The LA Reporter: Squawk Box for Monday, May 4, 2026

Squawk Box: Monday, May 4, 2026

This week, The LA Reporter is trying out a daily format that will become a separate newsletter, called the Squawk Box. The name comes from my time covering LA City Hall as a wire service and daily news reporter. I used to tune into and report on multiple meetings a day using a device nicknamed the “squawk box.” You can see a picture of that very device up above.

Anyway, I’ve always wanted more people to know about the “everything everywhere all at once” of what’s happening in local politics and governance. It’s useful knowledge to have, even if it’s not stuff that’s normally covered by local media. And it’s for people who like to get an early scoop and a deeper understanding of what’s going on. - Liz Chou, The LA Reporter

Today and the week ahead: Los Angeles city’s budget hearings will continue this morning with the Budget and Finance Committee meeting at 9 a.m. to ask questions of officials from the Disability, City Clerk, Neighborhood Empowerment, Civil & Human Rights and Equity, Zoo, Cultural Affairs, El Pueblo, Library, City Tourism, Office of Public Accountability, Los Angeles City Employees’ Retirement System, Los Angeles Fire and Police Pensions, and other city departments. Another budget hearing is scheduled for Thursday, May 7, aimed at tying up loose ends and going over budget memos. The budget committee won’t meet again to discuss the budget until May 15. The committee has already had some interesting discussions on other departments, like the CAO, Transportation, Community Investment, and the LAPD. Watch for The LA Reporter’s round-up on the highlights of the budget hearings, later this week.

There will be a NoHo Locals event at the Lawless Brewing Co. in North Hollywood tonight featuring City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who is up for re-election, and Marissa Roy, who is challenging the sitting city attorney, Hydee Feldstein Soto. It’s billed as a “ballot party,” and it is hosted by LA Forward and the California Working Families Party. It runs from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. They ask that you RSVP here.

The much talked about Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association’s mayoral debate between Nithya Raman and Karen Bass, and moderated by Fox 11’s Phil Shuman, is tomorrow night, on May 5. The way you RSVP is by emailing your full name and number of attendees to [email protected]. You can find the flyer here. Food is typically served at their meetings, but not this time. They’re expecting “huge attendance” at this meeting. If you want to avoid the crowd, there is also a Zoom livestream. 

There is a Police Commission meeting on Tuesday, at 9:30 am, during which they’re set to take up two “officer-involved” shooting cases from May and June 2025 in closed session. There are also reports on reserve officers and the conflict of interest code. 

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is meeting on Tuesday, May 5. Among the items getting taken up is an update on how they are supporting Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority workers, who were issued layoff notices last month. They’ll also take up a motion by Supervisor Lindsey Horvath to call for improving safety at Whiteman Airport after an airplane crashed in a commercial area in Pacoima on April 20. FYI, the Los Angeles City Council’s Energy and Environment Committee will be taking up a motion that was prompted by the same incident, during their meeting in the afternoon, that same day. 

And although the agenda hasn’t been posted yet, the Los Angeles City Council’s Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee is supposed to take up charter reform on Tuesday, May 5, to go over items related to government efficiency, planning, city powers, and neighborhood councils, as laid out in the Council President’s letter setting up the process. The rules committee met last Thursday for the first of a series of six committee meetings on charter reform. You can catch up on it with some quick social media threads by Fair Rep LA, myself and Unrig LA from the day of the meeting. But you can also check out the meeting recordings, including one by the city that’s only audio, and the other by the group Fair Rep LA that has video.

The Los Angeles City Council is scheduled to take up the LA Alliance case in closed session at their meeting on Tuesday. And the Sheriff Oversight Commission at the county is holding a forum on automated license plate readers on Wednesday, starting at 5:30 p.m. 

Other things to watch for this week include the start of budget hearings for Los Angeles County, on Wednesday, May 6. The Board of Supervisors heard from the departments back in February, which you can catch up on here. 

And of course, by the end of the week, the very hot, first phase of the D Line Extension will finally be open. It extends what used to be known as the Purple Line, from where it now ends in Koreatown, on Wilshire and Vermont, into the Miracle Mile area. There will be three new stops, in this first phase of the extension. They will be along Wilshire Boulevard, at La Brea, Fairfax and La Cienega. The Fairfax stop is probably its most prominent destination since this is where major museums like the LACMA and The Motion Picture Academy Museum are located. One way to get familiar with the new stops is with a pub crawl, which Abundant Housing LA is hosting on May 9, the day after the extension opens.

