City union groups give big money to Greuel campaign

Outside campaign committees affiliated with two powerful city employee unions have spent more than $2.2 million on their bid to make Los Angeles City Controller Wendy Greuel the city's next mayor, according to Ethics Commission records posted Saturday.

Working Californians, which is heavily backed by the Department of Water and Power union, reported spending an additional $770,000 on Greuel, much of it for campaign commercials. That brings the group's total to $1.65 million — money that has also gone toward billboards, pollsters and campaign consultants working on Greuel's behalf.

Two committees handled by the Police Protective League, which represents rank-and-file officers, also have spent $578,562 on TV and radio ads backing Greuel's bid.

The next mayor, and the leadership of the City Council, will be charged with negotiating new contracts with the DWP and police unions. Some officers have been frustrated by a policy that requires them to take time off instead of receiving much of their overtime. The top official at the DWP's employee union has said he expects to see raises in the new contract.

Councilman Eric Garcetti said labor's intense backing of Greuel raises a legitimate question of whether "elections can be bought."

"I don't think that comes without strings attached," the candidate said Saturday during a mayoral forum in the San Fernando Valley.

Councilwoman Jan Perry, also running for mayor, said voters should be "scared" of the Working Californians group's presence in the race. "It's like buying the position," she said after speaking at a separate event in Northridge.

Greuel repeatedly countered during the Valley forum that her record shows she has no problem saying "no" to allies.

"I have angered a lot of people as city controller, but not the taxpayers," Greuel said. "I've stood up and said the DWP doesn't do a good job on green energy and needs to do better."

Greuel and Garcetti have each raised more than $4 million under the system that limits contributions to $1,300 per donor. But unions and other special interests can spend unlimited sums if they do not coordinate their efforts with the candidate.

The unlimited outside spending for Greuel by Working Californians and the LAPD union now is higher than the combined donations collected by three other mayoral candidates: Perry, former prosecutor Kevin James and former tech executive Emanuel Pleitez.

James also is benefiting from unlimited outside spending by Better Way LA, an independent committee that has received $600,000 from Texas billionaire Harold Simmons, a prominent Republican donor nationally. The group has spent nearly $488,000 for television ads and other expenses promoting James, according to Ethics Commission records.

But Friday the committee reported dismal fundraising numbers, collecting only $9,700 during the last reporting period and going into the final days before the March 5 primary with just $64,000 cash on hand. Political strategists say it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to air a meaningful number of television ads in the Los Angeles market for a week.

James said Saturday he would be "thrilled" if Simmons would donate more to Better Way LA in the closing days of the race.

Nibbling on bacon at the Original Pantry Cafe in downtown Los Angeles, he said the independent campaign group already has produced a television ad. "If Harold Simmons sees just how close we are to making this runoff [and donates], it can be, I'm sure, quickly put on television and radio, and I'd be thrilled to see that."

James, the only Republican among the top five contenders, made the remarks after greeting voters with former Mayor Richard Riordan, who has endorsed him.

Many of the diners at the landmark eatery weren't from Los Angeles. James met visitors from as far away as Korea and Britain, and many from communities outside of Los Angeles.

"I've seen your commercials," Susan Friedman told James, who happily replied, "OK, good!"

"But I live in Orange County, so, sorry," the Huntington Beach resident added.

The candidates spent the day sprinting around the city, trying to woo undecided voters in the race's closing days. They met up at the Valley College debate, where the moderator posed a big picture question: Which movie would the candidates pick for an Oscar at Sunday's awards?

James and Emanuel Pleitez punted, saying they had been too busy campaigning to see the nominated films. Perry chose "Zero Dark Thirty," about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, saying it embodied the triumph of good over evil.

Greuel said she was rooting for "Lincoln," the biography made by her old DreamWorks boss, Steven Spielberg, who is one of the financial backers of Working Californians.

Garcetti named "Argo," which tells the story of the daring 1980 Canadian rescue of American diplomats in Iran.

Why?

