The Brief

People who lost their homes in the wildfires that swept through L.A. County last week won’t have to comply with some of the state’s strongest (and most time-consuming) environmental laws, according to a new executive order issued Sunday by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The order makes it easier for people whose homes burned down to rebuild as quickly as possible in exactly the same places, by allowing them to bypass the California Environmental Quality Act (known as CEQA) and the California Coastal Act’s permitting processes.

But some environmental advocates say CEQA is one of the few tools they have to challenge problematic construction projects.

Others note that residents looking to rebuild fire-damaged houses likely wouldn't need CEQA permits anyway. The bigger issue, they say, is whether Newsom's order encourages risky development in high fire-risk areas.

What is CEQA anyway?

CEQA (pronounced See-qua) is a law designed to prevent new building projects from harming the environment. It also informs the public about potential projects that could be damaging to the environment, allowing ordinary citizens to weigh in.

The 1970 law has become controversial in recent years for dragging out the permitting process for new housing developments. Critics argue it has contributed to the state’s housing crisis by driving up the cost of construction and adding delays.

The California Coastal Act, meanwhile, seeks to protect the state’s coastline by requiring new development near the ocean to get a permit.

What really drives up building costs?

Exempting home rebuilding from these processes may sound like a sweeping change, but it may not actually change much.

Three planning experts LAist spoke with said CEQA and Coastal Act permits would not have been required to rebuild individual single-family homes that burned in a wildfire — even before the governor’s executive order.

Marylee Guinon, president of State Alliance for Firesafe Road Regulations and a retired environmental planner, wondered if the governor was unfairly blaming environmental laws for hampering rebuilding.

“This false narrative that this ‘red tape’ is driving up the cost of the rebuild process is not true,” she said.

“We know from many other fires that the cost and process of rebuilding was dictated by construction materials and supply chain issues during the pandemic," she continued. "So why the governor’s office is coming across like this, I honestly don’t understand.”

Rebuild or relocate?

The scene after a 2007 fire in Malibu. Homes were later rebuilt along the same beach.

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Brian Vander Brug

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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One question on some people's minds — especially in light of Newsom's order — is not will the neighborhoods come back as they were, but should they?

 ”I perfectly understand the political and optics that drove this decision,” Char Miller, a professor of environmental history at Pomona College, told LAist’s AirTalk. “But if we're really going to build back into neighborhoods that have burned, and burned multiple times, then I think we should ask a different policy question, which is why are we doing this?”

The history of wildfire in Los Angeles County is one of building, burning, and re-building, as writer Mike Davis noted in this classic essay: "The Case for Letting Malibu Burn."

Instead of re-building once again, Miller suggested the government should offer buyouts to people to encourage them to rebuild in a safer location, something that has happened after devastating floods in New York, Houston and other parts of the country.

"There's a pattern here," Miller told AirTalk. "We have yet to stop ourselves from doing the thing that we know will harm us."

But rebuilding in fire prone areas after wildfires in California is inevitable, said Alexandra Syphard,  an ecologist at the Conservation Biology Institute and an adjunct professor at San Diego State University.

Recent studies have found that most homes that burned down in wildfires in California are eventually rebuilt in the same places.

 "The best we can hope for, I think, is rebuilding to more fire resilient standards,” Syphard said.

What about the building codes?

Most homes in California were built in the 1960s and '70s. Any homes that are rebuilt now will likely be more fire resistant than those older homes simply by virtue of complying with newer, more stringent building codes.

However, the governor’s executive order suggests some elements of the building code may be suspended for homes rebuilt after the wildfires, and gives various agencies 60 days to make recommendations.

Chapter 7A of the building code requires fire adaptations for homes in very high fire-risk areas, including fire-resistant roofs and siding, screens to keep embers out of attic vents, non-flammable decks and patios and heat-resistant windows.

The governor’s office did not clarify whether it was considering suspending those codes.

We're answering your questions

Police divers have found the body of a patient who went missing after a medical helicopter crashed into the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island, bringing the death toll to three while two other people were recovering from their injuries, authorities said Friday.

Divers with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department found the victim’s body Thursday in the wreckage of the helicopter after searching more than 156 square miles (404 square kilometers) over 23 hours, the Coast Guard said in a statement.

Relatives of the missing person told ABC7 that the woman was being transported from Catalina Island to the mainland for medical care after having an allergic reaction. They also said her 20-year-old son went with her in the helicopter to help translate.

The helicopter with five people aboard went down shortly after takeoff and hit the water not far from the island, officials said. The cause is not clear and the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.

