1) Scandals at the LAPD
The Los Angeles Police Department - its image tarnished by the Rodney King beating and its failure to respond to rioting when officers accused of it were acquitted - once again found itself under fire in 2000.
And this time, the department found itself virtually without a friend in town - not even community groups that long have buffered the LAPD from its critics.
Most of the problems centered around allegations made by former Officer Rafael Perez and misconduct at the Rampart Division's anti-gang CRASH unit. Officers there operated almost as if they were their own gang, Perez alleged, stealing drugs and money, assaulting suspects, framing them with evidence and lying in court to win convictions.
Perez himself was convicted of the theft of eight pounds of cocaine from an LAPD evidence locker.
Police Chief Bernard C. Parks immediately launched his own review - pointing out that it was an LAPD investigation that turned up Perez - but many of the problems for the department already had spread beyond City Hall control.
The federal Department of Justice, which had been investigating the LAPD for several years, forced the city to accept a consent decree that will include an independent monitor to oversee the police agency.
Included in the consent decree is much of what had been proposed by the Christopher Commission nearly a decade ago, including tracking officers for the number and severity of complaints. It also called for the department to develop a program to see whether there is racial profiling in stopping individuals.
Parks and Mayor Richard Riordan originally opposed the decree, but were forced to accept it after a veto-proof City Council - at the urging of City Attorney James Hahn - urged it be adopted.
This all comes at a time when the city is seeing an increase in violent crime and a reduction in arrests after seven straight years of declining crime statistics.
The other problem facing the LAPD this past year was self-inflicted by Parks when he dropped the popular senior lead officer program.
With problems in recruiting new officers, Parks decided in 1999 to force the 168 senior lead officers out of their community relations jobs and back into black-and-whites on patrol.
Neither Parks nor Riordan anticipated the public outcry that would ensue from homeowner groups and other community organizations that saw the SLOs as a valuable liaison between the neighborhoods and City Hall.
Under unrelenting heat, Riordan and Parks backed down in late 2000, saying the program would be restored starting Jan. 1.
The SLOs will continue some patrol duties, but their primary responsibility will be in dealing with quality-of-life issues important to community leaders, such as graffiti and illegal dumping.
Between the SLOs and the dozens of officers needed in Internal Affairs under terms of the consent decree, and problems recruiting officers to the department, Parks was forced to take yet another controversial step to get more officers on patrol.
A variety of specialized units dealing with issues such as car thefts were dismantled or cut back to put more officers on the streets directly fighting the worsening crime wave.
2) Democratic National Convention
Thousands of Democrats and 15,000 media members descended upon Los Angeles in August for the Democratic National Convention. And although national political conventions lost their drama long ago, this year's DNC will be remembered for the dramatic turnaround it gave Los Angeles and Southern California.
Before the DNC began, many people feared the worst. They feared protesters would tear up the city like they had done to Seattle in last year's World Trade Organization meetings. Or like in the 1992 riots following the acquittal of four Los Angeles policemen in the beating of Rodney King.
After all, only a few months before the convention, thugs rioted around the Staples Center after the Los Angeles Lakers won their first National Basketball Association championship in 12 years, overturning cars, breaking into businesses and destroying two police cars.
It was the Los Angeles of those riots - and the broken L.A. after the 1994 Northridge Earthquake - that the nation knew. What other face did Los Angeles have?
Well, it turns out there's one thing L.A. knows how to do: Throw a party.
And not just the big one at the Staples Center, although that one was impressive to an international television audience. No, the Democrats who came to their party's convention also came to party, and they were treated royally.
Scores of celebrities attended hundreds of parties across the region, from intimate dinners to studio extravaganzas for thousands of people. Barbra Streisand hosted a brunch for her good friends, the Clintons. The Playboy Mansion, well, it was supposed to host a fund-raiser party the weekend before the convention but political pressure nixed the mixer.
Thousands of protesters did show up for the convention, but they mostly followed the rules set down by the Los Angeles Police Department. Each day several people were arrested for minor infractions, but the disturbances were nothing like those following the Lakers' victory, never mind the riots of 1992.
