May 14, 2004

Mayor Hahn: First Citizen of San Pedro
Interview by James Preston Allen, Publisher

     This is Jim Hahn’s third year as Mayor of Los Angeles the nation’s second largest city with a budget of some $5 billion, which is quickly becoming the economic capital of Pacific Rim global trade. He is the first citizen of San Pedro ever elected mayor and for personal reasons still refuses to occupy the Getty Mansion, the official residence of the city’s mayor preferring to live instead in a suburban north San Pedro tract home. He is criticized by some for his low-key casual manner that is often characterized as lacking leadership or style. He would be the first to admit that he is a far shot away from the fashionable, limousine-riding image of former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, nor does he care to measure up to the personal wealth of former LA Mayor Dick Riordan. He sees himself as just a normal guy doing the mayor’s job.
     One gets the impression that Hahn would just simply like to do the job of running the city with all of its myriad problems. He has been in training for this his entire life, first as the eldest son of one of LA’s political giants, Kenny Hahn, and then three terms as LA City Attorney. But when I asked him if he was ramping up 2005 campaign his response was, “I’ve been running for reelection since the day I was first sworn in.” And running he is—it took nearly three months to get this interview as the mayor has been hop-scotching around the metropolis putting out fires, defending his LAX expansion, fending off allegations of corruption, selling his new budget and trying to create the nation’s safest big city.
     The Mayor arrived at our offices at the end of a very hot day at the end of a very difficult week, having just released his budget and having his records subpoenaed. My first question is about an altercation that was aired between him and a reporter at his budget press conference

James Allen: Well, you've had your bout with a couple of reporters recently. When you were doing your budget press conference they wanted to talk to you about the pay-for-play situation. It’s the first time where I saw you get testy with a reporter. It was on the news the other day.
Mayor Hahn: Oh, that's when the guy was lying to me and I just…. Know what, I haven't lied to a reporter yet, right? I can't do it. Lying is okay for reporters. 
James Allen: Right, there’s been some very significant problems with the mainstream press, like the reporter from USA Today, worked there for twenty years, who had been lying, and all of his stories for the last twenty years had to be researched. He got canned.
Mayor Hahn: So the guy comes over, you know, Like the radio and TV can go, "Look, I'm on a deadline. I gotta go to another thing. Can you just give me a brief synopsis of what you your press conference is about?” I say, “Okay.” And then he immediately launches into asking about this other subject. I said, "I'll just have a press conference and talk to you afterwards and then he tried to make it sound like I wouldn't talk to him. He knew I had already briefly talked to him and the problem I've got is, he's in control of the editing of the report, so he edits out all the points that I'm saying. Don't lie to me. I just, you know, I'm getting too old for this.
JA: Too old? You and I are about the same age.
Mayor Hahn: Yeah. I still don't want to put up with people lying to me, you know, 
JA: Does that include people you've inherited, or some of people that you’ve had trouble with, that have resigned or whatever?
Mayor Hahn: I didn’t have trouble with Ted Stein.
JA: Maybe the community has had more trouble than you did with them, people like Ted Stein who was on both the Harbor and LAX commissions. He was not well-liked in your predecessor's regime or yours. I mean would you be better off getting rid of some of the staff people who you inherited, some of the commissioners that you inherited from former the administration, simply because they carry some personal baggage with them?
Mayor Hahn: Having made decisions, you're going to make some people happy and some people unhappy. Or, as John Emerson told me, who had the job of filling commissions for Bill Clinton, you make nine people unhappy and you get one ingrate. (Laughter.) You're always going to make some people unhappy.
JA: Even your sister, the Councilwoman, called for you to get rid of Larry Keller, the Director of the Port. He's a holdover from Riordan. I mean, everybody tenders their resignation on the Harbor Commission when there is a change of administration. Yet Larry Keller, and some of the other people who can be let go, are still there. 
