Divergent views on illegal immigration emerge in state GOP

WASHINGTON — California's elected Republicans have long had a simple approach to illegal immigration: Those who broke the law coming here should leave.

But the confluence of politics and personal threat have now put many Republican legislators in Washington and Sacramento in a very different place: eager to embrace an overhaul of immigration laws and willing to consider legal status for some of the country's nearly 12 million illegal immigrants, 3 million of whom live in California.

In Sacramento and Washington, party orthodoxy is being defied. At least six GOP legislators in Sacramento have aligned themselves with Democrats to support a path to citizenship for those in the country illegally. Several congressional Republicans from California have said they would consider granting legal status to some illegal immigrants as part of a comprehensive immigration overhaul.

The issue, which has tormented California Republicans for a generation, is unlikely to be far from members' minds this weekend as the state party holds its spring convention in Sacramento.

Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona), who once declared himself "wholeheartedly against amnesty," is among those now willing to consider granting legal status to some illegal immigrants, under specific conditions.

"I have a number of people who say, 'hell no,' " said Calvert, whose district is 36% Latino. "But I have a lot more people who understand that we're not going to do mass deportations."

A number of California Republicans remain vehemently opposed to granting legal status to illegal immigrants or won't consider it until convinced that the border is secure.

"You've got to secure the border, and you've got to prove it's secure. Period. We'll talk after that," said Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine).

"There is a path to citizenship," added Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Granite Bay.) "It's followed by millions of legal immigrants who have obeyed all of our laws."

The shift among others has been driven by recent election results and the expectation that Republicans' woeful trajectory in the state will not change without an alteration in the party's views.

In November, Republicans in Sacramento ceded a supermajority to Democrats in both houses of the California Legislature for the first time since 1883. At the same time, the number of Republicans in the state's 53-member House delegation dropped to 15, their lowest share since 1936, according to UC San Diego political scientist Gary Jacobson.

Barring a change, the future looks more bleak. The fastest-growing group of voters in the state are Latinos, whose voter registration has soared in the years since Republicans pushed 1994's Proposition 187, which would have banned government services to illegal immigrants. Latinos are expected to surpass whites to form a plurality of California's population by next year, according to state Department of Finance estimates, and Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo estimates that 23% of the state's registered voters are Latino. And they vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.

"The demographic changes are … irrefutable, and they require not just small message changes in the Republican Party but a tectonic shift," said Assemblyman Jeff Gorell (R-Camarillo), one of those who has broken with GOP orthodoxy. Gorell is among those who support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. He also supports granting them driver's licenses if they can document they have paid taxes in California, as proposed in legislation by Assemblyman Luis Alejo (D-Watsonville).

Already the state's demographic shifts have cast an ominous shadow over some Republicans. Mary Bono Mack, a veteran Republican member of Congress seen as having statewide potential, was ousted from her Palm Springs district last year by a Latino Democrat, Raul Ruiz. And four of the state's 15 GOP members of Congress represent districts where Latinos make up 40% or more of the population; five represent districts at least 30% Latino, according to the National Assn. of Latino Elected Officials Educational Fund.

"I'd not be truthful if I said that didn't have an impact," said Rep. John Campbell (R-Irvine).

Republicans also have come under pressure from interests in the Central Valley who back immigration measures that would allow a steady stream of farm workers. That area is home to many of the surviving Republican elected officials.

Nonetheless, some in the party dispute the notion that a change in policy is required. (The state party's platform asserts that "allowing illegal immigrants to remain in California undermines respect for the law.")

"I don't think pandering to a small group of people is going to help the Republican Party," said Celeste Greig, president of the California Republican Assembly, a grass-roots organization promoting conservative ideas within the party. "I don't think we should grant citizenship to people who blatantly came and broke the law."

California GOP Chairman Tom Del Beccaro also opposes measures that include a path to legalization. The country should secure the border before it considers what to do about residents who arrived illegally, Del Beccaro said.

Jim Brulte, the former Senate minority leader widely expected to be elected Sunday to replace Del Beccaro as chairman, has said the party needs to work harder to reach Latino voters. But Brulte declined to stake a position on the party's platform, saying his focus would be fundraising and rebuilding the organization's infrastructure.

richard.simon@latimes.com

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

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Insurers not covering behavioral therapies for autism, California says

Insurers have been skirting their obligation under recently enacted state law to provide costly behavioral therapies for autism, according to the Department of Insurance, which is proposing emergency regulations aimed at enforcing the law.

In July, California joined more than two dozen other states in requiring private insurers to cover such treatments when medically necessary.

But state officials said they have received dozens of formal complaints that insurers have been delaying and denying coverage by imposing limits on how much therapy a child can receive and who can provide it, and in some cases by requiring extensive cognitive testing before treatment can begin.

The emergency regulations stipulate that those are not valid justifications for denying treatment. Officials said they planned to file the proposed rules Thursday with the state Office of Administrative Law, which will decide in March whether to put them into effect.

"Behavioral therapy is a medical treatment and has to be covered," Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones said in an interview.

Richard Wiebe, a spokesman for the Assn. of California Life and Health Insurance Companies, said insurers are reviewing the proposed regulations and preparing comments for official review. "The science continues to evolve," he said. "The regulations should … let that evolution take place."

An explosion in autism diagnoses over the last two decades has driven the demand for intensive behavioral therapies and launched a multimillion-dollar industry. Most prominent among the treatments is Applied Behavior Analysis, or ABA, in which a therapist spends up to 40 hours a week with a child, using praise and firm guidance to teach the child basic life skills. Treatment for one child often costs $50,000 a year or more.

In California, much of the financial burden has fallen to schools and the state. The new law was aimed in part at shifting a chunk of the costs from taxpayers to private insurers.

ABA is supported by decades of research showing it can improve language, behavior and intelligence test scores. But researchers are still trying to figure out how much treatment is required and why some children respond while others make little progress.

Many parents are motivated by controversial claims that with enough therapy a child can "recover" from autism, a wide-ranging social and communication disorder that has long been seen by scientists as an incurable condition.

Kristin Jacobson, an advocate for autism coverage, said in the last several months she has handled several cases in which Anthem Blue Cross has tried to deny treatment because a child had a low IQ.

Less impaired children tend to have better outcomes in treatment, but even those with low intelligence can benefit, research shows. Furthermore, cognitive testing in people with autism is unreliable because social and communication deficits can interfere with test-taking.

"For a nonverbal child with autism who hasn't begun treatment, it's irrelevant," Jacobson said.

Darrel Ng, a spokesman for Anthem Blue Cross, said he could not comment on the company's policy because of pending litigation.

alan.zarembo@latimes.com

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Long-shot candidate's provocative video gains attention

No one has accused Los Angeles mayoral candidate Kevin James of lacking for showmanship. His spirited debate performances have given an outsize profile to the onetime talk radio host's long-shot campaign.

But the financially strapped candidate's release of a Web video showing his rivals as burying a dead body in a shallow grave has set off accusations that James has overreached in trying to draw attention to himself in the last days before the Tuesday primary.

The James video depicts top contenders Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti as part of a culture of corruption at City Hall. Actors playing the city controller and city councilman bury a body in the dead of night — an effigy for the public funds the duo has allegedly wasted.

Neither Greuel nor Garcetti has faced charges of malfeasance. And their rival's claim that Los Angeles operates a particularly corrupt city government is not borne out by an academic study the James camp cites as proof.

But James stood by his contention that the two city officials have been corrupt because, he charges, they helped redirect funds for parking, fire hydrants and to purposes not supported by the public. James campaign manager Jeff Corless said the waste included "outrageous salaries and pensions [of] public employees, whose unions back their campaigns to the tune of millions of dollars."

Campaign observers said James was relying on the over-the-top imagery and ominous undertones of the video to stir up the mayoral contest.

"It's a stunt," Parke Skelton, a veteran Los Angeles political consultant, said of the nearly two-minute video.

"It's a common tactic to try to generate press attention in a race where you don't have the funds to compete for voters in any other way," said Skelton, who is not aligned with any of the candidates in the race. "You can do something extremely provocative to get attention, but it doesn't necessarily help your campaign."

The James spot plays off the frequent claim by Greuel, the city controller, that she would be the best mayor because she has investigated city agencies and knows "where the bodies are buried." That's because, James retorts, Greuel "helped bury them."

James, the lone Republican in the field, accused Greuel and Garcetti of "raiding" special city funds to help close budget gaps created by their mismanagement. The money went to cover employee raises, pension costs, "redecorated offices" and "handouts to special interests," James charges.

City officials have defended transfers into the city's general fund as a stop-gap measure to pay for crucial services, including Police and Fire Department operations, when tax receipts took a sharp downward turn during the Great Recession.

James' opponents belittled the video.

"If the Kevin James campaign falls in a forest, can anyone hear it? With 209 views on YouTube, the only people seeing Kevin James' ad is Kevin James," said Greuel's chief strategist, John Shallman.

After speaking at a mayoral forum on education Wednesday along with James and other candidates, Garcetti laughed about the video. "I told Kevin, 'We're going to bury you. We're going to bury the competition,' " Garcetti said.

With less than $25,000 cash on hand the last time campaign totals were reported, James has few options to draw attention to himself. (An independent campaign group, however, has spent more than $658,000 to air television and radio ads on James's behalf.) The new spot appeared to be garnering just the kind of "free" media attention that campaigns hope for when they release such videos.

At least three local television affiliates jumped on the story. CNN had a camera at the news conference when the campaign released the video, which it dubbed "Buried." KFI radio, Reuters and other outlets followed suit.

One of the claims in the ad is that "corruption is the way of life in City Hall, making L.A. one of the most corrupt regions in America."