By the time the Democratic National Convention ended, L.A. had proved to an international audience that it was recovered from the earthquakes and the riots, and that it was ready to take its place among the top international cities in the world.
True, the DNC didn't give Al Gore enough of a boost to win the presidency. But it did give Los Angeles a boost into the next decade.
3) Belmont Learning Center
The Los Angeles school board killed the environmentally plagued Belmont Learning Center at the beginning of 2000, only to have its hand-picked new Superintendent Roy Romer resurrect the possibility of completing the nation's costliest high school.
With myriad educational issues facing the district, Romer zeroed in on Belmont from the moment he took office this summer, proposing a series of alternatives for the site. The options include turning the ground floor into an open-air garage to allow methane and hydrogen sulfide to escape, or turning the buildings into a charter school.
Throughout the year, school board members - several elected on a reform slate opposed to Belmont - said they wouldn't budge from their Jan. 25 decision by a 5-2 vote to abandon the school, citing health and safety risks. The school sits atop a shallow oil field seeping potentially explosive and deadly gases.
But with Romer applying increasing pressure to "solve the problem" of Belmont, board members acquiesced Dec. 12 during a closed-door session to Romer's plan to seek proposals from the private sector to both complete the project and to indemnify the district against possible future lawsuits.
Board members could have sold the property outright, but a motion to that effect failed.
Instead, board President Genethia Hayes and member Caprice Young voted with the majority on a hybrid plan, combining Romer's request for private-sector proposals with a request for buyer bids.
Young and others said they don't believe the private sector can respond with a satisfactory plan to meet the district's requirements that the school be completed safely.
Critics were stunned at the turnabout, citing the estimated $100 million it will take to complete the school and to install a mitigation system, assuming the technology exists to safeguard children over the life of the school.
Downtown real estate experts told the Daily News the 35-acre Belmont site is a valuable piece of property in today's market, and likely would fetch between $40 million and $87 million if sold outright.
The decision on the school comes as the district proceeds with litigation against the project's principles.
The district has filed a false claims lawsuit against the developer and several subcontractors, and a legal malpractice suit against O'Melveny & Myers and partner David Cartwright alleging failure of due environmental diligence. All the defendants have denied any wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, incoming District Attorney Steve Cooley has set up a special Belmont task force to review for any possible criminal wrongdoing.
4) Lakers win a title
The 1990s were unkind to Los Angeles sports fans. But six months after the calendars switched to 2000, L.A. had its first professional champions since 1988 - thanks to Shaq, Kobe, Phil and the rest of the Lakers.
The Los Angeles Lakers won the National Basketball Association championship in June, giving the city its first title since the "Showtime" Lakers won in 1988 and the Dodgers won the World Series that same year.
The Lakers won thanks to Shaquille O'Neal, their mountain of a center, who was named Most Valuable Player during the 1999-2000 season. They also won thanks to Kobe Bryant, their highlight-film-every-night guard, who skipped college and went straight to the Lakers' starting lineup when he joined the league before the 1996-97 season.
But both O'Neal and Bryant also were on Lakers' teams that didn't win a NBA championship. New to the team for the 1999-2000 season was coach Phil Jackson, and he was given as much credit as anyone who wore a Lakers uniform for the team's championship.
Jackson came to the Lakers after leading the Chicago Bulls to six titles during the 1990s, all with the help of All-Stars Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. That's why Jackson was lured out of retirement to coach the Lakers: He had experience turning two-star teams into champions.
The Lakers had to beat four teams in the playoffs to win the championship, including the Indiana Pacers in the finals. Ironically, Indiana was coached by Larry Bird who, as a player for the Boston Celtics in the 1980s, was the foil to many championship-winning Lakers teams.
After the Lakers beat the Pacers for the title, the team rode through the heart of downtown on red double-decker buses as 250,000 or more fans cheered themselves hoarse in a sea of purple and gold jerseys. Lakers fans in attendance say it was one of the most beautiful June days Los Angeles has ever seen.
Unfortunately, the celebration was short-lived. In August, Jerry West, a Hall of Fame basketball player for the Lakers who had served as the team's top executive from Showtime to Shaq's time, left the team. West, who was known for the long hours and emotions he put into the team, said he needed some time off.
