Don’t miss the Press-Telegram’s Karen Robes Meeks’ Saturday profile of Mike Murchison—this type of story doesn’t get written every day any more, for about a million reasons.
“As usual, Mike Murchison was entrenched in controversy,” Robes Meeks begins.
“But this time the bald, gruff-talking lobbyist who often interjects himself in contentious issues and projects for clients, was [...]

Turns out, on the opinion page of yesterday’s Press-Telegram, and in a news story today from Paul Eakins—who sat two seats down from me Tuesday night to hear the same State of the City address I did—that Mayor Bob Foster’s address was actually real super.
Evidence? Yesterday, it was a P-T editorial, and today it’s exit [...]

Apparently not.
Even though, according to the Press-Telegram’s Paul Eakins, the Second District Councilwoman went to an Oct. 29 Los Angeles Kings game, after being invited by Frank T. Suryan Jr., chairman and CEO of Lyon Capital Ventures, which as you know has brought multimillion-dollar projects to the council in recent years; even though lobbyist Mike [...]

The Press-Telegram’s Paul Eakins follows up, briefly, on the tale of that police helicopter that was accidentally encased in fire-retardant foam last year, when someone—okay, okay, it was the “a contract technician,” Eakins writes—accidentally triggered the fire alarm in its hangar.
The follow-up is the pricetag, and it ain’t pretty.
“[T]urns out it’s going to cost $441,362, [...]

As LBReport.com and the Press-Telegram both report this morning, Long Beach City Council hasn’t changed the city’s tree removal policy just yet. Or:
“A new policy to allow the city to remove trees whose roots are damaging public or private property, even if the trees aren’t diseased, won’t be put into effect quite yet,” Paul Eakins [...]

More fallout from that mid-November trip to Napa
That supposedly discounted trip to Napa which Redevelopment Agency Executive Director Craig Beck took last month with his wife—and with lobbyist Mike Murchison and Murchison’s wife; and with Kraig Kojian, head of Downtown Long Beach Associates—continues to land the powerful Long Beach development official in very hot water.
In [...]

The story of the vacation that Long Beach’s senior development official has taken with the city’s most powerful life is getting even vacation-ier as a trio of Press-Telegram reporters—Paul Eakins, John Canalis and Karen Robes-Meeks—continue their impressive investigation today into what just may be burgeoning into a scandal.
City attorney Robert Shannon told the P-T team Wednesday [...]

Here’s Press-Telegram reporter Paul Eakins’ story on remarks by members of the Long Beach Coalition for Good Jobs and a Healthy Community at last night’s Long Beach City Council meeting.
The group, of course, condemned Redevelopment Agency and Department of Development Services head Craig Beck’s recent, discounted Nov. 13-14 Napa vacation with his wife, and with [...]

But how much longer will the furor over Craig Beck’s Napa trip really last?
In the wake of last week’s revelations that Long Beach Redevelopment Agency head Craig Beck got a special deal on accommodations during a trip to Napa with powerful lobbyist Mike Murchison, the Press-Telegram reports this morning that Beck is under review, and [...]

Three weeks since Long Beach Studios talks last surfaced, it seems there may be a deal in the works. Perhaps …
Remember Oct. 12? That was the day we were absolutely, positively supposed to have ourselves a Long Beach Studios—signed, sealed and delivered. At least the Press-Telegram said so, in a story Oct. 10, but by [...]