Transportation musical chairs

More fallout on the ouster of Gloria Jeff as head of L.A. transportation.

Latest from The Times' Steve Hymon: Still, the council's three African American representatives -- Bernard C. Parks, Jan Perry and Herb Wesson -- defended Jeff. Perry said Jeff deserved to have her case heard "on the record and in public." That Villaraigosa has replaced Jeff with another black woman -- Rita Robinson, head of the city's Bureau of Sanitation -- did little to dampen criticism of the mayor in the city's black media this week. The Los Angeles Sentinel ran a story that included a description of the personnel change as "Negro musical chairs." Meanwhile, an editor at the Wave newspapers wrote unhappily that she had received assurances from the mayor's office in June that Jeff would not be fired.

Brady at LA Cowboy: And then when I met Gloria Jeff for the first time I was... stunned. I do not know if I have ever met a more arrogant, self-centered person in my life. She made it clear from the moment she entered the room she had no interest in anyone other than herself - and less interest in what anyone else thought or had to say.

Zach at LAist: Any one in charge of our traffic needs to be fully transparent and communicative to the public. There is absolutely no reason why anything needs to be treated "classified" in a the way this city moves. To that end, the new department head, Rita Robinson, looks promising. City staff seems to already have better morale and she has told press that she will develop relations with Neighborhood Councils. Both good signs for week number one on the job. As for next week, we'll see about that.

Comments

[Marcotico]

I saw Gloria Jeff speak at a transportation studies conference held at UCLA last Spring. She mentioned bottle neck blog and asked the audience, made up of students and professors from various UC schools (and a few from USC), if anyone thought the answer to LA traffic problems would be found on this blog. Fresh from my collaborative public management class I naively raised my hand. Apparently no one else in the audience shared that opinion. On the other hand she did make a very good point when she mentioned that transportation funding and policies needed 30-60 year time frames rather than the current 10-15 year planning horizons. Like I said, a good point, but politically very difficult to pull off. "Hey vote for this tax increase and you'll be whizzing around this city when you're 60!"