Month: February 2022

Issue No. 98 – February 25, 2022

State Politics

• SB 972, introduced by State Senator Lorena Gonzalez, makes it simpler and more affordable for street vendors to obtain permits, a process that is effectively impossible to complete as currently designed. LA Times coverage in Spanish here.

City Politics

• Five candidates for Los Angeles mayor participated in a debate at Loyola Marymount University this week, presenting five versions of the same uninspiring platform on policing and homelessness. Protesters loudly heckled all candidates. Knock-LA covers. Video here.

• Writing in LA Progressive, Melina Abdullah and Patrisse Cullors lament Karen Bass’ pivot to the right as a mayoral candidate and express hope for a return to form.

• On Tuesday, the City Council voted to approve former Councilmember Herb Wesson as interim replacement for Mark Ridley-Thomas, whom they previously voted to suspend while he faces corruption charges. On Thursday, a judge blocked the appointment on the grounds that Wesson has already hit the term limit. CD10 remains without representation.

Education

• On Thursday, new LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho released a “100-Day Plan” for his project to reform the district. Absent from all of the reporting on the plan is any mention of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), or the union’s struggle to reduce class size. On this vital question, all Superintendent Carvalho says is that LAUSD will study “the effects of reducing class-size on academic achievement.”

• The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor voted on school board endorsements on Thursday, voting to endorse Maria Brenes for Board District 2 over UTLA’s endorsed candidate Rocío Rivas, and to endorse Nick Melvoin in BD4, over UTLA’s objections.

Labor

• CalMatters diagrams a rift within California labor over “just transition” plans as fossil fuel production within the state is being phased out.

Housing Rights

• A motion from Councilmember Mike Bonin making it easier to open a shelter for people experiencing homelessness without requiring a lengthy application process has advanced out of committee.

• State housing regulators rejected Los Angeles’ Housing Element for failing to expand the city’s zoning capacity to meet state mandated housing and affordable housing targets on a fast enough timeline. Hundreds of millions of dollars in housing grants are at stake.

• A discrimination lawsuit has been filed against real estate company K3 Holdings LLC by a group of tenants organized in part by the K3 Tenants Council. Coverage on Univision and ABC7. Details about the campaign against K3 Holdings can be found at K3TC.org.

Environmental Justice

• Local activists have filmed construction proceeding illegally on a build site that citizen journalists discovered, earlier this year, was known to be contaminated.

• State regulators have hand-waved aside a study exposing the likely ineffectiveness of California’s “cap-and-trade” program at restraining polluters.

• This week’s Boiling Point column in the LA Times lists all the climate legislation eligible for movement in the current state legislative session.

Issue No. 97 – February 18, 2022

STATE POLITICS

• California’s mask mandate for vaccinated people was lifted on Wednesday, though it remains in effect for the time being in LA County. On Thursday Governor Newsom announced S.M.A.R.T.E.R, the “next phase” of California’s COVID response strategy. His repeated reference to an “endemic” era suggests that the plan is to raise the threshold that would trigger any state action while accepting some level of infection and death as inevitable. The state of emergency does remain in effect.
• The first of many attempts at billionaire-funded recall petitions has succeeded in San Francisco, where three members of the school board were just recalled. A ballot measure this June will allow that city to vote to restrict the window of recalls, prohibiting them in the first 12 months of a term or when there are less than 12 months until the next election.

CITY POLITICS

• Early polls in the mayoral race show a lot of undecided voters, but Representative Karen Bass nevertheless has a commanding lead.
• The filing deadline for the 2022 elections has closed. Activist Gina Viola announced her candidacy at the wire, and with Karen Bass promising to increase police budgets as mayor, Viola is one of few candidates committed to decreasing the role of armed police in public safety.
• CD 10 has been without representation on the city council since Mark Ridley-Thomas was suspended in October of last year. This week, Council President Nury Martinez introduced a motion to appoint former councilmember Herb Wesson, aand political ally, to fill the seat on an interim basis.

HOUSING

• The Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count is scheduled for next week. Care+ sweeps will be suspended for three days but are still being conducted this week, potentially skewing the data.

TRANSPORTATION

• Metro service cuts, forced by staffing shortages, go into effect starting Sunday. Details on which lines will be affected here.

CLIMATE

• After record-setting storms in October and then December, the past six weeks — usually among the wettest months in California — have seen precipitation totals plateau.
• California’s emissions reduction targets are slipping out of reach, due to over reliance on marketplace solutions that allow companies to pay to emit greenhouse gases. A recent report notes the unsustainable amount of carbon credits that have already been banked.

