The LA City Council is finally taking up the mayor’s declaration of emergency on the Lineage cold storage warehouse fire, which was put out nearly two days ago. The declaration allows city officials to access additional resources, and to be skipped for contracting with vendors. They’re also taking up contracts for Hope the Mission to operate an “A Bridge Home” shelter, and John Wesley Center for Health to operate a “tiny home” shelter.

Also, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass will be attending a meeting of a committee set up by the Board of Supervisors that’s aimed at “aligning” homelessness response, and it looks like they’re taking up some items about how Measure A funds will be used. Measure A is a half-cent sales tax voters approved in November 2024 to continue funding homeless services. This Executive Committee for Regional Homeless Alignment also includes LA Council member Nithya Raman, County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, and others. The Board of Supervisors motion that created this committee is here, and it was adopted at their Aug. 8, 2023 meeting.

What just happened?

‘I fully admit, we have not been told anything else.’

Speaking of committees on homelessness, the Los Angeles Homeless Strategy Committee met on Thursday, and Council member Nithya Raman was in attendance, after all. Sometimes, elected officials send representatives to such meetings.

The committee received reports on the status of the city’s Homelessness Oversight Bureau’s 12 contracts. Ten of those contracts are with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority and amount to around $345 million. They’re executing additional contracts for the next fiscal year. A chart of those contracts can be found here.

The meeting drew the most public comment from advocates who said people now housed under a short-term voucher program, known as “time-limited subsidies,” could potentially be losing their current housing at the end of this month.

Advocates, from LA CAN and the Downtown Women’s Action Coalition, who attended and spoke at public comment were getting messages from residents on time-limited subsidies about how their housing situation under their current programs was ending after June 30, and that there was not much clarity on what would happen to them in just a few short days, once July 1 rolls around. Peggy Lee Kennedy, with the Venice Justice Committee, also called in, saying she was concerned that “time-limited subsidies” often lead to people going back out onto the streets after the two years the funds are good for. It can be difficult to keep up with LA’s rents after those subsidies are gone, she said, especially if people aren’t able to find other ways to assist with their rent.

The Homeless Strategy Committee heard an update on those subsidies, including a ramp-down of one program, and the ramp-up of another. Homeless services officials at the meeting assured that they did have a plan to transition people to other housing. Despite this, advocates said residents have been reporting that those assurances hadn’t actually been conveyed to them personally.

Queen AJ, who The LA Reporter spoke to after the meeting, said she was being told that her current housing situation was coming to a close at the end of the month, but she also said received very little information about why that was occurring and what might happen next. FYI, if her name sounds familiar, that might be because Queen AJ was a write-in candidate in the mayor’s race for the primary election that just ended.

Queen AJ said that even though officials are making assurances, the move is adding a “layer of unnecessary trauma and stress” for herself and others, and the lack of information has not helped. She gave The LA Reporter a disclaimer about the level of detail she was able to personally provide to a reporter, because beyond being told “the move at this point is July 1…. I fully admit that we have not been told anything else.”

The report on time-limited subsidies also included a chart on the units that homeless services officials were able to identify, broken down by council districts. Interestingly, the 14th Council District, where Skid Row is located, included no units found at this time — and that elicited some surprise from some of the high level officials, at the committee meeting, as well as some in the audience.

Meg Barclay, a staffer in the City Administrative Officer’s department, led the meeting (she started to get up when CAO Matt Szabo showed up part way into the meeting, but he ceded to Barclay, who then continued to lead the meeting). Barclay last month returned to work for the CAO’s office, after years ago leading the city’s homelessness programs as that office’s “first homelessness coordinator.”

When Barclay asked about the lack of “rent-reasonable” units in the 14th District, the homeless services officials at the meeting told her that “we are out there, of course, engaging with owners and developers.” They said they have to explain to people what the program is, in order for people to want to give it a chance. They gave the example of being able to increase the number of units just that morning from the three units listed on the chart, to 14 units, in the 4th Council District (which happens to be overseen by Raman).

Barclay returned to the CAO’s just last month, she told The LA Reporter. She is listed in city documents as an Assistant City Administrative Officer. After Barclay had left her post at LA city, back in 2021, she’d gone on to work in Seattle, Washington, where she was chief administrative officer of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

The committee also took in a presentation on this update on the city’s homelessness response.

[Note: I corrected the name of the Downtown Women’s Action Coalition, which I had written as the name of another organization with a very similar name. I regret the error!]

A few more things…

More money for CARE+ sweeps: Council member Curren Price earlier this week submitted a motion calling for $618,000 to be transferred from an account labeled “additional homeless services” to another account in order to “convert” CARE operations to CARE+ operations. There were no details in the motion as to why the use of the money for more intense sanitation sweeps at homeless encampments was being requested. Although such operations are described as being used to clean up streets, CARE+ operations in particular are often accompanied by police presence. The more intensive CARE+ operations include orders for people to move their encampments out of the way, which might strike some as a fairly atypical approach for city sanitation services to be delivered to the city’s residents.

Measure ULA untouched in state Howard Jarvis deal: The Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association measure that would have repealed Los Angeles’s Measure ULA, a transfer tax on high valued properties that funds affordable housing and tenant protections, has been withdrawn. The organization instead took a deal that allowed for a ballot measure that if approved by voters would close a loophole to allow for more tax measures to require a two-thirds vote threshold.

Mistrial in Palisades fire case: After the jury deadlocked on Thursday in a case in which Jonathan Rinderknecht, a former Uber driver, was accused of starting the Lachman fire that later led to the Palisade’s fire erupting on Jan. 7, 2025, the judge in the case on Friday declared a mistrial. Rinderknecht was described by the prosecution as someone who was “spiraling mentally and seeking vengeance against the wealthy when he hiked to a clearing overlooking Pacific Palisades and allegedly used a lighter to set the Lachman fire last New Year’s Day,” Brittney Mejia with the LA Times wrote. Rinderknecht’s attorney meanwhile pointed to other possible reasons for the fire, including teens setting off fireworks, and argued that the prosecution needed to “prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the lighter ignited the fire, because that’s what they claim happened here… They don’t have any evidence at all that Jonathan started a fire on that hill with a lighter.”

Drug-related deaths data released: You can find additional information about the latest report that drug related deaths have continued to drop in Los Angeles County at the county’s Public Health website. That’s where you can find the data behind what was being reported on in the LA Times and other publications. Overall, the decline is 6% from the previous year, when there was an even bigger dip. Public officials are attributing this downward trend to harm reduction and prevention programs.

High-ranking LA city officials will be taking part in a “homeless strategy” committee meeting this afternoon, at 3:15 p.m. The members of this committee are City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo, Chief Legislative Analyst Sharon Tso, Chair of the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee Nithya Raman (sometimes council offices send representatives) and a representative of the mayor’s office, Deputy Mayor of Homelessness & Community Health Etsemaye P. Agonafer. On the agenda for this meeting is time-limited subsidies, which are one or two year vouchers that people receive as a transitional way to go from being homeless to permanently housed. Such short-term vouchers are often used in Mayor Bass’s Inside Safe, where people can only usually expect to be temporarily sheltered in motel rooms. The committee is also getting a presentation on “homeless response indicators” and an update on staffing up the city’s homelessness bureau. Raman has also looked to a version of the time-limited subsidies program as a way to address people’s housing needs, in a white paper she included in the homelessness plan she released for her campaign for mayor.

What just happened?

On Day 8 of the Lineage cold storage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights…

LA firefighters announced they’ve finally put out the fire at the Lineage cold storage warehouse in Boyle Heights. The alert of the “knockdown” went out at 5:58 p.m. Fire chief Jamie Moore had previously promised to get the fire put out by around this time, and he had also said the warehouse should be turned over to Lineage by Friday for cleanup. The LA Times’s story on the knockdown points to the presence of Lineage crews already on site on Wednesday to do cleanup, and those crews were coordinating with Bureau of Sanitation officials, who were also there, to make plans for hauling away debris and other material. The LA Times’ story also includes interviews with workers and owners of nearby businesses, such as Jim Burgers, a mechanics shop and a beauty salon that saw their business drop. Some said they needed to close shop because workers with asthma or other conditions could not work under the conditions during the fire.

There have been concerns about what’s happening with the estimated 85 million pounds of food that was being stored at the warehouse when the fire broke out, especially in light of what happened at a fire at another Lineage warehouse in Washington. That fire took much longer to put out — 60 days. By the end of it, the rotted food in that warehouse along with the water that had been poured over the warehouse “ended up contaminating some of the groundwater,” says CBS’s Matt Guman. It’s unclear if that would be an issue with this fire, which appears to have been put out after much less time.

A pollution advisory by the Department of Public Health also expired at noon on Wednesday. And even though Mayor Karen Bass issued a declaration of a local emergency last Saturday to free up resources and also to skip the normal process for contracting, and submitted it to the LA City Council on Monday, that hasn’t been voted on by the council yet. That vote is now expected to take place on Friday. Meanwhile, the LA County Board of Supervisors ratified their chair, Hilda Solis’s declaration from Saturday, when they met for their regular meeting this past Tuesday.

LA Council member proposes suspending CARE+ homeless encampment sweeps during environmental emergencies, like the Lineage fire

Los Angeles City Council member Ysabel Jurado on Wednesday introduced a motion that calls for the Sanitation Department to suspend CARE+ sweeps during environmental emergencies. Her motion references the Lineage warehouse fire, as well as other times a declaration of emergency is made by local or state officials. CARE+ operations are conducted by sanitation department workers, and they require unhoused people to move out of the way, for the cleanups. During these operations, unhoused people are more likely to be unable to “shelter-in-place” inside their makeshift housing, as was being asked of people during the Lineage fire, for example.

Jurado’s motion reads:

According to the 2025 Point-in-Time Count, an estimated 4,306 people experience homelessness in Council District 14 on any given night. During environmental emergencies, these residents often face some of the highest levels of exposure while having the fewest resources to protect themselves.

At the same time, the City continues to conduct encampment cleanup operations through programs such as CARE and CARE+. These operations serve important sanitation and public health purposes. However, they also require residents to move themselves and their belongings, often over significant distances and for extended periods. During periods of extreme heat, poor air quality, smoke, hazardous debris, or other environmental emergencies, requiring unsheltered residents to remain outdoors while relocating their belongings may increase their exposure to dangerous conditions.

The City’s environmental emergency response protocols should account for the circumstances faced by unhoused residents and evaluate whether routine City operations may increase exposure to hazardous conditions during declared environmental emergencies. Establishing clear procedures for encampment cleanup operations during such events would help ensure that public health guidance, emergency response activities, and City operations are aligned.

A few more things…

Lineage hired M Strategic Communications to handle their crisis communnications, according to this filing with the City Ethics Commission. Film the Police offered up some additional context on this filing that shows that this firm is led by a former state legislative staffer for Mayor Karen Bass during her Assembly days.

POLITICO says there were changes made to Mayor Karen Bass’s re-election campaign. Douglas Herman, who has been Bass’s chief adviser on the campaign, is leaving the team, according to POLITICO’s Melanie Mason. Bass’s campaign is bringing on Julie Chávez Rodríguez, who has worked on campaigns for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

LA County’s voter turnout should be 37.8% for the June 2 election, according to the LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s 12th update on the results. The final certification of the election results is expected to be on Friday, June 26.

LA Council member John Lee recused himself Wednesday from a vote on what outside law firm the city will retain to oppose an appeal in Los Angeles County Superior Court that he filed in March to fight a $138,124 fine for ethics violations, which include misusing his position and accepting excessive gifts, including during a trip to Las Vegas. The City Council voted 10-0 to go with a law firm recommended by the Ethics Commission that includes a lawyer with expertise in ethics litigation.

A City News Service story picked up by the LA Daily News details a $6.5 million jury award to Pablo Vera, who “said he was peacefully celebrating near what was then called the Staples Center on Oct. 11, 2020, when mounted LAPD officers struck him multiple times with batons, breaking a forearm and causing injuries that required surgery and years of physical and emotional recovery that continue.”

The LAUSD board has named Alexander Chait as the district’s new superintendent. He’s been acting superintendent since Feb. 27, a couple days after Carvahlo’s home and office were raided in connection to ongoing FBI investigations into an AI chatbot company that the district hired under his tenure.

The Los Angeles City Council was scheduled at its 10 a.m. meeting today to consider a request by the Ethics Commission’s executive director to retain an outside firm to represent the city ,as Los Angeles City Council member John Lee fights the Ethics Commission’s order that he pay the city $138,124 for ethics violations, which include accepting excessive gifts.

The City Attorney recently determined that outside legal counsel is needed to represent the city due to a conflict. The Ethics Commission is made up of five members appointed by different elected officials, including the City Attorney. Other commissioners are appointed by the Mayor, the Controller, the President of the Council and the President Pro Tempore.

The Ethics Commission’s director, David Tristan, recommended the firm, Hecker Fink LLP. He wrote that the firm has a “former Assistant United States Attorney for the Central District of California and has extensive experience in complex governmental ethics litigation.”

We are now on the 8th day of the Lineage cold storage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights: Fire officials were hoping the extinguish the fire by mid-week, and return the site to the operator, Lineage, by Friday. The fire department’s updates on this fire, and other fires, can be found here.

What just happened?

State lawmakers move to lower Measure ULA transfer tax, which funds eviction defense and affordable housing, to 1.5%

State lawmakers are entertaining a plan to scale down LA’s transfer tax, Measure ULA, from a 5.5% tax on high valued properties, to one that takes 1.5% during the sale of such properties. That proposal is being floated as a way to neuter a ballot initiative by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association that threatens to repeal Measure ULA entirely. LA lawmakers and others say a compromise such as this is needed to avoid losing the transfer tax. LA city officials use proceeds of Measure ULA to fund affordable housing projects and tenant protection programs, including eviction defense. You can find the latest update to AB 736, where the compromise proposal appears, here at CalMatters’ Digital Democracy database.

But such a compromise is being opposed by the United to House LA Coalition, which wrote and championed the tax’s passage. The group issued a statement on Tuesday saying they oppose this proposal to lower the tax from 5.5% to 1.5%, as it would result in the city losing $300 million in revenue. The group says that Measure ULA has been working, and they have pushed back against accusations that it has been suppressing housing production, pointing to more recent numbers that show an uptick in development and tax revenue. Meanwhile, opponents of the transfer tax also don’t seem persuaded. Howard Jarvis’s president, Jon Coupal, told reporters they don’t plan on withdrawing their measure in response to this state legislative proposal.

When asked about Coupal’s stance, Mayor Karen Bass pointed to the state legislature having until Thursday [update: link fixed] before final decisions are made by the state legislature, and that while it’s not official or inked, “we actually reached resolution, and the Howard Jarvis measure will not be placed on the ballot. ULA will be placed on the ballot. It is a financial hit to the city of Los Angeles. But two choices — hit, or catastrophe… all of our labor partners are on board. I don’t think the community groups are necessarily on board. But that’s what we had to do, in order to essentially save the city.”

On the seventh day of the Lineage cold storage warehouse fire…

Council member Ysabel Jurado, whose district includes Boyle Heights where the warehouse and some of the surrounding residential neighborhoods are located, introduced some promised motions in response to the Lineage fire.

