The Brief

When a judge ruled recently that a controversial state housing law did not apply to a handful of southern California cities, Julie Testa saw it as an invitation.

The late April opinion from Los Angeles County Judge Curtis Kin held that a 2021 state law letting homeowners split up their houses into as many as four separate units regardless of local zoning restrictions had no effect in Redondo Beach, Carson, Torrance, Whittier or Del Mar. The reason: The five SoCal jurisdictions are “charter cities” — jurisdictions with their own municipal constitutions that grant them extra independence from state law.

Testa, the vice mayor of Pleasanton, wanted what Redondo Beach was having. She wanted to turn her bedroom community east of San Francisco Bay into a charter city.

“The state Legislature has declared war on our cities,” said Testa. “We think that this is a turning of that tide.”

Since first winning local office in 2020, Testa has spent much of her short political career chafing against the spate of new state housing laws that force local governments to automatically approve apartment buildings, duplexes and backyard cottages. She cobbled together a loose group of like-minded politicians under the banner of the California Alliance of Local Electeds. A few days after Kin’s ruling, the group’s weekly Zoom meeting saw near record turnout, she said.

Now Pleasanton is one of at least three California cities, all San Francisco Bay Area suburbs, that have taken the first step toward adopting a charter since the April ruling. Testa and three of her four city council colleagues instructed city staff to look into making the transition in mid-May. City councils in nearby Brentwood and the hyper-affluent Silicon Valley suburb of Atherton followed suit this month.

Becoming a charter city — as roughly 120 of California’s 482 cities have done over the course of the state’s history — requires local voter approval. Before that, city officials have to actually write a charter, a comprehensive, technical governing document that covers everything from local election procedure to the dos and don’ts of municipal debt management. The three cities are probably kicking off that lengthy process too late for this November’s election, meaning that voters in the three cities won’t weigh in until at least 2026 — if at all.

“We will see a lot of irreversible consequences in that period of time, so I am disappointed, but I do believe that we must do what we can do to defend our constitutional right to local control,” said Testa.

Jovita Mendoza, the Brentwood council member who is pushing the charter effort in her city, said housing policy isn’t her sole motivation. Charter cities have more flexibility over contracting and purchasing policies, election procedures and taxation. But the recent ruling out of Los Angeles “definitely helped” provide fresh inspiration.

Brentwood’s council voted unanimously to begin the process last Tuesday. At a late evening hearing on the subject, Planning Commissioner Rod Flohr endorsed the idea.

“Most of the public is still kind of unaware of how restricted we’ve become, almost to the point where it feels sometimes like the planning commission and city council can’t really do anything anymore,” he said. “This may be our only avenue to…keep working to make Brentwood the jewel of east county.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration has ordered local governments to plan for an additional 2.5 million new homes through the end of the decade in an effort to bring down prices and rents. That’s part of a broader political shift in Sacramento as the governor, the attorney general and the Legislature have more aggressively promoted more housing, even over the objections of local elected officials and residents.

Mendoza in Brentwood was one of the chief proponents of a proposed statewide ballot initiative that would have allowed local governments to override state land use laws. The measure failed to gather enough signatures for this year’s election.

The April ruling opened up a new potential strategy. “If the charter cities win on appeal, I think you’re going to see it happening more and more,” she said.

On housing, the tie often goes to the state

Many legal experts are skeptical that the ruling will hold — and if it does, whether that would be the death blow to state land use authority that many local control advocates hope it will be.

“If I were looking to become a charter city in order to avoid (the state’s duplex law), I would not waste my time,” said UC Davis law professor Darien Shanske. “This decision will be overturned.”

Since the 1880s, California cities have come in two distinct flavors: “General law” cities, which have to govern themselves under rules set forth by the state Legislature, and charter cities, which the state constitution grants autonomy when it comes to “municipal affairs.”

Unhelpfully, the constitution doesn’t actually specify what those “municipal affairs” are. That makes the precise scope of a charter city’s political autonomy from the state an uncertain and moving target that courts have had to address on a case-by-case basis.

New homes under construction in Pleasanton on June 16, 2024. The city of Pleasanton has voted to explore the possibility of becoming a charter city.

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Loren Elliott

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CalMatters

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As state lawmakers have unleashed a raft of pro-construction bills over the last decade, the courts have typically allowed them to apply to charter and general law cities alike.