A few weeks later, the team opened training camp, ready to defend the NBA title.
5) Airline crashes
Two tragic plane crashes made news in the Los Angeles region in 2000, one because it occurred off the coast of Ventura County and the other because many of its passengers were from the Los Angeles area.
On Jan. 31, an Alaska Airlines jet crashed into the water off Port Hueneme, killing all 88 people on board. Flight 261, en route nonstop from the Mexican resort of Puerto Vallarta to San Francisco and then on to Seattle, disappeared from radar about 3:45 p.m. after its crew reported problems with the stabilizer trim on the MD-83 jetliner and asked permission to make an emergency landing at Los Angeles International Airport.
Witnesses reported seeing the plane corkscrew into the water, an account later verified by the flight's black boxes. Fishing boats, turned into rescue craft by the tragedy, combed the surface of the water for days, looking for survivors and debris from the craft.
Undaunted by their gruesome task, the captains and crew of the Channel Islands Harbor commercial fleet gave up sleep and a night's catch to help recover wreckage and bodies from the stretch of water they consider their own back yard.
"Nothing could have prepared me for what I was going to see," Frank Ursitti, owner and captain of the charter boat Ranger 85, said after returning from the crash scene.
The voice recorder told a tale of a captain and first mate who realized they had lost control of the plane and fought for control until the plane hit the water. Investigations have zeroed in on a large stabilizing screw in the plane's tail section that apparently failed.
On Oct. 31, a Singapore Airlines jet crashed on takeoff from a Taipei airport, killing 79. Flight 6, which was trying to leave Taiwan in monsoon-like conditions, was scheduled to land in Los Angeles. It has the dubious distinction of being the first fatal crash in the history of the city-state-run airline.
Investigators now believe the pilot erred, turning the plane down a runway that was closed because of construction equipment that sat near the end of the strip. The plane clipped a crane as it was taking off, sending the jet spinning.
Dozens of passengers on Flight 6 were from the Los Angeles region, including many of those who died. Two passengers from the Antelope Valley - 26-year-old Christina Reed and 54-year-old David Ralph - suffered critical burns on 15 percent of their bodies as they were helping other passengers get off the plane, doctors said.
Three weeks after the crash, Reed and Ralph were able to return home.
6) Decision 2000
This year will go down in history books as the Year of the Election. And probably not because of any local contests.
But while the nation watched the presidential race (and watched, and watched), a few local races received national attention. That's why Election 2000 was among the top local stories of the year.
The two biggest local elections were the Los Angeles County district attorney's race and the contest between state Sen. Adam Schiff and Rep. James Rogan for Rogan's House seat. Both drew national attention.
The incumbent district attorney - Gil Garcetti - went into the spring primary against two other opponents with an enormous advantage in name recognition and campaign contributions. But name recognition turned out to be a disadvantage as well.
Garcetti was known nationally as the district attorney who lost the O.J. Simpson case, one of several high-profile cases in which his office failed to get a conviction.
His office was also blamed for part of the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart Division scandal, since prosecutors in Garcetti's office pressed for the false convictions. Before leaving office, he won guilty verdicts against three officers charged in the scandal, but those convictions were overturned last week.
Garcetti finished second in the March primary to Steve Cooley, a head deputy in the office's welfare fraud unit, but remained confident he would win the November election on the strength of his incumbency and superior campaign spending capabilities.
But Cooley, a Toluca Lake resident, kept hammering the incumbent about his office's failures, and by the time the campaign reached the fall, Cooley had a sizable war chest with which to respond to Garcetti's negative campaign ads.
Cooley won handily.
Meanwhile, Schiff and Rogan fought on a national stage over a House district that stretches from the East Valley to Pasadena. Rogan gained fame in 1999 as a House manager of the impeachment of President Clinton, but he also gained many enemies who are friends of the president.
Rogan was targeted early by the Democrats, both for his role in the impeachment and because his district has more Democrats than Republicans. Schiff had strong name recognition in the district, since it included much of his state senatorial district.
