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Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
LA Times Today: Newsom's decision to fight fire with fire could have profound political consequences
As Governor Gavin Newsom predicted last week, today California legislative leaders introduced the Election Rigging Response Act. Proposition 50 – named for the number of states in our union – would temporarily redraw the state congressional map to create more Democratic seats if – and only if – Texas, Florida, Indiana or other GOP-led states redraw their maps to favor Republican candidates first. L.A. Times reporter Julia Wick covers politics for the times and joins Lisa McRee now.
Los Angeles Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
City officials want to fund immigration defense. The budget crisis makes it hard
Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It's Noah Goldberg, with assists from Julia Wick, Seema Mehta and David Zahniser, giving you the latest on city and county government. Days after the Trump administration's mass immigration raids came to Los Angeles, City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado started looking for money to help the city's undocumented residents. In a June 10 motion, she asked City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo to detail options for finding at least $1 million for RepresentLA, which provides legal services for undocumented Angelenos facing deportation. A week later, an official from Szabo's office said they were 'unable to identify eligible funding sources' for the $1 million, which would come on top of $1 million the city has already allocated to RepresentLA. This summer in L.A., an immigration crisis is colliding with a budget crisis, leaving some councilmembers frustrated that the city cannot do more, as federal agents whisk thousands of immigrants away to detention centers and potential deportation. The city has been active in court, joining an ACLU lawsuit that temporarily blocked federal agents from using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate immigration arrests. Mayor Karen Bass also announced a program to provide immigrants with gift cards, funded by private philanthropy, when many were afraid to go to work. But coming up with another $1 million for immigrant legal defense, after city officials closed a nearly $1-billion deficit through cuts and slated layoffs, has proved a slog. 'Why is it that we can't find the money for this?' asked Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez during a Civil Rights, Equity, Immigration, Aging and Disability Committee meeting on Aug. 1. 'It appears that level of urgency is not being transmitted through this report, because when we're in other situations, we find the money.' Jurado piggybacked off her colleague. 'This is an immigration legal crisis,' she said, adding that she felt 'disappointment, frustration and, frankly, anger with the outcome here that we can't find a single dollar to support immigrant communities and this legal defense fund.' 'I find it really hard to believe that the CAO couldn't find any money for it,' she said in an interview. RepresentLA, which is a public-private partnership with the county, the city, the California Community Foundation and the Weingart Foundation, has seen a surge in demand for legal services since the immigration raids began in June, said Jorge-Mario Cabrera, a spokesperson for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, which manages RepresentLA. 'The need is higher than the needs being met,' Cabrera said. The city has contributed funding for RepresentLA since its inception in 2021 — initially $2 million each fiscal year before dropping to $1 million in 2024-2025 and $1 million this year out of a total budget of $6.5 million, with the other $5.5 million coming from L.A. County. RepresentLA, which has served nearly 10,000 people, provides free legal representation for undocumented immigrants facing removal proceedings, as well as other services such as help with asylum applications. Some attorneys are on staff, while others are outside counsel. In April, Bass said in her State of the City speech that the city would 'protect every Angeleno, no matter where you are from, no matter when you arrived in L.A ... because we know how much immigrants contribute to our city in so many ways. We will always stand strong with you.' But behind the scenes, the city's financial struggles put even the initial $1 million for RepresentLA in jeopardy, with the mayor proposing to slash it to zero for this fiscal year. 'Getting the initial $1 million back was quite a battle,' said Angelica Salas, CHIRLA's executive director. 'It had been zeroed out. We were able to get just the money enough to continue the program for those who are currently in the program.' The City Council managed to claw back the $1 million during budget negotiations by slowing down hiring at the LAPD, as well as 'ending duplicative spending,' said Naomi Villagomez-Roochnik, a spokesperson for Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who sits on the budget committee. (The mayor and Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson have since said they are looking for money to reverse the hiring slowdown.) 'It's a crumb when you compare it to the rest of the city budget,' Hernandez said. RepresentLA has 23 attorneys working on deportation hearings, and Salas said each represents about 35 clients at any given time. An additional $1 million 'would allow us to expand our capacity for the new people — the thousands of people who have now been picked up in this new sweep,' she said. At the committee hearing earlier this month, Councilmember Monica Rodriguez said the City Council should find savings in other areas to help pay for important programs like RepresentLA. 