“The courts generally have not been very receptive to charter city arguments given the housing crisis,” said Barbara Kautz, a land use attorney who regularly represents cities and counties.

Kautz’s law firm, Goldfarb & Lipman, has represented Pleasanton, Brentwood and Atherton, but is not doing so in their current quests to become charter cities.

The April ruling is a notable exception to the trend. But it’s also an exceedingly narrow one and not something on which to hang a legal revolution in land use policy, said Kautz. “As a long term strategy to avoid (state housing law), I just don’t know if it would have any effect,” she said.

What the ruling does — and doesn’t — say

California courts have generally let the Legislature steamroll local authorities, even in charter cities, if state lawmakers can prove that they are addressing a matter of “statewide concern” and that the bill they’re passing is narrowly tailored to address that concern.

The 2021 law itself specifies that the “statewide concern” in question is to ensure “access to affordable housing.”

Unfortunately for the state, “affordable housing” has multiple definitions. Affordable housing might refer to units that are legally required to be reserved for people making under a certain income with regulated rents or prices, sometimes called “deed-restricted affordable housing.” Or the term can simply refer to housing that’s cheap.

In his ruling, Kin concluded that the Legislature, in laying out its “statewide concern,” must have meant “affordable” in the first, deed-restricted sense. Because letting homeowners split their houses into duplexes “has, at best, an attenuated connection to affordable housing,” he wrote, the law wasn’t written narrowly enough to advance its stated goal and therefore doesn’t have the authority to trample over the rights of charter cities.

In short, the ruling dings the state duplex law because it didn’t justify its intent with the right term. UC Davis’ Shanske referred to the ruling jokingly as a “Simon didn’t say” legal test.

Kin has yet to submit a final judgment, which will clarify whether the ruling applies to just the five cities that sued or to every one of the more than 100 charter cities across California.

What the ruling doesn’t say is that charter cities are exempt from the duplex law because the state fundamentally lacks the authority to regulate how homes can be divided up. Nor does it say that charter cities are exempt from state housing requirements in general, which would have been at odds with a slew of recent court rulings.

Chris Elmendorf, one of Shanske’s colleagues at UC Davis School of Law who regularly opines on housing policy on social media, called Kin’s conclusion “a weird, narrow decision that turns on a lawyerly sleight of hand.”

A residential street in Pleasanton on June 16, 2024. The city of Pleasanton has voted to explore the possibility of becoming a charter city.

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Loren Elliott

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CalMatters

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Even some of those who welcomed the ruling as a victory for local control were tempered in their enthusiasm, if only because the ruling seems to invite the Legislature to simply fix its wording with another bill. San Diego Democratic Sen. Toni Atkins, who authored the four-unit housing law, is working on a bill this year, Senate Bill 450, which aims to make it harder for local governments to obstruct the earlier duplex law by delaying approvals or imposing costly or unworkable size, design and setback requirements. An analysis last year by the UC Berkeley Terner Center found that the duplex law had resulted in precious little new housing, partially as a result of such restrictions.

Asked whether Atkins plans to respond to Kin’s ruling with a legislative fix, the senator’s spokesperson, Meredith McNamee, said in a statement that the senator believes “some legislative clean-up” would improve the implementation of the law she wrote.

The California Justice Department, which represented the state in the Redondo Beach case, has already filed a notice of appeal.

Parents could soon be headed for an even bigger child care crunch in California, experts say.

That’s because the rollout of a new grade for 4-year-olds in the state’s public schools is having unintended consequences for child care businesses, according to a new report by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley.

Child cares have historically cared for children 5 and under, but the report found they’re losing more 4- and 5-year-olds to transitional kindergarten, a universal option that was fully implemented last school year.

Sue Carrera, who runs a home daycare in Inglewood, said that before the pandemic, she had an average of 12 kids enrolled in her program. Now, she has only four — the lowest since she opened up her business in 2008 — as she’s seen children move to the public school system earlier.

“ I don't really see myself staying in this business for any lengthy period of time,” she said.

The way that part of the child care business model worked was that older-age preschool children have helped subsidize the cost of caring for infants and toddlers, who are more expensive to care for, said Anna Powell, the report’s lead author.

“ When we're tinkering with a model where there's — ‘it already kind of barely makes ends meet’ — it absolutely can cause big ripple effects and potentially lead to system-level closures,” Powell said.

