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.

Facing a multi-million-dollar budget shortfall for the upcoming school year, Pasadena Unified's school board voted unanimously this week to finalize a plan to send layoff notices to more than 160 staff members as part of an effort to balance its budget that began last fall.

The district has maintained that the job reductions are necessary because of a $30 million budget deficit, part of a financial crisis made worse by the Eaton Fire.

California schools must notify employees about potential layoffs for the following school year by March 15. The number of current employees who will be out of a job next year is still unclear, in part, because people may be reassigned to vacant positions. In the past, PUSD has also rescinded some layoff notices before they took effect.

Parents, teachers and union leaders at the Thursday meeting criticized the district for targeting teachers and school staff for layoffs instead of administrative positions.

“ Teaching for PUSD means anxiety every March as it approaches, because we don't know if we're going to get to keep our job or not,” said Genevieve Miller, a PUSD teacher who said her children also graduated from the district. “ There's a different way forward.”

Board members acknowledged the decision they made was difficult.

“ I just want to be very clear that this is not the outcome that anybody prefers,” Board member Yarma Velázquez said. “Workforce reductions and the continuous, year after year position of being in this place where we have to reduce positions is draining and it is painful.

“I am very aware of what the implications are for all of the people that work here at PUSD.”

The board meeting

At the meeting, which started at 4 p.m. and nearly lasted until midnight, parents highlighted the potential of families and teachers choosing to leave the district because of the layoffs.

“ Right now, the [PUSD] community is in fight mode, as you can see from the turnout and other comments being made here tonight,” said parent Neil Tyler. “But if you approve these resolutions as proposed tonight, a large chunk of the community will quickly shift to flight mode and the death spiral of this district will begin.”

Jonathan Gardner, president of United Teachers of Pasadena, told the board that the cuts meant the district would lose dozens of middle and high school teachers and child development staff.

“ The best thing for kids and staff is always stability and making sure that we have full staff,” Gardner said. “The priorities should be working from the student experience out. Instead, what we see is millions and millions of dollars being spent on contracted services and millions and millions being spent on extra staffing at the central office.”

Speakers also noted that Pasadena Unified had endured years of budget cuts, which affected teachers, librarians and office staff.

Others said PUSD was failing to meet its requirement under California law to commit at least 55% of the district’s education expenses to teacher salaries.

LAist reached out to the district for comment on this but has not yet received a response.

Pasadena Unified board members said the cuts were necessary, especially after warnings from regulators that they could be out of compliance with requirements to balance the budget.

“For the sake of the district's solvency, I feel like it would be irresponsible if I took an action that put this district in jeopardy,” board member Michelle Bailey said Thursday night. “I can't in good conscience take that kind of action.”

About the budget issues

Concerns over declining enrollment numbers, which are tied to funding, have been growing since the Eaton Fire.

A report commissioned by a state agency recommended that the state increase its funding for the school system to help with fire recovery.

Some observers said Pasadena Unified’s budget issues date back much longer than that.

“Over the past 30 years, Pasadena Unified has faced a mounting fiscal calamity, one that you can no longer ignore or postpone,” Octavio Castelo, director of business advisory services for the Los Angeles County Office of Education, told Pasadena Unified’s board in November. “Despite your best efforts and intentions, the district has not been able to live within its means."

Cutting staff will likely mean losing some school programs, including language and music.

“ You have Mary Jackson [Elementary in Altadena] — it's a science magnet school, and they're cutting the science teacher,” Gardner, the teacher’s union president, told LAist. “That's the heart of the school.”

What happens next

The layoff notices are expected to be sent to affected staff members by mid-March.

The district will have until summer to finalize the list.

K-12 education reporter Mariana Dale contributed reporting.

The Los Angeles Unified School Board voted unanimously Friday to place Superintendent Alberto Carvalho on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation.

The FBI searched Carvalho’s home and district offices Wednesday. A DOJ spokesperson said the agency had a court-authorized warrant but declined to provide additional details. The FBI told LAist’s media partner CBS LA that the underlying affidavit remained under court-ordered seal.

The board also appointed current Chief of School Operations Andres Chait as acting superintendent after the seven-hour closed meeting Thursday and Friday.

“I know that this is a very challenging time,” said Board President Scott Schmerelson in a brief public statement after the decision was announced. “I want you to know that the board believes in you, supports you and knows that you will continue to do your very best to support the students and families of the district.”

Schmerelson clarified in an email to LAist, he was referring to Chait. The seven-member board exited the meeting room without taking questions. Carvalho was not present and has not made a public statement since the searches Wednesday.

The district posted a statement online later in which Schmerelson wrote “today’s action is aimed at fulfilling our promise to students and families to provide an excellent public education without distraction.”

The board’s decision provided clarity about district leadership, but did not shed light on the reason for the searches, which have been the subject of widespread speculation.

“While we understand the need for information, we cannot discuss the specifics of this matter pending investigation,” read the district’s statement.

Who is the acting superintendent?

