What’s happening today?
Mayor Karen Bass wants LADWP to pay for an “outside the city” independent audit, but City Controller Kenneth Mejia says the audit should be done by “a watchdog elected by the people”
This morning, the LADWP board, which is made up of mayoral appointees, will be discussing ways to respond to the recent spate of high water and power bills. You can view the meeting live (as well as after the fact) here. Mayor Karen Bass announced early Monday that she was calling for an “outside of the city” independent audit. In an emailed response to The LA Reporter’s questions about how the mayor defined an “outside of the city” audit, Bass’s office wrote that the “audit will require highly specialized expertise to thoroughly examine LADWP’s rate structures and how to protect ratepayers from surprise billing spikes.” The Board is recruiting the auditor, and the LADWP will pay for it, the emailed statement said, and that “the cost will not impact the city’s general fund.”
Bass’s announcement that she wanted an audit came about a week after City Council member Nithya Raman, who is running against Bass for mayor, had called for an audit to be done by City Controller Kenneth Mejia and the LADWP ratepayer advocate. She and Mejia appeared in a news conference together outside an LADWP yard in North Hollywood and demanded more transparency on how the rate is set. Raman noted that while the City Council sets the rate schedule, the last schedule adopted 10 years ago allowed some wiggle room for the utility to make some adjustments on their own to account for fluctuations. But Raman said said that those adjustments could be the reason behind why LADWP rates recently climbed so dramatically.
Bass’s own announcement did not mention involving Mejia in the audit, which prompted Mejia to respond on Monday that “if the mayor is serious about continuous transparency and accountability on our tax dollars, she should fund the independent watchdog elected by the people, instead of spending millions on outside companies that are not beholden to the people of Los Angeles.” Mejia’s office also said that they have been fielding “thousands of requests from frustrated Angelenos who are outraged by their unusually high LADWP bill.”
LAUSD to discuss a recent review of whether registered vendors are engaged with ICE-related and immigration enforcement services
In March, the LAUSD board recently adopted a resolution that directs the district to review whether vendors seeking contracts with the school district are engaged in ICE or immigration enforcement related activities. Since then the district found that 98.7% of vendors registered at LAUSD that responded to a survey don’t support ICE-related detention, surveillance or immigration enforcement services. That left 11 vendors that responded that they did support such services, two of which have LAUSD contracts. The survey has received responses from 763 out of a total of about 12,000 vendors, though. Los Angeles Unified School District school board members are meeting at 10 a.m. and are set to discuss that as well as academic performance and the district’s 2026 legislative advocacy, as well as their 2027 plans for legislative advocacy. Board resolutions can be looked up here. The meeting can be viewed live here.
A big vote today on an Axon contract to try out license plate surveillance cameras, after LA city dumped their competitor Flock
Today is the last chance, at least in this latest round of things, for the Los Angeles City Council to intervene on a three-month contract with Axon to try out Flock-style license plate surveillance cameras. The Los Angeles Police Department recently decided to let an existing Flock contract expire, but as with other cities that have done that in response to reports that federal immigration officials are able to tap into those surveillance logs, they are trying to turn to other companies, including Axon to fill the void. LAPD officials argue that these cameras aid investigations, although a recent inspector general report found that some of the information were false leads and may have led officers to stop people unnecessarily. The council recently voted to intervene on the contract, which is actually under the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles police commission to be decided. After voting to try to intervene, the council has a short time frame to vote on the issue, and today’s meeting at 10 a.m. is the deadline.
The City Council’s agenda also includes a 41.18 resolution in the 11th council district, in West Los Angeles, and three oversized vehicle restrictions, one in the 15th Council District in the South Bay and two in the 2nd Council District in Southeast San Fernando Valley. Other items relate to the Studio City/Beeman Recreation Center Capital Improvement Project and the tract maps for a big Jordan Downs project approved in 2019. They’re also taking up some motions aimed at building more protected bike lanes.
A few other things…
LA city leaders are also discussing a possible $10 million recovery fund for people affected by the Lineage fire, and potentially getting some updates on how the fire affected water quality in the area. An earlier report flagged dead fish found in the Los Angeles River around the time of the fire. These items were taken up by the Los Angeles City Council’s Ad Hoc Committee for Boyle Heights Recovery, and you can catch what was said here.
The Board of Supervisors is holding public hearings today at its 9:30 a.m. meeting, and among the issues they’re taking up is the spending plan for Measure J dollars. Among the recommendations is to use $11 million on a plan to close Men’s Central Jail. [This was added after it was sent out]
What just happened?
Nithya Raman’s mayoral campaign filed an ethics complaint against Thrive LA, saying that recent demonstrations held by the group violated ethics rules. They include an AI hotline that they said impersonated Raman’s voice, and spray-painted messages on the ground that the campaign says did not include the proper disclosure disclaimers. One of the messages said “Poop Zone, courtesy of Nithya Raman,” and it was part of a scene in which people impersonating unhoused people set up camps outside Raman’s home.
Ana Teresa Dahan, the executive director of Thrive LA, spoke to The LA Reporter on Tuesday about the filings, saying that the “campaign communications” were properly disclosed and that their activity was protected under “first amendment” and should be seen as political satire. Dahan also said that while they used satire, the fact that there is human feces on the ground is not funny. “What I find more troubling is they’re trying to intimidate and stop us from speaking,” Dahan said, who also said the goal was to bring scrutiny to Raman’s record. “We take it very seriously,” Dahan said.
Liz Garcia of Raman’s campaign meanwhile said in a statement that Thrive LA was a political committee supporting Raman’s opponenet Mayor Karen Bass, and she described their demonstrations as the “desperate tactics from corporate interests determined to keep their grip on City Hall. They can’t defend a broken status quo that has left Angelenos paying more and getting less, so they’re inventing a candidate to attack.” Garcia attacked the AI hotline, saying that it was “both sad and illegal for Karen Bass’ conservative allies to be cloning Nithya’s voice, manufacturing her words, and hiding who is paying for it, all to deceive voters.
The LA Times’ Itzel Luna has a report out on the ethics complaint.
Tentative deal takes the wind out of the sails of Monday vote on who takes over homeless services in LA County
Two weeks ago, more than 1,500 attendees crashed the Zoom of a meeting of the Los Angeles Continuum of Care, an extremely obscure commission to decide whether to hand LA County control homeless services duties, after LA Mayor Karen Bass had sent out a text blast to get people to vote against that proposal. But the crowd was smaller at Monday’s redo of those votes, and the CoC ended up handing the reins over to the county with little resistance. LA city leaders last Friday decided not to sue after they hammered out a deal last week that would give the city control over case management data, and priority to place people in the city into the housing that the city creates. LA city leaders have argued that they have created a disproportionate amount of the housing and shelters in the county. A couple hundred people voted in favor compared to a few dozen against letting LA County take over. The voter pool for the CoC is unusually vast, since a voting member is defined as anyone within their continuum, which stretches across virtually all of the 88 cities in Los Angeles County, who is interested in working together to resolve homelessness.
A few more things…
After votes by their national political committee, the LA chapter of DSA will need to get Nithya Raman to clarify her positions on Israel and BDS by Oct. 31, to ensure her endorsement isn’t rescinded. That deadline is just three days before the mayoral election. Raman also faces expulsion and would need to respond by Nov. 30 on her stances. Peter Sterne, of City and State NY, provided the live updates on X.com on Monday, while here in Los Angeles, Noah Goldberg of the LA Times offered an overview of what’s happening with Raman’s DSA-LA endorsement. While the decision to review Raman’s DSA-LA endorsement this close to the election struck some as counter productive to their own organization’s goals of furthering socialism in Los Angeles – with leaders of the local chapter pointing to ways Raman’s stances have been pushed closer in alignment to DSA’s through their continued efforts – others in the left-wing organization have said it was important to hold the line on what it means to stand for DSA’s values.
Stop LAPD Spying announced a CPRA lawsuit seeking public records from LA City Council member Traci Park about her “official dealings” with Flock Safety. You can read the complaint here. You can also see Eric Langberg’s write-up and photos from the group’s news conference here.
“I’ll tell you exactly what happened,” writes Memo Torres in a tell-all style account of his version of what led to him getting fired from LA Taco. It was a response to LA Taco’s challenge to Torres, who was a prominent face at LA Taco due to his daily updates on ICE raids, in their recent statement, saying, “Memo, you’ve always said you stand for the truth. Then tell it.”
And LA city just unveiled a revamp of its system for City Council files where you can look up 50 years of legislative records. They also renamed the database the Legislative Management System.