Let's install 'user pays' for council

By Doug McIntyre, Columnist, Los Angeles Daily News

SOMETIMES you just have to take a swing at the pinata even if it's not your pinata.

The Los Angeles City Council is famous for this: whacking away at issues completely outside its jurisdiction. How many nonbinding resolutions have members proposed and passed encouraging "free and fair elections in Guatemala?" How many impassioned speeches have filled the cave of winds as Bill Rosendahl out-Gandhis Eric Garcetti on the Iraq war?

"We, of the city of Los Angeles, are proud to recognize the independence of Kosovo!" And all you want is a new wheel for your blue barrel.

Maybe it's us. We just don't appreciate the council members for the leaders of vision they are - statesmen with their eyes on the big picture. Maybe we really are just a gaggle of philistines trapped by our provincial thinking unable to comprehend the global sweep of Richard Alarc n.