First responders pulled four people from the water on Wednesday night.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said that authorities were not yet identifying the victims by name. But he described the two people who died as the male pilot and a female nurse. He also said another medic and a fourth person, a man, were hospitalized.

Luna said the helicopter wreckage was about 200 feet (60 meters) deep in the water.

The helicopter’s operator, REACH Air Medical Services of Sacramento, confirmed that two of its crew members died and a third was recovering at a hospital. The company declined to provide more details.

“In the days ahead, our focus will remain on caring for our people, supporting their families and honoring the lives and service of those we have lost,” REACH said in a statement.

A memorial service was held on the island to honor the victims.

The crash came 11 days after a firefighting helicopter went down, killing two pilots in Yosemite National Park in California, and two weeks after a news helicopter crashed in Los Angeles, killing two people.

Emergency personnel were called to the Catalina crash shortly before 8 p.m. on Wednesday. Two people were pronounced dead at the scene, and two, in stable condition, were brought to hospitals on the mainland, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said.

The helicopter landed on the island shortly after 7 p.m., following a 24-minute flight from an airport in Oceanside, according to the flight tracking service Flightradar24.

At Signature Post in Burbank, Mariella Abaunza, the post-production company’s executive vice president for business development, shows off a photo of her talking to Gov. Gavin Newsom at the recent signing of AB 2319 at the Television Academy in North Hollywood.

Marielle Abaunza holds a photo of her and Gov. Gavin Newsom at the signing ceremony for California's new stand-alone post-production tax credit.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

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LAist

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She was there with the coalition that lobbied for the creation of a new stand-alone tax credit for post-production work done in California.

“It definitely restored my faith in government. ... Advocacy works,” she said.

It was a sizable coalition. Abaunza is president of the California Post Alliance, the post-production industry’s trade group. Leaders of the Motion Picture Association and the Editors Guild were there too.

The post-production tax credit is aimed at stopping the flight of TV and film work to other states and countries, attracted by generous tax incentives.

While there are existing tax credits for filming in California, under the new law, productions qualify for a 35% to 50% tax credit if post-production work such as editing, color correction, scoring and sound mixing is done in California, even if the filming was done outside the state.

But industry advocates acknowledge there’s a weakness in the law: Proponents initially asked lawmakers to set aside $100 million for the post-production tax breaks. By the time Newsom signed the bill into law, that amount had been drastically reduced to $10 million.

“That's going to get used up in a couple days. … It's not hard to allocate $10 million in post-production in California,” said Stephen Weizenecker, an entertainment lawyer based in Atlanta who advises TV and film productions on how to take advantage of tax credits in U.S. states and overseas.

But he said that regardless of the much lower cap, the credits will make California more competitive.

Abaunza hopes it will be a boost for Signature Post. The 6-year-old post-production company, which mixed sound for films and shows like  "Everything Everywhere All at Once," "American Fiction," and "Lessons in Chemistry," has been experiencing a slowdown, like many others.

“We're still ahead of the game, and we still have the largest concentration of post-production talent of anywhere in the world,” Abaunza said of Southern California.

But she said that post-production advantage has been eroded by new facilities and worker talent in the U.K. and Canada, among other countries.

Monica Levinson, executive producer of FX’s "Love Story," "Say Nothing," and many other TV and film projects, points out that those countries have another advantage: a lot more government social services.

She compared that to the U.S. “The one thing that this country has are unions, and it has health insurance, and it has pension plans, and the things that need to be put into the budgets of productions,” she said.

Weizenecker also noted that as much as producers might want to keep production in California or the U.S., they may not be the ones making the decisions about where work is done.

“ If Netflix only gives you so much to spend on the production, including post,” he said, “you're gonna go where it's the most cost-effective.”

Federal game changer

While the California tax credit is a step in the direction of keeping productions in the state, a much bigger tax credit is now making its way through the federal legislative process that may be even more transformative.

It’s called the Motion Picture, Television and Entertainment Revitalization Act and was co-authored by U.S. Sens. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, and Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina. President Donald Trump has also said he supports it.

If the bipartisan birth and early life of the bill isn’t enough to raise eyebrows, what it promises may be: a 20% federal, labor-based tax credit to U.S. TV and film productions where 75% of the days spent on principal photography happen in this country.

The bill would also favor post-production work and extend benefits to productions in some rural areas and places affected by disasters.

Marielle Abaunza is executive vice president of business development for Signature Post in Burbank.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

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LAist

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“These things could be real game changers to bring back the work here,” Levinson said. She’s the co-chair of the legislative committee for Producers United, a 3-year-old group that advocates for established TV and film producers. That position led her to join the coalition of groups working to get the federal bill passed.