Issue No. 95 – February 11, 2022

State Politics

• In CalMatters, an autopsy for AB 854, the tenant protection bill authored by Assemblymember Alex Lee that was held from a vote last Monday. Said one tenants rights activist: “Why would they listen to us when we don’t give them any money […] but the Apartment Association is the reason that they’re in office?”

City Politics

• With Yasmine Pomeroy announcing that she will drop out of the race, District 3 Councilmember Bob Blumenfield does not have a progressive challenger ahead of tomorrow’s filing deadline.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• Current mayoral front-runner Rep. Karen Bass has released her “public safety” plan, which calls for increased police funding and hiring, which Bass argues is necessary because Angelenos don’t “feel safe,” having seen “news coverage” of crimes. Response from Stop LAPD Spying and LA CAN here, tying this into the similar platforms of the other mayoral candidates and the failed criminal-justice strategies of the past.

• Check the Sheriff is leading a renewed charge for an amendment to the LA County charter that would allow the Board of Supervisors to impeach and remove the sheriff, as is the policy in other California counties.

• A tool developed and released by the Kenneth Mejia for comptroller campaign maps the most frequent locations of LAPD traffic and pedestrian stops, and can be filtered by race.

Education

• On Tuesday the LAUSD Board of Education unanimously approved a resolution supporting a “climate literacy” curriculum across the district’s 950 schools. DSA-LA had endorsed the resolution and sent more than 350 letters to members of the board.

Housing Rights

• LA City Council voted to advance a measure that will ban the repair of bicycles on public sidewalks. Supporters explicitly argued that the motion was necessary to give the police additional pretext to harass unhoused people whom they suspect, but cannot prove, are in possession of stolen bikes. The motion, which passed 11–3, only calls for the ordinance to be drafted by the city attorney. The ordinance itself has not yet been passed.

Transportation

• Healthy Streets LA is gathering signatures to get a public measure on ballots this November mandating that Los Angeles implement its Mobility Plan. The plan was passed in 2015 to protect pedestrians, cyclists, and public transportation, but councilmembers have repeatedly caved in to opposition within their districts. (Sign/volunteer here.)

Environmental Justice

• SoCalGas has been fined $9.8 million by the California Public Utilities Commission related to last year’s revelations that it had continued to use income from ratepayers to fund lobbying efforts against clean energy policy, in flagrant violation of a 2018 court order. The Public Advocates Office had recommended a fine of $124 million.

• On Wednesday, Councilmember Nithya Raman introduced a motion to require that all newly constructed buildings in Los Angeles be zero-carbon. The motion, already co-signed by much of the council, seems likely to pass. It is written to go into effect on January 1, 2023.

• At the state level, proposed legislation would end all offshore drilling in the state of California, following last year’s disastrous Huntington Beach oil spill.

Issue No. 95 – February 4, 2022

State Politics

• Monday was the last day this year to pass AB 1400, the bill to create single-payer healthcare in California. Assemblymember Ash Kalra, the bill’s author, declined to put it up for a vote, the second time in five years that a single-payer bill with grassroots support was killed without a vote. Democrats hold supermajorities in both houses of the legislature and support for single-payer healthcare is in the California Democrats’ platform. Statement from the California Nurses Association here.

• AB 854, legislation that would protect tenants by mandating a five-year period before new owners of rent-controlled housing could evict their tenants, was also withheld from a vote, despite grassroots support.

• The Ballot DISCLOSE Act, which would add space for a short (but revelatory) list of who supports and opposes each statewide ballot measure to appear on the ballot itself, did make it out of the assembly and heads to the state senate.

City Politics

• Civil rights attorney Erin Darling has declared as a candidate in CD 11, to take the place of councilmember Mike Bonin, who last week decided not to seek reelection.

• The Los Angeles Ethics Commission has completed its semiannual release of campaign finance data, searchable here. Representative Karen Bass has far outraised all other candidates for mayor, while DSA-endorsed candidate Hugo Soto-Martinez is now out-raising incumbent Mitch O’Farrell in the campaign for city council district 13.

Transportation

• Metro approved a motion to cut bus service by 12% in response to a shortage of bus drivers. The labor shortage has been exacerbated by the Omicron surge, but low starting wages have made it impossible to attract workers. The cuts are planned to be temporary, but who knows.

Housing Rights

• The advocacy group KTown For All has released a report card for all LA city councilmembers’ housing and homelessness policies. Councilmembers have a lot of autonomy to shape response to homelessness in their district; this recaps how they each have been using it.

• NOlympics dispels several myths about how the Super Bowl will benefit Los Angeles.

Labor

• The inspiring wave of unionization efforts in Starbucks stores across the country has arrived in Los Angeles.

Environmental Justice

• L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti will nominate councilmember Nithya Raman to the South Coast Air Quality Management District governing board. One of her top priorities: reducing emissions at the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports.