Month: January 2021

Coronavirus and Relief

• Though there are ongoing issues in California’s vaccine distribution, Governor Gavin Newsom surprisingly announced on Monday that the state will immediately lift its stay-at-home order — a decision that appears to have been communicated first to the California Restaurant Association. Soon thereafter, LA County announced it will “align” with the state, and Mayor Garcetti announced that the city will “align” with the county. Following up, County Board of Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer updated City Council on the state of the county’s vaccine programs, among other things, and Councilmember Nithya Raman summarized that report on Twitter.

• The California State Legislature reached an agreement to extend the state’s eviction moratorium until June 30. The moratorium protects tenants who pay 25% of their rent. The bill also contains a plan as to how to use the $2.6 billion the state will receive from the federal government for rent relief. This money will be disbursed to landlords to cover 80% of their pandemic-related unpaid rents, in exchange for their forgiving the other 20% and agreeing not to evict any tenants who are behind. However, landlords will be able to decline this money.

• CalMatters explains estimates that Californians are over a billion dollars behind on water payments — a number twice as much as the estimate for the state’s total unpaid rent.

Criminal Justice Reform

• California Attorney General Xavier Becerra will soon leave his position to join the Biden administration. But first he has launched a civil rights investigation into the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The investigation will determine if there is a “pattern and practice of unconstitutional policing” within the department. A similar investigation in Kern County led, after several years, to their Sheriff’s Department agreeing to a list of reforms.

• On Tuesday, the County Board of Supervisors heard the results of their requested report on what legal options they had to remove Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva from office. The results are summarized here. The board took no further actions.

Labor

• The United Farm Workers’ December lawsuit against the Department of Labor contesting their proposed regulation changes for H-2A workers has been resolved, with an injunction granted. Following the Department of Labor’s last-minute set of H-2A farmworker regulation changes during the final days of the Trump administration, the Biden administration has withdrawn many of these pending rule changes — including those affecting H-2A workers.

• The crewmembers of an independent film were forced to file unpaid wage claims covering five weeks of prep after what is being called a COVID-19 “scare” drove away the project’s financier.

City Politics

• A motion directing the Los Angeles City Administrator to find 45 million dollars in the budget so the city can purchase Hillside Villa Apartments, for use as affordable housing, has passed unanimously through the housing committee.

• The city’s Jobs Committee voted to advance a motion that would require large supermarket chains to pay their frontline workers hazard pay. Long Beach, a step ahead of Los Angeles, passed a similar ordinance last week and now faces a lawsuit from the California Grocers Association.

• Though it had been speculated that former councilmember Mitchell Englander could face no jail time for his role in municipal corruption, this week he was sentenced to 14 months in federal prison.

Coronavirus and Relief

• The California State Legislature is once again playing chicken with the state eviction moratorium, which ends on January 31. It is expected that the legislature will extend the deadline in some fashion but it is still unclear what shape that will take. The LA Times discusses how the rent relief funds that were part of December’s stimulus bill can be applied for (still unclear), and how they will be disbursed (direct payments to landlords).

• Some councilmembers in the city of West Covina have proposed that the city form its own department of health, independent from Los Angeles County, as a way for the city to make their own health regulations and safety decisions that would weigh the interests of business more heavily.

Housing Justice

• Yesterday, the City Planning Commission’s Equity Day listening session offered a chance for residents to participate in presentations and extensive public comment, which focused largely on how development in this city has failed to conserve communities and community resources, in South LA and other neighborhoods, and how these needs can be met in the future. The event was live-tweeted here.

• The Pasadena Star checks in with Pasadena’s new mayor in the aftermath of another failed appeal of the state’s affordable housing requirements. California cities have repeatedly pushed back against the municipal affordable housing benchmarks in the state’s Regional Housing Needs Assessment. At the moment, however, the state only requires that each municipality be legally prepared to hit its benchmarks — not that the housing ever actually be built.

• This week the LA City Council asked for a report back in 30 days on the feasibility of turning the LA Convention Center into an emergency shelter for unhoused Angelenos. Skepticism over whether this is an adequate or safe response to the city’s housing crisis is expressed here.

Labor

• KNOCK.LA has continued reporting on the aftermath of Prop 22, this time focusing on the ways labor is fighting back: pushing for federal legislation, filing lawsuits in the state, and organizing on the ground. The same topics were also discussed this week on Ground Game LA’s Twitch, at 12:53. (Also featured in this video is Daniel Lee, the Culver City councilmember and DSA member who is running in a special election to fill Holly Mitchell’s seat in the State Senate.)

• Workers at Donut Friend, in Highland Park, were recently fired in retaliation for attempting to organize a union. You can follow Donut Friends United on Instagram to learn how to support their efforts.

