What just happened?

Los Angeles voters — who recently polled at 40% undecided on the mayor’s race — were set to hear from mayoral candidates this Wednesday during a televised debate on Fox 11. But that candidate forum was canceled on Monday, after City Council member Nithya Raman, withdrew, following on the heels of Mayor Karen Bass canceling her appearance at the last minute just a day before.

That left two candidates in the debate — Rae Huang and Adam Miller. And so, the Pat Brown Institute, the League of Women Voters of Greater Los Angeles, and Fox 11 who were hosting the debate decided to cancel the whole thing. A news release from the organizers of the debate stated: “With only two candidates remaining, the event partners have agreed not to proceed.”

Bass canceled in order to go to Sacramento to talk to lawmakers about the Olympics, and to advocate for homelessness, housing and wildfire recovery funding. And Raman pulled out because she had originally signed up to be in the debate with the expectations that she could debate Bass, according to a news release from organizers. The Wednesday debate had been set to follow two previous debates, neither of which included Huang or Miller. Raman debated Bass at the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association forum last Tuesday. The next day, Raman, Bass and Spencer Pratt took part in a televised NBC4 debate.

Miller, who just earned the LA Daily News’s endorsement, weighed in Monday about the debate getting canceled. “If you can’t be bothered to show up for a debate, why should voters think you’ll ever show up for them as Mayor?” Miller said in a statement posted to social media. “I’ll debate anyone, anytime, anywhere. Voters deserve to hear the truth, and I’m the only candidate with the expertise, leadership, and results they can trust.”

Emel Shaikh, a spokesperson for Rae Huang’s campaign, said in a statement that Bass and Raman backing out of two recent debates (including one that was being organized by the TransLatin@ Coalition, but was subsequently canceled, in a similar way to Wednesday’s Fox 11 debate) was a “trend that demonstrates their inability to show up for the public unless it’s politically advantageous to them.”

“These establishment politicians continue to gatekeepe power in their small circle, denying the public the opportunity to hear from candidates critical of their poor leadership and new ideas that call for real systemic change for the working class.”

Raman held a news conference on Monday to discuss her opposition to Bass’s plan to increase vacation rental units in Los Angeles, which was scheduled to be taken up the next day, on Tuesday. She took some other questions including one from The LA Reporter about the debate, asking whether she foresaw herself debating the other candidates.

“I look forward to another opportunity to debate the leading candidates in this race and other candidates as well,” Raman said. “And hope that we have that opportunity coming forward.”

After Bass backed out, Wednesday’s debate was set to have the same lineup as the Streets for All debate held back on March 23. It was a streamed debate, and can be viewed here. That one was primarily focused on housing and transportation, given the organizers’ advocacy focus, but it provided a broad range of views on major issues that local candidates have a direct role in which they can play, such as Measure ULA, a property transfer tax that is being heavily debated.

Meanwhile, the TransLatin@ Coalition’s canceled debate did yield two separate roundtable discussions with Huang and Raman (the group said they reached out to five candidates to do the talks, but only two responded). Alex Cohen, a Spectrum News host and anchor, and Thandiwe Abdullah, with the People’s Budget LA, conducted the talks. Huang’s discussion with the group can be viewed here. And Raman’s discussion is available here.

Climate event: Sammy Roth of Climate-Colored Goggles reports that Marta Segura, the city’s chief heat officer was recently let go by Mayor Karen Bass (Roth also just released an exclusive look at mayoral candidate Nithya Raman’s climate policies).

While some might wonder why a city needs a “chief heat officer,” Roth writes that “climate tends to get lost when it’s not your main job. Hence the Climate Emergency Mobilization Office, which is charged by City Council with coordinating between agencies and marshaling resources in advance of heat waves, with a special eye toward protecting the most vulnerable. That includes the elderly, folks who can’t afford air conditioning and homeless individuals.”

And rising temperatures related to the climate crisis is a growing concern among health professionals. During a recent, unusual heat wave in March, I wrote in The LA Reporter about findings from a survey that UCLA and USC researchers did among unhoused people as part of a longitudinal study, that cited numerous health dangers of extreme heat exposure and the lack of public infrastructure and resources available. LA County has already released a heat action plan, and the city is supposed to be putting one out too at some point. Roth provided an update in his dispatch on LA city’s heat officer, Segura, getting fired saying that the mayor’s office subsequently provided him a statement (after initially not responding) saying they were getting ready to appoint a replacement who would shepherd the mayor’s climate action plan, and that work includes a heat action plan.

Big money lifts all spending: So when candidates take part in the matching funds program, it limits how much they can be spend in those races. After all, the focus of such a program is to both even out the playing field in elections, and to make it so that the size of candidates’ campaign war chests isn’t the main star of the show. But the fact is, money can be unavoidable, and when there are other ways large amounts of money can be spent in a race — for example by an independent expenditure committee — those participating in a matching funds program aren’t expected to continue operating at a disadvantage.

Well, that scenario just happened in the mayor and city attorney’s races in Los Angeles City. Due to higher amounts of spending by independent committees — separate from candidate campaigns — the matching fund limits were just lifted so that everyone has the ability to keep up.

In the mayor’s race, the spending ceiling was lifted after Streets for All Los Angeles spent to support mayoral candidate Nithya Raman, and that spending was preceded by spending opposing and supporting candidates Mayor Karen Bass and Spencer Pratt, who is better known as the star of reality show “The Hills” but also describes himself as a “community advocate” on the ballot. In the City Attorney’s race, independent spending supporting Marissa Roy, and opposing Hydee Feldstein Soto triggered the lifting of the ceiling. The LA City Ethics Commission has more details on the thresholds, rules and reasoning around all this here.

What’s happening this week?

Immigrant rights advocates to finally present to the Police Commission: The LA Sanctuary Coalition is scheduled to present on Tuesday to the Los Angeles Police Commission. The police oversight panel is also set to hear presentations by LAPD staff on any interactions police officials might have had with federal immigration enforcement officials. Last month, a presentation by the LA Sanctuary Coalition was abruptly pulled from the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioner’s agenda. The groups have been calling for the LAPD to more heavily restrict officers’ involvement in ICE activity, including when responding to 911 calls from federal immigration officials. Coalition members show up in large numbers last month to demand an answer for why their presentation got pulled.

At that earlier meeting on April 7, several members of that coalition cited LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell’s history of being a prominent opponent of “sanctuary” legislation at the state level while he was LA County Sheriff. But McDonnell might not be in attendance on Tuesday. He happens to be scheduled to be out of town during the entirety of this week. He is set to attend National Police Week, based on this request for travel authority that was heard at the earlier, April 7 police commission meeting.

