City Attorney's ACE Program Promises Swift Justice At Small Price

Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich and Councilmember Paul Koretz (CD5) have been quietly but steadily working together for the past two years on a plan to streamline the handling of minor, low-grade violations of the municipal code. The Administrative Citations Enforcement program (ACE) will allow Trutanich to impose fines (administrative citations) on violators without the traditional high costs and delays of the criminal justice system. Apart from the clear advantage of swift justice, it will also generate a revenue stream that will not only cover the costs of the program, but also yield several millions of dollars in fines and fees that will go to the General Fund.

At 1PM on Monday, September 26, 2011, the Budget and Finance Committee will vote on Trutanich's proposal, and members of the public are welcome to testify as to their thoughts on ACE.

The ACE program was an idea Trutanich came up with when he became LA's first fiscally conservative City Attorney in decades. A former Republican, Trutanich reinvented himself as an independent but kept a firm grip on his Republican values. Supporters will be pleased to find that unnecessary and often undue deference to civil liberties and minority interests, takes a distant second place to uniform enforcement of law. According to Trutanich, his idea was adopted by at least two major Californian cities after he shared his idea with them; San Diego and Santa Monica were rapid adopters and, according to Trutanich, "it's working just fine."

Although the idea was Trutanich's the impetus for ACE came from Councilmember Paul Koretz who represents Council District 5 which includes much of LA's wealthy westside community. Koretz had the bare bones of a plan to tackle common neighborhood complaints such as illegal vending, noise pollution, fence heights, unpermitted construction and untended front yards. Trutanich had to modify Koretz's two-page motion to beef it up with more effective enforcement measures that the liberal lawmaker had overlooked. Trutanich's final draft includes the following key concepts designed to ensure maximum enforcement with minimum delay and minimal or no cost.

1. Removal of the Criminal Court's Jurisdiction
Currently, neighborhood problems receive low priority in the already overcrowded criminal court system. Rogue judges often make allowances or exceptions for special interests and minorities that are not written into the letter of the law. ACE creates a parallel universe of Administrative Hearing Courts where the defendant will not be able to "game the system" with delays and typical defense attorney tricks. The goal is to ensure a uniform enforcement of the law with no exceptions.

The Trutanich Courts will be efficient and effective because:

• There will be no jury - the judge decides everything.
• There will be no public defender - if these criminals want an attorney, let them pay for one.
• The judges will be selected by the City Attorney and told how to decide cases. That way, rogue judges can be quickly removed.
• Specially selected prosecutors will staff the courts to assist the judge in matters of law.
• If defendants want to fight cases, they will have to pay the fine first before the judge even hears their case.
• If defendants fail to attend their scheduled hearing, a money judgment lien will be recorded against their home or business.

2. Fines not Jail Will Bring Rapid Results
The costs of incarceration are bankrupting the state. Sending more criminals to jail just adds to the strain on our limited resources. Using Administrative Penalties and Fees we can save money because:

• No defendant in Trutanich Courts will ever be sent to jail by one of Trutanich's judges. 
• Defendants will, instead, be made to pay their fines and fees, either by attachment of earnings or property liens.  
• Defendants who delay resolving their obligations will face a daily increase in fines because every day that a violation exists, constitutes a new offense.

3. Criminals Cannot Hide Evidence
Oftentimes, defendants escape justice because they are able to hide or conceal incriminating evidence. Because the Trutanich Courts are non-criminal, the full range of constitutional protections such as the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments to the Constitution do not apply. All that is required is Due Process - notice and an opportunity to be heard. Accordingly, the Trutanich Courts can:

• Hear evidence that would be considered hearsay in a criminal court.
• Compel the defendant to produce documents and items using a subpoena power similar to that used in criminal courts and grand juries.
• Use evidence seized by enforcement officers without search warrants.
• Hear incriminating statements made by defendants without "Miranda" warnings.

These are just a few of the ways that Trutanich will ensure that all our laws are applied fairly, evenly and appropriately to all who violate them. Yes, it is swift justice, but justice delayed is justice denied.