Mayor Hahn: Again, we have a system of government where we don't believe that the bureaucrats run City government, that we do appoint volunteer citizen commissions to oversee the policy of the commission and they set the policy. And the staff takes care of executing the policy. This is the first time at the Port of Los Angeles that you have a majority of the commissioners from the local community.
JA: And that's worked?
Mayor Hahn: And we chose to have the alternative Marine power program expanded and the formation of the Port Advisory Committee (PCAC) and a whole bunch of things that had not been done under previous administrations. But the staff is there to carry out the policy directives set by the Port.
JA: The director is the guy that you can retain or fire. He's not Civil Servant?
Mayor Hahn: Right.
JA: I guess if you feel like you're getting your money's worth out of him, then you keep him; if you don't, you won’t.
Mayor Hahn: He's got to adjust to the new policy direction of the new Commission and the new Mayor. In the end, I'm proud that we're moving forward with our program and probably have gotten the community more involved in the PCAC. We think that we've made a lot of progress with the Port of Los Angeles. Certainly not enough for everybody at once; I don't know of any other port in America that is involved in the community as much as we are right now.
JA: Along that line, there's been a lot of discussion recently about solving the dilemma between connecting the Port to the community, in what they call sort of a seamless interface. Do you hear people talking about that?
Mayor Hahn: I've talked about it. I said, when I ran, that we want the Port literally to change from turning its back on the community to turning around and embracing the community of Wilmington and San Pedro; and that if we can get them reoriented physically and mentally, that they can understand that they're part of the community, that it's important that they understand what their relationship should be, and they are in a relationship that understands this great economic engine. There's a lot of jobs in this area and all over Southern California. At the same time we have to realize that we're one community where people live and raise their families and we want to do it in a safe and healthy environment.
JA: Families such as the Mayor and the Mayor's sister, the Councilwoman.
Mayor Hahn: Right. We both live in this area and I'm here today to see what people want to be in San Pedro where the sky is blue, the breeze is blowing, it's a beautiful place to live.
JA: Part of the impasse with the Port comes down to a legal technicality that you probably have some experience with, seeing as how you were formerly the City Attorney. The issue is that Port properties are not taxed directly because they are part of the State Tidelands Trust. The leasees or Port tenants are taxed not on the land, because the land is owned by the State, but on their lease, or the value of their lease.
Mayor Hahn: Right.
JA: Now, what the CRA has been trying to do is to get access to some of these taxes using the tax increment that would occur by including the Port property into the CRA district; and the Port keeps thinking that they can't spend that money off the State tidelands. Yet, the reality is that the taxes on that property are already spent off of Port property. Because it's been collected by the County, the State, you know. 
Mayor Hahn: Now, I don't know. I guess you're talking about the possessary user tax. I don't know how that would work, [I would have a problem] if that means that the money can't go to schools and can't go to hospitals or go to other community college districts.
JA: Over what the baseline is at the time that the Port is included, whatever they're paying today. If tomorrow they were to include the tax increment it would be just that amount of taxes over and above what is currently going to schools and hospital because of the increased value of the property due to future development.
Mayor Hahn: I would have to ask the City Attorney. We have had our knuckles whacked for trying to take State Tidelands money for the general fund. But I wouldn’t be opposed to the community negotiating with the Port for the use of the tax increment if it is justified. Normally CRA's are talking about the tax increment that would grow from the actions they take in an area that's been determined to be blighted.
And we have the Pacific Avenue CRA project areas that are determined to be blighted so we can access revenues that result from redevelopment of those areas that plow back into those redevelopment areas.
JA: The biggest problem we have is in analyzing the budget of the CRA. In San Pedro, a very significant portion of that goes to administrative overhead costs. A significant amount of that money doesn't ever really hit the project area. The Port fears losing the tax increment by being included in an CRA project. 