Contentious 1,600 unit residential project in Skid Row, near Little Tokyo, up in PLUM on Tuesday: A major development project proposing nearly 1,600 residential units in downtown Los Angeles, in the Skid Row and on the edge of Little Tokyo, is up for a vote on Tuesday, in the Los Angeles City Council’s Planning and Land Use Committee. The project, at Fourth and Central, is planned for a 7-acre site that now includes a cold storage facility. It is being appealed, and the project is opposed by community groups including the Little Tokyo Community Council and Nikkei Progressives. The Arts District Little Tokyo Neighborhood Council, meanwhile, has submitted a community impact statement, that supports the project moving forward.

Proposal to expand the vacation rental ordinance also up in PLUM on Tuesday: At the same Planning and Land Use Committee meeting, a proposal to loosen up LA’s short-term rental regulations is being taken up. The council file on the issue includes an April 2 report that includes a proposal for a temporary program to raise the cap on vacation rentals allowed in Los Angeles.

Board of Supervisors to take up issue of federal immigration officials at LA hospitals: The Board of Supervisors will be taking up a motion by board chair, Hilda Solis that bills itself as an effort to protect immigrants at medical facilities amid President Donald Trump’s ICE and federal immigration enforcement campaigns.

Mayor Karen Bass drops the ball on Wednesday debate, to travel to Sacramento instead: There will be another televised mayoral debate this week, this time on Fox 11, organized by the Pat Brown Institute and the League of Women Voters of Greater Los Angeles, on Wednesday, but it won’t include Mayor Karen Bass. She who was originally scheduled to be part of it, but withdrew at the last minute. Her spokesperson told the LA Times she’ll be in Sacramento instead. This decision didn’t go over well with the debate organizers, who issued a letter calling her withdrawal from the debate “disappointing.” They included a copy of the signed candidate response form in which Bass confirmed she would take part in the debate on May 13.

Mike Bonin, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute, offered some behind the scenes context on the scheduling of the debate, telling the LA Times in a text, “To be very clear, the mayor CHOSE this date and the other candidates adjusted their schedules accordingly.”

Organizers of Wednesday’s debate wrote in their letter announcing Bass’s withdrawal that their groups have a “track record” of holding debates that are “fair, non-partisan, substantive and focused on issues that matter the most to voters.”

This debate is set to follow on the heels of last week’s NBC4 forum in which candidates were instructed to give brief answers to a battery of questions on substantive topics. Some — including LA Times columnist Steve Lopez — panned that format as a disservice to voters.

City Attorney candidate forum on Wednesday, but there is a fee at the door: There will be a town hall on Wednesday for the City Attorney’s race organized by the Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles County Bar Association. The event is $10 for members of the WLALA, and $25 for non-members.

Proposal to take the Olympics out of the Olympic Wage up on Wednesday: A proposal by the City Council’s leadership to put off a wage increase to $30 for airport and hotel workers by the 2028 Olympics, is on the agenda for Wednesday. A motion by Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Council member John Lee to delay the increase to 2030, two years after the Olympics, is scheduled for the City Council meeting on that day.

Charter reform and the budget closing up the week: Watch for the City Council’s rules committee taking charter reform back up on Thursday, and the Budget and Finance committee returning on Friday to deliberate over the city’s fiscal year 2026-27 budget.

What just happened?

Two more ideas for November’s ballot, one to check the mayor’s power, the other to tax golf courses: LA City Council member Ysabel Jurado authored a motion last Friday, that would place a measure on the November ballot that calls for giving the City Council more power over a role that Los Angeles’s mayor now has more control over right now — which is to remove general managers.

Jurado’s motion, seconded by Bob Blumenfield, states that the city “has long operated under a governance structure that concentrates significant appointment and removal authority in the hands of the Mayor, while leaving the City Council with limited ability to act when a General Manager fails to effectively serve the public or uphold the responsibilities of their office.”

And Council members Adrin Nazarian, Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Eunisses Hernandez say they want to try to impose a $4 per square mile parcel tax on “non-profit private country/golf clubs (social clubs).” The council members envision the tax revenue would be used on public infrastructure, initiatives supporting the film and television industries, and programs for homeownership.

Both proposals calls for the proposals to be placed as measures on the November ballot.

Settlement in lawsuit challenging LAPD response to Garcetti protest: The City Council on Friday approved a $287,626.44 settlement in a Black Lives Matter Los Angeles case against the city related to the LAPD’s response the Garcetti protest, calling on President Biden not to appoint him ambassador to India.

What if you got to choose your opponent? The LA County Federation of Labor is spending money on a video that many are saying appears to do a good job of promoting mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt, even though the labor organization backs his opponent, Mayor Karen Bass. Observers are saying this is an attempt to line up an ideal opponent for Bass to face off and win against in the November runoff. This is because there is a high likelihood that instead of being able to win the seat outright in the June primary, Bass will be forced to face off with one other opponent in a runoff in November. Aside from Pratt, Bass faces a viable challenge from former ally and now opponent, City Council member Nithya Raman, and some are predicting she would be a more formidable opponent than Pratt in a county where Republican candidates don’t fare well. And pundits have weighed in on this from across the political spectrum. They include Hasan Piker on the (extreme?) left, and Susan Shelley, a conservative pundit and member of the Southern California News Group editorial board, who wrote on X.com on Sunday that this could be a risky gambit by Bass: “This labor-funded ad belongs to the genre of ‘elevate the candidate we can beat into the top two,” Shelley writes. “It’s obviously aimed at Republican voters in Los Angeles. Could backfire by helping Pratt’s fundraising across the city, county, state and country. Bass could be another Hillary [Clinton].”

The LA Daily News backs Adam Miller for mayor: Meanwhile mayoral candidate Adam Miller, who has been polling in the single digits, has been grinding away — and pouring in his own substantial fortunes — to increase his standing. Those efforts might be bearing some fruit. The Southern California News Group editorial board that does endorsements for the LA Daily News just came out with its endorsement in the mayor’s race, and they’re backing Miller. Their endorsement piece describes Miller as “running for the right reasons and with the right ideas to put LA back on course.”

Zev’s face startles at D Line opening: One big name attendee of the D Line opening ceremonies, Zev Yaroslavsky, drew some shock and ire from transit advocates, as well as other observers of transportation-related politics. That’s because the former longtime LA county supervisor (he also served a much shorter stint amid his 40 year political career on the LA City Council) is known for ruining or delaying the Purple Line extension that is now known as the D Line extension, and other subway projects in Los Angeles County. He sponsored a 1998 referendum that basically stopped local county sales taxes from being used subway projects, something he did in response to a methane explosion in the Fairfax area that destroyed a Ross Dress for Less, forcing transportation and other public officials to seek funding in other ways, and delaying planned projects for years. What was once known as the Purple Line (some at the opening wore purple) and now is known as the D Line, finally opened on Friday with stops along Wilshire Boulevard, at La Brea, Fairfax and La Cienega. But that’s not the only project affected by Zev’s back-in-the-day activism. When the Gold Line Eastside Extension opened in 2009, Supervisor Gloria Molina was still noticeably upset that they had to pivot from constructing it as a subway extension of the Red, now B Line, because of the referendum.

