All of a sudden. Three years into a term of office distinguished by corruption scandals, high-profile defections and utter inertia. FiveEight months - almost precisely - before Election Day ...
C'mon, folks. We're a little smarter than that, aren't we? Let's look at the amount of effort and study - not to say leadership - it took for him to make these decisions. On the surface, the Owens Valley move requires no effort. It's a simple policy change with little apparent risk and a huge feel-good payoff that plays well to the Teva-wearing Sierra Clubbers among us and lets us go on watering our vast lawns and washing our SUVs in good conscience: No one can develop on land that the city needs to keep clean anyway since it feeds us the bulk of our water.
Oh, wait, there's the little matter of lawsuits that this will surely bring from disgruntled Owens Valley residents and leaseholders who were surly before about the LADWP's iron grip on their neighborhood, and now are sure to be moved to litigation to keep their chances of ever growing as a region from circling the drain that feeds the big southbound aqueduct.
As for the intersection safety crusade - it smacks of the same PR-driven fluff that generated the impotent Watch the Road campaign.
It's not a bold new plan. It's just the latest round of improvements in a weak annual program that Hahn started upon taking office - and that has seen only 75 intersections improved since 2001. Daily News writer James Nash reports this morning that Hahn's opponents are already jumping on it:
"I think it's a little late in the game to be proposing minor improvements," said state Sen. Richard Alarcon, D-Van Nuys, who is challenging Hahn. "All of these improvements are certainly needed, but the question is, do we have the vision to make significant improvements?"
It's a Band-Aid for a case of metastatic cancer: L.A's population and the number of motorists (and wrecks) are increasing every year, yet the city under Hahn's watch has done nothing significant toward improving public transit or regulating its volume. (I'm not advocating that L.A. follow London's crazy scheme for regulating congestion but talking about it might nudge us toward some real-world solutions.)
Just keep this in mind: It's an election year. You'll need to weigh everything he does over the next five eight months against everything he hasn't done in the past three years.
Posted by: mack_reed on Wednesday, July 07, 2004 - 09:02 AM
