LA Squawk Box for Thursday, July 9, 2026

Boyle Heights community meeting tonight on Lineage fire, former mayoral candidate Rae Huang seeks help with retiring campaign debt, and LAPD brass float pausing police hiring ahead of 2028 Olympics.

What’s happening today?

There’s expected to be good turnout at today’s community meeting in Boyle Heights about the Lineage warehouse fire. Mayor Karen Bass, County Supervisor Hilda Solis and Lineage leaders are expected to be there to talk to and meet with community members at Stevenson Middle School. There’s also a livestream you can catch here.

What just happened?

Rae Huang reaches out to donors for help retiring debt

Some donors to Rae Huang’s mayoral campaign received an email earlier this week seeking their help in relieving their campaign debt. This is despite Huang’s campaign eventually received matching funds of $469,735.02 about 10 days after polls closed for the the June 2 primary election. Huang’s campaign struggled and ultimately failed to obtain the matching funds they’d hoped to qualify for before the end of the election. Some who were owed money told The LA Reporter they ended up getting paid after these funds came in.

Their latest major ethics filing showed that Huang’s campaign owed $172,484.99. Any additional debt or expenditures that hadn’t been captured in that filing could show up in the next required filing, which is due to the City Ethics Commission by July 31, or potentially in amendments to some of the campaign’s earlier filings.

The subject heading of the email from Huang’s campaign that was shared with The LA Reporter read, “Favor: Help us relieve our debt,” and the email opens with Huang saying,“I’m writing to ask a favor. Will you help me relieve the remaining debt from my campaign by making a donation right now?”

The email identified $125 as the amount that the person who received the email had donated and thanked them for it. And then it asks if the donor could give an additional $132 “that could be matched,” which meant that the campaign could receive an additional amount that’s six times that, raising the total value of the donation to $924. They also said donors can give up to the maximum of $1,800.

Huang’s email also said the campaign was able to organize “first-time canvassers” to become “committed, long-term organizers now plugging into ongoing organizing throughout LA,” and it said that Huang “wanted to get back to what I do best, organizing and bringing people together, by retiring my campaign debt.” The email also said she “took a big risk to stand up for our values, but I knew that I wasn’t doing that alone, and that our community would work together to make it possible.”

A couple more things…

Libor Jany, who covers the LAPD, for the LA Times reports that there was an idea floated at a senior staff meeting last week that would call for cancelling more than half of the 13 recruitment academies that the department typically has per year, as a way to free up police officers to patrol the streets in time for the Olympics. The academies would pause starting January 2028, according to Jany’s story.

Teresa Liu, who covers LAUSD for the Los Angeles Daily News, reports that the Los Angeles Unified School District has been placed under heightened fiscal oversight. The Los Angeles County Office of Education made the determination to do this based on their assessment that the district wouldn’t be able to meet its financial obligations this fiscal year due to structural deficits, the recent labor agreements and declining enrollment. For now, it appears to mean that the district will be assigned a fiscal adviser to address the financial issues, but there could be further interventions if the district doesn’t stabilize its finances.

The resolution from LA Council member Traci Park to set up LAMC 41.18 anti-camping zones, which target homeless encampments, turns out to include the addresses of several Venice area services providers who work with people who are homeless. This was pointed out by a reader of the LA Squawk Box. Three of the listed sites where they’re restricting people from camping are Venice Community Housing, Venice Family Clinic and St. Joseph Center.

Many might not know this, but it’s illegal to play a sport involving a ball or other similar equipment on a city street, sidewalk or public park, unless it’s on a field or court designated for that sport. Language to repeal what two council members’ motion called an “uncommonly silly law” just got submitted by the City Attorney’s Office is headed to the City Council’s Public Safety Committee.