Cable Con in South-Central L.A

The cable television situation in South-Central Los Angeles is obviously a fiasco: In the early 1980s, when Los Angeles was in the process of awarding cable franchises, the right to serve the predominantly black area was awarded to Mayor Tom Bradley’s long-time supporter Eli Broad, who is white, on the condition that he offer a 20% interest in the venture to black community leaders and groups, all of whom had close ties to the mayor.

Bishop H.H. Brookins was one of the beneficiaries of the process, as were other politically influential clergymen, and developer Danny Bakewell. They were among the minority partners who were not required to invest any of their own money. None have participated in the operation of the franchise. Their only activity has been to collect profits. It shows: Today, seven years after the franchise was awarded, 52,000 homes in South-Central Los Angeles are still without any access to cable television.

The revelation in The Times Sunday that Brookins and others in the mayor’s circle of enterprising friends were handed shares in the lucrative franchise as virtual gifts is more than just another example of how badly the Bradley Administration’s chronic cronyism has abused and affronted the public interest. For the most distressing aspect of the ongoing City Hall tale is that so much of the self-enrichment accomplished by the mayor’s friends was achieved through manipulation of city programs intended to expand economic opportunities for women and ethnic minorities. Canny insiders like Brookins apparently took them as just another chance to do well for themselves.

In the end, the real victims of the avarice evident in this and other such affairs that recently have come to light are the struggling minority communities whose interests the mayor’s cronies claim to exemplify.