What’s happening today?
It’s voting — and ballot processing — time! Not only are ballots coming to people’s mailboxes today, the LA County Registrar-Recorders is also permitted to begin processing ballots now. For the rest of us looking to figure out our ballots and what to do with them, this “make a plan to vote” page, put together by county election officials, includes ballot drop-off and vote center locators, a ballot tracker tool, an online sample ballot and other tools.
Curious what types of lawsuits are being filed against the city? The LA city claims board, made up of appointed commissioners, is meeting this afternoon to take up numerous trip-and-fall, traffic collision, and other claims. Many of these will likely make their way to the City Council in the near future.
What just happened?
A dramatic broadening of LA city’s anti-camping 41.18 law headed to a Tuesday committee hearing
Get ready for a showdown on a 2025 motion by some LA City Council members to ramp up the anti-camping ordinance, LAMC 41.18. That motion just got scheduled for the Public Safety Committee meeting on Tuesday. The motion calls for making it a blanket ban, rather than one that needs to be created through a council resolution. The motion also calls for more places where unhoused people could get pushed along by police, such as fire stations, post offices, police stations and high-fire severity zones. Opponents of efforts to criminalize homelessness have begun putting out a call to action for people to write in, and some public comment has started coming in. The motion also has support letters, from 2025, from neighborhood councils in the Pacific Palisades, Studio City, Arleta, and South Robertson, while Los Feliz’s neighborhood council weighed in with a rare resolution against it, at that time. The motion has also been referred to the newly reconfigured Homelessness and Health Committee, although there is no date for the item.
A big swing to Raman among Latino voters explained as the result of November election attracting more young people and renters
The LA Times and Berkeley IGS released a poll on Friday that shows Council member Nithya Raman is up by 24 percentage points above Mayor Karen Bass, which is a dramatic swing from when Bass was thought to have the edge with Latinos back in the primary. Friday’s article in the LA Times by Noah Goldberg and Itzel Luna also includes plenty of context about efforts by both campaigns to court Latino voters.
The pollster, Mark DiCamillo, explained the wide swing by saying that the November election is expected to have an electorate that skews younger, and that includes more renters, which Raman tends to do well with. Latinos above 50 preferred Bass, with a 10% difference separating the two candidates, but it’s much more dramatic with other Latino voters. Not only did younger Latinos prefer Raman, the gap was wide, with Raman claiming the preference of 60% of them, to Bass’s 9%. Polling can vary though, and the Times notes that the Latino Community Foundation did a poll last month that found that Bass was mostly viewed favorability, which is in contrast to this new Berkeley poll, which found that Bass was mostly viewed unfavorably by Latinos.
As extreme heat waves blanket Los Angeles all summer, Raman ad on creating more shade and planting more trees hits home
Nithya Raman released an advertisement on Friday about how hot it is in LA and how she plans to build lots of shade structures at bus stops and 100,000 more trees. While social media algorithms can skew things, some of the effusively positive response to the ad that The LA Reporter glimpsed is quite a turnabout from when the LA Times editorial board felt comfortable noting —about 13 years ago — that many had thought Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s idea to plan a million trees was a “goofball idea.” By the way, the point of the editorial was that even if Villaraigosa got only halfway to that sensational goal, there were many good reasons for having aimed high to push for more trees to be planted. So they described it as a “glass half-full” situation, rather than “half-empty,” an intriguing framing — come to think of it — for when we see politicians hitch themselves to what may sound like out-of-reach goals.
A few more notes on the mayor’s race: Karen Bass announced an endorsement from the Pilipino Action Center on Friday. And on Saturday, Nithya Raman shared her plan for the first 100 days if she is elected mayor, just as people are getting their ballots in the mail (video from Eric Levai). Also on Saturday, Bass did a meet-and-greet with Jane Fonda, according to Alex Stack, with Bass’s campaign. Both Bass and Raman spoke – at different times – at the KBLA 1050 Radio candidate forum on Saturday. That all-day forum turned out to be the place to be if you wanted to hear from numerous candidates in-person. You can still catch up on it here. LA City Attorney candidates John McKinney and Marissa Roy took part, as did LA County Sheriff candidates Robert Luna and Alex Villanueva. Candidate for governor Xavier Becerra was exception to the in-person showings, as he was there via Zoom, while people got to hear from his opponent Steve Hilton in person. And also, there’s a petition going around among DSA-LA members calling for their organization to re-examine their endorsement of Raman, and to “invalidate” that endorsement, saying that their latest endorsement process did not entail asking Raman directly about her position related to BDS, during the recent endorsement round (she had stated her opposition to BDS in an earlier questionnaire she’d filled out for a City Council race).
