Sweetheart Deals Are a Hallowed L.A. Tradition

It’s only January, but you wouldn’t know it from the elected elites of Los Angeles.

By their calendar, it must be Valentine’s Day.

But heck, if you’re the L.A. City Council or the county Board of Supervisors, every day can be Valentine’s Day, voting sweetheart deals like these, planting them on supporters and contributors like a big wet smackeroo.

First, there’s the Greek Theatre, where the likes of Frank Sinatra and Sting and Los Lobos have crooned and tuned.

For a quarter-century, one company, Nederlander, has had a lock on the concert venue. Instead of the lease going out for competitive bids, Nederlander has been given extension after extension on its exclusive deal, thanks in no small part to its great good friend, council President John Ferraro.

The lease issue came up last month. The city attorney said the contract really ought to be put out for bids. House of Blues/Universal--which I hear has some idea how to put on a show--wanted a run at leasing the Greek. Yet the City Council voted Nederlander another five years--a lovely parting gift to the term-limited Ferraro.

But this very weekend, the city clerk is counting signatures on petitions that would actually let the common folk vote on whether to end-run the Greek Theatre deal. As fuses go, this one is slow-burning, but it runs right under City Hall, and the bang waiting at the other end could be ferocious.

Three blocks away, county supervisors unanimously voted to give 39-year lease extensions on two primo Marina del Rey waterfront parcels to Doug Ring, a faithful campaign contributor and one of only a half-dozen big players who hold marina leases.

Their names may not be big to you, but in the political universe they loom almost as big as their checks. Such big shots don’t dole out campaign dough by candidates’ ideology, but to just about anyone in office, or likely to get there. As long ago as 1984, in the landlocked city of Cerritos, marina interests were donating to the council campaign of a man named Don Knabe, who has now grown up to be a Los Angeles County supervisor.

So what was the likelihood that those leases would be opened to bid? Let’s put it this way: If only the landfill-earth undergirding Marina del Rey were as unshakable as the leases the county gives to run it.

The marina is public property, but public debate there was none, just a swift “yea” vote on the strength of Ring’s pledge to redevelop and spiff up the marina.

Will the county make money on its sweet piece of property? It says yes, even though only about a dime on every apartment rental dollar and two bits of every buck paid for renting boat slips will go to the county, the rest to leaseholders.

And what the county does make will probably go to pay off the mortgage it took on the marina five years ago, when times were bad. To put it baldly, you get the sense that the marina makes more money for the supervisors’ campaigns than it does for the taxpayers who own it.

That’s Marina del Rey for you: once a swamp, always a swamp.

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If competition is so beneficial, where is it? How can governments brag about saving a few hundred bucks by putting the paper-clip concession out to bid, if the truly big deals that could make or save big money are taken off the table?

The city went wooing sweethearts long before now. In 1958, L.A. swapped 300 acres in Chavez Ravine for Walter O’Malley’s minor league ballpark, and threw in $2 million in improvements for Dodger Stadium.

Then, too, people signed petitions, but Proposition B, to overturn the land swap, lost by 24,293 votes on June 3, 1958--the day the L.A. Dodgers won in Chicago, and announcer Vin Scully closed his game broadcast by urging Angelenos, “Don’t forget to vote.”

Want more? It took years of agonizing before the L.A. City Council opened up for bids the monopoly on official police towing and impounding held for generations, like feudal lords, by 17 companies.

Under Mayor Bradley, LAX concessions remained for years in the hands of a choice few, while travelers suffered from less-than-choice food and no-choice-

whatever sundry and trinket shops. The Riordan administration opened the concessions to bid, to be snapped up by companies actually serving edible food and selling readable paperbacks. (Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, who endorsed that competition heartily, chose not to do the same on the Greek Theatre, letting Nederlander extend its lease.)

Then there are the multimillions in tax breaks the city begged the DreamWorks billionaires to take, and the whiff of millions to come in the city’s pending high-speed Internet access deal.

Maybe the Greek and the marina are the best deals to be had. But we’ll never know now, will we?

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Patt Morrison substitutes today for the vacationing Al Martinez. Morrison’s e-mail: patt.morrison@latimes.com