Life & Times - Transcript

About Us \| Contact Us

Life & Times Transcript

10/18/06

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

What if they took your property to build a road, but the road never got built?

Natalya Shulyakovskaya>> We know that, as of 2005, they owned about twelve thousand acres of land which is similar in size to the city of Garden Grove and, of that land, a third has been on Caltrans' books for more than thirty years.

Val Zavala>> And then, are you willing to give up privacy for national security? Some frank talk about racial profiling.

These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> 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 Zavala>> Imagine you've remodeled and you now have your dream home. Then a government agency comes along and says they need your property for a road or a freeway, so you're forced to sell. Then ten years later, there's no road, no freeway, and your home is sitting there deteriorating. Well, investigative reporters at The Orange County Register have found that Caltrans owns hundreds of properties they've never developed. Roger Cooper has more.

Roger Cooper>> They're the kind of headlines guaranteed to get your attention: Highway Robbery. How the California Department of Transportation took land it didn't need and became one of the state's biggest slumlords. "Road to Nowhere" is the product of a two-year investigation by The Orange County Register into how Caltrans took land for roads that have never been built.

>> "And what did they tell you when they showed up?"

Sidney Stone>> "Oh, they said we're going to build a freeway through here and we need your property."

Roger Cooper>> In the 1970s, Bay area resident, Sidney Stone, was forced to leave his dream home overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge to make way for an eight-lane highway. That was thirty-five years ago, but the boarded-up home his family had to sell to Caltrans is still standing and the highway will never be built.

Sidney Stone>> And for thirty-five years, the state never did nothing to upgrade the houses or repair the houses. It's really sad. This house that we lived in for several years is unlivable now. The state just did nothing for thirty-five years.

Roger Cooper>> Register reporters, Kimberly Kindy and Natalya Shulyakovskaya wanted to know if this was an isolated case or a widespread Caltrans practice. Their team was led by investigative editor, Mark Katches.

Mark Katches>> Through that reporting, she was able to go further and realize that it wasn't an isolated case, that Caltrans had been taking a lot of land, over the years amassing a huge land portfolio for projects that either didn't get built or where some of the land they took was unnecessary.

Natalya Shulyakovskaya>> What I specialize in, what my job a lot of the time is in projects, is to find quantitative ways to prove things that we hear from people.

Roger Cooper>> Natalya Shulyakovskaya is the team's number cruncher. By digging into Caltrans' databases, she set out to calculate just how much land the state agency has bought.

Mark Katches>> Caltrans can't even tell you how much land they own. They can't even tell you how much the land is worth.

Natalya Shulyakovskaya>> We know that, as of 2005, the snapshot of the times in 2005, they owned about twelve thousand acres, which is similar in size to the city of Garden Grove and, of that land, a third has been on Caltrans' books for more than thirty years.

Mark Katches>> It's in their real estate portfolio that they've obtained for projects through eminent domain that are going nowhere.

Roger Cooper>> And it's not just the road projects going nowhere. The Register says its investigation finds in many cases Caltrans allows its waiting property to deteriorate. Caltrans allowed these houses it rents out along its stalled 710 extension in Pasadena to fall into disrepair and it has been slow to fix them up.

Mark Katches>> It's bringing down the property value around the surrounding areas because Caltrans is such a bad property manager that a lot of these homes are turning into slum-like conditions, drug dens, flop houses, places for the homeless to, you know, camp out and high crime magnets and just absolute blight.

Natalya Shulyakovskaya>> Some people refer to them as slumlords. They acknowledge themselves that they have not been doing the greatest job taking care of properties.

Roger Cooper>> The Register quotes Caltrans' Director, Will Kempton, as acknowledging that, in the past, Caltrans has been over-zealous in its land purchasing, but he says practices have already changed. Kempton also told The Register that Caltrans lacks expertise in managing its properties and hopes to hand off the job possibly to another state department. Did you come away with an impression of why Caltrans has allowed this happen?

Natalya Shulyakovskaya>> Numbers don't quite (laughter) spell it out, but it's general bureaucratic ineptitude. It's a very convoluted, large department and there's no push to do it quickly because basically they've been (unintelligible) with the road for so long.