Corless previously said that the notion of Los Angeles as a hotbed of corruption came, in part, from a study released last year by researchers at the University of Illinois. But the James campaign misconstrues what that research found.

The statistics in the Illinois study come not from the city of L.A. but from the federal judiciary's Central District of California. That includes seven counties with more than 18 million residents, making it by far the most populous federal jurisdiction in America, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles.

The entire region ranks high in total corruption convictions in large part because it encompasses so many government employees. The Illinois study did not break out per capita rates of corruption by region, but it did for entire states. By that measure, California ranked 35th in number of convictions for public corruption over the years of the study. The "leaders" in the most corrupt derby were the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania.

Officials in the U.S. attorney's office (where James, now an entertainment attorney, once worked) said they can remember only a few recent criminal cases against Los Angeles city employees.

Three former building and safety inspectors have been convicted of taking bribes in a probe that began in 2010. A former official of the Housing Authority got 51 months in prison last year for diverting more than $500,000 to a sham company he set up with his brothers.

Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon has been accused of using a false address for electoral purposes. That case is pending.

James' camp said other corruption cases prosecuted by the district attorney bolster the notion of trouble at City Hall.

Political scientist Dick Simpson of the University of Illinois, one of the authors of the corruption study, said the worst abuses tended to be not in Southern California but in other parts of the country.

"You essentially have in Los Angeles a reform city," Simpson said. "The places with the most corruption, like Chicago and New Orleans, come out of machine politics. You don't have the same thing out there."

james.rainey@latimes.com

seema.mehta@latimes.com

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California suppressed consultant's report on inmate suicides

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Jerry Brown has pointed to reams of documents to make the case in court and on the stump that California's prison crisis is over, and inmates are receiving good care.

But there is at least one document the administration wanted to hide.

New court filings reveal that the state suppressed a report from its own consultant warning that California's prison suicide-watch practices encouraged inmate deaths.

Lindsay Hayes, a national expert on suicide prevention in prisons, told corrections officials in 2011 that the state's system of holding suicidal inmates for days in dim, dirty, airless cells with unsanitized mattresses on the floor was compounding the risk that they would take their own lives.

His report described in detail inmates being divested of their clothes and possessions and robed in a "safety smock." Hayes concluded that such conditions encouraged prisoners to declare they were no longer suicidal just to escape the holding cells. Many of them took their own lives soon after.

The state asked Hayes to create a short version of his report that omitted his damaging findings, to give to a court monitor and lawyers for prisoners, the court documents show. Hayes complied, but when inmate attorneys obtained a complete copy, the state asked a U.S. District Court to order it destroyed. The judge refused.

The report says the state's handling of suicidal inmates is "seemingly punitive" and "anti-therapeutic." Hayes noted that guards, not mental health workers, dictate many of the conditions of suicide watches, such as whether to allow daily showers. Hayes alleged prison workers sometimes falsified watch logs showing how frequently those inmates were checked.

Hayes found that in 25 of the cases he reviewed, seven prisoners had killed themselves within hours or days of being released from suicide watch. He found lapses in care — lengthy delays in checking on the prisoners, failure to attempt CPR — in 68% of the cases he studied. Hayes did give the state high marks for compiling exhaustive reports after an inmate's death.

Contract records show that corrections officials recruited Hayes, a former consultant for inmate plaintiffs, to begin in 2010 a three-year project on suicide prevention, demonstrating the state's resolve to improve inmate mental health care.

His first report was filed in August 2011. Hayes said in a deposition that none of the follow-up reports and consultations called for in his contract occurred.

"When your report landed, it was not roundly applauded and in fact was buried," Robert Canning, a prison official overseeing Hayes' work, wrote in a June 2012 email to the consultant. There were 32 prison suicides in California in 2012, above the national average.

Other new filings show that the staffing shortage at one prison psychiatric hospital is so critical the psychiatric staff has declared they have been working since Jan. 23 "under protest."

The doctors in Salinas Valley State Prison's psychiatric program, run by the Department of State Hospitals, say they routinely juggle caseloads of up to 60 patients a day, and in some instances have been assigned wards containing as many as 120 patients a day.

"While not hiring psychiatrists may help the budget, it just drives more to leave, and the conditions just get even worse for those of us still here — and more importantly, for our patients," one of the psychiatrists told The Times, asking that he not be named for fear of retribution.

The Department of State Hospitals said Wednesday that it recently hired additional psychiatrists, with two starting work next week.

The department's acting director, Cliff Allenby, met with the prison hospital staff Wednesday "to reassure them their concerns have been and are being addressed," said spokesman David O'Brien. "There is currently no anticipated staffing crisis at DSH-Salinas Valley."

Brown has been arguing in federal court that California's prison psychiatric care no longer violates a constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and should be freed from oversight. In a round of speeches in January, he cited testimony from state-paid experts that inmates receive timely and responsive mental health care.

paige.stjohn@latimes.com

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California bill would allow lesser charges for drug possession

State Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), shown during a legislative session in 2012, has introduced a bill that would let prosecutors file misdemeanor rather than felony charges in cases of simple possession of heroin, cocaine and other hard drugs. He said the measure would save as much as $200 million a year by keeping fewer offenders behind bars. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press / August 30, 2012)

By Patrick McGreevy, Los Angeles Times

February 27, 2013, 9:20 p.m.

SACRAMENTO — Saying the war on drugs has failed, state Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) has proposed allowing prosecutors to file misdemeanor rather than felony charges in cases of simple possession of heroin, cocaine and other hard drugs.

Leno was joined Wednesday by representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union of California and the NAACP in announcing the legislation. He predicted it would save as much as $200 million a year by keeping fewer offenders behind bars.

"If we want safer communities, our collective goal for low-level drug offenders should be helping to ensure that they get the rehabilitation they need to successfully reenter their communities," Leno said. "Instead, we sentence them to long terms, offer them no treatment while incarcerated and release them back into our communities with few job prospects.''

Last year, the state Senate rejected a Leno bill that would have made simple possession of cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine a misdemeanor after law enforcement groups said it would have taken away a tool for controlling the worst offenders.

The new bill would allow prosecutors to decide to charge simple possession as either a misdemeanor or felony. A felony conviction hampers people for life, Leno said, making it harder for them to get jobs and housing.

California District Attorneys Assn. spokesman Cory Salzillo voiced "concern about the state making a policy that says drugs are not as bad as they used to be." The group has not taken an official position on the new bill.

patrick.mcgreevy@latimes.com

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Convicted rapist Luster testifies he's a victim of bad legal advice

Testifying in a blue prison jumpsuit with his ankles chained, Andrew Luster cast himself Wednesday as a victim of tragically bad legal advice.

Serving a 124-year sentence on rape and drug charges, Luster, the great-grandson of cosmetics giant Max Factor, took the witness stand in Ventura County Superior Court, where he hopes to have his unusually long sentence reduced because his legal representation was allegedly inept.

With drawn face and sometimes terse answers, Luster said attorney Richard G. Sherman urged him to flee to Mexico — advice Luster followed a week into his 2002 trial. The legal system in Ventura County was stacked against him, Sherman allegedly told him, and in prison, the wealthy, handsome Luster was likely to be murdered.

"I was traumatized," Luster said. "I was completely scared out of my wits."

After he jumped his $1-million bail, Luster was convicted in absentia of giving three women the powerful anesthetic GHB and raping them at his beachfront home. Jurors saw videotapes he made of himself committing sexual acts on two of the unconscious women and found him guilty of 86 criminal counts, including rape by use of drugs and rape of unconscious victims.

Luster's current attorneys, J. David Nick and Jason S. Leiderman, argue that Sherman deliberately frightened his client into fleeing so he could choreograph — and charge hefty fees for — Luster's flight to Mexico.

A state appeals court ruled last year that Luster deserved a shot at proving his former lawyers' incompetence.

On Wednesday, Luster testified about a string of attorneys he hired and fired before Sherman. One of them, James Blatt, advised Luster to accept a possible plea bargain that would have resulted in a prison term of eight to 12 years. But Luster said he listened instead to another lawyer, Joel Isaacson, who contended that the case would be dropped once he could tell jurors about the corruption and incompetence of Ventura County authorities.

"My head was reeling," Luster said. "I was confused."

Ultimately, Luster hired Roger Diamond and Sherman. As a judge continued to reject defense motions, Sherman started making suggestions about "leaving the jurisdiction," Luster said.

In December 2002, Luster said Sherman introduced him to investigator Patrick Campbell, a "black-ops, mercenary type," who immediately had Luster strip to ensure that he wasn't wearing a wire. After a few more meetings, Luster said, Campbell drove him to Mexico.

Six months later, celebrity bounty hunter Duane "Dog" Chapman apprehended Luster in Puerto Vallarta. Luster was taken to Wasco State Penitentiary, where one of his first visitors was Sherman. The attorney came with a notary and papers effectively giving him Luster's home.

Sherman died of cancer in 2011. In a 2004 Los Angeles Times interview, he denied defrauding Luster, as Luster had charged in a lawsuit. Sherman also said he "was never in a room with Mr. Luster discussing his fleeing. The only thing I discussed with him was his future."

Ventura County Deputy Dist. Atty. Michelle Contois said Luster was free to ignore Sherman's advice. In cross-examining him Wednesday, she tried to suggest that Luster was less than penitent.

Under questioning about the rapes, Luster told Contois that he had not "given" GHB to the women: "We did GHB together."

Contois asked Luster whether he had once said the harm he suffered at the hands of the court system "was equal to the harm you did to your victims."

Judge Kathryne Ann Stoltz would not allow him to answer, ruling that the question was argumentative. A retired Los Angeles judge, Stoltz hears cases when local judges are overloaded or want to avoid apparent conflicts of interest.

