Feuer Comes Out Shooting Over State Gun-Control Measure

Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Feuer recently persuaded his colleagues to support a state measure that would give municipalities the power to adopt their own gun-control laws.

This passed in March, only weeks after the brutal gun battle between bank robbers in North Hollywood and outgunned Los Angeles police officers.

Feuer said that if the Legislature approves the measure, he would advocate that Los Angeles completely ban all gun sales within city limits.

But Feuer doesn’t want to act out of ignorance. So this week the attorney and former head of a legal aid center went to a firing range near Lake View Terrace to meet with an agent from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to let loose with a little lead.

Feuer said he and his chief of staff, Jane Blumenthal, fired semiautomatic handguns, rifles and even an AK-47 assault rifle, the high-powered weapon used by the North Hollywood robbers.

“I want to be able to speak with some authority,” Feuer said.

But afterward, he also was able to speak with the pride of a marksman.

“I’m a pretty good shot,” he boasted.

Long Arm of the Lawmaker

Don’t try anything illegal around Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge).

He’ll hunt you down like a lawman, not a lawmaker. And he has a letter of commendation from the police to prove it.

“Officer” McClintock was in his car outside his district office in Granada Hills recently when he saw a woman ram a parked car so hard, it jumped the curb and hit a tree.

She drove away.

“We’re not going to take that!” McClintock exclaimed to his wife and two children.

So the assemblyman made a quick U-turn and took off in pursuit. His wife called police from a cellular phone and provided a description of the fleeing vehicle.

The driver capitulated. McClintock pulled her over on the overpass of the 118 Freeway and stuck around until police arrived.

The woman’s excuse? Her dog was sick and she had to hurry home to clean up the mess the pooch had made on the front seat. Why did McClintock get involved? Such a response was drummed into him by Ed Davis, a former police chief and state senator, for whom he used to work.

“Ed Davis lectured me often on the fact that it is the community’s responsibility to enforce the law,” McClintock said.

Talking Trash

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) is clearly frustrated by the Republicans’ investigation of Democratic Party fund-raising practices. But how frustrated is he?

The Republican-led Government Reform and Oversight Committee has focused its inquiry exclusively on the White House, largely ignoring missteps within the GOP. And Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), the leader of the probe, has seized sole authority to issue subpoenas, leaving Waxman, the committee’s ranking Democrat, largely powerless.

As a result, Waxman has attempted to uncover documents on his own that shine a light on Republican fund-raising. Neither party, he says, is as pure as the driven snow.

But Waxman insists that his paper chase has its limits. He vehemently denies a conservative magazine’s report that suggests he has turned into a garbage picker.

The May issue of American Spectator says that janitors in the Rayburn House Office Building have spotted Waxman “lightly rummaging through their large rolling garbage carts after they’d picked up trash in offices belonging to [House Majority Leader] Dick Armey and [GOP Conference Chairman] John Boehner.”

Waxman calls the accusation an outrageous partisan smear, and he has demanded a retraction from the Capitol Hill newspaper that repeated the assertion.

The magazine that fingered Waxman offers no proof, but it does concede that the veteran congressman might have a perfectly harmless explanation.

“Maybe Waxy was just checking if Republicans abide by recycling rules.”

On Shaky Ground

Former Los Angeles City Councilman Ernani Bernardi retired from the council four years ago, but his impact is still being felt, particularly at the Community Redevelopment Agency.

Bernardi made it his goal in City Hall to put an end to wasteful government programs, and in his book, city-sponsored redevelopment projects were the No. 1 offenders.

In fact, he fought so hard against a $750-million redevelopment project for the downtown central business district that the city was forced to sign an agreement with Bernardi pledging that the terms of the project would be “forever binding.”

Still, CRA officials have filed several lawsuits over the years to raise the $750-million spending cap, all to no avail.

This week, the Bernardi’s legacy was in evidence when funding shortages and “downsizing” forced the CRA to put on hold a program to protect houses from quake damage. The CRA could have hired additional staff for the quake program had the agency been able to lift the spending cap on the downtown redevelopment project that Bernardi stopped.

“It’s not dead for all time, but we really have to weigh this against other priorities,” John McCoy, a CRA deputy administrator, said of the quake program.

The latter was envisioned as a partnership with Wells Fargo bank to provide $15 million in loans to allow homeowners to strap down water heaters, bolt foundations and brace walls, among other improvements.

But maybe it was best that the program was stalled because less than a dozen homeowners had called to apply for the loans.

Said McCoy: “It’s not as easy as you would think to get people to do what is in their best interest, even when you are giving money away.”

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QUOTABLE: “I am torn by this.”

Councilman Mike Feuer, on a motion to offer a $5,000 reward for information on whether a dog was skinned alive or attacked by coyotes