Burke (left) and Taracena. (Pics by the L.A. Times.)
The summer of scandal continues in Los Angeles, where we're giving other municipalities a run for their money. While the Rocky and Mayor Tony V broohahas continue to percolate, two more surfaced this week.
Let's start with Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Burke. Burke represents a huge, huge swath of L.A. county, including some upscale neighborhoods. Yet she just couldn't bring herself to live within her district. That's an obvious no-no.
As the L.A. Times reported this week (doing a good-ol' fashioned stake out), Burke keeps a condo in Mar Vista -- where she spends about five minutes a day. Instead, she lives and sleeps in a gated Brentwood house with her husband:
In an interview with The Times two weeks ago, Burke said it was only on weekends and special occasions that she used her Brentwood home — a 4,000-square-foot residence with a swimming pool and tennis court that she and her husband have long owned. She said she lived at a 1,200-square-foot townhouse in Mar Vista, on a busy street just inside the border of her district.
But over a three-week period in which she was observed by Times reporters, Burke spent every weekday evening at her Brentwood house, in the district of Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. When confronted by reporters Wednesday, Burke changed her story and acknowledged that she has rarely slept in the Mar Vista townhouse, which she has declared as her primary residence since she purchased it more than a year ago.
Asked whether voters would consider her primary residence as the place where she sleeps, Burke replied: "So I'll start sleeping here if that'll make you happy."
Snippy, snippy! Burke then contradicted herself again, sending out a press release claiming that she did indeed live within the district.
If it's proven that Burke doesn't live in her district, she'll lose her chair (which she's retiring from next year anyway.)
Meanwhile, Victor Taracena was recently fired from his high-level managaer job at the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles after he sent nearly $800,000 in contracts to his brothers and three politically connected firms.
The L.A. Times writes that Taracena sent over 150 contracts to companies run by his brothers, which more going to pals of his:
These firms — all with ties to current or former Los Angeles City Council members from the Eastside — won their contracts in bidding processes fraught with irregularities. In one case, a losing bid was submitted by a nonexistent company. Other such bids came from actual companies which, when contacted by The Times, said they were surprised to learn that bids had been submitted in their names.
How sloppy was this? According to the paper, some of the fake bidders didn't correctly spell their own names.
And the Summer of Scandal rolls on...
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