Opinion: When Democrats Collide

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Oh, Felipe Fuentes – never mind the number of years in California’s term limits law. You may have just taken a big step toward creating your own personal term limits.

Fuentes was elected to a seat in the Assembly from Sylmar just over a year ago. He had served in City Hall and gotten endorsements there, but now he’s courted some hefty opposition from the city council and the Board of Supervisors.

He’s put forth a law that would help a campaign donor to build 229 houses on a certain unnamed parcel of land – identifiable as the 63-acre Verdugo Hills golf course that isn’t even in his Assembly district. And he’s written a ‘’poison pill’’ into his bill that would tie the hands of the city of LA if it tries to mess with the project.

Here’s Patrick McGreevey’s story in Sunday’s paper:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-build9-2008jun09,0,4425307.story

City council member Wendy Greuel sounds disgusted at what it sounds like what she considers a greenmail tactic – my word, greenmail, not hers – and says this is about the developer trying to get a better price to sell the land to the city for the open space that residents have been clamoring to save.

And it is not auspicious for Assemblyman Fuentes that city council members and the Board of Supes – powerful allies to have in your camp come re-election time, and formidable opponents to be ranged against you -- are lobbying the Legislature to kill what they surely regard as a high-handed end-run on their authority and their turf.

Will Fuentes fold his hand on AB 212 and come back into the political fold? Will he stick to his guns? Tune in next time and find out on ``As the Capitol Dome Turns.’’

-- Patt Morrison