The Thorn West is a state and local news roundup compiled by members of DSA-LA. Our goal is to provide a weekly update on the latest developments in state and local politics, and to track the issues that are most important to our membership.
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Issue No. 205 - June 7, 2024
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- This Monday, a Gaza solidarity encampment was established on the steps of City Hall, calling on the council to support a ceasefire, among other related demands. The encampment was quickly cleared by police. However, on Tuesday, Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez, Nithya Raman, and Hugo Soto-Martinez introduced a resolution in support of a ceasefire. The resolution was referred to the council committee on Rules, Ethics, and Intergovernmental Relations. If passed, Los Angeles would join San Francisco and Oakland, and several LA County cities.
- This week, the City Council discussed a Report from the office of the Chief Legislative Analys which contained proposed amendments to the City Charter. The amendments were collected city departmenst and categorized by the CLA into 51 recommendations for the November ballot and 48 to be referred to the soon-to-be-created charter commission reform for further discussion.
- The Council proposed an additional charter amendment to reduce the number of weekly meetings from three to one. Following pushback from critics, who argued that this would make the council less accessible to the public, the motion will be deferred for further discussion in the charter reform commission, rather than moving to the 2024 ballot for approval.
- Proposed amendments introduced by Chief Administrative Officer Matt Szabo would rewrite the Charter to state that the CAO was also the “Chief Financial Officer” of the city. This proposal faced heavy pushback from Controller Kenneth Mejia, who argued that this usurped the responsibilities of the controller. The amendments were redirected from the November ballot to the reform commission.
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- LA Public Press dives into the long awaited report on the impact of Los Angeles’ 41.18, which the city released last week on a Friday evening. The report notes that 41.18’s outreach process, which was put in place to provide moral and legal cover for the increase in encampment clearings that the program enables, has resulted in only two people finding permanent housing.
- Over 100 tenants of rent controlled units in the Barrington Plaza apartment complex are challenging their evictions under the Ellis Act, the California law which permits landlords to evict tenants if they are taking their rental units off the market permanently. Douglas Emmet, which owns Barrington Plaza, has argued that landlords who are simply performing renovations should also be able to evict their tenants under the Ellis Act. This expansion of the law could foreseeably allow the effortless eviction of any tenant of a rent controlled unit. Coverage in LA Public Press.
- In January, an employee of Urban Alchemy, which is contracted by the city to provide services to the unhoused, was filmed spraying an unhoused person with a hose. Now, Urban Alchemy is refusing to comply with a subpoena from the Controller’s office.
- Los Angeles officials have yet to fully comply with a judge-mandated order to disclose a granular breakdown of how money is spent on homelessness programs.
- A proposed amendment to the State Constitution aimed to remove Article 34, a 1953 segregationist effort to block the development of public housing. But the backers of the amendment have pulled it from November consideration, out of concern that the 2024 ballot has become too crowded for it to succeed.
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