The Brief

When is a minimum wage hike of more than $11 per hour actually a pay cut?

That question has dominated the debate over a current California housing bill that has riven the state’s two most powerful construction worker unions and many state legislative Democrats reluctant to get on the wrong side of either group.

Assembly Bill 1751, authored by Fullerton Democrat Sharon Quirk-Silva, would kick aside regulatory barriers to building townhouses — tightly clustered, multistory homes. In exchange for this fast-tracked approval process, townhouse developers would be required to pay their workers at least $28 per hour.

That’s a significant pay bump over the statewide minimum wage of $16.90.

But the fiercest opposition to the bill has come from what might seem like an unexpected source: The State Building and Construction Trades Council, an umbrella organization that represents electricians, plumbers, sheet metal workers and other skilled construction trade unions.

The trades — as the council is colloquially known — argue that the new wage floor could have the paradoxical side-effect of driving down the “prevailing wages” enjoyed by many of their members. Prevailing wages are mandatory minimum pay rates for publicly-funded or supported construction projects, which include many affordable housing developments and other projects propelled forward by recent state law in California. State and federal regulators set prevailing rates based on surveys of the most common wages in each field and geographic area. Because union pay scales can cover hundreds of similarly employed workers, those union-level wages often set the prevailing wage.

In a testy debate on the Assembly floor earlier this month, Quirk-Silva stressed — repeatedly — that the bill would in no way affect the state-set wage rates.

“It does not replace prevailing wage,” she said. “It does not undercut prevailing wage. This bill leaves prevailing wage exactly where it stands in current law.”

The trades aren’t buying it, noting that the federal government sets its own rates for federally-supported projects. But the group’s bigger beef may boil down to precedent.

For years, the building trades have battled any legislation aimed at easing regulations on the construction of new housing unless it also included pro-union guarantees. Those are either union-level prevailing wage pay requirements or, in more recent years, even more restrictive “skilled and trained” rules that require developers to hire apprenticeship program graduates, the vast majority of whom are union members.

Quirk-Silva’s townhouse streamlining bill introduces a new standard: a minimum wage far lower than what most trades members already make.

Making a meager minimum wage hike the new bone that pro-housing bills throw to construction workers would “signify the new norm,” said Chris Hannan, president of the Trades Council. “When you start a trend of doing a minimum wage, then that becomes the new go-to.”

The trades and carpenters, at it again

Standing on the other side of the debate, supporting the new wage standard, are California’s unionized carpenters.

The trades battling the carpenters is a familiar face-off in Sacramento. This isn’t even the first time the groups have publicly locked horns over this specific wage proposal.

Last summer, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat and longtime ally of the carpenters, inserted residential construction worker minimum wage of between $28 and $40 per hour into a budget bill in the final hours of the fiscal year. Aside from high-rise construction developments where the use of steel and concrete tend to draw more specialized workers, unions represent relatively few laborers who build California homes, the carpenters argued at the time. The new wage standard would be a modest corrective for those non-union laborers whose current wage floor is the state minimum wage.

For years, carpenters union leaders have argued that improving working standards for low-wage workers presents an “organizing opportunity” for the union.

The trades were apoplectic. Dozens of union members crowded in the budget bill hearing to decry what they saw as an anti-union reversal of state labor policy. One representative likened the measure to “Jim Crow” laws. Many labor-friendly Democrats on the committee recoiled; the proposal was shelved.

This year, the idea has been given a bit more time for debate, though the trades and some lawmakers have still complained of a process they see as rushed.

When Quirk-Silva’s bill was introduced in early February, it focused solely on townhouse regulations. The wage language was added only in time for its second committee hearing in late April. (Quirk-Silva’s staff declined to make her available for an interview to explain that delay or discuss the bill in general, citing personal family matters. On the Assembly floor, she explained the late addition in part by noting “severe health issues” among staff and family members.)

Since then the entirety of the legislative debate has been focused on the wage issue.

That itself is a notable development: The bill exempts the construction of townhomes from both environmental review and the jurisdiction of elected local city councils and planning boards. Just a few years ago, such a proposal would have made for a capitol-shaking, headline-grabbing fight. But a year after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law exempting most urban housing developments from environmental litigation, the land-use implications appear to be an afterthought.

At an Assembly floor vote last month, San Diego Assemblymember Chris Ward referred to the minimum wage issue as the “900 pound gorilla.” He, like many Democrats who spoke on the bill, said that he supported the legislation in general, but that he remained wary of the “unresolved” questions about how the new wage rate would affect existing labor standards.

The bill needed 41 out of 80 “yes” votes to move onto the Senate. It passed with just 47.

Hike or pay cut?

Quirk-Silva’s office tried to get around the prevailing wage fight early on.