One motion calls for funds to pay for distributing more masks and air filters to go to neighborhood councils. The motion calls for putting $1,000 each into the accounts of six neighborhood councils. Those councils are Boyle Heights, Historic Highland Park, LA32, Elysian Valley, and Lincoln Heights. “Neighborhood Councils play an important role in responding to local emergencies and connecting residents with resources,” the motion reads. “Providing additional funding for protective equipment and air filtration resources will help support ongoing community-based response efforts and ensure that residents continue to have access to tools that can help reduce exposure to smoke and airborne contaminants during this emergency.”

A second motion calls for the fire department to “report on the cause of the fire at the cold storage facility located at 1400 S. Los Palos Street in Boyle Heights, the status of ongoing investigations, and with information on the facility’s compliance history related to hazardous materials storage, refrigeration systems and fire and life safety requirements.” The motion also calls on the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety and the fire department to “report on current oversight and inspection protocols for large cold storage facilities utilizing ammonia refrigeration systems, and prepare recommendations for strengthening protocols.”

And a third motion calls for the city’s DASH Boyle Heights/East LA bus to run more frequently, at intervals of every 10 to 12 minutes, to reduce the amount of time residents have to wait outside. “Transit-dependent residents, including seniors, students, workers, people with disabilities, and families without access to a vehicle, may be required to spend extended periods of time waiting outdoors for bus service” the motion reads. “During an active smoke emergency, longer wait times can result in additional exposure to unhealthy air conditions.”

A note on navigating these motions: Jurado’s motion are all part of the same council file series with the numbering system that starts with 26-0906. That is actually the file for Mayor Karen Bass’s declaration of emergency for the Lineage fire. The first two numbers in a council usually refers to the year the motion was introduced. Each of Jurado’s motions above are followed by an “S” and a number, such as S1, S2, and S3. If you sign up to receive email updates on the original motion, you can opt to receive any updates on “supplemental” motions introduced under this 26-0906 series.

The Board of Supervisors also ratified a proclamation of emergency that the body’s chair, Hilda Solis, had issued on Saturday. This was the motion submitted by Solis and Supervisor Janice Hahn addressing the fire and the proclamation that there is a local emergency.

And the fire department’s update on the fire can be found here.

Altus, owner of the solar arrays atop the Lineage cold storage warehouse, says the fire’s cause hasn’t been determined yet: Altus Power, the company that owns the solar arrays on the roof of the Lineage cold storage warehouse, issued a statement on Tuesday saying the cause of the fire hasn’t been determined yet and that they are cooperating wiht authorities who are investigating the fire. Lineage has said they believe the fire at the warehouse “started on the roof when the owner of the solar array, Altus Power, was doing tests. The solar array does not power the building directly but provides power into the city power grid. As we step up for the community, we are also urging Altus to join us getting the Boyle Heights community the support they desperately need.”

And the LA Times’ Alex Wigglesworth also has a story that looks into Lineage’s safety record.

A few more things…

Ex-LA Sanitation worker’s lawsuit settlement goes to City Council: A potential settlement in a case by a former Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation worker just landed at the Los Angeles City Council, and has been referred to the Budget and Finance Committee. The lawsuit was filed by Michael Bates, who worked in the Livability Services Division that is most known for carrying out CARE+ and CARE operations, which are targeted at homeless encampments. In a 2023 complaint, Bates accused city officials of retaliation on a number of occasions, including after he reported fraudulent timecards, as well as after he found that the city was “violating legal obligations with respect to spot cleaning on Skid Row, which Plaintiff’s team, along with Environmental Compliance Investigators (“ECI”) and Solid Waste Management, were assigned to conduct.” Bates’s complaint said that “in the summer of 2020, Plaintiff discovered that the ECI team was not bagging and tagging personal property at the site as required by this protocol but was instead directing the Solid Waste crew to throw away anything they found. These violations were leading to altercations between the clean-up crews and unhoused people who discovered that their possessions had been improperly thrown away.”

Ex-LAFD chief Crowley sues Mayor Bass for defamation: Former LA fire department chief Kristin Crowley filed another lawsuit on Tuesday against Mayor Karen Bass, this time against Bass personally and accusing her of defamation. California Post reported on the story first, and the LA Times also has a story on this.

LA City Council advances LAFD sales tax and oil drilling ban: The City Council on Tuesday signed off on placing a measure on the the November ballot to raise the sales tax by a half-cent to pay for fire department needs. They also moved forward on another attempt to ban oil drilling in Los Angeles, after the city was forced to repeal an earlier ban.

We’re in a heat wave that weather officials said was set to bring mid-90-degree and above temperatures starting today and lasting through Thursday. The heat wave is expected to affect the San Fernando Valley, downtown Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley. The Weather Services posted an alert on the heatwave on X.com.

And the Lineage Logistics cold storage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights is now going into its seventh day. The fires started last week on Wednesday, June 17, 2026, at the warehouse, which is just across the street from a residential neighborhood that happens to be split between the city of Los Angeles and unincorporated East Los Angeles.

Both the LA County Board of Supervisors and LA City Council are expected to vote on emergency declarations today, as a way to bring in more resources. Meanwhile, fire officials projected on Monday that should be able to put out the fire by mid week and return the site back to the operator, Lineage Logistics.

What just happened?

As community members call for evacuations, public officials pass out masks and air purifiers to neighbors of Lineage Logistics fire

Residents and groups like East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, which has battled toxic industrial neighbors for decades, have been calling on public officials to evacuate surrounding neighborhoods, as eye-stinging smoke billowed above the burning Lineage Logistics warehouse and across the region. They’ve also been demanding greater transparency on what materials are actually present and burning at the warehouse.

On Monday, though, LA officials continued to focus on passing out tens of thousands masks and giving away hundreds of air purifiers. Both LA City Council member Ysabel Jurado and LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis — who are the most direct political representatives of the residents living near the warehouse — said the air purifiers in particular were in short supply. Both made appeals for people to donate or to point them to sources for getting more air purifiers to give out.

Public officials say they want answers about Lineage warehouse fire

Solis, Jurado and Controller Kenneth Mejia also called for greater transparency and investigations into what happened. Solis pointed to a motion she authored with Supervisor Janice Hahn that is set to be taken up in the Board of Supervisors that includes calling for the investigation. Jurado also said she planned to introduce a set of motions that call for the “public release of air quality and environmental testing results” in English and Spanis; a report on the materials at the facility, including what burned, what is still burning and the potential health and environmental risks that remain; and fore more immediate support for residents.

Jurado, who noted that residents of the East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights neighborhoods who live near the warehouse already take on many environmental and industrial burdens, said in a statement that during a “major industrial fire” the response “cannot be slow, vague or incomplete.”

“Residents are seeing smoke, smelling odors, and finding ash and debris near their homes and businesses,” Jurado said. “Yet we still do not have clear enough information about what burned, what may still be burning, what is in the air, what is in the ash, and what risks remain.”

Jurado noted that it is “unacceptable” that “it is still unclear whether toxic items like lithium-ion batteries, insulation, chemicals, building materials, or other hazardous materials have been burning or polluting the air during this process.”

And Mejia pointed to an earlier fire at the same warehouse in 2024 that had been quickly extinguished. He raised the question of, “What came out of that past fire?” Mejia said the city has already spent $3 million, just in fire department costs, on the fire, and that his offices will continue to track those costs and what the city is doing in response to the fire.

Lineage Logistics representatives have been releasing updates each day on the company’s website, which can be found here. The company says they have donated $2 million to the California Community Foundation to use toward supporting people affected by the fire. They also said they brought in “high-powered water cannons from elsewhere in Southern California and from Texas, and funding Chinook helicopters that are capable of continuous massive water drops.”

The company says they believe the fire started as maintenance work was being done on the solar arrays on the warehouse’s rooftop. Melanie Mendoza, a representative for Lineage Logistics, said the company is a tenant and operator of the building that’s now on fire, and that the solar array is owned by Los Palos Street Operating LLC, which is a subsidiary of Altus Power. And she said the solar contractor is Pearce, which is a subsidary of CBRE, while the owner of the building is Chill Build Los Angeles I, LLC.

City Ethics lists $107.5K in lobbying spending by Lineage Logistics

Lineage Logistics has been lobbying Los Angeles city officials over the past two-plus years, paying their lobbyist a total of $107,500 over that period, mostly to lobby the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power on a couple of issues that affect the Boyle Heights warehouse, which has been on fire since last Wednesday. In 2025, they also lobbied the LA Fire Department, according to the third quarterly report for that year. The issues they’re lobbying on include “seeking remedy relative to a rapid shutoff device.” They also were lobbying to seek approval on a linear generator interconnection.

FYI, one of Lineage Logistics’ founders, Kevin Marchetti, has donated to elected officials and candidates in the past, including to Mayor Karen Bass’s re-election back in January 2025, which happened to be around the time the wildfires broke out in the Pacific Palisades. Police watcher Film the Police pointed to that donation over the weekend. The City Ethics commission also lists donations from Marchetti to Eric Garcetti, once during his first successful run for LA mayor and when he represented the 13th Council District.

LA County adopts $50.3B budget amid financial challenges. It includes funding for parks, jail closure and a new ethics commission.

The LA County Board of Supervisors advanced a “final” $50.3 billion budget that includes “lifeline” funding for deportation defense and other legal defense programs, and funding to “implement” the closure Men’s Central jail.

The budget also includes new dollars for setting up an independent LA County Ethics Commission, and for operating and maintaining county parks, including Esperanza Hills Regional Park, a yet-to-be built park area that is set to go over the La Puente landfill, which got full and was subsequently closed more than a dozen years ago.

The budget incorporated adjustments that LA County CEO Joseph Nicchitta recommended to the Supervisors on Monday. The goal of this budget, he said, was to not grow any services, due to some pretty extreme financial conditions the county is facing. There are unprecedented federal funding cuts, as well as an unprecedented liability costs that include billions of dollars in settlements that the county reached with sex abuse victims who made claims under AB 218, which lifted the time limit.

Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who has spent years in LA County government, including as chief-of-staff of former Supervisor Mike Antonovich’s office, issued a statement after the budget’s adoption that this has been “one of the most challenging fiscal environments I have experienced in more than 35 years of county service.”

The spending plan supervisors adopted on Monday isn’t actually the final say in the matter. County officials must come back each September, just over two months into the new fiscal year starting July 1, to make adjustments. By then, they’ll be able to incorporate whatever state officials end up adopting in their budget later this month, and other changes.

This year, the county will also be incorporating spending recommendations based on the recent passage of Measure ER, a half-cent sales tax LA County voters passed earlier this month as a way to counteract federal funding cuts under the President Donald Trump-backed H.R. 1, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill, that are expected to result in deep cuts to the county’s health services programs. LA County officials say federal cuts already responsible for the closures of half a dozen community health clinics.

Nicchitta said his office is working to bring back budget recommendations for Measure ER in the next few months, and Measure ER will be programmed in the supplemental budget.

Nicchitta also noted that this year, they’re getting state mental health services funding under a new program that voters put in place by passing Proposition 1 in March 2024. Nicchitta told the county they’re receiving nearly $900 million from Prop. 1, which is also called the Behavioral Health Services Act. That measure replaced the Mental Health Services Act. While Prop 1 maintained the same percentage of state dollars counties receive, it changed the formula for how the funds are used and how reporting on mental health dollars work. The primary idea behind the changes is that there is a bigger emphasis on diverting the health services dollars paying for housing costs.

The California Budget and Policy Center recently put out a guide for how this new funding would work for counties. They wrote that “the restructuring of funds means counties are cutting back on vital services, especially in prevention and early intervention, innovative behavioral health programs, and other core services that primarily support children and youth services.”

They also said that “counties are exploring ways to count existing efforts under the housing interventions category, since many have already used MHSA funds to provide housing or housing supports to individuals with behavioral health conditions.”

This 45-page report summarizes the CEO office’s recommended adjustments that supervisors incorporated into the $50.3 budget adopted on Monday. County officials also released a 115-report that gathers together all of the various issues the public, supervisors, and advocacy groups raised raised during the budget hearings. There are also letters from department officials highlight unmet needs. An example of one unmet need that was highlighted during budget deliberations was for three carpenter positions “to address lifeguard tower maintenance and repairs in a timely manner.”

Here are a few highlights from Nicchita’s presentation to Supervisors on Monday:

Jail closure funding: And given the public interest in the closure of Men’s Central Jail, Nicchitta highlighted some of the funding that was put towards doing that. Nicchitta said that $314.3 million in Measure J funding is allocated in the new budget, with $42 million going toward closing the jail. Those funds go toward expanding diversion and community-based treatment They also put in $2.1 million to expand substance use navigation services in the Public Health Department.

Nicchitta said nearly $600 million are going toward closing the jail, while also complying with the Department of Justice to improve jail conditions and provide better access to medical and mental health care to people in custody. They are funding the majority of this with county dollars and AB 109 realignment funds, which are dollars the count receives when taking over custody of people from the state prison system.

The $600 million also includes hiring clinicians nurses to work at the jails, paying for medically assisted drug treatment for people in custody, and for body worn cameras and CCTV to prevent jail suicides, Nicchita said. There is $554.8 milion for correctional health services, which provides health and mental health treatment in jails. They are alsomaintaining 6,164 interim beds, 32,517 permanent supportive housign slots, and 5,300 diversion and re-entry beds.

County officials found $15 million to fund parks, Ethics commission and to keep the coroner’s office up to industry standards: They were able to find $15 million in “local” money, related to surplus in retirement money, to pay for new ongoing programs. They are putting nearly half of that $7 million toward parks, specifically for the recently named Esperanza Hills Regional Park, which is set to be built over the La Puente landfill in the San Gabriel Valley that closed over a decade ago; Charles White Park in Altadena, the Earvin “Magic” Johnson Recreation Area in Willowbrook and Wishing Tree Park in Torrance. Another third of that, $5 million, isgoing toward setting up the new Ethics Commission and Office of Ethics. They’re also putting $1.7 million to pay for licenses for the Sheriff department’s Computer Assisted Dispatch system. And they are putting $300,000 toward accreditation for the Medical Examiner department. Nicchita said the board has been working for several years to help the department regain its accreditation, since they lost several years ago, in 2016, after it was unable to meet the National Association of Medical Examiners’s operational standards. At the time, the group cited staffing shortages in the department, and backlogs in the department’s work. The Medical Examiner announced this past January that they regained full accreditation. They’re also putting $200,000 into a new staff position in the Military and Veterans Affairs department to help with suicide prvention and outreach. Nicchita said that this was an area where a “modest investment could have a very meaningful impact.”

