Latest news with #L.A.CityCouncil
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Trump administration targets California ‘sanctuary' cities, counties
The Department of Homeland Security has labeled over 500 cities and counties, many of them in California, as 'sanctuary jurisdictions,' escalating the conflict between the federal government and local leaders over immigration enforcement. The list, which was published on Thursday, places these communities on notice, demanding they 'immediately' revise their policies to align with President Donald Trump's mass deportation policy. 'Sanctuary cities protect dangerous criminal aliens from facing consequences and put law enforcement in peril,' DHS stated. The designations are based on a variety of factors, including whether a municipality cooperates with federal immigration officials, places restrictions on information sharing and offers legal protections to undocumented immigrants. Dozens of cities and counties in California appear on the list, including major metropolitan areas and smaller communities. The California counties include Alameda, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, San Bernardino, Ventura and others. Cities include Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, Long Beach, Malibu, Culver City and Huntington Beach (see the full list below). 'These sanctuary city politicians are endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens,' DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a press release. In November 2024, immediately following Trump's election, the L.A. City Council unanimously passed an ordinance explicitly prohibiting the direct or indirect sharing of data with federal immigration authorities. 'Immigrants make up the very fabric of Los Angeles, and they deserve to feel safe and protected in the city they call home, no matter who is in power,' said Councilmember Nithya Raman, whose family moved to the U.S. from India when she was 6 years old. Local governments also argue that immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility and that local resources are better used addressing local crime. ICE planning 'large scale' crackdown in L.A., leaked memo says 'This is simply the latest attempt by the Trump administration to strong-arm cities like Seattle into changing our local policies through bluster and threats to critical federal funding for public safety and homelessness,' Bruce Harrell, the city's mayor, told the Associated Press in an email. 'It's not going to work — the law is on our side — and we will not hesitate to protect our people and stand up for our values.' The list was published as the Trump administration ramps up efforts to follow through on the president's campaign promises to remove millions of people who are in the country illegally. It came out as Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced major leadership changes, and after a White House official said the administration wanted to drive daily immigration arrests significantly higher. California counties on the 'Sanctuary Jurisdiction' list: Alameda County Amador County Butte County Calaveras County Colusa County Del Norte County El Dorado County Glenn County Humboldt County Imperial County Lake County Lassen County Los Angeles County Madera County Mariposa County Mendocino County Merced County Modoc County Mono County Monterey County Nevada County Plumas County Riverside County Sacramento County San Benito County San Bernardino County San Francisco County San Joaquin County San Luis Obispo County San Mateo County Santa Barbara County Santa Clara County Santa Cruz County San Diego County Shasta County Sierra County Siskiyou County Solano County Sonoma County Stanislaus County Sutter County Tehama County Tuolumne County Trinity County Tulare County Ventura County Yolo County Yuba County California cities on the 'Sanctuary Jurisdiction' list: Alameda Albany Arcata Baldwin Park Belmont Benicia Berkeley Calipatria Cathedral City Chula Vista City of San Rafael Coachella Concord Culver City Davis El Cerrito Emeryville Eureka Fort Bragg Fremont Fresno Hayward Healdsburg Huntington Beach Huron Imperial La Puente Long Beach Los Angeles Madera Malibu Martinez Maywood Menlo Park Mountain View Newark Oakland Pacifica Palm Springs Pasadena Petaluma Pleasanton Represa Richmond Sacramento Salinas San Diego San Francisco San Jose San Leandro San Luis Obispo San Pablo Santa Cruz Santa Rosa Santee Soledad Stockton Union City Ventura Vista Watsonville West Hollywood Williams The Associated Press contributed to this report. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
L.A. hotels threaten to withdraw from Olympics deal over minimum wage hike
Los Angeles hotel operators are threatening to withdraw from agreements to provide discounted rooms for the 2028 Olympic Games over a city ordinance that will significantly boost the minimum wage for hotel and airport workers. On Friday, the L.A. City Council will vote for a second and final time to hike the minimum wage for tourism workers to reach $30 an hour by July 2028. The ordinance passed the first round of voting on May 14 but did not get unanimous support. At least eight hotels say they will back out of the room block agreement if the measure passes. That agreement includes discounted rates for officials, sponsors, and even the media at hotels across the city. The hotel operators, including Hilton, Hotel Angeleno, Hotel Per La and Hollywood Roosevelt, argue that the increased labor costs are financially unfeasible. In-N-Out raises prices in response to California's minimum wage increase 'Common sense says you cannot raise wages over 30% in less than a year when revenue is flat,' argued Mark Beccaria of Hotel Angeleno. If this increase in labor costs passes, we will be forced by the City to consider converting this hotel in the heart of residential Brentwood into a homeless shelter.' 