Mayor Hahn: I can't understand that it makes any difference to the Port. It would be of some benefit. I think there's some confusion.... Look here’s the reality, James, the State of California is in financial trouble. They're taking away monies form cities and counties.
JA: They're taking $100,000.00 out of the local CRA district.
Mayor Hahn: Okay, and they're taking money out of the CRA. So there will be no money that will go anywhere. Any additional tax increment will probably go to Sacramento to pay off the deficit [this year]. $100 million dollars from CRAs statewide and it's going to go up.
JA: This leads us to the City budget. Now, a significant portion of the problem with the City budget is the problem in Sacramento, and is the problem with Sacramento really a problem in Washington, D.C.?
Mayor Hahn: I don't know about Washington, D.C. Here's what happened back in 1992, and you remember this, but in 1992 the State had a big budget problem, nothing like the one right now. And so somebody was a genius and read Proposition 13. There's one little clause in Prop 13 that nobody noticed. Somebody up in Sacramento noticed that it said property taxes were apportioned by law. They thought, ‘oh yeah, apportioned by law. . . . That means [they] make the law.’ So suddenly the Education Revenue Augmentation Fund, ERAF, was created because they knew they needed to fund the schools. They didn't want to have to pay how much the schools needed. They shifted the property tax from the cities to the counties to the school’s ERAF. Then, even when they got to the point where, and it's hard to remember that the State actually had a $14 billion surplus, they never reversed that ERAF shift.
JA: So, that's meant that since the State funds the schools, the State can grab the County money and the City and they never stopped it.
Mayor Hahn: So, it works out that ERAF shift changes this year is $175 million in
local city property tax have been shifted by Sacramento. This year, then the Governor proposed his budget to shift another $40 million from the City of L.A. The bad news is I just heard yesterday that it can go up to $80 million. Now this is after I have already submitted my budget to the City Council. So, that there can be another $40 million problem, you know, if this latest rumor turns out to be true.
JA: The forecast is a $250 million dollar budget deficit we're dealing now. What is the percentage of the overall budget?
Mayor Hahn: Well, we have an overall budget of $5.3 billion but in reality only about $3.3 billion of that is money that we can move around. In the budget there is money that's in the sewer construction trust fund, maintenance that has to be spent by law on certain things. There is a whole bunch of these kinds of special funds... we can only use that money for those specific things.
JA: Right.
Mayor Hahn: So, it's only about 3, a little over $3 billion that we can move around to the Police Department, Fire Department, parks, libraries, roads, everything that people associate with city government. So in that respect the nearly $300 million is, you know, close to 10% of that money that we have, because we had to solve that budget problem. Here was our problem. Because of the lousy stock market, you know, pension funds obligations continued by law, we have no choice in this. The actuary comes in and says the City must contribute this dollar amount into the City Employees' Pension Fund. And it's good that it's a law because the employers shouldn’t be able to play games with these funds. So the problem is we have to put $100 million more towards the pension fund than we did last year to make up for the losses that the stock market has had where the pension funds had their money invested. There's $100 million problem.
JA: Has the City Comptroller taken a look at where those pension funds are invested?
Mayor Hahn: I guess from time to time. I mean, they did really well. One of the reasons that we're having to put money in now is that Mayor Riordan didn't have to put any money in for a couple of years. The stock market was doing so well that with no employer contribution at all for a couple of years. So, we're trying to catch up. So you've got $100 million there. Workers Comp has been going up about $25 million a year, even with the reform that supposedly happened this last week, I talked to the Insurance Commissioner, John Garamendi over the weekend. He said don't expect to see any savings for at least a year. It's going to take time for those changes to be implemented. So there's $25 million. Our health care premium changed. We had a lot of competition there. We get Kaiser and Blue Cross and that's about it. Cigna just dropped out, so we don't have a lot competition there.
JA: City employees could be buying medication in Canada and we could buy in bulk.
