The Brief

Topline:

The backstory: Last month, the council's Transportation Committee voted to bring a proposal forward to implement a policy change that allows the city to impound and immediately destroy abandoned or inoperable RVs worth less than $4,000. The change is inspired by new state law AB 630, which was created to prevent previously impounded RVs from ending back up on the street.

The motion, authored by Councilmember Traci Park, reports that abandoned RVs pose as public and safety hazards.

What's next: Councilmember Nithya Raman requested that an implementation plan be presented to the council's public safety and housing and homelessness committees.

Go deeper: L.A. pushes policy to make it easier to remove RVs from city streets.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has mostly blocked efforts to investigate misconduct within its ranks, according to the county inspector general, who announced his retirement Tuesday after 12 years on the job.

In an open letter, Max Huntsman cited examples of how the county has thwarted his efforts to watchdog the department, which in the past has been plagued with accusations that deputies use excessive force and lie on the job.

Huntsman said one example is former Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s misuse of criminal enforcement powers to discredit critics, such as opening an investigation into former County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl.

Villanueva was sheriff from 2018 to 2022.

“My requests for investigation were rejected,” Huntsman’s letter reads. “Even after receiving an official subpoena, the Sheriff’s Department has failed to turn over records regarding the improper surveillance.”

He added: “Sometimes members of the public wonder if frightening new surveillance techniques will be used for improper purposes under the guise of criminal investigation. Sadly, the answer is yes.”

Before becoming inspector general in 2013, Huntsman, 60, was a deputy district attorney who specialized in public corruption. He told LAist on Tuesday that the inspector general job wasn’t something he wanted initially.

“I didn’t want to go work for politicians,” he said. “But the need to provide some kind of independent reporting and analysis was significant.”

The Sheriff’s Department issued a statement saying it valued the Office of the Inspector General and all county oversight bodies and that it wished Huntsman and his family well in his retirement.

The department said it “continues to make great strides in advancing the department in a transparent manner.”

LAist also reached out to the county CEO and county counsel for comment, but they declined.

After George Floyd

In the letter, Huntsman says the state of California has come a long way in strengthening the power of local law enforcement oversight bodies, in part because of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis.

After widespread protests — and lobbying by Huntsman — the state provided authority to inspectors general to enforce subpoenas requiring law enforcement agencies to hand over documents and authorized external investigation of police misconduct, including deputy gang conduct.

The Sheriff’s Department — backed by county lawyers — has resisted.

“Los Angeles County may not follow those laws, but it will not be able to avoid them forever,” Huntsman wrote. “The county refuses to require the photographing of suspected gang tattoos in secretive groups that the undersheriff has identified as violating state law.”

“Just a few weeks ago, we requested some information regarding an investigation, and a pair of commanders refused to give it to us,” Huntsman said in an interview with LAist.

Origin of the office 

The Inspector General’s Office was created by the county Board of Supervisors in 2013 in response to a scandal that included former Sheriff Lee Baca covering up the abuses of jail inmates.

Baca went to federal prison.

Since then, the office has issued dozens of reports with recommendations for improving living conditions inside jails that some have described as “filthy,” stopping abuses of juveniles inside juvenile halls and providing shower privacy for inmates as part of the requirements under the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

“All of these abuses were reported by the Office of Inspector General and recommendations were ignored,” Huntsman wrote. Often, it took court orders to enact change.

“When we first blew the whistle on the torturous chaining of mentally ill prisoners to benches for 36 hours at a time, it was only a court order that ended the practice,” he wrote. “Time and time again, this pattern repeated itself.”

Huntsman wrote the county has permitted the Sheriff’s Department to block oversight and defunded the Office of Inspector General by removing a third of its staff.

“It's not surprising the county has driven out two successive chairs of the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission,” he wrote.

“Government always claims to value transparency and accountability, but shooting the messenger is still the most common response to criticism,” Huntsman wrote.

Despite setbacks, Huntsman values work 

Huntsman told LAist on Tuesday that he was proud of his career as a public servant.

“I’ve really enjoyed the work and I’m sad to have it end,” he said.

It’s a sentiment he echoed in his letter, adding that despite the setbacks and roadblocks, he was proud of the people with whom he shared the office.

“It has been my honor to work with a talented, brave and tireless group of public servants to ensure that the public knows what its government is doing,” he wrote.

He noted the inspector general’s reports are fact-checked by the office and public.

“When government abuses occur, they are sometimes kept secret, but that is no longer the case for much of what is happening in Los Angeles County,” Huntsman wrote. “What you do about it is up to you.,”

Huntsman’s last day is Friday.

The U.S. Department of Education announced Tuesday that it had reached a proposed settlement agreement to end a popular, yet controversial Biden-era student loan repayment plan.

The Saving on a Valuable Education plan, better known as SAVE, was the most flexible and generous of all income-driven repayment plans, promising expedited loan forgiveness and monthly payments as low as $0 for low-income borrowers. Republican state attorneys general, led by Missouri, sued the Biden administration, arguing in court that SAVE was too generous.

The legal challenges put all SAVE borrowers in limbo for months, during which they were not required to make payments on their loans — even after many had already spent years in a pandemic payment pause. Interest resumed accruing on SAVE loans in August.

"The law is clear: if you take out a loan, you must pay it back," Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent said in a statement announcing the proposed agreement. "Thanks to the State of Missouri and other states fighting against this egregious federal overreach, American taxpayers can now rest assured they will no longer be forced to serve as collateral for illegal and irresponsible student loan policies."

