The Brief

The head of Southern California Public Radio has announced his plans to retire, after leading a jump in fundraising and a growth in diversity at the organization — as well as controversial layoffs earlier this summer that roiled the company.

SCPR President and CEO Herb Scannell, a longtime media executive who has led the news organization for the last three-and-a-half years, announced his plans to the nonprofit’s full board and employees on Tuesday afternoon.

SCPR includes LAist 89.3 (formerly KPCC), LAist.com and LAist Studios, the organization’s podcast unit. LAist 89.3 is the region’s largest NPR affiliate.

Board members plan to start searching for Scannell’s successor quickly. In an interview, Scannell said he will stay on as long as the board needs for a transition to his eventual successor after the search.

He said he’s retiring for personal reasons, after the deaths of his brother and his best friend, and working for a long time far away from his wife and a daughter, who live in New York.

“It's really a matter of wanting to have another chapter of life where you're with the ones you love and doing things that you've always wanted to do,” said Scannell, adding that he’s 66 years old and hopes to travel in Europe after retiring.

“I’m so proud of the work that was done here,” he added, pointing to essential health information the station provided during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We were providing useful information every day, and people started to really look to us for whatever they could to try to figure out how they could mitigate their lives,” Scannell said of LAist’s pandemic coverage.

Drew Murphy, who chairs the board of Southern California Public Radio, said he’s sorry to see Scannell go and is appreciative of his work over the last few years.

“Personally I have really enjoyed and valued getting to know Herb and getting to work with him,” he said in an interview.

“I think all of the board feels that way,” added Murphy, who is CEO of Southern California Edison’s subsidiary Edison Energy.

The search for a new CEO

Murphy said the board will look internally and externally for candidates, including a national search. That process is expected to take months — with a successor likely to be identified sometime next year, Murphy said.

“I hope we can do this quickly, but as thoughtfully as possible,” Murphy said. That will involve bringing in stakeholders to help the board identify what the needs are for the next CEO, he said.

In a news release, the station said it’s seen a 38% growth in revenue during Scannell’s tenure, “including substantial contributions during the pandemic that enabled the preservation of jobs and initiatives.”

The move comes after Scannell led a rebrand that transitioned the radio station from KPCC to LAist in February. He also oversaw a major push to expand diversity in hiring and content after the police murder of George Floyd in 2020, and spearheaded a fundraising campaign to keep the station afloat during the coronavirus pandemic.

Recent layoffs were largest in station’s history

The announcement also comes three months after controversy erupted in and outside the organization about the sudden elimination of 21 positions in June — the largest in the station’s history. At the time, 20 people lost their jobs the day the announcement was made and one unfilled position was cut.

The cuts took staff by surprise, coming just after a successful on-air fundraising campaign and the release of public disclosures on executive compensation from a year earlier. Scannell received $625,000 in base pay and bonuses, plus benefits — up from $368,000 two years earlier. Scannell had said SCPR executives had taken large pay cuts to help sustain the company during the pandemic and the increases made them whole.

The disclosures also showed former CEO Bill Davis was paid around half a million dollars for a third year after leaving the organization, with no hours of work performed each week on average during that time, under the terms of his employment agreement.

Scannell and other leaders have said the layoffs were needed to redirect the organization on a more sustainable path focusing on daily online news.

The layoffs have continued to draw concern from many in the newsroom over how they were conducted. At the station’s quarterly board meeting Tuesday, staff members represented by the SAG-AFTRA union read a letter of concern to the board, signed by 44 station employees, including most of the rank-and-file reporters and producers.

In an interview in June about the layoffs, Scannell said the station had seen its underwriting revenues drop by “a couple million dollars” amid the writers’ and actors’ strikes.

“We had a shortfall, and we also needed to think about the way we were structured and we needed to make up for the shortfall and we needed to re-allocate jobs to create a daily news habit on [LAist.com] and that's what we did,” Scannell said.

“I believe we're set up better because of it right now.”