'Next time the city attorney comes asking us for outside counsel money, you could say 'No' and redirect those resources. ... When the mayor comes for Inside Safe, for additional discretionary money that she is unaccountable for, you could say, 'No, we're taking $1 million and putting it for RepresentLA,'' she said. 'Let's effing go.' The committee called on the city administrative officer's staff to research options for funding RepresentLA, including grants or reallocating money from elsewhere. Szabo confirmed to The Times that things will be different at the next committee meeting. 'Our next report will provide options to fund RepresentLA at the level requested,' he said in a text message. BALLOT ROYALE: Labor unions and business groups have been locked in a heated battle of ballot measures for the last three months, after the City Council hiked the minimum wage for hotel and airport workers. Each side is trying to get measures on the ballot that would have far-reaching effects, including one that would put the minimum wage increase to a citywide vote. Unite Here Local 11, which represents hotel and restaurant workers, has proposed four ballot measures that, according to critics, would wreak havoc on the city's economy. Business leaders, in turn, have filed a ballot petition to repeal the city's $800-million business tax — a move denounced by city officials, who say it would gut funding for police and other essential services. — SAGE ADVICE: The Jurado staffer who was arrested during an anti-ICE demonstration in June gave a heads-up to her boss that she planned to take part, according to text messages obtained by The Times through a public records request. 'Going to the protest at [City Hall] fyi,' Luz Aguilar wrote to Chief of Staff Lauren Hodgins. Hodgins responded with words of caution. 'To reiterate what we spoke about a few mins ago, if you choose to take part in any community action, please ensure that you approach the event with peace and care for those around you and stay safe,' Hodgins wrote. 'This is not a city-sanctioned activity and you are participating on your own accord so want to ensure your safety along with the safety of those around you.' Aguilar did not text back. She was later arrested at the demonstration and ultimately charged with resisting arrest after allegedly assaulting a police officer. — BACK TO COURT: Prosecutors filed two new corruption charges against City Councilmember Curren Price this week. The charges were connected to two votes he cast on funding for the city housing authority and the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, both of which were paying Price's wife, Del Richardson. Price's attorney called the new charges 'nothing more than an attempt to pile on to a weak case.' Sources told The Times this week that prosecutors tried to get Richardson to testify in front of a grand jury as part of Price's case. She did not ultimately do so. — IT'S FUN TO STAY AT THE YMCA: Bass, L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and City Councilmember Traci Park were all in the Palisades Thursday morning at a ceremony where Horvath pledged $10 million from her discretionary funds toward rebuilding the Palisades-Malibu YMCA. — GIFT ECONOMY: Our public records request for all the gifts Bass received in the last year and a half came back, with the list largely composed of ceremonial gift exchanges with her foreign counterparts (chopsticks and a teacup from the mayor of Sejong, South Korea, estimated cost $32; a scarf and a hat from Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, estimated cost $45). There were a few interesting tidbits: Bass received flowers (~$72) from race and gender scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality. There were also fancy Dodgers tickets and food (~$590, but marked as 'paid down') from her longtime lawyers at Kaufman Legal Group, along with flights and travel for two speaking engagements. — NOT RULING IT OUT: When Bass appeared on the podcast 'Lovett or Leave It,' host Jon Lovett gave her a 'crazy pitch': What if the city of Los Angeles broke off from the county, forming its own city-county? Bass said it 'wasn't that crazy' and asked (jokingly) whether Lovett would be taking on the messy ballot initiative … before reverting back to her standard line on the need for intergovernmental cooperation. Bass also told Lovett that the city is still looking at ways to carve out an exemption to Measure ULA taxes for Palisades fire survivors selling their lots. And, she said, the city is in the process of hiring its long-promised film liaison 'as we speak.' — HOT SEAT: Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic lawmakers launched a special election campaign on Thursday, urging California voters to approve new congressional districts to shrink the state's Republican delegation, as Texas Republicans fight to redraw their own maps to favor the GOP. If the plan moves forward through the many hoops ahead, another district could be created in southeast Los Angeles County, which would undoubtedly kickstart frantic maneuvering ahead of 2026. (L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis' name is already getting thrown around as a potential candidate, though her office didn't respond to a half-dozen queries.) — DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL: City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto came out swinging against SB 79, state Sen. Scott Wiener's latest housing density bill, back in May. Now, both proponents and opponents are clamoring to know whether Bass will take a position on the controversial bill. The Times has been asking too, but so far the mayor and her team have not responded to questions. That's it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@ Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.
