He’s one of L.A. City Hall’s most powerful politicians. He’s also having problems paying his

He is considered, at a minimum, the second-most powerful politician at Los Angeles City Hall. He wields huge authority over the city’s $8.8-billion budget, which governs spending on police, firefighters and an array of services.

Yet in his private life, Council President Herb Wesson has struggled with a considerably more mundane set of issues: paying the bills on time.

Since he became council president in 2011, Wesson has received five default notices on his properties — either on his home in Mid-City or at his rental property in Ladera Heights — saying he and his wife were months behind on their mortgage.

In two of those instances, Wesson’s properties came dangerously close to a foreclosure auction, according to county real estate records. The most recent auction was scheduled for July 6 and then canceled, records show.

Asked about Wesson’s real estate woes, his spokeswoman, Vanessa Rodriguez, said all five default notices have been rescinded and that the councilman is current on both mortgages.

Wesson attributed the problems to the home he and his wife bought for $759,999 in the Wellington Square section of Mid-City. <Source>

FBI Notebook: Why Feds Should Zero-In on Herb Wesson

The FBI’s and IRS’s investigation might boil down to a wink and, especially, a nudge from Wesson to Huizar to suggest how they got away with it.

Before we dig-in, there are myriad examples of how Wesson has gamed virtually every facet of the public trust placed in him. Many of them were either originally or exclusively identified in this column, with the LA Times either sitting on those stories, or not knowing about them, until after they were published here. Among them are Wesson’s shady personal real estate transactions, and the misuse of public resources for personal benefit. And, like father, like son, both Wesson and his son (City Council Floor Director Justin Wesson) defaulted on their debts to the Discover Card, and appear to have repeatedly falsified their voter registration information, which is something Wesson had me thrown out of City Council meetings for raising during General Public Comment.

And then there is Herb Wesson’s ultimate motive; his persistent financial troubles, including repeatedly coming this close to losing one of his homes due to failure to meet his mortgage obligations. How someone sports a new Rolex, custom-made suits and dress shirts, and a collection of high-end eyewear while on the verge of foreclosure is anyone’s guess, and an investigators’ job, to figure out. <Source>

Times Investigation: L.A. councilman Wesson helped apartment executives while his son received rent break

Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson’s son received preferential treatment on his rent for years at an L.A. apartment building while his father helped the building’s executives win approval of a controversial high-rise, according to interviews and records reviewed by The Times.

Wesson helped shepherd the 27-story Koreatown residential tower through the city’s review process amid opposition from city staff and the planning commission. During the same period, his son was living in a building owned by Rosewood Corp., a company headed by tower developer Michael Hakim and one of his relatives.

The councilman’s son, Herb Wesson III, went more than five years without a rent increase at the apartment building on Rosewood Avenue, even as many other tenants saw their rent go up, a Times analysis of city records found.

Three other people who lived in the building at the time said they were aware that he was receiving a rent break while living in Apartment 4 — and that it was provided because his father is a councilman. One of them said Wesson III explained during a private conversation that he had received a discount because of “business his father was doing with the owners of the building.”

One of L.A.’s most powerful politicians is searching for his homeless son — cameras in tow

It’s a campaign video with the pathos of a Hallmark Channel movie.

A worried father walks the streets of skid row, carrying a picture of his son and buttonholing strangers to ask if they have seen him.

You can see the strain on the father’s face — and feel the joy as he skips down the middle of a street lined with tents, en route to a reunion with his homeless son.

This kind of scenario plays out privately for countless local families in a county where nearly 60,000 people are homeless, most of them living on the streets.

But this worried father is one of Los Angeles’ most powerful politicians: City Council President Herb Wesson, the former speaker of the California Assembly. The son he is searching for is 50-year-old Doug.

Wesson, the candidate, hopes the carefully crafted campaign video will help propel him to an open seat on the L.A. County Board of Supervisors in March. He is already known as a consummate politician. The 90-second ad recasts Wesson as a resolute dad, relentlessly trying to reclaim a troubled son.

The video, narrated by his wife, aims to let us know that he’s intimately familiar with a plight that’s afflicted many families in the 2nd Supervisorial District in South Los Angeles that he’s running to represent. That he understands the woes and pain of wayward children, mental illness, addiction and grief.

It’s a smart move in an election cycle in which homelessness is the county’s most volatile and pressing issue. His experience means he’s got skin in the game. . They hoped that sharing their story could convince others to open up, even though it might also be seen as exploiting his son’s pain for political gain. “We needed to do something radical. What I wanted to do is personalize it, let people know what it’s like.”

For now — or at least when I spoke to Wesson — Doug is again lost to the streets. The reunion on the campaign video lasted for three days, Wesson said. Then Doug took off to see his girlfriend. “We were trying to get him into rehab, but he disappeared for several weeks. <Source>