Schiff received campaign money from across the country, especially among Hollywood's liberal elite, which appreciated Schiff's support of the entertainment industry in the state Senate and disliked Rogan for his role in the impeachment. Rogan, meanwhile, received money from Republican supporters around the nation.
By the time the last vote was cast on Nov. 7, $10 million had been collected and spent on the race, the most ever for a congressional contest in the nation.
Schiff won the seat, but with a Republican administration entering Washington in January, most political observers expect Rogan will still be working in Washington, D.C., in 2001. He's been rumored to be considered for a variety of administration jobs, in addition to several private-sector jobs that would keep him close to the federal government.
7) The Summer of Labor
Los Angeles labor claimed victory as a year of contract bargaining for more than 200,000 area workers drew to an end and union-backed Democratic candidates dominated the November ballot in local races.
Dozens of unions representing workers in the public and private sectors successfully negotiated new, richer contracts for their members during the "Summer of Solidarity" that cashed in on California's booming economy. Those that couldn't win at the bargaining table took their issues to the streets with high-profile strikes that drew national attention.
Not every strike was successful. The Los Angeles County workers' strike lasted only a day after turnout was low. And while the Metropolitan Transportation Authority strike lasted a month, the transit agency achieved the savings it sought.
"This isn't a union town yet," said Miguel Contreras, executive-secretary for the Los Angles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, a local union umbrella group, "but we're getting there and we're getting there fast."
The biggest political triumph was won with union-backed Democrats at the ballot box, with state Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Pasadena, cashing in on a flurry of union support to unseat incumbent Rep. James Rogan, R-Pasadena, in the costliest congressional race in the country's history.
Other key victories included Assemblyman Jack Scott, D-Pasadena, winning Schiff's 21st Senate District seat in Pasadena; attorney Dario Frommer winning Assemblyman Scott Wildman's 43rd District seat in Glendale; and Democrat Jane Harman taking back her 36th Congressional District seat from Rep. Steve Kuykendall in the South Bay.
Earlier in the year, the nation watched as some 8,500 janitors, mostly Central American immigrants earning just above minimum wage, held a series of colorful strikes that ended in substantial pay and benefit gains.
Another win for the Service Employees International Union, which represents the janitors, was the addition of 90,000 new members, mainly home-care workers organizing for the first time.
Other contracts reached in 2000 affected some 60,000 commercial actors represented by the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Actors; more than 47,000 Los Angeles County workers represented by the SEIU; and some 7,500 transportation workers with the MTA.
Talks over one large remaining contract between the school district and some 44,000 teachers and other workers have yet to be completed. United Teachers Los Angeles, which is seeking pay increases of 20 percent, has authorized a strike date of Feb. 27 if no accord is reached.
And in the March race to succeed Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, union support will be key in a region where labor is once again flexing its muscle and forcing politicians to vie for their support.
8) The economy
The region's economy was one of the top stories during 2000, for both positive and negative reasons.
On the plus side, home prices in the San Fernando Valley finally returned to the levels they achieved in the early 1990s before the post-Cold War recession devastated the local economy.
In August, the average price of a single-family house in the Valley sold for a record $255,000. Volume was up too: More than 1,000 homes were sold in August, a 6.5 percent increase over 1999's August.
The housing market was hot across the region. In the Santa Clarita Valley, the median price set a record in July that was then topped in August. Prices in Ventura County averaged 20 percent higher than the prices in the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys.
Even the Antelope Valley's housing market rebounded, and it had fallen further than any other region during the recession of the mid-1990s. During the summer, Palmdale home prices jumped 35.6 percent from the previous summer, the ninth-biggest price hike in California. Lancaster home sales prices went up 23.2 percent, the fourth-best results for any city in Los Angeles County.
But the economy's strength was more than just home sales. The region's unemployment rate fell to levels not seen since the early 1970s. Mirroring a national trend, scores of local dot-coms created paper millionaires and thousands of well-paid employees.
Industries born over the last few decades blossomed. The Valley continued to feed a growing demand for post-production entertainment work, from special effects houses to mixing studios. Dozens of nuts-and-bolts tech companies provided the infrastructure to the burgeoning Internet. And a handful of companies - led by Amgen Inc. of Thousand Oaks - turned the area into one of the nation's top biotech regions.