Mayor Hahn: That's one of the ideas it's looking at is if we could work together as a consortium that buys prescription drugs. That might help a little bit, but it's about $20 million more for our health care premiums. We have other new costs next year because of the election cycle, you know, the City-wide election. That's a $13 million.
JA: You're not buying these new touch screens?
Mayor Hahn: We're ending that, because they cost about $75.00 a vote to run those touch screen machines.
JA: They're being investigated by the Attorney General.
Mayor Hahn: Right. We're actually ending that.
JA: The Attorney General's also investigating the prices of the pharmaceutical companies that are selling meds to Medicare.
Mayor Hahn: And he's also investigating what's happening to our gasoline prices. As a big gasoline purchaser, there's another increase in our budget. So, we added all these kinds of increases from issues that next year, we're close to $250 to $300 million. So, we had to solve that, and I wanted to solve it without raising City-wide fees or taxes.
JA: The Department of Water and Power wanted to come in and raise water rates 18%, right?
Mayor Hahn: Well, I think, we hadn't raised water rates for ten years in the City. You know, people buy water, bottled water like we have here, people don't realize how great the quality of water that we have now is. You pay less than a half a cent a gallon for City water. Compared with what you’re paying for Avian I mean it's pretty spectacular.
JA: So the City has some real experience with having a privatized system in the past
I think it was written in the book William Mulholland and the Rise of Los Angeles, (University of California Press, 2000), that low pressure, high prices, and bad quality were the standard.
Mayor Hahn: Right, and so I think people like that they have a publicly owned water system, but here's the problem...
JA: Is it the biggest in the United States?
Mayor Hahn: Yes. But here's our problem. I mean there was a big blowout of the water main in the Valley last week. We've got an aging infrastructure. We're going to have to issue some bonds to do a lot of repairs and work on our water system, improve our security, improve the testing and quality. We're going to be putting in more filtration plants and adding pumping stations. There’s a lot of big expenses.
JA: The DWP, out of all the City agencies, is the one agency that is the wealthiest. Doesn't the DWP actually contribute some $100 million annually to the General Fund?
Mayor Hahn: Yes and more. It's part of the City charter. The Department of Water and Power may contribute surplus revenues to the City's General Fund and it's a tribute. Because just like when, Edison makes a profit or PG&E makes a profit, the people who own the system, the LA rate payers, have the right to expect a return on their investment, and that goes back into the General Fund. It pays for police and fire and paramedics and parks and libraries and everything else, and it's a modest amount. Our rates, our power rates are still 20% lower than elsewhere in the state.
JA: Arguably one of the best things about Los Angeles during the whole energy crisis, our rates didn't go up and the city actually made money.
Mayor Hahn: We made money and actually cranked up a lot of plants in the Basin that we weren't using just to help the State through this crisis. This impression, that sometimes people don't know, because it's actually a legal requirement because of the bonds that were for the power side and the water side, issue bond covenants, we don't mix the revenues together. So even if the power side is extremely profitable, it doesn't subsidize the water side. The water side has to stand on its own. So, that we're saying in terms of the long-term investment, that we need to make in the water side, we're going to need some modest rate increases that will be, you know, pennies a day, that we were taking about, 
JA: But 18%, it sounds like a lot?
Mayor Hahn: But we haven't done anything for ten years. How much have gasoline prices gone up just this year?
JA: Well, we know the gasoline prices aren't paying anything other than the price of the war in Iraq and the fat profits of the oil companies
Mayor Hahn: Everybody knows that things have gone up in life. I think it was the decision of the previous administration to try to postpone this issue, so they didn't have to deal with it. We probably needed these water rate increases. And everybody wants to say I didn't raise these, I didn't raise taxes.
JA: Wouldn't it be easier, I mean particularly on the low income user or even on business—you’re trying to be business-friendly and business consumers actually pay a higher rate on the water—wouldn't it be easier to factor it in on a percent and a half a year kind of basis, so we don't get hit with a large increase here.
