Sounds to me like the city council got too cute and tried to finesse the law in a way that didn’t satisfy legal requirements.

A judge Friday delivered a stinging rebuke to Los Angeles’ labor and political leadership, barring the city from enforcing a ballyhooed new ordinance that would have extended the city’s “living wage” protections to workers at hotels near Los Angeles International Airport.

The eight-page order by Superior Court Judge David P. Yaffe went far beyond merely blocking a law that had been considered a point of pride for the city’s powerful labor interests. As a practical matter, Yaffe dealt a political defeat to the City Council, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the union that championed the law.

over…

The City Council initially passed a living wage law.  Hotel interests in the LAX area bitterly opposed paying their workers enough so they could eat, so they collected signatures for a citywide referendum.  Then the City Council pulled the law, and replaced it with a “new” one that resulted from a negotiation with business and labor.  Apparently that law wasn’t new enough:

Instead of scheduling a referendum, the council rescinded the ordinance and, after talks with the business community, replaced it with a new living wage ordinance.

It included incentives for businesses near the airport, as well as some restrictions on extending living wage protection to other parts of the city. But the hotels and some people who had signed the referendum petition went to court to challenge it.

On Friday, the judge ruled that the new ordinance was essentially the same ordinance. In passing the new one, the council had deceitfully dodged the voter referendum and thus violated the constitutional rights of the public, the judge ruled.

“The elected representatives who enacted the new ordinance tried to make it appear different from the old ordinance,” Yaffe wrote, “but their purpose was to avoid the effect of the referendum petition, not to respect it.”

I would think the best strategy at this point would be to put the law before voters; in fact, I thought so at the time.  It’s more impactful for a living wage law to pass that way, and the latest polling shows that it would.  Obviously the hotels will fight like hell and raise lots of money to oppose it, so it would be better if unions didn’t have to break the bank ensuring that their workers are paid decently.  But that’s more of an election reform issue.

The FBI will investigate the LAPD’s conduct in firing rubber bullets to disperse the crowd at the end of Tuesday’s immigration rally, and everybody is doing their best to distance themselves from the incident and show that they’re doing something about it.

Authorities have launched several investigations into the Police Department’s actions at Tuesday’s rally at MacArthur Park, where police fired 240 rubber bullets. Video images of the incident were broadcast worldwide.

“I was very disturbed by what I saw,” (LA Mayor Antonio) Villaraigosa told reporters in Mexico City on Thursday.

The FBI said Thursday it would open an inquiry into whether the officers’ conduct violated citizens’ civil rights.

Prior to the FBI announcement, Police Chief William J. Bratton had said he would inquire whether an FBI probe was possible.

“I have no issues with the FBI coming in … and taking a look at it,” he said.

The FBI probe is the fourth official investigation of the incident. The Police Department opened two investigations almost immediately after the violence, one to create an “after-action report” that evaluates planning and operations, and another by internal affairs to probe complaints against officers.

The mayor even left Mexico early to deal with the public relations fallout.  See, he means business!

The LAPD doesn’t exactly have a sterling record with regard to police brutality, and the tensions inherent in that kind of scenario, with a few agitators on one side and an armed force on the other, with the addition of the emotional nature of the immigration debate, made this more possible.  Investigations are nice, but this kind of thing happens because of training and rules of engagement.  I guarantee you that the police officers didn’t do anything wrong in the eyes of their superiors, and that’s the problem.

I think half of the corrupt Republican Congressmen in this clever DCCC “Law and Disorder” spoof are from California.

Cunningham, Doolittle, Lewis, Miller, Calvert… they missed Bilbray, I think.

We truly are the Golden State, aren’t we?

This is an absolutely enormous development.  Clean Money got kind of lost in the shuffle at last weekend’s CDP Convention, but Loni Hancock’s AB 583 has been quietly making its way through the Assembly.  It cleared the Assembly Elections Committee, and yesterday there was a hearing in the Assembly Appropriations Committee, which was favorable.  And now, the Senate President pro Tem has signed on to be a co-author.  Considering that the CDP wouldn’t take a position on Clean Money just a year ago, this is historic news.  Susan Lerner writes in an email to supporters:

I want you to be among the first to hear the exciting news:  California Senate President pro Tem Don Perata just became a co-author of AB 583, the Clean Money bill!

The President pro Tem joins an ever-growing list of Legislators who are co-authors of AB 583, the California Clean Money and Fair Elections Act.  Clean Money supporters in Senator Perata’s Oakland district and throughout California should be proud because it was your calls, letters, and petitions that convinced him to sign on as a active Clean Money supporter.

over…

As Mark Leno said in yesterday’s Appropriation Committee hearing, “AB 583 is more than just a bill, it’s a movement.”  Two years ago it was stopped in committee.  Last year it cleared the Assembly.  And this year, Perata’s support will go a long way to helping it pass both houses and go on to the governor.  This movement understands that the ability to wage fair and clean elections is vital to sustaining our democracy.  You can join the movement working to clean up our political process here.

Robert Salladay reports that a group called U.S. Term Limits is announcing a lawsuit today over the term limits initiative, and particularly Attorney General Brown’s “Title and Summary.”  You’ll recall that the title and summary goes like this:

“LIMITS ON LEGISLATORS’ TERMS IN OFFICE. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Reduces the total amount of time a person may serve in the state legislature from 14 years to 12 years.”

Because the measure would actually extend the amount of time one legislator can spend in the Assembly or Senate, and because the measure would allow current legislators to extend their time in office (particularly the Speaker and the Senate President Pro Tem), U.S. Term Limits considers this a weakening of the law, and wants the wording changed.

Wording like this is always slippery, and whether there’s “right” or “wrong” language is debatable.  I bring this lawsuit up, however, because it was obvious that there would be a coordinated effort to derail this initiative.  Term limits are one of the backbone principles of the conservative movement, and while across the country that movement is breaking down, in this state it still means something, even if it’s marginalized.  I don’t know if U.S. Term Limits will be successful, but to me it’s a sign that there will in fact be vigorous opposition to the initiative.

I know there was a lot of bad blood coming out of how the CDP Convention wrapped up, but consider this: that controversy was over how we passed one resolution on Iraq and not another.  It’s not like it was about something like this:

Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan’s minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.

In a speech at the convention, Larsen told those gathered that illegal immigrants “hate American people” and “are determined to destroy this country, and there is nothing they won’t do.”

Illegal aliens are in control of the media, and working in tandem with Democrats, are trying to “destroy Christian America” and replace it with “a godless new world order – and that is not extremism, that is fact,” Larsen said. […]

Republican officials then allowed speakers to defend and refute the resolution. One speaker, who was identified as “Joe,” said illegal immigrants were Marxist and under the influence of the devil. Another, who declined to give her name to the Daily Herald, said illegal immigrants should not be allowed because “they are not going to become Republicans….”

No matter what the intra-party squabbles are, let’s understand that the real whackadoos are in that other party.  We can resolve differences between ourselves as reasonable people.  We don’t think Satan is an undocumented immigrant.

Another thing to consider: one of the resolutions that the CDP passed yesterday was in support of high-speed rail, which we learned yesterday that the governor may be trying to defund and effectively stop.  One of the resolutions we DIDN’T pass was in support of Clean Money, which actually is moving through the legislative process, with a hearing in the Assembly Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.  So resolutions pale in comparison to what’s really happening in Sacramento.  Just a little perspective.

I want to give a big shout-out to the Calitics community and everybody who contributed to this tremendous coverage of this year’s convention.  Juls, Brian, blogswarm, hekebolos, Lucas, atdleft, Todd, jra, da, midvalley, and I hope I’m not missing anybody else did an unbelievable job.  I’ve never seen a convention covered so thoroughly by a state blog since… the invention of state blogs.  We ran circles around traditional media at this event.  So we all should be very proud of ourselves.

Now we need to expand that role.  Obviously getting information out about the convention is vital, and I’ve had plenty of people say they were looking to Calitics for the latest news and perspective.  But if we want to help be a lever for change, we need to also  understand that there are things we can do as activists on the floor that can help bring that change about.  That means connecting with the grassroots progressives, preparing and planning for contingencies, and most important electing more officers and candidates and delegates who want to join us in this program for party reform and growth.

And let’s take up the gracious offer by Garry Shay to offer input into how the resolutions proecdure can be reviewed.  And by all means let’s those of us who are elected delegates try to get on standing committees.  Our ball has just inched off the top of the hill.  Let’s keep it rolling downward.

