Letter to the Editor

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579
CCN

Re: What Weissman Sent Around, Comes Around

Dear Editor:

As you know, the residents of the 10700 block of Farragut Drive are, to put it mildly, upset about Councilperson Andrew Weissman’s failure to disclose potential conflicts of interest at the September 8, 2014 City Council Meeting. In response to a direct question, he failed to reveal his relationships with Kenneth Smith—a senior official at the Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church—when the Church’s request to remove permit-only-parking restriction on Farragut was in issue.

Information in the May 23, 1986 article in the Los Angeles Times reveals Weissman’s then attitude—when he was a candidate for a City Council seat—about disclosing potential conflicts of interest.

“Andrew Weissman has charged in a campaign letter that Councilman Ron Perkins failed to disclose his three-year business relationship with… ‘How can we ever know whose voice is speaking as (Perkins) lobbies for the projects of a business partner?’ Weissman’s letter asked. ‘Culver City is entitled to the independent judgment of council members whose impartiality is untainted by the receipt of financial favors from those whose matters come before the council,’ it said. … He (Weissman) said that Perkins, as a … councilman in 1982, should have publicly announced his relationship with the Bishop & Moriarty General Development Co. when the firm requested the zoning change. … ‘The responsibility that the elected official has is to disclose conflicts of interest. … [T]he individual has to be sensitive enough to mention the potential conflict,’ Weissman said.”

It appears that, in the past 28 years, Weissman has become much less sensitive. We now know that he failed to disclose that in 2007 and 2011 Ken and Jozelle Smith hosted Weissman’s City Council campaign kick-off fundraisers at their home. (It’s located in a Culver City cushy cul-de-sac that has no traffic or parking problems.) We also know that, since 2005, Weissman has served a Ken Smith’s business’s agent for service of process. This usually indicates that Weissman, an attorney, incorporated the business and handles any litigation from its activities. Weissman is still silent to the full extent of the relationships.

How can we, Culver non-politicos, “ever know whose voice is speaking as (Weissman) lobbies” for Smith’s Church when it seeks to revoke our permit-only parking restrictions?

Weissman once believed that sunshine is the best disinfectant. He should learn from his younger self.

Les Greenberg