Part 146: "Just for the record" - County Measure A and the Future of Los Angeles

Published December 23, 2024.

By Ruth Roofless and Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalists

The passage of County Measure A in the November elections committed an estimated $1 billion in additional sales tax revenue for homelessness services and affordable housing initiatives. Two bodies now exist to administer these funds, which will be available for collection on April 1, 2025 (no joke!) with the first tranche of funding entering government accounts sometime in June 2025. In approving a permanent source of revenue (58% to 42%), voters chose the new Measure A and repealed Measure H, making permanent the increased sales tax along with changes to administration and oversight that will improve the management of funds. The Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency (LACAHSA), already envisioned by local government officials from the County of Los Angeles, City of Los Angeles, and neighboring officials, and the Executive Committee for Regional Homelessness Alignment (ECRHA), although slightly different in size and scope, are now essentially the two sides of a pretty penny. Some had feared Measure A wouldn’t pass based on polling.

LACAHSA first met on May 17, 2023, but has essentially been a paper tiger with no funding. Now the tiger has teeth, with a planned 40% of Measure A revenues going its way and 60% going to ECHRA, which first met on February 20, 2024. If LACAHSA is the paper tiger, ECHRA is like the pen writing its notes. On both bodies sits Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who in February 2020, after being nominated to lead it by Board of Supervisors Chair Lindsey Horvath, said: “Our expansive region has notably lacked a formal forum where key decision-makers from multiple levels of government can convene, craft unified homelessness response policies, and cultivate shared plans for allocating resources.” Both LACAHSA and ECRHA have so-called leadership tables for intersectoral participation, with foundations such as The California Endowment and Conrad Hilton Foundation having noticeable presences. Just how much money they might bring to the table to match taxpayer funding remains unknown, but it certainly is the aspirational goal.

Link: https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/part-146-just-for-the-record-county

Part 144: An LAPD Battle in Court - Free Speech and Hacking in Los Angeles?

Published December 18, 2024.

By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

For the last two mornings, just after 9:00 am, the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Bruce J. Iwasaki was the scene of a test of speech in the workplace and the power of anti-hacking laws. The lawsuit filed with a boisterous press conference by the Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL) against two high-ranking Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers passed the first test but failed on the second. Attorneys for the defendants, Commander Lillian Carranza and Deputy Chief Marc Reina, had filed separate anti-SLAPP motions, which stand for a strategic lawsuit against public participation and demurrers, an objection that the lawsuit is legally deficient against the litigation brought by the LAPPL. The Los Angeles Times headline on the August 9 original story by journalist Libor Jany had asked, "Is it part of a broader rift?”

This question of internal politics in the LAPD is the one that needs to be answered and not one that was addressed before Judge Iwasaki on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings in Department 58 of the Stanley Mosk Courthouse. Now, in fairness to the LAPPL, they will get another bite at the apple with the option to re-file an amended complaint by January 20, 2025. Whether they choose to do so may be a question of how much money they want to sink into what’s legally a sinking argument. The LAPPL’s case centered on allegations of fraud and hacking might be described as the proverbial fishing expeditions, grounded in the completion of surveys with admittedly bogus credentials going back years, in fact beyond the statue of limitations for bringing the lawsuit forward. The union's other claim is that the two officials, by nature of their position, are not technically LAPPL members, even though they’re required to go through the union for benefits, and somehow breaking the law by opening their emails is speculative at best.

Link: https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/part-144-an-lapd-battle-in-court

Rick Caruso vs. Santa Barbara - On Accepting Real Estate Developers

Published December 11, 2024.

By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

The Santa Barbara County Supervisors rejected a total of 5 appeals against the proposed expansion of the Rosewood Miramar Resort, a new record in Santa Barbara County history, by a vote of 5-0 on Tuesday, December 10, after several hours of hearings, public comment, and presentations. Billionaire Los Angeles real estate developer Rick Caruso took the lead for his eponymous firm in making the closing case, joking that he might use all of his time before yielding to Senior Director, Development, Katie Mangin, his son Justin Caruso, a Manager with the firm, and Senior Vice President for Planning and Development, Chris Robertson. Weeks before on November 1, the former mayoral candidate in Los Angeles had declined to speak in winning approval 4-0 from the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission after Robertson dispatched the Montecito Planning Commission. “Success is built on the well-being of their people,” Caruso said about good leaders before flattering the Supervisors, declaring that Santa Barbara was “best in class.” A challenge in the California Coastal Commission likely awaits the project next.

County Planning Staff had recommended approval for the project while noting 9 areas in which “Issues” had been raised: Construction Impacts, CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act), Traffic and Parking, GHG Emissions (Green House Gasses), Evacuation, Lack of a Fair and Impartial Hearing, Coastal Access, Flood Zone Concerns, and Inconsistent Planning. None really mattered—the allure of tax dollars along with progress toward affordable housing goals in the form of employee-only housing—the deal was done. All Supervisors disclosed in their ex parte conversations having met with Rick Caruso to discuss the project, some more than others, and it was clear that challenges against the project, which is in two parts, were going to fail. For his part, Caruso, who might be the most successful developer in all of Los Angeles County, had recently led the vaunted University of Southern California Real Estate Team to victory over the University of California, Los Angeles. This was not a man who fails, even if sometimes forced to compromise on some of the details.