I thought I’d give a little bit more detail about what happened at the end of the convention, which ended with a quorum call and an abrupt close to business.

Let me first say that I do not have this inflated sense about the importance of CDP resolutions.  They reflect the spirit and the passion of the activist community of delegates, but they are not pieces of legislation that can be enforced.  They are a nice endorsement for certain issues, and the delegates can feel like they have done something.  But they are not binding.  It has to amuse me, in a cynical way, that this entire brouhaha is over a nonbinding resolution on Iraq, brought to you by many of the same people who decried the Congress’ nonbinding resolution on Iraq.

That said, I do think it’s a serious issue from the standpoint of small-d democracy and the ability for the will of the delegation to be expressed, as well as what it bodes for the real structural reforms that are needed in the party.

On the flip…

The facts of the situation are this.  There were 13 resolutions voted on at the convention on the final day.  This was the very last business done on the floor, and this is fairly typical in an off-year (endorsements, I believe, sometimes come after the resolutions).  We’ve gone over how the resolutions committee did a lot of the work on resolutions before anyone ever got to the convention, making rulings on the 104 resolutions submitted, and in some cases tabling, referring, or directing resolutions as out of order.  Eventually the 104 were whittled down to the 13 that went to the floor, the result of many meetings and compromises.

Now, the progressive grassroots, led by PDA (Progressive Democrats of America), really focused their attention on an impeachment resolution.  They would maybe say otherwise, but it is undeniable.  They worked their tails off and mobilized dozens of supporters to carry banners, flyers, signs, to sit in every committee meeting.  They whipped their people up into a frenzy over it.  Added to this outside strategy was an inside strategy, using former members of the Resolutions Committee as a liaison to hammer out compromise language that could get the resolution to the floor.  They succeeded on their main goal; an “investigations toward impeachment” resolution passed.  This was really something of a small miracle, and the result of hard work and serious grassroots action.

But there was a price.  All of the energy put into the impeachment resolution took away from many of the other priorities of the Progressive Slate, priorities on which I ran – single-payer health care, clean money, election protection, net neutrality.  None of these made it out of committee.  Privately, some high-profile PDA members were very angry about this series of events.  They considered it wrong to ditch these other important proposals to put all the eggs in the impeachment basket.  I would add the 58-county strategy and the Audit Committee proposals to that, which were remanded to a task force for study, despite the fact that a significant number of signatures were collected to bring it to the floor (it couldn’t because of that new rule about resolutions which are referred or tabled not allowed to go through that process).  Chairman Torres appointed some of the main leaders in creating the Audit Committee proposal to the task force, and seemed sincere in his vow to abide by the wish to look at how the CDP funds races.  Stay tuned on that.

Resolutions on Iraq fell somewhere in the middle.  The Chairman of the Party and Senate leader Perata had a vested interest in getting the delegates to endorse their language on the Out of Iraq initiative, scheduled to move through the legislative process and onto the February ballot.  Here’s the key text:

BE IT RESOLVED, that the California Democratic Party wholeheartedly supports the following statement: “The people of California, in support of the men and women serving in the Armed Forces of the United States, urge President Bush to end the US occupation of Iraq and immediately begin the safe and orderly withdrawal of all United States combat forces; and further urge President Bush and the United States Congress to provide the necessary diplomatic and non-military assistance to promote peace and stability in Iraq and the Middle East; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the California Democratic Party urges other states to follow suit unifying our country in its absolute desire to see an immediate end to the Iraq War and sending the strongest possible message to President Bush and the Republican presidential candidates.

Perata wants to take the resolution to other states as well.  And certainly there’s a benefit in forcing state Republicans and the Governor to have to take a position on Iraq before 2008 (if the state party uses those votes).  But the point is that the party leaders had a vested interest in keeping the Perata resolution clean, without amendments.

But four amendments were offered on the floor.  Any delegate can pull the resolution and move to amend, and those amendments are then voted on in turn.  It happened with a few of the other resolutions (all the amendments failed, I believe).  On this one, two amendments added more specific language; one to cut off funding totally for the occupation of Iraq, and another to de-authorize the legislation that took the country to war.  A third amendment changed “Republican presidential candidates” to “all Presidential candidates,” and a fourth tried to insert language abut Iran.  The fourth one was immediately ruled out of order and not germane.