TV and film production and post-production used to be dominated by California, and L.A. County in particular. But Hollywood, as it refers to what you see on the big and small screen, is a national business now.

“Everybody in this country is behind this federal incentive. And therefore, that's why it's become such a bipartisan effort because there's production in every state right now,” Levinson said.

Supporters have not said how much less money would go to public coffers if this federal tax credit passes.

A long-running court battle between California veterans and the Trump administration will continue, as federal officials consider asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s order to build more housing for unhoused L.A. veterans.

A federal appeals court on Thursday agreed to temporarily pause the order to construct more than 2,500 new housing units on the Veterans Affairs campus in West L.A.

Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel representing the plaintiffs, told LAist the delay could spell life or death for unhoused veterans, especially as the region braces for strong El Niño-driven storms.

“These are veterans who risked their lives and suffered both the visible and invisible wounds of war,” Rosenbaum said. “What the government is saying to them is, you're supposed to stay on the street."

VA officials did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment.

Veterans' lawyers in a court filing called a possible appeal to the Supreme Court a “hopeless shot.”

“The government has lost every time they have taken this to court. No court has ruled for them on any of these matters,” Rosenbaum told LAist. “This is part of the administration’s war on its own veterans, and it’s time for that war to come to an end.”

Could long-running case end up at the Supreme Court?

The litigation was initiated in 2023 by L.A. veterans struggling with homelessness. The case has centered on the 400-acre V.A. campus, which U.S. District Judge David O. Carter has ruled should offer more housing to the approximately 2,250 veterans experiencing homelessness in L.A. County.

In 2024, Carter ordered officials to add thousands of temporary and permanent homes, and end leases with UCLA, a private K-12 school and an oil drilling company, which he said did not serve the needs of veterans.

An appeals court last month blocked the federal government’s efforts to halt the housing construction. But veteran advocates knew that federal officials could ask for further delays as the case winds through the courts.

VA officials now have until Dec. 10 to decide whether to appeal their fight to the Supreme Court. Judges with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals told lawyers for the federal government that if they do not decide to appeal by Dec. 10, “the stay will be lifted immediately.”

The Los Angeles Unified School District shortened the application window for specialized academic programs this year, and will no longer accept paper forms.

Applications for the district’s magnet, dual language and affiliated charter schools for the next academic year opened Oct. 1 and are due Nov. 6, 2026.

How does it work?

If you want your child to attend their neighborhood school, enrollment is fairly straightforward. There’s a separate process for the district’s specialized programs called Choices.

There are two windows to apply — on-time and late. The latter consists of all the spaces left after families who applied on time accept their offers.

Here’s the timeline for the 2027-28 school year:

• Sept. 2026: School fairs start.
• Oct. 1, 2026: Choices application opens.
• Nov. 6, 2026:  Deadline to apply online.
• Dec. 1, 2026:  Late applications begin. 
• February 2027: On-time applicant results sent. 
• March 5, 2027: Deadline to accept or decline school offers for on-time applicants. School assignments for late applications follow the processing of on-time applications. Students may be offered a spot through the start of the spring semester. 
• Aug. 12, 2027: The school year begins.

LAUSD will no longer accept paper Choices applications. If families do not have a computer, they can use a smartphone to complete an application. LAUSD will also allow families to use computers at school parent centers.

How to prepare

Every child within LAUSD boundaries is assigned a school — find yours through the district’s “resident school identifier.”

But there are also hundreds of other programs available through the Choices process.

Those include:

• Magnets: Programs on a specific theme, such as science, math, language, advanced studies or art. These programs were originally established to integrate segregated schools and have a unique “points” system to prioritize applications. 
• Dual language or immersion: Students learn in English and in a second language such as Spanish, Mandarin, Korean or Armenian. 
• Affiliated charter schools: District-run schools with more freedom to try different types of teaching or other programs. 

No one type of school is inherently better than another, and no one metric defines a great school — there are many factors beyond test scores to consider, and we go over some of those here.

By far the most frequent piece of advice we’ve heard is to go on an in-person school tour if possible.

“The very best thing that people can do is go to the school and try to watch the way that educators interact with students, the way that students interact with each other, and the way that families are included or not in the life of a school,” said Jack Schneider, a University of Massachusetts, Amherst, education researcher and parent. “Once you do that, you really get a sense of what kind of place kids are going to school.”

Some schools post tour information online, but you may need to call for details.

LAUSD also hosts fairs, organized by geographic region, where multiple schools table and share information about their programs, through mid-October.