10/26/04

LC041026

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

California cities are mad and they're not going to take it
anymore. Can they stop the state from siphoning off local
taxes?

Mayor Larry Guidi>> Why do they have the $35 million deficit
and my city has a balanced budget? So what does that tell you?
What's wrong with the picture? Does the fox really want to
guard the henhouse?

Val>> And then, a respected newsman has the back story of one
of the oldest shows on television.

Plus, what and where is Los Angeles? A new documentary tries to
define the elusive concept of Los Angeles Now.

It's all coming up next on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> You certainly wouldn't like it if your parents kept
raiding your piggy bank to pay the bills. But for the past
decade, that's what state lawmakers have been doing to the
coffers of hundreds of cities and towns. Well, now those cities
and towns are fighting back. Proposition 65 and 1A are aimed at
keeping revenues at home. David Okarski went to the city of
Hawthorne to see what it means for a town that's been struggling
to make ends meet.

David Okarski>> Hawthorne police chief, Stephen Port, has to
get rid of millions of dollars worth of marijuana his detectives
brought back to headquarters from a bust.

Chief Stephen Port>> We take it to an incinerator down in Long
Beach and we have a judge's court order to do that because we
just don't have the facility to store this kind of stuff.

David Okarski>> But until the court order comes through,
someone has to guard this much dope, probably a swat team.

Chief Stephen Port>> Twenty-four-seven, around the clock, so
they're generally going to be on overtime. Fifty dollars an
hour per person and that just has to happen.

David Okarski>> This is just one of the necessary, but
unpredictable, costs that challenge the Hawthorne Police
Department's bottom line, but the bigger uncertainty each year
is the city budget itself.

Chief Stephen Port>> Our history has been that we have to wait
on the state for the state to decide how they're going to give
us the revenue stream that we depend on and then we balance or
go into a deficit spending

David Okarski>> For more than a decade, Chief Port says,
California's legislature has siphoned off tax revenues from
cities like Hawthorne to pay the state's expenses.

Chief Stephen Port>> I'm going to be unable to hire six police
officer positions that I would like to have.

Mayor Larry Guidi>> The pool was closed for two years because
of the cuts.

David Okarski>> Hawthorne Mayor, Larry Guidi, says every year
Sacramento leaves cities like his scrambling to find money for
basic repairs.

Mayor Larry Guidi>> Streets should be slurry-coated every five
to six years. The sewers need to be upgraded. When that hits
all at one time, you're not talking a hundred thousand dollars.
To resurface a street is in the millions.

David Okarski>> He and other mayors across California have had
enough. Last spring, the League of California Cities put
Proposition 65 on the ballot. Over the summer, they negotiated
a better deal with the governor and that became Proposition 1A.

Mayor Larry Guidi>> Proposition 1A lets us control our money.
It prevents them from just automatically coming to Hawthorne and
all of our brother and sister cities and saying I'm taking
$800,000 from you, I'm taking a million or two million to help
balance our budget.

David Okarski>> Proposition 1A amends the State Constitution.
It limits the state's authority in several areas. The state
could no longer reduce local sales taxes and it couldn't
reallocate local sales tax money from a city to a county, for
example. It couldn't shift property tax money from local
governments to schools and it couldn't reduce vehicle license
fees unless it replaced the money that local governments would
lose.

Chief Stephen Port>> This is one of these things where it
doesn't raise taxes. It just corrects the system for the out-
years so we can just kind of move on.

David Okarski>> Unless starting in 2008, the governor were to
declare the state in financial hardship. Then the legislature
could borrow local property taxes again, but only with a two-
thirds vote of both houses.

Mayor Larry Guidi>> They can take $600,000 or $800,000 from
Hawthorne. They have to pay it back within the three years.
They can't come back to us and take any more money unless they
pay back the original loan with interest.

David Okarski>> Governor Schwarzenegger supports Proposition
1A. Both houses of the legislature approved it overwhelmingly
and groups representing California's cities, counties and
special districts are all behind it.

Chief Stephen Port>> And it allows us to be more accurate
strategists, you know, to deal with the economy, to deal with
future planning, capital projects, hiring, where are we going to
be like corporations. They plan on that. Local government?
It's year to year.

