Jeffrey Anderson

L.A.’S DEPARTMENT OF BUILDING AND SAFETY held a rare hearing Wednesday to determine whether to penalize downtown land banker Richard Meruelo for demolishing industrial buildings without a permit. For the fourth time in 15 years, since the city enacted a “scorched earth” law, the department threatened to take an action......

RON DEATON, THE DEPARTMENT OF WATER AND POWER’S embattled general manager, was not up to talking about the doomed Owens Lake Dust Mitigation Project, or any other factor in L.A.’s looming water-rate hikes. So he retreated to the back of a DWP van, where two of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s deputies......

FOR A GUY WHO WANTS TO BE California’s attorney general, Rocky Delgadillo has a strange way of showing respect for the law. Last week’s verdict against the City Attorney’s Office, in which Orange County jurors voted 11-1 to award former city prosecutor Lynn Magnandonovan $1.5 million for her wrongful termination,......

WHEN IT COMES TO REAL ESTATE, some laws seem to bother Richard Meruelo, the land banker and prolific campaign contributor who dumped more than $190,000 into Antonio Villaraigosa’s race for mayor last year. Meruelo’s ascent to the rank of downtown’s largest private landowner is legend, right down to the quaint......

A WRONGFUL-TERMINATION LAWSUIT filed by former city prosecutor Lynn Magnandonovan against the city attorney and his top deputies resulted in a $1.5 million jury verdict Wednesday, bringing an end to a bitter and costly legal struggle conducted by private attorneys on behalf of Rocky Delgadillo, a candidate for State Attorney......

BURDENED BY THE HALF-BILLION dollar Owens Lake Dust Mitigation Project, along with other environmental-restoration projects in Owens Valley and a crumbling infrastructure, L.A.’s Department of Water and Power is planning to raise water rates by 3.9 percent on July 1, and by another 3.5 percent by mid-2007, according to an......

TOM LABONGE’S OFFICE IN CITY HALL features a life-size cardboard cutout of water baron William Mulholland, the founding father of the Department of Water and Power. Councilman LaBonge is a booster of all things Los Angeles, and he used to work for DWP. A visitor with questions about the Owens......

WITH HIS INTEREST IN MOVIES, music and computers, and his access to a car and hot concert tickets, David Newman came off as a hip young guy. The son of a New York lawyer, he lived in Los Angeles, where he schmoozed with entertainment-industry players and the children of studio......

IN STRIVING TO SHAPE LOS ANGELES into a great modern city, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has set high standards and surrounded himself with advisers and commissioners hailed as “the best and the brightest.” Villaraigosa’s commissioners at the city’s three revenue-generating agencies — the airport, the harbor and the Department of Water......