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Wendy Greuel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Several social media sites, and internet blogs have exploded in in past 72 hours in reaction to Los Cerritos Community Newspaper’s release of Los Angeles Controller Wendy Greuel‘s official city appointment calendar this week.
The release of Greuel’s calendar, which covers a three and a half year period, has sparked a media firestorm.
LCCN is republishing the following article that was released on Saturday and authored by Paul Hatfield, a Certified Public Accountant and who serves as Treasurer for the Neighborhood Council in Valley Village.
The article appeared on the well-known and politically astute website www.citywatchla.com.
Candidate Greuel Caught In Calendar-Gate…Cries Smear
By Paul Hatfield
Calendars, Campaigns and Character – I am not going to weigh in on whether City Controller Wendy Greuel misused her and her staff’s office time to engage in election activities. The calendar is way too extensive for me to wade through. I’ll rely on others to dissect it.
But I will consider the source.
Reporter Randy Economy (with a name like that he should have a TV business news show), earned credibility for his investigative reporting of County Assessor John Noguez that broke the story about the official’s alleged criminal activities. It earned him praise from DA Steve Cooley.
Maybe he should change his name to Tenacious Economy – his investigation leading up to the story’s publication took two years. He did not back down on his records requests for Greuel’s calendars (under the State’s Public Records Act) despite being stonewalled by her office. He is not someone to be dismissed.
Mayoral candidate Kevin James made Calendar-gate an issue and cited red flags.
Greuel’s response was predictable. Through her spokesman Dave Jacobson, she dismissed it as a “political smear.”
Greuel has some credibility, too – she is an expert on political smears.
Turn back the clock to 2009 when she was running for City Controller. She accused her opponent of being a tax scofflaw in a series of TV commercials late in the campaign. Her foe could not come close to matching Greuel’s money, of which $200,000 came from her benefactors at the IBEW, making a comparable media rebuttal impossible (this article refers to the ad in the context of a story about the Kinde Durkee scandal).
I was familiar with the issue. Greuel’s campaign had no information even remotely connecting him to any personal income tax irregularity. Nor was there any irregularity in fact.
It did not stop her from making the allegations.
So to hear her complain about alleged political smears is laughable.
By the way, while Greuel dragged her feet releasing her calendars, Garcetti and Perry have offered their’s without reservation.
(Paul Hatfield is a CPA and serves as Treasurer for the Neighborhood Council Valley Village. He blogs at Village to Village, contributes to CityWatch and can be reached at:[email protected]) –cw
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