Between 2019 and 2025, about 1,100 preschools have closed across California.

The report, which used a survey of thousands of child care providers, found that at child cares based at facilities, average enrollment of 4- to 5-year-olds fell by five children from 2023 to 2025. It also found that at the same time, providers haven’t been able to make an easy shift to caring for more babies. The teacher to child ratio is higher for infants (1 to 4) than for older preschoolers (1 to 12).

“ There's no resources to help them buy cribs that they didn't need before, and now suddenly they must have on site. There's no resources for educators who are used to, after decades, working with 4- and 5-year-olds, learning, 'How do I need to adapt my craft to work with these younger children?’” Powell said.

The study recommends California invest in the early education system in the same way it has invested in transitional kindergarten.

If more preschools close down the line, it could mean families may struggle more to find child care in an already scarce environment, said Debra Coleman,  director of the L.A. County Office for the Advancement of Early Care and Education.

In 2022, there were licensed spaces in L.A. County to be able to serve only 4% of children under 2 years old.

“If you have less options, you will have less choices of where to go. It might impact the capacity,” Coleman said. “ It might take us from a very fragile system to a fractured system.”

Southern California is getting a dose of unseasonably cool weather — a welcome break after a series of hot, humid heat waves over the last few months.

Lower than normal temperatures are expected to stick around through the weekend.

Highs along the coast will be in the 70s over the next few days. Inland areas of L.A. and Orange counties will get up to the 80s. Even the Inland Empire is expected to peak at about 90 degrees on Friday.

The cooler temperatures are also expected to come with cloudy skies across the region.

The cloud cover will likely be widespread on Friday and much of Saturday, but concentrated mostly in the morning hours and along the coast, where skies could stay cloudy through the afternoon.

The cool, mild conditions won’t last long, though.

Forecasters say temperatures will start to tick back up on Saturday. They will stay below normal seasonal levels for a few days, but the summer heat will be back by the middle of next week.

So this weekend might be a good time to go on a hike or host that barbecue.

Low pressure equals mild temperatures 

The cool weather is a pretty stark change.

Just a few weeks ago, the National Weather Service was issuing warnings across Southern California for extreme heat and predicting nearly record-breaking temperatures. Now, atmospheric conditions have shifted.

Much of that suffocating heat was driven by a massive system of high pressure air hovering over the Southwestern U.S.

High pressure systems trap warm air beneath them and compress it, further warming the air and preventing cooler air from displacing it.

This week, the high pressure system finally loosened its grip.

“That ridge of high pressure kind of broke down, and then a trough of low pressure developed off and along the coast of California,” said Devin Black, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

Low pressure systems force air to rise, and as air rises it cools. It also eventually condenses, often forming cloud cover.

That’s one reason behind the clouds in Southern California this week.

Meanwhile, a deep marine layer and onshore winds are helping push those clouds farther inland. Forecasters note that the low pressure system and onshore winds are also keeping humidity levels up.

Despite the cloud cover and moisture, it’s unlikely there will be much, if any, rain. Some minimal precipitation could be possible in Ventura and Santa Barbara county mountains.

The low pressure system and marine layer will start to shrink on Saturday, allowing heat-generating high pressure to move back into the region.

The deadline set by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass for the removal of all rotting food from the Lineage Logistics cold storage facility in Boyle Heights is fast approaching.

Bass reiterated on Thursday to The LA Local that all of the approximately 88 million pounds of food that had been stored inside when the facility caught fire in June is expected to be removed by Friday. 

City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents District 14 where Lineage is located, said in a press release Thursday afternoon that the cleanup efforts will likely not meet the deadline. 

“I fully support the Mayor leveraging all the enforcement, cost-recovery, and accountability tools available to make clear that when the City establishes a public-health deadline, corporations are expected to meet it — and there are consequences when they do not,” Jurado said in the statement.

The company’s reports on the cleanup progress, similarly, have not appeared to be on pace with meeting that deadline. And some residents believe the putrid air they’ve had to live with for months will linger indefinitely despite the bureaucratic goal posts being met or moved.

Here’s what we know about the final phase of cleanup.

What is the deadline?

Workers continue to clear out the Lineage warehouse in Boyle Heights.

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Steve Saldivar

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The LA Local

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Soon after a fire broke out on the roof of the 500,000-square-foot cold storage facility on Los Palos Street on June 17, the managers cut the power to the two massive refrigerated rooms in the building. While firefighters took about a week to contain the blaze, the millions of pounds of food inside quickly began to rot in the summer’s heat.