Roger Cooper>> And that road led to frustration for Becky McKenzie who, in 1987, tried to learn from Caltrans if it would need her Santa Ana home to expand the 5 Freeway.

Mark Katches>> Caltrans kept telling her, "No, no, it's not going to impact you. Don't worry." So she and her husband went about remodeling their house, painstakingly, lovingly refurbishing it, and then suddenly Caltrans changed its tune and decided it needed her property, came in and tore down her house.

Roger Cooper>> But Caltrans ended up using only a tiny sliver of Becky's property. These driveway entrances are all that's left of the home site she could have continued to live on. Caltrans later sold the unused property at a sixty percent loss. It's even more frustrating for people who move out only to see nothing get built.

Natalya Shulyakovskaya>> They were approached by other departments and they begrudgingly sold the property. They didn't have any other choice. They were told that the department is going to go ahead with the construction really quickly. Then to drive by that property year after year and see that nothing came through, I think that's the most frustrating part.

Roger Cooper>> But investigative editor, Mark Katches, says that's just the start of the damage that's done.

Mark Katches>> It also hurts any citizen in California who lives in a county because, when Caltrans takes property away and they buy it through eminent domain, it is stripped from the property tax rolls. Meaning that these properties are no longer generating any revenue for local governments. We've calculated that as much as three hundred million dollars has been removed from property tax rolls statewide over the years.

Roger Cooper>> In a prepared statement responding to The Register investigation, the State Transportation and Housing Secretary Sunne McPeak says, when she and Caltrans Director Kempton were appointed three years ago, they were disappointed with the department's track record on land management practices, but she adds that we are now seeing timely Caltrans inspections of properties, diligent repair and maintenance and timely responses to tenants.

And McPeak says the department has established an Excess Land Process Review Team to better integrate the clearance process. This look at Caltrans' practices comes as California voters consider ballot Proposition 90 to limit government authority to take ownership of private property.

Mark Katches>> I do think that this story will bring renewed debate and renewed interest especially as we head towards a very critical election with eminent domain issues and the bond measure which could lead to more freeway expansion on the ballot.

Roger Cooper>> But it all comes about thirty-five years too late for Sidney Stone who once had his dream home overlooking San Francisco Bay, a home that now sits along a road to nowhere. In partnership with The Orange County Register, I'm Roger Cooper for Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> Orange County tax officials have now written a letter to Caltrans demanding back taxes on all the land they've taken by eminent domain and haven't developed. If you'd like to read the full story, "Road to Nowhere", you can go to the Register's website at ocregister.com/investigations.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> Ever since 9/11, the issue of racial profiling has come up. Should we scrutinize those who "look" Middle Eastern more carefully at our airports? Well, some people say the answer is in a national ID card. David Lehrer of CommUnity Advocates, Inc. moderates a frank kitchen conversation with ACLU attorney, Steve Rohde, and Chapman Law School professor, Katherine Darmer.

David Lehrer>> Newspapers, magazines, talk shows have been full of talk about racial profiling, airports and what happens. We're talking specifically about racial profiling at airports. What is your take on what's going on?

Stephen Rohde>> Well, I just think we have to look at racial profiling post-9/11 in the light that we understood that racial profiling pre-9/11 was wrong. Driving while black, stopping people because of their race. We've substituted that now for Muslims, Middle Easterners, people of that descent. My concern is, in our headlong efforts to fight terrorism, that we not lose way in terms of our basic principles and engage in the very racial profiling that we previously condemned.

David Lehrer>> Katherine, what do you think?

Katherine Darmer>> I definitely agree that undifferentiated profiling is wrong. I think where Steve and I might disagree is I think that there is a point at which taking into account things like national origin, ethnic background, is appropriate if you have a specific fit of information that is relevant to that particular group.

So for example, if you would see intelligence that says, you know, people from a particular country are planning on bombing targets in the United States, I think it's only sensible at that point to focus on those particular individuals, people from that group, as opposed to, you know, stopping every little old lady in an airport.