'If the City continues down this path and only listens to one side of the equation, there will be hotel closures, lost jobs and lost opportunities for all,' said Kara Bartelt, General Manager of Hoxton Los Angeles. Under L.A.'s Olympic Wage ordinance, the minimum wage for airport and hotel workers will increase incrementally. It is set to rise to $22.50 an hour in July 2025, followed by annual increases of $2.50 each July. This phased approach will see the wage reach its peak at $30 an hour by July 2028, coinciding with the start of the Olympic Games. Supporters, including labor unions, argue the wage boost will help keep workers in the city and benefit the local economy. 'City leaders have an opportunity to ensure the Olympic and Paralympic Games benefit hard-working Angelenos, and this ordinance does just that,' Unite Here Local 11 co-president Kurt Petersen told the city council. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Contributor: L.A.'s 'mansion tax' needs a remodel. Here's how to fix it
In 2022, Los Angeles voters approved Measure ULA, a transfer tax on the sale of high-value properties inside the city limits. Nicknamed the mansion tax by its supporters, Measure ULA imposed a 4% tax on sales over $5 million and a 5.5% tax on sales over $10 million — one of the steepest such levies in the nation. Its revenue is earmarked for low-income housing programs. ULA's tax is paid by sellers, which may explain why Mayor Karen Bass suggested suspending it after the wildfires. The mayor is right to worry. Property values in Pacific Palisades often top $5 million, creating concern that the tax could penalize owners who lost everything and just want to sell and move on. But Measure ULA's problems run deeper. Suspended or not, it needs to be reformed. Read more: L.A. City Council approves 'mansion tax' spending plan and program guidelines Despite its nickname, ULA isn't just a tax on mansions. It applies to nearly every property priced over $5 million, including apartment buildings, offices, soundstages, hotels and shopping centers — places Angelenos live, work and shop. Additionally, ULA is not a tax on profit. It's based on sale price. Thus, the owner of an office building that has plunged 90% in value since the COVID-19 pandemic might sell it for $15 million and incur an $825,000 ULA tax, despite the owner's overall loss. On the other hand, someone who bought a house 10 years ago for $500,000 and sells today for $1.5 million would pay nothing. ULA's design means large losses may be heavily taxed while big gains go scot free. Measure ULA also has steep 'cliffs' — thresholds where small price increases trigger massive tax increases. A property selling for $5 million incurs no ULA tax, but one selling for a dollar more pays $200,000. Such cliffs create strong incentives for owners to avoid the tax. Read more: Which L.A. neighborhoods have paid the most 'mansion tax'? The easiest way to avoid the tax is to not sell, and our research shows that over the first two years since ULA was implemented, high-value property sales in the city fell by about 50% — a far steeper decline than elsewhere in the county during the same period. Higher interest rates and construction costs aren't to blame for the decline — those conditions affected the entire region. And while there was a temporary 'rush to sell' before ULA was implemented, our analysis accounts for that behavior. The 50% drop is an effect of ULA specifically. Depressed sales mean less revenue generated by ULA. Backers estimated ULA would raise $600 million to $1.1 billion annually. So far, collections have averaged just $288 million per year — less than half the lowest projections. By reducing large sales, moreover, ULA has slowed the production of market-rate apartments. Most multifamily developments involve buying a suitable site and then selling the finished building. ULA can add significantly to the cost of both of those transactions. And because most market-rate housing developments now include some income-restricted affordable apartments provided by developers in exchange for increased project size, Los Angeles is getting fewer of those, too. Conservatively, we estimate ULA is costing the city more than 1,900 new units a year, of which at least 160 would have been affordable units produced without public funding. Meanwhile, the ULA revenue collected from newer multifamily projects since the tax went into effect is only enough to subsidize, at best, half that number. ULA's poor design needlessly costs the city affordable housing. The impact doesn't stop at housing. ULA has also slowed large transactions for commercial, industrial and office properties. This effect, combined with the slowdown in residential transactions, is impeding property tax growth. Under California's property tax system, local revenues increase primarily when properties are reassessed at sale. Large transactions contribute disproportionately to that growth. Sales over $5 million are only 4% of all transactions but account for more than 40% of the growth in the city's tax base. Over time, fewer big transactions means less funding for all public agencies and programs that rely on L.A.'s tax base: schools, community colleges and the county and its safety-net programs. Although the ballot language for Measure ULA included strong limits on the City Council's power to amend it, ULA is fixable. The most effective approach may be state action. State governments almost always have the power to revoke or amend local actions, and transfer taxes are arguably an issue of interest to the state, because they have direct effects on California's housing goals and overall fiscal health. Read more: 'Why us?': Housing nonprofits are paying millions in 'mansion tax' Targeted state legislation could reduce ULA's negative effects while preserving its goal of raising funds to help low-income renters. Options include restricting the tax to single-family homes (making it a true mansion fax), adopting marginal rates to eliminate the 'cliffs' (to work similarly to income taxes ), or limiting ULA to properties that haven't been sold or improved in many years; sales of these properties are much more likely to represent a large windfall for sellers and such sales would not tend to undermine housing and job creation. Los Angeles needs housing and economic policies that work — especially as we recover from the January wildfires. That means balancing the urgent need for new revenue with policies that encourage new housing and jobs. Measure ULA, as currently structured, makes that balance harder to achieve. It could become a better tool — one that fulfills voters' hopes for more affordable housing, strengthens the local economy and protects the social and fiscal foundation of the region. Michael Manville is a professor of urban planning at UCLA and an affiliated scholar at its Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. Shane Philips is housing initiative project manager at the Lewis Center. Jason Ward is co-director of the Rand Center on Housing and Homelessness. If it's in the news right now, the L.A. Times' Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
What about the bike lanes? Transit advocates say Metro project ignores city's mobility plans
When Los Angeles residents voted last year to implement the city's nearly decade-old mobility plan, transportation safety advocates called it a win for Los Angeles's pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists. Sidewalks would improve, traffic congestion would slow and bike lanes and bus lanes would be upgraded and built. But the scope of Measure HLA — the citywide initiative to follow through on what L.A. City Council had adopted in 2015 — has been at the center of a recent debate between advocates and Metro after the transit agency moved forward on a project for the county's busiest bus route without anticipated plans for new bike lanes. Transit advocates argue that the exclusion from the Vermont Avenue project ignores voters' mandate to follow the mobility plan, which calls for improved bike lanes on that street; Metro and city officials have countered that the measure applied only to the city of Los Angeles — not to the countywide transit agency. 'We don't think it's legal,' said Michael Schneider, who heads Streets for All, the advocacy group behind the ballot measure. 'HLA is a city measure, and Metro is a county agency, but Vermont is owned by the City of Los Angeles, and the city is working with Metro. They're permitting it, they're providing technical expertise, they're spending staff time and money. This falls under Measure HLA, which requires a bike lane on Vermont.' Last week, the agency's board of directors voted to approve plans for the Vermont Transit Corridor — a project that will add dedicated bus lanes and 26 stations at 13 locations along a 12.4-mile stretch on Vermont Avenue between 120th Street and Sunset Boulevard. The route sees 38,000 daily bus boardings, according to Metro, and that is expected to increase to 66,000 by 2045. Read more: Metro's Olympics plans rely on federal funding. Will Trump threaten it? The project is expected to especially improve transit access for disadvantaged communities and a high number of residents who identify as Black, Indigenous and people of color, according to Metro. The corridor includes a majority of low-income households, including residents without access to a car. The project is included in the Measure M expenditure plan, which allocated $425 million for construction. 'Metro is supportive of the goals and objectives of HLA, specifically we have worked — and will continue to work — with all local jurisdictions to provide better quality transit and safer streets for all of Los Angeles County,' the agency said in a statement. 'However, HLA does not apply to Metro projects.' The board vote did not include discussion and ignored pleas from public commenters who asked Metro to reconsider its plans to include upgraded bike lanes. The project has been under study for nearly a decade. According to Metro, the addition of new bike lanes would delay the project by up to five years, increase the cost and force Metro to acquire properties. In a letter to Metro Chief Executive Stephanie Wiggins last month, Schneider disputed Metro's assertions and said the addition of bike lanes would not cause delays or affect properties if parking was not prioritized over the upgrades. He warned that the plan without bike lanes would further compromise safety on the route for bicyclists and pedestrians. Vermont Avenue sees one of the city's highest pedestrian death and injury counts, according to Metro and Streets for All. Metro has maintained its stance. In a letter sent to L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson last month, an attorney for Metro said that the agency would take legal action if the city forced it to comply with Measure HLA. The attorney cited a letter that the city attorney sent Streets for All in November that said the agency does not need to comply with the measure, a point that was reiterated at an L.A. City Transportation Committee meeting in February. The attorney also pointed to an agreement between the city and Metro, which acknowledges the agency's 'self-governance authority.' 'The [agreement] simply does not transform Metro projects into City projects,' the letter states. Schneider and others have said that the agency's plan dismisses residents' needs. 'We have an epidemic of traffic fatalities and injuries,' said Eli Lipmen, the executive director of transit advocacy group Move L.A. 'Some of it has to do with how people drive and reckless driving, but a lot of it has to do with lack of good infrastructure.' Lipmen said that more people will be hurt if Metro does not allow for new protected bike lanes in its plans and hopes there is still time for conversation. 'Vermont needs to happen and needs to happen as soon as possible. We cannot delay this project another second,' Lipmen said. The project is expected to be completed by the 2028 Olympics. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