Lifeline funding extended to legal aid, commercial cannabis and Measure G: Nicchitta also said some one-time dollars were being put toward select programs, including several million for jobs programs, such as $9.1 million for the Youth@Work program and $1.1 million for a program to the PLACE (Preparing for Los Angeles County Employment) program, which is aimed at reducing barriers to permanent county jobs. For the PLACE program, the funding will go toward maintaining the current 200 participates taking part in the program, he said. Nicchita also said that while it’s usually not a good budgeting practice to use one-time money, which runs out after one year, for programs that are meant to be ongoing over several years. But he said there were some programs that needed a “lifeline” and those include $4.2 million to cover six months of Represent LA, a program to provide legal assistance to people facing deportation. They’re also covering $2 million for the Public Defender and the Alternative Public Defender’s holistic defense programs, which pays for “partners for justice” client advocates that connect people to support services and to complete court requirements for getting their case dismissed. They’re also putting $3.3 million, which come from savings from this year, toward the Measure G Governance Reform Task Force, to pay for staff, consultants and task force member stipends. And another $1.5 million will go toward the Self-Help Legal Access Centers which providers resources for who are representing themselves in lawsuits. And they’re putting $1.5 million into setting up their commercial cannabis program.

Federal, state dollars spending plan include an easier transition for people who just experienced an acute mental health crisis: Nicchitta also higlighted that they are using outside dollars from the state and federal government toward other programs, including one called emPATH units at the MLK Jr. Community Hospital and the Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital that serve as alternatives to a hospital environment, giving people a place to be while they’re “stepping down from an acute or crisis setting.”

You can read more about Monday’s adopted county budget in this City News Service story by Jose Herrera that was picked up in the LA Daily News.

LA is observing Juneteenth today.

What just happened?

Tenants at LA city’s William Mead public housing community say their buildings needs repair — not demolition

LA’s public housing agency is planning to redevelop the William Mead public housing community, which is expected to put that community under private management. This involves demolishing the existing 415 units, which are in two-story brick buildings spread out over several blocks that reminds one of an idyllic college campus. Those buildings would be replaced with 1,600 units, close to Chinatown and Dodger Stadium. This area, surrounded by industrial uses and growing into quite a foodie destination in recent years, is unsurprisingly ripe for real estate interests.

There are promises that the original tenants will be able to return after redevelopment, but some residents are worried that once people move away for a spell, not everyone ends up coming back, and the community that is there won’t really be the same. That’s not something to take lightly, they say.

They also worry things may be going down the same path as other public housing sites that have been put under private-sector nonprofit management. They point to the pattern that has played out under similar redevelopment programs in New York as examples for how what is promised may not end up being what happens.

Phoenix Tso, with LA Public Press, covered a rally held Thursday morning by residents of the community who do not want the demolition to occur. Those residents are demanding that the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles repair the existing buildings instead. Their efforts drew support from groups concerned about privately managed affordable housing, including efforts to convert public housing into privately managed low-income housing. Those groups include POWER, CCEDLA, a volunteer group that has organized with tenants who often raise concerns that their wellbeing isn’t being prioritize by their private-sector affordable housing landlords.

The housing agency says such redevelopment is needed to improve building conditions, while also having the benefit of increasing the city’s overall housing inventory amid an affordable housing crisis. But some residents say that while the condition of their buildings could be better, they are still in better condition than at many private-sector affordable and market-rate housing complexes. Any rundown conditions are fixable without needing to go to the extreme extent of razing down their community, they say.

HACLA officials have conducted surveys and community meetings, as well as set up some committee structures, to discuss the redevelopment plans, but residents and organizers have described some of that as window dressing, and they told reporters during the rally that they did not actually have a genuine say as to whether they really wanted their community to be redeveloped in such a way. Some of them include Justine Martinez, who said that word about the redevelopment project had first started off as “a verbal rumor” in 2019. And at first they didn’t realize a crucial detail about the plans, which is that their existing homes would be demolished.

Martinez told The LA Reporter that her mother, Mona Ayala, who has lived in their community, has played an important role at William Mead, running a summer day camp. Martinez said that effort started off “pretty small” and grew into something that offered tutoring to many of the young people there, including herself. Her mother often also got involved with helping her neighbors get maintenance issues resolved, she said.

In the remarks she made during the rally, Martinez — whose pet bearded dragon was resting on her shoulder — noted an inaccurate, negative public perception of public housing that people often have. She sought instead to describe the pride she had in her community.

“The historic brick buildings at William Mead are more than just structures,” she said. “They represent history, culture, identity and community built over generations. Residents want these buildings preserved, not replaced by developments that could change the neighborhood’s character.”

Even though housing agency officials say “residents will not be permanently displaced, many worry that temporary relocation will disrupt their lives, separating them from support networks and create barriers to returning,” Martinez said. “Even if families return, the communities we know today may be gone.”

And a note on where the William Mead redevelopment plan is in the process. While there was a federal grant secured to do the “transformation” plan, this isn’t a done deal. In other words, while housing agency officials are working toward getting them, they haven’t actually applied for the city planning approvals to move forward. There are some details in the Housing Authority of Los Angeles’s board meeting files. Some of the pertinent ones are organized in the William Mead redevelopment website. HACLA officials told The LA Reporter that they are doing a “housing needs review to prepare a relocation plan” as a way to understand what residents need and how that could be included into “a future development.”

Raman says Mayor Bass screwed with the charter reform process

At LA City Hall, so much of what people are really thinking are often only hinted at. But some are done being shy. In a follow-up to Controller Kenneth Mejia breaking loose with his feelings of disappointment over the charter reform process, mayoral candidate and City Council member Nithya Raman has gone on record in a campaign video blasting Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass as the culprit for the failure of the charter reform process in getting issues that many care about — such as council expansion, ranked choice voting and an independent budget for the controller’s office (which serves as LA’s own elected City Hall gadfly)— onto this November’s ballot. The delay of council expansion was especially notable for many, with The LA Times highlighting its conspicuous absence in the slate of issues the City Council decided to move forward on for the November ballot. Golden State’s Mariel Garza also noted that even as this item was put off, another less-studied issue, non-citizen voting seemed to have been put on the fast-track.

In the video posted on Thursday, Raman pointed to the current mayor as the reason for such issues getting referred for further study. “Nearly four years after we started this process, some of the biggest and most heavily anticipated changes are now going to be punted to another committee,” Raman said in the video. But, Raman said, “there was time to study it. A full commission was created two years ago to do exactly that, but Mayor Bass sat on her appointments for nearly a year. One publication called her ‘the most conspicuous logjam in the whole process.’ The commission lost almost a year of work, raced to finish, and now the council says the work feels rushed. Of course, it was.”

She said that what happened with the commission “was by design. This is how the status quo protects itself.” Raman said that gets done by stretching out the process “until the clock runs out, and nobody has to explain to Angelenos why reform was killed. Angelenos deserve the chance to vote on real reform in November, but you won’t get it, and we should all ask Mayor Karen Bass to explain why.”

Also, Raman’s video comes after Bass had told POLITICO’s Melanie Mason in a sit-down interview at Union Station last month that she was “not really happy” with the charter reform process.

A few more things…

Fire at Boyle Heights warehouse, operated by Lineage Logistics, prompts continued ‘shelter-in-place’ order: There was a new “shelter-in-place” order issued on Thursday, after officials learned that a fire was still going at the Lineage Logistics warehouse in Boyle Heights, after fire broke out at the facility the day prior on Wednesday, June 17. Council member Ysabel Jurado posted a video update on Thursday about this order, which included urging people to stay indoors. The LA Times story points to a past, smaller fire in 2024 at the Boyle Heights warehouse, and to federal penalties related to Lineage Logistics, in Iowa. [Note: The Los Angeles Fire Department lifted this latest shelter-in-place order on Friday, June 19.]

LA city sanitation head named, six months after position became vacant: Mayor Karen Bass has appointed Joone Kim-Lopez to be the new executive director of the Bureau of Sanitation. Kim-Lopez is currently the CEO of the Moulton Niguel Water District in Orange County. The appointment was forwarded this week to the City Council, which would need to confirm Kim-Lopez for the role. When the previous head of the Sanitation department, Barbara Romero, stepped down at the end of last year.,LA Waterkeeper called it a “major loss,” for the city. This appointment was first spotted by Unrig LA.

A new Los Angeles hole in the ground blows up: There appears to be a new hole in the ground in Los Angeles that’s blowing up the Internet and becoming quite the local spectacle. There was recently another hole in the ground that Film the Police had dubbed the “basshole,” after the city’s most powerful official, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, that exposed electrical wiring.

LA releases building rules for folks who want to live in a more modest abode: In 2023, Mayor Karen Bass issued Executive Directive 7 to make it easier to build smaller homes, which is supposed to make homeownership more affordable. Think townhomes, row housing, and bungalow courts. Three years later, we now have some draft ordinances to review for building more of these types of smaller, and more affordable-to-purchase homes in Los Angeles. Bass announced that the planning department has just released theddraft ordinances for review. They’ve been dubbed the Missing Middle LA ordinances.

City Attorney submits language for prohibiting RSO demolition in Valley Glen: A proposed prohibition on demolishing of rent stabilized housing in Valley Glen should be up soon in the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Committee, after the City Attorney’s draft ordinance language to do an “interim control ordinance.” Read the attorney’s letter summarizing the language is here, and the draft language is here. This was originally proposed by Council members Adrin Nazarian, and seconded by Council member Monica Rodriguez, last August. It had to get approval from the state housing department, which it ended up getting back in January.

Longtime San Fernando Valley business group leader moves onto BizFed: Stuart Waldman, the longtime executive director of the San Fernando Valley-focused Valley Industry Commerce Association, was just named as the new president of BizFed.

Council member John Lee is fighting with the city Ethics Commission in court: A trial-setting conference is scheduled for today at 1:30 p.m. in Council member John Lee’s appeal of the City Ethics Commission’s decision last December that he had violated ethics rules by accepting excessive gifts, misusing his city position and aiding and abetting the misuse of another official’s position. The commission fined Lee $138,124 for the violations. Lee had vowed to fight the decision, and indeed, he appealed it in Los Angeles Superior Court in March. The latest date in the case is a trial-setting conference set for this afternoon.

An interesting note is that the CAO’s office has retained the law firm Devaney Pate to represent the city in the case, as it has been deemed a conflict, but the Ethics Commission is now requesting Hecker Fink LLP be the attorney instead, writing in a June 10 letter to the City Council that this firm has an attorney who is a “former Assistant United States Attorney for the Central District of California and has extensive experience in complex governmental ethics litigation.”

What just happened?

November ballot filling up with LAPD reform, proposed change to a much debated Measure ULA tax, and a new one half-cent sales tax for the fire department

LAPD oversight, a protected parks budget and other charter reform issues could be headed to the November ballot: Some key decisions were made Wednesday on what LA city charter reform measures will be put to voters this November. The council on Wednesday approved motions that start the process for drafting for ballot measures that would, if approved by voters, grant the City Council authority to set LAPD policy, increase the protected budget for LA’s recreation and parks department and untie the city’s hands in the event they decide to give LA’s immigrants the ability to vote in local school board and city elections. You can read my rundown of the major charter reform proposals that got the green-light Wednesday, via my live thread on the meeting here.

Voters could vote on changes to LA’s transfer tax, Measure ULA, which funds tenant protections and affordable housing: Also OK’d Wednesday was a ballot measure to revise LA’s transfer tax, Measure ULA. The city uses the proceeds of the tax revenue to fund tenant protection programs, including legal aid groups that defend people against evictions, and the construction of affordable housing. You can read the report on Wednesday’s vote, by LAist’s David Wagner, here. And I shared the language of the approved motion, which was posted up during yesterday’s meeting, as part of a live-thread from the meeting here.

A few things to note about this proposed ballot measure. The motion calls for a measure that would, if approved by voters, exempt for the first ten years new multifamily housing from the Measure ULA tax, which applies to sales of properties valued at around $5 million or more. And it calls for broadening the eligible use of the funds beyond permanent affordable housing, so that it can be used for temporary housing.

This ballot measure effort comes as a state measure put up by Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is seeking to repeal such tax measures statewide. Those who were calling for this compromise proposal say there are attempts to get the potential financial backers of the Jarvis measure to withdraw their support. They also argue that it has indeed suppressed housing construction, although studies and reports that have been released in recent months have concluded different things.

Those who are seeking to preserve the measure say that while the measure may not be perfect, there are changes that can already be made to the measure without actually needing to go to the ballot. The ad hoc committee that was formed in recent months to study the issue had recommended a compromise that would not need to go to the ballot, and that aims to reduce the tax for certain types of housing, including affordable housing and those that pay construction workers a prevailing wage.

Once the language for the charter reform and Measure ULA ballot measures are drafted, they will be sent back to the City Council for further votes. The council has until July 1, about two weeks later, in order to adopt the final resolution, although further language or decisions are expected before then, for at least some of the measures.

Keep watch for a fire department one-half-cent sales tax on your LA city ballot: Also on November’s ballot should be an LA city one half-cent sales tax to fund the hiring of Los Angeles Fire Department staff and the purchase and maintenance of fire facilities, vehicles and equipment. The City Attorney recently posted draft ballot language, which were prepared after sponsors of the citizen initiative submitted sufficient petition signatures to the City Clerk back in May. You can read the attorney’s letter, which includes a summary of what the sales tax would be used for, here. The draft measure language is available here.

El Pueblo vendors are behind a total of $1.3 million on rent, according to new report on the financial state of the historic destination

An anticipated report on the state of vendor leases at El Pueblo is out. Vendors of Olvera Street, which is a marketplace inside the El Pueblo historic city park and tourist destination, recently sat down with mayoral candidate Nithya Raman to air their concerns that the city has been failing to do enough upkeep at the attraction, even as the city welcomes people for the World Cup, and in a couple years for the Olympics. The report lays out the conditions of the park’s facilities, and the financial challenges faced by vendors who have been behind on rent by a total of around $1.3 million.

The report noted that while there are various significant upgrades needed in the park’s facilities, including at historic sites like the Pico House (the former home of the last Mexican governor of California), “many legacy merchant families remain committed to El Pueblo, reflecting the site’s enduring cultural significance and long-term potential. Stabilizing site conditions remains critical to supporting these businesses and preserving the character of Olvera Street.”

Some of these financial challenges were brought up in May, during budget deliberations as well, and this new report, dated June 15, 2026, similarly said that vendors are dealing with the “long-term impacts of the COVID19 pandemic, ongoing site conditions, reduced tourism and visitor-ship, broader economic challenges affecting small businesses, and other external factors that have negatively impacted merchant revenue and financial stability.”

Some vendors The LA Reporter spoke to during their meeting with Raman last month said that numerous tenants have left, but vacant stalls have yet to be filled, and this has caused them to feel as though city officials have abandoned them. One of the longtime tenants, a restaurant called La Golondrina that has been a spot for birthdays and special occasions, shuttered in recent years, despite efforts by other tenants to step in to help keep it alive. And the operator of a burro statue that tourists could take photos with also faced an imminent eviction.

The report came as the result of a motion authored by Council member Ysabel Jurado that described the businesses at El Pueblo as “multi-generational enterprises relying on in-person commerce.”

“While emergency measures and gradual reopening helped stabilize these losses, the pandemic exposed structural vulnerabilities and underscored the need for sustained investment and flexible policies to ensure El Pueblo’s long-term economic and cultural resilience,” the motion read.