Link: https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/part-138-rick-caruso-vs-santa-barbara

USC Release Annual Title IX Data to the USC Community

PETITION: USC Release Annual Title IX Data to the USC Community

DEMAND: USC Comply With U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights Resolution Agreement Case Number 09-18-6901

By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

This is not a petition published lightly; instead, it reflects more than 2 years of advocacy attempting to get the University of Southern California (USC) to meet its legal obligations. Following one of the largest civil settlements in higher education history made in response to sexual abuse by gynecologist George Tyndall, USC continues to fall short in meeting the promise of “safety and transparency” required of it by the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights. Since February 2020, USC has been legally obligated on an annual basis to release “an “annual letter to the community” reflecting “a written report” from the Title IX Coordinator” to “the President, Provost, and Chairman of the Board of Trustees.” This report is supposed to provide an update “regarding the status of the implementation of the plan, including the actions taken and an assessment of their effectiveness as well as proposals for the next academic year.” Title IX is the nation’s fundamental gender equity law, enacted in 1972.

USC has only met this obligation once since then, this summer in August 2024, but only providing a single year of data from 2021-2022 to the USC Community. This petition demands that USC immediately take steps to remedy this breach by providing data from the 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 academic years. USC must then provide the 2024-2025 data once it becomes available at the conclusion of the current academic year and no later than the start of the 2025-2026 academic year. This will begin following the retirement of current President Carol Folt on June 30, 2025. USC is negligent in its legal obligations and has done a grave disservice to its students, who, most certainly, the Daily Trojan found experience a higher rate of sexual violence than occurs at peer institutions based upon the single year of data it’s released.

Link: https://www.change.org/p/usc-release-annual-title-ix-data-to-the-usc-community

A note on recent news matters

Just going to put this out there: Killing an insurance executive won’t lead to any major changes or structural reforms to how healthcare, much less health insurance, is provided in this country. So while I get that violence is an attractor for many people, and the wealthy are quite hated, I for one am not going, “Wow, this is amazing.” Violence simply isn’t the answer.

"Somehow At Some Point"

Ruth@roofless December 05 2024

THE UNHOUSED -The VA claims it wants to house veterans, but not in the ways the Powers court prescribes.

“There's one [unhoused veteran] across the street, one tent across the street from this courthouse today.”

Attorneys for a plaintiff class of unhoused veterans in Powers v McDonough pointed to the American flag-draped tent outside the new federal courthouse on First Street during a hearing on Wednesday, November 13th, two days after Veteran’s Day, objecting to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ motion to stay the district court’s October 11th judgment.

Hours later, the patriotic tent was gone, and a new fence erected where the humble shelter stood for months. Obstructive panels of rented chain link blocked an entire Metro bus stop, attracting a ticket on 11/19 from the City’s Bureau of Street Services Investigation and Enforcement Division, as reported by L.A. TACO journalist Lexis Olivier-Ray. The occupant of the tent, presumably an unhoused veteran, therefore a member of the now-settled Powers plaintiff class, was nowhere to be seen.

Link: https://www.citywatchla.com/important-reads/29985-somehow-at-some-point

Part 134: "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" - A New County Homelessness Agency?

By Ruth Roofless and Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalists

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved by a vote of 4-0-1 a motion to study the feasibility of creating a new homelessness response agency on November 26, right before the Thanksgiving holiday. As noted by Los Angeles Times journalist Doug Smith writing on the notable approval, the County Chief Executive Office under Fesia Davenport will need to produce “a feasibility report in 60 days, an analysis of which County and LAHSA programs would be absorbed by the new department in 90 days, and a fiscal and staffing plan in 120 days.” A “friendly amendment” from Supervisor Janice Hahn to allow staff more time to complete the feasibility report was met with a lukewarm response despite “the holidays.” The move to restructure comes after scathing audits from both the County Auditor-Controller’s office under Oscar Valdez as well as the Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia reviewed spending.

In question are tens of millions of dollars in “working capital” advances made to service providers in 2017-18 from County Measure H funding. Similarly, questions remain regarding spending at the City of Los Angeles that have yet to be resolved, even as an audit approved by the City of Los Angeles in response to the LA Alliance lawsuit filed under Judge David O. Carter. The audit underway by firm Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) is now expected to issue a report no later than the end of February due to delays getting data from the Los Angeles Housing Solutions Agency (LAHSA). Under review, pending the audit findings, is whether LAHSA should be streamlined to have a narrower set of responsibilities limited to conducting the annual point-in-time count and managing the Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) versus direct fund administration for service providers.

https://zacharyellison.substack.com/p/part-134-the-rocky-horror-picture

Part 131: Mark Ridley-Thomas and David Lee Cases Appealed to a Higher Authority

Part 132: Was the 2024 Election Hacked? Dangerous Lawfare in Bizarre Times

Part 130: "Looking for Unicorns" - Housing and Homelessness Progress in Los Angeles