Since the layoffs, LAist has made 13 new hires, according to details shared by Carlo Giovanni, the organization’s vice president of people and culture, during the public portion of Tuesday’s board meeting. There are currently 189 staff members.

An uncertain financial future

Asked where things stand financially, Scannell said revenues from underwriting — a form of advertising that includes sponsored messages — are still down and will become more of a challenge the longer the strikes go on.

“Hollywood is the cash crop of our underwriting,” Scannell said.

“It’s still too early to call if we’re deeply affected,” but there’s “no alarm right now” for the organization, Scannell said.

Murphy, the board chair, said “the board feels very comfortable about where we’re at financially.”

“We did have some challenges that we had to manage around and through over the last year, and we are, I think, well-positioned to continue to be in a position of financial stability and hopefully growth going forward,” he said.

Reactions from inside SCPR

Megan Garvey, the newsroom’s executive editor, said she appreciated Scannell’s support of the station’s journalism and efforts to keep everyone employed when revenues took a hit early in the pandemic.

“I feel like he’s been a strong supporter of our news operation and the vision to try to do things differently,” Garvey said in an interview. “Herb has a lengthy media background, but not really a lengthy news background. So it was great to see him really understand what we did as a news organization and why it mattered.”

Mary Hawley, LAist’s vice president of underwriting, said that Scannell encouraged his colleagues to always think about how to improve. She said he’s had a tireless mantra: How can we be better? How can we do better?

“At his core Herb is a marketing guy. He thinks about everything through a marketing lens,” Hawley said. “As a result, he championed a lot of critical things that will take us into the future.”

Scannell on his biggest accomplishments 

Asked what he feels were his biggest accomplishments at LAist, Scannell pointed to two initiatives: the fundraising campaign to save jobs during the pandemic, and expanding diversity and inclusion.

“When COVID happened we were staring down the loss of potentially up to 50 jobs. And we immediately just went and mobilized,” including sending letters and appealing to listeners on-air, Scannell said. He credited the organization’s fundraising executives Carla Wohl and Rob Risko for their work on that campaign.

“We came through,” he said. “That, to me, was an incredible accomplishment.”

The diversity efforts included more staff training and efforts to hire people who are more reflective of the communities LAist serves, Scannell said.

“To me that’s a source of great pride,” he said. “I think it’s been an important part of our culture that I think makes us a better place to work.”

Scannell’s career included time at Nickelodeon

Scannell took the helm of SCPR in March 2019 after a long career as a cable TV executive overseeing Nickelodeon and working as vice chair at MTV Networks, and later led the BBC’s entertainment operations in North America.

He made the decision early this year to rebrand the public radio station from KPCC to LAist 89.3, the name of the news website the station acquired in 2018.

Asked if he would receive any compensation after leaving the organization, Scannell said he doesn’t have an exit package and doesn’t have a contract with the station.

Murphy said compensation of Scannell after he leaves is “not something that’s been addressed or decided at this point.”

Scannell said he’s grateful for his time at the station.

“It’s been a pleasure to work with the folks at Southern California Public Radio. I think they’re incredibly smart, talented and committed,” Scannell said.

“It’s been a great experience for me…I’ve done a lot in my career and I’m glad I did this.”

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by Senior Reporter Nick Gerda and edited by Senior Editor Mary Plummer and Managing Editor Tony Marcano. 

Under LAist's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly. Gerda, like all LAist reporters, is a member of SAG-AFTRA. He co-signed the letter presented to the board. He did not discuss the reporting of this story with any SAG-AFTRA members prior to publication. 

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen were ensconced in the Orion space capsule when they dropped into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego at 8:07 p.m. Friday. The USS John P. Murtha is stationed near the splashdown zone to help recover the crew.

The USS John P. Murtha is stationed near the splashdown zone and will help recover the crew. A team will head out to the floating capsule and install an inflatable raft just below Orion's side hatch. The crew will be examined by a flight surgeon, then helped out of the capsule. From the transport ship, they will hitch a ride back to Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Risk of reentry

There's always risk when returning from space. Glover said that he has been thinking about this portion of the mission since he was selected for it back in 2023, and he's been looking forward to it ever since.