03-04-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
What about the bike lanes? Transit advocates say Metro project ignores city's mobility plans
When Los Angeles residents voted last year to implement the city's nearly decade-old mobility plan, transportation safety advocates called it a win for Los Angeles's pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists. Sidewalks would improve, traffic congestion would slow and bike lanes and bus lanes would be upgraded and built. But the scope of Measure HLA — the citywide initiative to follow through on what L.A. City Council had adopted in 2015 — has been at the center of a recent debate between advocates and Metro after the transit agency moved forward on a project for the county's busiest bus route without anticipated plans for new bike lanes. Transit advocates argue that the exclusion from the Vermont Avenue project ignores voters' mandate to follow the mobility plan, which calls for improved bike lanes on that street; Metro and city officials have countered that the measure applied only to the city of Los Angeles — not to the countywide transit agency. 'We don't think it's legal,' said Michael Schneider, who heads Streets for All, the advocacy group behind the ballot measure. 'HLA is a city measure, and Metro is a county agency, but Vermont is owned by the City of Los Angeles, and the city is working with Metro. They're permitting it, they're providing technical expertise, they're spending staff time and money. This falls under Measure HLA, which requires a bike lane on Vermont.' Last week, the agency's board of directors voted to approve plans for the Vermont Transit Corridor — a project that will add dedicated bus lanes and 26 stations at 13 locations along a 12.4-mile stretch on Vermont Avenue between 120th Street and Sunset Boulevard. The route sees 38,000 daily bus boardings, according to Metro, and that is expected to increase to 66,000 by 2045. The project is expected to especially improve transit access for disadvantaged communities and a high number of residents who identify as Black, Indigenous and people of color, according to Metro. The corridor includes a majority of low-income households, including residents without access to a car. The project is included in the Measure M expenditure plan, which allocated $425 million for construction. 'Metro is supportive of the goals and objectives of HLA, specifically we have worked — and will continue to work — with all local jurisdictions to provide better quality transit and safer streets for all of Los Angeles County,' the agency said in a statement. 'However, HLA does not apply to Metro projects.' The board vote did not include discussion and ignored pleas from public commenters who asked Metro to reconsider its plans to include upgraded bike lanes. The project has been under study for nearly a decade. According to Metro, the addition of new bike lanes would delay the project by up to five years, increase the cost and force Metro to acquire properties. In a letter to Metro Chief Executive Stephanie Wiggins last month, Schneider disputed Metro's assertions and said the addition of bike lanes would not cause delays or affect properties if parking was not prioritized over the upgrades. He warned that the plan without bike lanes would further compromise safety on the route for bicyclists and pedestrians. Vermont Avenue sees one of the city's highest pedestrian death and injury counts, according to Metro and Streets for All. Metro has maintained its stance. In a letter sent to L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson last month, an attorney for Metro said that the agency would take legal action if the city forced it to comply with Measure HLA. The attorney cited a letter that the city attorney sent Streets for All in November that said the agency does not need to comply with the measure, a point that was reiterated at an L.A. City Transportation Committee meeting in February. The attorney also pointed to an agreement between the city and Metro, which acknowledges the agency's 'self-governance authority.' 'The [agreement] simply does not transform Metro projects into City projects,' the letter states. Schneider and others have said that the agency's plan dismisses residents' needs. 'We have an epidemic of traffic fatalities and injuries,' said Eli Lipmen, the executive director of transit advocacy group Move L.A. 'Some of it has to do with how people drive and reckless driving, but a lot of it has to do with lack of good infrastructure.' Lipmen said that more people will be hurt if Metro does not allow for new protected bike lanes in its plans and hopes there is still time for conversation. 'Vermont needs to happen and needs to happen as soon as possible. We cannot delay this project another second,' Lipmen said. The project is expected to be completed by the 2028 Olympics.
