The Brief

Corruption and scandals are disheartening to read about when it comes to your local government. But one of the best things you can do to hold officials accountable is to pay attention.

Your city council, board of supervisors, school board and more all hold public meetings that anybody can attend. These are times you can talk to your elected officials directly and hear about the policies they’re voting on that affect your community.

Thinking of attending for the first time? Here are some tips to get you started.

Figure out which government represents you 

This seems like a no-brainer, but can actually be tricky to nail down. You might think you live in a neighborhood within L.A.’s city limits, but actually live in a separate city, or vice versa. Or you might think you live in a city but actually live in an unincorporated part of town, in which case you don’t even have a municipal government — you’re represented by the county board of supervisors.

You can input your address into these planning maps for L.A. County or Orange County to find out what city you live in, or if you’re in an unincorporated area. That will determine which government actually represents your neighborhood.

Once you know whether you live within a particular city’s jurisdiction or an unincorporated area of the county, you’ll know your main governing body for policies that impact where you live. If you live within a city — a mayor and city council vote on local rules. If you live within an unincorporated area of the county, your county board of supervisors makes the decisions.

Decide which meetings to attend

Who actually has power over the issue you’re interested in? Boards and commissions usually set policies for specific city departments, or provide recommendations to the mayor and city council. City councils and boards of supervisors pass legislation. (Here’s our election guides for L.A.’s City Council and L.A. County Board of Supervisors, which explains what they do.)

If you want to weigh in on the police department, you can attend a local police commission meeting. If you have thoughts about a new building being proposed in your neighborhood, your city’s planning commission meeting might be the place for it. Figure out which group has influence over the issue you care about, and see what’s coming up on their agendas. You can peruse your local government’s website to get a list of different boards and commissions.

Here are reference pages for the city of L.A., Burbank, Glendale, Santa Monica, Huntington Beach, Anaheim and Santa Ana.

Good to keep in mind: L.A. County and Orange County have 10 million and 3 million residents, respectively — and yet each county only has five representatives on their board of supervisors. The supervisors for both counties control budgets that, combined, total over $50 billion. With so much power in such few hands, those county supervisor meetings are important to keep an eye on in general.

Find meeting schedules and agendas

State law requires governments to publicly post an agenda at least 72 hours in advance of each meeting. That’s where you can find all the meeting details: when and where it’s happening, what topics will be addressed, and how to submit public comment.

City councils usually meet at least twice a month, although larger ones may meet weekly. Committees and boards tend to meet less often, typically once a month. You can find meeting schedules and individual agendas on your local government’s website, or posted physically at your city’s city hall. Often, you can sign up to have meeting agendas emailed to you when they’re available. Here are some examples of where to find what you need from Culver City, Huntington Park and Tustin.

If you can’t attend a meeting in person, many municipal governments offer live streaming or other ways to participate remotely. Those details should be on the government’s website and on the agenda itself.

Get familiar with meeting rules and common agenda terminology 

A few norms to get acquainted with:

• Officials can only discuss and take action on items on the agenda. You can bring up other matters during the general comment period, but officials can’t get into discussions on those issues unless they’re on the agenda. 
• Members of the public have a right to attend all public meetings. But portions of the meeting may be in a “closed session,” meaning it’s restricted to the public. This is only supposed to happen when officials discuss something that has to be kept confidential for legal or privacy reasons, like sensitive information about a city employee or a pending lawsuit. 
• A “consent calendar” is part of the agenda that includes routine, non-controversial items that officials can approve in one motion without having to open up individual issues for discussion. Public hearings and votes on motions (an official proposal to do something, like launch a feasibility study or create a new task force) or individual legislation (laws that affect all residents in the city or jurisdiction) generally come later in the agenda.

Give public comment

Every public meeting allows community members to give comment, whether or not it’s about something on the agenda. You can give written comment via email or an online portal, or verbal comment in person at the meeting or, in some cases, by teleconference. The verbal comment period may have a time limit, with individual time limits per speaker. The meeting agenda will have specific instructions for giving public comment.

Jeanine Robbins of Anaheim, who often attends multiple city council and board of supervisor meetings a week, says it’s best not to wing it when it’s your turn to speak.

"I always write it down so I don't lose my train of thought, and so I can get everything out that I want to say," Robbins said, adding that elected officials respond to public commenters in different ways. "It's very easy to get flustered up there. Some of them are staring at you, some of them are looking down and never once look up, some of them are on their laptop, some of them are on their phones."