Bass on June 29 issued an executive order requiring the removal of all remaining food in 45 days, or Friday, Aug. 14. Food cleanup began in early July.

Meanwhile, residents of Boyle Heights, East L.A. and several other neighboring communities who were left to deal with the putrid odors, have made more than 4,000 air quality complaints to regulators since early July.

It’s not the only deadline Lineage Logistics faces.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District, which regulates air pollution in the region, issued 19 notices of violation alleging the odors created a public nuisance. Last week, the agency ordered the company to meet dozens of cleanup and air quality control standards, including enforceable requirements for food removal and full facility cleaning.

That agency set a separate deadline of weeks for the food and other material to be removed before the remaining freezer room is fully sanitized.

What’s been cleaned up so far?

The freezer that was extensively damaged by fire has been cleared. The remaining freezer held the vast majority of the rotting food that has been polluting the air in nearby neighborhoods.

Lineage Logistics has for weeks reported on its website about its progress toward 100% cleanup. 

Residents can get a sense of their pace for cleanup by tracking their reports:

• Aug. 7: 85% of food waste had been removed 
• Aug. 11: 92% of “bulk food cleanup” was completed
• Aug. 12: 93% of food had been cleaned up

It’s unclear how exactly Lineage is arriving at these measurements and how the city or some other agency is independently verifying this progress.

Will they meet the deadline?

The deadline set by Mayor Karen Bass for the removal of all rotting food from the Lineage Logistics cold storage facility in Boyle Heights is fast approaching.

Lineage is clearing between 1% and 1.5% of food each day, according to their progress reports. This roughly aligns with the weekly goal AQMD ordered Lineage to maintain, 10% or 8.8 million pounds of food removed each week.

At that pace, it is unlikely they’ll be able to remove the remaining 7% of food waste in the next 24 hours. 

Unless they significantly accelerate, this puts full food cleanup somewhere into next week. That revised timeline better aligns with the one Dominic DiCarlo, vice president of global safety and compliance for Lineage, outlined during the AQMD hearing last week.

DiCarlo added that the company expects to spend between $80 and $100 million on the cleanup and related expenses, which has been described as continuing around the clock.

Lineage did not respond to The LA Local’s request for more information about their progress toward the mayor’s deadline on Thursday.

What happens if they blow the deadline?

Jurado reported Thursday that Lineage would not meet the deadline, and expressed frustration with what residents have had to deal with.

Jurado’s statement reflected this: “For nearly two months, families in Boyle Heights have lived with unbearable odors, flies and pests, truck traffic, uncertainty, and disruption to their homes, businesses, and daily lives. They were told there was a deadline, and they had every right to expect that deadline to mean something.”

Bass’ executive order does not provide details on what will happen if Lineage does not meet the Friday deadline for clean up. Her office told The LA Local that it will provide more information on Thursday about the consequences if the deadline is not met.

She is also hosting a virtual community meeting Thursday about the cleanup efforts. 

Bass was among several local elected officials who had pushed AQMD to levy fines on Lineage for its air pollution violations, which it did not do. She has pushed city agencies to prevent Lineage from reconstructing the facility and continuing its business there. Local lawmakers have also introduced legislation that could increasingly regulate similar businesses in the future.

AQMD can levy penalties if Lineage does not meet its deadlines for cleanup in the coming weeks.

What are residents saying?

Residents on Prado Street were still hopeful Thursday that cleanup would be finished by the deadline.

“Ojalá,” that’s what Irma Soto said when she was asked if she believed workers would finish in time. “I hope they finish so this could all end.”

“It smells horrible,” she added as the stench emanated from the neighborhood early Thursday afternoon.

Soto said she’s been seeing more trailers picking up debris lately. Her neighbor said there appears to be more nighttime work near the facility recently.

“Who knows if they’ll finish, but they are working faster,” the neighbor said.

The post Lineage unlikely to meet deadline to clear 88 million pounds of rotting food from Boyle Heights appeared first on LA Local.

Jake Hemann grabbed a board and headed out to surf. But an hour later, he wound up sitting at the lifeguard station soaking his foot in a pail of hot water alongside four other beachgoers.