"We have to get back," he said from the Orion capsule Wednesday. "There's so much data that you've seen already, but all the good stuff is coming back with us. There's so many more pictures, so many more stories, and, gosh, I haven't even begun to process what we've been through."

To get back, the capsule must hit the atmosphere at a precise angle.

"Let's not beat around the bush," said Jeff Radigan, Artemis II's lead flight director. "We have to hit that angle correctly. Otherwise, we're not going to have a successful reentry."

All eyes will be on the heat shield — this is the piece of hardware beneath the capsule that protects the crew from the extreme temperatures during reentry. NASA tested it out on Artemis I, the previous, uncrewed mission, and found that the heat shield wasn't performing as designed.

NASA mission planners and the Artemis II team worked on a way to mitigate that risk. Instead of "skipping" through the atmosphere like Artemis I, this mission would hit the atmosphere steeper and faster, limiting the time the spacecraft spends in those fiery, energetic moments of reentry.

"It's 13 minutes of things that have to go right," said Radigan. "I have a whole checklist in my head that we're going through of all the things that have to happen."

Mission success

The Artemis II mission is a key flight test for Orion, and thus far, mission managers have been pleased with the results. The spacecraft has taken humans farther from Earth than they've ever been, breaking a record set by Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970.

The crew tested the manual control of the spacecraft, which will be needed for future missions that will dock with a lunar landing system. The mission tested the spacecraft's life support systems and ability to keep four astronauts comfortable within the confined space.

Artemis II returned humans to the moon for the first time since the Apollo program over 50 years ago. And while some astronauts back then did see the far side of the moon, the Artemis II crew was able to observe it from a vantage point never before seen by humans. Their images and geological notes will help better determine what the moon is made of and where it came from.

While some of the astronauts' observations may help scientists understand the distant past, others will help mission managers better plan for the future. Case in point: The crew tested out the very first toilet to go to the moon, and it quickly ran into issues during flight. Multiple times during the trip, the crew had to use manual urinals instead. The issue, NASA said, was not with the toilet itself, but the system that dumps the urine overboard when it gets full.

The Orion capsule will return to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida after the mission, where engineers will examine the spacecraft after its flight, including a closer look at the spacecraft's plumbing. The team will be picking apart the spacecraft to see how it performed — and make any necessary changes ahead of the next mission, Artemis III, set to launch next year.

An L.A. city official sounded the alarm Friday that homeless service providers may go bankrupt or have to lay off staff over major reimbursement delays that still haven’t been fixed by the region’s homeless services agency — despite promises two years ago to fix it.

The L.A. Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) is late in reimbursing more than $50 million to shelter, housing and other service providers — much of which is more than 90 days overdue — according to a report it issued last month. One service provider said LAHSA is more than 90 days late in reimbursing more than $12 million in invoices to their organization.

”Everybody involved with contracting is frustrated, is angry, is exhausted," said John Wickham, the lead city staff member who presented about the issue to the city council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee on Friday. Wickham said the frustrations are shared by all of the city departments that deal with LAHSA, as well as LAHSA staff and service providers.

Wickham said he’s heard that some service providers may be considering layoffs or even considering filing for bankruptcy because of the delayed payments.

“ When payment delays occur, [service providers] are forced to make difficult decisions that everyone is experiencing right now,” said David Carpio, the chief operating officer for Veteran Social Services, Inc.

Those decisions, he said, include reducing available beds, limiting intake of new people for services, increasing wait times, ending projects — which he said leads to increased homelessness and burden on the city for emergency services calls.

Sharon Sandow, a spokesperson for the city housing department, said the department has paid LAHSA upfront — known as “advances” — so it has cash on hand to pay service providers. Sandow said the city has, at times, borrowed money from the General Fund to make advance payments to LAHSA.

Wickham said advanced payments from the city to LAHSA were being passed “ back and forth and around and around in circles.”