Mayor Hahn: That's kind of what I want the Council to do here. I signed with Alex Pedilla and Tony Cardinas as the chair of Commerce and Energy committee of the Council to have them resubmit that rate at 11% increase this year, and defer the rest of the increase until they come back to the Council with a five year analysis of what the water system's financial needs are going to be.
JA: But you know the public hears about the PR company, that is charging the DWP $50.00 a phone call and $100.00 a fax just to represent this department.
Mayor Hahn: And that company's ended their contract. 
JA: That's just one contract. 
Mayor Hahn: The public has the anecdotes and so does the press. They want to make all public policy by anecdote and that's fine. Add up all that money, that is a fraction of the need of what this water system needs to invest. We need to invest hundreds of millions of dollars making sure this water system continues to deliver reliable, safe water to the people of the City. And you know, a $50.00 phone call sounds terrible, we need to eliminate it, but, you know, look at the bigger picture here. We need to make all efficiencies. We need to implement the recommendations of the City Controller Laura Chick and her audit and we need to do all of them. Add them all up, you don't get to where you need to get.
JA: You don't get to $250 million.
Mayor Hahn: You get a fraction of it. It doesn't help when you're trying to convince the public and I understand that. Because the press will focus on the $50, not on $100 million dollars that we need to raise.
JA: For instance, in your budget what is convincing, is that the Mayor's budget is also reduced by what, 10%?
Mayor Hahn: That's asking other departments to cut back also.
JA: Exactly. Now if we went around to all of the different departments particularly the ones that make money and ask them either for a higher contribution to the General Revenue Fund or to cut…
Mayor Hahn: We are asking for a higher contribution to the general fund. That's what we're asking from the DWP, but a little bit of an issue for some Council members in that we asking for a special one-time transfer over and above their regular transfer of $60 million next year.
JA: Now that's the only semi-autonomous department that can actually do
that, right?
Mayor Hahn: Yes, the Port of Los Angeles, and I think that's another problem that a lot of people don't understand. They think that money comes Downtown from the Port revenues. Under the State Tidelands Trust those monies have to stay here in the Port of Los Angeles. There was one exception. You want to talk about the first time the ERAF shift. Right. Because it was going to be so hard on the City that first year, the City Comptroller, then Rick Tuttle, negotiated the deal with the State to have a one-time exemption to the Tidelands Trust. That's what everybody remembers when $44 million came Downtown to balance the City's budget in the beginning of 1992, that one time, because of the ERAF shift. And so the State says, okay we notice you've got a lot of money down here in the Harbor, we'll let you take $44 million of it, so that the pain of the ERAF shift doesn't hurt you too much. And that was the first and only time that that happened. Mayor Riordan did it when he came in. He then came in the next year and he got sued, he absolutely took $66 million and it is this administration that has to pay it back.
JA: The Promenade and China Shipping and all the waterfront issues that have been on the table under your administration, the Promenade has been supported here and is a popular community issue. It appears that if it's done right, that the property values in most of San Pedro especially those areas closest to the water will go up.
Mayor Hahn: This is the first time I've ever heard anybody mentioned property values in connection with this,
JA: Well, think about this. Property values in Los Angeles are at the highest that they've ever been. You put in a public amenity, like the Promenade and all of Lower San Pedro goes up 25%. The property transfer tax alone is probably going to pay back the City for
its investment in the Promenade.
Mayor Hahn: Again, it's going to be the Harbor Department that's investing in that in the Promenade, so.
JA: Yes, and it would be the City who gets the property transfer tax.
Mayor Hahn: Certainly it will stimulate the community. What we think it will do is it will again establish very clearly with the community a public relationship [which] ought to be. Yes, shipping is important. Yes, commerce is important. But you know what? The right of the people who work near the water to be able to enjoy the water is important, too. I don't know how you put a price on that, but it's worth something and I think it'll also make the Port a destination. People will want to come here. 