• Though it may end up largely a symbolic gesture, the Screen Actors Guild is considering expelling former President Trump for his role in inciting the January 6 Capitol riot.

Criminal Justice Reform

• Sixty-five current and former elected prosecutors filed a brief supporting Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón in the civil case brought by the Los Angeles County prosecutors’ union. The union is suing to reverse several less-punitive policies Gascón put into place when he took office, which some prosecutors claim are “unfair” to be asked to follow (because it is their preference not to).

Coronavirus and Relief

• Following CDC COVID-19 vaccine guidelines, Governor Newsom has simplified the access tier system in California and announced that the vaccine will now be made available to everyone over 65. However, Los Angeles County still does not have enough doses for its healthcare workers and will not be able to make the vaccine available to seniors until February — unless you live in Long Beach, which has its own separate health department that isn’t facing these shortages.

• LA County will discontinue the use of Curative’s COVID-19 tests, after a report issued by the FDA last week warned that the test is associated with a high rate of false negatives.

State and City Governance

• Governor Newsom released his budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year last Friday. It reflects the fact that revenues for 2020 were 20% higher than were expected in June, largely due to the resiliency of the stock market. “Folks at the top are doing pretty damn well,” said Newsom. Read a more in-depth breakdown here.

• Los Angeles City Council is back in session (and now using the gallery view so online viewers can see every councilmember at once). Committee assignments have also been released. On Twitter, Councilmember Nithya Raman has broken down the committee process’s role in how motions become laws.

• From the LA Podcast blog: transcripts of conversations used as evidence in the corruption case against former Councilmember Mitchell Englander were released this week, and they remove any lingering doubt that current Councilmember John Lee, the former Englander aide who was elected to fill his former boss’s seat this March, was complicit in that corruption.

Labor

• A coalition of Los Angeles city employee unions have negotiated a deal that would prevent any layoffs or furloughs for at least six months. The results of the elections in Georgia, giving Democrats functional control over the US Senate, make it more likely that the federal government will step in to make up the budget shortfalls in municipalities.

• An in-depth article in Capital and Main surveys worker complaints made to Cal/OSHA about inadequate workplace protection from COVID-19. Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer noted this week that worksite infection rates have more than quadrupled as general infection rates have soared.

• Workers in film production have been deemed “essential workers” — but the industry is wisely not pursuing priority for its employees in the vaccination pipeline.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• The LMU Law School has officially released their study “Fifty Years of ‘Deputy Gangs’ in the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.” Among other things, the study notes a correlation: deputies at sheriff’s stations with active gangs are more likely to use their guns. The Sheriff Department’s official response so far has been to disparage the report. The full report is here. (An amazing nationwide database of all civilian deaths caused by police has been posted here.)

• Meanwhile, a Los Angeles Sheriff’s Deputy appears to be one of the many law enforcement officers from around the country who participated in the riots at the Capitol building last week.

• A $25 million cut to the Los Angeles School Police Department was approved this summer by the LAUSD Board of Education. The discussion as to how to implement those cuts has again been delayed, at the request of activist groups who still don’t feel that they have enough voice in the process. It had previously been delayed until this week’s meeting of the board for the same reason, and has not yet been rescheduled.

Coronavirus and Relief

• The FDA has cautioned that the COVID-19 test provided by Curative, a self-administered oral swab, is far more prone to false negative results than the nasal swab tests administered under the guidance of a healthcare professional, and should only be used to test symptomatic patients. Curative processes thousands of tests per day in Los Angeles, including all of the tests given at Dodger Stadium.

• The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors returned this week, and voted to extend the county’s soon-to-expire eviction moratorium by another thirty days. Public comment hammered the ridiculousness of expecting tenants to be able to pay a year’s worth of back-rent after the moratorium is lifted, as the current law mandates, and demanded that the board move to cancel rent entirely.

State Politics

• Governor Newsom, as expected, appointed California Secretary of State Alex Padilla to Kamala Harris’s vacated Senate seat, while Assemblymember Shirley Weber was appointed to replace Padilla.

• The California State Legislature disappointingly failed to pass meaningful police reform legislation last year. CalMatters runs down some of the state laws that did pass, and which went into effect on January 1.

Labor

• Reported in KNOCK.LA: Vons and Albertsons have fired all of their non-unionized delivery drivers and will replace them with “independent contractors,” in the wake of the passage of Prop 22.

• As infection rates in Southern California soar to unprecedented levels, SAG-AFTRA has recommended that on-set commercial production be paused.

Criminal Justice Reform

• Ground Game LA hosted an excellent roundtable of public defenders and civil rights advocates to discuss the criminal justice system reforms implemented by incoming District Attorney George Gascón, which touches (at 40:44) on how to support those efforts amid pushback from supporters of the current, punitive, model.