Month: December 2021

City Politics

• Los Angeles County has finalized its new district map, which was drafted for the first time by an independent commission. The new map achieves the goal of creating a second majority-Latine district. However, the new districts appear to blunt the advantages of progressives (and Republican supervisor Katherine Barger) in favor of moderates. Many argue for the county to be split into more districts. Five supervisors currently see to the needs of ten million residents.

• The Los Angeles City Ethics Commission met and will form an ad hoc committee to discuss amendments to the city charter, which could give the commission greater independence from the mayor and city council (@56:40). The commission’s last reform push was thwarted by the council, whom the commission regulates.

• Politically behested donations are back in the news thanks to a records request for emails related to the Mayor’s Fund. Mayor Garcetti faced only brief questions about his record in Los Angeles as his confirmation hearings to become ambassador to India began last week.

• The budget requests from each city department have been posted for the public this year.

Labor

• The Hollywood Reporter recaps an empowering year for workers in the entertainment industry.

Housing Rights

• Reporting in the New Republic draws national attention to the health crisis faced by Los Angeles’ unhoused population every time it rains.

• Caltrans is finally going to put a number of vacant homes up for auction. The city of Los Angeles plans to purchase several lots to develop more affordable housing.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• The Los Angeles Times debunks the purportedly drastic rise in shoplifting.

• More research from the Brennan Center has been published, this time revealing data on LAPD surveillance of activists’ social media accounts.

• Cerise Castle interviews Cecil Rhambo, candidate for Los Angeles County Sheriff, in Knock LA. Rhambo is branding himself as a reformer alternative to incumbent Alex Villanueva, but has his own disappointing record on disciplining deputy misconduct.

Environmental Justice

• Cargo ship gridlock at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have resulted in unhealthy air for the communities in and around the region. Curbed talks to residents of communities where pollution from the ports is estimated to cause 1,300 premature deaths each year.

• On Monday, the California Public Utilities Commission proposed an overhaul of the state’s net-metering program for rooftop solar. Canary Media explains how the new plan largely embraces the arguments made by the state’s three big investor-owned utilities by disincentivizing self-installed solar panels.

• Much-needed rain fell on Tuesday, providing a little relief to drought-ridden California. In addition to the rain, several inches of snow fell in the Sierras, increasing the snowpack from 19% of the average to 83%.

Local Media

• Thorn West will return in 2022 with its own web platform. Thank you to all readers and contributors for a great year. Knock LA is fundraising this week; we’ve relied on their reporting all year. LA Podcast, LA Taco, and LAist also provide indispensable reader-supported independent journalism.

City Politics

• DSA-LA’s 2022 Local Officer Election nomination period has been extended to Friday, December 10 (today) at 11:59pm! You can nominate yourself here.

• The confirmation process for Mayor Garcetti’s nomination to be ambassador to India has finally begun, with the first scheduled hearing on Wednesday. This comes on the heels of major reporting suggesting that Garcetti knew of and tolerated the serial harassment committed by one of his top aides.

• The city’s redistricting map is final. Councilmembers Nithya Raman and Paul Krekorian have proposed a motion to make the city’s next redistricting process independent; see you in ten years. Advocacy groups are still fighting for equity in the county’s redistricting process, which is still ongoing. The current lines include only one majority-Latine supervisory district out of five, even though the Latine community now makes up nearly half the county’s population.

• The former manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has pleaded guilty to bribery, after accepting over $2 million to award a no-bid contract. (More than most councilmembers seem to get.) The city’s Ethics Commission has recently expanded their oversight to include LADWP employees. For anyone who misses Redistricting Commission hearings, the next quarterly meeting of the Ethics Commission is December 15.

Labor

• Members of the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers’ Local 37 have been on strike at the Jon Donaire Desserts plant in Santa Fe Springs, CA, since November 3. The DSA is organizing members to join the picket line tomorrow morning, as workers seek higher wages and better treatment. Fact sheet here. Hear more from workers on the BCTGM podcast here. RSVP here!

Transportation

• LA Metro has started its GoPass pilot program, offering free rides to all students in all participating school and community college districts. The pilot program begins just as Metro resumes collecting fares January 10; bus rides had been free throughout the pandemic.

Environmental Justice

• Dystopia, as several dangerously unhealthy weeks of air quality in Los Angeles County has triggered an apparently unmonitored automated Twitter account from the Southern Coast AQMD to declare every day an “Action Day” without ever explaining what that entails. The glitching intensified this week: the Los Angeles Times was forced to retract an entire story after receiving a one-year-old press release about wildfire smoke.

• A coalition of environmental justice groups have filed a lawsuit against the EPA over their failure to intervene in the air quality problems in the Central Valley, Capital & Main reports.

• Californians have accelerated their water conservation efforts, but remain far short of Governor Newsom’s goal of a 15% reduction in usage.

• This January, California will implement mandatory food waste recycling, becoming the second state in the US to do so. This is intended to help cut methane emissions, as food scraps and other organic materials emit the greenhouse gas as they break down.

City Politics

• A motion proposed by Councilmember Nithya Raman, calling on the state to revise its food codes to better accommodate the needs of street vendors, passed unanimously.

• For the second week in a row, Councilmember Joe Buscaino was scolded on the floor of city council. This time, Buscaino’s motion to impose 41.18 enforcement zones against sleeping, lying, or sitting at 161 sites in his district was chided as overreach.

Housing Rights

• The Los Angeles Daily News has published its annual report card grading California cities on how close they are to meeting their state-mandated housing requirements. Last week, Los Angeles (C-minus/D) updated its housing plan to accelerate the growth of the city’s capacity for affordable housing.

• Some California municipalities are taking steps to blunt the impact of SB 9, the state law that attempts to address the affordable housing shortage by drastically curbing single-family zoning. SB 9 goes into effect January 1.

NOlympics

• Analysis from NOlympics LA breaks down the “Games Agreement,” to show how the blueprint agreement between Los Angeles and the Olympics committee exposes the city to potentially limitless cost overruns. Today the city council voted to approve the agreement, with Councilmembers Raman and Mike Bonin the only votes in opposition. Knock LA live-tweeted the discussion.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• The Metro board voted to extend its contract with law enforcement agencies by six months and to approve $75 million in related cost overruns. The six-month window’s stated purpose is to give Metro’s new Public Safety Advisory Committee time to make recommendations.

Environmental Justice

• Though the fracking ban proposed by Governor Newsom failed in the legislature, the state’s Geologic Energy Management Division has rejected an unprecedented 109 fracking permits in 2021, approving only 12.

• A “net-zero” carbon housing development in Tejon Ranch north of Los Angeles has been approved to go forward. The development’s climate commitments were won through extensive litigation from environmental activist groups.

• A proposal to bring a coastal oil pipeline back online following a disastrous 2015 oil spill is facing opposition.

• Hundreds of toxic sites in California will be threatened as sea levels rise due to climate change, according to environmental health professors at UC Berkeley and UCLA.