The hearing is expected to end Friday. If Stoltz rules that a new sentence is warranted, a separate hearing will be held, during which Luster's victims will have a chance to testify.

steve.chawkins@latimes.com

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L.A. to ask high court to overturn ruling on homeless belongings

Citing an immediate public health threat, the city of Los Angeles will ask the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to overturn a lower-court ruling preventing the random seizure and destruction of belongings that homeless people leave temporarily unattended on public sidewalks.

If the court takes up the matter, the case could have broad implications for cities nationwide grappling with how to keep streets clean and safe while respecting the property rights of those who live there.

Fresno faces more than 30 lawsuits arising from its efforts to clean up downtown homeless encampments. In Hawaii, activists living in a De-Occupy Honolulu encampment sought an injunction against city authorities after they allegedly seized and destroyed personal property during a raid, according to court documents.

The Supreme Court filing comes after two years of legal wrangling between Los Angeles officials and homeless advocates over a controversial campaign to clean up downtown's skid row, which has the highest concentration of homeless people in the city.

"We have an obligation to the homeless, as well as to the other residents and businesses on skid row, to ensure their health through regularly cleaning skid row's streets and sidewalks," City Atty. Trutanich said in a statement. "The current outbreak of tuberculosis among that most vulnerable population should serve as a stern reminder to us all of just who and what is at risk."

Carol Sobel, who represents the homeless plaintiffs, said the TB outbreak, which has infected nearly 80 people and killed 11, has nothing to do with the property left on the streets. She accused city officials of deliberately allowing conditions to deteriorate in order to bolster their case, saying: "They have a public health issue of their making."

The dispute began when eight homeless people accused city workers, accompanied by police, of seizing and destroying property they left unattended while they used a restroom, filled water jugs or appeared in court. The seven men and one woman had left their possessions — including identification, medications, cellphones and toiletries — in carts provided by social service groups and in some cases were prevented from retrieving them, Sobel said.

In a 2-1 decision last September, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the belongings the homeless leave on city sidewalks for a short period of time may be taken only if the possessions pose an immediate threat to public health or safety or constitute evidence of a crime. In such cases, the court said, the city may not summarily destroy the possessions and must notify the owners where they can collect them.

City attorneys question whether the 4th Amendment protection from unlawful seizures and the 14th Amendment guarantee of due process extend to people who violate a city ordinance requiring them to remove their possessions during posted cleanup times, especially when free storage is available.

They say the decision, which upheld an injunction against Los Angeles, has created a "public health disaster." Homeless people are leaving piles of possessions on the ground or in overflowing shopping carts, often covered by tarps and blankets, and sometimes with a note attached saying "not abandoned" or "mine," according to a draft of the filing reviewed by The Times.

"The presence of this unattended property makes it impossible to clean the sidewalks, leads to an accumulation of human waste and rotting food around and underneath, that in turn provides a breeding ground for vermin and bacteria," the filing said.

At the city's request, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health inspected skid row last year and cited the city for violations of county and state health codes, including an accumulation of human waste, needles, condoms and a rat infestation. The city launched a major cleanup effort, during which workers removed 278 hypodermic needles, 94 syringes, 60 razor blades, 10 knives, 11 items of other drug paraphernalia and two 5-gallon buckets of feces, according to the filing.

Homeless advocates said the effort showed how street cleaning can and should be done. Homeless residents were notified in advance, given time to remove their belongings and treated courteously, they said. Any items left behind that were not deemed a hazard were bagged, tagged and stored for 90 days.

But city officials contend that the lower-court rulings are causing a drain on municipal resources by forcing city workers to sort through unattended items for hazards, exposing their employees to unreasonable health risks and leaving the city open to the possibility of endless litigation.

Just days after a cleanup, trash and debris begin to pile up again, said Andy Bales, who heads the Union Rescue Mission on skid row.

"We never, ever had to battle that before the injunction, which has taken skid row back at least eight years to before all the improvements," he said. "It has emboldened people to leave their stuff everywhere."

Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Assn., a business improvement district that runs the storage facility for the homeless, said she worries the rulings will undermine efforts to get people off the streets.

"No one's mental illness, tuberculosis or staph infection gets better lying on a public sidewalk," Lopez said. "These are human beings who are often unable to make rational decisions for themselves and they need our help. Instead, we give them options that are self destructive like you can amass and hoard your belongings on the sidewalk."

Settlement negotiations are underway. Stan Goldman, a Loyola Law School professor, said it may be a long shot to ask the Supreme Court to weigh in, given how few cases it has taken up in recent years. But he said: "History has shown that the conservatives on the Supreme Court like nothing better than reversing liberal 4th Amendment decisions out of the 9th Circuit."

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

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Eric Garcetti showed political savvy during busy student years

Fourth in a series of articles focusing on key periods in the lives of the mayoral hopefuls.

Ben Jealous still recalls walking into a Columbia University meeting of a new group called Black Men for Anita Hill and seeing a half-Jewish, half-Mexican kid from Los Angeles leading the discussion.

"What's he doing here?" he asked the professor who organized the meeting.

"Honestly brother," the teacher replied, "he's the only one here I'm certain will really work hard."

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It was Jealous' first exposure to Eric Garcetti, a committed young progressive known on campus for gliding between different worlds and liberal causes. As a political science major at Columbia, Garcetti patched plaster and painted walls in low-income apartments in Harlem while also serving as the president of an exclusive literary society known for its wealthy membership. He led a men's discussion group on gender and sexuality, ran successfully for student government, and wrote and performed in musicals.

His busy student years offered hints of the future political persona that would later help him win a Los Angeles City Council seat and emerge as a leading candidate for mayor. As he pursued countless progressive causes — improved race relations in New York City, democracy in Burma and human rights in Ethiopia — Garcetti also exhibited a careful stewardship of his image and a desire to get along with everyone.

Some of his critics complain that he is confrontation averse, and say his chameleon-like abilities are political. Others complain that he has lost touch with his activist roots, citing his recent advocacy for a plan to allow taller and bigger buildings in Hollywood despite strong opposition from some community members.

But Jealous, who went on to study with Garcetti at Oxford, where they were both Rhodes scholars, remembers his classmate as "authentically committed" to social justice and naturally at ease in different settings. That was a valuable trait in early 1990s New York City, when tensions between whites and blacks were high, said Jealous, who is now the president of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. Against a backdrop of racial violence, including the stabbing of the Rev. Al Sharpton in Brooklyn in 1991, "there was an urgent need to build bridges," he said.

On Columbia's campus, Garcetti pushed to involve more men in Take Back the Night protests against sexual violence and tracked hate crimes as president of the National Student Coalition Against Harassment. He also worked against homelessness and founded the Columbia Urban Experience, a program that exposes incoming freshmen to city life through volunteerism.

Judith Russell, a Columbia professor who taught Garcetti in a yearlong urban politics course, remembers him as a skilled organizer. "Eric was one of the best people I've ever met at getting people to agree," she said.

He was also ambitious. Russell says she wrote countless recommendation letters for Garcetti, who was always applying for some new opportunity. "For most people I have a file or two. For Eric I have a folder," she said.

Even as a student, Garcetti went to great lengths to guard his image and public reputation. In a 1991 letter to a campus newspaper, a 20-year-old Garcetti sought a retraction of a quote that he acknowledged was accurate. A reporter wrote that Garcetti called owners of a store that declined to participate in a Columbia-sponsored can recycling program "assholes." Garcetti said the comment was off the record.

"I would ask, then, if you would retract the quote, not because of the morality of my position, rather the ethics of the quoting," he wrote.

That self-awareness came partly from being raised in a politically active family. Back in Los Angeles, his father was mounting a successful campaign for county district attorney. His mother, the daughter of a wealthy clothier, ran a community foundation. Her father, who had been President Lyndon B. Johnson's tailor, made headlines in the 1960s when he took out a full-page ad in the New York Times calling on Johnson to exit the Vietnam War.

Garcetti's family wealth allowed him to carry on the legacy of political activism. While attending L.A.'s exclusive Harvard School for Boys, he traveled to Ethiopia to deliver medical supplies. In college, while other students worked at summer jobs, he traveled twice to Burma to teach democracy to leaders of the resistance movement.

In 1993, after receiving a master's degree from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, Garcetti departed for Oxford. There he met Cory Booker, a fellow Rhodes scholar who is now the mayor of Newark, N.J., and a likely candidate for the U.S. Senate. Garcetti, Booker said, "was one of those guys who would be in the pub at midnight talking passionately about making a better world."

In England, Garcetti worked with Amnesty International and also met his future wife, Amy Wakeland, another Rhodes scholar with activist leanings. Garcetti remembers being impressed when Wakeland missed President Clinton's visit to the Rhodes House at Oxford because she was on the streets protesting tuition hikes. Her worldview aligned with his, he told friends.

In his second year at Oxford, Garcetti persuaded student leaders to join him in a hunger strike after the passage of Proposition 187, the 1994 California ballot measure that denied immigrants access to state healthcare and schools.

Looking back, he sees the hunger strike as a bit of youthful folly. "We were young," Garcetti said. "Was a fast an ocean away going to overturn 187? No. But in my book, whether it's me in Los Angeles seeing an injustice across an ocean or vice versa, you have to stand up and be heard."

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Labor pours millions into L.A. races

Nearly $4 million in independent expenditures have poured into Los Angeles city election campaigns in recent weeks, with more than three-fourths coming from groups tied to organized labor.

Much of the debate on union spending before the March 5 vote has focused on $2.2 million — the bulk of it from police officers and Department of Water and Power workers — that is fueling the mayoral candidacy of Wendy Greuel.

