In his opening comment at today’s city council meeting, Jeff Lalloway made the most interesting argument…
The Irvine City Council is meeting this Tuesday afternoon to consider moving forward with a “land swap” to move the Veteran’s cemetery to the “Strawberry Fields” site. Greg is liveblogging and Allan Bartlett has the live twitter update. When I left, it looked pretty clear that the motion would pass 3-2, with Lalloway and Lynn Schott opposing.
[UPDATE: Passed 3-2 on the expected vote]
The turnout was impressive for a workday afternoon– I counted over a hundred citizens. Both sides were well represented, and easily identifiable. The older folks displaying their military affiliations were, almost without exception, in favor of the swap. However, a large cadre of non-military retirees were supportive council members Lalloway and Schott. It wasn’t hard to figure out why: these were Larry’s Agran‘s base. I love these folks. They are the model citizens who have spent decades making Irvine the successful, tolerant place it is. And they love their Larry, who moved among his people smiling and shaking hands.
So expect this to be a looonnng meeting with a predictable outcome.
But that’s not why I’m posting.
Jeff Lalloway had a strong opening argument that the process should be slowed down — that this vote wasn’t yet necessary. As part argument, Jeff talked about the “Republican Majority,” and made clear he was not part of it. This Republican majority was not transparent, he said, and he was “sick” of the hypocrisy.
Um, Jeff, it’s fine to oppose your fellow concil members. But attacking fellow non-partisan officeholders as “Republicans” is very odd thing for a Republican Party of OC Central Committee member to do.
Why is Jeff still on that committee?
He’s fond of himself and that’s about it. He’s burned his bridges with most Republicans in the county and definitely the state during his disastrous tenure as state party vice chair.
[Nasty insult against Allan deleted by editor…]
What Lalloway said was that if Agran rammed through a huge giveaway to a developer like the Republicans did last night, they would be screaming from the rooftops. And that is true. Hypocrites.
He’s a very good and principled leader. I support him.
Is it possible that by calling them “the Republican majority” he was either trying to (1) peel Melissa Fox away from Wagner and Shea or (2) using the term somewhat ironically to tweak them for being sold out to developers?
(Of course, from my perspective, it’s not ironic at all. I tend to see Republicans as SUPPOSED to be sold out to the big interests, except in half of Anaheim and parts of Costa Mesa and Fullerton.) (And yes, I do know that the leading Democrats here in most of OC that doesn’t border LA County are much the same.)
Which leads me to my other question. I thought that Lalloway and Schott’s arguments were quite impressive, even though I didn’t agree with them. (In most cases, as with strip mining the grounds around Angels Stadium, hell YES you should want an audit! This is that rare exception when the VALUE of the land is subsidiary to the UTILITY of the land for a very specific purpose — and the greater utility of this land for a public memorial is simply pretty bloody obvious.)
Be that as it may, he and Schott *really* put themselves on the line in so strongly taking this position — which surprises me coming from the man who four years ago was the main impetus between cutting the heart of out Larry Agran’s Master Plan. It seemed to me that if June 2017 Lalloway somehow met Summer 2013 Lalloway, he might well pound the crap out of him.
So my question, then, is: who IS he serving here? I’ve heard guesses ranging from the Irvine Company to Gafcon to the glory of God. Or is he — and I guess this is related to the last of the above guesses – just some mutant Republican do-gooder like Tait and Vanderbilt or Genis and Leece?
It’s the latter possibility that steers me away from glee at seeing you trash him as an OCGOP CC member. (But it’s OK, I know that you need to have your fun.) I just look at him and listen to him today and say, “I don’t agree with him on this, but I think that maybe he really IS a pretty decent guy.”
(Oops — did I just end his political career there? Sorry, Jeff!)
boy howdy.
That is a great set of questions.
The issue with Jeff is not his motivation. As best as I can tell, he _is_ a do gooder. He is one of the few people on the dais I have ever seen that changed his position based on the public comments. That’s a good thing. Think of his Veteran’s Cemetery vote in 2014 or his Occupy Orange County vote at one his very first council meetings.
I don’t hold Jeff’s wandering allegiances against him. Being a competitive council candidate in Irvine takes $500,000/cycle. He doesn’t have anything like that kind of disposable wealth, so he _has_ to strike deals with Irvine’s devils. This can be a good thing — he did much of the heavy lifting to crack Larry Agran’s death grip on Irvine politics.
