys and Lake Balboa along with other Valley neighborhoods claims on his web site to have overseen the most robust state revenue (TAX) reserve in the history of the state. Tony left the state assembly to bring his expertise to Los Angeles. The state is now broke and so is Los Angeles. Coincidence? I don’t know. This is the same guy, so why is he having such a tough time translating his talents to Los Angeles?
Now he wants to run for Congress, if Cardenas wins that seat he will have served in three government entities that are basically broke:California, Los Angeles, and the USA.
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Councilmember Alarcon who represents Pacoima, North Hills and Mission Hills was a state senator and assemblyman. One of his proudest achievements was his work on federal and state utility policies. He was front and center as Mayor Villaraigosa planned and implemented the misguided green energy policy which led to all of us paying higher DWP rates. His most flagrant special interest payoffs came when he tried to derail a much needed addition to Mission Hills Hospital in an effort to force unionization on hospital operators.
There are more of these recycled former state pols, and they will be the subject of future blogs. In the meanwhile I wish the voters would start to think in terms of what is good for the city and reject the party politics that have driven so many of our elected representatives bad decisions for the city. We need to stop feeding the ego of the elected officials. We should all be asking, what our elected officials have done to make my life better and my community more livable.
