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‘This woman has guts,’ a gutsy former LA City Hall veteran says of Nithya Raman in endorsement
“Simply put, Nithya is fiscally responsible, she’s independent and she’s courageous,” Laura Chick, a well-regarded former LA City Controller known for her feisty and outspoken style, said Thursday as she announced her endorsement of Council member Nithya Raman for mayor. “This woman has guts.”
Chick appeared with Raman in Encino at the Balboa Sports Center, where they unveiled a digital billboard truck skewering a spendy, Los Angeles Convention Center expansion project that received significant backing from Raman’s opponent, Mayor Karen Bass. The project had been approved amid warnings from the city’s top financial advisers that this was financially risky. Raman was one of two people who voted against the project, with others stating that the project was worth the risk to rejuvenate LA’s economy. The other was Katy Yaroslavsky, the chair of the budget committee.
Chick said she was endorsing Raman because of her votes against the convention center project, as well as a separate $1 billion city employee labor contract, “despite enormous pressure by powerful players at City Hall.” Although Chick did not initially name that labor contract, Raman voted against a Los Angeles police officer contract that is set to cost the city nearly $1 billion over four years.
After the news conference, Chick did end up focusing on that contract. She told The LA Reporter that what stood out to her was Raman’s approach toward public safety spending, which contrasted with that of people who she characterized as “irresponsibly” calling for defunding the police department.
Chick said that Raman “stood up and said no, ‘I’m not voting for a $1 billion package we can’t afford to pay police more, but I care about police and I want a different kind of LAPD. I don’t want to send police out on frivolous calls. We can train other safety workers. I want more 911 call agents to be handling calls.’ All of the things she was suggesting to me were common sense, real solutions.”
The focus of the news conference and endorsement has some relevance to the state of play in the mayoral election. The police officers’ union’s political action committee spent heavily to attack Raman during the primary, having endorsed her opponent Karen Bass.
Meanwhile, the LA Convention Center, which Raman’s campaign has characterized as a boondoggle, was championed by Mayor Karen Bass. That project was also heavily backed by IBEW Local 11 and Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council – two groups that are now funding an independent expenditures committee that came out on Tuesday with an ad attacking Raman. IBEW Local 11, which represents LA DWP workers, put in $250,000 into the committee, and the building trades group put in $50,000.
Also lined up behind Raman’s opponent, Bass, is the Central City Association, an influential downtown business group. They also were big on the LA Convention Center expansion. Thus, Raman’s campaign played up a common San Fernando Valley voter sentiment of feeling cut off from downtown Los Angeles, where the main building of the LA city government is located.
“As both a City Council member and controller, I always did what I could to ensure the Valley got its fair share of services and investment,” said Chick, who in addition to serving two terms as controller, also served just as many terms as a City Council member representing west San Fernando Valley neighborhoods, including Encino.
Lineage sues company that owns the solar panels that they blame for the fire at their Boyle Heights cold storage warehouse
Lineage has now sued the owner of the solar panels atop their building, accusing Altus Power, as well as a few other companies, of causing the conflagration at their cold storage warehouse in Boyle Heights by ignoring safety measures. Lineage’s president, Greg Lehmkuhl, put the blame squarely on the solar array, and insisted in a prepared statement on Sept. 10 that “cold storage is not a risk to communities – it is an essential service that lowers food costs, expands food access and creates jobs.” Lineage continues to face pushback on an application they submitted in July to rebuild their facility.
The companies have been at odds with each other from the beginning, with Lineage saying the fire was started because of repair work that was being done on the solar panels, and Altus Power saying that the investigation into the cause of the fire was still ongoing. That tussling continues under this lawsuit. LA Local’s Christopher Damien’s received a response from Los Palos, a subsidiary of Altus Power, saying that Lineage’s complaint is “riddled with misinformation in a blatant attempt to deflect blame for their role in this matter, including any damage caused by the release of substances from the warehouse, not the solar panel.”
Lineage meanwhile faces a threat of a lawsuit from community groups that posted a 60-day notice saying they planned to sue over the release of information about chemicals released from their facility during the fire. Lineage has been under scrutiny over the possible release of ammonia, something that Lineage (along with the LA Fire Department) has said was addressed by removing the chemical from the site at the start of the fire.
Unhoused journalist sets up homelessness oversight bureau, with a message that sweeps cause ‘real damage to… the trust between citizens and the city’
An unhoused journalist, Rooflesser – complying with what she estimates is a 10th sweep notice, one that was issued for a day that saw temperatures reach 91 degrees – has set up a “bureau of homelessness accountability and oversight” outside LA City Council member Nithya Raman’s Valley district office. Rooflesser is a constituent of Raman’s and has been critical of her elected representative’s response to her concerns over the sweeps, which have lately grown more frequent.
In a video she recorded about the endeavor, Rooflesser said that she was “at Ventura and Ethel tabling for the Bureau of Homelessness Oversight and Accountability outside Nithya Raman’s office because I’m being swept today for the 9th or 10th time this year — I’m very, very tired.
“And I want some answers about some burning questions I have about the homelessness industrial complex in the city of Los Angeles. For example, I would like to know if mortality tracking is being done… I’ll be out here for as long as it takes to figure out where I’m allowed to be and learn more about the system that is supposed to be housing people, but seems to just be taking our shit over and over and over and over again.”
The sweeps are done under a law that’s specific to LA city parks, as opposed to the more popularly known 41.18 law, and the LA Sanitation street cleaning operations that are carried out under the name CARE+.
On Thursday, Raman’s homelessness deputy stepped outside with sunscreen and water bottles, and spent some time getting grilled by Rooflesser. Meanwhile, Celeste, who was Rooflesser’s tabling partner, touted to The LA Reporter the cost-effectiveness of their “bureau,” which she said was set up with no money at all.
“The Bureau of Homelessness responds to the voters,” Celeste said. “Even though we think we’re so fixated on this topic here in LA, we really are so detached from it… We need to start holding the city accountable for the disruption [caused by sweeps]. This causes real damage to the city and the trust between citizens and the city, when people are at risk of losing their homes that they rely on.”
Raman’s office sent The LA Reporter a statement, in response to questions on the frequency of the sweeps, saying that “the frequency and scale of the cleanups that take place” at the spot Rooflesser stays at “are driven by the conditions on the ground, including fire hazards, heavy debris, and public health and safety concerns.”
The statement also says that their office has worked to “minimize the impact” of those operations by working with the Los Angeles Conservation Corps and service providers to offer support.
And one more thing…
LA Times’s might diminished to a ‘simplistic plea’: Golden State’s Mariel Garza, who famously defected from the LA Times after its billionaire publisher Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked the editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, is exactly the person you’d want a reaction from on the LA Times endorsing against Proposition 40, a one-time billionaire tax.
And Garza, whose departure touched off an exodus of other members of the paper’s editorial board, has indeed delivered a scathing critique of the piece. She starts off with problems with craft, writing that the endorsement “reads like something drafted by a campaign comms contractor.”
But she ultimately arrives at a more upsetting conclusion, which is that “after a year and a half of immigration raids, Proposition 50 redistricting, Spencer Pratt’s mayoral run and a June 2 primary that all but decided the state’s next governor, this is the topic that moved The Times ‘editorial board’ to end its silence? A simplistic plea to spare the state’s billionaires, including the one who owns the company, from a one-time 5% tax?”