We just had a primary election, but some big decisions are about to be made about what measures will go on November’s ballot. Today is the deadline for the Los Angeles City Council to request ballot measure language for November to be drawn up, and you should expect to see some debate around whether LAPD reforms will be among the charter reform measures that makes it onto the ballot. While chances might be slim for this item, a proposal to give City Council the ability decide LAPD policy has nevertheless been recommended for the ballot, after great effort by advocacy groups. Another hot proposal, to increase the City Council to 25 members, has already been rejected.

There’s also a proposal to increase the protected budget for Recreation and Parks, which the City Council’s budget chair, Katy Yaroslavsky, recently said the city would have trouble even funding. There has been an effort to get a tax measure going to fund parks, but that has collapsed after there was indication powerful leaders may not support it. And Yaroslavsky has dismissed the idea that LAPD funding, which commands the lions share of LA’s budget could get diverted to LA’s parks. Meanwhile, LA city’s parks were recently ranked 93rd in the nation. Alissa Walker, of Torched, just put out a piece on the state of the charter reform proposals for LA’s parks.

There is also a proposal to change how city services are managed in a way that goes to the heart of one of LA City Hall’s more politically sensitive topics. The city’s public works department is now managed by a full-time paid board of commissioners, who are all appointed by the mayor. On the table now though is a proposal to reinstate a director of public works, and to take out language specifying what bureaus should be part of the Department of Public Works. There used to be such a director of public works, but LA leaders got rid of that position, or at least gutted its powers, after that director locked horns with those commissioners.

A key thing to watch in all this is how the City Council decides to group the charte reform proposals. There are strategic considerations for how they do this, and one thing that has come up is if certain issues would be considered “poison pills” that could hurt other proposal’s chances of getting passed by voters. There are also potentially other considerations, such as sweeteners, of course. The City Attorney’s Office last night also submitted a suggested ways to group the proposals.

You can see the full slate of recommendations, and the proposals that might still be in the running but haven’t been recommended, in a report out of Rules committee that just posted this morning. A table of all of the proposals and what happened to them is here. And here is the summary of what is actually getting recommended or going before the City Council today. You can also check out the council file for the charter reform issues, which includes public comment that has come in (although it appears the City Clerk has been slow in posting many of them).

And you can check out yesterday’s episode of AirTalk, where I joined LAist’s civics and democracy reporter, Frank Stoltze, to talk about LA city charter reform.

The Los Angeles City Council will be taking these up at today’s meeting, and you can view the meeting here.

Today is also crunch time for deciding on measures to revise Measure ULA, the tax on real estate transfers and sales for high value properties (that are generally around $5 million or more), so there could be some possible ballot measures on that to watch for coming out of today’s meeting. The measure funds affordable housing and tenant protection programs.

And later this afternoon, at 2 p.m. the council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee will be taking up the unsigned contracts for advocacy and legal aid groups offering services to tenants facing eviction. The agenda also includes Council member Ysabel Jurado’s motion requesting a report on housing complaints about rent stabilized units in the 14th council district, which she represents. Jurado’s motion on this issue cites City Controller Kenneth Mejia’s dashboard on the city’s top 100 rental properties, which can be viewed here.

What just happened?

LA County officials lay out financial challenges for county’s social safety net services

While LA county’s sales tax measure to fund healthcare services, amid federal fundjng cuts, Measure ER, just squeaked out a win, belts still need to be kept tight, LA county officials said in a presentation to the LA County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

“One of our greatest challenges over the last year... has been operating in an environment of unprecedented uncertainty,” Interim County CEO Joe Nicchita told the Board of Supervisors at their meeting Tuesday morning. “The federal government has cut funding without notice and issued executive orders and regulatory changes without sufficient detail to fully understand the impact until agency instructions are rolled out months later, and even though we’re coming up on the anniversary of H.R. 1 [also referred to as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act], the agency rulemaking to fully implement the bill continues. Not all of the details are fully spelled out at this point in time.”

“In this context we’re forced to continue to focus on financial stability and taking a long view, and even giving new funding sources like Measure ER, the year ahead will require financial discipline to prioritize critical safety net services over less immediate needs,” Nicchita said.

The presentation came a day after the state legislature adopted its proposed budget (which now goes to a negotiation with the governor and ahead of it being adopted later this month). It also comes ahead of the County CEO presenting a set of budget recommendations next Monday.

Nicchita noted that there are more county departments than usual facing budget deficits at the moment. He specifically highlighted the Sheriff’s department, which has a $148 million gap to close, while the public health department has a $30.6 million deficit.

A few more things…

Council motions from Tuesday include one by LA Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, seconded by Nithya Raman, that calls for funding allocations for hygiene trailers for the Schrader A Bridge Home homeless shelter site in in the 13th City Council District, specifically in the Hollywood neighborhood. There is also a motion to transfer funds to use for the “Spring/Alameda Safety & Mobility Project” in the 1st City Council District to help with installing curb ramps, bus pads, and bus boarding islands, and to fix sidewalks.

There was yet another plane crash on Tuesday connected to Whiteman Airport in Pacoima, and this time LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath is calling on the FAA to halt the airport from operating. A plane from Whiteman Airport crashed into power lines nearly three months ago in April. There have been other crashes over the years, including one that killed the pilot in 2020 on a residential street in Pacoima and that set cars ablaze and scattered plane parts.

Mayoral candidate Nithya Raman sat down with KTLA’s Jessica Holmes and Eric Spillman for an interview on Tuesday. You can watch it, as well as read the transcript, here.

The political consultant for Wendy Carillo, Mike Trujillo, has put out a take on what’s happening in the race for the 26th state senate race, highlighting the fact that Sarah Rascon is entering the November runoff against Sara Hernandez on a strong footing. It appears candidates who lean progressive, like Carrillo and Maebe Pulido could be fans of Rascon.

The LA Times’s Ruben Vives has a story about a grand jury recommending that the LA Zoo, which is currently a city department, be privately run.

The LA City Council’s Government Operations Committee is meeting at 8:30 a.m. and taking up lease agreements with homeless services providers — including Five Keys, Hope the Mission and John Wesley Center for Health — that operate shelters and tiny homes. There are also lease agreements for community gardens in North Hills and Mission Hills. You can catch the meeting here.

The Los Angeles City Council will meet at 10 a.m. and take a proposal to exempt residential properties affected by the 2025 wildfires from Measure ULA, a motion to look at ways to reduce the time buses and light rail have to wait at red lights, including cutting wait times 50% by January 2028, and a motion to restrict oversized vehicles on and around Graham Avenue, Monitor Avenue, Maie Avenue, and East 111th Street in the 15th City Council District.

The Los Angeles City Council’s Budget committee will meet at 2 p.m. and take up an item on a “city homelessness governance structure,” along with a motion to look at legal options for protecting the city’s around homeless services governance. The latter item is related to LA County withdrawing funding from Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Several city council members and Mayor Karen Bass released a letter in April to address how the city will react to such shifts in how homeless services are funded and governed. These items are being scheduled as the Trump administration pulling HUD funding from LAHSA. There is also a resolution being taken up in City Council today opposing HUD funding from being taken away from LAHSA. The comittee is also taking up a couple of progress reports on the $2.6 billion expansion of the Los Angeles Convention Center, which city officials cautioned could be financially risky for the city unless they kept to a strict timeline for the project.

What just happened?

Police accountability charter reforms move forward, to face debate in a bigger arena

The LA City Council is expected to debate police accountability reforms on Wednesday, after the Rules committee on Monday advanced proposals that include giving the council more authority to set LAPD policy and the police chief the ability to fire problem officers. While the proposals have generated much public interest for the relatively obscure, months-long charter reform process that’s happening at LA City Hall, it will definitely be an uphill battle for advocates and other members of the public to get such policing oversight issues onto the ballot, especially as city staffers had not recommended that police oversight and accountability reforms to be placed on November’s ballot, nor any future ballots. Advocates have sent out a call for action for people to reach out to council members urging them to vote in favor of placing the issues on the ballot this November. And the Rules committee, which includes some of the more powerful members of the City Council, was split on the proposal to increase their authority to set LAPD policy, voting 3 to 2 in favor of advancing the proposal to the full City Council.

Some issues that didn’t make it out of the Rules committee, but that did generate some attention throughout the process, include switching LA elections to ranked choice voting, lowering the voting age to 16 years old for local elections, and most notably, expanding the City Council to 25 members.

The issues that have the strongest likelihood to actually making it onto the ballot, at least based on the discussion on them up until now, including those that revolve around creating a capital infrastructure program that’s led by the Department of Public Works, which is a financial plan that governs how public infrastructure projects are funded and prioritized. Many cities, including the Long Beach, already have such plans for maintaining and building public facilities and amenities such as roads and briges. Another fairly noncontroversial proposal to switch LA city’s budgeting timeline from an annual one to a two-year cycle has also made it out of committee. And they moved forward a way to strengthen the powers of the Director of Public Works, which had been eliminated after that role began competing against the power of the Board of Public Works. There is also a proposal to increase the protected budget for Recreation and Parks that got moved forward.

And a few more things…

City Controller Kenneth Mejia recently put out a correction to HUD’s letter announcing funding being pulled from LAHSA saying that their office found that much of the funding from that agency had not been spent. Mejia said that his findings were that LA city, not LAHSA funding, were going unspent.

Faizah Malik, a tenants rights attorney who recently ran for City Council, reacted to a story in LAist about 250 “master-leased” apartment units that were meant to shelter unhoused people but have been sitting empty. Malik called on progressives to take a more proactive approach to transparency and accountability around homelessness and housing. Right now these stories fuel talking points for conservative politicians like Council member Traci Park and Spencer Pratt, who recently ran unsuccessfully for mayor. “Unlike them, we WANT government investments to work,” Malik wrote. “But when leaders make excuses, it lets the other side say the whole strategy is a failure when it’s not.”

City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto on Monday released a report detailing the “challenges” around negotiating contracts with groups providing tenant protection services. Meanwhile, one of those groups raised alarms about needing to layoff employees due to their contract with the city not being signed.

The latest episode of the LA Podcast is out, and their guest is Jasmyne Cannick, who joins regulars Mike Bonin and Godfrey Plata to discuss the LA mayoral race runoff between Mayor Karen Bass and Council member Nithya Raman.

Eleventh-hour decisions to reform LA City Hall continues this afternoon in a special meeting set for 1 p.m. in the LA City Council’s Rules Committee. The commission met last Friday to discuss other issues, but delayed discussion of police accountability until today’s meeting, with the committee’s chair (who is also the LA City Council President) Marqueece Harris-Dawson, saying that the committee member who is championing the issue, Hugo Soto-Martinez, was absent. They did take comment from Council member Eunisses Hernandez, the other major champion for the proposals for increasing the accountability of the Los Angeles Police Department. The committee is also set to take up a motion on allowing noncitizen voting on local elections. The City Council has until tomorrow, June 17, to decide what to place on this November’s ballot.

What just happened?

LA City Hall reform continued at a glacial pace last Friday, as LA city leaders reject 25-member City Council proposal

Some of LA’s most powerful leaders last Friday rejected a proposal to expand their members to 25 people, just four days ahead of a June 17 deadline for placing council-sponsored initiatives onto this November’s ballot.

The Rules committee, which includes the City Council president and the council’s budget chair, ducked out on placing the proposal on the November ballot, after receiving a city report recommending that further study be done and the issue be placed instead on the November 2028 ballot.

This issue of expansion was originally punted by a 2023 ad hoc committee of the City Council that also included powerful members of this body, with the promise that a separate charter reform commission would further study the issue. Three years later, the promised study of the issue never materialized — including one that got answers to basic questions such as what the duties of a 25-member council would look like and how much this change would cost.

Some committee members nevertheless spoke to the strong arguments for expanding the council, which has been capped at 15 members since its inception, — now more than a century ago in 1925 — with each member now representing more than 260,000 constituents, a population larger than many cities.

Council member Katy Yaroslavsky, who sits on the Rules committee and is budget chair, said that “one of the strongest arguments for expansion is access to power.”

“Running for council in LA requires an enormous amount of money, organization, political infrastructure,” Yaroslavsky said. “When each district is this large, the barrier to entry gets higher. More often than not, the clearest path belongs to people who are wealthy and/or well-connected, and that’s not the sign of a healthy democracy.”

Yaroslavsky ended up not supporting the proposal, saying that the study needed in order to present the issue to voters has simply not been done.

Council member Nithya Raman was the sole committee member who advocated putting the issue to voters in November, arguing that LA leaders have “been discussing this for three years, and we have not had the further study that is required.” She pointed to the earlier 2023 punt, which came with the promise that council expansion would be studied by the Charter Reform Commission.

That process, Raman said, “was supposed to be the real process for arriving at those answers.”

Raman, who is running for mayor, has argued that the city needs better leadership to ensure city services are delivered in a way that works. She said that while expansion may not be the answer to all of the problems that LA faces, “it is an answer to one piece of it, which is your accessibility to your local elected representative and your opportunities for better representation.”

Raman pushed back on this latest effort to delay the issue, saying that she wants to “make sure that we have a clear pathway. I thought we had one before. And we don’t.”

City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who is considered a close ally to Mayor Karen Bass (who is facing off against Raman as she runs for re-election), argued that there has been some progress, even if it is “painfully slow.” He said that while their own ad hoc committee back in 2023 couldn’t get to a specific number for how many people to expand the City Council by, and were only able to come up with a range, the charter reform commission did decide on increasing the council to 25 members.

The status quo ‘political machine’ at city hall? ‘They don’t even care,’ says City Controller Kenneth Mejia

Controller Kenneth Mejia, who just cinched a second term in office, took to his soapbox this weekend, posting on social media about his disappointment at the charter reform process, including the Rules committee’s decision to punt on council expansion, ranked choice voting and several changes his office proposed to increase the independence and influence of the controller’s office.

“LA City Hall continues to disappoint and frustrate me. But what else is new?” Mejia said. “This is the status quo of the political machine working, wanting to maintain its power.

He said that when it comes to the controller’s office recommendations, which include making the controller the chief financial officer, and protecting their office’s budget, which weren’t even considered, “they don’t even care.”

Parks advocates to keep fighting for a bigger protected budget for Rec and Parks

LA City Council member Katy Yaroslavsky proffered some of the more convincing arguments on another charter reform issue on Friday, when she said that the city’s recreation and parks services are “wildly” underfunded and that she was tired of the city’s parks ranking last. But Yaroslavsky again gave some disappointing news at last Friday’s Rules committee when she said that there was simply no funding to pay for parks — either because there hasn’t been the political will to put a tax measure on the ballot, or because they also simply aren’t prepared as a City Council to reduce the funding of the LAPD so that more funds could be allocated to parks.

Yaroslavsky remarked that while people might say the funding for parks should come out of the LAPD budget, most of that budget is salaries, and city leaders have had trouble keeping those costs down.

“I don’t think this council, when faced with the actual choices, is prepared necessarily to reduce LAPD by the amount” needed to fund Recreation and Parks under the proposed increase for parks,” Yaroslavsky said.

Advocates for protecting the Recreation and Parks department’s budget say that multiple attempts to raise money through tax measures have petered out, and they see the proposal Yaroslavsky placed on the table Friday as insufficient. Yaroslavsky put forward a proposal that instead of doubling the amount, would increase it by 50%, which translates to around $175 million each year. Yaroslavsky argued that they could study putting another tax measure on the ballot in 2028 to reach the fully doubled amount.

