LA Squawk Box for Thursday, July 16, 2026
Kenneth Mejia endorses Nithya Raman for mayor, $1.5M to USC researchers creating a way to measure whether LA county is doing a good job, LA City Attorney sues landlord for harassment, and more.
What’s happening today?
Popular LA Controller Kenneth Mejia endorses City Council member Nithya Raman
LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who just scored a decisive win in the primary against a challenger backed by the LA Democratic Party, is lending his political heft to Council member Nithya Raman, as she tries to deny Mayor Karen Bass a second term.
Raman announced the endorsement from Mejia Thursday morning, after teasing it the day before as “significant.” Indeed, traditional wisdom makes the endorsement a bit unusual. Even colleagues on the City Council who typically align with Raman’s politics and who are considered Democratic Socialists, have lined up behind the current mayor, Karen Bass. So Mejia’s support of one City Hall colleague over the most powerful official at City Hall sticks out.
And to get this bit out of the way, while Mejia is mistaken often for being a Democratic Socialist, he isn’t actually a member of that group, although he is friendly with many of them and has leant them his support on many occasions.
In his endorsement video, Mejia highlighted his early and often criticism of a labor contract that gave LAPD raises that the city ended up struggling to afford, saying that the reaction from others at City Hall when he did that, including a spokesperson for Mayor Bass, was to mock him for doing that. Raman, sliding up next to him, states in the video that she voted against the police officers’ contract.
Meanwhile, Mejia may see an ally in Raman if she does win in November. Even though Mejia has impressive returns at the election polls, he has also had a tough time of it within City Hall, where he has seen his office’s budget get cut down into the marrow and their ability to audit the performance of city services reduced. Raman says in the video that if she is elected mayor, she would support the controller’s office by fully funding it.
LA Materials’ Matt Hamilton and ABC7’s Josh Haskell were at today’s news conference to announce the endorsement.
What just happened?
Voters will go to the polls to elect a County CEO and four more board supes in a few years, thanks to Measure G. But how do they hold those officials accountable?
When voters passed Measure G in 2024 as a way to make LA County government more accountable, they brought about sweeping changes, such as expanding the Board of Supervisors from five to nine members, and setting up a central elected representative, similar to a mayor, called the County CEO.
But how do we measure whether these powerful elected officials, and other county officials, are even doing a good job of delivering services?
According to Raphe Sonenshein, executive director of the Haynes Foundation, LA county constituents might find useful a performance metric tool to measure outcomes. This is why the foundation announced they’re putting in a big sum, $1.5 million, to fund a USC research team that will go out to consult people in the community to get their thoughts on what it means for county government to be serving them well. They’ll also talk to county officials about that. The researchers are then supposed to incorporate the feedback into the performance measuring tools they create using the grant. Those tools would add to the performance metric system the county government is currently already developing.
The changes from Measure G will likely make LA County government more prominent on the minds of Angelenos, and because of this, Sonenshein said, “people are going to be asking more about outcomes.” The researchers’ work is expected to take 18 months, and ideally will be completed in time before we get an elected CEO in 2028, and the four additional members on the Board of Supervisors in 2032, he said.
The funds are coming out of a pot of funds called The Haynes Foundation Fund for Los Angeles Public Policy Research, which the Haynes Foundation set up at California Community Foundation. And the grant is going to a research team led by two professors, David Brady and Jared Nathan Schachner, who teach out the university’s Department of Real Estate Development. Brady spends much of his time looking into questions around poverty, racial inequality, social policy, health, and immigration. Schachner is a sociologist who studies how urban social infrastructures determines inequality. They’ll be working with the teams at LABarometer, which is part of the Center for Economic and Social Research, and the Neighborhood Data for Social Change at USC Lusk Center.
While the changes from Measure G might seem like new ideas, many were actually part of a report written 50 years ago by a citizen commission that had also been supported by the Haynes Foundation, and this latest involvement is actually part of a much longer history of shaping LA’s governance and civics institutions. The philanthropic foundation was set up by and named after what Sonenshein described as “LA’s first civic power couple.” John Randolph Haynes was a medical doctor who helped write an earlier version of the LA city charter, and Dora Haynes was a feminist and suffragist who helped found local chapters of the League of Women Voters.
A few more things…
Sammy Roth of Climate Colored Glasses shares the under-the-radar news that Mayor Karen Bass has already named a new “chief heat officer.” The role of this official is something that those who are focused on the climate change crisis are keyed in on, but it was not something that the mayor’s office advertised, even though it is big enough news to be shouted out on at least a medium-heighted rooftop. Roth, after hearing word about it, had to reach out to Bass’s office to confirm that indeed they’d named Daniela Simunovic, who was previously working at the state air quality regulatory agency, the California Air Resources Board, to replace the previous chief heat officer, Marta Seguar.
Supervisor Janice Hahn says she’s planning to introduce a motion next week to create a “metro rider” seat on the Metro board. The motion would call for working with a community advisory council, community organizations and others to create a process for selecting a rider representative, and to layout the staffing and resources that would be needed so that the board member can fully participate on the Metro board. Hahn says the motion is set to be introduced at the July 23 Metro board meeting.
The Department of Cultural Affairs is getting $10.1 million from the Bezos Earth Fund to update the Watts Tower Arts Center Campus, according to an announcement sent out by Mayor Bass. It’s supposed to add 30,000 square feet of park space to the campus. The campus was closed in June and reopened this month, with renovation ongoing. Here are some renderings of the planned work, will include more shade, landscaping, walking paths, seating areas and interactive art. There are also spaces for programming and performances as well as gatherings. There will also be LED lighting, drinking fountains and bike racks. Here is the website for the Watts Tower Art Center Campus that lists out a timeline for the renovations, which they say will take until 2028 to complete.
The LA City Attorney’s Office just filed a lawsuit against a landlord of an eight-unit apartment complex in Historic South-Central, alleging that they harassed their tenants. The complaint filed against the landlord states that “On October 29, 2025 — a mere five days after purchasing the Property — defendant demanded that all tenants at the [roperty surrender their units no later than March 2026, and served at least five rental units with written eviction notices. Defendant admitted to the tenants and the Los Angeles Housing Department (“LAHD”) that he made this demand and served these eviction notices because, in defendant’s view, current rents are too low.”
That a single metro rider seat on the Metro Board is an improvement is 😵💫 (but also yay)
Research is destiny. Not sure it can reform LA County Governance. Did Fesia Davenport end up getting that Measure G payoff?