Scales of Justice May Help Teach Weighty Lessons in City Schools

It’s Red Ribbon Week on some Los Angeles Unified School District campuses, when kids learn to “just say no” to drugs. But when it comes to drug booty, the district is learning to just say yes.

That’s the upshot of a motion passed this week by the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, comprised of San Fernando Valley representatives Richard Alarcon, Laura Chick and Mike Feuer. Under the motion, the scales seized by police in drug busts will be turned over to city schools for science students to put to less nefarious use.

“We have a need for scales to measure both force and mass,” Chris Holle, a school district science advisor, told the panel, which met at Monroe High School in North Hills. The scales would be used “in a productive way,” Holle said.

The committee unanimously approved the booty distribution plan, although Alarcon expressed concern that the scales be kept secure, presumably so that they would not be stolen and returned to their original purpose.

Once the full council gives the green light, the scales will technically be “sold” by the police to the school district, in lots of about 50 for just a dollar a lot.

“We have a real need,” Holle said.

“It seems to be a perfect match--we really don’t need them,” said Byron Boeckman of the city attorney’s office, to laughter from the audience of adults and about 200 students from area high schools.

Back in the Arena

On the long list of speakers who had come to praise or bury the proposal to build a downtown sports arena, there was a name familiar to everyone in City Hall: former Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who represented the northeast Valley for years.

Now in his 80s, Bernardi still styles himself a nemesis of the city’s redevelopment agency, with which he constantly sparred as a councilman.

On Tuesday, he was in usual feisty form, albeit a little shakier, in announcing his opposition to the arena development proposal, then passing out photocopies of his handwritten statement to reporters.

“The project is in for quite a buggy ride,” he warned the august body he once sat on, though practically no council members remain who can remember buggies.

Bernardi was unfazed. If the city insisted on heavily subsidizing the deal and giving a handout to developers, then he would take whatever measures necessary to block it.

“I’m prepared to go all the way,” Bernardi declared before relinquishing the public speaker’s lectern.

“Mr. Bernardi, always nice to see you,” council President John Ferraro responded.

Thanks Giving

Forgive the folks in the audience who were confused as to whether they were attending a City Council meeting Tuesday or the Academy Awards telecast. As the debate over the proposed downtown sports complex dragged on, council members began using up so much time thanking people involved with the project that they might as well have been accepting Oscars.

In fact, when Councilman Hal Bernson took the floor and got to the well-worn line, “And I would like to thank . . . “, council president Ferraro motioned to him to stand down.

But Bernson had a persuasive argument for continuing. “Don’t cut me off now, John,” he told Ferraro, one of the arena’s staunchest backers. “I’m talking about you!”

Bernson went on: “I’d like to thank the council president for his support.”

He finished his list.

A Life-and-Death Matter

It may not sound like the most exciting committee assignment in Sacramento, but Assemblyman George Runner (R-Lancaster) is actually happy about being asked to sit on what he calls “the new committee on death and dying.”

In reality, the panel is called the Select Committee on Palliative Care, but Runner calls it the death and dying committee because that is mostly what the panel will discuss.

Runner himself does not have any special insight on the matter--he is in good health, thank you very much. He was selected to the panel to provide a good balance of men and women, as well as Democrats and Republicans.

But Runner volunteered to join because he does have strong opinions on such issues as euthanasia. The assemblyman, a former Lancaster mayor, is adamantly opposed to doctor-assisted suicide.

“It is important that as California wrestles with this issue, the sanctity of every human life is protected,” he said.

The committee will meet in downtown Los Angeles on Nov. 17 to take testimony from right-to-die organizations, churches, medical providers and hospice workers.

Turning the Tables

It’s to a politician’s benefit to remember names and faces of potential supporters and allies. Now extend that to the children of supporters and allies as well.

At Thursday’s meeting of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Mayor Richard Riordan sat with an empty lunch plate he couldn’t get rid of while chairing the meeting. What to do? Looking around, the mayor nabbed a young man near him, shoved it in his hands and asked that he toss it.

Fine, except that it wasn’t just any young man, much less a busboy there to wait on MTA board members. It was County Supervisor Don Knabe’s younger son, Matt, who is his father’s new assistant deputy. The supervisor, an MTA director, wasn’t at the meeting himself; Matt had simply stopped in to get a glimpse of the MTA in action.

Which included throwing Riordan’s refuse away without objection--just a slight smile.

Post Honors

When former U.S. Rep. Carlos Moorhead goes to the post office in Glendale, he may be able to avoid those notoriously long lines.

If he wanted to, he could cut to the front and say: “Hey, this is my post office.”

That’s because this week, the House of Representatives approved a bill to name a Glendale post office after Moorhead, in honor of his 24 years in office.

The bill was authored by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), who sat on the House Judiciary Committee with Moorhead for many years. Rep. James Rogan (R-Glendale), who replaced Moorhead after he retired in January, coauthored the bill.

A former attorney and member of the California Assembly, Moorhead entered the national spotlight early in his career as the Judiciary Committee weighed the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. Moorhead stuck by Nixon long after many other Republicans had backed away, until the infamous “smoking gun” tapes emerged.

Moorhead, 75, announced his retirement in 1995, citing a desire to spend more time with his wife, Valery, and a growing distaste for the “cantankerous” nature of politics in Washington.

Maybe Washington isn’t that cantankerous anymore. The measure to name the site after him was unanimously adopted by the House without debate and is expected to fare just as well in the Senate.

*

QUOTABLE: “Now let’s get one done in the San Fernando Valley.”

--Councilman Richard Alarcon, voting to approve the downtown sports arena development