“ I actually haven't been able to get to the bottom of that myself,” Wickham said when asked why that’s happening. “Nobody [can] understand that.”

Wickham said he and colleagues have held over 100 meetings with officials to try to understand how the city contracts for homeless services, but some aspects were still unclear.

Officials promised to get payments back on track two years ago by streamlining their processes. Councilmember Nithya Raman, who has chaired the council’s homelessness committee for the past few years, said on Friday the city is “stuck” and has not fixed the issue.

“We don't have the ability at the city to manage this process any better than we did last year or the year before. We have just not moved forward at all,” she added. “It is extraordinarily frustrating, and those same issues persist at LAHSA that we've been discussing. So we're literally in the same place that we've been for two years.”

What LAHSA leaders say

The agency’s CEO, Gita O’Neill, told the committee the delays are “unacceptable” and that LAHSA is working with a consultant to improve its processes. LAHSA’s chief financial officer, Janine Trejo, said LAHSA “is accepting responsibility,” while she also pointed at the city for what she described as delays in the city finalizing its agreements to fund LAHSA and payments to LAHSA.

Mayor Karen Bass oversees the city agencies that pay LAHSA and is the only elected official on LAHSA’s governing commission, which she has served on for more than two years. She did not respond to a request for comment through a spokesperson on Friday’s discussion of the payment delays. Raman is running against Bass in the June primary election for mayor.

What’s next

Following up on City Council requests from years ago, the council committee plans to decide next Wednesday whether to recommend pulling all of the city’s funding out of LAHSA and having a different agency manage it. It will then go to the full City Council for a decision.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday is expected to consider, a motion aimed at assessing the impact of the growing number of data centers in the region.

The centers have drawn criticism for their potential health and environmental effects on surrounding communities, and for the amount of energy they use.

Around the country, the growth in the number of data centers — which house servers, storage systems and other technology — has been driven in part by the proliferation of artificial intelligence, which has drastically increased the need for critical internet technology infrastructure.

There are already more than 70 established data centers in the county, with that number likely to grow as developers approach cities and the county to create additional facilities, according to the motion authored by Supervisor Hilda Solis.

“Establishing local regulatory oversight of data center placement and operation is needed to ensure community and environmental health and safety is protected,” the motion states. “As newer centers expand in scale and complexity, their energy use and environmental footprint is also increasing, with little community engagement on the potential impacts on residents’ health and wellbeing.”

A representative of the data storage industry raised concerns about the motion, which calls for a moratorium on data center development in unincorporated L.A. County that would be initiated “as applicable.”

“What concerns me most with the motion is the inclusion of a moratorium,” said Khara Boender, director of state policy for the Data Center Coalition. “That sends a strong signal as to whether they are welcome in those areas.”

Data centers ‘underregulated’

Solis’ motion calls on various departments including public health, public works and fire to provide findings regarding the health, environmental and safety impacts of data centers on neighboring communities, the impact on electrical and water resources and a review of how other jurisdictions around the county are regulating data centers within urban areas.

It also calls for a community education and outreach campaign to inform residents on potential impacts of advancing technologies.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, has said the data center industry is under-regulated and accelerating at a speed, scale and concentration that is impacting energy systems, water supplies, air quality, community health, land use and public finances.

A recent report by the group said state and local policymakers are at the forefront of this expansion, “uniquely positioned to guide it in ways that reflect local priorities and community needs, especially in the absence of federal guidelines.”

A fact sheet from the council said unrestricted buildout of data centers could come with big consequences including:

• Higher household water and energy bills
• Water scarcity 
• Increased water, air and noise pollution

The motion by Solis quotes a 2026 report by Community & Environmental Defense Services that showed pollutants emitted from data centers may adversely impact the health of individuals living as far as 0.6 miles from the site.

Boender, of the Data Center Coalition, said concerns about data centers have been overstated. In addition, she said data centers have “a lot of positive economic impacts associated with them.” She cited a Pricewaterhouse report that found one job in a data center creates six jobs in the broader economy.