Meanwhile, Recreation and Parks Department Jimmy Kim told the Rules committee that not a week goes by that they don’t get requests from council offices about parks services. They try to do their best, Kim said, “but the simple fact of the matter is it’s breaking the backs of our staff.” Parks are closed on Sundays, he says, and any amount would help.

The Trust for Public Land recently released rankings that placed Los Angeles’s parks 93rd, dropping from 91 the previous year.

Council members Jurado gets heat for insufficient notification of encampment sweeps in Skid Row

Last week, amid the wider conversation about registering unhoused people to vote, and the intimations that this was a cynical, exploitative effort to skew the results of the LA mayor’s race, Council member Ysabel Jurado spoke up in defense of unhoused people’s right to engage in elections.

Notably, Jurado pointed out that “the people most affected by decisions about housing, policing, sanitation, and city services should have a voice in those decisions.”

Interestingly, Jurado herself has been getting some heat from unhoused constituents in her district, which includes Skid Row, over how city services are being handled. Jurado represents the 14th District, which has the city’s highest number of unhoused constituents, given that Skid Row is located within its boundaries.

Sweeps in Skid Row, a 50 block area where homeless services as well as encampments have been sequestered (the area was officially conceptualized as a “containment zone”), are conducted under a city program called Operation Healthy Streets, which covers a wide geographic area. That means that people living in encampments there need to prepare for such sweeps, which require them to move their encampments, without knowing if the crews will really come to their block that day.

And last Friday, General Dogon, an organizer with LA CAN (Los Angeles Community Action Network), urged LA leaders that, if such sweeps are even to be done, there’s a need for better notification procedures, especially ones that are at least equal to the CARE+ sweeps that take place in other neighborhoods in the 14th City Council District, where the geographic areas being targeted are smaller.

During the public comment portion of Friday’s City Council meeting, Dogon said that “nearly every day, we get members (of Los Angeles Community Action Network) telling us about the traumatic and violent impacts these sweeps are imposing on them, and through all the stories, one thing that’s always consistent is [there is] no notice, or… not enough time to retrieve they stuff, and so while the council office claims to work with LAPD and the bid to coordinate sweeps., the only people who don’t know that the sweep is happening is your constituents on a block, right?”

LA CAN members and organizers sent Jurado a letter about a month ago, and they say that they haven’t received a response from her office. The LA Reporter just sent an email late Friday, also asking about the public comment.

An LA CAN member, Queen AJ, also spoke, saying they’ve never spotted staff from Council member Jurado’s office doing outreach and monitoring the sweeps, “nor have we seen you before, during, or after to see how people’s lives were dramatically impacted once you allow the sweeps to happen.”

“So, while we are 100% against sweeps happening at all, at the very least, can we get the same treatment for other communities… which includes sufficient notice for the sweeps?” Queen AJ said. “I would ask, why do we not deserve that, but I’m going to give you an answer, we deserve that. Do something, Councilmember Jurado.”

Jessica, another organizer with LA CAN, said in their public comment on Friday, that their members have been making comment at LA City Council meetings every week. “At least respond to our letter,” Jessica requested. “Why has your office not replied?”

The letter from LA CAN requested that Jurado’s council office “provide specific notice of the date and time of the ‘clean-up’ at least 48 hours in advance and that, once noticed, they actually conduct the ‘clean-up.’ This is the norm in every other neighborhood in CD14 and across the city, and must be the norm in Skid Row as well.”

“As we discussed in our meeting, the permanent metal signs that say there may be a cleaning on a given day of the week somewhere over a several square block area do not provide sufficient notice,” the letter continues. “A block may go weeks or months without cleaning, while people living there, many of whom have disabilities, pack and move their tents and other possessions each time. Or, one day they fail to move their belongings and the Sanitation Department comes and destroys them. Or, not having had specific notice, they leave the area to go to work or an appointment and lose their possessions.”

Progressive group, Controller Mejia rally around police accountability, council expansion and other charter reforms on the chopping block: There’s a big push today to convince LA city council members to advance police accountability, council expansion and ranked choice voting proposals to the council for consideration for this November’s ballot. Godfrey Plata, deputy director of the progressive advocacy group LA Forward, told The LA Reporter that they’re watching to see if members of the Rules committee — made up of five LA City Council members — will flag those topics during today’s 1 p.m. meeting of the Rules committee and recommends to the full Council that they be included on this November’s ballot.

A city report from the chief legislative analyst this week has either recommended those issues for a future ballot, or aren’t recommending them for any ballot measure. Plata argued that this November’s election is expected to be a high turnout one, and that’s a good opportunity for a high number of voters to decide on issues that affect every Angeleno. “We want voters to weigh in on them when public attention on elections is as high as it is right now!” he said.

The Rules committee is meeting at 1 p.m. You can view the agenda here.

Also, LA Controller Kenneth Mejia, who in the past has turned record numbers of people out to comment on charter reform issues has been getting the word out about this afternoon’s meeting. And on Thursday, he added his own call to action to people to advocate for the three proposals to be advanced.

Mejia has his own issues that he cares about too, including one that would include the Controller’s role as looking into waste, fraud and abuse into the charter. And he has been advocating for his office, which is elected, to be designated as the city’s chief financial officer — which is in competition with another proposal that’s gotten more traction, which is to make the City Administrative Officer (who is appointed by the mayor) the city’s CFO. The CAO has argued in the past that his office already serves the functions of a CFO — and indeed the CAO has a central role in the city’s financial matters. The office is heavily involved in creating the budget and is the representative that meets with credit agencies, for example. But Mejia is raising his own proposal as the city faces persistent financial woes.

FYI, there are some disagreements over whether the CAO’s role as an appointed official helps or hinders things financially for the city. The CAO answers to the mayor, which some argue reduces their independence on presenting financial matters in an honest way. But others argue that having key officials report to the mayor means that there is more clarity on which elected official has the responsibility for what happens. It would make it easier for Angelenos to know who to hold accountable, and in case that would be the mayor receiving the blame (or the credit), is the argument.

What just happened?

LA council member pushes back on CA Post’s hyper-fixation on unhoused people voting in the LA mayor’s race: In the last few days, the California Post, a west coast offshoot of the New York Post, and others have focused in on unhoused people voting in the LA mayor’s race, raising questions about possible illegal activity and exploitation of people who are homeless to try to skew the results of the LA mayor’s race. This comes as rightwing voices continue to question the election’s integrity, after their favored mayoral candidate, Spencer Pratt, failed to make it into the runoff.

One of the Post’s editorials referenced an article by the Post’s reporter Jamie Paige that they said detailed “revelations that thousands of homeless voters were registered to shelters where they didn’t live,” including in Skid Row.

LA City Council member Ysabel Jurado, who’s area includes Skid Row, posted a message on X on Thursday, pushing back on this inquisition into unhoused people being registered to vote.

“Some people are looking at unhoused Angelenos legally registering to vote and asking whether those votes should count. Not because they’re ineligible, and not because they broke the law. Just because they’re homeless,” Jurado’s post read.

In another post, further down in the thread, Jurado wrote that “the people most affected by decisions about housing, policing, sanitation, and city services should have a voice in those decisions. You don’t lose your right to vote because you lost your housing.”

A Los Angeles voter who was unhoused had made a very similar point to me during the 2020 elections, when I was a reporter for the Los Angeles Daily News. The voter lived along an industrial road in the northwest San Fernando Valley, where an LA City Council race was taking place. He said the council race mattered to him because the council member at the time was conducting encampment sweeps, which lead to their belongings getting taken.

“It affects us,” he told me. “We’re in the community. We’re right in the middle of it… In the district that we’re voting in, it affects us because they take our things… so hopefully it makes a difference.”

In that election, there were some hiccups with the voting centers that made it difficult for people who did not have home addresses to get their local elections listed on their ballot. The voter I spoke to had spent days going to vote centers to cast a ballot, and after efforts by the LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office to fix the issue, he was finally able to vote. Moments after he cast his ballot, the Los Angeles voter told me, “Just being on the streets, having a vote… it means a lot to me.”

Speaking of issues that matter for people who are unhoused… apartments are sitting empty and the Trump Administration just pulled funding used to keep people housed.

Nick Gerda at the LAist has a story about master-leased apartments for unhoused people sitting empty. LAHSA officials told LAist that the vacancies were due to “local policies restricting master leased apartments to people who have taxpayer-funded subsidies, which have been cut back by the state.” The agency also pointed to a successful subsidy program getting paused due to cuts at the state

Meanwhile, LAHSA released a statement responding to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Trump administration pulling funding from them, saying they’re looking at “all available options to ensure that federal funds continue to support thousands of people who have been housed through LAHSA.” Aaron Schrank with the LAist has some background here on the HUD funding getting pull.

LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath also shared some thoughts on the HUD funding getting pulled, writing in a social media post that this was done “for publicity, not for results.”

She argued that the Trump administration ought to be working in tandem with LA County, especially as county officials such as herself have been “calling for change and accountability at LAHSA.”

“While they focus on stunts and retribution against Los Angeles — a community that rejects their apocalyptic MAGA agenda — we’re staying focused on results for our most vulnerable.”

Ballot measure mix-up is now in court: Politics reporter Robert Greene has an update on the Measure J and Measure G fiasco, in which voter passage of a governance reform measure at the county repealed an earlier measure setting aside money for “alternatives to incarceration.” Greene writes about a lawsuit pending in court that is meant to resolve the mix-up, but he notes that the lawyer who filed it, Fred Woocher, is concerned about the timing of the anticipated trial-setting hearing, because it “falls past the deadline to put any corrective measure on the November ballot.” The hope is that the case gets sped up a bit so that something could happen before that deadline.

Want to know what fun thing your big city library is planning, how the city is handling discrimination complaints, or what’s happening at your local swim center? On the docket today are LA city commission meetings for the LA public library’s board, the board overseeing the Civil and Human Rights and Equity Department (they handle complaints of discrimination and decide on enforcement, which recently has actually led to fines for such companies like Smart & Final, Ross and a motel), and a committee overseeing the Balboa Aquatics Center, which includes a presentation on a design for the center. You can check out the full schedule of such commission meetings here.

And with LA County setting up its own homeless services department, this might be a time to get to know some of the nitty gritty of how the county is allocating time, money and energy into this issue. Up this afternoon is the county’s “homelessness & housing” cluster meeting during which they’ll be discussing contracts and budget recommendations for the upcoming fiscal year. So even though there is usually just one big long meeting of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors each week, there are actually even more tests of stamina scattered through out the week in several such “cluster” meetings, with policies and decisions being discussed by different groupings of county departments (such groupings, for example, include public safety or health services). The schedule for those cluster meetings can be found here.

And some notes about these more obscure meetings: There are several such commission meetings happening at any given moment throughout the week. These panels are made up of appointees, and sometimes other representatives sent by elected offices, who gather and dive into the muscle and guts of policies and decision-making in LA city and county government. The meetings are a slog, and usually not exciting. People on committees and commission tend to talk in more detail about the important issues, but it’s usually not dressed up in big sweeping language. Yet they’re stuff that tends to get glossed over by the more big ticket decision-making bodies, and you may learn more about how things really work (or don’t work) at these meetings than at the usual ones people do pay attention to. And you can sometimes get ahead of things before they reach the point where it’s too late, and key votes are already being made.

What just happened?

Policing reform, council expansion and other big ticket and hot 🥵 charter reform proposals could get voted off the island? 🏝️ 🚨

Spencer Pratt won’t be on the November ballot. But neither will police reform and other very hot charter reform issues like council expansion and ranked choice voting?

That’s what it’s looking like going into tomorrow’s Rules committee meeting. This will be a key meeting in which the City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson will be leading a small committee that includes four other council colleagues to help shape the fate of what proposed changes to the city charter — it’s similar to the constitution for the city — will be taken up in this November’s election.

A city report that landed with a big thud on Wednesday punted on some key charter reform proposals, including council expansion. That was one of the bigger issues that motivated the latest reform process, and city staffers are recommending that city leaders skip this November’s ballot and instead place council expansion on the 2028 ballot. Right now the proposal is to expand the council to 25 members, increasing the current 15 members by 10 people. The council’s ad hoc committee on governance reform about two years ago said nearly the same thing — that more study was needed on this issue — so they created a charter reform commission to do that.

The report also leaves up in the air whether police reform should go onto November’s ballot. Meanwhile, policing reform, a topic that many hadn’t anticipated would even be taken up, turned out to be one of the more popular charter reform topics that ended up getting regular Angelenos to tune into this relatively obscure process. That’s also potentially getting dropped from consideration for this November’s ballot.

The issue of reforming the LAPD has easily been the most talked about subject in the LA city’s charter reform process, with numerous regular Angelenos who would not have normally paid attention to a seemingly insider-y process such as charter reform going to commission meetings to make public comment both in-person and through written comment. It was also something that the charter reform commission’s staff pushed back against even including on their agendas — and it wasn’t until heavy pushback from members of the public that it got included.

The LA Reporter got an early inkling of regular Angelenos’ interest in police reform when she interviewed people at an El Sereno doughnut shop last fall, as part of a piece kicking off the charter reform process. Manuel Berru, an El Sereno resident, told The LA Reporter it would “be a blessing” if the charter reform commission were actually able to push through changes that bring accountability to the LAPD. It was the one topic that she asked people at the doughnut shop about that didn’t cause their eyes to glaze over.

The possibility that these big topics won’t go to voters in November has raised the hackles of some of the advocates who pushed the hardest for urgency on these issues. In a post festooned with a siren emoji, LA Forward’s deputy directory Godfrey Plata urged people to write to the five City Council members who sit on the Rules committee to urge them to get the police accountability and council expansion items onto the ballot.

“We don’t need to study whether police should be following the First Amendment,” Plata says in the video. “We don’t need to study that the chief of police ought to be able to let go officers with histories of harm. And then there’s this: we all know that our districts here in LA are too large. They got 270,000 residents each, as 15 council members, but here they are saying that further study is required to determine whether or not we should expand. Of course, we should expand the number of districts we have. We’ve been talking about this for years.”

And while the fate of these proposals is uncertain, what we do know is that November’s ballot will feature a big mayoral race showdown. This week, election results determined that Council member Nithya Raman has forced Mayor Karen Bass into a runoff. Incidentally, Bass was a big factor in why the charter reform commission was pressed for time when going through a whole slate of complicated issues including council expansion. Bass dragged her feet in submitting her commissioner appointments, which needed before that panel could even start their work. Those late appointments reduced the charter reform commission’s runway down from more than a year to just eight months. In a recent sit-down interview with POLITICO, Bass said that she was “not really happy with charter reform,” and thinks the process should have been different.

Meanwhile, Bass’s opponent Raman has been more engaged in the charter reform process and was instrumental in getting the charter reform process started. She recently submitted a response to the Fair Rep LA Coalition, which has been advocating for council expansion (they also did polling, which can be found here), in which she wrote that one of the issues she most strongly supports is council expansion.