David Okarski>> In fact, it's hard to find public opposition to
Proposition 1A. The argument against it in the Voter
Information Guide is signed by Carole Migden, Chair of the State
Board of Equalization. She's declining interviews about
Proposition 1A. Her arguments in the voters' guide say it all.
In the Voter Information Guide, Carole Migden says that we
should protect local taxpayers, not local government's
irresponsible spending habits. She says there's no provision
for fiscal accountability here. But not even tax watchdog
groups like the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association are taking a
position on Proposition 1A.

Chief Stephen Port>> My accountability goes through that room
across the street, through the five elected officials, with the
City Manager, with voters, and I'm accountable to that.

Mayor Larry Guidi>> We've been struggling for years to balance
budgets with the state taking our dollars away and, even with
all the money they've taken from us, why do they have the $35
million dollar deficit and my city has a balanced budget?

David Okarski>> Police Sergeant Charlie Leonard, meanwhile,
says Hawthorne needs new squad cars.

Sergeant Charlie Leonard>> I can feel the brakes as I drive
this car right now. The brake pedal is low.

David Okarski>> But because of the current budget squeeze, the
cops will have to live with these cars two more years and with a
roster that's six officers short.

Sergeant Charlie Leonard>> Typically on a day like today, we'll
have a minimum of five officers out in the field to answer any
and all radio calls. But ideally, it would be good if we had
eight or maybe even nine officers out here on a daily basis.

David Okarski>> It takes most of the department's on-duty
officers to round up teenagers in a local park for violating a
daytime curfew.

[Film Clip]

David Okarski>> Hawthorne cops deal with the same issues other
Southern California cities do, including gangs, traffic
problems, bank robberies and drugs.

>> We pulled up. That's why they were running.

Sergeant Charlie Leonard>> Nickel bags of marijuana or dime
bags?

>> Yeah, they're definitely doing sales. They're selling
marijuana out of the park here.

David Okarski>> Sergeant Leonard's officers can't be everywhere
at once.

Sergeant Charlie Leonard>> This will happen ten minutes from
now when we leave, so as we take a person or two to jail, the
officers are going to be tied up writing crime reports and
arrest reports and booking in essential evidence, etc., etc. all
the while this park, which is supposed to be for people to enjoy
and things of that sort and not be involved in sales of
dangerous drugs. The more police presence, the better.

David Okarski>> Police presence, like everything else the city
needs, costs money and, like the other things, it'll have to
wait. Chief Port and Mayor Guidi are pinning their hopes on
Proposition 1A.

Chief Stephen Port>> If it doesn't pass, we'll be back to the
year-to-year negotiations with whoever the governor is, whoever
the legislative committees are that are running budget and
appropriations. We'll be back to this vehicle license fee
debate, about whether it's at the right rate, you know, whether
the people that live in our city that pay for their vehicle
license fees in our city, whether we get a share of that or the
state takes it all.

Mayor Larry Guidi>> They woke the sleeping giants and, you
know, we're going to take you on now. It's over with. You're
no longer going to bully us or push us around. We're going to
come up there and we're going to beat you over the head.

David Okarski>> If voters approve Proposition 1A. David
Okarski for Life and Times.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts
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interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life
and Times".

Toni Guinyard>> Viewers have been tuning in to the CBS News
program, "Face the Nation", since November 7, 1954. The program
is now celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. Bob Schieffer, the
familiar face of "Face the Nation", has done everything from
interview presidents to moderate presidential debates and now
he's sharing some of his favorite stories from the first fifty
years.

Announcer>> "Today on this CBS Public Affairs program, "Face
the Nation".

Bob Schieffer>> If you look at "Face the Nation" today, it is
basically the same program that it was fifty years ago. To me,
that's even more remarkable than the fact that it's lasted for
fifty years.

Toni Guinyard>> But in this era of look superseding the
content, you've got to wonder what is keeping people tuning in
week after week after week.

Bob Schieffer>> I think there's a great desire out there for
information. People are serious. They want to know about the
issues that are facing the country and we don't do anything very
fancy. I mean, we basically turn on the lights up there, we sit
them down at a table and we ask them questions.

Toni Guinyard>> And it works?

Bob Schieffer>> And they seem to like it that way. Over the
years, every time somebody tried to change "Face the Nation", it
proved to be a disaster even while I was anchoring "Face the
Nation" which I've done for thirteen years now. We once had
some guy that had the bright idea that we ought to move it out
to Hollywood and focus on entertainment news. Well, thank the
Lord, wiser heads prevailed and we didn't do that. I mean, I
could just see myself standing out there on the red carpet when
they were having the Oscars some night.

