JULIE WALMSLEY

Last month Pat Morrison sat down with then-Councilman LaBonge on his way out of city council , where he has looted managed Council District 4 since 2001. In his interview, true to LaBonge form, he kissed an acquaintance through glass, used a chocolate chip cookie to illustrate better council district divisions, and called valid questions (including mine ) about frivolous spending of public works money "horse s---" because money spent to illuminate the Los Angeles Zoo - which is already funded with taxpayer dollars via a nebulous non-profit with highly paid executives - brings people joy. Morrison persisted, asking if that should be the work of government:  You were criticized for spending money from your discretionary fund on things like holiday lights around the zoo instead of, say, on potholes. That was a bunch of horse---- because the zoo lights bring joy. The DWP years ago created the holiday lightfest in Griffith Park. That $100,000 brought nearly 200,000 people to t...

So, the independent bookstore is not dead. At least not in Los Angeles. I visited  Skylight Books  in Los Feliz,  Stories on Sunset  in Echo Park, and  Chevalier's Books  on Larchmont for forthcoming articles for the Ledger papers, and found full stores with interesting stories and committed customers. People still use libraries too. I was at the Silver Lake Library twice last week, and parents actually go with their kids and read from printed books, not iPads and Kindles. I wasn't allowed the editorial space for all the photos and interesting bits about the stores, their ownership, and their strategy. The outtakes - A longtime neighborhood hang, Skylight Books has been open since 2006, and owned by the same LLC. Some of the individual investors have changed out, but a core group continues to shepherd the store. The resident cat, Franny, is very sweet. She just hangs out with customers all day. She is named for J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey...

The UCLA hospital system was the site of another cyber attack , the LA Times reported yesterday. I, along with Holli Herdeg, wrote about hospital data as one of several Los Angeles critical infrastructures vulnerable to cyber attack for EPICenter LA. In the article , we covered a 2014 breach into Community Health Systems, the second largest hospital operator in the country. Details of that attack were not provided until mandatory disclosure in an SEC filing: "The attacker was able to bypass the Company’s security measures and successfully copy and transfer certain data outside the Company… this intruder has typically sought valuable intellectual property, such as medical device and equipment development data. However, in this instance the data transferred was non-medical patient identification data related to the Company’s physician practice operations and affected approximately 4.5 million individuals who, in the last five years, were referred for or received services from ph...

The city council today advanced the possibility of permanently closing the pedestrian tunnel on Sunset Boulevard by authorizing cost analysis, with a report due back in city council on an undecided date. The analysis is moving forward against the hopes of a group of local art enthusiasts who want it converted to an outdoor gallery modeled on the one in Cypress Village . I first learned about issues with the tunnel, and plans to close it, from one of Silver Lake city council member Mitch O'Farrell's field deputies. Then O'Farrell's press rep said no plans exist, weeks before O'Farrell filed the motion that today became a city council order to look at costs and find budget to get it done.

Weeks after his press deputy insisted that plans to permanently close the Micheltorena Pedestrian Tunnel amounted to an unfounded rumor, Councilman Mitch O'Farrell filed a motion in city council to request a cost report on closure. That is, he needs to know how much money to come up with to close a tunnel he said he has no plans for, though I first learned about those plans from another one of his deputies in April. Art supporters in Silver Lake hope to make an outdoor gallery out of the tunnel that extends under Sunset Boulevard, what used to be a pedestrian passageway designed to get kids on foot to school safely. They hold the Cypress Village Art  Tunnel as their model, and hope to stop the cementing before the city finds the money to get it done.

I wrote about tire slashings in Silver Lake for this month's Los Feliz Ledger. Pending corrections will update the map and copy to accurately reflect the area that gets hit: Effie Street and Crestmont, Maltman, and Golden Gate avenues. According to one of the unnamed sources mentioned in the story, about 90 percent of the activity is within a 100-yard radius of the corner of Effie Street and Golden Gate Avenue. I didn't have the editorial space to go as deep as I wanted to. Within this story, there were several issues which merit examination: The use of the senior lead officer system in the LAPD - the very relationships that keep the police in touch with neighborhoods keep benevolent residents from criticizing, not wanting throw the officer who's become their friend under the bus The larger trend of property crime in Los Angeles, overshadowed by a recent spike in violent crime What it actually takes to arrest and prosecute any offender, and why it's not hard to ...

This morning the LA Times' David Zahniser wrote about the arrival of David Ryu in Los Angeles City Council, and how he could interact with that body's president, longtime City Hall denizen Herb Wesson.  Zahniser's article primarily covered the election's outcome as a function of controversial redistricting and the resultant disgruntled voters looking to smack back at City Hall, but he also discussed Wesson's role: Wesson, who has served on the council for a decade, said he expects to get along with Ryu just fine. The job of a council president, he emphasized, is to help the 14 other members become successful. Ryu, he pointed out, had few serious policy disagreements with Ramsay. The council president has another responsibility, which wields dealmaking (or breaking) power over all legislative action: agendizing. Wesson, who supported Ryu's opponent Carolyn Ramsay, decides what goes on the agenda when, and how to break out single motions and ordinances into...