In a stunning display that flipped civil behavior and traditional political courtesy upside down, the City Council — probably for the first time — meekly retreated last night when their longtime tormentor, extreme gadfly Tony Pappas, turned his fire onto them once again and scored his biggest victory.
Staging one of his typically uphill fights, he wanted to block the disposition of outdated financial documents because he suspected secrets were embedded within.
Pappas’s Pattern
Flinging respect for city leaders through the nearest closed window, Mr. Pappas commonly and surily addresses Council members and well-known City Hall officials by their surname, without an honorific, an unheard of practice in government etiquette.
Without exception, he salts every visit to the podium with tart insults designed to sting rather than amuse.
Smiling sardonically in seeking to emulate a villain, as he seems to see himself, Mr. Pappas speaks quietly, relentlessly, badgering Council members about the time allotted to him as he tries to convert a community gathering into a farcical sideshow.
He is tireless in pursuing rhetorically imaginative routes into not merely provoking members with obnoxious, sometimes hurtful, personal comments but in trying to aggravate them into a response.
Instead of reacting to Mr. Pappas’s latest bizarre presentation with dismissive bemused expressions and then resuming business as they normally do, the Council last night actually embraced one of his desultory conspiratorial accusations even though they all agreed it was typically outrageous, unworthy of further comment.
Instead of rebuking their antagonist for using offensive language that commonly would be labeled abusive, the City Council, led by Mayor Chris Armenta and cheered on by Vice Mayor Mehaul O’Leary, retreated and surrendered to Mr. Pappas’s charges.
They granted his wish, which may be unprecedented.
A Unique Reaction
Ignoring Mr. Pappas’s familiar incendiary stance, they did what politicians almost never do. Unaccountably, they simultaneously handed him an olive branch and a much-cherished upset triumph over his supposed foes.
No explanation was immediately available.
Instead of proceeding with disposition plans, according to the agenda request, Mr. Armenta, unflappable as ever and brimming with good-cheer, and Mr. O’Leary, a witty Irishman who loves jokes, chose peaceful defeat over defending the city’s honor.
They convinced colleagues Jeff Cooper and Scott Malsin (Andy Weissman was home ill) that, well, why not hang onto the useless papers, say, for at least a year longer.
Chief Financial Officer Jeff Muir, the executive behind the routine request, might have been paralyzed with shock at the Council’s sword-falling moment.
Submitting to Mr. Pappas probably for the first time in the years he has been insulting the Council, members turned a humiliating scenario into a series of supposedly comical comments that they couldn’t shake off, like flypaper that would not go away. In lieu of the $20,000 price tag to which Mr. Pappas objected for electronically copying the documents, Mr. O’Leary suggested renting an apartment for a year and storing the unneeded documents there.
After Mr. Pappas made a verbal Freedom of Information Act request for the old checks and receipts, Mr. Malsin offered to personally deliver them to the antagonist’s home. Mr. Cooper concurred with the solution, but did not volunteer to participate.
When Is an Insult Funny
After Mr. Pappas treated Council members like target practice, the members appeared to think it was hilarious when Mr. Pappas insulted them. He has done it deftly dozens, if not hundreds, of times before.
Scorning the numerous defenses and retorts and penalties at their disposal, the Council, some think, may have empowered, inflated, Mr. Pappas for his coming appearances.
Known for fighting fiercely over the equivalent of a dust particle next door, Mr. Pappas was protesting the proposed digitization of outdated financial documents. They were not being dumped into a bin or shredded, but instead being preserved, electronically, to conserve office space.
“What is the big hurry?” Mr. Pappas wondered.
Except for Mr. Pappas’s protesting colleague, Meghan Sahli-Wells, there was unanimity in Chambers that the request by Mr. Muir was pedestrian to the point of dull. That is why it was included in the Consent Calendar, where obviously routine items are approved in bulk.
Mr. Muir, probably the easiest-going personality in City Hall, routinely was proposing $20,000 be set aside to digitize them to conserve room because the mountain of paperwork has jammed all available file cabinets.
For two Mondays in a row, Mr. Pappas has stood before the City Council and employed dark, conspiratorial, inarguably disrespectful language.
In pillow-soft tones, he slyly has berated the Council and City Hall staffers for probably disingenuously shielding inexplicably important information from a deserving but denied public.
He follows the identical template every time when he steps to the podium: He coldly drills the members on the dais with venomous acerbity and intensely personal insults.
Rarely is such bizarre, unorthodox conduct tolerated, even in low-grade, informal communal venues.
Had Mr. Pappas hurled his shockingly unsettling language in another venue, there may have been a penalty for him to pay.
This act has played for years in Council Chambers, marked every time by a level of disrespect for sitting members that is unmatched anywhere else perhaps on the Westside.
COUNCIL NOTES — Plans proceeded on schedule for 33 units of multiple grades of affordable housing to be built by the Los Angeles Housing Partnership at 11042-11056 W. Washington Blvd., site of the eyesore and since-razed Pleasantview halfway house. The Housing Partnership was widely praised. In neighborhood slang, the project has become known as Tilden Terrace. Residential opposition may have melted because only the faintest opposition was voiced. Todd Tipton, Project Administrator in the Community Development Dept., estimated construction may begin by the end of next year and take perhaps a year and a half to complete. Parking tickets and related penalties are rising after the state docked municipal governments a fresh $3…