Toni Guinyard>> Now you know you are in Los Angeles right now.

Bob Schieffer>> I do, but I don't think that that was exactly
what they had in mind for "Face the Nation" and I don't think
that's what people who tune in on Sunday morning want to see.

Toni Guinyard>> If you could list your top one-two-three
moments that "Face the Nation" has been in the spotlight, what
would those be?

Bob Schieffer>> Well, I think, number one, the biggest story
they ever got was the real scoop. They got an exclusive
interview with Nikita Khrushchev, the first time a soviet leader
had ever been interviewed by anybody even in his own country.
The soviet people -- because the soviets recorded the interview
-- for the first time saw their leader being interviewed.

Broadcaster>> "What do you consider at this time to be the most
pressing points that must be solved between the two countries?"

Nikita Khrushchev>> "I believe that the main thing is to
normalize relations between our countries."

Bob Schieffer>> It was a remarkable story. It was also
controversial because people weren't sure at that time that a
government-regulated industry as broadcasting is ought to have
the freedom to interview a communist and put him on television.
After this, they came to the conclusion that broadcasting
deserved the same rights and privileges as print reporters.

Had a print reporter interviewed Khrushchev, he would have been
put in the paper and nobody would have thought anything about
it. But after that interview appeared on television, two
members of the House of Representatives got up on the floor and
introduced a resolution that the next time a communist was going
to be interviewed on television, the questions had to be cleared
in advance by the Central Intelligence Agency. Well, now, we've
come a long way since then. So I think that's the most
important broadcast.

Equally important was the first broadcast with Joe McCarthy. He
was the first guest. That was on the Sunday before the Senate
took up the resolution on whether to censure him.

Joe McCarthy>> "I invited them to give information of
wrongdoing, graft, corruption and communism. I am continuing to
get that information."

>> "Getting documents too?"

Joe McCarthy>> "Yes."

>> "Are you getting any more as a result of your appeals than
you got beforehand?"

>> "Has there been a flow built up as a result of that?"

Joe McCarthy>> "It's pretty hard to say whether it has
increased or decreased. I've been so busy being investigated
and preparing for this lynch bee starting tomorrow that I
haven't had an opportunity to -- "

>> "You call a meeting of the United States Senate a lynch
bee?"

Bob Schieffer>> I also think the interview with Fidel Castro,
the day he came out of the hills in Cuba to take power.

[Film Clip]

Bob Schieffer>> I think that was also a memorable broadcast.
It is also the only time in the history of the broadcast that
the Executive Producer was held at gunpoint while the interview
was being conducted and he complained to Castro and Castro said,
"Oh, well, don't worry. They're all men of law." This was not
very reassuring to the guy who was at the other end of a
military carbine that was being held on him.

Every person who has served as president since Eisenhower has
appeared on "Face the Nation" either as a candidate or as a
sitting president. Those were also broadcasts to remember.

[Film Clip]

Toni Guinyard>> I think a lot of our viewers probably saw you
when you were moderating the presidential debate. Your feeling
about the format, because a lot has been made about the format
of those debates?

Bob Schieffer>> It was very, very difficult because the
moderators were not allowed to ask follow-up questions.

Toni Guinyard>> That hurt you, didn't it?

Bob Schieffer>> There were really times when I really was very
frustrated. I just wanted to say, wait a minute, you haven't
answered the question that I asked, and both of them were guilty
of it. I hope the next time that these debates come about that
we'll be able to work out some kind of a deal where at least
some of the time the moderator can ask the follow-up questions.

Toni Guinyard>> Why did you agree to moderating it?

Bob Schieffer>> Well, because the debate commission, which is a
nonpartisan group, had asked me to moderate the debate and they
asked me to moderate it under the rules that they approved. Now
these two campaigns worked it out and I thought it was my job to
live up to that commitment. You know, my sense of it was that,
if they wanted to stand on their heads and answer the questions,
I'll ask them the questions. We'll see how they think on their
heads. We knew they could think on their feet.

The best parts of that debate were the times when I was -- and
it only happened a couple of times -- when I was able to get
them off the talking points and they seemed to be speaking from
the heart. I don't know why politicians think that hurts them.
They're so afraid to say something that hasn't been sort of
focus grouped, as it were. A lot of the time, I think that you
have people at the top of politics and they generally have
pretty good political instincts. The President has very good
political instincts. You know, when I got him off those
memorized one-liners and he had to answer questions about his
wife, I mean, how could you not like him a little more after
what he said?