Roundup of BIG MONEY in LA city’s elections: John McKinney in the City Attorney’s race, is set to get a boost from a $1.5 million contribution from an Airbnb-funded committee to a Central City Association committee supporting his campaign.

His opponent, deputy attorney general Marissa Roy, said in a statement that this type of money comes into the race as she poses “a credible threat to all companies in Los Angeles seeking to take advantage of working people.”

“These corporations know I have the track record to hold them accountable — and are willing to place a $1.5 million dollar bet on a late-entry candidate to stop our momentum,” Roy said in a statement.

Human rights attorney Aida Ashouri responded saying that the short-term rental company Airbnb had previously donated money to support the current city attorney, Hydee Feldstein Soto, “but has recently shifted its support to John McKinney, another conservative opponent. Their donations show these candidates’ support for big tech will result in no accountability as these corporations continue to take our housing units for their corporate profits!”

In the City Controller’s race, Zach Sokoloff’s mother antes up with $1.5 million to bring her support for her son’s run for office to $4 million. And that support is funding three videos attacking incumbent Kenneth Mejia that cites an April 2023 LA Times story in which volunteers for his campaign described him as a “toxic” boss in social media posts and interviews. Mejia released a response describing the attack videos as “deceptive” and saying that those putting it out dug up an “old story” that “wasn’t true back then and was publicly addressed as well.” One of the people who spoke to the Times back in 2023 about their experience said that she did not want “cancel” Mejia, and that she wanted him to “do a better job as a boss.” At the time, Mejia responded three months later with an interview with Spectrum News’s Kate Cagle, telling her that the allegations were “simply untrue,” adding that he though “these allegations that they’re making are so absurd or not true that it’s coming from a place of hurt, and we understand that. Especially if we had that relationship, of being close.”

And in the mayor race, Nithya Raman receives another check for matching funds that puts her above $1 million. While it’s big money, those are public funds that candidates can unlock by seeking small-dollar donations of no more than $257 each. The program is aimed at diverting candidates’ loyalties away from wealthy donors and to focus more of their attention to the issues affecting a wider set of constituents.

And while there isn’t much information out there about Neighbors First, a “dark money” group that’s been funding mailers in several LA city races, including council races in the Eastside’s 1st district, and the westside’s 11th district, the spending should be big. And there is some information trickling out. On Saturday, the LA Times had a story on Neighbors First that finds a connection to a former aide for Gil Cedillo, the councilman that 1st District incumbent Eunisses Hernandez ousted in 2022. The group also has since filed some spending with the Ethics Commission, posting $366,158.72 in a “major filer” disclosure that was spent on lobbying on the city’s anti-camping law, Los Angeles Municipal Code 41.18, affording housing, police funding and emergency response, and the fire in the Pacific Palisades.

Measure ULA’s authors present to City Council ad hoc committee, amid Howard Jarvis threat: An ad hoc committee that is exploring the Measure ULA property transfer tax that is helping to fund the city’s tenant protection programs and affordable housing construction heard a presentation on Fiday from panel representing the United to House LA, the group that authored and pushed for the tax’s passage in 2022.

The panel told the Ad Hoc Committee on Measure ULA that revenues from the tax have been on an upward trend, recovering from initial delays that were largely unrelated to the transfer tax itself, but rather to bureaucracy and wider economic forces. The funds, they said, have since been important in preventing people from becoming homeless and for making it possible to fund affordable housing projects, including alternative forms housing such as community land trusts, which are part of the category of housing called “social housing” that doesn’t treat housing as a real estate investment.

Joe Donlin, the director of the coalition, told the committee that they continue “to welcome a thoughtful, data-driven policy evaluation process.”

“Our position continues to be — not that ULA is infallible — but that it is too early to do the level of analysis in a meaningful way that should be required before overturning the articulated will of nearly 60% of the voters of Los Angeles,” Donlin said. “This measure is owed the time and the substance of the analysis, in an environment of certainty, in an environment where its opponents aren’t frequently given a microphone. It’s impossible to look at any data, including our own, and feel like it’s not been compromised.”

The full meeting of that ad hoc committee meeting can be heard here.

What’s happening today? It’s time to ride the D. Measure ULA transfer tax authors up in committee. LA City Council takes up BLM-LA lawsuit related to LAPD’s response to Garcetti protest.

If you’re going west on Metro’s D Line today, you can ride it a little longer before reaching the end of the line. I know you’re not under a rock, so you already know that this is because it’s opening day for three new stations along Wilshire Boulevard, at La Brea, Fairfax and La Cienega. These stops extend the line past Wilshire and Western in Koreatown where for the past thirty plus years, the D Line had ended for riders. While those opening day festivities are happening, the Measure ULA ad hoc committee will be quietly meeting at 8:15 a.m. (video link) to hear a presentation from the United to House LA Coalition, the group that wrote and campaigned for the passage of the transfer tax, which funds tenant protection programs, affordable housing construction and social housing. And finally, the City Council is taking up a recommendation to pay a “monetary sanction” in lawsuit filed by Black Lives Matter Los Angeles related to LAPD’s response to a 2020 protest outside then-Mayor Eric Garcetti’s residence.

What just happened?

Langer’s Deli owner calls for ending needle distro. A financial bomb looms over city budget. Jury sides with LAPD in 2021 shooting of 14-year-old girl.

The owner of Langer’s Deli, who got a question in to the mayoral candidates during Wednesday’s NBC4 debate, held a news conference Thursday to call for the city to end a needle distribution program, arguing that this harm reduction public health program was instead causing harm, according to a KTLA article by Jocelyn Fiset and Kareen Winter.

The deliowner, Norm Langer, and another property owner, John Alle, argued that the mayor and the council person for the area needed to end these types of programs, and they said the city also shouldn’t be giving out Narcan, which stops overdoses.

For context, harm reduction methods, not just for drug use, is an accepted public health strategy that’s based on the idea that outright prohibition of something is usually a recipe for failure, and usually makes a matter worse. The LA County Department of Public Health recently launched a campaign to to reduce the stigma around services meant to prevent people from dying.

Money is tight and there is a potential financial bomb ahead for next year’s budget, as Los Angeles city leaders presided over the Budget and Finance Committee on Wednesday, as they wrapped up its review of the mayor’s budget, ahead of budget votes in the upcoming weeks. Budget officials told the committee that there is a November ballot measure that could repeal the city’s business gross receipts tax, removing more than $800 million revenue annually for the city — a potentially disastrous outcome. And the city is full steam ahead to revamp its LA Convention Center, a project with a high price tag. Because of the need to get a good bond rating as they get ready to borrow money for the project, city leaders seemed to be on their Ps and Qs to show they were working hard to improve the city’s financial footing, including taking steps to reduce their very high liability costs.

