Time for City Council to hold developers accountable - Sister Sue Miller and her phantom parking garage

It's no secret that real estate developers and the local land use attorneys who enable them are chomping at the bit to find ways to extract revenue from our humble, 8-square-mile beachfront urban utopia. City Hall's plan to manage growth (read: keep the barbarians at the gate) for the next few decades, the Land Use and Circulation Element (LUCE), casts our City Council in the role of protector of our quality of life and defender of the most vulnerable Santa Monicans — mainly through the negotiation and enforcement of development agreements.

A compliance review of the controversial Saint John's Health Center development agreement was on the council agenda last night. The outcome of the discussion was not known by the time this column went to print, but it's safe to say that Sister Sue Miller and the order of gangster nuns from Leavenworth, Kan. who are actually in charge at Saint John's, have not acted in good faith and complied with the terms of their agreement as they are trying to weasel out of building hundreds of much-needed parking spaces in Mid-City.

If the council doesn't put a stop to that request, they will have sent the message to all real estate developers that our elected representatives are weak and that our city is available to be exploited.

If you ask anyone who knows, he or she will tell you that real estate developers don't mess around when it comes to development agreements; so when a review is required, they're typically pretty run of the mill. Since there is so much to lose, no experienced developer would risk even the appearance of non-compliance. Needless to say, Sister Sue is not an experienced developer.

Part of the development agreement that she and her local attorneys, Harding, Larmore, Kutcher, and Kozal, negotiated with our city included the construction of a 422-space North Subterranean Parking Garage (NSPG), which was supposed to mitigate the negative effect of the estimated 29,000 new daily car trips associated with Saint John's. Absent that additional parking capacity, everyone understood the stress of those trips would fall squarely on the hospital's neighbors — and nobody wanted that.

Sister Sue's agreement required her to produce three specific documents relating to the NSPG: the parking structure design analysis, the parking lot layout and specifications, and the parking operations plan. In other words, she was supposed to have designed the garage, analyzed that design, laid out that design, and come up with a plan for how this 400-plus-space garage was going to operate underneath the new Saint John's — and she was supposed to have given all of that information to City Hall. Most importantly, after submitting the design, layout, and specs for the NSPG, the specific operations plan was supposed to have been submitted to and approved by the planning director before construction could begin on the inpatient suites. Those suites became the Keck Center, now completed, despite the fact that none of the three parking garage-related documents have ever been provided to City Hall — and the planning director has not approved the parking operations plan as required.

If you're wondering how it could be possible for Sister Sue to get away with this for almost 15 years, you're in good company. I wondered the same thing. So I looked up the state and local laws dealing with development agreements, and what I discovered blew my mind.

It turns out that California law focuses on the consumer's and the public's need for effective, low-cost utilization of resources more than the developer's desire for personal enrichment. Along those lines, the state requires both our Planning Department and our City Council to go out of their way to keep us informed. For example, in 2007 when Sister Sue applied for permission to screw us over and not build the garage as promised, both the Planning Department and the City Council were supposed to have held public hearings on the application. They were also supposed to have advertised those hearings in a newspaper and mailed notice of the hearings to people who own property near the hospital. I have found no record of any of that taking place.

There is also no record of our City Council conducting an annual review of the Saint John's development agreement, as required by California law and the Santa Monica Municipal Code. It seems as though the council has been content to let the Planning Department deal with Sister Sue and her local lawyers; and the private sector guys have been kicking our public sector workers in the pants. Fast-forward a few years, and Sister Sue has built a brand-spanking-new hospital where her underground parking garage is supposed to be and nobody in city government saw it happening.

On May 11, it was determined that City Hall was "working to" bring Saint John's into compliance with its development agreement, and it was determined that Saint John's was "in substantial compliance." The combination of the two statements clearly indicates that as of the time this column went to print, the hospital is not in compliance with its development agreement. If after all of this time our City Council isn't willing to stand up and make this developer comply, then these individuals can't be counted on to stand up to any developer under circumstances ever, and Sister Sue wins.