George W. Bush>> "To stand up straight and not scowl."

Bob Schieffer>> Or John Kerry when he made fun of himself for
being married to one of the richest women in the world.

John Kerry>> "The President and you and I are three examples of
lucky people who married up (laughter) and some would say maybe
me more so than others."

Toni Guinyard>> You were criticized, though, for asking those
questions about their wives, accused of wasting time.

Bob Schieffer>> Yes. The two women in the Washington Post Op-
Ed page said that I wasted valuable time just to provoke a
Hallmark Card moment. Well, you know, I plead guilty to that.
I mean, if there's one thing we could use and deserve, I think,
in this nasty campaign season, it is maybe a Hallmark Card
moment from time to time because I think that, during those
moments, we not only got a little relief, we were able to get a
little better picture of both of those men, and that really was
my objective. I was not trying to do in that debate what I do
on "Face the Nation", which is to make news and move the story
along. What I was trying to do was to give the American people
a little better picture, a little more understanding, of who
these men were and I feel pretty good about that. I think we
did get a couple of insights.

Toni Guinyard>> Well, that's just an appetizer, in a sense, to
all of these moments with "Face the Nation". Mr. Schieffer,
thank you so much for spending a little time with Life and
Times.

Bob Schieffer>> Well, thank you. It was really, really fun.

Toni Guinyard>> Thank you.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or
contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val>> Have you ever felt overwhelmed by where we live? This
massive metropolis that's larger than a small country, has over
sixteen million people, a couple hundred cities and more than
eighty languages. Well, now a new documentary by a fresh
hometown voice brings Southern California into perspective in a
visually stimulating way. It's called "Los Angeles Now" by
Phillip Rodriguez.

>> "The story of Los Angeles is a small town that was multi-
cultural and became literally the most white city in the history
of urban America and now has become the most multi-cultural city
in the history of mankind."

Val>> I talked with filmmaker, Phillip Rodriguez, at his home
in Silverlake about how he approached such a huge subject.

Phillip Rodriguez>> I'm as perplexed as everyone else is and I
feel as exhilarated and as concerned about this change that's
taken place in our city, the city that was when I was a boy,
Iowa by the sea, and now has become this unbelievable,
incomprehensible, fast-moving polyglot. I mean, I think
everyone in the elementary school I went to was blonde but me,
and to see it change in the course of twenty or thirty years has
been so impressive.

>> "Someday when there are so few blondes left in California,
we're going to put them in a preserve and we're all going to go
look at them just remembering what it was like."

Medusa>> "Koreatown is almost taking over Crenshaw. I'm like,
wait a minute, where did all of these -- you know, I'm reading
buildings where I can't even understand the language and I'm
like where did this come from?"

Phillip Rodriguez>> I'm a crummy student and I'm not a
historian and I'm not a good statistician and I simply was
trying to get to evoke a feeling of how it's like to be here. I
wanted the film to feel like life on a freeway.

>> "We're in Los Angeles, somewhere in Bel Aire, Zsa Zsa
Gabor's house. I mean, you know, where is this damn town? You
drive along and am I still in East Los Angeles or where am I?
Is this Tarzana yet? I mean, where am I?"

Val>> Real unique technique which I would call a city of
collage. Still images moving in relationship to each other as
opposed to just going out and shooting a bunch of pictures of
people. What were you after?

Phillip Rodriguez>> Good question. I think that, again, we
wanted the film to feel like Los Angeles, a city that's
constantly in motion, where the mini-mall that was there last
week is gone and something is in its place the next week. We
rooted around for visual technique to attempt to evoke the sense
of change and disorientation.

Val>> One of the more edgy moments was when there was a
discussion about the relationship between Jews and Latinos,
which is something that's not often broached.

Phillip Rodriguez>> Yeah. I mean, there are lots of edgy
moments in the film, I think. I think a lot of us are feeling
like we don't know where we sit and where we fit in the context
of this change.

>> "The divide between the Jewish community in Los Angeles and
the Latino community is one of the crueler divides."

Yuval Rotem>> "Many Jews in the west side don't necessarily
have any curious understanding of the Latinos on the east side
because of them are in (inaudible) with Latinos. It's either
with their maid or their gardeners."