But records show labor is also looking to strengthen its hand at the City Council by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on mailers, billboards and campaign ground troops to try to sway the outcome in eight of 15 council races.

SPREADSHEET: Unlimited outside money

Organized labor already wields considerable influence at City Hall, pressing the mayor and lawmakers to support employee raises and approve construction projects that create union jobs. The large number of open council seats, combined with laws that let special interests spend unlimited amounts, could leave unions with "an even stronger grip," said Jaime Regalado, emeritus professor of political science at Cal State L.A.

"L.A. is one of the few places in the country where labor plays such a dominant role, not only in selecting candidates to run, but in spending an amount of money that far outdistances whatever groups or individuals are second or third," he added.

Campaign finance laws limit mayoral candidates to accepting no more than $1,300 from any single contributor. Council candidates can't take more than $700 per donor. But special interests and wealthy individuals can spend unlimited sums as long as they do not coordinate their efforts with a candidate.

By 2 p.m. Tuesday, roughly $700,000 had been spent by independent groups on the three most competitive council contests, with two-thirds coming from labor groups.

The biggest beneficiaries of that money are Assemblyman Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) on the Eastside; former City Commissioner John Choi in an Echo Park-to-Hollywood district; and state Sen. Curren Price (D-Los Angeles) in South Los Angeles.

Cedillo, Choi and Price are hoping to replace termed-out council members Ed Reyes, Eric Garcetti and Jan Perry — all of whom antagonized organized labor last year by voting to roll back pension benefits for newly hired city employees.

FULL COVERAGE: L.A.'s race for mayor

Maria Elena Durazo, who heads the 600,000-member Los Angeles County Federation of Labor — one of the big independent campaign donors — warned council members last year that the benefits rollback would "come back and haunt" them.

Durazo was unavailable for comment. But her organization said in a statement that it chose candidates based on their track records, strategy for winning and views on "living wage" jobs, affordable housing and other issues.

In Reyes' district, union groups have spent $182,000 to support Cedillo, a former organizer with Service Employees International Union. Four-fifths of the money came from the county labor federation, which opposed last year's pension reductions. The rollback, which goes into effect July 1, is expected to save taxpayers $4 billion over 30 years, according to city officials. With days left before the election, Cedillo would not say whether that vote was the right one. Instead, he suggested a new look is needed at retirement benefits for new hires.

"I want to reevaluate the entire situation," he said.

Cedillo's opponent, Jose Gardea, said the council did the right thing on pensions. The unlimited independent money — which is paying for campaign billboards across the district — should worry voters, he said. "It's an outrageous amount," said Gardea, who is Reyes' chief of staff.

Ron Gochez, who is running to replace Perry, voiced similar complaints about the South Los Angeles race, where more than $300,000 in independent money has been spent to promote Price, more than half of it from labor groups. "It's completely undemocratic," he said.

Price, who moved into Perry's district last year, said he welcomes labor support, noting that the blue-collar 9th District is filled with union members. "I'm proud to represent working people," he said.

SPREADSHEET: Unlimited outside money

In Garcetti's Hollywood-area district, union groups have spent $171,000 so far supporting Choi, who was the labor federation's economic development director from 2009 to 2011. Choi made his union ties explicit in one closed-door candidate interview, telling a large city employee group he would put them "on the inside" if they endorsed him.

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Deasy group aids 3 school board candidates

Los Angeles schools Supt. John Deasy isn't on the ballot Tuesday, but you'd hardly know it, based on the undercurrent of the school board election.

A coalition of local organizations, wealthy donors and L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa have decided that the election is all about keeping Deasy on the job and accelerating the aggressive policies he's putting into place.

This group has come together for the campaign through a political action committee called the Coalition for School Reform. So far it's raised on behalf of three candidates more than $3.2 million, including $1 million from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The superintendent has a "relentless focus on improving student performance, rather than on protecting a system that does not always serve students," said Elise Buik, president of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles. And that, she said, "has made him an easy target for those who are comfortable with the status quo."

Although not part of the funding coalition, the United Way is allied with community groups that support Deasy and want to limit the influence of the teachers union.

That union, United Teachers Los Angeles, is opposing the coalition in two of these races and is neutral in the third. Unless national unions jump in massively, UTLA cannot match the coalition in dollars, but it does have thousands of volunteers it can mobilize including teachers, counselors, social workers and librarians.

UTLA has not made removing Deasy a litmus test for candidates it supports — and Deasy has worked successfully with all employee unions on notable issues — but a sizable UTLA contingent says Deasy has misplaced priorities that have denigrated teachers and worsened working conditions.

Deasy, and the groups that support him, place a high priority on improving teacher effectiveness through new performance reviews that rely on student standardized test scores as a key component. Deasy has proposed basing 30% of an instructor's evaluation on test scores; the teachers union opposes such a fixed percentage.

Many Deasy backers also would end teacher job protections that protect ineffective veteran instructors at the expense of more able teachers with less seniority. So far, Deasy has limited, but not ended, the seniority system, which is enshrined in state law. The union defends seniority as the fairest approach to layoffs, especially in the absence of an evaluation system that they find reliable.

The superintendent also has sped the dismissal process of teachers accused of misconduct and pushed for changes in state law that would give him more authority over hiring and firing.

Advocates for independently managed charter schools have made common cause with the coalition. They oppose impediments to the growth and operation of charters and also want freer access to district-owned campuses. L.A. Unified has the greatest number of publicly funded charter schools of any district in the country.

The tenure of the schools chief, who has been praised by the Obama administration, has become more precarious in recent months because three of the seven current members of the Board of Education would consider removing him, according to insiders. None of the three are on the ballot in the March 5 election.

That has intensified the focus on the reelection bid of one-term incumbent Steve Zimmer, 42, who is supported by the teachers union. Zimmer talks of Deasy as a strong leader with whom he sometimes has strong disagreements; he has been unwilling to replace Deasy so far. But the superintendent's supporters see Zimmer as a possible fourth anti-Deasy vote. Zimmer's District 4 stretches from the Westside to the west San Fernando Valley.

Zimmer's backers insist that he simply does not deserve to be fired by voters. They describe the longtime teacher and neighborhood activist as a thoughtful, hardworking moderate who helped bring opposing parties together on issues large and small.

The pro-Deasy forces are firmly behind challenger Kate Anderson, 41, who leaves no doubt about her enthusiasm for the superintendent.

Her supporters say the board could use her intelligence and perspective. They point to her experience in civic affairs, including as an attorney, a parent, a onetime congressional staffer, a member of a neighborhood council and even her stint as UCLA student body president.

The coalition also stands firmly behind school board President Monica Garcia, 44, a Deasy backer who is considered Villaraigosa's closest ally on the board. Her District 2 stretches out from downtown.

Thanks to the coalition and her own sway within the district, Garcia enjoys a dominant funding advantage over all four challengers combined. The union hasn't bankrolled any challenger but has invested in an anti-Garcia campaign, hoping to force a runoff.

Her challengers are: Robert Skeels, 47, a writer and researcher who criticizes corporate and foundation involvement in education as well as the growth of standardized testing; Isabel Vazquez, 52, a former board member's aide who became an adult-school administrator before budget cuts forced her return to the classroom this year; Abelardo Diaz, 51, a veteran Spanish teacher, who helped start a bilingual academic decathlon and is among the founding faculty at the Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts; and Annamarie Montanez, 40, a teacher with broad experience at the elementary and adult-school levels, reduced to part-time hours in the adult school because of budget cuts.

Board member Nury Martinez is leaving her District 6 seat after one term to run for L.A. City Council. Her district encompasses the east San Fernando Valley.

Among three candidates, Antonio Sanchez, 30, voiced the clearest support for Deasy, a major factor in his landing financial support from the coalition. Non-teaching unions also have spent money in support of Sanchez, who just completed a master's degree in urban planning at UCLA. He has experience in campaign work and as a staff member for a state legislator and the mayor.

Another aspirant is Maria Cano, 42, a veteran manager in the community outreach office of the district's school construction program; the wind-down of that effort resulted in her being laid off. The third candidate is Monica Ratliff, 43, a veteran fifth-grade teacher at a high-performing school who worked as an attorney before deciding to change fields.

The teachers union has funded no candidate in this contest.

howard.blume@latimes.com

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Garcetti holds potential interest in Beverly Hills oil drilling

In his bid for Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti has promoted himself as the greenest of candidates.

The city councilman from Silver Lake has pushed for an expansion of L.A.'s rooftop solar-panel program and the creation of thousands of clean-energy jobs, all to reduce the region's dependence on oil. Those positions helped Garcetti win the Sierra Club's endorsement.

Missing from Garcetti's environmental platform, however, is any hint that he has long stood to profit from a lease interest in a headline-making oil drilling operation: the wells run by Venoco Inc. at Beverly Hills High School.

FULL COVERAGE: L.A.'s race for mayor

According to documents on file with the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder's office, Garcetti and several family members signed a 20-year lease with Venoco in 1998. It gave the company the subsurface drilling rights to a nearby Beverly Hills retail property that the councilman co-owns through a personal trust.

The lease enables Denver-based Venoco to tap oil and gas underneath the Wilshire Boulevard property by slant drilling from the high school about half a mile away.

The high school wells have been the target of some alumni, residents and environmentalists who allege the drilling has emitted dangerous levels of benzene.

Venoco insists the wells are safe and says it has taken no oil or gas from the Garcetti property in the 9600 block of Wilshire. Company spokeswoman Lisa Rivas said Venoco secured the lease in anticipation of extending its drilling to that part of Beverly Hills but does not know if the firm will follow through on the plans.

Garcetti spokesman Jeff Millman said the candidate "has no memory" of signing the lease. In response to Times queries, Millman said, Garcetti looked into the agreement and found that he earns just $1.25 from it per year.