Primetime racial divide still exists - Black actors on the new fall TV schedule

Twenty-four years ago this month, the American TV landscape was changed forever when "The Cosby Show" debuted on NBC. Like most sitcoms, it was a story about a couch and the people who sit on it; but this couch was in a Brooklyn Heights brownstone owned by a black obstetrician married to a black attorney and raising five black children. Sure, the premise was far-fetched; but we all wanted to believe in the myth of a thriving, educated, middle-class black family, so we bought it. Literally. There was a time when a minute of ad time on "Cosby" was more expensive than a minute of ad time during the Super Bowl.

For guys who fit my demographic profile (black, male, urban, born in the 1970s), the show provided us with our first glimpse of ourselves on television in a character who would become a cultural archetype, Theo Huxtable.

Fast-forward a few decades to the new 2010 fall season, and Theo is back on network TV, he's all grown up, and he is doing his thing.

Not on CBS, though. The "Corpses," "Big Bang," and "Survivor" network has very little use for black actors who aren't former hip-hoppers (LL Cool J in "NCIS: Los Angeles," Flex Alexander in "Blue Bloods"), so Theo gets no love. Rather than attempt to reach out to black and brown audiences, CBS has decided that a heaping helping of vanilla is the right recipe for the fall schedule. Its new shows are led by has-been actors like Tom Selleck and Jim Belushi, never-were actors like Jerry O'Connell and Scott Caan, and never-will-be actors like Billy Gardell. On the plus side, CBS did put the great William Shatner back on TV in something other than a Priceline ad — and they deserve some credit for that.

At the other end of the diversity-is-a-fact-of-American-life-and-should-be-portrayed-on-American-television spectrum is ABC; with six new shows featuring some pretty good black actors. In his role as a medical examiner in "Body of Proof," Wendell Middlebrooks gets a chance to atone for the cartoonish beer truck driver he's been playing in commercials. Jason George plays another doctor in "Off the Map," while Damon Wayans, Jr. continues the family tradition in "Happy Endings," and Mehcad Brooks (Eggs Benedict of "True Blood" fame) gets a chance to show what he can do in "My Generation." The new ABC shows I'm most excited to TiVo are "No Ordinary Family," starring Judd Apatow's favorite black actor, Romany Malco, "Mr. Sunshine" starring James Lesure (who was incredible in "Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip" and is good enough to carry Matthew Perry, which he'll have to do), and "Detroit 1-8-7" starring James McDaniel and Jon Michael Hill.

Theo Huxtable's original home, NBC, falls somewhere in between the others. The network doesn't pretend as though black people are invisible like CBS does, and it hasn't flooded its schedule with black actors as ABC has; rather, it's going with a strange hybrid of heterogeneousness this fall season. They've got their basic all-white casts on "Law & Order" and "Chuck" and "Parenthood." For their Thursday night ensemble comedies they're sticking with the "Friends" model (one ethnic character, maybe two), but they've added a clichéd fish-out-of-water show about a young, square-jawed white guy managing a call center full of what I'm sure will be whacky brown people in India. I can already hear the canned laugh track over the "I'm not rogan joshing you" jokes.

At the same time, NBC is spending some pretty serious money on prime time television shows that are led by talented, attractive black men. They've got J.J. Abrams, the creator of "Alias" and co-creator of "Lost," executive producing and directing the pilot of "Undercovers," a show about a spy couple running their own restaurant as a retirement career who find themselves back in the game. It airs on Wednesdays, stars the versatile Boris Kodjoe, and will probably be the best new show of the fall. NBC also has Blair Underwood starring as the president of the United States in "The Event," a serialized, "Lost" meets "24" drama that will air on Monday nights. When you add Jimmy Smits' ridiculous new Friday show about a conservative Supreme Court Justice who sees the liberal light and becomes an ACLU-style crusader, you've got 60 percent of NBC's primetime schedule featuring non-white actors. Since it took until the last season of "Friends" for the first black character to show up, I call that progress.