The committee also forwarded on some instructions to their legislative staff to try to find funding for select line items cut out of, or that were not included in the mayor’s budget, such as funding for deportation defense and the city’s animal shelters to be able to let out the dogs out of their kennels for play time.

There was also some debate over funding for new police vehicles to use for the Olympic Games. The committee also discussed an upcoming report on consolidating the city’s unarmed crisis response programs. Some had asked about adding funding in the budget for the program, but City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo told the committee he was recommending that the program not be expanded until after the report’s been done.

The committee also recommended taking out a contentious proposal by the mayor to loosen short-term rental regulations as a way to bring in more tax revenue, although that was only done because some members argued for moving the debate to a different venue — namely, a Planning and Land Use Management Committee next Tuesday.

Also on Wednesday, the LA Times’s Libor Jany reported that a jury has sided with the LAPD in a lawsuit by the family of a 14-year-old girl who was killed in 2021 by a police officer in a North Hollywood Burlington Coat Factory department store. The shooting touched off public outcry, with some calling for criminal charges against the officer. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit argued that the police officer who shot the girl should have slowed down. During the trial, the officer testified that he thought he had been going into an active-shooter situation and that the suspect was holding a gun (it turned out the suspect was holding a bike lock). The police chief at the time had also found the officers’ actions to be out of policy, although the commission was more forgiving, finding that he violated fewer of the police department’s policies.

What just happened?

“It’s a simple yes or no question”: Spencer Pratt made his debate stage debut at Wednesday’s mayoral debate with Mayor Karen Bass and Council member Nithya Raman. The debate, televised on NBC4 and Telemundo, moved briskly with the three candidates being asked to give mostly brief, and occasionally “simple yes or no,” responses to meaty questions on topics like the 2025 wildfires, the size of the police force, their strategies for solving homelessness, and whether they support an ordinance to ban encampments in front of schools.

At one point, the moderator, KNBC anchor Colleen Williams, asked each of the candidates if they would end a city-run needle distribution program, with a prompt of “Yes or no?” She said this question came from the owner of Langer’s Deli. Bass answered that yes she would. Raman said she would not. Pratt said, “Absolutely no needles and pipes for drug addicts on the street, ever.” Williams said she would take Pratt’s answer to mean a “yes.”

The replay of the debate can be viewed here. The LA Times provided live coverage of the debate, breaking out the questions asked and answered into separate posts.

Gustavo Arellano at The LA Times crowned Karen Bass and Pratt the winners of the debate, while declaring Nithya Raman the loser, with Arellano citing that Raman became tongue-tied at different moments in the debate.

Pratt won’t be at another debate/candidate forum, to be televised by Fox 11, that’s scheduled for less than a week later, on May 13. The debate/forum will feature two additional candidates not featured in Wednesday’s — Adam Miller and Rae Huang. Raman and Bass will be participating, but not Pratt.

Also, the recording of an earlier debate, featuring just Karen Bass and Nithya Raman held the night before in Sherman Oaks, has been posted.

DOJ does drug enforcement at MacArthur Park: Earlier on Wednesday, the Department of Justice conducted a drug enforcement raid in MacArthur Park, with authorities arresting 18 people. Those arrested were expected to appear in court on Thursday, according to Sam Levine of The Guardian. The DOJ’s press release can be read here.

LA City Council sends pretextual stops ban to the police commission: Also on Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council approved a motion calling the Los Angeles Police Department to stop pulling people over for minor violations as a pretext for searches and other more serious enforcement activity. Such pretextual stops have long been considered discriminatory, and multiple members of the City Council shared stories of how such stops affected themselves and their loved ones.

They include Council member Heather Hutt, who said that she has had to instruct her sons who are Black on how to behave around police officers in order to avoid being killed or injured by an officer during a stop. Hutt, who was in tears as she spoke in anticipated of voting on the proposed ban, said those talks she has with her sons are “born out of love, but fueled by terror.”

And Council member Ysabel Jurado said that as a “as the daughter of Asian American Filipinos, and even though this issue does not disproportionately affect us, I stand in solidarity.” She added that “as a queer woman whose trans community is disproportionately impacted by interactions with PD [the police] and how this breaks trust, I think this vote is so important.”

Since the LA City Council is not authorized to set policy, as they are with most other city departments, on policing matters, the motion they approved actually requests, rather than instructs, the Board of Police Commissioners, the body that does have authority to issue policy instructions to the police chief, to adopt a pretextual stops ban.

Although the effort to ban pretextual stops has been going on for many years, this latest version grew out a now six-year-old motion authored by Council member Harris-Dawson and now-former City Council member Mike Bonin.

“We have a society where we enforce lots of rules. Tenant harassment, embezzlement, wage theft, tax evasion, illegal demolitions. We do all of those things,” Harris-Dawson said before the vote. “Those people never get confronted with a worker with a gun. We never send a person with a gun to say you took away their overtime pay. We don’t do that. And the suggestion that we should do it would be immediately viewed as absurd. Well, it’s just as absurd to do that to people who cross a double yellow line or have a broken taillight or couldn’t afford to pay their registration.”

Streetsblog LA’s Sahra Sulaiman noted that Council member Traci Park was absent during the vote on the issue, which passed unanimously without her. She also pointed out that Nithya Raman, who is running for mayor and considered a progressive-leaning candidate in that race, was the only member of progressive bloc on council who did not make remarks prior to the vote.

Bonin came back to the council chambers on Wednesday to give some remarks and to witness the moment. He has an adopted son, who is Black. He said Harris-Dawson had told him that he was “committed to doing this work and wanted to get it done before my son got his driver’s license. He’s 12. Thank you.”

The effort has been backed by by advocacy from groups like Push L.A. Coalition, Catalyst California (formerly called the Advancement Project), and Community Coalition. Push L.A. recently released a report on LAPD’s pretextual stops that found that Black and Latine residents were over-represented among people pulled over in situations where minor violations were used as a pretext.

What else just happened: DSA-LA released their voter guide. Unrig LA spotted a $250,000 contribution that City Controller candidate Zach Sokoloff poured into his own campaign challenging the incumbent, City Controller Kenneth Mejia. Torched LA’s Alissa Walker highlights a recent April 17 motion on reimbursements to the city for costs of hosting the Olympic Games (Walker recently did a write-up on the Capital Infrastructure Program released this week by Mayor Karen Bass, and that focuses on Olympics Games-related projects). And the LA County Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission held a public forum on automated license plate readers — the replay of which can be found here. The LA County Board of Supervisors held a hearing on the county budget, and that can be viewed here.

What just happened? One-time allies face off in the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council mayoral debate

Some frustrations got aired out at Tuesday’s Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association mayoral debate between Council member Nithya Raman and Mayor Karen Bass. It was the first time the two have directly faced off in a debate since Raman made her surprise, last-minute entry into the mayor’s race in February. They had been political allies up until then.

The debate, held in a community auditorium set up with foldout chairs and tables, was conducted by Fox 11’s Phil Shuman in an unstructured, free-flowing fashion. Things got heated almost immediately, with Bass going after Raman almost immediately for criticizing how the city was run, and arguing that Raman has spent more time at City Hall than and has held a leadership positions on the City Council up until recently.

While answering a question, Bass turned to Raman and said, “Councilwoman, you are in the leadership of City Council … You have been in City Hall, actually, twice as long as I have. You chair one of the most important committees,” prompting the moderator, Shuman, to speakk up an say there was an opportunity later for the candidates to ask each other questions. But Bass responded, “I wasn’t going to ask her a question. I was just making the point.”

Bass took this tack at various points in the debate, with Raman responding to one of those times by saying that the mayor was deflecting her responsibility as the city’s leader.

Raman, who up until recently, served in the number three spot on council, also said she was never on the Planning and Land Use Management Committee (PLUM), commonly thought of as one of the more powerful committees to sit on, although Bass later pointed to the committee that Raman does chair, the Housing and Homelessness Committee.

Bass also brought up at least three time that her opponent has been in a city elected office “twice as long” as she has, which Raman ended up correcting. Raman, who first took office in December 2020 and is less than halfway into her second term, for a total of five years compared to Bass’s three, told her opponent, “I’m a little confused. I was on council for two years before you got there, not in leadership, never on PLUM.”

Raman also pushed back by saying that her role as a member of a 15-member City Council, in which she could be in the minority on some issues, does not afford her the same kind of power a mayor enjoys. And a mayor, Raman said, has more power over the city’s departments than a council member does. “To pretend that a council member has the same powers as a mayor to create a system is patently false and is an abdication of the responsibility and power that the mayor of the city has,” Raman said.

Bass responded by saying that Raman shouldn’t sell her role short, telling her, “I don’t know why you diminish yourself, because you are one of the most powerful members of the council. Before you stepped down to run, you were third in line for the presidency.”

“You chair the committee on housing and homelessness,” Bass said. “And we have worked until just a couple of months ago, shoulder to shoulder on this issue, in spite of our differences.”

At this point, someone in the audience appeared to have commented that Raman endorsed Bass in a previous election, which Bass responded to by saying, “There is the little detail of that.”

“And you endorsed me too,” Raman said. “We have worked together. I’m just frustrated now.”

Speaking of what powers the mayor and council has, a motion introduced on Tuesday highlights one big power the mayor has… In that motion, some Los Angeles City Council members want to put a check on the mayor’s ability to issue executive directives, which unilaterally sets policy. The motion, authored by Monica Rodriguez and seconded by Tim McOsker, calls for putting a measure on the November ballot that would give the City Council the ability overturn executive directives through a 2/3rd vote.

The LA police officers union backs John McKinney, after revoking their endorsement of City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto

In the wake of a massive data leak in the City Attorney’s Office, the Los Angeles Police Protective League — the influential police officers’ union — took the extraordinary step of revoking their endorsement of City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto’s re-election bid, saying she “willfully failed” to disclose the leak during a March 25 interview with the union’s political action committee seeking their endorsement. The leak, which Feldstein Soto’s office became aware of on March 20, had involved the release of internal records about police officers. On Tuesday, the union announced they will be throwing their support to Feldstein Soto’s opponent in the City Attorney’s race, John McKinney.

McKinney, a deputy district attorney, announced the influential police officers’ union’s endorsement during a news conference Tuesday at the police union’s headquarters, where he also announced that he had also earned the endorsement of his boss, District Attorney Nathan Hochman. He is one of three candidates seeking to deny Feldstein Soto a second term. The other two are Deputy Attorney General Marissa Roy and Human Rights Attorney Aida Ashouri.

Stop LAPD Spying files lawsuit to obtain Flock contract with LAPD

On the same day as McKinney’s LAPPL endorsement news, Stop LAPD Spying, a group that’s been looking into the LAPD’s ties with Flock Safety, which makes and sells automated license plate readers, filed a lawsuit to compel the police department to release memorandums of understandings, or agreements, that the police department has with that company. The company’s surveillance software has come under scrutiny amid concerns it’s being used to assist in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts.

The group writes in their complaint that at the same time the department has delayed providing the MOUs, department officials have been “promising a forthcoming ‘report on its relationship with Flock’ … If that report is released while LAPD continues to

suppress the records sought here, then LAPD will have defied the Public Records Act to ensure a highly one-sided debate on a time-sensitive matter of urgent public concern.”

“The documents sought here — ‘all contracts, MOUs, MOAs, or other agreements with Flock Safety’ since 2017— should take no more than a few hours to find. Yet this request has been pending for over two months while LAPD has refused to provide anything more than a single, expired agreement. LAPD then went completely silent on this request since March, leaving Petitioner no choice but to sue,” the complaint reads.

LA city leaders scramble to keep up as county officials get ready to seek a more powerful role at LAHSA

Los Angeles County officials are getting ready to pull funding from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a now three-decade-long joint powers partnership with the city of Los Angeles, on July 1, and they appear to also be going after a more powerful role on providing homeless services, based on a motion introduced Tuesday by Council member Monica Rodriguez and seconded by Bob Blumenfield.

Rodriguez’s motion states that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors “will be hearing a motion to change the terms of the Joint Powers Authority (JPA) agreement, making HSH [Los Angeles County’s new Department of Homeless Services and Housing] the lead and removing the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.” The motion calls for a report back on “the impacts of the County’s Department of Homeless Services and Housing becoming the lead of the region’s Continuum of Care and the Coordinated Entry System.”

(A “continuum of care” refers to a body or agency that applies for federal dollars to spend on homeless services and decides on how those funds are used, with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority now serving in that role for both the county and the city of Los Angeles. The “coordinated entry system” is a prioritization system for distributing homeless services.)

“Although it is necessary for the city to create its own response, we must act with greater urgency to put an effective system in place,” Rodriguez’s motion reads. “This action by the county, without working with the city, could cause confusion in programming and negatively impact residents in the city.”

Another motion authored by Councilmember Tim McOsker, and seconded by Ysabel Jurado, also appear to be seeking some action to “protect the city’s interests.” McOsker and Jurado both joined Mayor Karen Bass last month on a letter layinig out a 90-day roadmap for responding to the county pulling funding from LAHSA by July 1 that includes working out a way for the city of Los Angeles to have a more dominant role at LAHSA, “with a clear majority governance authority over the LAHSA Commission, including greater representation, oversight, and decision-making control.”