Union members, community groups and organizers rallied at MacArthur Park for workers and immigrant rights, on Friday, May 1. They include Luis Lopez Resendiz, of CIELO, who held up a marmota, which is a large, festive globe on a stick that gets brought out on special occasions in Oaxaca. “We understand the struggle,” Resendiz said of International Workers Day. He told The LA Reporter they came to make a call for action to stop the exploitation of indigenous workers.

Also spotted at the rally were members of the Garment Workers Center, who were involved in responding to the ICE raid last June at Ambiance. And La Brigada, the gig workers union that’s set to organize hundreds of thousands of ride-share drivers throughout California, had a truck there for the rally and march, with a banner that read, “We are the CA Gig Workers Union.” Some of the La Brigada members got a kick out of CIELO’s band, Resendiz bobbing the marmota up and down to the music, and the dancing of bystanders.

Transit workers from ATU Local 1277 stood with a big banner that read, “ICE OUT!” and smaller signs that called for “full citizenship rights for immigrants” and that declared their opposition to the Gaza genocide. The LA Tenants Union had a contingent there, while DSA-LA members held up signs that read “Solidarity has no borders!” Members of Local 36, of the United Union of Roofers and Waterpoofers and Allied Workers, held up signs that had a classic “No Capitalists” message illustrated with the Monopoly man crossed out with a big red X.

And there was also Matthew Carson, a veterinarian technician who has also worked in the printing and and clothing industries, who said that local leaders need to do more about lowering rent. Carson is a member of ACCE, which organizes with tenants and on other economic justice related issues.

“The housing situation is horrible in LA,” Carson told The LA Reporter. “The prices of rent are too high. And we are here to shut down LA for a day to let everyone know all of the things that are needed in LA. And to protest things that are happening to each and every one of us in L.A. because when they are taking away rights for one, they can take away the rights of all.” 

As part of the events on May Day, ACCE joined with other groups like Sunrise Movement, CLUE, LA Voice and other community groups to hold a sit-in at the Home Depot in Westlake, to protest the company allowing ICE and other immigration officials onto their premises to kidnap people during their raids. Numerous LAPD vehicles, officers and a helicopter responded to the sit-in action. After the police issued warnings, the protesters exited the store and picketed the entrance of the parking lot, before eventually leaving. They had also issued a demand letter to Home Depot’s CEO Ed Decker, calling on the company to publicly condemn ICE’s use of Home Depot’s property, and to prohibit federal immigration enforcement from using their parking lots to target day laborers. 

LA Local reported on Unite Here Local 11 organizers releasing big bags of soccer balls down the stairs of the office buildings where the local FIFA offices are located. Food service workers with the union recently filed a labor complaint against FIFA, and are threatening to strike amid negotiations with SoFi Stadium. The FIFA World Cup is set to have matches in Los Angeles in June and July. 

In the last couple weeks, mayoral candidate Nithya Raman has posted up an addition $363K to her matching funds haul, bringing the total matching funds her campaign has gotten to more than $975K. Campaigns qualify for the funds when they bring in small dollar donations, and it is meant to encourage campaigns to be less reliant on richer, big-pocketed donors. Meanwhile, Raman faces two incumbents with campaign war chests of more than $2 million, including the incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, who is endorsed by the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the police officers union that recently spent $237K on attack ads against Raman. This is on top of $175K in spending a couple weeks before by the police union. Among the donors to the police protective league independent expenditure committee is Kilroy Realty, which gave $100K to the police union to spend to sway elections. The company previously gave money to Ethan Weaver, who was Raman’s opponent when she was running for re-election in 2024, and Thrive PAC, which supported Weaver in that election. Here’s a link to some of Kilroy Realty’s contributions history, listed on the city Ethics website. Others that gave to the police union include Douglas Emmett, a property manager in Los Angeles. Raman on Friday, responded to those ads, saying that she voted against a contract that will give police officers raises over the next few years. She says that decision is leading to a billion dollar deficit in the city of Los Angeles. The transportation advocacy group Streets for All on Friday disclosed some spending, smaller than the police union, for ads to support Nithya Raman and to oppose Mayor Karen Bass.

