Carmen "The Clown" Trutanich was sworn in as Los Angeles City Attorney on July 1, 2009. He ran as an Independent, promising honesty, integrity, openness and transparency. This blog exists because not everything is TRU.
Trutanich gets the last laugh on the City Council by
fooling them into giving him the Grand Jury Powers
they denied him last year,
According to a report at the Los Angeles Dragnet, Trutanich "sneaked" Grand Jury powers into the ACE Program and played on the greed of the City Council for the promise of vast cash revenues from the ACE Program, to blind them to the reality of what he was actually doing.
The Dragnet's analysis concludes that the ACE Program, once enacted, will give Tutanich unlimited McCarthy-like Grand Jury subpoena powers, and allow him to fully control the judges he get to appoint. But the promised stream of millions of dollars for the General Fund is likely never to materialize unless the Council stands by and allows Trutanich to target homeowners and small businesses with ACE penalties.
The Council would most likely never allow Trutanich to use the ACE Program against homeowners and small businesses because such action would likely mean the end of their political careers. So Trutanich will be left to employ ACE against illegal street vendors, graffiti vandals and unlicensed day laborers - all worthy causes, but all unlikely to be able to pay ACE Penalties. Thus the ACE Program gives nothing to the General Fund, but gives Trutanich the last laugh as his Grand Jury powers will allow him to harass his enemies and make mountains out of molehills.
Read the Dragnet article for a full and excellent analysis of Trutanich's end run on the City Council.
Trutanich's lies about "his" ACE Program are seen as just the
latest of a series of lies that Trutanich followers are being fed
as the former Plaintiff's Attorney steps up his campaign for DA.
(Credit: Los Angeles Dragnet)
Trutanich's desperation may be due to the fact that the ACE Program is inching closer and closer to a vote by the full City Council. As it gets closer to that vote, Trutanich seems to be ratcheting up the hyperbole with his followers, promising a more efficient way of obtaining "compliance" from municipal code violators, as well as a new stream of revenue for the cash strapped City Council from the "Administrative Penalties" that Trutanich says will be as simple as "traffic tickets." Simple for who? The City in collecting the money, or those hit with traffic ticket-like fines with no real hope of fighting them?
But as to the lies themselves, Trutanich appears to have told at least two; the first was that the ACE Program was an idea he had when he became City Attorney. He didn't say it once, he said it twice, so there's no excuse about misunderstanding exactly what he said.
Trutanich's claim that the ACE Program was an idea he had when he became City Attorney
appears to be completely false based on the original motion instructing Trutanich to
create an administrative citation ordinance.
The second lie that Trutanich told, is that he had shared his idea with other cities. Trutanich specifically mention the cities of San Diego and Santa Monica, and implied that they had implemented his plan and that it was "working just fine." But both of those cities already had their own administrative citation programs in force long before Trutanich was asked by CM Koretz to write LA's version of those ordinances, indeed, Trutanich despatched three of his top aides to San Diego to study and copy the San Diego program.
Sharp eyed observers will note that the latest iteration of ACE Program has stripped away Trutanich's control over where the administrative penalty money will go. But the all-important subpoena power remains, and if Trutanich succeeds in retaining this power he will have made fools of his enemies in City Hall who quashed of his Grand Jury plans last year.
Critics still believe that the City Council needs to remove Trutanich from having any involvement with the ACE Program because it still could be used just like traffic tickets - to raise money, rather than to promote public safety. As the Los Angeles Dragnet observed, "if you cannot trust the City Attorney to be truthful about where it came from, how can you trust him when he tells you where it's going?"