Chait has worked for the district for nearly three decades. The chief of school operations’ responsibilities are varied and include athletics, the district’s office of emergency management and staff investigations. Chait has presented to the board on everything from school safety to the cell phone ban and the district’s calendar.

Chief of School Operations Andres Chait has worked for LAUSD for nearly three decades.

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“I am humbled by the Board’s confidence in appointing me to serve as acting superintendent during this critical time," Chait said in the district’s statement. "Our focus remains clear: to ensure stability, continuity, and strong leadership for our students, families, and employees."

What we know about AllHere, LAUSD’s AI tool

A spokesperson for the FBI in Miami confirmed Wednesday’s L.A. searches are linked to a search of a South Florida home the same day. That property, identified by local media outlets, belongs to Debra Kerr, who was associated with the company LAUSD contracted to create a short-lived AI tool called AllHere.

Federal authorities have not connected AllHere to this week’s investigation.

Los Angeles Unified approved a $6.2 million contract with AllHere in June 2023 to develop a tool that would create an “individual acceleration plan,” using district data and featuring an artificial intelligence chatbot.

LAUSD debuted “Ed” the following March as a "personal assistant" to students that would point them toward mental health resources and nudge students who were falling behind.

Within three months of its debut, the company behind Ed, AllHere, furloughed the bulk of its staff; its CEO was later charged with fraud. The district defended the process it used to debut that chatbot, which cost $3 million.

Parents and educators demanded transparency after the district shut down the chatbot.

Many questions remain

The federal investigation comes at a time when LAUSD is financially strained, cutting hundreds of jobs, and facing pressure from the district’s largest labor unions to settle new contracts.

SEIU Local 99, which represents school support staff and United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) have issued statements calling on the district to clearly communicate about the status of the superintendent and the investigation.

"UTLA educators and our school communities have long raised concerns about LAUSD rapidly increasing spending on education tech and outside contractors, while investment in classrooms and educators has declined,” UTLA wrote in a statement provided to LAist.

Carvalho has been superintendent of LAUSD since 2022, and the board unanimously renewed his contract in 2025. Prior to coming to L.A., Carvalho had worked for the Miami-Dade County school district for decades, 30 years as a teacher and the last 14 years as the district's supervisor.

Carvalho's time at LAUSD has included a number of wins for the district, including gains in test scores and participation in AP classes.

After threatening to sever ties with Scouting America and kick the youth group off military bases worldwide, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday gave a six-month reprieve to the organization formerly known as the Boy Scouts of America.

Hegseth made the announcement in a video posted to X, framing it as an ultimatum to Scouting to conform to the Trump administration's anti-DEI agenda. He detailed his many criticisms of the group, saying Scouts had "lost their way" by changing the organization's name and "watering down" what he called "the focus on God as the ruler of the universe."

He accused the Scouts of promoting "an insidious, radical, woke ideology that is anti-America and anti-American."

Hegseth also made clear he thinks the organization should go back to being exclusively male. " Ideally, I believe the Boy Scouts should go back to being the Boy Scouts as originally founded, a group that develops boys into men," he said. "Maybe someday."

The Pentagon's promise to reevaluate its relationship with Scouting in six months was nonetheless a retreat of sorts for Hegseth. Today's announcement came after word of Hegseth's plans to shun Scouting sparked weeks of backlash, including from some Republicans. Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska has said of Hegseth's plans: "I've heard a lot of dumb stuff, but this is up there."

In a meeting with Scouting officials in January, Hegseth had demanded that the organization change its name back to Boy Scouts and remove some 200,000 young girls from its membership.

" I knew in the meeting that my board, my organization, was not gonna make those changes," Scouting America CEO Roger Krone said in an interview with NPR.

Krone explained that the organization considers including girls to be a service to families.

" When I was a youth, we left parts of the family in the parking lot on Friday night when we went camping," Krone said. "Long before I came back to Scouting, our board made several decisions, by a vote of our national council, that we were gonna serve the entire family."

A week after the Pentagon meeting, Scouting officials sent a letter to Hegseth outlining proposed concessions. While they wouldn't change the name or kick out girls, they would drop a Citizenship in Society merit badge that promoted diversity and had been instituted after the killing of George Floyd. They would also add a Military Service merit badge, waive membership fees for military families and offer a public rededication "of duty to God, duty to country, and service."

Even after the concessions, which Scouting officials said they planned to implement regardless, a spokesman told NPR the group expected an announcement from the Pentagon severing ties was imminent. But after NPR reported on the rift, Krone said Scouting's members and alumni started lobbying against breaking the century-old partnership.

Hegseth has for years criticized Scouting for allegedly caving to progressive politics. He repeated the claim Friday. "Scouting became an organization that no longer supported and celebrated boys," Hegseth said. "They even welcomed the destructive myth of gender fluidity and transgenderism to infiltrate their membership."

The Secretary also highlighted another concession. "Scouting America will modify its policy to make clear that membership will be based solely on biological sex at birth and not gender identity," he said. "That means that the application, any application, will have only two sex designations, male and female, and the application must match the applicant's birth certificate."

