Opinion: Report cards for L.A.’s leaders

Good morning. I'm Paul Thornton, The Times' letters editor. It is Saturday, July 18, 2015, and here's a look back at the week in Opinion.

Why wait until endorsement season -- nearly two years from now -- to comprehensively evaluate the work being done by L.A.'s leaders? Mayor Eric Garcetti, Controller Ron Galperin and others in City Hall are halfway into their terms, and there's a big enough body of work -- and certainly enough, good and bad, that has happened in the city -- for The Times' editorial board to grade their performance so far.

Starting Sunday, the board will issue report cards for L.A.'s most important leaders and for several county and state leaders as well. The grading, the editorial board assures, "will be tough but fair, as generations of teachers have told generations of students."

In a preview of the series, the board explains its motivations and criteria:

Leading an urban metropolis such as Los Angeles is a hard job; no single elected official should be expected to untie the knots of bureaucracy, reverse decades of under-investment in infrastructure or end income inequality in two years. But politicians will do a better job if they are held to high standards.

Are they keeping their campaign promises? Have they delivered on their rhetoric? Do they tackle the city's fundamental problems or do they duck controversy in favor of safe or politically popular stances? Are they focused on the monumental problems at hand or on their next elections and their own careers? Do they represent all of Los Angeles, including its diverse communities, and think about the city as a whole?

Here's why it matters. Los Angeles' leaders must struggle to close the long-standing budget deficit and manage the creeping cost of employee pension and retirement benefits, which consume 20% of the city's general fund (nearly four times more than they did in 2002). At the same time, they must confront a host of social problems, provide basic services and address a billion-dollar backlog of infrastructure needs. Can it all be done? ….

For all its strengths and attributes, Los Angeles is increasingly a city of haves and have-nots, where some residents are being priced out of their neighborhoods, where public schools fail to provide a path out of poverty for too many students, where there are too few middle-class jobs and there is too little affordable housing. But it is also a city where corporations feel underappreciated, saying that L.A.'s business taxes are too high and its government bureaucracy is too cumbersome. It is a city where even many Democrats concede that policy in City Hall is too often made to benefit labor unions -- which donate liberally to city campaigns -- rather than residents.

>> Click here for more

The editorial board's grades aren't the only ones that matter, so we're asking you to weigh in. Tweet your opinions or expectations of Garcetti et al. using #gradeyourgov (as always, The Times' Opinion section is at @latimesopinion and Facebook), or write to letters@latimes.com.

Some who disagree with the acerbic Antonin Scalia still enjoy his biting opinions; Erwin Chemerinsky isn't one of those people. Writing on The Times' Op-Ed page, UC Irvine Law School Dean Chemerinsky blames the conservative Supreme Court justice for the increasing prevalence of ad hominem attacks in legal briefs. L.A. Times

A warning to Congress: Block the Iran nuclear deal at great risk to U.S. standing in the world. That's the message to critics of the Obama administration from nuclear proliferation expert Michael Krepon, who says that such action by Congress would "diminish U.S. global leadership, destabilize the Middle East, further exhaust American military forces and weaken the U.S. Treasury." L.A. Times

The former Israeli ambassador to the United States says that the opposite is true. Michael B. Oren writes that the nuclear deal has united the typically fractious political players in Israel, where "politicians rarely agree on anything." Oren warns that the "present deal poses grave dangers not only to us, but ultimately to America and the world." Time magazine

Other perspectives on the nuclear agreement: "Is the Iran deal good enough?" (L.A. Times editorial board), "Don't like the Iran deal? What's the alternative?" (Opinion columnist Doyle McManus) and "What a disgrace" (reader Dave Connell of Laguna Beach).

Like Kris Jenner, writer Lisa Jaffe Hubbell knows what it's like to have a marriage upended by the revelation that her husband has always been a she: "We are forced to applaud with so many others what it takes to come out as trans, to live an authentic life. But only we know the courage it takes to redraw what gets erased." L.A. Times

When a politician begins a sentence with "let's be clear," expect anything but clarity to follow. Instead, says a speechwriter for former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, expect something more akin to lunacy and bombast, as in this recent statement from Bobby Jindal: "Let's be clear: Today's decision will pave the way for an all-out assault against the religious freedom rights of Christians who disagree with it." Politico

Let’s be clear -- no, really: Your opinions, especially about this newsletter, matter, so you should send them to paul.thornton@latimes.com.