>> "Most west side Jews could give a damn about Los Angeles.
They're not really of Los Angeles in the way the rest of us are
and, by that, I include the Anglos and Jews, Middle Easterners
and Ethiopians who live in my neighborhood."

Phillip Rodriguez>> My film, for instance, was financed in
great part by the Skirball Foundation and for that I am very
grateful. But all my film is trying to accomplish is to
stimulate and maybe provoke some kind of interaction. I think a
lot of us, because the city is so spread out and because we
don't sit on top of each other, we don't experience each other
every day in the metro, that we're disinclined perhaps to engage
and consider each other's point of view. All my film is trying
to do essentially is to mix it up a little bit, stir up a little
bit and maybe sometime impolite conversation.

Val>> So what kind of reaction do you hope or expect to get
after people see it?

Phillip Rodriguez>> I would really like for the film to
stimulate conversation. The fact that we made a movie that has
Eli Broad next to Wanda Coleman next to Selma Hayek next to some
taxi driver from Central America.

>> "My child that I have, he's not going to be a cab driver
like me because he knows how hard it is. He knows that there is
a better way and he's sees the light and he already knows what
he wants to do. He wants to be a movie director."

Val>> But it's not just the Latino century. One of the big
points that you make in your piece is that it's going to be such
a mixed race. Everyone is going to be part this and part that
and a quarter that and a fifth that. After a while, will race
not mean anything in particular?

Phillip Rodriguez>> That's not a question I can answer. I'm
not qualified. Which is why I only make documentary films. I
don't think about such things. Honestly, I don't know. Things
could go so many ways. I'm just a chronicler. I'm not a sooth-
sayer or, again, a statistician or a sociologist. I simply take
the camera around and try to get a sense of what people feel and
what they fear and what they aspire to for the city.

>> "You're going to have many Anglos with Latino grandchildren
increasingly and so that they're brought into this mix as family
members whether they want to or not."

>> "I've gotten tickets before and they write down white. You
know, it's not a big deal to me. I'm not going to be like, no,
I'm Asian, you know. It's just whatever people want to call me.
It's their deal. Not mine."

>> "You grow up in a white neighborhood, you're going to have
white. You grow up in an Asian neighborhood, you're --

>> "Everybody speaking Korean and eating Korean food."

>> "You know how it is, though. I mean, you blend in to
everything. So we adapted."

Medusa>> "Ten years ago, I'm getting out of my car and I had an
Afro. This kid said, hey lady, this ain't black history month.
This little black kid. Wait a minute, you know what I mean? I
was almost offended. But three years later, everybody had an
Afro. Mexican-Americans have Afros."

Phillip Rodriguez>> I guess my mission is two-fold. In the
context of the city, I would like people to experience it and
bounce it off their own experience and some of it is going to
ring untrue. To some, it will be rubbish. To some, it will be
maybe an irresponsible publication. To some, it will be an
incomprehensible video game.

[Film Clip]

Phillip Rodriguez>> The city is the one most poorly
represented, misunderstood places in the world. It's the most
photographed and it's the most absolutely non-understood.
Hollywood is largely responsible for that because it exploits
images of the place that have nothing to do with the facts that
are here.

>> "To that extent, the people I know in Southern California
seem much more hostage to the lure of fame."

>> "I'm going to be the center of Los Angeles in a minute, you
know (laughter)."

Val>> So we live in the most diverse culture that's ever
existed, as you said, on the human planet and yet we don't talk
to each other.

>> "We used to have the railroad tracks. Now we have the 405,
the freeway. That's the great divide."

>> "If I'm on the other side of aviation, you know, I'm a fish
out of water, I'm flipping around. No, I'm over here."

Phillip Rodriguez>> I simply wanted to introduce this city,
this dynamic place, to the rest of the country.

Val>> Phillip Rodriguez, you've done a fantastic job of
representing this city and it is a difficult one to represent.

Phillip Rodriguez>> Thank you, Val. I appreciate it.

Val>> Whether you're a new arrival or have lived here a long
time, you'll enjoy seeing "Los Angeles Now". It's on KCET
Saturday, November 27, at 9:00 p.m. It's also showing at
various places around town. Just go to their website for
details at losangelesfilms.org. And that's our program. I'm
Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for
watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

The higher cost of learning. Are we pricing the middle class
off the campus?

>> It's ridiculous in the sense that the University of
California Los Angeles is a public institution and, as such, you
need to be accessible to the public.

>> You can have higher fees and higher aid such that it doesn't
reduce access at all.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.