Their motion reads: “I MOVE that the City Council request the Office of the City Attorney to explore and report on all legal options available to the City of Los Angeles, including any potential claims, defenses, and strategies to protect the City’s interests, as expressed through Council File 26-0514, and that the City Council be scheduled for a closed session pursuant to applicable provisions of California Government Code Section 54956.9 to confer with legal counsel.”

LAHSA’s commission is made up of 10 members, half of whom are appointed by the County’s Board of Supervisors, and the other half by the LA city mayor.

The Police Commission is taking up two police shooting cases from last May and June at its 9:30 meeting, which you can tune into here. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is also meeting at 9:30 a.m. and will be getting an update on how they’re supporting the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority workers, who were issued layoff notices last month, afer the county pulled its funding from the agency in order to form their own Department of Homeless Services and Housing. Supervisor Lindsey Horvath’s motion to improve safety at Whiteman Airport after an airplane crashed in a commercial area in Pacoima on April 20, will also be up. FYI, the Los Angeles City Council’s will be taking a motion on the same incident, at the Energy and Environment Committee meeting at 3:30. The Los Angeles City Council is scheduled to take up the LA Alliance case in closed session at their meeting on Tuesday.

The Sherman Oaks Homeowners’ association’s debate between City Council member Nithya Raman and Mayor Karen Bass will SOHA debate is tonight, at 7 p.m. Organizers are advising arriving early. RSVP by emailing your full name and number of attendees to SOHA914@gmail.com. The debate will be live-streamed Zoom livestream.

What just happened? LA city finally gets organized with its infrastructure planning

Everyone says the city is broken and needs to be fixed, but for a long time, even just getting a list of what public infrastructure projects ought to be repaired, maintained or built has been a seemingly impossible task. On Monday, though, the city may have finally started to take its capital infrastructure planning seriously.

Mayor Karen Bass released a capital infrastructure program that “includes 73 reports on assets maintained by city departments, which represents the first time in 30 years the city has provided a detailed citywide report on the state of repair of its infrastructure.” Such a roadmap and investment plan is routine in other cities, and Los Angeles has long been notorious for not having one.

What was released on Monday is only a first step and for now, it lays out a path for getting a plan into place. Also, the projects that are listed focus on getting the city into shape ahead of the Olympics. You can read the report here.

Spencer Pratt skewered in parody website based on his autobiography

A website parodying Spencer Pratt created by television writer Toby Morton offers a not very flattering portrait of the mayoral candidate, whose campaign recently got a shot in the arm after it was reported that Lakers part-owner Jeanie Buss had made a maximum donation of $1,800 to his already healthily funded campaign. The website springboards off of Pratt’s autobiography that the candidate released soon after launching his campaign. That biography was recently reviewed in CalMatters by Jim Newton, who wrote that the person depicted in Pratt’s autobiography “does not impress. The Pratt of these pages — in his own words — is selfish, undisciplined and unprincipled. He deflects blame, squanders fortunes and complains. A lot. It’s hard to imagine him holding any office, much less one of such consequence.” (@PresKrekorian, a parody account that revolves around former Council President Paul Krekorian, alerted The LA Reporter to the website)

A few other election things …

Reporter Jon Regardie spots Lou Calanche becoming the second person in the 1st District City Council race to receive a check for matching funds, in the amount of $129,498. Incumbent Eunisses Hernandez was first, receiving a check of $182,048.

The video recording of last Thursday’s 13th District debate hosted by neighborhood councils in that district is up. The debate featured incumbent Hugo Soto-Martinez and challengers Dylan Kendall, Rich Sarian and Colter Carlysle is now up. Regardie provides a TLDR of the debate.

The TransLatin@ Coalition just did a roundtable talk with mayoral candidate Rae Huang. You can view the video here. According to the group, they had invited five candidates to do this talk with them, and two of the candidates responded. An earlier debate organized by the TransLatin@ Coalition that was planned for April 25 had been cancelled, after candidates City Council member Nithya Raman and Mayor Karen Bass pulled out. An email sent by organizers to people who had RSVP’d for that debate said that journalist Alex Cohen and organizer Melina Abdullah had been confirmed as co-moderators.

From the budget hearings …

Amid ICE raids, a third of merchants at El Pueblo don’t make rent

Amid the ICE raids over the last year, merchants at El Pueblo de Los Angeles have seen less foot traffic, and partly as a result that, about a third of them have not been paying rent, Domenika Lynch, the general manager of the 22-acre historic public park in downtown Los Angeles, told the Budget and Finance Committee during budget hearings Monday.

The declining business to their stalls, as well as inconsistent upkeep and cleanliness of the park itself, has made it more difficult for the merchants to make rent, Lynch told the committee. She said that was why they’re seeking some tweaks to the mayor’s proposed budget so that their department could have more control over custodial services, and be able to add five more security guards to a team of 10.

Lynch said that the merchants who have not “been in the position” to pay rent have told them that it was due to “the site conditions, because of the lack of safety, because of the unhoused populations, and at times, feeling a bit of neglect that’s affected the foot traffic.”

The funding requests are among several Lynch highlighted in an April 21 letter responding to the mayor’s budget. They include a request for $500,000 to increase the number of security guards from 10 to 15. They are also seeking just over $800,000 to use on an in-house custodial team, rather than outsourcing them from another agency, the General Services Department, with about $375,000 on contractual services.

Lynch said they could be more responsive and provide more regular service with an in-house team. Right now maintenance has been inconsistent, and that’s been a “tremendous problem” she said. “It’s basically tied to one of the reasons why the merchants have not felt compelled to pay rent when they themselves have to clean up so much of the of the park.”

Lynch, who was newly appointed at general manager of El Pueblo last September, said there has been progress in recent months on increasing rent payments. Before, they were collecting $84,000, out of $185,000 of rent due. They saw their rent collection go up to $124,000 in March.

Lynch said the statistics on the percentage of merchants who haven’t been paying rent is part of a report their department is releasing soon. She said the 14th council district had commissioned the report. Council member Ysabel Jurado, who represents that district, made a motion in March seeking a report on lease agreements at El Pueblo. Her motion pointed to a need to help the businesses there, many of which have been there for decades and are part of its history, to become more sustainable.

The merchants had earlier already been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Jurado’s motion, but that experience also “exposed structural vulnerabilities and underscored the need for sustained investment and flexible policies to ensure El Pueblo’s long-term economic and cultural resilience.”

Lynch said they’re working out arrangements for payment plans with the merchants, and while “it’s slow and it’s consistent,” they believe that once there is more foot traffic at El Pueblo, “we’re going to see people really meeting their obligations.”

Lynch also went into how they were trying to address the needs of people who were unhoused at the park, saying that just before going to council chambers Monday to make their presentation, “there was a gentleman, an unhoused gentleman, dropped off with his hospital gown and bandaged up.” Lynch said this was “really heartbreaking to see,” and she said that “we have to figure out how to do better.”

