LA Squawk Box for Wednesday, July 8, 2026

LA fire chief shares July 4 staffing woes, county supes want community land trust to get first crack at purchases but realtors are against it, and Lineage wraps rotting food odors in plastic.

What’s happening today?

Staffers from Los Angeles County supervisors offices and county health services departments gathered to workshop some board motions at a “health cluster” meeting today. One of the motions is by Janice Hahn and it’s related to Measure ER, which was just passed and will be bringing in some funding to help fill any gaps in health services created due to the One Big Beautiful Bill. Because Measure ER provides for a set amount of the funds to go specifically to health departments in Long Beach and Pasadena, Hahn’s motion was calling for doing some engagement with those two cities.

And there has been a bit of a dust-up around the much older Measure B, an earlier measure from 25 years ago that funds trauma hospitals, over how those funds are being divvied up among hospitals. Some hospitals are complaining that there needs to be a more equitable way for deciding who gets the funds so they can go to high-need areas, while other hospitals say that’s not necessary, arguing that it’s all already being done fairly. Supervisor Holly Mitchell authored the motion that tries to rethink how Measure B funds are being distributed, especially in light of the effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill.

And the LA County Democratic Party is starting to take endorsement requests today from candidates in the Nov. 3, 2026 general election. It looks like they will be considering recommendations from their candidate interview committee and assembly delegation at a Sept. 8, 2026 meeting of the Los Angeles County Central Committee Meeting. They point people to this schedule of elections from the LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk as the races that are eligible for endorsement consideration.

What just happened?

LA County supervisors say they want to put community land trusts at the front of the line for purchasing property; realtors are against this

The LA County Board of Supervisors signed off on drafting legal language for regulations guiding a program that would allow community land trusts — which are collectively owned properties that need to be used to help the community — as well as nonprofits, the first right of purchase on property in unincorporated Los Angeles (most LA county legislation can only affect unincorporated areas, since similar legislation in the cities within the county are set by their own elected city councils). Under this motion, approved by the board, affordable housing groups would be at the front of the line for buying land and property with a program like this. It’s similar to a Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) program, but it’s called a Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) program, which allows community groups such as land trusts and nonprofit developers, to have the first crack at buying property.

Such programs are meant to give people or groups who may be at a disadvantage competing with other buyers more of a leg up in these real estate deals. The motion the board approved describes the two programs as “complementary,” saying that “TOPA centers tenant empowerment, while COPA ensures long‑term affordability and stewardship, strengthening the overall ecosystem of anti-displacement tools.”

Just because the supervisors gave their blessing to the motion doesn’t mean anything’s been set up yet. They still have to draft the language for the program, and a lot can happen during this process. The motion calls for legal language to be brought back for another vote, and staffers were given a 180-day runway, or six months, to do that. That puts the deadline at next January for the language to return, although it’s also always possible for language to come back earlier than that.

The county’s Department of Consumer and Business Affair produced a report on TOPA back in 2023, in response to a 2021 board decision, if you’re interested in learning more about that. The idea of setting up TOPA and COPA programs was also something that was proposed in an LA city motion from 2024 by Nithya Raman and seconded by Hugo Soto-Martinez. It’s clearly been a long time since the motion was introduced, and they’re only a few month off from the Nov. 19, 2026 expiration date for it. And a COPA program now exists in San Francisco, while Washington D.C. has a TOPA program. David Wagner with LAist covered Tuesday’s board discussion on the COPA program, noting down the opposition from a speaker during comment representing the Southland Regional Association of Realtors.

Fire Chief Moore said firefighters took a beating during Lineage fire, until more aid came; says staff shortage led to shutting down ambulances, fire engines and truck companies on July 4.

Los Angeles’s fire chief, Jamie Moore, told fire commissioners on Tuesday that while his firefighters were battling the recent fire at the Lineage cold storage warehouse in Boyle Height, he had to make a special request to the state’s chief marshal for staffing and equipment support.

“As mighty as the Los Angeles Fire Department is, my people are taking a beating,” Moore said he told the chief marshal, in his report to the Board of Fire Commissioners at Tuesday’s meeting.

Moore said this request to the chief marshal for the extra help was part of what led to the emergency declarations that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis issued on Saturday, June 20, about three days into fighting the fire, which started on June 17 and was eventually “knocked down” eight days later on June 24. Those declarations also led to local officials getting the sign-off from the governor on an emergency proclamation that opened up the more resources for fighting the fire, Moore said.

Those emergency designations came after he did something that he said had never been done before in California. Based on what Moore was telling fire commissioners, this kind of support is typically made for brush and wild fires, but not for structure fires. And he said he made this unusual request after speaking to a commander at the fire that morning, who mentioned the fatigue that firefighters were enduring. Firefighters were working eight hours at a time, Moore said.

As the result of getting sign-off on the extra support, Moore said, firefighters from around the region came to the fire department’s aid, including ones from Orange County, Long Beach, Los Angeles County, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Redondo Beach and Torrance. They had help from “refinery firefighters,” Moore told the commissioners. “I had tools and equipment to fight that fire that we could have never ever dreamt of having on our own,” Moore said. “And that just shows the vulnerability… the city of Los Angeles has.”