"It's not really an issue," Millman said.

But Garcetti and several of his relatives who co-own the Wilshire property could collect royalties if Venoco began producing oil or gas from the parcel. Otherwise, they are paid nominal rental fees.

Millman said Garcetti would donate any royalties to the Sierra Club.

FULL COVERAGE: L.A.'s race for mayor

Because the amount of money he has received to date is so small, Garcetti apparently has not been required to list the lease or the fees on his annual financial disclosure forms. It is unclear whether Garcetti has followed state and city disclosure rules for his ownership interest in the property.

When the lease was in its seventh year, Garcetti voted in favor of a 2005 council resolution opposing Venoco's efforts to increase its drilling offshore. At the time, he said in a statement that the ocean drilling "would harm the legacy that we're guarding for the generations that come after us," but he did not mention that he could benefit financially from Venoco's onshore wells.

Millman said the Wilshire property once housed a clothing store run by Garcetti's grandfather. It is now the site of a hair salon that pays rent to Garcetti and the relatives, including his sister and cousins, and his grandfather's trust, Millman said.

In general, state law requires disclosure of real estate holdings that are within two miles of a city office-holder's jurisdiction, said Gary Winuk, enforcement chief for the California Fair Political Practices Commission. The Beverly Hills property is within that distance of Los Angeles. For the most part, the city rules are similar to or stricter than the state's.

Garcetti specifically listed the property on his state and city forms from 2007 through 2009, reporting annual rental income from the hair salon in the broad category of between $10,000 and $100,000.

He omitted the property from the forms he filed in the years before and after that period.

Millman said Garcetti did not report it before 2007 because his advisors believed its location outside the Los Angeles city limits exempted it from disclosure.

Based on new advice, Millman said, Garcetti began reporting his interest in the property in 2007. But starting in 2010, he stopped disclosing it as a real estate holding. Instead, Garcetti listed his rental earnings from the hair salon as income from the Harry Roth Trust, named for his grandfather, believing that was the appropriate way to report the proceeds from the property, Millman said. He added that Garcetti's attorneys would review the filings to make sure they are correct.

The Sierra Club did not respond to requests for comment.

FULL COVERAGE: L.A.'s race for mayor

In 2003, Venoco agreed to pay a fine and install monitoring equipment to settle pollution complaints from air quality officials. The wells were the subject of lawsuits brought that year by the firm of famed environmental advocate Erin Brockovich against Venoco and the city and school district of Beverly Hills, among others. The city and school district earn royalties from the wells.

The suits alleged that the wells had caused cancer in former students. The city and school district subsequently conducted tests that found no evidence of elevated emissions. A judge later dismissed the suits. As part of a settlement, the plaintiffs paid some of the legal fees incurred by the city and school district.

The debate over the wells died down, but the Beverly Hills City Council in 2011 adopted an anti-drilling ordinance that could stop Venoco's operations at the high school when its lease expires at the end of 2016.

paul.pringle@latimes.com

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Race for L.A. city controller heats up

A previously low-profile race for Los Angeles city controller has begun to heat up as opponents of City Councilman Dennis Zine accuse him of "double dipping" the city's payroll and question why he is considering lucrative tax breaks for a Warner Center developer.

Zine, who for 12 years has represented a district in the southeast San Fernando Valley, is the better known of the major candidates competing to replace outgoing Controller Wendy Greuel.

The others are Cary Brazeman, a marketing executive, and lawyer Ron Galperin. Zine has raised $766,000 for his campaign, more than double that of Galperin, the next-highest fundraiser, and has the backing of several of the city's powerful labor unions.

He also has been endorsed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and several of his council colleagues. Galperin is backed by the Service Employees International Union, one the city's largest labor groups, and Brazeman is supported by retired Rep. Diane Watson and several neighborhood council representatives.

With the primary ballot less than a week away, Brazeman and Galperin have turned up the heat on Zine, hoping to push the race beyond the March 5 vote. If no one wins more than 50% of the ballots cast, the top two vote-getters will face a runoff in the May general election.

In a recent debate, Zine's opponents criticized him for receiving a $100,000 annual pension for his 33 years with the Los Angeles Police Department and a nearly $180,000 council salary. Brazeman and Galperin called it an example of "double dipping" that should be eliminated.

That brought a forceful response from Zine, who shot back that he gives a big portion of his police pension check to charities.

"I am so tired of hearing 'double dipping,' " he said. "I worked 33 years on the streets of Los Angeles. I have given over $300,000 to nonprofits that need it.... That's what's happened with that pension."

In the same debate, Brazeman accused Zine of cozying up to a Warner Center developer by pushing for tax breaks on a project that already has been approved. The nearly 30-acre Village at Westfield Topanga project would add 1 million square feet of new shops, restaurants, office space and a hotel to a faded commercial district on Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

"The councilman proposed to give developers at Warner Center tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks even though it's a highly successful project," he said. "He wants to give it away."

City records show that less than a month after the development was approved in February 2012, Zine asked the council for a study looking at possible "economic development incentives" that could be given to Westfield in return for speeding up street and landscaping enhancements to the project's exterior.

The motion's language notes that similar tax breaks have been awarded to large projects in the Hollywood and downtown areas, and that "similar public investment in the Valley has been lacking." Westfield is paying for the $200,000 study.

Zine defended his decision before the debate audience, saying if the study finds that the city will not benefit, no tax breaks will be awarded. "If there's nothing there, then they get nothing," Zine said.

The controller serves as a public watchdog over the city's $7.3-billion annual operation, auditing the general fund, 500 special fund accounts and the performance of city departments. Those audits often produce recommendations for reducing waste, fraud and abuse.

But the mayor and the council are not obligated to adopt those recommendations, and as a result the job is part accountant, part scolder in chief. All the candidates say they will use their elective position not only to perform audits but also to turn them into action.

Their challenge during the campaign has been explaining how they will do that.

Zine, 65, says his City Hall experience has taught him how to get things done by working with his colleagues. He won't be afraid to publicly criticize department managers, he said, but thinks collaboration works better than being combative.

"You can rant and rave and people won't work with you," he said. "Or you can sit down and talk it out, and you can accomplish things."

Galperin, 49, considers himself a policy wonk who relishes digging into the details to come up with ways to become more efficient with limited dollars and to find ways to raise revenue using the city's sprawling assets. For instance, the city owns two asphalt plants that could expand production and sell some of its material to raise money to fix potholes, he said.

He's served on two city commissions, including one that found millions of dollars in savings by detailing ways to be more efficient. Zine is positioning himself as a "tough guy for tough times," but the controller should be more than that, Galperin said.

"What we really need is some thoughtfulness and some smarts and some effectiveness," he said. "Just getting up there and saying we need to be tough is not going to accomplish what needs to be done."

Brazeman, 46, started his own marketing and public relations firm in West Los Angeles a decade ago and became active in city politics over his discontent with a development project near his home. He has pushed the council to change several initiatives over the last five years, including changes to the financing of the Farmers Field stadium proposal that will save taxpayer dollars, he said.

As controller, he would pick and choose his battles, and, Brazeman said, be "the right combination of constructive, abrasive and assertive."

catherine.saillant@latimes.com

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2 Santa Cruz officers die in shootout; suspect killed

Two Santa Cruz police officers were killed in a shootout and a suspect was fatally wounded Tuesday afternoon in a burst of violence that rocked the eclectic seaside community.

The shootings began about 3:30 p.m., when a man opened fire on two Santa Cruz Police Department officers conducting a follow-up criminal investigation at a home, law enforcement authorities said.

Both officers were fatally wounded and the gunman fled.

Late Tuesday, the slain officers were identified as 10-year veteran Elizabeth Butler, originally from Torrance, and Loren "Butch" Baker, a 28-year veteran.

After the shootings, officers from multiple jurisdictions swooped down on the city and launched a search for the killer.

A suspect later identified as Jeremy Peter Goulet, 35, was killed about 30 minutes later in a second shootout with authorities.

The loss of the two officers followed a recent series of violent incidents in the city and was especially devastating for the small Police Department, which has about 90 sworn officers. Butler and Baker were the first officers slain in the line of duty in the department's history.

"This is a horrific day. We lost two exceptionally fine officers," a visibly shaken Chief Kevin Vogel told reporters. "We need to figure out a way to bring our department together and get through this."

Analicia Cube, who founded the community group Take Back Santa Cruz in late 2009, called the deaths "just devastating for our community."

The city, about 60 miles south of San Francisco, is best known for its famed surf spots, seaside amusement park and diverse community that includes a University of California campus.

But in recent weeks, a UC Santa Cruz student was shot in the head, another student was reportedly raped and a home-invasion robbery left residents on edge.

"Santa Cruz has always been a different, eclectic kind of town," Cube told The Times, breaking down in tears as she talked about the killings. "Now it's just gotten ugly."

Cube, a 39-year-old business owner and mother of two, had just walked into a City Council meeting Tuesday afternoon when the police chief ran past her and sped off in his cruiser. Then her phone rang. A group member had heard the call on the scanner: two officers down.

An hour later, as rumors circulated through the City Council chambers, Mayor Hilary Bryant declared a five-minute recess. When council members emerged from a closed session, some were crying.

As the incident unfolded, police issued a "be on the lookout" alert for Goulet.

Goulet was arrested Friday on suspicion of disorderly conduct at the same location where the two officers were killed, according to the sheriff's online records.

News accounts from the Oregonian newspaper in Portland state that in 2008, a Jeremy Peter Goulet was sentenced to three years probation and sex-offender treatment after a conviction for peeping at a 22-year-old woman as she showered in her northwest Portland condo.

The Oregonian also reported that jurors convicted Goulet of carrying a gun without a concealed weapons permit.