Unfortunately, not all citizens see things the right way, and there have been a few alarmist and ill informed criticisms of ACE. Stephen Box, who ran for CD4 and lost, published a hit piece on CityWatchLA, read it after reading this and you decide what's makes more sense. The Los Angeles Dragnet blog also criticized Carmen Trutanich for his ACE program, but the arguments made there are frankly ludicrous and completely biased against Trutanich.

For more information the draft ACE ordinance can be found at:

http://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2010/10-0085_RPT_ATTY_06-27-11.pdf .

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact David Hersch or Christopher Koontz in Councilmember
Koretz’s office at 213-473-7005.

Come and testify at the Budget and Finance Committee:
September 26, 2011, 1:00 PM
Room 1010, City Hall
200 North Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
(Contact CD5 for Parking 213-473-7005.)

If you cannot attend the hearing, please send e-mails and letter of support to members of the
Budget and Finance Committee below.  Please copy Councilmember Paul Koretz.

Bernard Parks             bernard.c.parks@lacity.org
Tony Cardenas           tony.cardenas@lacity.org
Mitch Englander         mitch.englander@lacity.org
Paul Koretz                 paul.koretz@lacity.org
Bill Rosendahl            bill.rosendahl@lacity.org

Remember, City Attorney Carmen Trutanich has worked on this plan for over two years and if there were any real problems, he would have said so. His enemies inside City Hall want him to fail, but with your support that will not happen.

Thanks to the folks at LANeighbors.org for much of the information used here.

Ron Kaye Says It Like It Is - City's Budget in the Hands of Incompetents

Thank you, Ron Kaye, for saying in two minutes, everything that the City Council's Budget and Finance Committee needed to hear - the anger of the residents of Los Angeles at their incompetence and indecision.



Here's a transcript of what you said:


"Thank you for this, and thank you for what you have done, which I think is, fulfilled and impossible dream of mine to ever unite the city. You have brought labor together with the neighborhood activists, you've brought the people with disabilities  and the people who are caring for them, soccer moms and every constituency of this city to the table.


They are all angry. Angry at what I think is really the subtext of the CAO's reports on both parking and the budget, which is a failure of leadership and a failure of management. The proposition that you can possibly fix this city by yourself after years of failure is ridiculous. You need the people, you need all the constituents brought to the table. You need our support, and you have lost the confidence of the people. And that's really the crisis that we're talking about. It's not financial, you can't create jobs in a city that nobody believes in. You can buy jobs, which is what you've been doing, and what is proposed by taking money from the proprietary departments.


These people are just the tip of an iceberg of hundreds of thousands of people who love this city, who want to see it turn around and become a city that respects every element of this city, every type of person, and brings them to the table.


We can't all have everything that we want, but we can sit down at the table and figure out how we really fix this. I have proposed that, if we really got serious, labor might take a step back for two or three years, the public might even agree to a tightly written tax for two or three years just to bail us out of this. You're afraid to tax them because you know that you don't have their trust or faith. You have perpetuated a fiefdom system despite Charter Reform. This is your opportunity to be real leaders and to really save this city, and God willing, you will and the people come together. 


Thank you very much."


I'm also reproducing a comment on your blog this morning, that says what you left unsaid:

"I've never heard so much common sense, so succinctly put, in such little time. Your words are the words of a leader, Ron, and they scare the living daylights out of that bunch of lilly livered, knuckle dragging, hand wringing, indecisive, incompetent, imbecilic, morally and ethically corrupt, unrepresentative, conniving, duplicitous, sanctimonious, self-serving stuffed shirts who have never, ever, held a real job their entire miserable lives. 


You were preaching to a group who have never had to balance a personal household budget, never had to worry about where the next paycheck comes from, or ever, ever, have to make a hard decision. For them there's always a political safe harbor, either as an elected official, or an appointed lackey where they do the devil's work. They bunny-hop between the city and Sacramento, leaving behind them the consequences of their disastrous decisions and move on to con other voters into believing their glossy mailers and special interest paid for baloney."


Says it all, doesn't it?