David Lehrer>> But if we have the evidence that every one of those people who drove the planes into the World Trade Center were young Muslim males between eighteen and thirty-five, and we know that's the case we're sure of and most of the incidents around the world are related to young Muslim males, does that work? We can have higher thresholds for a week, a month, a year? I mean, does it make sense to stop the little old lady from Boise, Idaho?

Stephen Rohde>> Well, we didn't racially profile Caucasians when Timothy McVey engaged in the terrorist bombing in Oklahoma. I think we need to be smarter than that.

David Lehrer>> But don't you think law enforcement is looking at right wing extremists a lot more carefully after Oklahoma City?

Stephen Rohde>> If you start to add -- and I think we may agree on this -- if race is part of a profile of behavior, conduct, actions, that's good policing. What I worry about and what I worry the government has fed is an "Islamaphobia". The president used "Islamic fascists". We cannot feed a generic of hostility toward all Muslims, all Arabs and all people from the Middle East.

David Lehrer>> I don't think anybody would disagree. Do you feel that that's been the case?

Katherine Darmer>> I think that Steve is over-stating it a bit and I do want to say that I think in the immediate wake of 9/11, one thing President Bush did to his credit -- even though I don't agree with much that he does -- he came out and said specifically that we cannot blame these attacks on Muslim people or on people from the Middle East. He went after a hate crime in the wake of 9/11 that was targeted to those groups. So I don't think it's true that there's been a general frenzy coming from the government to target those groups.

I think one distinction I agree with you about is Timothy McVey and so on, but the difference here is that we're talking about airport security. When you're walking down the street going into an office building, generally there's not going to be the same kind of security that you're going to expect at the airport.

What I'm talking about is, when you have information about a particular group, I think it only makes sense to focus on that group as they go through security. Perhaps do more scrutiny of checked bags. We all know that not all checked bags are even screened. I would say, you know, if you have information that somebody from a particular country, Saudi Arabia, is going to go after the United States, I would say that you screen all of the bags from that particular area during the time that that threat is still live.

In answer to your question about how long does it last, I think it's very contact-specific. Sometimes the threat isn't going to happen within a day. Sometimes it's more open-ended and I think the standard under the Constitution has to be reasonable.

David Lehrer>> Is there a way to kind of obviate this problem? The whole notion of a national ID card that has data that can't be forged where you can opt into it like an easy pass on a toll road? You give up a little bit because somebody will know that you're getting on a plane at 8:45 and that you're landing in Denver, Colorado at 4:15. People can opt in or not opt in. If they don't opt in, they wait in a long line.

Katherine Darmer>> I think it's a great idea and I think it's just a reality of flying today that we know that we're going to be subject to more scrutiny. To expedite things, I'd certainly be willing to give up whatever it is, thumbprint, DNA.

David Lehrer>> Steve, are you ready to get on the slippery slope?

Stephen Rohde>> I'm very worried when we start down a national ID card. First of all, if it applies to everyone, that's a step forward. But if you get it to being voluntary or optional, what kind of suspicion will it pass to the person who, as a matter of principle, does not want to have the ID card? How hackable is the system that produces the cards? What's going to be done with the information once you get it?

If a system would pass all of those tests, then I think it may be a remedy. But I do not want us rushing in in light of all these technological failures of Diebold Voting Systems and electronic voting. We shouldn't look to a new technology as the be all and end all solution.

Katherine Darmer>> But that's what the individuals decide. I mean, I may be willing to recognize the risk if the government's going to mine some additional data about me and have my thumbprint on file. I mean, it already is because I passed the Bar exam, so who cares? I mean, why not just --

Stephen Rohde>> -- who cares reminds me of people who invoke the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination and other people say, "Well, I don't have anything to hide." So if you invoke your Constitutional rights, you must have something to hide.

Dave Lehrer>> Why would you object if it's voluntary? I don't quite get that.

Stephen Rohde>> Because if it was a system across the board, it avoids the selectivity. Voluntary means that civil libertarians and others may, as a matter of principle, choose not to get the card.

Katherine Darmer>> But again, I think that's your decision.