Police accountability would be an interesting ingredient on November’s ballot, if only because Bass is endorsed by the powerful police officers union, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, and among the proposals getting the boot could be one that would allow the police chief to fire problem officers.

You can read the chief legislative analysts’ recommendations on charter reform proposals here. The agenda for tomorrow’s Rules committee meeting also just dropped. And check out the charter reform council file where you can read more on this issue, as well as submit comment.

LA mayoral candidate Raman did win her own council district, after all

It turns out Nithya Raman did win her own 4th City Council District, which spans from a few communities such as Reseda on the southern edge of the San Fernando Valley, through the Hollywood Hills and into parts of the Eastside.

Paul Mitchell, who runs Political Data (also known as PDI), which provides voter data to campaigns, released a breakdown of the top two vote-getters in the mayor’s race by in each of LA city’s 15 council districts. Mitchell had previously put out the breakdown using election results data from when polls closed on June 2, prior to hundreds of thousands of ballots even being counted. In that chart, Raman didn’t even break the top two in her own district — something that was widely noted by those who weren’t paying close attention. But in reality, once basically all of the ballots were counted (there are just a few thousand conditional and provisional ballots left, plus some vote-by-mail ballots that need to be “cured”), Raman rose to the top to win her own district.

While one would assume an incumbent ought to be winning their own district, there is something to be said for how hard-earned even that might be for Raman in particular. This primary mayoral election would be the second time she has proven she could win a district that had its boundary changed in the 2021 redistricting process. Raman’s district went from being more renter-heavy to including a more significant share of homeowner constituents. That came after her district had been targeted by some of her past colleagues to be placed into a “blender,” in a now infamous, secretly recorded conversation known as the LA Fed tapes that not only featured racist remarks, but conversations around schemes to set future elections to favor or hurt certain council members, through redistricting.

Raman’s 2024 re-election was considered a big test given that, with the make-up of her district having changed, she was partially running a new race for City Council in which she was trying to earn the votes of a different electorate — one that has more homeowners. The latest primary results appears to underscore the resilience of that earlier recent victory.

Meanwhile, the political and policy leanings of renters and homeowners can be starkly dissimilar on some of the most polarizing issues in the city right now. What is considered conventional political wisdom for a homeowner electorate diverges from that of a renter electorate. A USC LABarometer survey from 2024 found that renters tend to support affordable housing and public housing construction, more so than homeowners. Meanwhile, homeowners are more supportive of encampment sweeps than renters tend to be.

The idea that renters prefer Raman is kind of a big takeaway in a mayoral race context. Los Angeles is majority renters. And Raman was initially elected to council on the strength of a renter electorate. Los Angeles’ politics though, has long revolved around a political discourse aimed at a homeowner electorate.

Mitchell teased on Wednesday that he’s working on a tool that can break down the demographics voted, including ones that breaks out the renter demographic. For example, renters tended to prefer Nithya Raman in the LA mayor’s race, with 46% of that group voting for her, versus the 27% who went for Karen Bass. Mitchell says that this tool “will have the data on all the LA County races, and will build out to other counties as well. Will have maps of results, regression analysis and ecological inference to look at.”

A few more things for today… A half-cent sales tax measure to raise revenue for the Los Angeles Fire Department just qualified enough signatures to be placed on the ballot… the LA City Ethics Commission released its quarterly report on lobbying activity, which includes $16 million in lobbyist spending. The report also provides information on lobbyist spending in the recent LA city races, include contributions by lobbyists and groups they’re lobbying on behalf of, that were made to the election campaign of Mayor Karen Bass in the mayor’s race… Mariel Garza of Golden State chats with Republican strategist Mike Madrid about the recent accusations of election rigging in California and Los Angeles’s elections… Mike Bonin, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute and a former LA City Council member, has a new podcast episode of “What’s Next Los Angeles” in which he talks about the recent election results, with segments on Controller Kenneth Mejia’s “landslide re-election victory” and LA County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan’s thoughts on ballot counting and election integrity… and Alissa Walker of Torched continues to deliver the news on the SoFi stadium workers’ labor deal, which has been ratified and includes a $40 per hour wage.

Park rangers carrying guns, World Cup preparations and a square dedicated in Wakiesha Wilson’s name: The City Council’s Public Safety Committee, which meets at 2:30 p.m., is set to take up a motion asking the City Attorney to draft an ordinance authorizing park rangers to carry firearms. The motion has gotten some support from people writing into the council, and the Encino Neighborhood Council, which includes the Sepulveda Basin, submitted a resolution they adopted to support the motion. You can listen to the meeting here... The LA City Council’s Transportation Committee meets at 8:45 a.m., and among the items is a verbal report on how the city is preparing of the World Cup. You can listen to the meeting here... And the City Council’s Public Works Committee, meeting at 2:30 p.m., is set to take up some street dedications, include one to designate an intersection as “Wakiesha Wilson Square,” who died while in LAPD in-custody, after being detained on a minor offense. It took four days before Wilson’s family were even able to learn of her death, after they had been frantically trying to locate her, exposing an “operational failure” by the department, the motion for this item reads. You can listen to the meeting here.

The Los Angeles City Council is meeting today at 10 a.m., and among the items is a request from the City Attorney to spend $500,000 on outside counsel to defend the city against a lawsuit filed by Kristin Crowley, the former fire chief, who has alleged retaliation from the city after the January 2025 wildfires. (Regular agenda, special agenda).

What just happened?

Half-cent sales tax for healthcare services set to pass: For awhile there, it seemed like Measure ER, the half-cent sales tax to fund LA County healthcare services, was on the ropes, but voters appear to have passed his measure. It had earned 50.59% in yes votes, as of Tuesday, June 10, after first surpassing 50% by a teensy bit less on Monday. FYI, ballot counting continues, but is close to wrapping up. And if you want to know what this might mean at the “point of sale,” that depends. The current sales tax in Los Angeles County varies based on which city or unincorporated area you’re in, but it’s generally around 9.75%, so this measure would increase the sales tax to at least 10.25% in many places, including in the city of Los Angeles. But Palmdale’s sales tax is already at 11.25%, and Pico Rivera’s at 10.75%, for example. So just to make sure, you can find the different sales tax rates around the state and county on California Department of Tax and Administration’s website here. Once fully passed and certified, and after the governor signs a bill allowing it go through, the half-cent sales tax would go into effect Oct. 1 of this year, and it would be in place for five years. This fact sheet from the county includes a breadown of where the tax revenue would go, the oversight panel and independent audits that are required, and some history around why the measure was put on the ballot.

Protections against federal immigration authorities, wage increases, and other terms in deal averting strike by SoFi workers: Union representatives for SoFi Stadium workers have reached a deal with management, averting a strike 96% workers authorized about a week ago. There were no immediate details on the terms, but the union’s co-president Kurt Peterson told the LA Times’s Kevin Baxter that they had gotten some “economic gains” (which should relate to compensation), protections against automation, and some victories around a major sticking point, which was around what happens if federal immigration authorities show up. The deal, according to Peterson, includes protections for workers that ensure their personal information is not shared, and that would allow them to leave work if they feel threatened by a federal immigration official’s presence. You can also see for yourself what the union sent to reporters, thanks to Alissa Walker of Torched LA, who shared on Bluesky a screenshot of the key points of deal. They include wage increases, a workforce housing fund, a 75% reduction in subcontracting, restrictions against automation such as no new self-checkout stations and kiosks, protections against surrendering their personal information like immigration status, and the ability to walk off the job (right to strike), if “the union determines in good faith that federal immigration agency actions threaten safety during a World Cup match.” Walker has been covering this story of how labor has been fighting for workers as “mega-events” such as the World Cup and the Olympics come to town, so you can also check out select past coverage on that via that Bluesky thread.

Mayor Karen Bass visits the LA County Democratic Party to give thanks, celebrate, and fire off some zingers at Spencer Pratt: Jasmyne Cannick, a journalist and advocate, posted a video of Mayor Karen Bass going to the monthly LA County Democratic Party general meeting, to celebrate her first place finish and advancement to a November runoff in the mayor’s race, and to thank the party for their support. The video has Bass talking about Spencer Pratt, the opponent that was eliminated from the runoff after Council member Nithya Raman surged ahead in the standings. “For a minute we thought it was going to be Donald Trump Jr. He sent his nephew. And we’re sending him back, not sure where… I never thought he was serious. I just thought he was running to be famous.” Meanwhile, LA Material has a tidbit about how Bass’s brother joined several thousand other plaintiffs in a “master lawsuit” filed against the city around its handling of the wildfires that struck the Pacific Palisades in January 2025.

Soto-Martinez promotes noncitizen voting charter reform measure, ahead of Friday’s wrap-up Rules meeting on charter reform: There’s been some activity around LA city charter reform, including on Tuesday, when Council member Hugo Soto-Martinez held a news conference to highlight a proposal to make changes in the charter that would allow the city to give noncitizens the ability to vote in local elections. It’s just one of many proposals that the City Council is sifting through, and a committee looking at that list is set to wrap up its work at the end of this week. While the agenda’s not out yet, the committee’s chair, Council member Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who also happens to be the City Council President, is expected to schedule a Rules committee meeting for this Friday, June 12, to take up the whole shebang of charter reform, before sending their recommendations onto the rest of the City Council. You can get an overview of the charter reform process at the city from this podcast episode that I did with Raphe Sonenshein, a former executive director of one of the charter reform commissions back in the 1990s, on his podcast Governance Matters.

More oversized vehicle parking restrictions LAMC 41.18 anti-camping zones, this time in the northwest San Fernando Valley, and some questions for the Housing Department: Motions introduced on Tuesday, June 10, include a resolution to designate 41.18 zones oversized vehicle parking restrictions in the northwest San Fernando Valley from Council member John Lee (with an assist from Council member Monica Rodriguez, who seconded), and a motion from Council member Ysabel Jurado calling for a report on how the Los Angeles Housing Departments responds to problem rental properties, citing the numerous complaints filed by Wyvernwood tenants. And Council member Traci Park has motions to issue TEFRA bonds to finance a 49-unit affordable housing project at 3608 Centinela and a 41-unit affordable housing project at 12442 Pacific — these bonds do not obligate any money from the city, but the city does need to sign off on them. Council member Monica Rodriguez also filed a motion to spend $500,000 to go to the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority for use on general operations related to river rangers.

LA County: The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, is meeting today. They’re getting an update on its new homeless services department and what is being done to support LAHSA workers. They’re also taking up reports about the May 22 oil spill in East Los Angeles, a plan for curtailing street racing, and the latest quarterly report from the county’s inspector general on reform efforts at the Sheriff’s Department. You can tune into the meeting here or here. The agendas are here.

LA City: The LA City Council is meeting today, and you can tune in here. The Board of Police Commissioners is also meeting this morning You can tune in live here, or catch the video a few days after here.

Donut shop workers to protest unpaid work: Workers at Yum Yum Donuts on Hoover Street in Downtown LA are protesting $160,000 in unpaid wages, including from being paid less than the state’s $20 minimum wage for uncompensated overtime and off-the-clock work. The workers are also expected to advocate for LA leaders to adopt a fast food fair work ordinance, which could lead to the creation of “know your rights” trainings and scheduling protections for fast food workers. Here’s some past coverage on this proposed legislation, from the LA Times’ Suhauna Hussain. You can rifle through the council file for this LA City Council legislation here. And City Council member Hugo Soto-Martinez, a major champion of the measure, provided an update last year on a key vote on this legislation.

What just happened?

Raman knocks aside Pratt to advance to the November runoff in LA mayor’s race: The Associated Press has declared that Nithya Raman is advancing to a runoff with Mayor Karen Bass in the LA mayor’s race. Monday marked the second day Raman held the second place spot, after first overtaking Spencer Pratt on Sunday. Raman was 3% ahead of Pratt in Monday’s results. Raman released a statement saying that her campaign’s “fight for a healthier, safer, more affordable, and more joyful Los Angeles continues. For too long, City Hall has prioritized giving political advantage to powerful interests that fund elections. Meanwhile, working people pay the price in higher rents, depleted services, and a city that has stopped working for them.” Bass’s political strategist Douglas Herman reacted with a New York Times article in a post saying that “a campaign against @nithyavraman, who allows encampments near schools and cuts the police force, is one @KarenBassLA looks forward to winning.” Bass’s campaign account also posted a reaction, saying that “this is an election with a choice between whether we keep making change together or Nithya Raman who allows encampments near schools and fights against hiring more cops, yet is MIA on saving Hollywood jobs and fighting back when ICE invades LA.”

County health services sales tax, Measure ER, surpasses 50% on Monday. Will this result hold, in today’s update?: Monday’s election results showed that Measure ER, a half-cent sales tax to fund LA County health services, passing for the first time, over the past week of updates. But it is only passing by a hair. Earlier ballots counted had the sales tax failing, but the “yes” votes are now at 50.35%. There will be another update from the LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk after 4 p.m. today. The measure was put on the ballot in reaction to federal funding cuts that have resulted in the closure of hospitals and clinics.

On the anniversary of ICE raids, community groups urge LAPD commissioners, Mayor Karen Bass to follow sanctuary laws: Community, labor and faith groups, including those who are part of the LA Sanctuary Coalition sent a seven-page letter to Mayor Karen Bass and the Board of Police Commissioners urging action on a motion aimed about prevent the LAPD from assisting on immigration enforcement. The group presented to the Board of Police Commissioners on May 12, after an earlier scheduled presentation had been pulled back in April. Police Chief Jim McDonnell happened to not have been present at the meeting where their presentation was made. The June 8 letter calls on the LAPD to update their internal guidelines, as well as restrict their responses to 911 calls made by ICE and other federal immigration enforcement agencies. Last Thursday, June 6, was the anniversary of the start of the ICE raids in Los Angeles.

LA City Council gets a report on short-term rental violators: Better Neighbors LA, which opposes changes that would expand short-term rentals in Los Angeles, sent a letter to the City Council on Monday that lays out 11 illegal short-term rental operators. They calculate that this could amount to as much as $201 million in fines, through April 2026, that could be levied for violating the city’s home sharing ordinance. The fines for April 2026 alone would amount to as much as $4.5 million, according to the letter. The group argues that instead of expanding short-term rentals to increase tax revenues, the city could fine violators.

Karen Bass less vulnerable to shifts in who’s voting: The Ballot Book offers up an analysis on the different sets of election results posted up over the past week in the Los Angeles mayor’s race, highlighting a known phenomenon of older voters turning in their ballots early, and younger voters submitting them last minute. Those who turned in ballots last minute were more likely to vote for Nithya Raman. Toward the end of the analysis, they point out that Mayor Karen Bass was less vulnerable to the shift in demographics. Bass “appears to have a broader coalition that was less sensitive to these changes in ballot timing.” (H/T to John Gonzales on X)

City Attorney candidate to continue sharing message via Substack: Human rights attorney Aida Ashouri earned 10 percent of the votes in the City Attorney race, which was just over 71,589 votes as of Monday. She posted a message on Instagram saying that she plans to post on Substack to “discuss problems in the city and the hurdles I went through as a candidate. I’m going to continue using this platform to educate and build community.”