The issue with Jeff is that his report card keeps getting an “N” for “works and plays well with others.0” His first two years on the council several of his colleagues gave him a “U”. So he’s burned a lot of bridges – and still he has to come up with another $500,000 in 18 months.
tough spot to be in.
So, yes, he is carrying Larry’s and Irvine Corp’s water on this the Veteran’s Cemetery. But that doesn’t mean he “sold out”. He may be arguing from conviction and looking around for any allies he can find.
My guess? He doesn’t care that much one way or the other about the cemetery, but is bending with wind as needed so he can keep his council seat. I can expound why I am certain that is at least half-true, if that interests you.
Well, it interests me, but that interest is sort of prurient, so I don’t know if that is a good enough reason.
Here, I’ll toss you another pitch and you can decide whether to take or swing. Unless it’s tied to a big donor, or unless FivePoint or whoever has told him that he’ll never play ball in this town again (at least on their team), then I just don’t understand the politics of the decision if his goal is political self-preservation.
Scott seems to me as a do-gooder as well, who is offended at what looks to her like a ripoff. I get that perspective, and the answer to that is complicated: it’s like sometimes the value of a bottle of water can really be more than $100 — such as if you are literally dying of thirst — so if you have nothing but a $100 bill but no water it may make <1>perfect sense to trade the bill for the bottle, even though from an outsider’s perspective it looks sickeningly like a heinous ripoff.
To me, it looks like the City has a great spot for houses or commercial space —
or maybe even just for beautiful sprawling and prestigious Chinese and Korean Gardens complex whose only real financial advantage for FivePoint is that it heads off litigation from existing homeowners over the insufficiently disclosed possibility of a nearby cemetery — and that FivePoint has an outstanding spot for a veterans cemetery. (I think that the county commercial land will eventually get cleared for its expansion — with all tenants getting a tasty deal for their trouble. And could Broadcomm move its purple elephant campus? Maybe! The cemetery along the freeway might get a lot larger.)
So in that case, their VALUE might be discrepant, but their UTILITY for desired purposes might each be far greater if held by the other party, as well as the combined value being greater — the definition of a “win-win.”
So that’s why I’d disagree with Schott — who reminded me a lot last night of Wendy Leece. But why did Lalloway agree with her?
Lalloway certainly spoke brilliantly about being opposed to a ripoff — but Shea’s and Wagner’s contention that it won’t be one because it still has to go through the whole Irvine bureaucratic process before construction is approved seems to be correct. Maybe the difference between them is that they don’t think that they’ll need any limits while Lalloway and Schott think that there’s no way that FivePoint won’t get what it wants, as this turn suggests to them.
My intuition is not only that to SOME extent it isn’t the City’s business how much FivePoint makes — taken to absurd levels, that a cemetery that’s $10 better for veterans and Irvine justifies a swap that makes FivePoint an extra $10 million — but I don’t even think that I need to rely on that argument. I’m not sure this <1>is a ripoff by intent (as opposed to being essentially “reputation repair” for this now-public corporation) and I suspect that its excesses can be constrained by zoning and other regulations if it is.
In those votes, I’d see Fox joining Lalloway and Schott to use regulation to scale back too much FivePoint overreach — which of course gives her Anthony Kennedy-like powers and burnishes her reputation as a sensible pragmatist. She ends up in a very good position unless Agran destroys her — but he can’t destroy her if he needs her as a third vote in favor of constraining FivePoint more than it would like.
So the only piece I don’t quite get was what was in it for Lalloway — because he was speaking with passion and moral clarity of the sort that Kris Murray can only try to mime. Maybe he just really IS sort of the rightful heir to Honest John Moorlach (who of course has his own problems, mainly with his excessive cynicism, but corruption isn’t among them.) And maybe that mantle IS what’s in it for him.
If he writes in, I’ll bet that that’s what he’ll say. And so it is despite my opposition to his vote, he actually moves UP on the scale of “Republicans I would prefer to be the ones climbing the political ladder compared to the other Republican possibilities.” If he wanted to take on Choi, I’d prefer him. And if he were to run for Supervisor against Kris Murray (if he’s in Spitzer’s district) — well then I will beseech you to stop being so mean to him.