JA: And if that raises the property transfer tax, if that raises retail sales, if that brings tourists to come around and stay at our hotels, it raises the value of the bed tax, all of these things are extra revenue sources that are going to pay the City back directly, into General Revenue, without having to expend any money from the General Revenue.
Mayor Hahn: I guess that could be said. But we want that to happen in every community of Los Angeles. I’m looking at ways to improve the entire city.
JA: As I told Janice, the Promenade is a way of raising taxes without having to raise taxes.
Mayor Hahn: I would have to wait and see on that. Here's what I think is the better way to raise property values is to make this a safer City. That's what I'm concentrating on. I think if you make neighborhoods safer that you will increase property values because that makes it a desirable place to live, make it a desirable place for people to invest and to make businesses and jobs.
JA: Safer neighborhoods are not always more police, though.
Mayor Hahn: No.
JA: You can talk to Howard Uller at Toberman House about his gang diversion program. You can talk about fixing the sidewalks and better street lighting. And after-school programs. How come we don't have Mike Lansing’s support on your after school program, opening up every neighborhood school for sports programs?
Mayor Hahn: On L.A.'s Best program. I would like to see every neighborhood school (most of the schools have the playground hours supervised Monday through Friday) throughout the City and the School District Department on those programs. We have special programs, like L.A.'s Best that we have on 15th Street and some other schools. I'd like to see that program in every school because it really, it really works. That is part of public safety, and then Howard Uller and L.A. Bridges where we're at the middle school level with at-risk kids, that's part of Public Safety.
JA: In my estimation, you could get three social workers for every police officer that we hired. At $150,000 per police officer.
Mayor Hahn: No, it's about $100,000.
JA: With the car and all the equipment?
Mayor Hahn: With everything. Here's the problem we have. We have a city where police officer per capita is half of New York City or Chicago, or any major city you want to name. In some parts of the City where people are living, this area where you are, from here to the water we generally have much higher crime than in other parts of San Pedro and we need to figure out what we can do to change that.
JA: Is the solution for fighting crime always hiring more police officers?
Mayor Hahn: No. I just said that, but you have to do all three and what we haven't enough . We don't have enough peace officers. Our response time isn't fast enough and we just don't have enough officers. That's not supporting the officers on one-half cent sales tax. I know people say sales tax is regressive. But some people say, look at it this way, let's say a family of four, low income taxable retail sales about $10,000, $20,000 maximum. So what does that work out to a year? Half cent sales tax increase would be less than $100.00 a year if you're spending $20,000. You know, $100.00 a year, is $8.00 a month, $2.00 a week. We're talking pennies, pennies.
JA: How about a tax on something that is in fact very viable for this City, like one dollar on every container that comes through the port? L.A., Long Beach has one-third of all the containers in the United States coming in there. What we're seeing even with anticipated growth, which people say will come, even with that anticipated growth, what we're going to say is that's going to increase air pollution and with that increased growth they're talking about taxes or fees of some sort. Assemblyman Alan Lowenthal and Congressman Rohrabacher even said well how about a dollar per container pass-through fee?
Mayor Hahn: We’ve got the number one Customs district in the country. We think that's an ample source of revenue that comes right now out of the Customs district, without adding another burden to business—if that revenue that is being shared by the entire United States of America, if we got our fair share right here in Los Angeles and Long Beach to deal with our security problems, to deal with infrastructure and improving air quality and water quality. Hey, you know, we're producing a lot of revenue to the United States. 
JA: This is a national benefit because we're an international port, and yet there are local consequences not only to the community but to our state services and all this and so, how 
do you make that argument? Is there anybody in Washington that will listen to this?
Mayor Hahn: I make that argument every time we go back there. I made it the last time I was back there talking about Homeland Security. Look at revenues that are coming out of our Custom system. It's pretty remarkable. 
JA: And is George listening?