The LA Reporter tees-up LA city charter reform on podcast with charter alums: I spoke to Raphe Sonenshein for his latest podcast episode, out today, on the charter reform effort happening at LA City Hall, something that I have been covering at The LA Reporter since last year. Sonenshein was executive director of the appointed Charter Reform Commission that was stood up in the late 1990s and that helped lead the effort to make sweeping changes to LA city’s charter. Sonenshein is the author of Los Angeles: Structure of a City Government, which has long been the primer for understanding how LA city government is set up. (It’s a really easy read, and very short — and it is a primer that any regular Angeleno who needs to get stuff done around their community should read.)

On the podcast, I talk to Sonenshein about the scandals that prompted the reform effort, headline issues being taken up like policing and city services, and the shortened timeline this latest charter reform effort is being crammed into. Sonenshein also brought in his rival from the old days, Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law professor at UC Berkeley who served as the chair of the rival 1990s charter reform commission, which was made up of elected members (as opposed to appointed), to discuss the themes from the earlier reform effort. It’s much needed context for the current situation, and their chat lays out the big power struggles that occurred back then and that could be bubbling up in today’s reform effort.

What just happened?

Raman runoff prophecy very likely to be fulfilled: The big election news over the weekend was that Nithya Raman, who some had long projected to be headed to the runoffs, finally did overtake Spencer Pratt in the standings to get into the second spot in the LA mayor’s race, just behind Mayor Karen Bass.

More than 100,000 ballots are supposedly left to count for LA city races, so the election results still aren’t final yet. But it looks as though the vote by mail ballots that were dropped off late, primarily on Election Day, have been breaking for Raman. Even though Bass holds the lead (and based on The LA Reporter’s own back of the envelope projections, that lead should keep holding), Raman was the mayoral candidate of choice for these late voters. In the latest batch of nearly 48,000 ballots counted on Sunday, Raman earned nearly 40% of those votes, followed by nearly 33% that went to Bass, and then 17.75% that voted for Pratt. Obviously these later votes are just a subset of all of the votes, dwarfed those who cast their ballots early enough to get them counted by election night who number nearly 500,000 people.

It bears some repeating that Raman overtaking Pratt was expected, and not some type of anomaly or “cheating.” Pratt is a registered Republican, and no matter how much he may have tried to distance himself from that, Republicans tend not to do well in Los Angeles, except perhaps in certain precincts or districts. Those who follow LA politics even a bit know this, and they also know that typical voting patterns lead to these shifts in the election results standings — conservative voters tend to vote early, while those who favor progressive candidates get their ballots in last minute. Rob Quan, our resident LA politics Nostradamus, was highlighted today in POLITICO’s California Playbook for making an apt prediction about Pratt sliding in the results standings. There was also recently a really good — and detailed — profile of LA city’s voters that uses past election data to describe LA’s political geographies down to the neighborhood level, so that’s going to be worth a read.

A few concessions in LA city races: Hydee Feldstein Soto, who has been ousted from her City Attorney’s post, issued a concession statement on Saturday. You can read it here. Henry Mantel, a tenant’s rights attorney who has so far earned just over 24% of the votes in the 5th City Council District race on LA city’s Westside also posted a concession statement here. And Faizah Malik, a civil rights attorney known for her work on housing issues, also posted a concession statement here, after earning nearly 40% of the votes, which was not enough to oust the incumbent Traci Park in the 11th District City Council seat, which is also on the Westside.

Chinatown tenant association raises awareness of building issues, rent increases: The Bartlett Hill Tenant Association held a news conference on Saturday to highlight rent increases and habitability issues at their Bunker Hill apartment complex in the Chinatown neighborhood. The unit is owned by a nonprofit low-income housing builder Linc Housing. You can view the full news conference here. A representative of the management company for Linc was present at the news conference, but declined to respond immediately to questions by the tenants, and a reporter.

Motions from Friday’s City Council touch on bus shelter grant funding, anti-depressant drug regulations and affordable housing: Los Angeles City Council motions from Friday include a motion from Bob Blumenfield and Nithya Raman that calls for seeking grant-funding for bus shelters, a motion by Heather Hutt to regulate the anti-depressant drug Phenibut, a motion from Ysabel Jurado on the implementation of SB 79, which increases housing density around transit.

Just another Friday at LA City Hall? The LA City Council is meeting at 10 a.m., taking up a short agenda that includes setting the salary for the new Animal Services general manager. Before that the Rules committee met at 9 a.m., but it was on issues other than charter reform, including city stances on a variety of legislation in other jurisdictions. And at 2 p.m., the Civil Rights committee is taking up some appointments to commissions, as well as the appointment of Abigail Marquez as the permanent general manager of the Community Investment Department.

The slow trickle election results continues: The LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk is going through outstanding ballots and posting up another update on the election results between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. today.

What just happened?

‘In-the-red” outside counsel costs irritate LA city leaders on the budget committee: The City Attorney’s Office is “in the red” by at least $4.5 million due to cases being handled by “outside counsel.” On Thursday, the Budget and Finance Committee recommended that part of those costs be covered using $950,000 in surplus dollars from in-house city attorneys retiring. This direction was made in response to a funding request from the City Attorney’s Office for much more than that. At Thursday’s meeting, the budget chair, Katy Yaroslavsky, expressed concern that they seemed to be continually caught off-guard by such outside counsel spending, saying it has felt as though the City Attorney’s Office had gone beyond what was budgeted, and now they’ve come back asking for forgiveness and requesting more funds.

Meanwhile, City Council member Eunisses Hernandez pressed City Attorney staff about what they were doing to hire in-house attorneys to bring down the cost of retaining outside counsel. Barak Vaughn, with the City Attorney’s Office, told Hernandez that they were in the middle of preparing a report on how they were going to hire lawyers in order to “greatly reduce both outside counsel and… the 90 plus cases that all of our litigators are carrying.”

The fate of the mayor’s race still unclear as Thursday’s ballot count update cuts Raman’s distance from second place down to 6%: It is still unclear who will face off against Mayor Karen Bass in a runoff for the mayor’s seat in November’s general election. Council member Nithya Raman is very slowly shaving away the distance between her and Spencer Pratt, who now sits at 2nd place, in the mayor’s race. Raman would be out of the running for mayor if she doesn’t get into second spot, ahead of Pratt, at the end of the days long tallying of remaining ballots cast in the city of Los Angeles. Some are anticipating that this switch in standings is still possible, based on the assumption that later ballots tend to be from voters who favor progressive or Democratic candidates over Republican or conservative candidates. That assumption seemed to be holding, as Raman’s share of the votes in the added ballots has increased over the last few results updates, while Pratt’s share has plummetted. And the turnout is anticipated to be higher than in the last election where the mayor’s seat was on the ballot, but it’s not totally clear how many ballots is actually left to count and if the remaining pool of uncounted ballots leaves enough room for a switch-up to occur. Since the process of counting numerous ballots can take some time, some have filling up their time getting busy in the spreadsheets, to project out the various scenarios around Raman overtaking Pratt — even though in reality none of this changes whatever was already decided when polls closed at 8 p.m. on Tuesday.

President Donald Trump fans flames of election fraud theories around LA election: After every election in Los Angeles, there is a bunch of griping over the slowness of the election results counting process. But this year, the conversation around this got politically heightened, as those pulling for Pratt to be mayor alleged this slow process was a vehicle for election rigging. These theories got fanned by President Donald Trump, who in an unsubstantiated post on Truth Social, claimed that there was “big cheating” going on in the LA mayor’s and California governor’s race. The long wait is actually built into the process, and is a way to make voting accessible to more voters. The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk waits seven days for mail-in ballots, postmarked by election day, to arrive. There was some discussions about cutting down the time for the counting process by removing this seven-day wait, but many defended this by saying that this wait is worth the increase to voter participation.

Streetsblog LA editor writes that city’s street repaving avoids streets with sidewalks, which also allows for skirting accessibility requirements: It appears that the city has switched to mostly repaving streets without sidewalks, which also happens to be mostly in the city’s wealthier neighborhoods. In a piece reprinted in Mar Vista Voice, Joe Linton, editor of Streetsblog LA, writes that he was able to determine that this shift has happened, and he points to how this would allow the city to avoid needing to do the sidewalk curb ramps that are required under accessibility laws and Measure HLA, which requires the city to follow its Mobility Plan adopted in 2015. Linton, FYI, is a litigant against the city, as allowed for under that measure.

The LA City Council’s Budget and Finance Committee is meeting at 9 a.m. Among the numerous items on the agenda is the latest financial status report for the city, that City Administrative Officer released on Tuesday. It relays that the city has a shortfall of about $81.45 million due to overspending and unbudgeted expenses related to the fire department, city attorney litigation and outside counsel costs and the general services department… Among the more than 200 pages of this financial status report is a brief update on increased litigation and outside counsel costs in the City Attorney’s Office, which can be found on page 41. There’s also a list of unfunded budget requests that’s before the City Council, which can be found on page 230, totaling about $54 million.

The LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk will be releasing another update to the election results, as they continue to process outstanding ballots that have yet to be counted. The update should be posted to their election results page between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. The County Clerk will also update the number of outstanding ballots on their X account.

What just happened?

More indications of high turnout in LA County election: Turnout could be pretty high for Tuesday’s primary elections, based on the latest numbers released by the LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk of outstanding ballots they still have to count. The turnout could be at least 36% countywide, although even that should increase once more mailed-in ballots are received. A reminder though that there were some warnings this year that ballots should be mailed in at least seven days before election day, which might or might not affect things depending on whether people were paying attention and heeding those warnings.

Nithya Raman, now in third place, moves closer to runoff spot in mayoral race: We may be starting to see a shift in the mayoral runoff line-up. Election night ended with Mayor Karen Bass and Spencer Pratt positioned to advance to a two-person match-up in November, but those figures were already expected to shift if we base things on how results have shifted dramatically in past elections once more ballots are counted. Council member Nithya Raman, while seemingly a distant third on election night, has started to close in on Pratt to snatch up the second place spot, posting a greater increase in Wednesday’s election results update than Pratt. The ballots being counted include vote-by-mail ballots deposited into ballot drop boxes and at vote centers on election day, so those who did that could have cast votes that may prove pivotal in any switch-ups in the election result rankings over the next few days.

Post-election, Nithya Raman sits out chairing Housing and Homelessness Committee: Raman, who spent the last several months sprinting through a last-minute mayoral run, sat out chairing the Housing and Homelessness Committee. That task was taken up by another member of the committee, Ysabel Jurado.

Controller’s opponent concedes: Zach Sokoloff posted a video on Wednesday conceding in the City Controller’s race, just before another election results update dropped, showing the already wide margin between him and incumbent, Kenneth Mejia, widening even further.

Unexplained delay on contracts for tenants services: Council member Ysabel Jurado’s motion asking for information about unexplained delays to contracts with groups and firms offering services to tenants just got referred to the Housing and Homelessness committee, although it’s unclear when the motion will actually get taken up.

Monterey Park voters ban data centers: The voter-approved measure in Monterey Park to ban data centers is considered the most permanent ban in the country in the sense that it would take another ballot measure in order to repeal it. Monterey Park already has an ordinance banning data centers on its books, but that can be changed with enough votes on the city council there. Groups that pushed for this ban are also fighting data centers in industrial areas like City of Industry, Vernon, Santa Fe Springs and City of Commerce.

Latest LA City Council motions include funding for sweeps, anti-camping zones, affordable housing and summer programming at MacArthur Park bandshell: Motions introduced at Wednesday’s City Council meeting include one by Council member Bob Blumenfield to fund CARE+ overtime costs; a couple of motions to issue bonds to finance affordable housing projects, with one going toward a 41-unit affordable housing project in the 14th Council District at the Lincoln Hotel Apartments, and another for a 46-unit multifamily project called Oatsie’s Place on Sherman Way in the 6th Council District; a motion to create a 41.18 anti-camping zone at North Hills Park in the 7th Council District; a couple motions by Council member Eunisses Hernandez to fund community needs, with one that calls for using funds from her 1st District Council office and philanthropic organizations to offer summer programming at the MacArthur Park bandshell, and another to provide funding for beautifying the Korean Youth and Community Center; and motion by Imelda Padilla to instruct the Tourism department to put together a plan for attracting bookings and programming for the LA Convention Center.

Business group shares update on electoral efforts: Central City Association of Los Angeles’s president Nella McOsker sent out a message in response to Tuesday’s election results, writing in an email saying that this week’s election results are built on what their group has been working toward over the past several election cycles, including two years ago when their political committee spent $1 million in the 2024 primary and general elections. CCA’s PAC this year spent $4.7 million on just the primary election. McOsker wrote that “throughout these elections, we have been intentional about supporting candidates and causes focused on building more housing; investing in public safety, transportation, and infrastructure; and supporting the diverse businesses that provide jobs and put paychecks in Angelenos’ pockets.”

A couple of interesting reads… The LA Times’s music industry reporter August Brown gives some context to the music executives that gave money to to Spencer Pratt’s mayoral campaign. Veteran political journalist Robert Greene offers a theory as to why Matt Mahan’s gubernatorial bid fell flat, pointing to a longstanding history of politicians who have served as mayors of major cities, including Los Angeles, who have had trouble running for the governor’s seat.

Election results will be posted later today after 4 p.m., according to the LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. You can find the update schedule here. The LA City Council and their Housing and Homelessness Committee are are meeting today.

What just happened?

Semi-final election results are in, but there are still many ballots left to count, which could mean that the election result standings reported on Election Night will change dramatically. In the city of Los Angeles, 399,147 ballots have been turned in, which is 18% of the vote, according to PDI’s tracker. In the 2022 primary, when the mayor’s race was last on the ballot, the turnout was 30%, with 662,514 ballots cast. (Further back in the 2017 election, the turnout was much lower at 431,896, but that was when LA city elections were not lined up to high turnout national elections.)

Election night on Tuesday was good to LA city’s incumbents, except for one.

In the LA mayor’s race, Mayor Karen Bass pulled results that makes her pretty confident that she’ll advance to a runoff in November. What’s more up in the air is who will end up joining her. Early Wednesday morning, the standings looked solidly like the top two to advance will be Bass, who ended the first day of counting with 34.78% of the votes, former reality TV personality and Palisade fire victim Spencer Pratt, with 30.44%. Council member Nithya Raman was in 3rd place, with 22.32%. Adam Miller took up the 4th place spot with 4% of the votes, while lefty candidate Rae Huang got 2.78%.

As Pratt did interviews Tuesday night that looked ahead to a runoff race with Bass, and with C-SPAN interpreting Raman’s election party speech as a “concession” (it was not), some are hoping future ballots will favor Raman and boost her past Pratt to put her into the runoff.

Those hopes are being placed onto the numerous ballots yet to be counted, and may swing things dramatically, especially for progressive candidates if past trends hold. In 2024, I wrote about how there could be stunning shifts between results reported out on election night, especially for progressive candidates, when all of the ballots have been accounted for. If the voter turnout is around what it was in 2022, then there could be more than 200,000 ballots left to count.