Los Angeles Times
19-07-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
It's a bureaucratic whodunit: Who killed Measure J?
Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It's Rebecca Ellis, with an assist from Julia Wick and Noah Goldberg, giving you the latest on city and county government. The 'five little queens' of L.A. County agree: accidentally wiping out a ballot measure is not a good look. It's a 'bureaucratic disaster,' Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said this week of the revelation that voters had wiped out the promise of hundreds of millions toward services that keep people out of jail. That snafu happened when voters approved her completely unrelated ballot measure in November to change the county's form of government. It's clear, the supervisors say, someone messed up badly. But who? The bureaucratic whodunit has confounded county observers — even those who once were creatures of the county themselves. 'I just can't figure it out,' said Zev Yaroslavsky, a former longtime county supervisor. 'The charter amendment just disappeared. I just don't know how that happened, mechanically.' The mistake, it seems, began with the county's executive office, which supports the five politicians with the less glamorous, administrative parts of the job — preparing meeting agendas and guiding the board through marathon Tuesday meetings. One of the lesser-known job requirements: updating the county charter — think of it like the county's constitution — when voters make changes at the ballot box. To do that, the executive office is supposed to submit the change to Municode, the online vendor hosting the county's charter, when the measure passes. That didn't happen. In 2020, voters approved Measure J, enshrining the promise of hundreds of millions toward services that keep people out of jail in the charter. Only the language was never actually added to the official charter document. Executive Officer Edward Yen, who was sworn into the top job last year, told his bosses Tuesday that the office was cleaning up its act. 'This failure of this magnitude is the reason why we're doing what we're doing,' he said at the Tuesday board meeting, noting he'd found his office's policies 'limited and lacking' when he came on the job. Celia Zavala, the former executive officer who retired in January 2024 after more than three decades with the county, couldn't be reached for comment. The executive office called its role 'purely ministerial' when it came to charter amendments and said it was working closely with the lawyers to make sure future changes were 'accurately and promptly reflected in the charter.' It was sloppy governance, but — until recently — it didn't really matter. Voters approved the measure, so it was, legally speaking, part of the county's governing document, even if you couldn't open up the charter and see it. But when a majority of county supervisors decided they wanted to revamp the county government last year, the outdated document became a real problem. County counsel had their marching orders: They were to create a ballot measure, known as Measure G, that would overhaul the county government, expanding the five-person board of elected supervisors to nine and bringing on a new elected executive, who would act almost as a mayor of the county. That's how it works, says Yaroslavsky. A supervisor has the vision. The lawyers create a ballot measure that makes it a reality. 'They put it into the secret language of legalese that none of us understand. And it wasn't like we took a magnifying glass to it,' said Yaroslavsky, who sponsored a ballot measure in 2002 to raise money for the county's trauma care network. 'I don't think I had any lawyers on my staff at the time — and certainly not legislative experts. So, I mean, you have to rely on your lawyers.' To change the county government, county lawyers wrote a ballot measure that would repeal most of a section of the charter — called Article III — in 2028. That section details the powers of the board — and, most consequentially, includes the requirement from Measure J that the board funnel hundreds of millions toward anti-incarceration services. County lawyers rewrote that chunk of the charter with the new changes the board wanted to make to the county's form of government — but left out the anti-incarceration funding. So when voters approved Measure G, they unwittingly repealed Measure J. The county counsel, led by Dawyn Harrison, said in a statement last week that the fault lies with a 'prior Executive Officer administration.' The charter wasn't updated, so they were left in the dark about what they needed to include in the new version. But some say the county lawyers — who drafted both ballot measures and therefore were presumably familiar with that part of charter— share some of the responsibility. 'It is an inexcusable administrative failing of the County's Executive Office and Counsel,' Supervisor Holly Mitchell said last week. 'It's just amazing that you wouldn't recall that you had Measure J,' said John Fasana, the former Duarte City Council member who first spotted the mistake. County counsel said in a statement that it was unrealistic. They were going off of what was posted on the online charter, which they said they're expected to treat 'as the governing law.' 'The idea that county attorneys should have 'just known' a provision was missing assumes we memorize every law ever passed,' county counsel said in a statement. 'That's not how the law works, and it couldn't function if we did.' Derek Hsieh, head of the sheriff's deputy union that opposed both ballot measures, says the buck stops at the top. 