Krone noted that the Scouting application already has only two sex designations. " Tomorrow it will be the same application that we had yesterday," he said. "We ask for that information so we can operate our units in a way that ensures that our kids are safe and are safeguarded."

In the wake of sexual abuse allegations that resulted in a $2.46 billion victim compensation fund, Krone says Scouting has implemented stringent policies. Along with other practices, he said they ask for gender information " so that we know from a tenting standpoint and from a bathroom standpoint how to run our programs."

Severing ties with Scouts would have meant banning scouts from meeting on military bases, withdrawing military medical and logistical assistance to the quadrennial Scout Jamboree and eliminating the program that allows Eagle Scouts to enlist at advanced rank and pay.

As reported by NPR, the Pentagon had gone so far as to coordinate with the heads of the different branches on what a separation might mean. The Pentagon circulated a draft notification internally meant for the congressional Armed Services Committees, justifying the withdrawal of military support for the Jamboree. The memo, reviewed by NPR, claimed that providing medical and logistical help to the campout, scheduled for July, would threaten national security.

With this six-month trial period, base access for Scout troops will continue and Jamboree assistance is moving forward for now, including recruitment coordination. As Hegseth pointed out on X, many boy Scouts have become high-ranking military officers, or have served the country in other ways.

"Six Boy Scouts have been elected president of the United States," Hegseth said. "Eleven of the 12 Men to walk on the Moon [were] boy Scouts."

Copyright 2026 NPR

A city commission on Thursday recommended increasing the size of the Los Angeles City Council from 15 to 25, a change long sought after by advocates who said the panel was too small for a city of nearly 4 million people.

The Charter Reform Commission also recommended moving to a ranked-choice voting system for city elections, a method in which voters choose multiple candidates in order of their preference. If no candidate wins a majority of votes, then the last-place finisher is eliminated and their supporters' second choice is counted.

Each of those moves would require changing the city’s charter, the basic set of rules and procedures by which the city operates. And any change to the charter would require voter approval.

The recommendations will go to the City Council, which will decide whether to place the proposals on the June ballot.

Born out of corruption

The commission has been meeting for six months to take input from the public and to consider charter changes. It was created in the wake of the 2022 City Hall tapes scandal, where members of the council were heard on audio discussing how to hold onto power. The conversation was laced with crude and racist remarks, triggering calls for resignation and reforms.

Council President Nury Martinez resigned.

Expanding the size of the council has been suggested as one way to help guard against corruption in local government. Supporters say making the council larger would make it better reflect the diversity of L.A.

The idea is “to have a city council that is bigger, more representative of Los Angeles and gives minorities across the city [power] to elect candidates of choice,” Commissioner Diego Andrades said at the meeting.

Several other major cities have far larger councils. New York, with 8 million people, has a 51-member City Council. Chicago, with 2.7 million residents, has a 50-member council.

The current size of the Los Angeles City Council was established nearly a century ago, when Angelenos approved the 1924 Charter. At the time, each of the 15 council members represented on average a little more than 38,000 residents.

Today, the city has grown to more than 3.9 million residents, with each councilmember now representing on average 265,000 Angelenos, according to Fair Rep LA, an advocacy group.

Increasing the size of the L.A. council to 25 would mean each member would represent 159,000 residents each.

Commissioners debated increasing the size to 29, but voted down that number amid concerns the voters would reject it as too high.

A new way of voting

The committee made several other reform recommendations during a five-hour meeting Thursday evening. The panel recommended that the city change the way it conducts elections, moving to a ranked-choice voting system for city elections starting in 2032.

With ranked-choice voting, if a candidate receives more than half of the first choices, that candidate wins outright — just like in any other election.

But if there is no majority winner after counting the first choices, the race is decided by an instant runoff. The candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and candidates who ranked that candidate as their first choice will have their votes counted for their second choice. The process continues until one candidate has a majority of the vote.

New York conducts ranked-choice elections.

“The Charter Commission took a big step in empowering Los Angeles voters,” said Michael Feinstein, a former mayor of Santa Monica and a Green Party candidate for secretary of state.

“Ranked-choice voting allows voters to express their preferences over more than one candidate, it gets rid of the spoiler issue and gives voters a much greater voice,” he said. It also saves money because the city is required to conduct one election instead of a primary and runoff elections.

The commission also recommended the city create a chief financial officer position to replace the chief administrative officer position.

City Controller Kenneth Mejia disagreed with the recommendation, saying the CFO role should be placed in his office.

The panel also voted against giving the controller the ability to hire outside counsel and turned down Mejia’s request that the controller be able to conduct audits of all city programs, including those under elected offices.

The commission voted to recommend giving the controller a fixed budget that is a percentage of the general fund. It also agreed to recommend enshrining in the charter the controller’s waste fraud and abuse functions — something that was requested by Mejia.

Earlier this week, the panel approved bifurcating the City Attorney’s Office, creating an anti-corruption office and doubling the charter-mandated amount of funds set aside for the city parks.