LA County’s Hahn and Mitchell tackled the ‘28-day shuffle,’ and unnecessary restrictions on homeless families
In her Friday newsletter, LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn highlighted a motion she co-authored with Supervisor Holly Mitchell that calls for making it easier to get homeless families housed, as well as tackle the notorious 28-day shuffle problem at motels that requires people to relocate frequently – a practice that has been understood as a method of preventing people from establishing legal tenancy.
But people rarely are able to get housed quickly, much less within 28 days, and Hahn’s press release from earlier in the week highlighted the circumstances of a family who had to move across town to do that 28-day shuffle. The family includes four children whose father just suffered a heart attack and whose mother has epilepsy. Hahn’s release said she met the family while commuting on the Silver Line.
The motion includes a request for a report-back in 60 days that recommends “changes to County policies, contracts, or provider requirements that may reduce unnecessary displacement or disruption for participants, while addressing operational considerations and protecting the County, providers, and hotel and motel owners from unintended legal or financial liability, consistent with legal guidance from County Counsel.”
Hahn and Mitchell’s motion also tries to tackle restrictions on the housing that families can get placed into. It states that “current housing matching practices may unnecessarily limit opportunities for small families to access one bedroom units when such placements would otherwise comply with occupancy standards and program requirements.” The motion is calling for more flexibility on these restrictions so that they “could reduce the time families spend waiting for permanent housing.”
LA city’s Hernandez touts ‘care-first’ programs at MacArthur Park
LA City Council member Eunisses Hernandez gives an update on MacArthur Park, in her latest newsletter, stating that the city has spent $27 million on “care-first investments” there. Those cover “peace ambassadors,” clean teams that come out daily, and an overdose and street medicine team. They are also planning youth programming, culture and arts events, lighting and other infrastructure upgrades. She also says they are expanding the street medicine team, putting in a health hub, and doing free programming year round at the band shell. This update comes as, earlier last week, the Recreation and Parks Commission took up proposed fencing around MacArthur Park’s north and south portions. Parks officials say this will allow the city to keep the area closed off during evening hours and their report said that they have had fewer issues of vandalism at nearby Lafayette Park, compared to at MacArthur Park – and Lafayette Park had just gotten fencing put in.
A few more things…
The LA Times has a packed LA On the Record newsletter issue on Saturday in which they pick apart some recent dustups over campaign and election related things, including Bass campaign pointing out that Raman missed a Jewish Heritage Month presentation. They also take up an ad put out by Streets for All, which supports Raman, that lashed out at the city’s high trash fees – except that Raman hadn’t actually voted against a recent big increase to those fees (which was explained at the time as making up for years of the city subsidizing trash pickup for single-family residences, and a was one method of trying to address severe budget crisis). The ad ended up stirring up a hornet’s nest, as it was actually a pet issue of one of Raman’s biggest critics on the City Council, Monica Rodriguez. Unsurprisingly, Rodriguez was not shy about pointing out that she was one of two votes against the fee increase, and she told the Times that Raman hasn’t spoken up about any concerns she might have had about the fee increase.
An LA Material investigation into bogus street-sweeping citations has led to a motion from City Council members to look into the matter. And they also took a look at who may be interested in running for Nithya Raman’s Fourth District City Council seat, if Raman ends up becoming mayor.
Political reporter Jon Regardie has a good piece in Golden State, featuring a chat with Council member Monica Rodriguez, about one somewhat obscure item on the ballot for LA city voters – which is that Measure EE includes a provision that would remove a requirement that the City Council meet three times a week. Rodriguez wrote an argument opposing that measure, but the general mood on council has been that less time spent at meetings was better. Some of the current members of the City Council, including Katy Yaroslavsky, have complained openly about the meeting frequency, saying that it takes away from time doing work in their districts. It’s probably something that many people working in office can relate to — but at what cost could this change be? Regardie brings up the notorious lengthiness, and arduousness, of sitting through LA County’s once-a-week meetings, which has been known to take up an entire day for people attending. City Hall watchdog Rob Quan, of Unrig LA — who has usually been a lone voice highlighting efforts by City Council members over the years to reduce the number of meetings and what the public might lose from that — recently explained to the LA Times that such reductions in the public’s ability to have access to city elected officials needed to be made up for in other ways — but he also said he was skeptical that anything would be done to offset any reductions to the meetings that might happen.