The deadly shootings Tuesday followed a commitment by the Santa Cruz City Council to increase funding for the Police Department.

On Tuesday night, the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office had taken over patrol duties in the city and was leading the investigation into the shootings.

"My primary concern at this point," Vogel said at a news conference, "is for the safety and well-being of my officers as well as the families of the deceased officers."

The Facebook page for Take Back Santa Cruz, which is closed to outsiders, was filled with posts Tuesday night expressing anguish and anger, Cube said.

"You're seeing people grieving and in shock," she said. "There's people crying, there's people mad. People are starting to talk about carrying guns around."

lee.romney@latimes.com

robert.lopez@latimes.com

Romney reported from San Francisco, Lopez from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Maria L. La Ganga in San Francisco contributed to this report.

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Cost of San Onofre nuclear plant outage exceeds $400 million

The parent company of Southern California Edison, operator of the troubled San Onofre nuclear plant, reported that the costs of the yearlong outage at the plant had ballooned to more than $400 million by the end of 2012.

The hefty price tag for the darkened plant includes inspections, repairs and purchasing replacement power.

Edison International officials fielded questions Tuesday from analysts about the plant's extended shutdown and the possibility that federal regulators will require the plant to go through a lengthy license amendment process before returning to service.

The utility also indicated Tuesday that the company has looked into what repairs could be done to restore both units to full power, and was told by the steam generator manufacturer, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, that the job of replacing "significant portions" of the system could take more than five years to complete.

The seaside facility, one of only two nuclear power plants in California, has been shut down for just over a year because of unusual wear on steam generator tubes that carry radioactive water. One tube leaked in January 2012, releasing a small amount of radioactive steam.

Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric — which has a 20% stake in the plant — spent more than $780 million replacing the steam generators, which ratepayers are now repaying.

Edison officials also took a shot Tuesday at elected officials who have accused the company of knowingly installing defective equipment.

Edison has proposed restarting the less-damaged of the plant's two units and operating it at 70% power, which the company argued would alleviate the conditions that led to the wear. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing the proposal.

The plant powered about 1.4 million households in Southern California before the outage.

The report also heralded a potentially protracted dispute between Edison and Mitsubishi over the warranty on the equipment that limited payouts to $138 million, of which the company has paid out $45 million to date. Edison contends that the warranty cap should not apply because of unusual circumstances at San Onofre — Mitsubishi disagrees.

Edison Chief Executive Ted Craver said the company "bristles" at allegations made publicly by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) that the company was aware of design flaws in the steam generators before installation and did not make fixes to avoid triggering a time-consuming license amendment.

"This is just not accurate, and it injects politics into a process that should be free from it," Craver said during Tuesday's earnings call.

The lawmakers cited a leaked confidential report written by Mitsubishi when they made their claims. The NRC has said it will make a redacted version of the report public, but has not yet done so.

Environmental group Friends of the Earth contends that Edison should be required to go through a license amendment process, including public hearings, before the plant can restart.

The NRC has yet to decide on that question, but agency staff asked Edison to demonstrate that the unit proposed for restart can operate safely at its full licensed power, raising the possibility that the commission would require a license amendment for it to operate at 70% power.

In a response submitted Monday, Edison argued that 70% power is, in fact "normal steady state full power," drawing indignation from activists who are pushing for a license amendment.

The company said that the "clear purpose" of the technical specification governing tube integrity is "to ensure that the … tubes will retain their integrity over the range of operating conditions to which they will be subjected. In this case, that range is limited to 70% power."

But the response also promised to provide an analysis by March 15 showing that the unit could operate at 100% power without danger of a tube rupture.

Edison officials were scheduled to meet with NRC staff Wednesday.

abby.sewell@latimes.com

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Wendy Greuel acquired a love of politics from working with Tom Bradley

In the early 1980s, Wendy Greuel was at a crossroads. In one direction was the family building supply company housed in a dusty North Hollywood warehouse. The other way, a career at Los Angeles City Hall in Mayor Tom Bradley's administration beckoned.

Bright, young and ambitious, Greuel had balanced duties on the high school cheerleading squad and as student body president with part-time work at Frontier Building Supply — where she kept the books, drove a forklift and answered the phone that sometimes rang for her mother's side business, the White Lace Inn.

The 17-year-old Greuel, raised a Republican, was star-struck when she first met the Democratic mayor during a youth leadership ceremony atop City Hall. "Here was this 6-foot-5 inspirational leader," she said, "and as I've jokingly said, I fell in love that day."

When Bradley handed her an award, her course was set. Over the next decade, she would join a group of young aides who drove the five-term mayor's agenda, from the inspiring run-up to the 1984 Olympic Games to the difficult rebuilding after the city's 1992 riots. Her portfolio at City Hall — homelessness, housing, child care and AIDS — took the young UCLA graduate from the conservative enclaves of the Valley into the most destitute corners of South and East L.A.

"I used to call her the mayor of hopeless causes," former Bradley Deputy Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers said. "She had all the really tough, intractable issues … and she dove in."

Now a leading contender to follow her political hero to City Hall's top office, Greuel says she learned from Bradley the skills the job demands: a tireless work ethic, an ability to glide between city factions and a relentless focus on basic city services.

"What I really learned from all of those years was that the details matter," said Greuel, whose admiration for Bradley's zeal in reporting potholes led her to style herself as the "pothole queen" when she later represented the San Fernando Valley on the City Council.

But critics contend that as Greuel, currently the city's controller, raised her political profile she shied away from the imaginative and idealistic projects that were a hallmark of her years in the Bradley administration. Councilman Richard Alarcon, who worked with Greuel in Bradley's office, said he endorsed Greuel's chief rival, Eric Garcetti, after watching her gravitate toward politically safe initiatives.

"When Wendy was with Mayor Bradley, it was all about action — all about creating projects, ideas, L.A.'s Best," Alarcon said, alluding to the acclaimed after-school program that has now expanded to more than 150 Los Angeles schools. "We were doing a lot more than filling potholes."

Greuel says Bradley inspired her "passion to fight for social justice" and to stand up for the most vulnerable. But some saw her City Council focus as tending toward the more narrow — modernizing parking meters and synchronizing traffic signals.

Councilman Bernard C. Parks, the former police chief who is supporting Greuel's rival Jan Perry, said that Bradley created the downtown skyline, rebuilt the airport and brought the Olympics to L.A.

"He had a variety of legacies — most of them were big-picture ideas," Parks said. "In Wendy's era on the council…it was more of the mechanics of dealing with transportation and potholes."

In the early years however, Greuel's drive on those social issues was unquestioned.

Olivia Mitchell, Greuel's first boss in Bradley's youth development office, described Greuel as the ultimate "go-getter." At night, Greuel volunteered to be Mitchell's driver, ferrying her boss to community gatherings, prisoner probation meetings and continuation high schools in her brown Camaro.

"She wanted to know everything I knew and the people I knew," Mitchell said. Later, colleagues would tease her about being willing to "go to the opening of an envelope," Greuel said.

Former Bradley aide Donna Bojarsky said Greuel sought out "high-value, low-glamour" assignments. She also cultivated long-term political relationships that have helped her stack up endorsements in the current race.

Fellow Bradley aide Kerman Maddox noted that she was the one staffer who went to every group's party.

"We're talking 1980s Los Angeles, a tough, gritty, racially-balkanized city," Maddox said. "We'd tease her: 'How many white girls are hanging out in South L.A? It's just you.' But that's her.... She could move from camp to camp, faction to faction, because she got along with everyone."

Greuel was tasked with developing programs to deal with the city's burgeoning homeless population, which was threatening Bradley's drive to redevelop downtown's Bunker Hill. Greuel was in the thick of the issue when tensions grew over a proliferation of urban encampments, including the much-publicized "Justiceville."

Ted Hayes, Justiceville's leader and an advocate for the homeless, recalled that he and Bradley were at sharp odds because "I ran like a buzz saw right smack dab into his plans." Greuel began showing up at the camp, wandering among the plywood and cardboard structures in her prim navy suits.

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Imperial County betting its future on renewable energy

Situated in the southeastern corner of California, bordering Arizona and Mexico, Imperial County has long depended on agriculture and cash crops that grew from the good earth.

But lately the region — which carries the dubious distinction of having the state's highest unemployment rate at 25.5% — is betting its future on a different kind of farm: green energy.

Spurred by a state mandate that requires utilities to get a third of their electricity from green sources by 2020, renewable energy companies are leasing or buying thousands of acres in Imperial County to convert to energy farms providing power for coastal cities — bringing an estimated 6,000 building jobs and billions in construction activity to the county.

Although renewable energy projects are sprouting up across the Golden State, no county needs them as much as Imperial, which has consistently ranked as the worst-performing region of California even in boom times.

The prospect of a construction boom has excited residents hungry for work. But some farmers and Native American tribes are crying foul, angry that the new projects are encroaching on land that they claim has cultural value or should be devoted to crops.

Solar, wind and geothermal projects are popping up on farms that once grew wheat, alfalfa and sugar beets. County officials say the normally hardscrabble region is benefiting from vast tracts of affordable land and lots of sunshine, the one resource the region can almost always count on.

"It's sunny 365 days of the year, damn near," boasted Mike Kelley, chairman of the county's Board of Supervisors. "Renewable energy is going to give Imperial County a shot in the arm."

Local advocates are betting that a "green rush" will lift a county that has struggled with economic upheaval. The Bureau of Labor Statistics just ranked El Centro as the second-worst metro area for job hunters, after Yuma, Ariz. Its unemployment rate fluctuated between 25% and 33% from 2010 and 2012.

