LA Squawk Box for Tuesday, June 30, 2026

'Poison pill' proposal would eliminate charter-required LA City Council meetings. Police union threatens litigation on oversight measure. LA leaders have a deal on how Angelenos foots Olympics cost.

What’s happening today?

‘Poison pill’ charter proposal would allow LA leaders to get rid of required, standing dates with the public

The LA City Council is set today to consider a slate of charter reform ballot measures, including some that are big topics like giving the City Council more oversight of the LAPD. That’s something that has predictably led to the powerful police officers union now threatening litigation. There are a few other headline-grabbers in the proposed charter changes. But one proposal that’s gone under the radar has alarmed some of the advocates most concerned about setting up guardrails against corruption at City Hall. This proposal would remove a requirement for the City Council to hold at least three meetings per week.

The groups are calling this a “poison pill” because it’s slipped in with a set of ethics, elections and governance proposals that’s packaged in a single ballot measure. This means that someone who may otherwise support the other items could think twice about their support if they see that their vote would also mean letting LA leaders off the hook on holding the standing council meetings.

Such meetings are one of the very few ways the public can speak directly to elected officials without feeling like they must make special arrangements to get face-time with those often in-demand leaders. And it’s not uncommon for members of the public to feel as though they are being left on read by their local City Council member, even when they’ve made many attempts to reach out to them. Such public meetings can be an avenue for getting heard, including on issues that make those officials uncomfortable.

And the advocates even applied some cost figures to this dynamic of numerous constituents and stakeholders fighting for the attention of a relatively limited number of City Council members in a large city. In Los Angeles, politicians’ time tends to be more of a “valuable commodity,” they said, and that’s a system in which those who can afford lobbyists might win out over the regular Joe or Jane who cannot.

“The city of LA is an extreme outlier in the size of our council districts, and that negatively affects opportunities to access an elected official,” the groups write in their letter to the City Council on Monday.

“Time in front of a decision maker is a valuable commodity, $74 million was spent lobbying LA City officials last year. Public comment doesn’t matter to most of those lobbyists, but it does matter for the general public. The Charter obligates our elected officials to serve full time, and they are well paid for those efforts. This issue cuts to the core of what our representative government looks like, and what our elected officials are paid to do. Removing this section needs further study before it is seriously entertained.”

The letter is signed by California Clean Money Campaign, California Common Cause, Fair Rep LA, League of Women Voters of Greater Los Angeles, and Unrig LA.

The proposal that was sent to the City Council to be taken up today would entirely delete this part of Section 242 in the City Charter, on the meeting frequency requirement:

“The Council shall hold regular meetings at least three days each week. Meetings may be held in City Hall or elsewhere in the City. By resolution, the Council may establish periods during which the Council or its committees will be in recess. The Council and its committees may also each hold special meetings with proper notice.”

The advocates say the issue deserves more study before being placed on the November ballot, but they nevertheless graciously provided some analysis of the issue, and offered up some tweaks of what’s being proposed.

For example, they argue that the existing language is too vague. They offered that based on the current pace of city business, the council could absorb removing one of the required days, reducing it to two required meetings per week. They also recommended a fairer way of describing what the ballot language does, since right now it says the measure would “allow the City Council to change its meeting schedule.” They note that the city does have discretion to change its meeting schedule, and they say that a fairer reflection of what the proposal actually does is to “allow the City Council to establish its meeting frequency.”

They also point to the need to make up for any reduction in meeting frequency, including allowing for more people to be able to get into the meetings (right now there is limited space and some people aren’t able to get in if there are multiple hot issues and presentations taking place at once), and to provide video of committee meetings, which now can only be heard remotely through an audio feed.

This one issue is part of a massive day of meetings in which the City Council is expected to take up at least 100 issues, and they’re going to have an even bigger agenda tomorrow that has more than 120 issues. These jam-packed meetings are taking place just before the City Council goes on recess next week, starting July 7, and through July 31. And something to note about the actual deadline for the City Council to vote on placing measures on the November ballot — while the deadline is practically speaking, tomorrow, for the City Council to decide, they legally have until the end of next month, July 31st, to make the final decision on what to place on the ballot this fall. The earlier deadline was set due to the fact that that they’re going to be on recess for the legal deadline. This means the council does have more time, but they’d have to choose to hold a meeting during a recess, which has been done in the past on some urgent matters.

LA leaders to look over a deal on how Angelenos foots Olympics cost: LA leaders and LA 28 have been extremely late on reaching an agreement on how on the hook Angelenos would be for paying for the cost of hosting the 2028 Olympics. But they finally cut that deal, and it’s being taken up at a 2 p.m. meeting of an ad hoc committee on the Olympics that includes seven council members. You can read the report and the agreement language here.

What just happened?

LA’s homeless services agency sues the Trump Administration: The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority says they’ve filed a lawsuit against the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, also known as HUD, after the agency moved to suspend federal homelessness funding around Los Angeles County. LAHSA officials say this is to keep 11,000 formerly homeless people housed. Their legal brief pointed out inaccurate characterizations in HUD’s letter that confused some of the agencies involved or used sources other than formal audits, and says HUD pointed to wrongdoing without evidence. LAHSA’s commission chair, Amber Sheikh, said that federal officials, for example, were “weaponizing old corrected financial abuse to suddenly strip housing from thousands of people,” which she said “makes no sense legally or practically.” She also said they could not “stand by while an unjustified federal decision threatens to pull the rug out from under LA’s homeless services system.” LAHSA officials also said they were seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent HUD from suspending funding.

Police officers union threaten to sue over charter reform plans for November ballot: The Los Angeles Police Protective League has been threatening litigation against the city over charter reform proposals that affect the police department. As the City Council actively takes up proposals to give themselves more authority over setting LAPD policy, as well as giving the independent LAPD watchdog greater independence, the police officers union is making a demand that city officials hold “meet and confer” meetings with them to negotiate these changes with them in good faith. You can read their June 18 letter to city officials here, and look through the council file on the issue here. You can also provide written public comment under that council file.