She also said that they are experiencing “public safety challenges driven by the growing unhoused population” and that because El Pueblo is “across the street from Union Station and adjacent to the jails” the park is “a natural spot for people to come to take a minute and decide what their next step is.”

Lynch told the committee that they recently reached out to the homeless services provider The People Concern, which operates El Puente, a transitional housing site that has operated in one of El Pueblo’s parking lots since 2018. They are trying to put together a task force that includes The People Concern, LAHSA, the council office, and “faith-based partners” in order “to coordinate services to find beds, particularly for our elderly who are unhoused” and to help them to “really feel safe at our park.”

El Pueblo was only one of several departments that reported to the Budget and Finance Committee on Monday. Other departments that were on deck included the Disability, Library, City Clerk, Zoo, Tourism, Civil & Human Rights and Neighborhood Empowerment departments, and the pension boards for city employees, firefighters and police. The meeting video is here.

This week, The LA Reporter is trying out a daily format that will become a separate newsletter, called the Squawk Box. The name comes from my time covering LA City Hall as a wire service and daily news reporter. I used to tune into and report on multiple meetings a day using a device nicknamed the “squawk box.” You can see a picture of that very device up above.

Anyway, I’ve always wanted more people to know about the “everything everywhere all at once” of what’s happening in local politics and governance. It’s useful knowledge to have, even if it’s not stuff that’s normally covered by local media. And it’s for people who like to get an early scoop and a deeper understanding of what’s going on. - Liz Chou, The LA Reporter

Today and the week ahead: Los Angeles city’s budget hearings will continue this morning with the Budget and Finance Committee meeting at 9 a.m. 10 a.m. to ask questions of officials from the Disability, City Clerk, Neighborhood Empowerment, Civil & Human Rights and Equity, Zoo, Cultural Affairs, El Pueblo, Library, City Tourism, Office of Public Accountability, Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System, Los Angeles Fire and Police Pensions, and other city departments. Another budget hearing is scheduled for Thursday, May 7, aimed at tying up loose ends and going over budget memos. The budget committee won’t meet again to discuss the budget until May 15. The committee has already had some interesting discussions on other departments, like the CAO, Transportation, Community Investment, and the LAPD. Watch for The LA Reporter’s round-up on the highlights of the budget hearings, later this week.

There will be a NoHo Locals event at the Lawless Brewing Co. in North Hollywood tonight featuring City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who is up for re-election, and Marissa Roy, who is challenging the sitting city attorney, Hydee Feldstein Soto. It’s billed as a “ballot party,” and it is hosted by LA Forward and the California Working Families Party. It runs from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. They ask that you RSVP here.

The much talked about Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association’s mayoral debate between Nithya Raman and Karen Bass, and moderated by Fox 11’s Phil Shuman, is tomorrow night, on May 5. The way you RSVP is by emailing your full name and number of attendees to SOHA914@gmail.com. You can find the flyer here. Food is typically served at their meetings, but not this time. They’re expecting “huge attendance” at this meeting. If you want to avoid the crowd, there is also a Zoom livestream.

There is a Police Commission meeting on Tuesday, at 9:30 am, during which they’re set to take up two “officer-involved” shooting cases from May and June 2025 in closed session. There are also reports on reserve officers and the conflict of interest code.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is meeting on Tuesday, May 5. Among the items getting taken up is an update on how they are supporting Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority workers, who were issued layoff notices last month. They’ll also take up a motion by Supervisor Lindsey Horvath to call for improving safety at Whiteman Airport after an airplane crashed in a commercial area in Pacoima on April 20. FYI, the Los Angeles City Council’s Energy and Environment Committee will be taking up a motion that was prompted by the same incident, during their meeting in the afternoon, that same day.

And although the agenda hasn’t been posted yet, the Los Angeles City Council’s Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee is supposed to take up charter reform on Tuesday, May 5, to go over items related to government efficiency, planning, city powers, and neighborhood councils, as laid out in the Council President’s letter setting up the process. The rules committee met last Thursday for the first of a series of six committee meetings on charter reform. You can catch up on it with some quick social media threads by Fair Rep LA, myself and Unrig LA from the day of the meeting. But you can also check out the meeting recordings, including one by the city that’s only audio, and the other by the group Fair Rep LA that has video.

The Los Angeles City Council is scheduled to take up the LA Alliance case in closed session at their meeting on Tuesday. And the Sheriff Oversight Commission at the county is holding a forum on automated license plate readers on Wednesday, starting at 5:30 p.m.

Other things to watch for this week include the start of budget hearings for Los Angeles County, on Wednesday, May 6. The Board of Supervisors heard from the departments back in February, which you can catch up on here.

And of course, by the end of the week, the very hot, first phase of the D Line Extension will finally be open. It extends what used to be known as the Purple Line, from where it now ends in Koreatown, on Wilshire and Vermont, into the Miracle Mile area. There will be three new stops, in this first phase of the extension. They will be along Wilshire Boulevard, at La Brea, Fairfax and La Cienega. The Fairfax stop is probably its most prominent destination since this is where major museums like the LACMA and The Motion Picture Academy Museum are located. One way to get familiar with the new stops is with a pub crawl, which Abundant Housing LA is hosting on May 9, the day after the extension opens.

What just happened? May Day rally at MacArthur Park, Home Depot sit-in, and soccer balls

Union members, community groups and organizers rallied at MacArthur Park for workers and immigrant rights, on Friday, May 1. They include Luis Lopez Resendiz, of CIELO, who held up a marmota, which is a large, festive globe on a stick that gets brought out on special occasions in Oaxaca. “We understand the struggle,” Resendiz said of International Workers Day. He told The LA Reporter they came to make a call for action to stop the exploitation of indigenous workers.

Also spotted at the rally were members of the Garment Workers Center, who were involved in responding to the ICE raid last June at Ambiance. And La Brigada, the gig workers union that’s set to organize hundreds of thousands of ride-share drivers throughout California, had a truck there for the rally and march, with a banner that read, “We are the CA Gig Workers Union.” Some of the La Brigada members got a kick out of CIELO’s band, Resendiz bobbing the marmota up and down to the music, and the dancing of bystanders.

Transit workers from ATU Local 1277 stood with a big banner that read, “ICE OUT!” and smaller signs that called for “full citizenship rights for immigrants” and that declared their opposition to the Gaza genocide. The LA Tenants Union had a contingent there, while DSA-LA members held up signs that read “Solidarity has no borders!” Members of Local 36, of the United Union of Roofers and Waterproofers and Allied Workers, held up signs that had a classic “No Capitalists” message illustrated with the Monopoly man crossed out with a big red X.

And there was also Matthew Carson, a veterinarian technician who has also worked in the printing and and clothing industries, who said that local leaders need to do more about lowering rent. Carson is a member of ACCE, which organizes with tenants and on other economic justice related issues.