Tuesday's agreement, pending court approval, would end the long legal battle over SAVE by ending SAVE itself. The Education Department would commit not to enroll more borrowers in SAVE, to deny all pending SAVE applications and to move the roughly 7 million borrowers still enrolled in SAVE into other repayment plans — though some of those plans are also in flux.

The department also said student loan borrowers would have "a limited time to select a new, legal repayment plan." Borrowers will have to choose between two types of plans: 1.) fixed payment plans or 2.) plans with payments based on a borrower's income.

The two new plans created by Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) will roll out in July 2026, and will include a revised standard plan and a new income-driven plan called the Repayment Assistance Plan. Though SAVE borrowers will be expected to change plans before then.

The SAVE plan's days were already numbered. Under the OBBBA, borrowers would have had to change plans by July 1, 2028. Tuesday's news would move that deadline up, though the administration has not provided a timeframe for the changes.

If the proposal is approved by the court, transitioning millions of borrowers to other plans will be a Herculean feat for loan servicing companies that handle day-to-day loan operations.

"It's gonna be bumpy," says Scott Buchanan, head of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance. "Remember, SAVE borrowers have not been in repayment for years. They're gonna have a ton of questions and will need a ton of hand-holding to get back into repayment."

The settlement arrives as millions of borrowers are struggling to keep up with their payments.

"We are sitting on the precipice of millions of borrowers defaulting on their loans," says Persis Yu, of Protect Borrowers. "And instead of choosing to defend a plan that would have been affordable for these borrowers, this Department of Education has capitulated to the AGs and is going to make life much more expensive."

The American Enterprise Institute, AEI, recently published an analysis of the latest federal student loan data: In addition to the 5.5 million borrowers who are currently in default, another 3.7 million are more than 270 days late on their payments and on the edge of default. Another 2.7 million borrowers are in the earlier stages of delinquency. In all, some 12 million borrowers are worryingly behind.
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The Malibu City Council on Monday unanimously approved agreements that would lay the foundation to separate the city’s schools from the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District.

The vote, along with last week’s approval from the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District board, is a significant step forward in a years-long effort to split the westside district of 8,600 students.

The three agreements outline how the two new districts would share property tax revenue, divide existing resources and create a group of stakeholders to oversee the transition.

About two dozen parents, community members and students urged the council to approve the proposal during Monday’s meeting.

“I've reviewed the agreements. They are not perfect,” Malibu Elementary School PTA President Mark DiPaola said. “They are as good as we're ever going to get. And they're on the table. They're ready for us now.”

Malibu and district leaders said the creation of the two new school districts will require additional action from an outside body, for example the California Legislature or the state Board of Education.

“It’s not going to happen next year or the year after this,” Malibu City Councilmember Bruce Silverstein said. “It’s going to be a while, but the sooner it can get done, the better, and we can start tonight.”

The origin of an unprecedented split

The creation of the Santa Monica-Malibu School District in 1875 predates the incorporation of either community. Santa Monica became a city in 1886 and Malibu incorporated in 1992.

For more than a decade, Malibu schools advocates, including parents and politicians, have argued that local control would better serve students.

While the name of the process, “unification,” may seem counterintuitive, it refers to the creation of a new “unified” Malibu school district.

“We have the opportunity to build a program here that can draw young families to our community by creating an educational system that is progressive and suits the unique needs of our evolving world,” said Dana, a parent and Malibu resident who spoke at Monday’s meeting.

Why has the split been divisive?

Santa Monica community members previously have raised concerns the split would leave the community’s schools with fewer resources and a higher-need population of students. While the proportion of low-income students in Santa Monica-Malibu Schools, about 33%, is less than half of the rate in the county overall, a greater share attends schools in Santa Monica compared to Malibu.

“We wanted the services to be comparable, the educational pathways to be comparable — what the children receive,” Santa-Monica Malibu Unified Board Member Jon Kean said.

Under the agreements, Santa Monica students who currently attend Malibu schools on permits could continue to do so.

It’s not yet clear how the split could affect the employment of the district’s 1,400 teachers, support staff and other employees.

“Many significant questions remain,” said Claudia Bautista-Nicholas, president of the Santa Monica Malibu Classroom Teachers Association, at the district’s December board meeting. “One of our greatest concerns is the ongoing decline in enrollment in both cities. We know that declining enrollment inevitably leads to reductions in staffing and ultimately layoffs.”

Funding Santa Monica and Malibu schools

One of the biggest sticking points in the mediation among stakeholders is how the two proposed districts would be funded because Santa Monica-Malibu Unified’s budget is more closely tied to local property taxes than most school districts in the state.

California distributes money to the vast majority of school districts based on a funding formula that accounts for several factors, including how many low-income students are enrolled.

Santa Monica-Malibu Unified, however, is a less common “basic aid” district, where local property tax revenue (from Malibu and Santa Monica combined) provides more money than the state funding formula.

“If Santa Monica … were only to receive the [city of] Santa Monica property taxes, we would not have enough revenue to operate,” Board Member Jon Keane said.

Kean served on a subcommittee that along with Malibu stakeholders and a mediator, started meeting in 2022. The proposed deal would have the new Malibu district share revenue with Santa Monica schools under specific circumstances through 2042. For example, Santa Monica Unified is guaranteed an annual operating revenue growth of 4%. If the district’s property tax revenue does not support that increase, Malibu would fill in the gap.

Kean said one of the challenges is that no other basic aid school district ever has split.

“ We're doing something brand new,” Kean said. “We need protections.”