Stephen Rohde>> I know it is, but what's the consequence then in a society among people not trained in the law when they see someone who doesn't have the ID card? Is that going to become --

David Lehrer>> -- if it's an ID card designed for ports of entry, airports or otherwise. It wouldn't be one where police could stop you willy-nilly and say, "Show me your ID card." This is not, you know, the Gestapo in 1938.

Stephen Rohde>> But we've had false IDs in the past. Why do you have any reason to believe that this magical ID card is going to be free from falsification as well the others?

Katherine Darmer>> Well, I think there are ways to make it more failsafe than IDs in the past by, for example, requiring some kind of either DNA component or a fingerprint or something that can be encoded so that you can really verify a person's identity. I think the technology would be there now to do that.

My point is that people who are willing to give up a little bit of privacy for the benefit of going more quickly through the airport, I just frankly don't even see that that's a libertarian problem. You know, if somebody wants to give up their privacy in order to make their life a little more convenient, it seems to me that's just recognizing individual choice.

David Lehrer>> Aren't we really giving up our privacy every day with the amount of information that private firms, TRW and the like have about us? They know where we go to eat. They know where we travel. They know what hotels we stay at. They probably know who we take out on dates.

Stephen Rohde>> Well, I don't know who you're dating, David, but there's a fundamental difference between what private companies are doing, because we've signed an agreement with our credit card company, and what government is doing. The Bill of Rights is all about government. I'm on the side of putting my thumb to assure that these wonderful solutions don't violate civil rights.

David Lehrer>> I just got a call from the government. We have to end this conversation, but thank you both very much.

Katherine Darmer>> Thank you very much.

Stephen Rohde>> Thank you, David.

Val Zavala>> Ever since we increased security at airports, something else has been on the rise: lost luggage. In fact, this summer there was more lost, delayed or damaged luggage than there was in the previous two years. That prompted Life and Times commentator, Cris Franco, to wonder what ever happened to those suitcases.

Cris Franco>> Where are the good scissors? How did I gain five pounds if I only ate four pounds of chocolate? Along with these great mysteries is what happened to my lost airline luggage? Many people ponder this imponderable. Sincerely, about .06 percent of all travelers' bags are lost, damaged or mishandled by the world's air carriers. That's 1.35 million bags of luggage.

Is this misplaced mountain of mementos still in that great holding pattern in the sky? Well, I don't know where all of it goes, but some of it goes to Scottsboro, Alabama's unclaimed baggage center, the lost luggage capital of the world, which has recovered and sold some pretty odd keepsakes. A live snake -- a snake on a plane? -- a suit of armor. Wow, it's still got a fresh press! An Egyptian mummy from 1500 B.C. Boy, that suitcase was lost a long time.

It's a huge supermarket of misplaced memories and it just might have been the final stop for your valise that never got to Belize and your Liz Claiborne that disappeared once airborne (laughter). Oh, I could go on rhyming and rhyming, but this is PBS, the education station, so I need to educate you as to how to avoid having your personal gifts and novelty undergarments ending up in the unclaimed baggage center's bargain basement.

Tip number one: Sure, the airlines label your bags, but so should you. Many bags are never returned because the rightful owner simply didn't take two seconds to do this. Insert your contact information into this little plastic window. You just slip it in. Just slip it in. Slip it in!

Tip number two: Arrive early so that handlers have enough time to load your bags onto the correct flight. With today's anti-terror alerts, arrive about, oh, two days before departure and, during those two days, you can try to do this. Slip it in!

Tip number three: Take a direct flight. If your luggage is lost, booking your trips with a few stops to save five bucks sort of flies out the window once you're forced to buy a seven dollar mini tube of toothpaste at the airport store.

Tip number four: Pack an extra set of very comfortable clothing into your carry-on. This way, you can live, sleep and, yes, actually enjoy your vacation until your lost belongings are returned to you because they probably will. And if they're not --

Tip number five: Pray. Just like your luggage has to be directed towards the correct destination, so must your prayers be directed towards the correct faith, Faith Samsonite.

Do all that, and you can send your travel worries packing.