Support for state legislation

In addition to asking county staff to assess the impact of data centers, the Solis motion calls on the county to support state legislation that directs the Public Utilities Commission to create a special rate structure for large-scale energy users and requires these users to pay for upfront transmission or distribution upgrades.

The county Board of Supervisors is expected to consider the motion during its regular meeting Tuesday. For more information, click here.

Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, one of the leading candidates for California governor, came under increasing pressure Friday to drop out of the race following a report by the San Francisco Chronicle that he sexually assaulted a former female staffer. Swalwell denied the allegations.

Several other Democratic candidates called for him to immediately drop out, including Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and former Controller Betty Yee, who called the allegations “sickening.”

Swalwell had racked up endorsements across the Democratic establishment, and at least one labor union and one politician who was backing him suspended their support swiftly Friday afternoon.

The Chronicle reported that a woman who worked in Swalwell’s Castro Valley office claimed to have had sexual encounters with him while she worked for him and alleged he sexually assaulted her when she was intoxicated. The report comes after weeks of rumors that Swalwell had inappropriate interactions with staff for years. On one instance in 2019, the woman said she became intoxicated after Swalwell asked her for drinks and woke up in his bed in a hotel room, feeling the effects of intercourse.

"These allegations are false and come on the eve of an election against the frontrunner for governor. For nearly 20 years, I have served the public — as a prosecutor and a congressman and have always protected women. I will defend myself with the facts and where necessary bring legal action,” Swalwell said in a statement Friday.

In recent weeks, two social media influencers began posting online what many people had considered rumors about Swalwell’s behavior with women. The influencers said they had spoken with several young women with whom Swalwell had behaved inappropriately. CalMatters has not independently verified the claims.

Swalwell pushed back hard against the allegations this week, telling reporters at a town hall in Sacramento on Tuesday that they are “false,” that he had “never” had a sexual relationship with anyone who worked for him. He suggested the allegations were politically motivated.

“I don’t want there to be any question in the minds of Californians,” he said. “I’m offering myself also as somebody who is fearlessly going to stand up for Californians on the toughest issues and not flinch.”

An attorney for Swalwell sent cease-and-desist letters to some of the women, one of the influencers, Arielle Fodor, wrote online. The attorney, Elias Dabaie, did not respond to a request for comment on the Chronicle story but confirmed to other news outlets the letter’s authenticity.

On Thursday night, Swalwell canceled a planned town hall in Southern California. Swalwell began calling groups that have endorsed him Friday morning to tell them of an upcoming story in the Chronicle, and denying the story, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to CalMatters.

At least four of his senior campaign staffers, including a top consultant who helped him court labor support, abruptly resigned before the news report.

Swalwell’s top two Democratic competitors in governor’s race, Tom Steyer and Katie Porter, on Friday avoided calling for him to drop out, though both issued statements commending the woman in the Chronicle story for coming forward.

Some groups that have endorsed Swalwell declined to comment on the allegations when reached by CalMatters, saying their board members needed time to digest the news.

For others, the exodus was swift. U.S. Rep. Jimmy Gomez, a Los Angeles Democrat who chaired Swalwell’s campaign, resigned from the role Friday and called on Swalwell to drop out. He called the allegations “the ugliest and most serious accusations imaginable.”

“My involvement in any campaign begins and ends with trust,” he said in a statement. “The congressman should leave the race now so there can be full accountability without doubt, distraction, or delay.”

The powerhouse union California Teachers Association immediately suspended its support of Swalwell, calling the allegations against him “incredibly disturbing and unacceptable” in a statement by President David Goldberg. “Our elected board will be meeting as soon as possible to follow our union’s democratic process to determine next steps.”

Another heavyweight union that endorsed him, Service Employees International Union California, suspended at least one ad buy in support of Swalwell following the accusations.

The California Medical Association, another backer, was convening an emergency meeting of the board, and “takes these allegations extremely seriously,” said spokesperson Erin Mellon.

CalMatters' Yue Stella Yu contributed to this report.

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