But the economy also had its negative story lines in 2000. And as 2001 approaches, the outlook is cloudy.
Housing affordability has become an issue to the region again. Can the Valley's workers find homes to buy, or even apartments to rent, when prices are rising so dramatically?
And will the slowdown that has crept into the nation's holiday budgets reach the Valley? Economic forecasters universally predict that the region will experience slower growth in 2001 as consumers and businesses curb their spending. In fact, the second quarter of the year could see a slowdown, according to a recent forecast from the Anderson School at the University of California, Los Angeles.
That slowdown could turn into an outright recession if two powerful unions strike against Hollywood, as many expect they will. Both the actors and screenwriters unions have begun negotiating with the studios over a new contract before the current one expires this June.
But no one is optimistic that a deal will be struck by the summer over such issues as reimbursement for material seen over the Internet.
If Hollywood shuts down, the region's economy could be the top story of 2001, but for all the wrong reasons.
9) Quackenbush resigns
More than six years after the Northridge Earthquake, the temblor is still knocking things down. In 2000, it was Insurance Commissioner Charles Quackenbush who fell.
In April, it was disclosed that Quackenbush funneled payments from insurance companies into private foundations that, among other things, filmed public service announcements that starred Quackenbush himself. Those payments were supposed to be fines paid by the insurers for cheating consumers out of money owed for damages sustained from the Valley earthquake.
Quackenbush defended his scheme at meetings across Sacramento. His wife, who unsuccessfully ran for a state Senate seat in 1998, called the criticism a Democratic plot against one of the state's most popular Republicans.
In fact, Quackenbush had been one of his party's top elected officials in California, a rising star in the GOP frequently mentioned as a top contender for the governor's office in 2002 or 2006.
But in June, two months after the first disclosure, some members of Quackenbush's party began discussing his removal from office, including then-Assemblyman Tom McClintock, R-Granada Hills. After numerous state Senate and Assembly hearings, Quackenbush finally resigned on June 28.
In October, Northridge Earthquake victims received extra time to petition their insurers for money to repair damages because of the disclosure of Quackenbush's deal.
Many victims are pleased with the latest turn of events, saying their insurers forced them to accept lesser payments soon after the earthquake.
The law was intended to offer a second chance to policyholders whose quake-related insurance claims were mishandled or low-balled. According to several attorneys, tens of thousands of the 600,000 Northridge claims could be reopened.
But it also has become the subject of debate between those who contend it helps homeowners and those who assert it will only line the pockets of trial lawyers eager for a class-action lawsuit.
Some people worry that existing claims could be swallowed by a class-action lawsuit that would leave them with less money.
10) Valley secession
For San Fernando Valley secessionists, 2000 was a year of skirmishes, studies and girding for the big battle.
The true fight for the hearts of Los Angeles voters will heat up in 2001 and hit a fever pitch in 2002, when cityhood supporters hope to put their cause on a citywide ballot.
Nonetheless, this year was critical for behind-the-scenes work as consultants launched a massive study of the city's inner workings and secession supporters fought for funding and political respect.
Also, Hollywood activists joined their Valley and Harbor-area colleagues this year, collecting enough signatures to be part of the county Local Agency Formation Commission study. Combined, the three areas equal nearly half the city's 3.6 million population.
Most city officials either oppose secession or grant the movement grudging tolerance in recognition of its grass-roots political power. Still, secession supporters convinced city officials to contribute 10 percent toward the $2.65 million study.
A major economic conference in February boosted the cityhood effort as civic leaders tried to carve out a separate economic identity for the Valley. They also released polls showing a majority of Valley residents support secession and strongly dislike their public officials.
Valley leaders and state legislators crafted several bills to make the cityhood process smoother, including one that would give a Valley city one City Council member per 100,000 residents, compared to Los Angeles' ratio of about 250,000 per member.
The study process went slower than expected, however, as LAFCO's consultants slogged through mountains of data. As a result, the initial study has been pushed back at least three months, to March 2001. Secessionists accused the city of intentional delays, but city and LAFCO officials noted the study required an unprecedented amount of information.