On the others, the progressive grassroots and the Party leaders forged a compromise that, if it had succeeded, would have had everyone going home with a smile on their face.  The Perata bill would go forward without amendment; but then the two substantive amendments, on cutting funding and de-authorization, would become separate resolutions that could be debated and voted on immediately thereafter.  Chairman Torres had to suspend the normal rules regarding resolutions to make this happen, and it showed an effort to offer the best of both worlds.  Sen. Perata gets his bill endorsed by the Party, and the progressives get their resolutions the full force of passage.  A cheer went up in the crowd when this happened.  A lot of goodwill was gained in that moment.  PDA and their allies would have gone home meeting their goals on Iraq and impeachment, which would not have been expected.

And then, in a moment, it was gone.

Karen Wingard, a regional director from Southern California, in association with Ted Smith, a member of the Resolutions Committee, called for quorum.  The rest here:

Someone called for a quorum on the presumption that there wouldn’t be a quorum, so no more debate could be conducted and business would be over.  When the quorum call was made, they immediately started counting–I barely had time to run from the blogger table back to my region–much less anyone from the hallway.

A lot of people are upset about this–there are people who are saying they expect parliamentary crap like this to be pulled by the Republican party, not by Democrats.

A quorum is 1155, and there are only 623 delegates.  No more business can be conducted.  The convention is over and we can only hear reports.

All of the goodwill of the previous several minutes was lost.  People predisposed to believe the worst about the Party leadership was given the excuse they needed to believe it.

But this didn’t appear to be an inside job.  Chairman Torres and the leadership wouldn’t have negotiated such a compromise in the first place knowing that it would be sabotaged, would he?  It made things so much worse, I cannot imagine why he would think to do that.  And people we talked to afterwards said that the Chairman was genuinely shocked by the turn of events.  Once quorum is called, counting must go on; he cannot overturn a bylaw, only a rule.  So the die was cast.

Anyone can make a quorum call.  The reasons for it can only be speculative on my part.  Calitics calls on those who pursued this divisive strategy to subvert small-d democracy and silence the will of the remaining delegates to come forward and explain exactly why they felt the need to do so.

The other thing that must be discussed here is that the underlying structure of the convention lends itself for this kind of thing to happen.  Resolutions are done last, and in this example, this was the last resolution discussed.  There were less reasons for delegates to stay as the day wore on.  If the resolutions are supposed to reflect the spirit of all the delegates, it seems to me that the Party could make a good-faith effort to not make them an afterthought by putting them dead last.

Like I said, resolutions aren’t bound with the force of law.  But they mean something on at least a spiritual level to a great many activists and people who bring so much energy and effort to the Party.  Furthermore, the suspicion that there isn’t enough transparency in how the Party does business is already there.  This “sour taste” allowed many progressives to believe everything they already wanted to believe.  We have an opportune moment in America, where new activists are interested and excited by the prospect of real progressive change, and are getting involved for the very first time.  The CDP needs to respect and honor that.

Our next steps in the progressive movement are to continue to work within the system, PRIORITIZE AND UNIFY, connect and communicate and grow, polish up on our Roberts Rules of Order, win more AD elections and County Committee slots, elect candidates that will appoint progressives, sit on the task force that can ensure a 58-county strategy and financial transparency, and make sure that those who would rather stifle debate than lead are held accountable.

Net neutrality, as a resolution for this convention, is in effect dead.  The resolution has been referred to the Labor Caucus, and that ruling will stand.

Now there is some good news.  Brad Parker, a member of PDA and a staunch supporter of Net Neutrality, is on the Labor Caucus.  He has spoken to people on that caucus and people on the Resolutions Committee, and he believes that he can get a strong resolution to the floor by the next convention.  So it’s a waiting game.

What has not been resolved is the idea that you can refer a resolution to a caucus, which as I said is unprecedented.  Parker intends to take it up in the Resolutions Committee happening right now, and if not there then in the Rules Committee.  The shenanigans pulled here were unconscionable.

About the impeachment resolution: there is no doubt in my mind that the new substitute language will become one of the top 10 resolutions brought to the floor tomorrow.  The Resolutions Committee members would not be able to leave that room if they didn’t place it in the top 10.

No word on getting the Audit Committee to a floor vote, I’ll check on that.

And the Calitics staff did an exclusive interview with Sen. Christopher Dodd, we should have something on that (with pics) soon.