The Brief

Topline:

Why it matters: The city has been retrofitting one of its wastewater treatment plants in Van Nuys to recycle water for drinking in order to boost water supplies in the face of long-term water shortages driven by climate change and overuse. Now, if approved by City Council, the plant will be able to recycle water to its full capacity, producing enough water for a half-million Angelenos as soon as 2028. It’s part of a broader effort to recycle all of the city’s water by 2035.

Effects beyond L.A.: Officials and supporters of the project say the expansion also can help restore water levels in Mono Lake in the eastern Sierra, where L.A. gets about 2% of its water. The Mono Lake Kootzaduka'a Tribe and water advocates have long fought for a landmark 1994 decision by state water regulators to limit L.A.’s water diversions from the lake to restore it to healthy levels, but those targets still have not been met.

What’s next: The construction project on the Tillman plant is expected to be completed by 2027, with water deliveries beginning as soon as 2028. As for the cost to ratepayers, the recycled water will be cheaper than what the city currently imports from the Colorado River and the Sierra Nevada. The L.A. City Council will next need to approve the board’s recommendation.

Go deeper: 

• LA has big plans to recycle more water. Why the city says it’s going to take decades to do it
• California’s new water recycling rules turn wastewater to tap water. What this means for you
• How ocean creatures tell us the complicated story of LA sewage treatment 
• I drank recycled sewage to get a taste of SoCal's water future

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

For several months, Westlake residents have been waiting for more information about a proposed $2.3 million project to install a permanent fence around MacArthur Park. The locals want to have a voice in how the project moves forward.

“We want to ensure that this $2.3 million fence does not become yet another eyesore in our neighborhood,” residents said in a letter and sent in early March to city officials requesting more details on the project.

The letter, signed by Mireya Valencia, president of the MacArthur Park Neighborhood Council, on behalf of the council, adds that residents should help inform the design of the fence before any final plans are approved.

So far, Valencia said city officials have not meaningfully engaged with residents, pointing to a lack of routine check-ins. They were also promised conceptual renderings in January that would show what the fence would look like. Those have not materialized either.

The Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners, County Supervisor Hilda Solis and Mayor Karen Bass did not respond to requests for comment and were all addressed in the residents’ letter.

A spokesperson for Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez’s office said in a statement that Council District 1 has been a part of discussions around the proposed fence and attended a MacArthur Park Neighborhood Council meeting when the letter was drafted.

“We appreciate the MacArthur Park Neighborhood Council’s engagement on this issue and have communicated our support for an inclusive community engagement process,” Hernandez’s office said in the statement.

The office added that while the Department of Recreation and Parks is at the forefront of the effort, Hernandez’s office will “support efforts to ensure that community voices are meaningfully incorporated as the project moves forward.”

For several months, Westlake residents have been waiting for more information about a proposed $2.3 million project to install a permanent fence around MacArthur Park.

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Gary Coronado

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The neighborhood council wants to know how the $2.3 million project funds would be spent and an explanation on  the project’s timeline and delays. 

Valencia said some neighborhood council members gave public comment when the project was first considered by the Los Angeles Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners last October, but felt the decision had already been made.

“Basically, we were told the fence is happening,” Valencia said. 

The fence would allow the park to close the space overnight and make it easier to maintain and secure facilities, according to what city officials told the LA Local in February.

But some residents and park users, like Josefina Portillo, a local vendor who has sold snacks and drinks in MacArthur Park for more than thirty years, said they worry the fence would make the space even more inaccessible.

Valencia, who has lived in the area for five years, said the council has yet to receive a formal response to its March letter. She added that she understands why some residents support a fence, given the park’s ongoing safety concerns for families, but said a fence alone will not address the deeper issues affecting the park, including homelessness.

“A fence is just going to push the problem somewhere else,” she said. “So instead of money being spent on fencing, I would love to see money be spent on social services.”

Mikaela Ruiz, a Westlake community member who works in the area, believes the fence proposal was created by people who don’t understand all the meaningful interactions that take place at MacArthur Park.

“If you go to MacArthur Park on a regular Saturday, you still see families interacting with the park,” Ruiz said. “You still see the kids football games in the summer, you still see the Levitt Pavilion having shows and events.” 

Westlake residents want to have a voice in how the project moves forward.

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Gary Coronado / For The LA Local

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Ruiz said the city should focus on what she sees as a fentanyl crisis happening at the park and services for unhoused people. She added that she doesn’t believe a fence would make the area feel any safer.

“What we’ve taken from the fences that Karen Bass decided to put on Sixth Street is that they just accumulate the trash,” Ruiz said. 

Valencia said meaningful community engagement would mean city officials change how and when they reach out to local residents.

“I would like to see proactive community engagement instead of reactive community engagement,” Valencia said. “Again, they come to our meetings after the decision has been made and after we write these letters, but they’re not asking us what we think beforehand.” 