Mayor Hahn: Not specifically with George about that.
JA: All I hear is that George talks to God.
Mayor Hahn: That's nice if that helps particularly if God helps out.
JA: You worry if he talks back. How much are we spending now just in terms of homeland security?
Mayor Hahn: I don't know. Every time you see one of these reports it makes it look like we’re getting the money
JA: $15 million.
Mayor Hahn: $10 million. That's a nice story. Doesn't mean we got the check yet.
JA: Have we gotten any money from the Fed for security?
Mayor Hahn: We've gotten a little money but for the most part we haven't. We've been paying out money already.
JA: Honestly, how does it work? You send them a bill?
Mayor Hahn: When they announce a grant, sometimes they haven't even announced the guidelines and the regulations, which are the most important part about the federal government, it's not the law but the regulations that follow. We have to wait for those guidelines and regulations to identify how we ask for specific items that get within that branch, and sometimes that doesn't happen right away. So, when it does happen then we have our application in there and then it's reviewed by Homeland Security and then you basically draw down the funds as you spend them at that point. 
JA: You have to show them that you spent x number of dollars and then they reimburse you?
Mayor Hahn: In some situations it's like that. Sometimes they'll advance the money if you've identified specific things you want to spend it on. It varies with from grant to grant.
JA: Rocky DeGadillo the City Attorney has come out and said he supports the use of
the China Shipping mitigation funds off tidelands and supports the Welcome Park concept
Mayor Hahn: We think the legislation that Alan Lowenthal carried and got passed allows us to do that.
JA: Now the question is whether or not we're going to convince anybody in Sacramento?
Mayor Hahn: That’s the State Lands Commission . . , I do think they recognize the change that took place with that law and what we were trying to do was deal with the “No! No! No!” that we always got from the State Lands Commission before in terms of what they said our tidelands trust was restricted expenditures to. And we think that the language in the law that allows us, we could establish a nexus in allowing the Port to spend monies outside the Port property that are directly related to the Port's commerce.
JA: Related to the impacts that the Port has on the community, just like the Customs pass-through has an impact.
Mayor Hahn: And a number of things that China Shipping settlement talked about in the impact fund and the projects that were thought should done to deal with community impacts, you know, I agree with those. I don't think that they should [be blocked], especially when we see how other ports have been able to spend their revenues in San Diego or Long Beach, they've been able to spend tidelands revenues on [off-site projects].
JA: There was supposed to be a charter amendment regarding the adoption of the new Tidelands Law, suddenly somebody said that it doesn't need to be a charter amendment to make that happen.
Mayor Hahn: I think that was the advice of the City Attorney that we believe that we're on solid ground with our present charter language and the statement. We're just the trustee of the trust and the State is the trustor. So we have to carry out the wishes and instructions of the trustor, just that anybody would be a trustee for anybody's property. And we think the law allows us to still fill our obligations as trustees to the State of California and also be able to mitigate in some very small ways, whether it's the Welcome Park or its other projects, landscaping or whatever we're doing over in Wilmington. We think that all those things will benefit the Port as well as the community. Certainly, I'm hopeful that that new administration in Sacramento will focus on this issue. Hopefully I’ll be able to talk with the Governor about it.
JA: So you're going to Sacramento soon?
Mayor Hahn: I go to Sacramento all the time to talk to those folks.
JA: About the tideland trust?
Mayor Hahn: Yes, I’ve talked to State Tidelands Commission about that before, I'll do
it again. Certainly one of the things I'm going up right now is please don't balance budgets on the backs of Los Angeles
JA: Don't take the next $40 million? Thank you for your time today Mayor.
The Mayor’s press deputy chimes in: Congratulations. You ask more questions per minute than any journalist I have ever seen.
Mayor Hahn: He's good.
JA: Thank you once again for an informative interview.

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Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn. Photo: Slobodan Dimitrov.

Photo: Slobodan Dimitrov.