Two of the county's top five employers are the Calipatria and Centinela state prisons. The agriculture sector shed jobs as farmers moved to automation and switched to less labor-intensive crops. Construction work vanished when El Centro, the county's biggest city, was hit hard by the housing crisis. Long-standing businesses such as a food processing plant moved elsewhere, taking away hundreds of jobs.

But with green energy companies scrambling to build solar installations and wind farms throughout the county, some residents are convinced that Imperial's fortunes will soon be looking up.

Tenaska Solar Ventures plans to break ground this year on its second project in the county after nearing completion on its first site, known as the Imperial Solar Energy Center South, on nearly 1,000 acres near El Centro.

The company came to the region both for its "abundant sunshine" and also proximity to the Sunrise Powerlink, a power transmission line completed last year that connects Imperial and San Diego counties, said Bob Ramaekers, Tenaska's vice president of development.

More than 500 construction workers have been hired to work on Tenaska Imperial South, with 70% coming from the local community, he said. A job fair held last year drew about 1,200 applicants. The second project will generate as many as 300 construction jobs, with priority given to local hires.

"One of the advantages of solar projects is they are not really high-tech. Anyone who has worked at all in the construction business can work in a solar facility," said Andy Horne, deputy executive officer of the county's natural resources department. "It's like a big erector set — you bolt these things together and ba-da-bing, you have a solar project."

The lure of a steady, well-paid job is what persuaded Victor Santana, 27, to start training as a journeyman electrician two years ago. He had studied film in college and hoped to make movies, but ended up working a series of odd jobs after the economic downturn — driving tractors, operating hay presses, selling vacuum cleaners. Even a video-editing gig he eventually found paid minimum wage,

"Things had dried up. There was only field work, or fast food, or working at the local mall," the El Centro resident said.

Santana finally decided to switch careers after hearing the pitch from green energy companies trickling into town. Now he earns about $21 an hour with regular raises every six months, and the prospect of steady work for another seven to 10 years just from the stream of solar and wind projects. "I feel a lot more secure than I did," he said.

Green energy may help Imperial hold onto its young people, who often try to land a government job or leave the county altogether in search of better-paying jobs elsewhere. Calipatria Unified School District is launching a vocational program this fall to prepare high school graduates for jobs in renewable energy. San Diego State is building a power plant simulator at its Brawley campus.

"With the advent of renewable energy, we are seeing a different kind of industrial base," said Mike Sabath, associate dean of academic affairs at San Diego State's Imperial Valley campus. "Hopefully that will provide opportunities to develop more job stability in the region than what we have enjoyed."

But construction has raised the hackles of some locals. There are farmers wringing their hands over fertile land snapped up by energy companies; they worry that a way of life is being edged out by corporations eager to cash in on the modern gold rush.

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Perry, a financial underdog, makes race a three-way contest

With the Los Angeles mayoral primary a week away, an aggressive mail campaign by Jan Perry has helped push her into a three-way fight with Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti for two spots in a May runoff.

From the start, Garcetti and Greuel have seen each other as the chief competition. But Perry's steady attacks via mailers — she lacked the money to advertise heavily on TV — have made her, at the very least, a credible threat to Greuel, the city controller.

The race remains highly fluid, with many voters still largely unfamiliar with the candidates days before the election.

But the surest sign of Greuel's concern was her recent decision to target not just Garcetti but also Perry in a mailer accusing both City Council members of misspending public money on travel and other perks.

In a five-way primary, any tactical miscalculation can be costly, so it was noteworthy that Greuel decided to spend money trying to diminish Perry's appeal.

"Jan has made this a three-person race," said Parke Skelton, a veteran campaign strategist who is unaligned in the mayoral primary.

For weeks, Perry has attacked Greuel relentlessly in mail to voters. On Saturday, Perry put out a scathing piece quoting Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky saying that Greuel's spending plans were "totally impossible without eviscerating other city services."

Yaroslavsky, who is highly influential on the Westside, answered Monday with a statement saying that Perry had wrongly implied he was no longer neutral in the mayor's race. None of the top candidates, he said, has "realistically addressed what they would do about the city's financial challenges."

Each of the leading contenders is keeping close watch on how lesser-known rivals Kevin James, a former radio talk show host, and Emanuel Pleitez, a former tech executive, might affect the split of votes among the top three. James and Pleitez have suffered from poor fundraising.

By tradition and necessity, the winning formula in a Los Angeles mayor's race is to build a coalition of two big voter groups — no small task in a city so diverse and geographically vast. Heightening the challenge this year is the lack of personal charisma among Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's would-be successors. None of them started with a large or solid base.

The candidates are targeting some groups more than others. Over the weekend, they paid respects to two of the largest: African Americans in South L.A. and white liberals on the Westside.

Perry, who sees fellow African Americans as her strongest constituency, visited black churches Sunday with her most prized supporter, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles). At New Testament Church on West Florence Avenue, Waters told parishioners that Perry was unashamed "to talk about the poor and the disenfranchised and the 35% to 40% of our young men and women who are without jobs."

Perry, in turn, made an overt, and rare, racial appeal. "Not since Tom Bradley has there been an African American in this seat," she told worshipers. "I would be the first woman, and I would be the first woman of color."

Greuel and Garcetti stand little chance of winning the black vote next week. But they too spent Sunday morning at South L.A. churches, a nod to the pivotal role that African Americans would play in a Greuel-Garcetti runoff.

Seated in a pew at Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Greuel swayed as a gospel choir sang "Lift Every Voice and Sing." Moments later, she stepped to a lectern, where she paid tribute to Bradley, the city's first black mayor.

"I worked for him for 10 years, dealing with issues that are so important in our communities — housing and economic development," Greuel told churchgoers.

A few hours later, Garcetti turned his focus to liberals on the Westside, where he touted his Sierra Club support at a campaign stop on the beach. Westside liberals are one of the biggest groups up for grabs in both the March 5 primary and May 21 runoff, regardless of who makes it to the final round.

With candidates battling multiple rivals in the primary and simultaneously positioning themselves for a runoff, the campaign is like "five-dimensional chess," said Raphael J. Sonenshein, executive director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State L.A.

"That's why this thing is so interesting — so many different things are going on," he said.

Early on, Greuel saw James, a Republican, as a serious competitor for conservative votes in the San Fernando Valley, her home turf. But James, a compelling stage presence at debates, has failed to raise much money. He was counting on independent spending by Republican ad maker Fred Davis to promote his candidacy. Davis, however, has had trouble raising money too, limiting his ads' reach. Republican donors, Davis said, are deeply demoralized.

"They think they've seen the last Republican elected — ever — in California," he said.

As for Pleitez, he could erode Garcetti's presumed support among Latinos, but he has raised nowhere near enough money to advertise on the scale that winning candidates typically do.

Perry, though, has waged an efficient mail campaign, sending a carefully sequenced series of brochures to tightly defined pockets of likely voters seen by her strategist as most open to persuasion, with messages calibrated accordingly.

Early on, Perry's mail appeared to be aimed at replicating former Mayor James K. Hahn's 2001 coalition of whites in the Valley and African Americans. She introduced herself as "the daughter of civil rights pioneers" in Ohio (her parents were each elected mayor of her hometown near Cleveland). She also outlined her record of promoting the downtown L.A. development boom, along with an agenda of fiscal restraint to resolve the city's chronic budget troubles.

But Perry has also targeted many Democrats, the dominant force in Los Angeles elections, sending them a series of hit pieces against Greuel. One shows a voter registration form identifying Greuel as a Republican. "Not on Our Side!" the mailer says.

Greuel released statements from state and Los Angeles County Democratic leaders affirming her party credentials and denouncing Perry's mailer. It did not make clear that Greuel has been a Democrat for almost 21 years. She was a Republican until 1992, when she switched parties months before joining the Clinton administration.

One of the dangers of going after rivals in a multi-candidate primary is that there's no way to know who will pick up votes stripped from the candidate under attack. It's a risk that Perry and Garcetti have taken in criticizing Greuel in recent weeks. It's one that Greuel has also now deemed necessary.

"We don't take anyone lightly," said Greuel strategist John Shallman, "which is why we're responding."

michael.finnegan@latimes.com

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Healthcare overhaul may threaten California's safety net

Millions of uninsured Californians will gain medical coverage under the national healthcare overhaul beginning in January, but Guadalupe Luna won't be one of them.

Luna, an illegal immigrant and tamale vendor in Los Angeles, doesn't qualify. So she will continue going to the clinic where she has received free care for more than 20 years: Los Angeles County's Hudson Comprehensive Health Center. There, publicly funded doctors will help manage her diabetes and high cholesterol.

An estimated 3 million to 4 million Californians — about 10% of the state's population — could remain uninsured even after the healthcare overhaul law takes full effect. The burden of their care will fall to public hospitals, county health centers and community clinics. And those institutions may be in jeopardy.

County health leaders and others say the national health law has had the unintended consequence of threatening the financial stability of the state's safety net.

Newly insured patients who no longer have to rely on public hospitals and clinics may seek care elsewhere, meaning a loss in revenue, they say. And under the federal law, some of the funding that goes to safety-net hospitals is also set to decrease.

Now, as the state scrambles to create the new healthcare infrastructure, Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing to take back another crucial pot of money that counties have depended on for more than two decades to care for the uninsured.

"Safety net providers are imperative ... and some of their funding streams are in serious danger," said Lucien Wilson, director of the Insure the Uninsured Project, a consumer organization.

Melissa Stafford Jones, president and chief executive of the California Assn. of Public Hospitals and Health Systems, said many of the patients who are uninsured now still won't have coverage next year. "Those communities are still going to need care, and we need to have a safety net to serve them," she said.