If the fence does move forward, Valencia said she hopes it reflects the community and does not make the park feel closed off, pointing to the fence that the Frida Kahlo theater nearby has, as being more welcoming.

“I would love to see it incorporate artwork and our culture somehow,” Valencia said. “I would hate to see it blemished by an ugly carceral fence.”

The House of Representatives voted Thursday to reopen most of the Department of Homeland Security, ending the longest agency shutdown in U.S. history.

The House passed a bill funding DHS, minus dollars for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. The measure passed by voice vote on what was the 76th day of the shutdown.

Democrats refused to back funding for many of the agency's immigration functions in an unsuccessful effort to secure reforms including body-worn cameras and broad restrictions on face coverings after federal law enforcement killed two American citizens in Minnesota earlier this year.

The Senate, led by Republican Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., unanimously advanced this funding legislation in March. At the time, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., referred to the proposal as "a joke" and refused to bring it up for a vote. Many members of the House Republican conference refused to fund the agency in a piecemeal fashion and did not want to negotiate over reforms to immigration enforcement operations.

On April 1, Johnson reversed course. He announced the funding bill would be voted on "in the coming days." More than four weeks later, he finally made good on that commitment.

In an effort to appease his hardline members, Johnson waited to bring the Senate's proposal to a vote until that chamber's Republicans started the arcane procedural process, known as reconciliation, to fund all of DHS — including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — for the remainder of Trump's term without any backing from Democrats.

The funding bill comes as Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin warned the agency was close to running out of funds to pay staff.

"We have reached all the emergency funds we can reach into," Mullin told Fox News on Friday. "I am completely out of the slush fund, I have no place to move at the end of the month."

Mullin said the agency was relying on appropriated funds from last year's One Big Beautiful Bill, which allocated more than $150 billion to DHS on top of its regular annual appropriations funding.

President Donald Trump signed a memo this month authorizing DHS to use some of the money from that legislation to fund the department's operations — potentially infringing on the powers granted to Congress by the Constitution to direct how taxpayer money is spent.
Copyright 2026 NPR

The candidates running for lieutenant governor are apt to hint at the post’s largely symbolic and overlooked status when discussing their ambitions for the statewide office.

It’s true that California’s lieutenant governor is mostly a ceremonial position. Eleni Kounalakis, who currently holds the position, is next in line if the governor is absent or vacates the office, such as when they’re out-of-state, undergoing surgery or if they die. Kounalakis, who terms out this year, is also president of the state Senate and can cast a rare tie-breaking vote if called upon. Most of her influence lies within higher education, where she sits on all three of the state’s higher education boards.

Because of this, the four major leading candidates for the office in the upcoming June primary are emphasizing the sway they’d like to have on higher education, such as freezing tuition or cutting back on remedial coursework.

Previous lieutenant governors have used the office as a stepping stone to the state’s top job, including Gov. Gavin Newsom who held the position for eight years before his election in 2018.

But it’s still mostly unknown to voters and suffers a poor reputation.

“I called the lieutenant governor sort of the Seinfeld of state government, because nobody knows who it is, and then they think it’s a job about nothing,” Gloria Romero, a Republican candidate, told CalMatters.

The major Democratic candidates include Josh Fryday, who leads volunteer programs in the Newsom administration, state Treasurer Fiona Ma who terms out this year, and former Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs.

Here is what each candidate, in alphabetical order, said about how they’d approach the gig.

Josh Fryday

Fryday said one of his biggest priorities as lieutenant governor would be to try to get California community colleges to credential more trade workers to help build more clean energy projects and boost the state’s renewable energy supply.

Prior to becoming part of the governor’s cabinet in 2019, he was the chief operating officer of NextGen America, a clean advocacy organization started by billionaire Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer.

He also said he would push for developing more student housing on public land to increase enrollment and create more revenue to stem rising tuition costs.

The former mayor of Novato also emphasized expanding the volunteer service program he helped develop as chief service officer in Newsom’s cabinet. He would like it to include more community colleges and universities. In addition to Newsom’s support, he’s endorsed by the California Teachers Association and California Federation of Teachers.

Janelle Kellman

Former Sausalito mayor Janelle Kellman wants to make community college free and expand training programs for in-demand jobs as a member of the state’s higher education boards. But the lieutenant governor is one of 18 members on the UC Board of Regents and has limited capacity to enact a single policy change.

She’s received support from the California Legislative Jewish Caucus and the LGBTQ Stonewall Democratic Club.

The lieutenant governor has no role in electricity regulation or insurance. But Kellman, a climate attorney, said she would work to cut utility costs by getting rid of extra electricity fees. She also said she’d work with the insurance commissioner to reduce premiums for homeowners who take preventive measures to mitigate wildfire risks.

Kellman spent 10 years in local government on Sausalito’s planning commission and city council and is the founder of a climate nonprofit focused on sea level rise.

She also supports building more student housing.

Fiona Ma

Finding other ways to generate revenue for Cal State universities outside the general fund is one way Ma would look to lower the cost of housing and tuition. She supports partnering more with private companies to lease out spaces such as campus theaters when they’re not being used.

