LA Squawk Box for Friday, June 12, 2026
Controller and progressive groups rally around police accountability and council expansion, CM Jurado speaks up for unhoused voters, and reactions to HUD pulling funds for homeless services, and more.
What’s happening today?
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.