Moore’s story about what happened came at the tail end of a discussion about the fire department needing to shut down fire engines, truck companies and ambulances over just the last week, on July 2 and on July 4. This means that those firefighting units weren’t available for 24 hours at a time, and other firefighting units needed to step in to cover the work.

Moore said they had to shut down these units because of a staffing shortage problem the department has been grappling with, via conversations with the firefighters union, and LA city leaders like Mayor Karen Bass. There are as many as 400 empty firefighter slots that he has to fill each day, Moore said, to ensure that all of the department’s firefighting resources are staffed at all times, but they have been struggling to keep up with that. When they can’t fill some of those slots, it leads to needing to shut down fire engines, truck companies, ambulances and other such resources.

Moore says there is a way to try to address this that would also give firefighters more predictability about when they work (and when they can go home), but there is a component around “accountability” in that plan that he and other fire leadership have not been able to come to an agreement with the firefighters union on.

The commission’s president, John Perez, said he had hoped to get this particular issue taken up at Tuesday’s meeting, but there were some logistical complications that ended up making it not possible, so he called for making sure this did get taken up at a future meeting.

This conversation happened against the backdrop of a one-half cent sales tax to fund the fire department needs getting placed onto the November ballot. The council recently also voted to name this measure Initiative Ordinance FD. To that end, Moore mentioned that they needed as many as five recruitment classes to hire enough firefighters to keep up with their workload. And he said that right now, there are two upcoming recruitment classes with slots for 60 people each, but he would prefer if they could increase the capacity to 100 people per class. And so the extra funding from the fire department sales tax measure would help with that, Moore said.

“There’s a lot relying on this ballot measure,” Moore said. “That ballot measure will help us come closer to a solution to this problem with our staffing issue.”

Perez responded to Moore that while “it is crucial that this ballot measure pass… that can’t be our only solution with respect to resources.” He says there are other “creative” ways to also bring in revenue, such as by address legislation around brush clearance, and having the city doing a better job of recovering fees that property owners that could also be done, including by following the practices that LA County takes with how they bring in fee revenue.

A few more things…

The Board of Supervisors also signed off on a way to fix a screwup that led to Measure J, which funds programs for communities affected by mass incarceration, headed toward a repeal, potentially cutting off that funding. That “colossal fiasco” has led to much anger among community members who spent years to get the set-aside in the county’s budget for such programs, and others who have seen first hand how it has been helping their community. Many spoke at the meeting to share stories about how the funding has helped to keep them housed, or supported, including through guidance on schooling and job searches, and other social support services, such as mental health services that would otherwise be too expensive and out of reach for many people in the community.

For example, one of the speakers, from the Young Women’s Freedom Center, said that the county funding that’s set aside for “alternatives to incarceration” programs has gone to a program for formerly incarcerated youth to help them get their diploma, and to get employed.

She pointed to her own example, saying that, “never in the five years I was in-and-out of juvenile hall, [did] I received these opportunities. Instead, I felt helpless, oppressed by the people who should have helped me.”

But she did end up “achieving my goals,” she said, due the Measure J-funded program at the Young Women’s Freedom Center, which included getting her high school diploma and a job, as well as “new ways of healing.”

Since Supervisors are already wanting to go to the ballot to make sure that the new Ethics Commission they’re setting up will be independent, this was an opportunity for this Measure J language to be restored, after it is set to be overwritten by language that voters adopted via Measure G, a separate measure that revamps governance in the LA County, including expanding the five-person Board of Supervisors to nine members, and creating a new elected office called the County CEO, which has similar powers to that of the LA’s mayor, although the types of services that the county has jurisdiction over can be much different and has a heavier emphasis on health services and social safety net programs.

The Board of Supervisors also heard updates about the recent Lineage fire, and an earlier oil spill in East Los Angeles, from a variety of fire officials, as well as AQMD and public health officials, like Barbara Ferrer. They touched on numerous topics, including clean up efforts, who has liability and how the public can make claims, and also how they decide whether to evacuate residents. The presentation included mention of fact that the Lineage building, where officials and the company are dealing with tens of millions of pounds of rotting food, is getting wrapped up in plastic to contain the odors. That’s something that was also mentioned in the Boyle Heights Beat’s exclusive coverage by Laura Anaya-Morga and Isaac Vargas of a mostly private meeting between Lineage executives and some community leader in Boyle Heights representing people who care about the effects on residents, small businesses, street vendors, and environmental justice.

LA leaders recently sent a stern letter to Lineage’s president complaining that the company was late on numerous requests for information they had sent. Council member Ysabel Jurado who set up the meeting between the Lineage executives and the community leaders expressed strong disappointment after the meeting after repeatedly asking them to commit to holding regular community meetings, since not everyone follows the updates posted online. Boyle Heights Beat reported that Lineage’s chief operating officer, Jeff Rivera, responded by raising concerns about how “constructive” the weekly community meetings Jurado and the community leaders were requesting would be.

They report that Rivera said his “only pause with weekly meetings is if they’re not going to be constructive, then I don’t think it makes sense to do that.”

And according to the Beats’ reporting, as well as that of others, the company has brought in the company, Clean Harbors, to conduct the cleanup. Clean Harbors is a company that the Department of Sanitation at LA city already contracts with frequently, per the City Controller’s website.