Prevailing wages are required of publicly funded works, including many affordable housing projects. They are set by the California Department of Industrial Relations, which sets its rates based on the most common wage for each job type in each region of the state.

Quirk-Silva’s bill specifically bars the state department from taking the new $28 per hour townhome wages into account when running those calculations, lest a glut of townhome builders inadvertently bring down the wages owed to union roofers and plumbers.

The trades aren’t satisfied with that concession. That’s because the federal government conducts its own wage surveys and set its own prevailing wage for federally-funded infrastructure projects.

The current federal prevailing wage required for a residential roofer in Sacramento, for example, is $46.73 per hour plus benefits. That number is based on the most common wage paid for that job in the area or — if no single rate is paid to at least 30% of the workers in the survey — on the regional average.

“The federal government won’t give a rat’s ass about what this bill says,” Scott Wetch, a lobbyist for Trades-affiliated unions, said at the bill’s April hearing. “And they will set the prevailing wage rate for all the crafts at $28.”

The trades “have a case” in this argument, said Kevin Duncan, an economist at Colorado State University Pueblo who has studied prevailing wage policy’s effect on construction costs. Imagine a smaller market with a relatively low unionization rate. If the bill uncorked a geyser of contractors paying all their low-wage workers exactly $28 per hour, “that would be the prevailing rate — and with zero benefits,” he said.

Backers of the bill dispute that, saying such a specific outcome is unlikely given how many contractors are likely to use this specific townhouse bill. They also argue that vanishingly few residential roofers do federal public works jobs in Sacramento — or anywhere in California — so changes in the federal prevailing wage for residential projects aren’t likely to affect many workers anyway. Instead, most roofers are non-union on privately-funded projects and many are being paid less than $28 per hour, said Danny Curtin, director of the California Council of Carpenters.

To say that raising those wages “will actually bring everybody else's wages down, defies comprehension,” he said at the hearing.

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

Flies, rodents and other pests have been a persistent problem in Boyle Heights and nearby communities as millions of pounds of food rot in a nearby burned-out warehouse. It’s gotten bad enough that L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is asking for action from the L.A. County Department of Public Health.

In a letter sent Tuesday to county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, Bass said she’s “concerned with County DPH’s pace in addressing this disaster” and the risks it posed to health and quality of life.

“Possibly the worst manifestation of these risks is the severe infestation of flies in Boyle Heights and neighboring communities,” Bass wrote.

LAist has asked the Department of Public Health for comment and will update this article when they respond.

The back-and-forth between jurisdictions

Bass wrote that the city of L.A., which does not have its own health department, is largely dependent on L.A. County for control of potentially disease-carrying vectors. The city has said elsewhere that its Sanitation Department did set about 250 rat traps in surrounding areas.

Bass’ letter says the county took its first steps to hold warehouse operator Lineage accountable for a fly infestation on July 17, ordering the company to remove flies and mosquitoes from the property.

“Although I appreciate that County DPH has taken this first step, the County’s report only directs Lineage to eliminate flies from Lineage’s own property,” Bass’ letter to Ferrer states.

Bass urged the county to compel Lineage to address pests at neighboring properties “with aggressive measures to eliminate the flies and any other vectors.”

As for L.A. County’s Department of Public Health, a spokesperson told LAist on July 17 that it had itself directed the city and Lineage to address the pest situation.

“Los Angeles County Department of Public Health requested that both Lineage Logistics and the City of Los Angeles develop and implement a vector/insect control plan,” the statement reads.

Lineage’s part

According to Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents Boyle Heights on the L.A. City Council and met with Lineage representatives on Monday, an inspector contracted by the company confirmed that the rotting food at the warehouse is serving as a breeding ground for flies. The infestation won’t go away without addressing the root cause, Jurado reported the contractor as saying.

“Removing waste, adding odor-control equipment, and conducting a pest inspection are important,” Jurado said in a statement. “But residents are asking a more fundamental question: Are conditions actually improving? They deserve evidence, timelines and accountability — not just a list of activities.”

Lineage has not yet presented its pest control plan to the public.

A ticking clock

The first day of instruction for L.A. Unified schools is Aug. 12, three days before the city’s current deadline to clear the warehouse — a deadline Lineage does not appear to be on track to meet.

That’s led many teachers and parents to raise the alarm about smells and pests that may very well still be around when school starts. An LAUSD spokesperson told Boyle Heights Beat that it is prepared to temporarily relocate nearby schools, as they did with summer programs during the warehouse fire.

Lineage meets deadline at last minute

Meanwhile, Lineage also faced a deadline of Tuesday to present a plan to air quality officials on how to address smells of spoiled food, which have been reported from miles away. A South Coast Air Quality Management District spokesperson said that the agency received a response from Lineage at 5 p.m. and is evaluating it.

L.A.’s homeless services agency has not completed any internal audits in years — and one that was started two years ago is still incomplete because management is taking months to provide responses, officials said Monday.

The delayed audit has been looking into why the L.A. Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA, failed to spend $7 million in federal dollars it was granted to house and serve people in need. The roughly six-page audit report hasn’t been released because it’s missing LAHSA management responses that were requested over two months ago, officials said.

Internal audits are considered critically important to protecting taxpayer dollars at every level of government. L.A. County auditors, for example, issued about 100 reports in a recent fiscal year.

“ We haven’t gotten anything,” said Erum Shahnawaz, LAHSA’s chief internal auditor, referring to the lack of response from LAHSA management at a meeting of the agency’s audit committee on Monday.

“That’s the only thing that's holding us from issuing the final report,” Shahnawaz said of the underspending audit.

That audit is examining a repeat problem. A previous, external audit in January 2022 found LAHSA had left $3.5 million in federal grants on the table by not using them.

Shahnawaz flagged management’s delays to the LAHSA Commissioner Justin Szlasa, Szlasa said. He chairs the commission’s audit committee, and has repeatedly called out LAHSA executives’ delays in providing information about taxpayer spending over the past year.

“ I've been trying to intervene and use whatever I can to try to help provide support,” said Szlasa as he described his attempts to get the auditor the answers needed to complete the report.

Szlasa was appointed to the commission by L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger.

 “It shouldn't take us two months to receive a…management response to an internal audit,” Szlasa said at Monday’s meeting. He said the industry standard for internal audits is eight or nine weeks from start to finish. That compares to the two years — and counting — for LAHSA’s federal underspend audit.

“We haven't had a single internal audit completed here in the last couple of years, which is nuts,” Szlasa added. He called for internal audits to happen much more frequently.

Long delays to LAHSA audits also are not new. In November 2024, the county issued a widely-seen audit that included findings that LAHSA was failing to complete internal audits.

Half of LAHSA’s governing commission is appointed by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and half appointed by each of the five county supervisors. Bass is also the only elected official on the commission. She served on the audit committee for several months last fall. Records show she was absent for all of the meetings during that time.

Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy chief financial officer, said management’s responses to the audit on underspending haven’t been provided yet because LAHSA leadership did not have clearly defined roles for who is supposed to coordinate responses to internal audits.

“ We need to work on clarifying that role internally,” Lim said.

 “The last two months have been probably some of the most stress-filled two months that we've had at LAHSA,” said Paul Rubenstein, chief of staff to LAHSA CEO Gita O’Neil, pointing to mass layoffs.

Szlasa said there’s not that much in the audit for management to respond to.

“It's like, six pages or less,” he said.

Szlasa said  another option is to “just say we've asked management for responses and we're awaiting management response. We can publish the results.”

In response, Shahnawaz said that if management doesn't have an updated timeline for a response, then she’ll go ahead and issue the report without the response.

Once they floated that idea, Lim committed to providing the responses by next Tuesday.

LAHSA’s leadership has downsized the internal audit team — dropping from a staff of three to just one in the agency’s proposed budget up for approval Friday.

Delays in getting access to financial records

The delayed responses from management are not the only thing that’s been slowing down audits, Szlasa said at the meeting.

LAHSA policy, approved by its governing commission, says internal auditors are “ authorized to access all organizational records, personnel, and systems necessary for conducting audits,” he said.

But the auditor has faced challenges in actually getting that access, Szlasa said — including delays in being allowed to view LAHSA’s databases that show contracts and financial payments.

 ”We finally were granted access, but it wasn't, it wasn't easy, it wasn't immediate. It was slow,” Szlasa said.

Many failed outside audits

The delays on the internal audit come even after LAHSA failed multiple external audits in recent years, which have found the agency — overseen by city and county elected officials — has neglected to properly track billions of dollars in spending.

Largely in response to earlier audits, L.A. County supervisors pulled funding from LAHSA and are having the county instead oversee it directly. L.A.’s mayor and City Council have continued to have LAHSA manage the city’s homeless spending while the council delays plans to start studying a possible plan to transition away city tax dollars.

Signatures under scrutiny

LAHSA is also in the midst of a different internal audit — expected to finish in late August or early September — examining whether top officials followed requirements when signing contracts and letting others sign. It was launched in the wake of LAist reporting that found LAHSA’s then-CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum’s signature finalized a $2.1 million contract with her husband’s employer.

LAist also discovered Adams Kellum’s signature, as LAHSA’s CEO at the time, finalized a quarter-million-dollar contract between LAHSA and a longtime service provider she led up until two months earlier.

That contract was signed so soon after she left the service provider — St. Joseph Center — that the contract paperwork still listed her as one of St. Joseph Center’s points of contact and authorized signers.

She is currently under a state ethics investigation into whether her actions were an illegal conflict of interest.

