LA Squawk Box for Friday, October 2, 2026

LA city asked to join group fighting to control liabilities costs, city officials want to help businesses along Pacific Avenue in San Pedro with JEDI zone, and influencer drama in the LA mayoral race.

What’s happening today?

LA city invited to join a fight against ballooning liabilities costs

At the Los Angeles City Council’s rules committee this morning, they delayed discussion of a formal invitation to LA to a coalition that’s trying to change the rules around damage claims filed against public entities, advancing it to the full City Council. The City Attorney writes that LA city has been invited to join League of California Cities’s Tort Reform Coalition includes 81 other California cities, as well as Long Beach, Pasadena, Glendale, Downey, Sacramento and Riverside. The chair, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, said the issue would be continued to a later date that hasn’t been determined yet.

The coalition points to recent data from the California Association of Joint Powers Authorities that says liability costs “have tripled in the last seven years” and that costs could go up by another 70 percent by next fiscal year. The League of California Cities says this is not sustainable, and it’s “unfair to taxpayers” since liabilities would direct away funding from classrooms, fire stations, roads, mental health services, and the essential programs Californians depend on every day.” The data that the League cited can be found here. The Controller has a dashboard listing the payouts the city has made in lawsuits against the city.

LA County’s mental health beds weigh heavy on the minds of LA city leaders

The rules committee sent forward a resolution in which the city would take a position that calls for LA County to “adhere to the agreement of the LA Alliance Memorandum of Understanding that requires the County to assist those individuals with severe mental illness transition from City-funded interim housing sites into the County-operated systems of care, including bed placements.”

One of the pet peeves that city leaders have highlighted lately has been the availability of mental health beds for people in the city of Los Angeles, with Council member Nithya Raman specifically citing this issue at a committee meeting in August. City leaders at that meeting, especially Tim McOsker, worry that without having access to data about how services are delivered, it would be difficult to ensure people in the city are getting their share of services.

A few more items today…

Later this morning, the City Council is meeting, and they’re taking up a contract with the nonprofit The Wall Las Memorias to maintain the AIDS Memorial at Lincoln Park. In the afternoon at 1 p.m., a task force created by budget chair Katy Yaroslavsky, is getting a presentation from the risk management division of the City Administrative Officer in which they are expected to talk about “current initiatives to address budget challenges” and recommendations for what they think the task force could further research. And in the 15th City Council District, mom and pop storefronts on an additional stretch of Pacific Boulevard could be getting an economic lift, under a proposal to expand the existing JEDI zone in that area (JEDI is short for Jobs and Economic Incentives, and it’s a five-year program to assist job-creating businesses there, including through improving facades, microloans, permit fee reductions and other support. That item is getting taken up by the City Council’s jobs committee at 2 p.m., since council approval is needed in order to set up these zones.

What just happened?

Sales tax rates went up yesterday, but they vary depending on which city you are in. You can peruse the state’s chart. The tax rates are going up as a lawsuit was filed this week by the Libertarian Party to halt the Measure ER sales tax increase to raise revenue for LA County health services. The lawsuit holds up the county from receiving that revenue for the time being.

What is an influencer account without some intra-influencer drama? It’s what we live for. And with political influencers being all the rage now, we’re getting some of that in this LA Times article, by Ben Wieder, in which we find out that an ethics complaint filed by a couple of influencers against LA mayor’s race candidate, Nithya Raman, was funded by the campaign for her opponent, Mayor Karen Bass. Meta-data pulled from the PDF of the complaint filing showed that it was prepared for the influencers by Kaufman Legal Group, which works for Bass. It looks like a “pot calling the kettle black” situation.” Adam Conover, whose support of Raman was the target of the Bass-friendly influencers, responded to all this with a post that declares, “every accusation is a confession.”