It is a common scene at Bolsa Chica State Beach and some other popular beaches in Southern California where the number of people being hit by the sharp, serrated caudal barbs found on the tails of stingrays has gone up significantly from a year ago as a marine heat wave draws more stingrays — and people — to shore.

Hemann, a 31-year-old tourist from New Mexico, said he was learning to surf when he hopped off his board and landed on what he thought was a sharp stick. “It hurt pretty bad,” he said, while sinking his throbbing foot into the hottest water tolerable to ease the pain. “It was radiating up to my ankle.”

Bolsa Chica and Huntington State Beaches reported more than 3,100 incidents so far this year, twice the number for all of 2025. The city of Huntington Beach’s 3.5-mile (5.6-kilometer) stretch of shoreline has reported more than 2,000 such incidents so far this year, more than during all last year, while more than 900 stings were recorded on San Diego’s beaches during the first half of 2026, more than during the first six months of any of the past five years, lifeguard data shows.

“We’re definitely seeing an increase,” said Bryan R. Etnyre, state park superintendent in northern Orange County. “A lot of it is due to warming ocean temperatures that are consistently staying in the 60s. I don’t think there was a week all winter where we dropped below 60 this year.”

Warmer water draws rays and people

Round stingrays are found in Pacific Ocean waters from Panama to Southern California and are known to veer toward the shore when the swell is down and the water warm.

In recent years, many species that feed on rays, such as sharks, sea lions and giant sea bass, have seen their populations dwindle, causing the number of stingrays to grow, said Chris Lowe, a professor of marine biology and director of the Shark Lab at California State University, Long Beach.

Rays are known to prefer warmer water, such as lagoons. Females prefer these waters to reproduce, and during the summer male rays have a higher metabolism that drives them to seek out food in the invertebrates along the shore, Lowe said.

“They’re really a subtropical species that is thriving at the end of its range because of climate change,” Lowe said.

The ocean already has been warming because of human-caused climate change, according to meteorologists.

This year has seen even more rays with a marine heat wave persisting off parts of the West Coast, marking the third time on record that such a large section of coastal waters stayed warm for so long, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In June, officials confirmed the formation of an El Niño, the natural warming of parts of the central Pacific that alters weather worldwide, that is expected to grow to historic strength.

Meanwhile, more people have been heading to beaches seeking outdoor recreation since the coronavirus pandemic. And when the water is warm, they are more likely to swim.

When rays are stepped on, they instinctively flick up their tails, stinging people with venomous barbs. Lifeguards urge bathers to shuffle their feet as they enter the water as the movement often gets rays to slide out of the way without stinging.

In Southern California, lifeguards can treat 10,000 stingray injuries a year, Lowe said.

In Seal Beach, one area draws so many due to an influx of warm water from a nearby power plant it is known as “ray bay,” though lifeguards there haven’t seen much change in stings this year.

Using a 75-foot-long net, researchers swept up some 200 stingrays, each about the size of a dinner plate, on a section of the beach on a recent morning.

“There can be so many that they actually carpet the bottom, like you can’t see sand,” Lowe said. “During El Niños, we get more of them up from the south, and they come closer to shore. So this year, we’re expecting record numbers.”

Sting advisory and booties aim to help

Lowe said he is working with television stations to develop a stingray advisory to help reduce the number of people who get stung, and the number of rays that get squished. Rays help keep the beach healthy by feeding on small clams and aerating sediment.

Many beaches use an app to notify bathers when there are multiple stings at a location. Meanwhile, a company has developed surf booties that claim to be barb-resistant — though swimmers are urged to still tread lightly to avoid trampling the rays.

At Bolsa Chica State Beach, swimmers suffering stings to the sides of their feet and toes sat in a circle refilling their pails with hot water from a hose. Some were there more than an hour waiting for the pain to ease.

Most stings don’t require additional medical attention. If redness and swelling continue more than four or five days, there could be a medical complication such as an infection or a retained barb that can be seen on an X-ray, said Dr. Christanne Coffey, who researches the stings at University of California, San Diego Health.

Allen Lowry said he was playing with his 7-year-old grandson when he came down on something squishy. He lifted his foot and saw blood so his wife drove him to the lifeguard station for a hot water soak, which is the remedy for stings.

Lowry, 69, said he swims three times a week at another beach, and getting stung, though painful, won’t change that. He said some people in his swim group have been stung multiple times.

“Usually, once the pain you feel goes away, you feel fine the next day,” he said.