“The housing situation is horrible in LA,” Carson told The LA Reporter. “The prices of rent are too high. And we are here to shut down LA for a day to let everyone know all of the things that are needed in LA. And to protest things that are happening to each and every one of us in L.A. because when they are taking away rights for one, they can take away the rights of all.”

As part of the events on May Day, ACCE joined with other groups like Sunrise Movement, CLUE, LA Voice and other community groups to hold a sit-in at the Home Depot in Westlake, to protest the company allowing ICE and other immigration officials onto their premises to kidnap people during their raids. Numerous LAPD vehicles, officers and a helicopter responded to the sit-in action. After the police issued warnings, the protesters exited the store and picketed the entrance of the parking lot, before eventually leaving. They had also issued a demand letter to Home Depot’s CEO Ed Decker, calling on the company to publicly condemn ICE’s use of Home Depot’s property, and to prohibit federal immigration enforcement from using their parking lots to target day laborers.

LA Local reported on Unite Here Local 11 organizers releasing big bags of soccer balls down the stairs of the office buildings where the local FIFA offices are located. Food service workers with the union recently filed a labor complaint against FIFA, and are threatening to strike amid negotiations with SoFi Stadium. The FIFA World Cup is set to have matches in Los Angeles in June and July.

Mayoral candidate Nithya brings in big matching funds cash, just as the police union spends big on attack ads

In the last couple weeks, mayoral candidate Nithya Raman has posted up an addition $363K to her matching funds haul, bringing the total matching funds her campaign has gotten to more than $975K. Campaigns qualify for the funds when they bring in small dollar donations, and it is meant to encourage campaigns to be less reliant on richer, big-pocketed donors. Meanwhile, Raman faces two incumbents with campaign war chests of more than $2 million, including the incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, who is endorsed by the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the police officers union that recently spent $237K on attack ads against Raman. This is on top of $175K in spending a couple weeks before by the police union. Among the donors to the police protective league independent expenditure committee is Kilroy Realty, which gave $100K to the police union to spend to sway elections. The company previously gave money to Ethan Weaver, who was Raman’s opponent when she was running for re-election in 2024, and Thrive PAC, which supported Weaver in that election. Here’s a link to some of Kilroy Realty’s contributions history, listed on the city Ethics website. Others that gave to the police union include Douglas Emmett, a property manager in Los Angeles. Raman on Friday, responded to those ads, saying that she voted against a contract that will give police officers raises over the next few years. She says that decision is leading to a billion dollar deficit in the city of Los Angeles. The transportation advocacy group Streets for All on Friday disclosed some spending, smaller than the police union, for ads to support Nithya Raman and to oppose Mayor Karen Bass.

Big money in other races: There was also a big chunk of change dropped in the Controller’s race. Kenneth Mejia’s opponent Zach Sokoloff is getting a boost from his mother, Sheryl Sokoloff, who gave $2.5 million to an independent expenditure committee supporting his campaign. While that is a pretty formidable amount, it became yet more fodder for the incumbent, Controller Kenneth Mejia, for a video that criticized the funding as being used to buy the election. When asked how their campaign planned to counter this latest funding drop to support their opponent, Jane Nguyen with Mejia’s campaign said that “unlike our opponent, Kenneth does not have any millionaire family members who can bankroll his campaign. Just like the last time, we’ll rely on small dollar donations from LA residents.”

A few other election things …

The LA Times’s Noah Goldberg reports that mayoral candidate Rae Huang took a maximum $1,800 donation from a Twitch streamer, Michael Beyer, who made antisemitic remarks that got him temporarily banned from the platform. Huang’s spokesperson is not returning the donation from Beyer, who later apologized for the remarks and also said he had not meant it.

The LA Times’s Hailey Branson Potts writes about the nine mayoral underdogs, which includes someone who became famous through protesting and filming someone at a gym who was transgender.

Deadline’s Dominic Patten writes about Karen Bass joining the bandwagon of political candidates, like her mayoral race opponent Nithya Raman, and candidates for governor, who want to remove the cap from California’s film and tv incentives progarm. Bass is also now against the Paramount merger deal with Warner Brothers that’s expected to “come with deep deep job cuts,” Patten writes.

Mayor Karen Bass spoke to Katie Phan of Meidas Touch, telling Phan that she thinks that one of her opponents in the mayor’s race, Spencer Pratt, has been exploiting the grief of Palisades fire victims. This comes after Pratt released a splashy new video this week that describes opponents Nithya Raman and Bass as being “not like us.” That video closes with Pratt and the trailer that he now lives in.

Gary Baum of The Hollywood Reporter writes about Spencer Pratt’s very LA brand of grievance politics.

Ballots are arriving in people’s mailboxes, and LAist has a great voter guide for our local elections.

An update on LA city’s charter reform efforts

The LA City Council’s Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee met last Thursday to resume discussions around Charter Reform, after they handed the baton on to a Charter Reform Commission around two years ago. They are expected to meet again on Tuesday, May 5, to go over items related to government efficiency, planning, city Powers, and neighborhood councils.

At last Thursday’s meeting, the chair, Council member Marqueece Harris-Dawson, said the reform effort was sparked by corruption scandals, as well as other issues with the existing charter. Harris-Dawson made references to the LA Fed tapes, and also questions around for how to fill a mayoral vacancy.

The Rules Committee includes Harris-Dawson, which is also City Council President, and council members John Lee, Hugo Soto-Martinez, Nithya Raman and Katy Yaroslavsky, who wasn’t there that day because she’s chairing budget hearings that was taken place at the same time.

Los Angeles City Council members have also been introducing motions on charter reform, and among the first out of the gate was a motion by Council member Hugo Soto-Martinez to allow the city to give non-citizens the right to vote in city and school board elections. This was an idea that was approved with some trepidation by Charter Reform commissioners who worried that this proposal would make Los Angeles residents a target of a presidential administration that is hostile to immigrants. Soto-Martinez has noted that the proposal to change the charter to allow this doesn’t automatically lead to non-citizens getting voting rights, but would give the city the ability to make that happen through an ordinance.

Another early motion was one that supports a Charter Reform Commission recommendation to double the Department of Recreation and Park’s protected budget.

Council members Monica Rodriguez and Bob Blumenfield teamed up on a bevy of charter reform motions. They include motions that call for a review of the costs for splitting up the City Attorney’s Office into an appointed legal counsel and an elected prosector, an analysis of the charter recommendation to switch LA’s elections to ranked choice voting, a clearer idea as to how the Charter Reform Commission’s proposal to create an Inspector General on ethics would actually work, prohibiting a caretaker or appointee to a vacant elected position from seeking that office for five years, and setting up a process for suspending elected officials.

Council member Nithya Raman introduced a motion proposing to make the Board of Appeals the sole body for planning appeals. And Council member Tim McOsker and Blumenfield partnered on a motion that takes out a line that says the Board of Public Works should devote its entire time to the board.