Primetime television is important for our society because no matter how hard these actors work to tell fictional stories about people from different backgrounds coming together, at 11:01 p.m. our local news is going to feature stories about black and brown men threatening the health and safety of innocent white people. So I hope that one of these days, CBS finds a compelling story to tell about a black man who isn't a police officer, that ABC can find a black actor good enough to lead a primetime TV show, and NBC and "Saturday Night Live" will finally cast a black actor and a black actress to play the thriving, educated, middle-class black couple living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. in Washington, D.C.

The Fourth Estate needs to differentiate - The press and the 2010 mid-terms

It's hard to believe it's only been four years since the last mid-term elections. In 2006, the major difference between the parties was that Democrats were united in their desire for our troops to come home from Iraq (since our military had done all it could), and Republicans were committed to staying there to referee the ongoing Iraqi civil war and to fight al-Qaeda forever. It was an easy choice for voters to make, so it was an easy election for the Washington press corps to cover.

The same was true for most of the 2007 primary campaigns and the 2008 elections; until September when the fundamentals of our economy were not strong all of a sudden, and stories from the business section turned into front-page news. But this year, for the first time since 2004, a national election isn't going to be a binary choice between "to stay in Iraq or to leave Iraq." This mid-term election campaign will not only be a referendum on what the Democrats have done while in power and what the Republicans have done while out of power; it will also show if there are any credible reporters left covering politics in Washington, or if the notorious 24-hour news cycle has completely taken over.

The D.C. press corps has gotten lazy over the past six years, though the inactivity between 2004 and 2008 wasn't completely their fault. The Bushies didn't have much use for the press unless the White House was controlling the story (Judy Miller at the New York Times, Matt Cooper at Time magazine), distributing propaganda (radio talk show host Armstrong Williams), or planting questions in the briefing room (Jeff Gannon of Talon News). The openness of the early days of the new Obama administration must have been a little off-putting for reporters in Washington, who responded with a barrage of stories about the new swing set and the search for a new first pet.

Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, a new Democratic majority was being sworn in with a sweeping legislative agenda and a mandate from 60 million-plus voters. There was finally going to be real news to cover because there was finally going to be real policy to write. The first major task was to craft a response to the Great Recession that had our nation's economy in a tailspin. The Democrats came up with the Recovery Act: $250 billion in tax cuts (one of the largest in history), $250 billion in aid to states to keep teachers and firefighters and police on the job, and another $250 billion in new spending that included investments in health information technology, a smart grid for electricity, and expanded broadband access. That bill saved and/or created millions of jobs, led to sustained economic growth, and is credited with preventing a second Great Depression.

The Democrats also passed badly-needed Wall Street reform and a historic health care reform bill that will lower our nation's deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next 20 years — in addition to hundreds of measures (including an energy bill) passed by the House that died in the Senate. By anyone's standards, the Democratic majority in the 111th Congress has crafted effective legislation to deal with our country's problems and Democratic members of Congress elected in 2008 have kept their campaign promises.

Congressional Republicans, on the other hand, have done everything they could to stop the Democrats' agenda where it could be stopped, and slow it to a glacial pace where it couldn't. At a time when our nation was on the brink of economic disaster, only three of 249 Republicans in Congress could bring themselves to vote for the Recovery Act. In the Senate, the Republican minority has consistently abused one of the courtesies of the chamber — each Senator's privilege to filibuster, or speak without time limits — to prevent bills from ever coming to the floor for debate. Before this Congress, bills were typically brought to the floor by unanimous consent; but Sen. McConnell, who wishes he'd "been able to obstruct more," decided that literally every bill proposed by the Democrats was so bad that none of them should even be considered by the United States Senate. That's not divided government, that's misguided government.

If it was reporting the facts of the 111th Congress, the Washington press would be talking about a Democratic majority being historically productive and (or in spite of) a Republican minority that chose to make it more, not less, difficult for Congress to do its work. But Disney, Universal, News Corp., and CBS care more about profit than facts; so this political off-season between elections, we've gotten stories about death panels, armed tea parties, and whatever was on whatever passes for Glenn Beck's and Sarah Palin's minds.