Ma has an exhaustive resume in local and state politics: She spent six years in the Assembly after one term on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and was on the Board of Equalization for four years before she was elected state treasurer in 2019.

State Treasurer Fiona Ma in the Senate chambers at the state Capitol in Sacramento on Jan. 5, 2026.

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Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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As treasurer, she has issued housing bonds to California universities, which she said has given her “a different perspective” on how to build more student housing.

“Some of them do have land and they are working with some of the developers that have a speciality with building student housing” she said.

Ma is endorsed by construction and hospitality unions. She was accused of sexual harassment by a former employee in 2021, who accused Ma of requiring her to share a hotel room with her and buying her gifts. The state, using taxpayer dollars, settled the lawsuit for $350,000 in 2024.

Ma has repeatedly denied the accusations and called the lawsuit "frivolous."

It took up three years of her life, and voters still elected her, she said. “I still got all the same endorsements that I got the first time I ran in 2018,” Ma said. “I’ve gotten even more support for my lieutenant governor’s race.”

Gloria Romero

Romero, a former Democrat-turned-Republican, supports school vouchers to let parents use taxpayer dollars to pay for private school education — which teachers unions vehemently oppose. She also supports slashing remedial coursework to help students finish their degrees faster.

Former state Sen. Gloria Romero in Culver City on April 18, 2024.

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Ryan Sun

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AP Photo

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A former assemblymember and first woman to become Senate Majority Leader, Romero spent 12 years representing east Los Angeles in the state Legislature as a Democrat until 2010. She switched parties in 2024 and announced her lieutenant governor run as a joint ticket with Steve Hilton, one of the leading Republican candidates for governor.

On how she’d navigate negotiating with the Democratic supermajority in the Legislature and on numerous boards as a rare Republican, Romero said she would individually meet with each colleague to see where their priorities overlap.

Michael Tubbs

Tubbs is looking to return to office to help drive down the cost of higher education more than a decade after skyrocketing to political stardom in Stockton as one of the youngest big city mayors in the county.

His ascent as the city’s first Black and youngest mayor at 26 in 2016 garnered him national attention as the son of a single mother raised in a poor neighborhood who climbed his way to full ride at Stanford.

He supports freezing tuition at all public colleges by cutting “administrative bloat,” cutting remedial coursework that doesn’t count toward graduation requirements and streamlining programs for in-demand industries such as nursing.

Tubbs is a special economic adviser to the governor and leads the nonprofit organizations Poverty in California and Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, dedicated to implementing universal basic income pilot programs in cities across the state, a flagship initiative of his mayorship.

California’s major public employee union, Service Employees International, is supporting Tubbs.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

A new music festival comes to Santa Monica this weekend, curated by a living legend. The inaugural Santa Monica International Jazz Festival is the brainchild of master bassist Stanley Clarke, a five-time Grammy winner who has played on every festival stage from Montreux to Monterey. He said the idea to bring a jazz fest to Santa Monica came to him during a walk on the Third Street Promenade.

" I live very close to Santa Monica and I'm pretty much in Santa Monica all the time," Clarke said. "That whole area down there is really beautiful, and I thought, 'Man, what a perfect place for a jazz festival.' And it was really that simple. Just in my head. Bing."

The festival runs from May 1-9 and includes performances from headliners Kamasi Washington (who recently won a Grammy with Kendrick Lamar), Isaiah Collier and Lakecia Benjamin. Clarke will also be performing two sets during the festival. One will be a tribute to John Coltrane. The other will feature drummer Stewart Copeland from The Police. Clarke said over time, jazz has become a more undefined term to him.

"It's a lot of different things for me," Clarke said. "Where I'm at on the definition is that any music that has improvisation in it, where guys playing solos and are jamming, I can say that it has a jazz feel. So, the term jazz is more of a feel to me now than anything."

In a modern world of TikTok fads and music made by artificial intelligence, jazz may seem like it belongs to an older generation. But Clarke said he isn't worried about the genre's future.

"I actually think that jazz is definitely in the city of Los Angeles exploding," Clarke said. "We have my festival.  There's another festival called the L.A. Jazz Festival. There's the Blue Note that just opened up too.  So, there's a resurgence."

Clarke said education plays a key part in promoting jazz. Because of that, an afternoon slot on the festival will feature the Santa Monica High School jazz band.

"All these new groups and all these new young people that are just doing stuff," Clarke said. "I don't think it's so conscious where everyone's getting together and having a meeting going, 'Hey, we're gonna expand jazz.' I think it just human nature. Things just come together."

Clarke said the community will ultimately decide if this festival becomes a part of the fabric of Santa Monica.

" I think for a jazz festival, the main thing is it's not just music," Clarke said. "It's community, food, weather, scenery and we have all of it. It's the royal flush."

Performances on May 3 at Third Street Promenade are free to the public. Tickets for all other events are available at the festival's website.