"Because it's the only one that filmed here," he said.

seema.mehta@latimes.com

david.zahniser@latimes.com

Times staff writers Catherine Saillant and Kate Linthicum contributed to this report.

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Bloomberg's meddling in L.A. Unified races is paying for junk ads

If you're like me, your mailbox is getting stuffed with political mailers.

What to do?

The best course of action is to take a shovel and dig a hole in the backyard, toss the mailers in and set them ablaze.

At best, they're filled with useless simplifications and generalizations about candidates and issues, and a lot of them contain gross exaggerations or distortions, if not outright lies.

If you live in Los Angeles and it seems like you're getting more of this junk than ever, it's because millions of dollars are being spent by committees to either support or demolish candidates for City Council, mayor and school board. Not only for mailers, of course, but also for equally vapid and nasty TV ads. This is how democracy works, courtesy of the U.S. Supreme Court, which lifted limits on so-called independent expenditures, thereby turning elections into cash-driven free-for-alls in which candidates are almost beside the point.

Take the current campaigns for seats on the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education. Three spots are up for grabs, but this is less an election than a local skirmish in a national war that's raging over control of public schools. In the current battle, the local teachers' union and its allies are taking on the "reformers" and their supporters, some of whom live far, far from Los Angeles.

I kept hearing last week from readers who were having conniptions over New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's $1-million donation to the local Coalition for School Reform. They said he should mind his own business, and they called this another example of an attempt by rich guys to privatize public schools, or at least turn them over to their charter school cronies.

Actually, it was Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa who helped shake down Bloomberg. But I called Bloomberg's office to find out if he was aware that at least part of his money is being spent to distort the truth and misinform voters, which I'll explain in a minute.

"Mike Bloomberg is proud to help level the playing field on behalf of children and their families," a Bloomberg spokesman responded. "The union may not like it, but they should get used to it because he is just getting started."

That's more than a threat; it's a live grenade.

To be honest, I welcome anyone — including outsiders — whose goal is to improve public education. But the conversation has become so philosophically and politically polarized that it's hard to know who, if anyone, is acting most purely in the interest of kids.

On the contentious issue of charter schools, I think it's fair to say some do pretty well and some don't.

And although some of L.A. Unified's shortcomings can be blamed on union inflexibility, some is also due to administrative inefficiency and to parents who don't pay enough attention to their kids' academics. And all those problems are dwarfed by the fact that California is near the bottom when it comes to school funding.

I'd like to see more union give on teacher evaluations, work rules and tenure. But I'd also like anti-union forces to quit scapegoating teachers, because we owe the majority of them a debt of gratitude.

In Los Angeles, the stakes are high because L.A. Unified Supt. John Deasy seems to have convinced enough people that he may get ousted if this election doesn't go his way, even though that's an unlikely, long-shot scenario.

Deasy is a creative and effective leader who ought to keep doing what he's been doing, for the most part. But I don't agree with him on everything, and I don't think we're well served if everyone on the board stands up and bows every time he speaks. That goes the other way too. It'd be disaster, for sure, if everyone on the board were a union lackey.

That brings me to incumbent board member and former teacher Steve Zimmer, who has been nobody's stooge. Zimmer, at times, has tried to bridge differences among the warring parties, winning supporters and making enemies on both sides in the process. But there's a price to pay for independence, it seems. Zimmer is under attack by the Villaraigosa-aligned Coalition for School Reform, which supports Zimmer's opponent Kate Anderson. They see Anderson, an attorney and L.A. Unified parent, as more inclined to butt heads with the union and more likely to support Deasy.

Even some of his supporters say Zimmer can be an angst-ridden, hand-wringing worrier who takes too long to decide where he stands. But I respect his answer to that charge.

"I've spent my life immersed in these issues, and when a game-changing vote or policy issue comes up, I damn well should wring my hands."

And it's not as if Zimmer is rabidly pro-union and anti-Deasy. He's proclaimed his support for the superintendent and has ticked off the union because of it. But in a game of lesser evils, the unions have thrown in their lot with Zimmer, which has made his opponents all the more determined to drive him out.

The way I see it, we've got two capable people running who both seem to care passionately about L.A. Unified's 600,000-plus students. But politics being what it is, campaign strategists on each side have polluted mailboxes and airwaves with exaggeration and distortion. It's a dirty game, and you either sling mud or get buried alive.

Are you paying attention, kids?

The hit pieces on Zimmer are paid for in part by Bloomberg, whose name is on mailers, and the stink bombs dropped on Anderson are paid for in part by United Teachers Los Angeles.

If you'd prefer to make up your own mind about who Zimmer and Anderson are, or if you want to learn about the candidates for the other two seats, you can watch all three debates at http://www.unitedwayla.org.

And as for the junk mail headed your way in the next two weeks, you know what to do with it.

steve.lopez@latimes.com

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Digital billboard company issues $100-million threat against L.A.

An outdoor advertising company fighting to preserve dozens of digital billboards across Los Angeles warned this week that it would seek "substantially" more than $100 million from City Hall if it is ordered to remove any electronic signs targeted in a recent court ruling.

In an 11-page letter sent Friday, Clear Channel Outdoor told Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, City Atty. Carmen Trutanich and Council President Herb Wesson that its digital signs are "valuable assets that the city cannot attempt to take away without paying just compensation."

The letter comes two months after a three-judge panel struck down a 2006 legal settlement approved by the City Council allowing Clear Channel and CBS Outdoor to convert 840 existing billboards to digital formats. The company installed 79 digital signs before the settlement was blocked.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal ordered a lower court to invalidate all digital conversions permitted under the agreement. But Sara Lee Keller, Clear Channel's lawyer, warned that if the council instructs the company to turn off the signs, "it would be exposed to liability to Clear Channel for the fair market value of such signs, which substantially exceeds $100 million."

"While litigating these claims would be costly and time-consuming for all … we believe it is important to be clear about the consequences," wrote Keller, who contends that other factors make all of the company's signs legal.

The letter drew a sharp response from Summit Media, a competing sign company that successfully sued to block the 2006 agreement. Phil Recht, the company's attorney, said Clear Channel has "no regard for the rule of law."

"Clear Channel is trying to bully the city into submission so that they can continue to make hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal profits from these digital billboards two courts ruled to be illegal," he said.

Clear Channel sent its letter one day before neighborhood activists and outdoor-advertising lobbyists — including the company and its representatives — took part in a working group to discuss possible digital sign legislation. One proposal up for discussion would allow new digital billboards to be installed in exchange for removing a greater number of static billboards.

Summit promised to work with neighborhoods on digital sign issues, saying the technology diminishes quality of life. In recent years, it has described the original 2006 agreement as a "sweetheart deal" that gave CBS and Clear Channel hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

Since the ruling, Clear Channel has been waging a publicity campaign in favor of digital billboards, putting together an advocacy group to argue on its behalf and touting support for its signs from such groups as AIDS Project Los Angeles, Art Share L.A. and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. Those groups, among others, have asked the state Supreme Court to take another look at the ruling that invalidated the 2006 digital sign pact, according to Clear Channel's letter.

Clear Channel and a handful of other billboard companies also have been contributing tens of thousands of dollars in recent weeks to Proposition A, which is on the March 5 ballot and would raise the sales tax rate to 9.5% from 9%. That measure, if passed, is expected to generate more than $200 million annually for the city budget.

Meanwhile, Lamar Advertising, which has proposed its own plan for converting signs to digital formats, has been spending $5,000 per candidate on outdoor advertising promoting the City Council campaigns of Councilman Joe Buscaino, Assemblymen Bob Blumenfield (D-Woodland Hills) and Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), and former Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes, as well as the city controller campaign of Councilman Dennis Zine.

Friday's letter from Clear Channel was accompanied by a legal claim, a document submitted before the filing of a lawsuit. Clear Channel spokesman Jim Cullinan said his company sent it because it must provide 90 days' notice before filing an action in court.

"This letter gives notice, but we hope it doesn't come to litigation," he said.

david.zahniser@latimes.com

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Deputy shoots, injures driver after short chase in Orange County

By Hailey Branson-Potts, Los Angeles Times

February 23, 2013, 8:46 p.m.

A short chase that began early Saturday in a McDonald's drive-through in Stanton ended when authorities hit the suspect's vehicle and shot and wounded him, authorities said.

The incident began when deputies were dispatched shortly after 3 a.m. to a McDonald's near Beach Boulevard and Katella Avenue, said Lt. Joe Balicki of the Orange County Sheriff's Department. A man was reported to be passed out in his vehicle in the drive-through lane, he said.

The man was "extremely intoxicated" and "became uncooperative" when approached by deputies, Balicki said.

The man sped from the parking lot and struck a deputy's marked patrol vehicle, Balicki said. He then drove north on Beach Boulevard and turned onto Ball Road, Balicki said.

Deputies stopped the vehicle by striking its back quarter panel, causing it to spin out, near Ball Road and Gilbert Street in Anaheim, Balicki said.

One deputy fired at the man and struck him, said Sheriff's Capt. Steve Doan. He sustained non-life-threatening injuries and was taken to a hospital, Doan said.

hailey.branson@latimes.com

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Dorner and the LAPD legacy

I expected fireworks in South Los Angeles this week, when LAPD Chief Charlie Beck showed up at a community meeting to talk about Christopher Dorner, the ex-cop turned killer whose manifesto cast the department in an ugly light, resurrecting decades of buried wrongs.

The crowd at the Vermont Avenue community center was small, about 100 people. But the line to speak stretched from the stage to the back of the room. Some came for answers, some just to vent.

There were stories of ugly street stops and police harassment. Half a dozen people — black, white and Latino — said they'd had family members injured or killed by cops. An old man carried a poster of Dorner. A young man told Beck that the LAPD's legacy runs so deep, "babies cry when they see your uniform."

They had read Dorner's manifesto, which blamed his firing from the LAPD on racists, liars and cowards. There were nods all around when one man declared, "I don't defend what Dorner did, but like many in the community, I believe what he said."

But no voices were raised, no insults hurled. Nearly everyone prefaced their comments to Beck with some version of "thank you for coming."

It wasn't exactly a love fest, but it was the sort of dialogue that would have unimaginable a decade ago, when the LAPD was regarded in the neighborhood as an occupying army.

"This is not us against them," moderator Skipp Townsend told the crowd on Wednesday night. Townsend is a former gang banger who now "partners" with the department in crime prevention efforts.

"We're going to be together, whether we like it or not," he said. "This is like a marriage."

::

If it's a marriage, one spouse is feeling betrayed right now and the other is fumbling for answers.

A lot has been made of the ways the LAPD has changed since Rodney King and Rampart. The institution is more accountable, with video cameras in patrol cars and officers equipped with microphones. And the ethnic makeup now reflects the city's demographics: 43% of officers are Latino, 35% white, 12% black, and 9% Asian American. Twenty percent are women.

Still, it's unrealistic to believe that the LAPD has cleared its ranks of bullies and bigots.

Beck acknowledged that in South L.A. this week. "You will never have a perfect department," he said. "We hire from the human race and we hire the best people we can, and sometimes they make mistakes."

Some officers can be redeemed through discipline and training, but those with a "malignant heart" have to be let go, Beck said.

But how do you see into an officer's heart and who determines its darkness? And how does an officer wind up fired for reporting misconduct?

That's what residents wanted to know. And those questions are prompting soul-searching not just in the community, but inside the police department.

Dorner's manifesto contends the deck was stacked against him. He was kicked off the force because a police panel ruled that he was lying when he reported that his training officer had kicked a mentally ill man they were in the process of arresting.

Official accounts lay out the evidence on both sides: The suspect's father said the man's face was puffy and that he described being kicked by a police officer. The training officer's denial was backed by two witnesses who said they saw no kick during the arrest.

When Dorner challenged his firing, a trial court judge said the evidence left him "uncertain of whether the training officer kicked the suspect or not." The case came down to the "relative credibility" of Dorner and the training officer. So Dorner lost his job.

Clearly, given his actions later, his was a "malignant heart." Dorner was unfit to be a police officer.

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Councilman's preferred successor holds edge in Westside district

When Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl decided in October to retire and focus on battling cancer, he anointed Mike Bonin, his longtime chief of staff, as his preferred successor.

The March 5 primary election now seems Bonin's to lose.

Of four candidates seeking to represent Council District 11 — which includes Brentwood, Mar Vista, Venice and Westchester — Bonin has raised the most money ($380,000, including matching funds, more than four times the amount amassed by his nearest rival). The self-avowed "progressive activist" has also received hundreds of endorsements from politicians, business and labor leaders, environmental groups and residents.

"He's smart, he's a doer, and he's solution-oriented," said Austin Beutner, a conservative businessman and former mayoral hopeful who recently held a meet-and-greet event for Bonin in Pacific Palisades. "He's not an ideologue."

Bonin's three opponents — Frederick Sutton, 28, a part-time bartender and community activist; Tina Hess, 52, a prosecutor with the city attorney's office; and Odysseus Bostick, 36, a Westchester teacher and parent — all acknowledge the financial leader's sizable edge. But they say they're fed up with pothole-riddled streets, homeless encampments and out-of-control municipal expenditures. Bonin, they say, represents a politics-as-usual bureaucracy that has turned the City Council into what Sutton calls "a merry-go-round of lifetime politicians."

Having received $87,000 in donations and matching funds, Sutton sees his immediate goal as keeping Bonin from getting the simple majority of votes needed to seal victory in March. "Once you get into a runoff," Sutton said, "suddenly everything changes."

Bonin, 45, has unveiled plans to make Los Angeles more employer-friendly (extend the Internet tax exemption for Silicon Beach companies, support tax credits and reduce red tape for film operations) and to improve residents' access to City Hall through regular community meetings and technology ("Hikes with Mike" and "Mayberry meets the iPhone")

After receiving his bachelor's degree in U.S. history at Harvard University, Bonin worked as a newspaper reporter before entering politics. The Massachusetts native moved to the Los Angeles area in the early 1990s. He lives in Mar Vista with his partner, Sean Arian, a consultant.

A Gold's Gym regular who eats mostly raw foods, Bonin sports five tattoos, including a recycling symbol on his left shoulder that serves partly "as a symbol of getting sober and taking a life that had been trash and making it productive again." After long overdoing it on drugs and alcohol, Bonin said, he has been sober for 18 years.

The diverse Westside sector he seeks to represent is rife with vocal activists and hot-button issues: congestion, transit construction, an imbalance between jobs and housing, transients and the modernization of Los Angeles International Airport. Like Rosendahl, Bonin opposes separating the northern runways but is all for updating the airport.

Bonin said his 17 years in public service have prepared him.

He first worked in city government as legislative deputy, district director and deputy chief of staff for former Councilwoman Ruth Galanter. He then became deputy chief of staff and district director for Rep. Jane Harman, who represented many 11th district neighborhoods before retiring from Congress. He has been Rosendahl's chief deputy since 2005.

Elected in 2005 and 2009, Rosendahl, 67, was favored to win a third and final term before being diagnosed with advanced cancer last summer.

Bonin said he has been inspired by his boss' spirit and resilience after months of grueling cancer treatments. "He's got the level of energy back that most of the staff finds exhausting to be around," Bonin told a group of elderly residents one recent afternoon.

Marcia Hanscom, a wetlands activist, said she endorsed Bonin after hearing his ideas for bringing government closer to the people and promoting nature in the city.

"He's got good values and instincts, and he also knows the inner workings of City Hall and its bureaucracy," she said in an email. "If he does as he says — getting and staying close to the constituents — he will not be so captured by City Hall as some think he is."

martha.groves@latimes.com

Times researcher Maloy Moore contributed to this report.

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Taken aback by a photo from way back

A bank's branch office in Alhambra is helping Fame Rybicki become famous.

The 91-year-old former school administrator and community activist was startled to discover that a photograph taken of her in August 1926 had been incorporated into a large mural that decorates a newly opened Wells Fargo office on the city's Main Street.

The mural is a montage of historic photos that salute 112-year-old Alhambra's early days. A 5-year-old Rybicki is shown standing with family members and uniformed attendants in front of several cars gassing up at her father's service station.

"My father had just opened the service station at the corner of Fremont Avenue and Valley Boulevard," Rybicki said. "My mother and my uncle from back East are also in the picture."

Rybicki learned of the mural when she spied a photo of it in a newsletter mailed to her last month by the Alhambra Chamber of Commerce. She and her husband, Anton, 95, now live close to daughter Joan Steen in Newport Beach.

The gas station, named Fremont Service, was a focal point in Rybicki's life.

Her father, Giles Ratkowski, a civil engineer for the Chicago North Alton Railroad, had contracted tuberculosis on a trip to Washington, D.C., where he had gone to testify before Congress about government payments owed for services during World War I.

"It was believed at that time that the only cure for TB was sunshine," she said. "One of his friends had already quit the railroad and moved to Glendale, so my father wrote to him for information and we came to California in January of 1925."

Her father decided to open a gas station so he could work outdoors in the sunlight, Rybicki said.

He looked at a spot on Wilshire Boulevard and Western Avenue but "decided that there weren't enough residents there to warrant building a station," she said. "That corner is now worth millions."

Instead, Ratkowski settled on the corner of Fremont and Valley and bought a double-sized lot that contained a citrus grove and a rambling, 16-room Asian-themed house that had been built 24 years earlier by an engineer named Antonio Cajal, who had served in Peking during the Boxer Rebellion.

To clear space for his gas station and a planned mini-market, Ratkowski removed rows of orange, acacia, avocado and palm trees, Rybicki said.

Being an engineer, her father designed his eight gasoline pumps himself. "They were built to keep anyone from tampering with them and stealing gasoline at night. They were the first of their kind — the gas would go back into the tanks in the ground when they were turned off," she said.

Her father closed the station and its small market at midnight and carried the day's receipts back to the family home. He was never robbed.

Rybicki, whose first name is Euphemia but is known to friends as Fame, spent much of her childhood at the station. It was from there that her father taught her to drive the family's big Packard — at age 10. And it was in the Fremont Service mini-market that as a 13-year-old she met the man she would eventually be married to for more than 70 years.

"He was 17 and was in there buying something," she said. "He later told me that he told himself that day that someday he was going to marry that girl."

The Ratkowski family operated Fremont Service until the 1950s, when they rented the station to the Union Oil Co. It remained a Unocal station until the mid-1990s; a Jiffy Lube and a Jack In the Box restaurant occupy the corner now.

After graduating from Alhambra High School, Rybicki married in 1938 and then went on to work as an administrator with the Alhambra Unified School District and as a savings and loan association vice president. She was the first woman to be president of the Alhambra Chamber of Commerce.

Rybicki plans to return to the Wells Fargo branch Saturday for the official opening of the office at 701 E. Main St. and the 11 a.m. unveiling of the mural, one of 1,800 installed at the bank's branches nationwide. Other photographs included in the 12-foot-wide artwork depict a 1920s Alhambra fire station, a 1925 Valley Boulevard produce shop, Alhambra's 1910 City Hall and a 1926 view of Main Street.

bob.pool@latimes.com

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NextG agrees to pay $14.5 million for role in 2007 Malibu fire

A phone company whose equipment on a top-heavy pole was partly to blame for the 2007 Malibu Canyon fire has agreed to pay $14.5 million under a proposed settlement, according to legal documents.

NextG Networks of California Inc., now owned by Crown Castle NG West Inc., will pay $8.5 million into California's general fund and $6 million to hire independent engineers to inspect each of the company's attachments on tens of thousands of poles in California. Any pole found to be overloaded or decayed would be replaced, with co-owners sharing the cost.

On Oct. 21, 2007, three utility poles on Malibu Canyon Road snapped and fell to the ground, igniting brush. Propelled by strong Santa Ana winds, the resulting blaze burned thousands of acres and destroyed or damaged nearly three dozen houses and other buildings.

The poles that toppled were jointly owned by Southern California Edison Co., AT&T Mobility, Sprint Telephony, Verizon Wireless and NextG.

In January 2009, the California Public Utilities Commission opened a case to determine whether the five companies had violated the utilities code or other rules when they installed equipment on the poles. In the settlement agreement signed Thursday, NextG acknowledged that it failed to talk to other telecom companies or Edison before adding cables to one of the poles that broke.

In September, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon agreed to pay $4 million each to resolve issues relating to the fire.

Hans Laetz, a part-time journalist and Malibu resident who has campaigned for power pole safety, opposed the September agreement, saying it did not provide adequate protection for Malibu against future fires that might be caused by overloaded poles.

He praised the NextG settlement agreement for stipulating that overloaded or damaged poles be inspected and replaced as necessary. The settlement is subject to a vote by the full commission.

The settlement means that inspectors will examine NextG's poles, "starting in Malibu and then working out through all of western Los Angeles County," Laetz said. "We know there are many that are overloaded."

Hearings into Edison's involvement in the blaze were to begin Monday but now must wait until the commission has acted on NextG's settlement.

The NextG settlement "is really precedent setting," said Malibu Councilwoman Laura Z. Rosenthal. "We all know all the overloading that has been going on. Malibu is vulnerable."

martha.groves@latimes.com

Times staff writer Matt Stevens contributed to this report.

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Autopsy inconclusive on woman found in hotel water tank

More tests need to be performed before a cause of death can be determined for the Canadian tourist whose body was found inside a water tank atop a downtown Los Angeles hotel, coroner's officials said Thursday.

The body of Elisa Lam, 21, was pulled from a tank at the Cecil Hotel on Tuesday. Lam, who authorities said traveled to California from Vancouver on Jan. 26, was last seen Jan. 31 at the hotel.

Los Angeles County coroner's spokesman Ed Winter said the autopsy was completed. He would not say whether the medical examination found visible signs of trauma on the body.

But Winter said toxicology tests, which will take six to eight weeks to complete, would help determine if Lam was taking medication or another substance at the time of her death and, if so, whether it was at therapeutic levels. He did not elaborate.

Winter also did not reveal whether coroner's investigators had determined how Lam got into the water tank or how long she may have been inside. The matter is being treated as a death investigation, he said.

Law enforcement officials familiar with the case said that although foul play is a possibility, they are examining whether Lam's death might have been an accident.

The body was discovered by a hotel worker checking out complaints of weak water pressure, police said.

Lam was reported missing about three weeks ago. Last week, police released video of her inside a Cecil Hotel elevator. In surveillance footage, Lam is seen pushing buttons for multiple floors and at one point stepping out of the elevator, waving her arms.

The only ways to get to the roof are via a locked door that only employees have access to and a fire escape. The door is equipped with an alarm system that notifies hotel personnel if someone is on the roof, Los Angeles police Sgt. Rudy Lopez said.

Also Thursday, health officials said there were no traces of disease-causing bacteria in the Cecil Hotel's water supply.

A do-not-drink order implemented Tuesday was expected to be in place through the weekend until the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health determines that the water is suitable for drinking, said Angelo Bellomo, director of environmental health.

Officials tested for disease-causing coliforms at different places inside the 15-story Cecil Hotel.

"The tests came back negative, meaning that if they were in the water they are no longer viable," Bellomo said. The test didn't take into account water conditions before samples were taken Tuesday, Bellomo said. But the chance of disease-causing bacteria surviving was "very unlikely" because of the chlorine in the water.

The Cecil Hotel is expected to drain and flush its tanks and water lines before sanitizing them, a process that could take two or three days. The Department of Public Health will then conduct another series of tests before deeming the water safe to drink.

andrew.blankstein@latimes.com

adolfo.flores@latimes.com

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Victim recalled as full of promise, with a heavy metal edge

In the splintered world of high school, Courtney Aoki was someone remembered for blazing a path all her own.

She favored red and black, and walked through the halls wearing cat ears. She carried a journal in which she would jot down poetry, and had a grasp of literature that stuck in her teacher's mind years later. And she enjoyed musicals — "Chicago" and "Rocky Horror Picture Show" were among her favorites. Her ambition was to one day be on stage, working as an actress.

"She was on her way to do something great," said J.C. Marquez, her English teacher at Renaissance High School for the Arts, which she attended for two years.

Yet it remains puzzling to those who knew her, as well as investigators, why the 20-year-old was in a bedroom of a Ladera Ranch condominium, fatally shot before dawn Tuesday — the first victim in a rampage through Orange County in which authorities said Ali Syed stole a car and aimed his shotgun randomly at motorists, killing two others before shooting himself.

Although friends and authorities have said that Aoki was working as an escort, no one is rushing to connect the occupation with her violent death. It's unclear what relationship — if any — Syed and Aoki had, but she was found fully clothed, and there was no evidence of a sexual assault.

"There's still a lot of work to do in this case," Orange County Sheriff's spokesman Jim Amorminosaid.

That includes examining the contents of the computers owned by Syed, the 20-year-old unemployed, part-time community college student described by officials as a loner who spent countless hours holed up in his bedroom playing video games.

Three days after her death, those closest to Aoki are at a loss.

Danni Wood, 23, had known Aoki since they were both students at Renaissance in Long Beach. They liked to listen to the beats of Sublime and the high-pitched pop of Aqua, and were in a clique that practiced magic after school. The two fell out of touch when Aoki left Renaissance after 10th grade, moving to Norwalk High School.

Carina Hebert, a friend at Renaissance, explained that Aoki left the arts-oriented school because her family was having financial problems. "It just became too hard on her mom to drive her there every day," Hebert said. Aoki's mother didn't return phone calls seeking comment.

Wood reconnected with Aoki in recent years, and said she talked on the phone with Aoki two days before she was killed. Aoki gave her relationship advice.

The two had talked about going to an Anime expo and shopping for Aoki's birthday in June — her 21st. They were also thinking about getting tattoos together on Wood's birthday next month.

"That was the plan," Wood said, "and now it's not going to happen."

She said that Aoki had recently worked at a fast-food restaurant and was taking classes in massage therapy. But those who knew her as a high school student recalled a young woman with flair and big plans — someone with remarkable talent and individuality.

"She had everything going for her in terms of writing," said Marquez, who lost track of her after she left Renaissance.

In class, he said, she approached literature with an appreciation rare for a teenager, whether the assignment was analyzing Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations" or doing a table read of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet."

"She just seemed to get it," Marquez said, "and she wanted to absorb more of it."

In 2010, she attended a program for young performing artists in Orange County and made an impression with her dynamic stage presence. "She was comfortable on the stage," said Jim Perez, who manages the program for the Orange County Board of Education. "It was her home."

Not only could she sing and dance, he said, but was supportive of her classmates who weren't as confident in their performances.

Aoki later developed a tougher exterior, with a heavy metal edge. Tattoos began covering her body, including one of a black widow on her chest with the number 13 for Friday the 13th that she got with a friend last year. Her Facebook page included a take-life-as-it-comes quote: "Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today."

But friends said it was a shell that cloaked her genuine personality: thoughtful and kind-natured, if also a little nerdy.

Hebert didn't stay close after Aoki left Renaissance, only reconnecting briefly during their senior year. But the reasons Aoki was a memorable person are still vivid in her mind.

"The key thing is that she was just so sweet and lovable," Hebert said." Even if you thought she was weird, you just couldn't help but smile when she was around."

nicole.santacruz@latimes.com

Times staff writers Mike Anton, Rick Rojas and Richard Winton contributed to this report.

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