'The responsibility for this is with Los Angeles County supervisors. They are in charge, they take responsibility,' said Hsieh, underscoring one didn't need to have had a law degree to figure this out. 'And by the way, John Fasana's not a lawyer,' he said. — MEASURE J(K): County supervisors unanimously voted Tuesday to ask their lawyers to find a way to bring back Measure J. The county says it's looking at multiple options to try to get the measure permanently back in the charter including a change in state law, a court judgment or a ballot measure for 2026. — A HELPING HAND: County officials say a cash fund for families financially reeling from federal immigration raids will be stood up within a month. It's not clear yet who will be eligible or how much a family could expect to collect. — HOMELESSNESS HOPE: For the second straight year, the city and county saw declines in the number of homeless people. The number of people experiencing homelessness in the county dropped 4% in 2025, including a 10% decrease in people living on the street, according to the county's annual point-in-time homeless count. — TRUMP BASH: A day after the Pentagon ordered the withdrawal of half the National Guard troops deployed in L.A., Gov. Gavin Newsom held a press conference in Downey to criticize the president for wasting hundreds of millions of dollars to appear 'tough' by punishing immigrants. — PALISADES PERSPECTIVE: Mayor Karen Bass' political image was badly bruised in the wake of the fires, but she has compensated amid a string of historically good headlines in recent days. However, six months after the fires, she still faces some harsh critics in the Palisades, where the devastation is still palpable. — TRAGEDY WHILE TRAINING: Three deputies were killed on Friday in an explosion at the L.A. County Sheriff's Department's Biscailuz Training Center in East L.A. The agency has a history of dangerous incidents at its training facilities, with at least four fires at its mobile shooting ranges in the last 12 years. — ICE IN JAIL: The sheriff's department has resumed transferring jail inmates to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the first time in years. Eight inmates were released to ICE in May and a dozen more in June. Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said he has 'no choice' in the matter. He said the department must follow federal judicial warrants seeking the transfer of inmates in its county jails. — COSTLY CROSSWALK: A jury decided this week that the city must pay nearly $50 million to a man who has been in a coma since he was hit by a sanitation truck while crossing a street in Encino. The verdict comes as the city continues to struggle with escalating legal liability payouts. — MOUNTING LIABILITY: The county's no stranger to big payouts either. The supervisors approved a $14-million settlement this week to Alexander Torres, who spent more than 20 years in prison for a murder that he did not commit. That's it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@ Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.
Los Angeles Times
12-07-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
This four-decade veteran of city government thinks Los Angeles is in dire trouble
Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It's Julia Wick, giving you the latest on city and county government. Rick Cole has forgotten more about municipal government than most of us will ever know. The 72-year-old former mayor (Pasadena), city manager (Ventura, Azusa, Santa Monica) and deputy mayor (Los Angeles) returned for a third stint at Los Angeles City Hall in 2022, bringing a depth of experience to political neophyte and then-newly elected City Controller Kenneth Mejia's office as Mejia's chief deputy. After two and a half years in City Hall East, Cole announced last month that he would be leaving his post to focus on the Pasadena City Council, which he joined again last year. Cole knew that holding down 'a more-than-full-time role in LA and a more-than-part-time role in Pasadena' would be difficult to juggle, he wrote in a LinkedIn post, and ultimately decided he couldn't do both jobs justice. In a goodbye presentation to the L.A. City Council, he sounded the alarm, saying he has never been more worried about the city. We sat down with Cole to discuss that speech and his fears. Here's some of our conversation, very lightly edited and condensed for clarity. Tell me about the speech you gave at council. What motivated it? I've never been more alarmed about the future of Los Angeles. I delineated the existential challenges facing the city, which have been decades in the making. Politics needs to be looking out at the future and not just reacting to the crises of the day. And Los Angeles needs bold, systemic reform to meet the moment. Why are you so alarmed about the future of Los Angeles? It's a converging set of crises. You have a homelessness emergency, an affordable housing crisis, a billion-dollar structural financial challenge that's resulted in the loss of thousands of key city jobs. You had a firestorm that destroyed an entire neighborhood. And you have the federal government at war with the people in the government of Los Angeles. And underneath that, you have an existential challenge to Hollywood, which is unfolding. And you have crumbling infrastructure. And you have people feeling that government can't really fix any of these things, that the money we spend gets wasted, fair or unfair. That's a challenge. Do you think the government is wasting taxpayer money? Every