LA Squawk Box for Tuesday, June 23, 2026

Air purifiers and masks passed out amid calls for evacuation during Boyle Heights warehouse fire, operator of burning warehouse paid $107,500 to lobby LA officials, and LA county adopts $50.3B budget.

What’s happening today?

We’re in a heat wave that weather officials said was set to bring mid-90-degree and above temperatures starting today and lasting through Thursday. The heat wave is expected to affect the San Fernando Valley, downtown Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley. The Weather Services posted an alert on the heatwave on X.com.

And the Lineage Logistics cold storage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights is now going into its seventh day. The fires started last week on Wednesday, June 17, 2026, at the warehouse, which is just across the street from a residential neighborhood that happens to be split between the city of Los Angeles and unincorporated East Los Angeles.

Both the LA County Board of Supervisors and LA City Council are expected to vote on emergency declarations today, as a way to bring in more resources. Meanwhile, fire officials projected on Monday that should be able to put out the fire by mid week and return the site back to the operator, Lineage Logistics.

What just happened?

As community members call for evacuations, public officials pass out masks and air purifiers to neighbors of Lineage Logistics fire

Residents and groups like East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, which has battled toxic industrial neighbors for decades, have been calling on public officials to evacuate surrounding neighborhoods, as eye-stinging smoke billowed above the burning Lineage Logistics warehouse and across the region. They’ve also been demanding greater transparency on what materials are actually present and burning at the warehouse.

On Monday, though, LA officials continued to focus on passing out tens of thousands masks and giving away hundreds of air purifiers. Both LA City Council member Ysabel Jurado and LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis — who are the most direct political representatives of the residents living near the warehouse — said the air purifiers in particular were in short supply. Both made appeals for people to donate or to point them to sources for getting more air purifiers to give out.

Public officials say they want answers about Lineage warehouse fire

Solis, Jurado and Controller Kenneth Mejia also called for greater transparency and investigations into what happened. Solis pointed to a motion she authored with Supervisor Janice Hahn that is set to be taken up in the Board of Supervisors that includes calling for the investigation. Jurado also said she planned to introduce a set of motions that call for the “public release of air quality and environmental testing results” in English and Spanis; a report on the materials at the facility, including what burned, what is still burning and the potential health and environmental risks that remain; and fore more immediate support for residents.

Jurado, who noted that residents of the East Los Angeles and Boyle Heights neighborhoods who live near the warehouse already take on many environmental and industrial burdens, said in a statement that during a “major industrial fire” the response “cannot be slow, vague or incomplete.”

“Residents are seeing smoke, smelling odors, and finding ash and debris near their homes and businesses,” Jurado said. “Yet we still do not have clear enough information about what burned, what may still be burning, what is in the air, what is in the ash, and what risks remain.”

Jurado noted that it is “unacceptable” that “it is still unclear whether toxic items like lithium-ion batteries, insulation, chemicals, building materials, or other hazardous materials have been burning or polluting the air during this process.”

And Mejia pointed to an earlier fire at the same warehouse in 2024 that had been quickly extinguished. He raised the question of, “What came out of that past fire?” Mejia said the city has already spent $3 million, just in fire department costs, on the fire, and that his offices will continue to track those costs and what the city is doing in response to the fire.

Lineage Logistics representatives have been releasing updates each day on the company’s website, which can be found here. The company says they have donated $2 million to the California Community Foundation to use toward supporting people affected by the fire. They also said they brought in “high-powered water cannons from elsewhere in Southern California and from Texas, and funding Chinook helicopters that are capable of continuous massive water drops.”

The company says they believe the fire started as maintenance work was being done on the solar arrays on the warehouse’s rooftop. Melanie Mendoza, a representative for Lineage Logistics, said the company is a tenant and operator of the building that’s now on fire, and that the solar array is owned by Los Palos Street Operating LLC, which is a subsidiary of Altus Power. And she said the solar contractor is Pearce, which is a subsidary of CBRE, while the owner of the building is Chill Build Los Angeles I, LLC.

City Ethics lists $107.5K in lobbying spending by Lineage Logistics

Lineage Logistics has been lobbying Los Angeles city officials over the past two-plus years, paying their lobbyist a total of $107,500 over that period, mostly to lobby the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power on a couple of issues that affect the Boyle Heights warehouse, which has been on fire since last Wednesday. In 2025, they also lobbied the LA Fire Department, according to the third quarterly report for that year. The issues they’re lobbying on include “seeking remedy relative to a rapid shutoff device.” They also were lobbying to seek approval on a linear generator interconnection.

FYI, one of Lineage Logistics’ founders, Kevin Marchetti, has donated to elected officials and candidates in the past, including to Mayor Karen Bass’s re-election back in January 2025, which happened to be around the time the wildfires broke out in the Pacific Palisades. Police watcher Film the Police pointed to that donation over the weekend. The City Ethics commission also lists donations from Marchetti to Eric Garcetti, once during his first successful run for LA mayor and when he represented the 13th Council District.

LA County adopts $50.3B budget amid financial challenges. It includes funding for parks, jail closure and a new ethics commission.

The LA County Board of Supervisors advanced a “final” $50.3 billion budget that includes “lifeline” funding for deportation defense and other legal defense programs, and funding to “implement” the closure Men’s Central jail.

The budget also includes new dollars for setting up an independent LA County Ethics Commission, and for operating and maintaining county parks, including Esperanza Hills Regional Park, a yet-to-be built park area that is set to go over the La Puente landfill, which got full and was subsequently closed more than a dozen years ago.

The budget incorporated adjustments that LA County CEO Joseph Nicchitta recommended to the Supervisors on Monday. The goal of this budget, he said, was to not grow any services, due to some pretty extreme financial conditions the county is facing. There are unprecedented federal funding cuts, as well as an unprecedented liability costs that include billions of dollars in settlements that the county reached with sex abuse victims who made claims under AB 218, which lifted the time limit.

Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who has spent years in LA County government, including as chief-of-staff of former Supervisor Mike Antonovich’s office, issued a statement after the budget’s adoption that this has been “one of the most challenging fiscal environments I have experienced in more than 35 years of county service.”

The spending plan supervisors adopted on Monday isn’t actually the final say in the matter. County officials must come back each September, just over two months into the new fiscal year starting July 1, to make adjustments. By then, they’ll be able to incorporate whatever state officials end up adopting in their budget later this month, and other changes.

This year, the county will also be incorporating spending recommendations based on the recent passage of Measure ER, a half-cent sales tax LA County voters passed earlier this month as a way to counteract federal funding cuts under the President Donald Trump-backed H.R. 1, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill, that are expected to result in deep cuts to the county’s health services programs. LA County officials say federal cuts already responsible for the closures of half a dozen community health clinics.

Nicchitta said his office is working to bring back budget recommendations for Measure ER in the next few months, and Measure ER will be programmed in the supplemental budget.

Nicchitta also noted that this year, they’re getting state mental health services funding under a new program that voters put in place by passing Proposition 1 in March 2024. Nicchitta told the county they’re receiving nearly $900 million from Prop. 1, which is also called the Behavioral Health Services Act. That measure replaced the Mental Health Services Act. While Prop 1 maintained the same percentage of state dollars counties receive, it changed the formula for how the funds are used and how reporting on mental health dollars work. The primary idea behind the changes is that there is a bigger emphasis on diverting the health services dollars paying for housing costs.

The California Budget and Policy Center recently put out a guide for how this new funding would work for counties. They wrote that “the restructuring of funds means counties are cutting back on vital services, especially in prevention and early intervention, innovative behavioral health programs, and other core services that primarily support children and youth services.”

They also said that “counties are exploring ways to count existing efforts under the housing interventions category, since many have already used MHSA funds to provide housing or housing supports to individuals with behavioral health conditions.”

This 45-page report summarizes the CEO office’s recommended adjustments that supervisors incorporated into the $50.3 budget adopted on Monday. County officials also released a 115-report that gathers together all of the various issues the public, supervisors, and advocacy groups raised raised during the budget hearings. There are also letters from department officials highlight unmet needs. An example of one unmet need that was highlighted during budget deliberations was for three carpenter positions “to address lifeguard tower maintenance and repairs in a timely manner.”

Here are a few highlights from Nicchita’s presentation to Supervisors on Monday:

Jail closure funding: And given the public interest in the closure of Men’s Central Jail, Nicchitta highlighted some of the funding that was put towards doing that. Nicchitta said that $314.3 million in Measure J funding is allocated in the new budget, with $42 million going toward closing the jail. Those funds go toward expanding diversion and community-based treatment They also put in $2.1 million to expand substance use navigation services in the Public Health Department.

Nicchitta said nearly $600 million are going toward closing the jail, while also complying with the Department of Justice to improve jail conditions and provide better access to medical and mental health care to people in custody. They are funding the majority of this with county dollars and AB 109 realignment funds, which are dollars the count receives when taking over custody of people from the state prison system.

The $600 million also includes hiring clinicians nurses to work at the jails, paying for medically assisted drug treatment for people in custody, and for body worn cameras and CCTV to prevent jail suicides, Nicchita said. There is $554.8 milion for correctional health services, which provides health and mental health treatment in jails. They are alsomaintaining 6,164 interim beds, 32,517 permanent supportive housign slots, and 5,300 diversion and re-entry beds.

County officials found $15 million to fund parks, Ethics commission and to keep the coroner’s office up to industry standards: They were able to find $15 million in “local” money, related to surplus in retirement money, to pay for new ongoing programs. They are putting nearly half of that $7 million toward parks, specifically for the recently named Esperanza Hills Regional Park, which is set to be built over the La Puente landfill in the San Gabriel Valley that closed over a decade ago; Charles White Park in Altadena, the Earvin “Magic” Johnson Recreation Area in Willowbrook and Wishing Tree Park in Torrance. Another third of that, $5 million, isgoing toward setting up the new Ethics Commission and Office of Ethics. They’re also putting $1.7 million to pay for licenses for the Sheriff department’s Computer Assisted Dispatch system. And they are putting $300,000 toward accreditation for the Medical Examiner department. Nicchita said the board has been working for several years to help the department regain its accreditation, since they lost several years ago, in 2016, after it was unable to meet the National Association of Medical Examiners’s operational standards. At the time, the group cited staffing shortages in the department, and backlogs in the department’s work. The Medical Examiner announced this past January that they regained full accreditation. They’re also putting $200,000 into a new staff position in the Military and Veterans Affairs department to help with suicide prvention and outreach. Nicchita said that this was an area where a “modest investment could have a very meaningful impact.”

Lifeline funding extended to legal aid, commercial cannabis and Measure G: Nicchitta also said some one-time dollars were being put toward select programs, including several million for jobs programs, such as $9.1 million for the Youth@Work program and $1.1 million for a program to the PLACE (Preparing for Los Angeles County Employment) program, which is aimed at reducing barriers to permanent county jobs. For the PLACE program, the funding will go toward maintaining the current 200 participates taking part in the program, he said. Nicchita also said that while it’s usually not a good budgeting practice to use one-time money, which runs out after one year, for programs that are meant to be ongoing over several years. But he said there were some programs that needed a “lifeline” and those include $4.2 million to cover six months of Represent LA, a program to provide legal assistance to people facing deportation. They’re also covering $2 million for the Public Defender and the Alternative Public Defender’s holistic defense programs, which pays for “partners for justice” client advocates that connect people to support services and to complete court requirements for getting their case dismissed. They’re also putting $3.3 million, which come from savings from this year, toward the Measure G Governance Reform Task Force, to pay for staff, consultants and task force member stipends. And another $1.5 million will go toward the Self-Help Legal Access Centers which providers resources for who are representing themselves in lawsuits. And they’re putting $1.5 million into setting up their commercial cannabis program.

Federal, state dollars spending plan include an easier transition for people who just experienced an acute mental health crisis: Nicchitta also higlighted that they are using outside dollars from the state and federal government toward other programs, including one called emPATH units at the MLK Jr. Community Hospital and the Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital that serve as alternatives to a hospital environment, giving people a place to be while they’re “stepping down from an acute or crisis setting.”

You can read more about Monday’s adopted county budget in this City News Service story by Jose Herrera that was picked up in the LA Daily News.