Announcer>> 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 Zavala>> It's the biggest public auction of Latin American art in southern California, more than two hundred fifty pieces, sculptures and paintings, some by masters like Tamayo, Orozco and Siquieros. It's all part of the tenth anniversary of the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach.

There's everything from this premier piece by Armando Reveron estimated at two hundred thousand dollars to a small ink drawing for a few hundred dollars. There's the very abstract and the very realistic, the serious and the whimsical.

Two hundred seventy paintings, prints, sculptures and photographs and, by the end of this frenetic weekend, all of them will be going, going, going, gone. The man at the auctioneer's podium is Alex Slato, the Associate Director for the Museum of Latin American Art.

Alex Slato>> I'm a third generation auctioneer.

Val Zavala>> You are?

Alex Slato>> It's been in my family for many, many years.

Val Zavala>> Always art auctions, or other auctions?

Alex Slato>> Art auctions, specializing in art auctions, and mainly fundraising auctions for institutions. I've done this for several museums in the United States and the Caribbean.

Val Zavala>> And you do it in English and Spanish?

Alex Slato>> And French if you have the amount of people here that want to.

Val Zavala>> Is there an art to art auctions?

Alex Slato>> Well, I think the most important thing about auctioneering is knowing how to listen and not necessarily listen in a conversation. The public talks to you through different ways. They talk to you by looking at you. They talk to you by moving. Sometimes people get a little nervous and you understand that they're wanting to do something.

So even though there's only one person talking, there could be up to six hundred people in one room talking at the same time and communicating. Let's say communicating, not talking. At the same time, there are reactions. There are movements that people make. Those are the things that you need to be aware of and to understand what they're trying to do. There's a great feedback from the public.

Val Zavala>> MOLAA put out the call to artists throughout Latin America to donate work. As an incentive, they offered a hundred thousand dollars in prize money, and work by the top prize winners will become part of MOLAA's permanent collection. The other contributions go to the fundraising auction. Do you speak really fast? You know, we always think of auctioneers like the cattle auctioneers or whatever. Do you speak really quickly like that as well?

Alex Slato>> When it needs to be done. I do it faster and when it needs to slow down because a fundraising auction is a different type of auction. People are here also to be educated. Whatever we do in the museum is like this show right now. This show needs to have a museum quality, structure and timeline. This is what we do.

This is not just about an auction. This is about an education process. This auction had a roundtable that we brought in four phenomenal scholars from California and we talked about Latin American art in California. So we have several educational procedures within the event itself.

Val Zavala>> So you've had to learn about all the art.

Alex Slato>> Well, yes, of course.

Val Zavala>> In order to auction it off properly.

Alex Slato>> Absolutely. I probably know every single artist that is represented in this.

Val Zavala>> Can you give us a little preview of how you might auction off one of these pieces here? Just pick one.

Alex Slato>> Let's pick this one right here.

Val Zavala>> Okay.

Alex Slato>> "Now, ladies and gentlemen, we are now auctioning a piece by Tony Vargas. It's a new contemporary piece from a Venezuelan artist and we'll start the bidding at $2,000. Now I have $2,000. How about $2,200? I got $2,200, $2,200, $2,300 now. I have $2,600 now, $2,600, $2,700 now. We got $3,000 now, $3,000, $3,200 now. Here we have $3,200, $3,400, $4,000, ladies and gentlemen. All done then. Sold at $4,000."

Val Zavala>> That's fast (laughter). How do you say "going, going, going, gone" in Spanish?

Alex Slato>> Siguele, siguele, siguele, vendedo (laughter).

Val Zavala>> (Laughter) You are going to have fun.

Alex Slato>> We all are.

Val Zavala>> All that art will be auctioned off this Saturday and Sunday and you can see it on their website. Just go to molaa.org. Most of it will be auctioned off on Sunday, which is free and open to the public.

And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> 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.

Sponsored in part by:


Home \| Features \| Arts \| Health/Science \| OC Edition \| L&T Blog \| Archives \| About Us \| Contact Us \| Privacy Policy \| Terms of Use © 2007 COMMUNITY TELEVISION OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA