A funny thing was said at Inglewood Mayor Roosevelt Dorn’s Town Hall meeting July 30. About 150 residents filed into City Hall to hear reports from city officials about things that are going on in their departments — reports that are normally given during periodic Town Hall meetings. Sid Porter, the financial director for the city, reported to the crowd that he had received several calls from a Rice Financial Products’ official urging him to hurry up and prepare the paperwork necessary for the firm to do the $24.5 million bond deal the City Council had approved with Rice over the strenuous objections of Wanda Brown, the city treasurer. Brown maintains the bond deal is rife with political corruption and she has publicly accused Councilman Danny Tabor of being on the take to Rice and has been paid by Rice to secure the bond deal.

Porter told the Town Hall participants that a Lamar Lyons of Rice Products had been calling him everywhere — his office, his cell, his home — pressuring him into making haste with his work so the bond deal could be implemented. Mayor Dorn asked Porter whether these are good financial times to carry out such a massive bond deal as the one approved by the council.

Porter answered in the negative, and added, “These are terrible times to do the bond deal.” Porter went on the say he did not trust Rice and that Lyons, in an attempt to press him into acting on the bond matter quickly, told him that if he didn’t hurry up with the work, “Councilman Danny Tabor would be very upset.” Why would Lyons say that? I called Porter to get more information about his recorded and televised Town Hall remarks, but, true to the rules in the civil servants’ handbook, Porter told me: “No comment.”

NAACP STEPS IN — Los Angeles NAACP President Leon Jenkins wrote an open letter last week to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa decrying the Spanish-language-only summer instruction that was implemented at John Ritter Elementary School in Watts. The school is one of the 10 LAUSD public schools taken over by the mayor. Jenkins told the mayor that such segregation, regardless of how compelling the reason or justification, violates the fundamental principles of Brown v. Board of Education and the 1963 Civil Rights Act.
Jenkins writes about the dangers of engaging in any decision-making process “that decides which student gets educational opportunities based on ethnic origin or group and not on academic need, disadvantages, or income disparity, which exclude other equally disadvantaged and academically needy students based on ethnic origin.” Jenkins wrote something else that’s important, to wit: “It is equally appalling that this kind of segregation comes at the hands of another disadvantaged minority. Regardless of the intended goodwill, acts that advance the vestiges of discrimination and segregation cannot be tolerated.”

BREWER DID IT — The Villaraigosa-controlled Los Angeles Unified School District is touting the fact that the district has shown a significant decrease in its dropout rate and a similarly substantial increase in its high school graduation rate between 2007 and 2008. Wasn’t the Black man, David Brewer, the superintendent of schools during that period? Wasn’t David Brewer the man who put the mechanism in place that resulted in these significant ups and downs? Isn’t David Brewer the man the mayor had unceremoniously, humiliatingly, and expensively thrown out of his job for no good reason so Ramon Cortines, his own hand-picked crony, could take over? We already knew that while Superintendent Brewer was still on the job, students’ reading and math scores went up, and now we know their dropout rate went down and their graduation rate went up. So what the hell do people want from the head of a school district? I know, and I still say Brewer’s ouster was an act of racism.

THIS AND THAT — The Baptist Ministers’ Conference of Los Angeles and Southern California held “Rev. T.M. Chambers Jr. Day” Monday and the group’s president, the Rev. L. Daniel Williams, was kind enough to invite me to share with the attendees reflections of my association with the iconic preacher, whom I have known for 50 years — almost my whole life. The event was a fitting tribute to Chambers, who was too ill to attend, but about whom I must write a Bottom Line to inform the Southland’s newcomers and remind its old-timers of this minister’s impact on the growth and development of church life that we experience today.

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass this week called on community-based organizations to challenge the constitutionality of the line-item veto Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently made to California’s health and social safety net programs. “The latest round of cuts the governor hand-selected and unilaterally made — many of which are illegal under the Constitution — will have a disproportionate impact on the African-American and Latino communities,” Bass said. “The community needs to be aware of the governor’s actions and join in efforts to ensure his illegal cuts are blocked.”

Arriving by the busloads, Baldwin Hills residents and stakeholders jammed the Board of Supervisors’ meeting Tuesday to urge the board to consider enhancements to the existing ordinance regulating oil drilling in the Yvonne Burke Baldwin Hills Oil Field. The Culver City City Council added support to the residents’ stance, as did state Sen. Curren Price. In the end, the board unanimously approved Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas’ request to direct the acting director of the Department of Regional Planning to initiate a study to consider recommendations regarding possible amendments or modifications to the existing oil drilling ordinance for the board’s consideration.

Rep. Maxine Waters is on another list. She is the first female member of Congress to be named by The Hill, the congressional daily newspaper, to its list of the 50 Most Beautiful people on Capitol Hill. She is number five on the list and is the first of either sex named who is older than 37. She is 70.

Rep. Diane Watson will host the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency and the U.S. Small Business Administration in a small business forum Friday from 1 to 4 p.m. in her district office at 4322 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 302.

Gloria Gray kicked off her campaign for the 51st Assembly District seat Sunday with a host of South Bay big shots in attendance.
The California Black Chamber of Commerce has selected the Greater Los Angeles African American Chamber of Commerce (GLAAACC) as the Chamber of Year for 2008-2009. The CBC’s Ron Brown Award will be presented to GLAAACC on Aug. 21 at the Wyndam Hotel in San Jose. My condolences to gospel musician/singer Annette May Thomas on the death last week of her mother, Viola May, in their hometown of East St. Louis, Ill. Annette is the daughter of the late gospel singer, Brother Joe May and, of course, her mother was his widow.

AND FINALLY — Did you see him? There, in the Tuesday L.A. Times, as big as life, is our new city attorney high-fiving one of his deputies over the fact that the lawsuit of a grieving mother whose 4-year-old daughter was shot between the eyes by an LAPD SWAT sharpshooter was thrown out of court. A child is dead and Carmen Trutanich is high-fiving?! I told you people not to vote for this man, but no-o-o. I say a pox on Trutanich and a pox on all you idiots who elected him! A pox on the cop who killed the kid and a pox on the judge who dismissed the suit! A pox on everybody! High-fiving, indeed!!