When Bengara opened in Los Angeles' Arts District earlier this year, its owner and head chef had something special lined up in their kitchen arsenal.

It was genshiyaki, a rare traditional Japanese grilling method that dates back 1,500 years.

Chef and co-owner Tyler Burges had only encountered it once while traveling in Japan at a robatayaki spot in Fukuoka, a port city on the island of Kyushu.

Robatayaki, a style of slow, ember-cooked grilling rooted in Japan's rural coastal kitchens, usually centers on an open charcoal hearth. But the restaurant Burges visited had something even more noteworthy: a genshiyaki pit, a gentler, ambient method of cooking that uses radiant heat instead of direct flame.

Loving the unusually subtle, delicate flavor and texture it produced, he and head chef Phil Mireles decided to bring genshiyaki back to the U.S. and build their Arts District restaurant around it. The genshiyaki pit is a rare enough technique that Burges had to work with fabricator Phil Roxworthy for six months just to get the grill built to spec.

It's Burges' and Mireles' first L.A. project. The pair are also behind Smoke Door, their acclaimed Lake Tahoe restaurant, and Bengara brings a more casual, day-to-day take on the same fire-driven cooking.

All roads lead to the Arts District

Chef/owner Tyler Burges (left) and head chef Phil Mireles at Bengara.

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Wonho Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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Burges and Mireles both got their start at San Francisco's Saison and Angler under chef Joshua Skenes — who's now just down the street in L.A. at LYNX with fellow alum Brandyn Tepper.

Burges traces Bengara's DNA back to two mentors: Ron Siegel, who introduced him to Japanese ingredients and technique in his mid-20s, and Skenes, who taught him to cook with live fire. It was Skenes, Burges said, who showed him that fire didn't have to mean char and bravado.

"The one thing I loved about wood-fire cooking is you get this subtle, sweet barbecue flavor when you cook correctly over embers, and you don't cook directly over the fire," Burges said. "Most places, when you think about grilling something, you think of char, bold flavors, masculine flavors. But Chef Josh — it's like a master art, getting really delicate, subtle flavor using that grill method."

The uni kiritampo, Bengara's take on a traditional Akita-prefecture rice skewer, finished with scallion.

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Wono Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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What sets the food apart

Take their luscious miso cod. On a normal grill, the marinade's sugars would blacken before the fish cooked through. On the genshiyaki pit, the cod sits at a distance from the embers, cooking gently until the very end, when it's given one last pass directly over the coals — what Burges describes as a final "kiss" of heat before it hits the plate.

To fuel genshiyaki's slower, ambient style, ordinary charcoal or wood is replaced with binchotan, an ultra-dense, pure-carbon hardwood charcoal traditionally made in Japan, which burns hotter and cleaner.

The signature dish

A perfect example of how this cooking style comes together is the uni kiritampo, the Akita prefecture rice skewer, reimagined with uni and cooked via genshiyaki — born of an offhand kitchen conversation with one of the restaurant's Japanese chefs about regional dishes cooked over fire.

Once they realized genshiyaki was the dish's original, historic cooking method, the rest fell into place.

"It's like the most delicious thing," Burges said. "I don't know why it never made it over to the United States earlier."

Bengara's Arts District dining room pairs industrial bones with warm, low lighting and long communal tables.

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Wonho Frank Lee

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Courtesy Bengara

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The chewy exterior, with just a hint of smoke, gives way to a creamy inside, like a caramelized custard, that’s topped with a decadent amount of uni, providing a semi-sweet finish — one memorable bite.

Tasting menu option

Bengara recently added a daily eight-course tasting menu ($98) that doubles as a greatest-hits tour of the kitchen — Toyosu carpaccio with chili coffee oil, pork belly "tacos" wrapped in mochi crepes, miso cod, Mary's half chicken, and handmade citrus soba, with optional wagyu and uni add-ons.

The price includes a beverage pairing, with a full non-alcoholic option alongside the boozy version. Walk-ins are welcome, and reservations can be booked via OpenTable.

Topline:

Why it matters: Museum officials said you will “likely experience high demand and long wait times in the queue" and thanked people for their patience.

LAist saw estimated wait times up to 6 hours, and it took a little more than 4.5 hours for this reporter to get through. On the bright side, there were still plenty of tickets left, including for the first day. Do not refresh the page or you may lose your spot.

The details: All tickets are timed entry. Tickets are $25 for adults and $21 for those 65 and older. Children, members, active-duty military, personal aides or attendants and EBT cardholders have free entry. Museum neighbors in the LM37 program will also be free, with that pass opening in August.

But how do I buy: Each person is limited to nine tickets, and you’ll have 20 minutes to check out once they’re added to your cart, according to the museum. You can find the link here.

What's next: The grand opening is Sept. 22.

Go deeper: How to secure Lucas Museum of Narrative Art tickets ahead of the fall opening