"Krekorian's Corruption Fish Story Is Full Of Carp" by Daniel Guss
City Council president is either lying through his teeth or blissfully ignorant of his responsibilities to Los Angeles
@TheGussReport - Last week, my years-long prediction that LA City Councilmember Curren Price may wind up in prison took a big leap forward when he was crushed by enough felony charges to put him there for the duration of his retirement.
My 10 previous columns on the subject, dating back to early 2017, are linked within this column from last week. You may also want to listen to my latest segment discussing this subject with John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou on The John and Ken Show on KFI AM 640.
Thanks to everyone for their hat tips and congratulations, though the Price indictment is more vindication than victory for me. It is hardly the only saga about City Hall self-dealing that this column, and its earlier incarnation at CityWatchLA, has exposed. And there is plenty more to these cases that should be explored by prosecutors, including but not limited to possible voter registration fraud and forgery.
What will never be remedied is the harm done to those hurt by these corrupt deals that were continually approved by City Council. Think of it as “corruption musical chairs” where LA politicians consistently turned a blind eye to the fraud until the music stopped and, in this latest instance, Price had no place to plant his rump.
I simply exposed stories that the LA Times at first would not, and then only begrudgingly and half-heartedly, explore because it and LA’s political class don’t like disrupters impeding on their respective turf. And make no mistake, they will continue to circle their wagons to protect one another and that turf.
Remember this story, and that one, about then-City Council president Herb Wesson?
Ask the Times where it was on those stories and be sure to send up a flare when it writes word one about Wesson’s wife, Fabian Wesson, falsifying her educational quals to land a $265,000 gig replacing a PhD at the political cesspool known as the South Coast Air Quality Management District, AQMD, working for the husband of her husband’s first boss.
Must I really provide another dozen examples of the unhealthy relationship between local government and local media, but specifically the LA Times?
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If Price wants to blame someone other than himself for his predicament, he should look squarely at Herb Wesson. When I exposed thousands of falsified pet “adoptions” at LA Animal Services, LAAS, Wesson dared me to “write about something other than animal issues,” after he, former Councilmember Paul Koretz and former City Controller Ron Galperin ran a rigged audit of the city’s deadly animal pound system.
Had they been honest about LAAS, I might have gone in a different direction with my writing, and you can be sure that the LA Times would never have explored the stories that led me to Curren Price’s alleged criminality and other stench-filled City Hall exposés.
To wit:
Ask the LAFD how it feels about this story and that story.
Ask the LAPD about covering up its cover-up.
Ask them all about paying me tens of thousands of dollars (with more likely to come) for retaliating, harassing and interfering with my reporting on them.
Then ask the LA Times where are you on these stories now???
Enough of this shit-show. Let’s get on to current LA City Council president Paul Krekorian.
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When word of Price’s indictment broke last week, Krekorian said he was “shocked” at the news, describing Price as "a friend and colleague.”
You have got to be kidding us, sir.
Was Krekorian shocked because yet another pally of his was charged with corruption? Who in City Hall, let alone the City Council president, does not know of the pervasive corruption that recently sent Mitch Englander to federal prison, and is about to send Jose Huizar and Mark Ridley-Thomas there with a bunch of their bag men in tow? Has he not heard of Richard Alarcon*, Martin Ludlow and Richard Alatorre’s life-destroying corruption entanglements in previous years? (Alarcon’s conviction was overturned and not retried after he served an ironic sentence of house arrest related to his not living in the district he represented.)
It is just as implausible that Krekorian didn’t see this coming with Curren Price.
Krekorian and Price spent years representing their respective Los Angeles districts in the California State Assembly starting on December 4, 2006, before spending the past decade together on LA City Council.
How could Krekorian have voted on hundreds of Price agenda items involving Delbra Richardson Price, a known real estate entrepreneur who Price untruthfully represented as his wife, without asking how it didn’t create a massive conflict of interest? Krekorian is too bright to act that dumb; he has a law degree from UC Berkeley, though he has been ineligible to practice law since 2015.
Did he not hear about Price’s bigamy stories, even when the LA Times eventually wrote about them? You’re telling me that none of it was elevator scuttlebutt all of those years?
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And then there’s this.
Back on October 21st, it was Krekorian who nominated Price to serve as president pro tempore of LA City Council, i.e. making Price the Mayor of Los Angeles in instances where the Mayor and Krekorian are away.
Three days earlier, I predicted that Price was “City Hall’s Likeliest to be Indicted.”
And that’s what’s really scary.
Krekorian is either lying through his teeth about being shocked about Price’s alleged criminal conduct or he is blissfully ignorant of his responsibilities to four million Angelenos. Either way, he knows that the LA Times won’t ask him about it.
Take your pick. There’s no other logical explanation.
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(Daniel Guss, MBA, is nominated for four ‘23 LA Press Club journalism awards. He is City Editor for the Mayor Sam network, and has been 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.)