The most consequential result out of Tuesday night’s election could be the ousting of City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto. She came in third to the top two vote-getters, Marissa Roy and John McKinney. Roy, who is a progressive candidate, received 37% of the votes, followed by McKinney, who got around 33%. Feldstein Soto earned just under 20% of the votes, followed by Aida Ashouri, with 10%.

Feldstein Soto’s re-election bid was hobbled after her endorsement by the politically powerful police officers’ union was snatched from her by McKinney, when a data leak in her office came to light. She appears to be the sole incumbent in the LA city races who was having a terrible night.

In the City Controller’s race, Controller Kenneth Mejia was feeling relieved after cinching his re-election, to the point that he pulled out his dance moves at an election night party. Mejia spent the last few months fending off a Democratic Party backed challenger, Zach Sokoloff, who attempted to prevent Mejia from receiving matching funds by sitting out on a debate, and who got a $7.5 million boost from his mother via an independent expenditure committee that unleashed weeks of attack ads. Mejia won with a wide margin, scooping up 58.87% of the votes, leaving Sokoloff with 41.17%. In LA city elections, a candidate who receives more than 50% of the votes wins outright. Since there are only two candidates in the Controller’s race, the election is being decided in the June primary.

The 11th Council District race on the westside was another highly watched contest that was decided in favor of the incumbent, Traci Park. She was being challenged from the left by housing advocate Faizah Malik. Park commanded 65.33% of the votes, which left Malik to claim 34.67%.

Other incumbents were doing just fine after Tuesday, including two members of the LA City Council’s progressive bloc, Hugo Soto-Martinez and Eunisses Hernandez. Both held onto more than 50% of the votes despite facing multiple challengers each, and they are expected to win their races outright. Hernandez was much closer to the line than Soto-Martinez, with just above 51% of the votes, but some supporters felt comfortable celebrating that due to the trend of later ballots leaning progressive.

Meanwhile, Katy Yaroslavsky, who represents the westside and holds a prominent role as the City Council’s budget chair, held onto her seat with ease. And LA City Council member Tim McOsker, who represents South Bay neighborhoods, had little trouble getting another term after pulling in 76.46% of the votes.

Jose Ugarte, a community outreach director, and Estuardo Mazariegos, director of a community organization, are sitting in the top two for Curren Price’s open council seat in South LA’s 9th District. And in the west San Fernando Valley race for Bob Blumenfield’s 3rd District seat, businessman Tim Gaspar and community advocate Barri Worth Girvan are positioned to head to a runoff.

Monica Rodriguez, who ran unopposed, won her seat before the election season had even unfurled. Nevertheless, based on the semi-final count, at least 20,991 voters filled in the bubble next to her name for good measure.

The LA Reporter has a guide for monitoring the situation of the LA city election: Election Day is here. Long live election day. Polls close today, but it will take several days for the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk to process all of the ballots received. There’s a glut of voter guides, but The LA Reporter is providing a different kind of guide — one that gets you through the days of results trickling out. It focuses more on how to check the results, since knowing what is about to or has already happened, even if we don’t have much control over it now, has its appeal. The results have implications for what’s going to happen in LA politics and policy. And I know you’re excited or nervous about all that if you’re subscribed to newsletters like The LA Reporter, and the LA Squawk Box. Read the guide here.

What just happened?

Should the Sheriff and District Attorney appoint members to LA County’s new Ethics Commission? Veteran journalist Robert Greene provides an update on LA County offcials’ effort to create their first ever Ethics Commission, and one thing that has been a bit of a controversy is around whether the Sheriff and the District Attorney should be able to appoint membera to the critical oversight panel. An interesting detail in the story is that Derek Hsieh, executive director of the association for deputy Sheriffs, ALADS, said he’s okay with excluding the Sheriff from appointing someone to the county’s Ethics Commission. Hsieh sits on the task force implementing the governance changes approved by voters as part of Measure G — which include expanding the Board of Supervisors from five to nine members, and creating an elected CEO whose duties are similar to that of LA city’s mayor — that worked on the proposal for the Ethics Commission. Here’s an earlier story by Greene, for background about this panel getting created.

Huang campaign, yet to unlock matching funds, does last minute fundraising push on eve of election: Rae Huang’s campaign sent out an email to supporters, on the eve of election day, seeking donations and saying they are close to “maximizing” on matching funds. However, there was no matching funds posted for Huang’s campaign as of late morning the next day. The campaign had previously said they were hoping to get a check by last week, as early as Tuesday. Those statements mirrored earlier hopes that also did not ultimately get fulfille as reality. Campaigns can still try to resolve debt, including via matching funds, but that was not a reason specifically stated for the fundraising push by Huang’s campaign on Monday night. Their stated reason was that the funds raised would “have an outsized impact on our ability to finish strong and continue building this movement beyond Election Day,” which appears to hint at the funds being used after. The LA Reporter published a story last week about the Huang campaign’s struggles with qualifying for matching funds, despite making claims as early as two months prior that not only had they unlocked the funds, they were the first ones to do it.

New state law leads to brief hiccup for LA candidates going to vote at the polls: The LA Times reports that some LA city election candidates had some trouble voting, because their names and other information were kept off the ballot for privacy reasons due to a new state law, AB 1392. The candidates who were told they weren’t listed on the voter rolls including Controller Kenneth Mejia, Council member Eunisses Hernandez, and a candidate Maria Lou Colanche. Some were able to fill out provisional ballots, while others filled out and submitted their mail-in ballot. Mejia said there ought to be a way for the poll workers to still have acccess to rolls that list their information. Election officials said candidates were told about the new law when they registered to be on the ballot, and were told they could opt out. The law was proposed, and adopted, after Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her spouse were killed in an attack last June.

There looks to be strong voter turnout this election: PDI’s Paul Mitchell report a huge dump of returned ballots on Monday, June 1, as shown on the tracker created by his firm, which provides voter data to campaigns. You can find PDI’s tracker on ballots returned here. If you poke around on the tracker, you’ll see that turnout before election day was already close to what the 2022 voter turnout ended up being after everything had been counted, indicating potential for strong voter turnout, which is quite interesting for a primary election and one that’s inbetween presidential elections. PDI this year added this prior election data, and it’s been helpful for comparing a comparable election to this one, in terms of turnout, which by the way, is broken down by age and party affiliation — something that still matters despite LA city races being technically non-partisan.

The LA Reporter sits in on an episode of LA Podcast: It’s the last day before election day, and candidates in local races are making their last push. You can catch up with some of what’s going on by listening to the latest LA Podcast episode, “Poll Yourselves Together,” in which I joined LA Forward’s David Levitus and Pat Brown Institute’s Mike Bonin to talk about some election stuff, including the LA mayoral and California governor’s races.

What just happened?

Latest campaign disclosures roll in just before election day: LA city and school district candidates filed their last set of campaign disclosures before election day, last Friday. You can dig through them here. You can also monitor spending above $1,000, which must be posted within 24-hours. The next report that campaigns need to file doesn’t come until after June 2, election day. Those are due to the Ethics Commission on July 31 and need to disclose fundraising and spending details.

One major headliner in the campaign money dump is that Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, gave to mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, as reported by Unrig LA, which described it as a “rightward lurch” by the tech titan. Pratt, who has tried to fend off characterizations of his candidacy as MAGA (including rejecting President Donald Trump’s recent endorsement of his bid for LA mayor) and downplayed his Republican Party voter registration, reframed Brin’s support as a turn toward “common-sense.”

Ground Game LA’s voter guide now also recommends Nithya Raman for mayor: Knock LA, a publication funded by progressive political organization Ground Game LA, has updated their voter guide’s mayoral endorsement to recommend that people vote for either Rae Huang or Nithya Raman. Previously the guide had only recommended Huang. The reasoning given for the update was Raman’s recently added policy platforms on immigration and public safety, including that Raman now also calls for the removal of police chief Jim McDonnell.

Yes, LA voters actually can cast ballots in-person, contrary to Trump’s claim: The LA County Registrar/Recorder had to do some debunking of President Donald Trump’s claim that LA doesn’t have voting booths. In fact there are 646 vote centers with voting booths sprinkled throughout Los Angeles County. You can look up the nearest vote center here.

LA City Council member Ysabel Jurado introduces Flock motion, but how far will it go?: Council member Ysabel Jurado presented a motion last Friday calling on the Board of Police Commissioners to “refrain from entering into any new Memoranda of Understanding, Contracts, or other Agreements, or implement any pilot programs with Flock Safety or its affiliates.” Her motion also calls for a report on existing contracts with Flock and the locations of Flock cameras, for an analysis of whether any data sharing with Flock has violated the city’s sanctuary ordinance, and a report on a plan to remove Flock devices. You can follow the progress of Jurado’s motion here. The motion is assigned to the Public Safety Committee, which is chaired by Council member John Lee, who decides when or if the item is scheduled.

OC chemical leak prompts LA city council member Tim McOsker to seek scrutiny of harbor area chemical plants: The recent chemical leak in Orange County has reminded harbor area LA city council member Tim McOsker that residents of San Pedro have also had some concerns about chemical plants in their area — namely Rancho LPG Holdings, LLC and JCI Jones Chemicals, Inc. “Both the Rancho LPG and JCI sites currently have outstanding violations or ongoing compliance and enforcement matters and, given the potentially catastrophic consequences associated with a major hazardous materials incident, the city must immediately evaluate all available mechanisms to eliminate or substantially reduce these risks,” a motion McOsker introduced last Friday reads. The progress of this latest motion — which adds to others introduced over the years since as early as 2011 — can be tracked here. This has been assigned to the planning committee (known a PLUM for short), and that committee’s schedule is set by Council member Bob Blumenfield.

Measure ULA ad hoc committee says no to ballot measure, after hearing staff report on transfer tax: The ad hoc committee on Measure ULA, which is a vote-approved transfer tax measure that funds tenant protections an affordable housing, has recommended changes that won’t need to go to the ballot. They chose not to recommend a measure to lower the tax. But there could still be further debate on the issue. The ad hoc committee consists of just three council members, and their recommendations would need the approval of the full 15-member City Council. And the battlefront over Measure ULA could switch to the ballot box in November, one that could be between two competing measures. Meanwhile, Friday’s meeting contributed additional analyses to the pile of conflicting takes on the effect of Measure ULA, which some have blamed for suppressing housing production, and in turn, tax revenue for the city. This time the assessment came from city legislative staffers who told the committee that it was too early to tell if ULA has had a serious impact on tax revenue — especially since there are other economic forces that were also in play. And city staffers recently obtained detailed data from the County Assessors office and have been poring through those. They pointed to an upward trend in tax revenues to the city. You can listen their report to the ad hoc committee here.

LA county clears encampment on the westside: LA County officials with the new Department of Homeless Services and Housing announced on Friday that they conducted a “Pathway Home” encampment clearing operation near Inglewood and Westchester. County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, LA city Council member Traci Park and the city of Inglewood partnered on this operation. Officials say that 29 people were brought into interim shelter as part of the two-day operation that took place May 27 an 28.

A few more notes… LA Department of Water and Power is considering setting up an armed police unit to go after copper theft. The LA city Office of Finance last Thursday submitted its latest investment report, with information current as of April 30, 2026.

An LA City Council committee, meeting at Van Nuys City Hall, will be taking up some proposals to scale back Measure ULA, a transfer tax on high-valued properties that funds affordable housing and tenant protections, at an 8:15 a.m. meeting today. Measure ULA is also being blamed for suppressing housing production. One key revision (CF 26-0782) being proposed would lower the tax amount. Much of the urgency around this comes from the fact that a ballot measure expected in November sponsored by Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association could end up nullifying such transfer taxes, if passed by voters. The state legislature is also in the middel of working out their own legislation on transfer taxes at the moment.

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Policing reform gets expedited, and city workers warn of burnout, during LA city charter hearing: Police reform measures, including one that would allow the City Council to set LAPD policy, advanced out of a key City Council committee that’s deliberating what charter reform measures should go on the November ballot. LA city workers filled the City Council chamber on Thursday for the meeting in order to speak against some charter reform measures that they said would hurt their civil services protections. Some voiced the mood of the city’s workforce, with one saying that a lack of investment in them “continues to burnout and crush city employees." At the moment, there are some proposals for changing charter reform that would allow the city to have more flexibility to hire from outside of the city worker pool. Those are proposed by the personnel department. Meanwhile, there aren’t any proposals from the city worker unions, because a meet and confer process with them has yet to begin.

Take the rent gougers to court! The Rent Brigade, a scrappy volunteer group that leapt into action after last year’s catastrophic wildfires, announced on Thursday the first rent-gouging lawsuit filed using a city law that allows people to take their landlords to court, rather than hold their breath for government officials to go after scofflaws who take advantage of desperate people trying to find a place to live after losing their homes in disasters like the wildfires. The lawsuit was filed by Candy and Randall Renick, who were charged nearly $15,000 in rent per month at a Glassell Park home, after escaping the Eaton Fires in Altadena. The LAist’s David Wagner reported that when they reached out to the landlords, one of them cut the call short before answering questions and the city attorney’s office failed to respond to the publication’s question about why their office did not pursue the case beyond sending a warning letter. The Rent Brigade announced the lawsuit as a way to also let people know that if government officials aren’t up for the job, people can still seek recourse through a private lawsuit. To help with that process, the Rent Brigade volunteers have also created a tool, built on Zillow data their group gathered over several months, that helps people determine if they could be a victim of rent-gouging.

Watch out, there is a fake poll circulating out there, claiming to be a new one from Emerson College Polling that shows mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt in the lead. It’s making the rounds just as the LA Times-sponsored poll shows Pratt out of the two-person runoff in November. He was at least 4 percentage points behind LA Mayor Karen Bass and Council member Nithya Raman who came out at the top of that poll in a dead heat.

Was lefty mayoral candidate Rae Huang platforming Spencer Pratt (who was recently endorsed by President Donald Trump) when she quote tweeted a post praising her? Whatever Huang may have meant, the now deleted post appears to have turned some folks off of voting for Huang, with others wishing they could rescind the votes they have already cast for her. Pratt made his pro-Huang post shortly after the LA Times poll showed him in third place, and some say Huang may have walked into a trap. Pratt’s praise could be a way to help himself, since Huang’s voters are being eyed by the Raman campaign, since the two candidates may be vying for the same voter pool. If Pratt splits those votes, Pratt could have a chance at slipping into second place, which is enough to keep him in contention by getting him into a runoff in November. Huang replaced her previous post with one saying Pratt doesn’t “deserve any voice or sound bite in my Campaign,” to which Pratt posted a meme of himself elaborately rolling his eyes.

A heated exchange between politicos on Thursday warrants a looking eyes emoji 👀. State Sen. Henry Stern took to X on Thursday calling a new campaign ad from 26th district state senate candidate Wendy Carrillo’s campaign pointing to her opponent Sara Hernandez taking donations from “leadership from AIPAC,” antisemitic. Carrillo, pointing to Israel’s right-wing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, responded to Stern’s post sayin that “Anti-Zionism is not Anti-semitism.” The LA Reporter wrote about the donations last September and October.

Noting a few more things… LA city’s $15 billion budget for next year was signed by Mayor Karen Bass on Thursday. The mayor is also now chair of Metro board again, after her colleagues voted to appoint her.