"A New Form of City Hall Corruption, the COVID Dodge?" by Daniel Guss
LA City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez has a lot of explaining to do.
@TheGussReport - On Wednesday of this week, just hours before a scheduled LA City Council committee meeting in which its chair, Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez was going to address severely cruel conditions in LA Animal Services pounds, she canceled the meeting citing her allegedly testing positive for COVID.
Just hours before that, this column exclusively exposed a criminal investigation into those conditions and related financial misconduct. The article came out after the meeting had been scheduled.
Hernandez’s excuse was provided to this column by Zach Seidl, Mayor Karen Bass’s communications deputy, when asked why the meeting was canceled, since Hernandez’s office had not responded. Hernandez’s people have also refused to state why the prior two committee meetings had been canceled.
But just two days later, on Friday morning, Hernandez appeared at the full City Council meeting, unmasked and inches away from her colleagues Heather Hutt and Marqueece Harris-Dawson, as well as dozens of staffers, members of the public, including Olympic multi-gold-medalist and honoree Allyson Felix and the USC marching band, in clear violation of the COVID safety protocols that the city inflicted on tens of thousands of its employees, and with which it continues to urge them and millions of others to exercise caution in COVID matters.
If Hernandez had a false positive test, she has failed to tweet about it, and her tweet with her positive test remains published, along with her accepting “get well soon” wishes from her Twitter, or X, followers.
Hernandez’s claim is not without harm, either.
On Wednesday, Teri Austin, president of the Amanda Foundation, a widely respected animal charity had showed-up to City Hall to comment at the 8:30am meeting, only to find the meeting canceled. The meeting did not have a call-in option.
If this is a new form of corruption, using false or misleading claims to disrupt important meetings, Hernandez is the new poster child for it.
I have reached out to the City Ethics Commission to file a complaint and will explore other options to hold her accountable to demonstrate whether or not she used phone lines and other public resources to defraud the public.
So far, no response from Seidl, City Council president Paul Krekorian or Hernandez’s office to my inquiry.
So ask yourselves this…
Why would Hernandez’s colleagues be comfortable sitting within inches of her, utterly non-responsive to my public comment about it, unless they believed her COVID-positive test was a ruse? Hernandez never said it was a false positive, and her claim of testing positive remains posted on Twitter.
Are they all so comfortable being around an unmasked, infected person or part of a larger scheme to mislead the public using city assets and phone lines to dodge a meeting about corruption, severe animal cruelty and misuse of donated funds?
To be continued.
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(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a multi-award-winning journalist. In June ‘23, he won the LA Press Club’s “Online Journalist of the Year” and “Best Activism Journalism” awards. He has been City Editor for the Mayor Sam network, and a featured contributor for CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW 89.9 FM, KRLA 870 AM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News and the Los Angeles Times in its sports, opinion, entertainment and Sunday Magazine sections among other publishers.)