institution has some level of waste. The problem with Los Angeles government and the public sector in California is an aversion to innovation. We've fallen behind the private sector in adapting to the new world of advancing technology and changing demographics. That's fixable, and that's what I was advocating for. What would it look like to fix these problems? Who's responsible, and who is currently dropping the ball? The lack of responsibility is built into the City Charter. Tell me more about what you mean by that. The people who originally wrote the charter a hundred years ago intentionally designed the system to diffuse authority, which therefore diffused accountability. So it's really difficult to know who is in charge of any given thing. A clear example is that the department heads have 16 bosses. They report to the mayor, but in each of the council districts, the council members think that the department heads report to them. That they ... have to make the council member happy with what's going on in their district, whether it's trimming trees on a particular street or fixing a sidewalk in front of a constituent's home, the general managers [of city departments] are subject to extreme and constant political pressure. That distracts them from fixing the system so that we're doing a better job, so that there are fewer resident complaints, so that a constituent wouldn't have to go to their council member to get their street fixed. The street would get fixed every 10 years. But if you are have 16 bosses and and a continually shifting set of priorities, it's difficult, if not impossible, to put in place systemic solutions. And in terms of who do you blame: Do you blame the general manager? Do you blame the mayor? Do you blame your council member? Do you blame the lack of resources that the city has to allocate? The answer is yes. What needs to change? What I advocated is designing the city to work in the 21st century, which means a chief operating officer who works for the mayor to make sure the city runs effectively across 44 departments. We don't have such a person now. It means a chief financial officer. The responsibilities of a chief financial officer are [currently] divided between four different offices in the city, so it's difficult, again, to point to one person who's in charge of keeping the city fiscally sound. The charter calls for a one-year budget, but we could do a two-year budget and simply update it once a year and be consistent with the City Charter. But then we would have a much broader view of the city's financial future, and we wouldn't waste so much time on a budget process that takes 11 of the 12 months and produces very little change. — SAFER CITY: L.A. is on pace for its lowest homicide total in nearly 60 years as killings plummet, according to an LAPD tally. The falling murder rate mirrors a national trend in other big cities. As my colleague Libor Jany reports, it also paints a decidedly different picture than the Gotham City image offered by President Trump and other senior U.S. officials as justification for the deployment of military troops in L.A. in recent weeks. —MORE RAIDS FALLOUT: Mayor Karen Bass announced a plan Friday to provide direct cash assistance to people who have been affected by the Trump administration's sweeping immigration raids. The money will come from philanthropic partners, not city coffers, and the cash cards will be distributed by immigrant rights groups. —MOTION TO INTERVENE: The city and county of Los Angeles are among the local governments seeking to join a lawsuit calling on the Trump administration to stop 'unlawful detentions' during the ongoing immigration sweeps. The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, Public Counsel and immigrant rights groups last week. —IN MEMORIAM: Longtime former executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs Jaime Regalado died last month at age 80. Born in Boyle Heights, Regalado served in the U.S. Navy and was the founding editor of California Politics & Policy and the California Policy Issues Annual. He led the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State L.A. from 1991 to 2011. —'SOMEONE GOOFED': When L.A. County Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Janice Hahn co-wrote Measure G, a sprawling overhaul of county government that voters passed last November, they didn't realize they would also be repealing Measure J, a landmark criminal justice measure that voters had passed four years earlier. Thanks to an administrative screw-up for the ages, that's exactly what happened. The relevant changes won't go into effect until 2028, so county leaders have some time to undo their oops. —DISASTER AVERTED: A potentially tragic situation was averted Wednesday night, after all 31 workers in a partially collapsed Los Angeles County sanitation tunnel were able to make their way to safety. Work on the tunnel has been halted, and the county sanitation district board is looking into what caused the collapse. —POSTCARD FROM SANTA MONICA: In the long shadow of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller's hard-line anti-immigration policies, local and national observers alike are paying renewed attention to Miller's upbringing in the famously liberal enclave once dubbed 'the People's Republic of Santa Monica.' Join me for a deep dive into Miller's time at Santa Monica High School and learn why some of his former classmates think he's getting his revenge on Southern California. That's it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@ Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.
