Law Firm Strategy "Knock Them Down"

Los Angeles, CA—David Cartwright, Senior Partner with the politically powerful law firm of O’Melveny & Myers was a major force in planning strategy for the Belmont Learning Center development as the "Chief outside real estate counsel" to the Los Angeles Unified School District. . In part one of a two-part interview on the Emmy Award winning Full Disclosure public affairs cable television program. Mr. Cartwright describes his role as being a "part of a project team that was specifically created to start knocking down the barriers to school construction." He further emphasized, "And when I say 'knocking down,' I'm very serious about that. It was not to get around them or to go under them. It was to KNOCK THEM DOWN..."

The Cartwright interview will be featured on 40 cable systems throughout California and is set to air world-wide on the Internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week starting on Thursday, June 3, 2004 on the STREAMING PAGE at http://www.fulldisclosure.net/StreamingMedia.htm. For the first 30 days the program will be provided to viewers FREE as a public service and thereafter available online in the program catalog.

In fact, Cartwright says they wrote new state legislation known as the Joint Ventures Act, which allowed for combining private and retail developments with public school construction projects. Critics and prosecutors have blamed the Joint Ventures method of financing school construction for contributing to the $175 million fraud known as Belmont.

Full Disclosure host Leslie Dutton has been conducting a series of interviews entitled “BELMONT: The World's Most Expensive High School". Costs to date for the development are $175 million, which was financed in 1997 with non-voter approved, tax-exempt bonds known as Certificates of Participation (COP's). The Los Angeles Unified School Board has already approved an additional $110 million for remediation of environment hazards on the Belmont campus, which was built on top of one thousand closed oil wells and is plagued with methane gas and other toxic substances. The LAUSD Facilities and Safety committees are holding hearings on Belmont in preparation to complete the controversial development. .

You can view this program and other Belmont programs our website at www.fulldisclosure.net via media streaming media. A cable channel guide with airtimes is available on the website.