Happy Monday. In case you didn’t catch them, I thought I’d point your attention to some stories from over the weekend:
- The Union-Tribune’s Matt Hall wrote a profile of City Councilman Carl DeMaio was full of fascinating details. Among them, DeMaio, who is gay, was silent on Proposition 8. Yet he has seen “Milk,” the film depicting the life of pioneering gay politician Harvey Milk, three times. Hall also explored the increasingly common DeMaio-Mike Aguirre comparison.
- City Council President Ben Hueso and County Supervisor Ron Roberts wrote dueling opinion pieces in the Union-Tribune on the idea of consolidating city and county services, which Hueso has floated recently.
- The Los Angeles Times had a story on Sunday about top state officials who bill taxpayers for hefty travel costs. Here’s an excerpt from Michael Rothfeld’s story:
Carrie Lopez, director of the Department of Consumer Affairs, charged taxpayers to fly from Sacramento, where she works, to Los Angeles, where she lives, to attend a Justin Timberlake concert with her daughter. She listed the trip on her expense report as a meeting with the energy company that paid for the concert tickets. Lopez also billed the state for meals on days she received those meals for free from corporations, according to state records.
The mission of Lopez’s agency, Rothfeld tells us later, is “to protect Californians from getting fleeced.”