For the last six months, the Washington press corps has been telling us that when the economy is bad, voters blame the party in power. But at this point, most voters don't care about assigning blame, we just want jobs and recovery. For the next six weeks, they should just do their jobs and explain the difference between the two parties so that voters can do our jobs and choose the best candidates.

Sisters you don't want in your family - Worst Catholic ministry ever

Even though there are a lot of good people at Saint John's Health Center doing their best to provide outstanding care to patients, the decisions made by management and the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System undermine that good work. As its sewage repeatedly pollutes our air, water, and beaches — and it remains indifferent to the traffic choking our streets — the hospital proves itself to be Santa Monica's worst neighbor. As they offend their own core values of respect and stewardship, Sister Sue Miller and the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas, have proven themselves to be the worst Catholic ministry ever.

First of all, they lie. The Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System entered into a development agreement with the city of Santa Monica laying out the exact terms and conditions of the reconstruction of Saint John's after the Northridge earthquake. Because of the pressure the estimated 29,000 daily new car trips to the hospital would put on the surrounding community, the Sisters agreed to build a 422-space underground parking garage. Construction of the new campus is just about finished, but there is no additional parking capacity. And the fact that they've applied for an amendment to their development agreement relieving them of their obligation to build the garage means there probably never will be any additional parking capacity.

Sister Sue and her enabling local land use attorneys/lobbyists will argue that steps are being taken through a Transportation Demand Management Plan to make up for the un-built garage. But the fact that there are no signs that the Sisters ever planned for or designed that garage, as required by the development agreement, means they haven't operated in good faith, as required by California law. You'd think good faith is something that would come naturally to an order of nuns.

They also cheat. In an effort to keep its registered nurses from exercising their right to form, join, or assist the California Nurses Association, Saint John's management committed six different violations of federal labor law. They illegally barred off-duty RN's from organizing in the hospital, illegally threatened off-duty employees with arrest, and illegally created the impression that employees were being followed and/or watched. Also, when RN's wore white ribbons as "an expression of union solidarity, as well as a concern about the hospital's non-compliance with a staffing law dealing with nurse-patient ratios," management illegally prohibited wearing the ribbons and illegally threatened discipline against RN's who didn't comply. That kind of behavior toward people who work tirelessly on behalf of Saint John's patients is hard to condone when your core values require you to "recognize the sacred worth and dignity of each person."

In addition to their established lying and cheating, we've just discovered that they steal. Last week, the Civil Fraud Section of the United States Attorney's Office and the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that they had reached a settlement with Saint John's over allegations that the hospital had overcharged for "outlier payments" designed to re-pay hospitals for ridiculously expensive care. Without admitting any wrongdoing, the hospital agreed to pay $5.25 million in fines for "turbocharging" or "jacking up already outrageous bills" for seven years between 1996 and 2003.

Who was the victim of this crime spree? Who were the Sisters robbing blind for almost a decade? It was the single payer for seniors' health care, the taxpayer-funded social safety net known as Medicare. They were violating the sacred trust between generations.

At this point, nothing shocks me when it comes to Saint John's, The SCLHS, or Sister Sue. I was a little surprised when spokeswoman Tish Starbuck said the development agreement didn't "require" the construction of the parking garage, rather "gave permission to build it" because she was inadvertently breaking news. But to me, the fact that Sister Sue and her giant hospital corporation masquerading as a Catholic ministry have been screwing over the U.S. Treasury seems par for the course. I like the fact that the Justice Department is making her cut a respectable seven-figure check, but that just makes our City Council look weak and ineffectual by comparison.

The Sisters were obligated to submit their (nonexistent to date) plans for both the building and the operations of the North Subterranean Parking Garage before they could start on the Chan Soon-Shiong Center, now fully constructed. Given that fact, I can't help but wonder what would have happened if the council had, as required by Santa Monica Municipal Code Sec. 9.48.190, reviewed the Saint John's development agreement "at least every 12 months from the date the development agreement is entered into." If the council had conducted the required annual review even once over the past decade (and counting), the Sisters wouldn't be able to get out of building that garage by saying, "Sorry, we put a hospital on top of it."