What’s happening today?
The Venice Dell project is back on the agenda today, this time with the Board of Transportation Commissioners. That committee meets at 10 a.m. and will be taking up Mayor Karen Bass’s June 26, 2026 letter — sent because of a court order — telling the commission to “vacate” a decision to deny the use of a city parking lot, Lot 731, for affordable housing.
Boyle Heights Beat reports that Mayor Karen Bass will be holding a community meeting today to give an update on the post-Lineage fire cleanup at the Lou Costello Jr. Recreation Center. This is happening a day before the end of Bass’s 45-day deadline for the company to get the site cleaned up.
What just happened?
Former labor ally to Karen Bass just plunked down a big chunk of change to support her potential ouster, Nithya Raman
Estamos con Nithya for Mayor of LA 2026 is the name of a committee that just got $3 million from The Western States Regional Council of Carpenters. The labor group previously endorsed Bass, but said things soured when she failed to deliver for their members working construction. The filing for that contribution was posted to the Ethics Commission website on Wednesday. Meanwhile, a committee called Unidos con Karen Bass for Mayor 2026 just got a $5,000 donation from a former LA City Council member, Cynthia Miscikowski, who served 35 years on the body.
A few other recent tidbits from the filings: Thrive PAC donated $1,000 to Curren Price’s former staffer Jose Ugarte’s bid to replace his recent employer as the council member of the 9th City Council District. Ugarte is in a runoff with community organizer Estuardo Mazariegos. Marissa Roy, a deputy state attorney who is going up against deputy district attorney John McKinney, in the City Attorny’s race just got $1,800 from the Western State Regional Council of Carpenters.
After Nithya Raman’s removal from leadership spots, colleagues on council lash out; Congress member gives Raman her vote of confidence
Nithya Raman’s colleague on the City Council, Imelda Padilla, has been pretty explicitly expressing her dislike of the Bass challenger on social media this week. In a response to Raman’s post about being removed from her leadership position as chair of the Housing and Homelessness Committee (which also got split into two committees), Padilla’s account — writing in the first person — said that during the months she served on that committee under Raman’s “leadership were the most unproductive time I’ve had on council.”
“You ran it like a lecture hall at a university, not a place of government decision-making,” the comment said. “You were removed because of your inability to lead and get things done. The homeless crisis does not need a chair that is all talk and no action.”
Then on Thursday morning, a third person voice came online, responding to those who had came into the chat to back up Raman, wrote that “Padilla has been unhappy with Raman since her attempt to go after gardeners and their leatblowrers [sic], and when she tried to ban BBQs. Both would have highly negatively impacted members of CM Padillas community. Thus, it would be irresponsible for Padilla not to speak truth to the horrible type of Mayor Nithya would be.”
Padilla actually had already voiced her strong dislike of Raman a few months ago. In a June episode of the Scottie and FRNDS podcast featuring an interview with Padilla, the council member let out the sentiment that she thought Raman “is the worst coworker I’ve ever had.” At first she didn’t name the coworker, but later she identifyied that coworker as Raman. “God knows I tried to get to know her, get to work with her, but it was just never productive,” she said. “There was a major encampment between our communities and if it wasn’t for Mayor Bass that encampment on her side bordering me would have never been taken care of.”
Padilla also said in the podcast that she has held rallies for Bass. And a little earlier in the episode, Padilla mentioned that she was one of the mayor’s appointees to the Metro board, which makes major decisions around public transportation in LA County. That reveal elicited an impressed, “daaaang” from the podcast host. Padilla said she had thrown her name into the hat to be on that board, and she expressed her appreciation for Bass appointing her to the Metro board: “Thank you, Mayor Karen Bass.”
And it wasn’t just Padilla. A major member of the council also wasn’t shy in lashing out at Raman. Council President Harris-Dawson told Noah Goldberg of the LA Times that he felt that Raman saying her removal from the Housing and Homelessness Committee was political punishment was “sad and pathetic frankly… it was sad to see her ambition get the best of her, for her to spin a cunningly devised falsehood.”
While Raman was getting flack from both Padilla and Harris-Dawson, a member of Congress, Laura Friedman, put out a lengthy thread supporting Raman, after she was removed from the Housing and Homelessness Committee. In that post, Friedman shared her experience while serving on the state Assembly of Raman reaching out to partner on clearing an encampment that was on state property. “Nithya and her team were exceptional partners,” Friedman wrote. “They showed up consistently, worked across agencies, and were personally involved in connecting people experiencing homelessness with services rather than simply treating them as a cleanup problem.”
Another major thing happened… An agreement that would put LA city’s taxpayers on the hook for any financial overages of hosting the 2028 Olympics got approved by the City Council on Wednesday, with four members voting against it. Alissa Walker of Torched was there to cover that vote, and notes that not only does Controller Kenneth Mejia oppose a contract that makes taxpayers responsible for any of the costs, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto had said pretty much the same months ago.