Big money in other races: There was also a big chunk of change dropped in the Controller’s race. Kenneth Mejia’s opponent Zach Sokoloff is getting a boost from his mother, Sheryl Sokoloff, who gave $2.5 million to an independent expenditure committee supporting his campaign. While that is a pretty formidable amount, it became yet more fodder for the incumbent, Controller Kenneth Mejia, for a video that criticized the funding as being used to buy the election. When asked how their campaign planned to counter this latest funding drop to support their opponent, Jane Nguyen with Mejia’s campaign said that “unlike our opponent, Kenneth does not have any millionaire family members who can bankroll his campaign. Just like the last time, we’ll rely on small dollar donations from LA residents.”

The LA Times’s Noah Goldberg reports that mayoral candidate Rae Huang took a maximum $1,800 donation from a Twitch streamer, Michael Beyer, who made antisemitic remarks that got him temporarily banned from the platform. Huang’s spokesperson is not returning the donation from Beyer, who later apologized for the remarks and also said he had not meant it. 

The LA Times’s Hailey Branson Potts writes about the nine mayoral underdogs, which includes someone who became famous through protesting and filming someone at a gym who was transgender.

Deadline’s Dominic Patten writes about Karen Bass joining the bandwagon of political candidates, like her mayoral race opponent Nithya Raman, and candidates for governor, who want to remove the cap from California’s film and tv incentives progarm. Bass is also now against the Paramount merger deal with Warner Brothers that’s expected to “come with deep deep job cuts,” Patten writes.

Mayor Karen Bass spoke to Katie Phan of Meidas Touch, telling Phan that she thinks that one of her opponents in the mayor’s race, Spencer Pratt, has been exploiting the grief of Palisades fire victims. This comes after Pratt released a splashy new video this week that describes opponents Nithya Raman and Bass as being “not like us.” That video closes with Pratt and the trailer that he now lives in.

Gary Baum of The Hollywood Reporter writes about Spencer Pratt’s very LA brand of grievance politics.

Ballots are arriving in people’s mailboxes, and LAist has a great voter guide for our local elections.

The LA City Council’s Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee met last Thursday to resume discussions around Charter Reform, after they handed the baton on to a Charter Reform Commission around two years ago. They are expected to meet again on Tuesday, May 5, to go over items related to government efficiency, planning, city Powers, and neighborhood councils.

At last Thursday’s meeting, the chair, Council member Marqueece Harris-Dawson, said the reform effort was sparked by corruption scandals, as well as other issues with the existing charter. Harris-Dawson made references to the LA Fed tapes, and also questions around for how to fill a mayoral vacancy.

The Rules Committee includes Harris-Dawson, which is also City Council President, and council members John Lee, Hugo Soto-Martinez, Nithya Raman and Katy Yaroslavsky, who wasn't there that day because she's chairing budget hearings that was taken place at the same time.

Los Angeles City Council members have also been introducing motions on charter reform, and among the first out of the gate was a motion by Council member Hugo Soto-Martinez to allow the city to give non-citizens the right to vote in city and school board elections. This was an idea that was approved with some trepidation by Charter Reform commissioners who worried that this proposal would make Los Angeles residents a target of a presidential administration that is hostile to immigrants. Soto-Martinez has noted that the proposal to change the charter to allow this doesn’t automatically lead to non-citizens getting voting rights, but would give the city the ability to make that happen through an ordinance.

Another early motion was one that supports a Charter Reform Commission recommendation to double the Department of Recreation and Park’s protected budget.

Council members Monica Rodriguez and Bob Blumenfield teamed up on a bevy of charter reform motions. They include motions that call for a review of the costs for splitting up the City Attorney's Office into an appointed legal counsel and an elected prosector, an analysis of the charter recommendation to switch LA’s elections to ranked choice voting, a clearer idea as to how the Charter Reform Commission's proposal to create an Inspector General on ethics would actually work, prohibiting a caretaker or appointee to a vacant elected position from seeking that office for five years, and setting up a process for suspending elected officials.

Council member Nithya Raman introduced a motion proposing to make the Board of Appeals the sole body for planning appeals. And Council member Tim McOsker and Blumenfield partnered on a motion that takes out a line that says the Board of Public Works should devote its entire time to the board. 

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