Hahn’s Staffers Grilled Over Failed Bid for Stem Cell Site

Los Angeles City Council members loyal to mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa traded heated accusations with Mayor James K. Hahn’s deputies Thursday during a public hearing over the city’s rejected bid for the headquarters of the state’s $3-billion stem cell institute.

State officials announced this week that Los Angeles did not make the short list of places seeking to become home to the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine. Officials said the city’s proposal, prepared by the mayor’s office, lacked basic requirements such as an irrevocable lease offer and proof that the proposed office space was on just two floors.

Councilmen Jack Weiss and Martin Ludlow, both Villaraigosa supporters, led an hourlong hearing Thursday into what went wrong, much of which focused on whether the mayor’s office did make an irrevocable lease offer.

“I read English. Where does it say that?” asked Weiss, questioning Deputy Mayor Renata Simril on where in the proposal an irrevocable lease offer is spelled out.

Hahn’s aides have said that a City Council resolution included in the bid is equivalent to such an offer, a practice they said has been accepted on state bids in the past.

Weiss was unconvinced, and at one point the former federal prosecutor lamented that he was not in a courtroom where he could compel witnesses to answer questions.

“It says it on Page 12,” answered Simril, Hahn’s deputy mayor for economic development.

“Where?” Weiss responded. “No wonder this got rejected. It’s just astonishing.”

“Councilman,” Simril retorted, “with all due respect, it’s astonishing to me that we would spend taxpayer dollars to have this hearing.”

Instead, Simril said, city officials should work together to pursue the $3 billion in research funding that the stem cell institute is expected to provide.

Simril also said her office believed the Bay Area and San Diego, with their established biotech companies, had an advantage in landing the headquarters. “The deck was stacked,” she said.

“So that position, to summarize that, Ms. Simril, is headquarters, schmedquarters? Right?” Weiss responded. “I think that’s wrong.”

Los Angeles was one of six cities whose applications were deemed incomplete. Other cities, such as San Jose, have also protested that they were disqualified unfairly. City officials said they are still trying to decide what recourse, if any, they have.

At another point during the hearing, Simril said that she believed the city did nothing wrong in preparing its application.

After the hearing, Weiss’ office issued a news release castigating the mayor. “The Hahn administration lost the headquarters,” Weiss said. “They lost thousands of jobs, millions of dollars in economic development related to saving countless lives, and at the end of the day they said they wouldn’t have changed a thing. That’s just astonishing.”

Tim McOsker, the mayor’s chief of staff, had harsh words for Weiss and Ludlow, saying the hearing was “more about the politics of the mayor’s race.”

“We have committee members that were more committed to working against the city’s interest in a public forum for base political reasons unrelated to what’s good for the city of Los Angeles,” McOsker said as he left the hearing. “It’s shameful.”

Some council members loyal to the mayor suggested the hearing was unnecessary. Jan Perry and Greig Smith issued a letter saying they would not attend.

“It was a political fishing expedition,” Smith said in a statement. “And it appears nothing useful came out of it.”