Under the healthcare overhaul, the state could enroll as many as 1.4 million additional residents in Medi-Cal, its program for the poor and disabled, and sign up 2.1 million others for subsidized private insurance through a marketplace known as Covered California, according to a recent UC Berkeley report.

About a quarter of those left uninsured will be undocumented immigrants, and nearly three-quarters will be U.S. citizens or green-card holders, according to the report. Some already qualify for Medi-Cal but don't receive it; others will be eligible to buy subsidized healthcare through Covered California but won't be able to afford it.

Martin Garcia, 39, a U.S. citizen with five children, said he doesn't know if he could get Medi-Cal now or what he might qualify for next year. Garcia lost his job and insurance in 2010 and recently started going to the Hudson clinic in Los Angeles because of stomach pains.

Garcia needs hernia surgery, which he said he will receive at L.A. County-USC Medical Center, a public hospital. He said he was relieved to learn that he could get free healthcare through the county. Without it, he said, "I really don't know what I would do. I would probably head to Mexico."

Even with massive outreach by the state, it will take time for eligible people to learn about and enroll in the new coverage. During the early years, the demand for public health services is expected to remain high, and counties will be responsible, said report author Ken Jacobs, chairman of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.

To pay for care for the uninsured, counties have long relied on revenue from sales tax and vehicle license fees — a pot of money known as realignment funds. In fiscal year 2012, the funds amounted to an estimated $1.3 billion.

Brown argues that counties will no longer need all that money because so many of the uninsured will gain coverage under the federal law. At the same time, the governor's administration has said, the state will need the funds if it is going to run the expanded Medi-Cal program.

"There is going to be a fundamental shift in responsibility of healthcare to the state from the counties," said Toby Douglas, director of the state Department of Health Care Services. "There needs to be a realignment of county dollars."

The Legislative Analyst's Office released a report this month recommending that the state run the Medi-Cal expansion and that it take control of some of the realignment funding to help pay for that expansion.

But county health directors argue that the state is just trying to balance its budget on the backs of safety-net systems. They say the counties already struggle to meet demand and contend the state should not take the money before it's clear how many people will sign up for Medi-Cal and how much savings there will be for counties.

"The state needs money, and they see this as an opportunity to get it," said Mitch Katz, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. "I think it is completely unreasonable."

If the state does take back the realignment funding, counties such as Los Angeles that run their own hospitals and clinics could be seriously affected, he said.

Alex Briscoe, director of Alameda County's Health Care Services Agency, said the state proposal shows a "fundamental misunderstanding" of the pressures facing safety-net systems. About 100,000 people might remain uninsured in the county, he said. "If the state takes the money, who is going to pay that care?"

In addition, Briscoe said the state doesn't have any justification for taking the money because the Medi-Cal expansion is 100% covered by the federal government for the first three years.

Who ends up paying doesn't matter to Luna, the tamale vendor. But without the Hudson clinic, the 43-year-old said, her diabetes would spiral out of control.

"I don't have anywhere else to go," she said. "I have to come here."

Luna is one of about 42,000 patients who go to the clinic and urgent care center to manage their chronic diseases, get their children vaccinated, check their eyes and monitor their pregnancies.

Hudson's administrator, Michael Mills, said that even after the healthcare law takes full effect, the clinic will be vital to the community. Nearly half its patients now are uninsured, and many will remain without coverage next year.

"Those are our patients," Medical Director Rona Molodow said. "Those are the people the county has traditionally served."

anna.gorman@latimes.com

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Jan Perry in some ways a classic Angeleno

Second in a series of articles focusing on key periods in the lives of the mayoral hopefuls.

When Jan Perry came to Los Angeles as a college freshman to watch the Ohio State Buckeyes play in the 1974 Rose Bowl, she had no idea that a trip to a football game would change her life.

"All I remember is being shocked at how warm it was when I got here and the sky was blue and that people were wearing shorts," Perry said, recalling walking down Hollywood Boulevard, visiting Olvera Street and seeing the Jackson Five in the Rose Parade. "I was struck by the diversity, just the mosaic of people."

As soon as she went home to Ohio, she filled out a transfer application to USC, and enrolled her sophomore year.

That was the beginning of a new chapter for Perry, now a veteran City County member running to become Los Angeles' first African American woman to be elected mayor.

"I came here and I felt like I belonged," she said recently over burgers at a downtown restaurant. "There was something about being here, I really felt like I could do whatever I wanted to do, and just walk through any door. I was just on a search for something. Fulfillment."

Of the elected officials in the race, Perry, 57, is the only non-native Los Angeles resident.

She is known for being business-friendly, which has drawn critics who complain that she appeases powerful interests at the expense of constituents and city coffers.

She grew up in a suburb of Cleveland during racially tumultuous times, having a cross burned on her family's lawn, but also seeing both of her parents elected mayor of their town.

In some ways, she is a classic Angeleno: an African American transplant from the snowy Midwest who converted to Judaism and speaks Spanish. She represents a district whose demographics are rapidly shifting from a stronghold of black voters to Latino.

Before Perry got into politics, she was a paralegal for 14 years and earned a master's degree in public administration. While living in Mid-Wilshire on the Miracle Mile, she became active in neighborhood preservation. She instantly impressed Renee Weitzer, then a staffer for Councilman John Ferraro, with her ability to gauge the effects of proposed development on the neighborhood.

"She was very realistic. She wasn't anti-development, she wasn't pro-development," Weitzer said. "She just had a knack for it."

So Weitzer urged Perry to apply for a planning deputy job in then-Councilman Mike Woo's office. Perry was a hard worker, balancing "angry homeowners and irritated real estate developers," Woo recalled.

Perry later joined the staffs of council members Rita Walters and Nate Holden before running herself. She moved into the 9th District and, amid criticism that she was a carpetbagger, won the 2001 race to represent downtown and part of South L.A.

The district is a study in disparity — celebrities sit courtside at Lakers games at Staples Center, minutes from where the city's most downtrodden residents sleep on skid row. The southern part, once the post-World War II home to middle-class African Americans, is one of the city's poorest areas.

Perry has had to straddle these worlds, shepherding high-end development, such as downtown's Ritz-Carlton hotel complex, while trying to create housing and jobs for the neediest.

Balancing the privileged and the poor has led to uncomfortable fights.

She and other city officials were viewed as villains when 350 families who grew food and flowers on the 14-acre South Central Farm were evicted in 2006.

The city had acquired the land by eminent domain in the 1980s but never used it, so the prior owner sued. The city sold it back to him in 2003 in a deal that called for him to donate 2.6 acres for a park. The council later scrapped that plan and instead had the landowner pay to improve nearby parks, clearing the way for the property's sale to clothing manufacturers.

Perry said the plot, in an industrial area, was unsuitable for a park because of diesel emissions. Farmers and their supporters accused her of using the health-risk issue as a pretext to push through development. The clash was featured in "The Garden," an Oscar-nominated 2008 documentary.

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City attorney race: Trutanich, Feuer spar as Smith gains support

In a sign of how bitter the race for Los Angeles city attorney has become, two of the three main candidates on the March 5 ballot continued to hammer each other Monday, while the campaign of a largely self-funded, dark horse candidate appeared to pick up steam.

City Atty. Carmen Trutanich, former lawmaker Mike Feuer and private lawyer Greg Smith mixed it up during a radio debate on KCRW-FM (89.9)'s "Which Way, L.A.?" Trutanich and Feuer reserved their sharpest barbs for one another, with Feuer calling Trutanich's tenure a failure and Trutanich continuing to deride Feuer's lack of courtroom experience.

Also Monday, Trutanich launched a TV advertising campaign that echoed the inexperience theme. The campaign said the spot will begin airing this week on cable stations. Feuer says his broader experience running a legal aid foundation, then serving on the L.A. City Council and in the state Assembly makes him best qualified for the city's top legal job, which includes prosecuting misdemeanors; defending the city in civil suits; advising the council, mayor and departments; and vetting ordinances the council has proposed.

During the debate, moderator Warren Olney touched off one of the dust ups in asking how each candidate stood on Measure A, the proposed sales tax increase on the ballot. All three said they opposed it, but Trutanich added — erroneously, it turned out — that "Feuer just changed his position."

"I absolutely have not changed my position," Feuer responded.

After the program, the Feuer campaign produced a mailer that it said showed Trutanich had paid to be on a pro-Measure A slate, or endorsement list. But what he had paid to be on was a slate called "L.A. Voter Guide," which included endorsements not only for Measure A but also for several other candidates, including at least two who do not support Measure A. The disclaimer on the mailer states that an appearance on the slate "does not necessarily imply endorsement of" issues or other candidates on the mailer.

Slate mailers can be confusing because they often lump together candidates who do not support one another and causes the candidates may not agree with. Some candidates are included without their knowledge. Others pay to reach specific types of voters; for example, Feuer, a Democrat, paid to have his name on a slate sent to Republican voters.

The debate came at a good time for first-time candidate Smith, who has made millions of dollars during a 25-year career representing police officers and firefighters in discrimination and whistle-blower lawsuits against their local government employers. He has spent a lot of his own money, mostly on television ads. This week, he said he is adding $200,000 to his campaign kitty, which would bring his personal investment to $820,000.

The money will help Smith stay on television and keep airing a radio ad that started over the weekend, Smith strategist John Thomas said Monday.

The campaign also had picked up some notable endorsements lately. Backers include organizations representing such law enforcement groups as the Los Angeles Airport Peace Officers Assn. and, on Monday, the Peace Officer Research Assn. of California. Both groups backed Trutanich when he first ran for — and won — the office, in 2009.

The Los Angeles News Group, which includes the San Fernando Valley-based Daily News of Los Angeles and the South Bay-based Daily Breeze, also endorsed Smith over the weekend.

jean.merl@latimes.com

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