Opinion: Local City Councils Don’t Like the Truth

By Brian Hews

In this paper next week you are going to read about how a local newspaper publisher (not me) planned and schemed with a city council (surprisingly not Cerritos) and the local Chamber of Commerce (not Cerritos) to financially hurt and injure the reputation of my newspaper. The reason? We wrote stories about what was going on in the city; murders, robberies, etc., and certain people on the council did not like that. It did not matter that the other 80% was good news about the city.

So like their counterparts here in Cerritos, this council (not all of them) hatched a plan that began in November of last year (I have emails that prove this from the Freedom of Information Act which I will post next week) culminating in the Chamber (who never published a newspaper) selling a “newspaper” to that local publisher with the blessing of the Council.

That publisher then filed documents in court (under penalty of perjury) to obtain the city legal adjudication, claiming the paper was printed and had been delivered in the city for over one year, and had been publishing news about the city for three years.

She was granted the adjudication in April because no one objected. I was told by her attorney, whom I called four days before the hearing, that it was too late to object.

A legal adjudication in a city can be very lucrative, so when I found out about the filing, knowing it to be false, I had my attorneys file a Motion to Vacate the Adjudication.

The hearing was August 15, 2012.

In the meantime the publisher saw an increase in revenue of 1-$2,000 per week from April to August, and the city where she got the adjudication gladly sent the publisher their legal notices.

On August 14, 2012 the publisher, I guess knowing the filing was false, sent an email to all companies implicating me as the “bad guy” and that she was losing her adjudication to do business with the city.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ordered her adjudication vacated on the 15th of August, proving the documents she filed about printing and delivering in the city were false, a total fabrication of the truth.

It is truly bewildering the arrogance of some on the city council (sounds familiar Cerritos?) who do not approve of our articles and then attempt to financially injure and hurt the reputation of this paper, calling us liars; fabricating the truth.

The same paper that, if it is covering an event, these same council people will not hesitate to push residents aside to get in the middle of the picture so they can be on the front page of the Community News.

So sadly, it has come down to this: I have to hesitate about writing certain stories in Cerritos and this other city because for fear of financial retribution by the respective Councils.

Not likely.

What are your thoughts? Please feel free to leave your comments below.