LOS ANGELES (CNS) - An ordinance allowing Los Angeles County to sue taggers and their parents or guardians to recover graffiti-related costs willgo into effect today.
Supervisor Gloria Molina led the effort to draft the law in response to the fatal shooting of Maria Hicks, 58, who was killed Aug. 10, 2007, when she tried to stop a vandal from defacing a wall near her home in Pico Rivera. The average cost of removing or painting over graffiti is $522 per incident, according to county Chief Executive Officer William Fujioka, and the effort to nab taggers costs $665 per offender.
'Graffiti is an epidemic and through our Graffiti Enforcement Program, we are telling the graffiti vandals we mean business,'' Molina said. 'As long as we are successfully prosecuting graffiti vandals sand holding parents accountable, we are making progress in our fight against graffiti and crime.''
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Blog: Antonio on the road to San Antonio for reelection cash
Phil Willon and David Zahniser
Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa hits the road again to collect some cash for the mayor reelection campaign -this time to San Antonio.
The fund-raiser is being hosted by former San Antonio Mayor and Clinton cabinet member Henry G. Cisneros and AT&T executive John T. Montford, a former Texas state senator, on Oct. 9.
The invite, which asks guests to fork over donations from $100 to $1,000, waxes poetic about the mayor's accomplishments as mayor and the former speaker of the California Assembly: Villaraigosa is known for his exceptional skill at building broad bi-partisian coalitions and is considered one of the leading progressive voices in the country."
Villaraigosa has traveled to several cities for his re-election bid, collecting campaign contributions in Chicago, New York, Miami and San Francisco earlier this summer.
Travel has been a dominant theme for the mayor in 2008, with Villaraigosa repeatedly heading out of state in January and February to stump for the presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton. In June, the mayor also took a contingent of city leaders to Israel to look at environmental and security initiatives - a trip that was expected to cost roughly $240,000. In July, he spent part of his vacation in Iceland. And in August, he spent a week at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, campaigning for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama at least one day in Pueblo.
The invite for the San Antonio fund-raiser was posted on WalkerReport.
Check out Villaraigosa's previous fund-raising efforts in our series,"Fund-raisier o' the Day".