The public comment period is also where you may get acquainted with some of the, ahem, more spirited contributions from other community members. Don’t be too surprised if you witness excessive profanity, a Joan Jett cover, a goat puppet or a surfer bro pop up at some of these meetings.

Keep participating! Tips from a local watchdog

It doesn’t have to end with that one meeting, or that one comment.

Cynthia Ward, a longtime civic activist in Anaheim, suggests setting up a Google alert for your city "so that any time something is happening in your city, that pops up in your feed." Then if you want your voice heard at a public meeting again, you’ll know what to do.

Even as “mind-deadening” as it can be to sit through a local government meeting, they’re vital for understanding how your city works, she said — so even if you can’t actively participate in each one, you can still livestream it and have it on in the background while you’re doing dishes or house chores.

“Even in the really boring stuff in those meetings, you get a feel for who’s who, you get a feel for which of your leaders is truly representing you and which ones are making excuses for lobbyists and developers and special interests,” she said. “And those are the ones that you need to watch for so that when the next election comes up, you're not playing eeny meeny miney mo at the ballot box."

LAist correspondent Jill Replogle contributed reporting to this piece.

The leader of a congressional panel warned Tuesday he would use “every tool” to get Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass to testify after she skipped a hearing that put L.A.’s homeless services system in the hot seat.

It came as multiple audits, reviews and court rulings have found L.A. has failed to ensure proper tracking of large-scale spending on homeless services — particularly through the joint city-county L.A. Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA. Much of the money is federal dollars authorized by Congress.

Bass had declined to testify at Tuesday’s hearing, saying she was unavailable and that it would be a “politically motivated” attack. Her public schedule showed she planned to attend a groundbreaking of a shopping and community center in the Pacific Palisades two hours after the hearing was set to start.

Rep. Tim Burchett, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee's DOGE subcommittee, said she won't get off that easily.

Bass "seems intent on evading accountability, but she knows we will not let her off the hook," Burchett said at the hearing. He added that he and the Oversight Committee’s chair would "use every tool at our disposal to secure her appearance if she does not cooperate.”

House committees and subcommittees can issue subpoenas to compel witnesses to testify or provide documents.

Just before the hearing got underway, Bass called it "the latest attack on Los Angeles by the Trump Administration and his allies in Congress.”

"I don't run LAHSA," she said, adding that she was the first mayor to sit on its board and that street homelessness has dropped since she took office. The latest official count for the city showed a 8% year to year jump in street homelessness.

Bass stepped off LAHSA’s governing commission last week, after LAist reported she had missed most of its meetings since she appointed herself to it in 2023. The mayor cited “time and all” as her reason for stepping down. She continues to appoint — and has the power to remove — half the commission’s members, including its current chair.

What happened at the hearing

Much of the hour-and-a-half hearing focused on Republican members’ criticism that Democrat-led cities distribute drug paraphernalia and don’t require unhoused people with addictions to get treatment as a condition of living in publicly funded housing.

Some proposals raised Tuesday would change how money reaches Los Angeles.

Burchett said he will introduce the Recovery First Housing Act, to require federally funded housing to offer substance abuse treatment. He has also introduced a bill restricting federal housing dollars to only support U.S. citizens.

LA's fights on a national stage

Burchett noted LAHSA’s audit committee chair, Justin Szlasa — who was proactive in rooting out wasteful spending — was demoted by Stephanie Graves, a Bass appointee who has declined to give her reason for doing so. The move was first reported by LAist.

Burchett also made claims that don’t hold up. He said 50,000 people are homeless in the city with "another 75,000" in the surrounding county. The latest official count found a total of 73,000 unhoused people across L.A. County — a figure that includes the city.

Burchett also said, “ LAHSA recently doled out funds to an L.A.-area nonprofit whose CEO had just been indicted for fraud.” LAist recently investigated LAHSA’s awarding of funds to that nonprofit, Abundant Blessings, and found no indication that LAHSA awarded it any funds after the fraud indictment. However, the review did find that long before the indictment, LAHSA kept awarding millions in contracts to the group even after it was flagged internally as high-risk for failing to do its job.

Burchett, however, was correct in saying “a court-ordered independent assessment of LAHSA's finances found alarming financial control weaknesses that leave the door open to rampant fraud.”

On Tuesday, street safety advocates and families of victims of vehicle collisions demanded that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declare a state of emergency on traffic violence in the city.

Sandra Sanchez Loulakis’s son died last year after she said he was hit by a negligent driver.

“I’ve been struggling just to survive daily,” she said at the news conference organized by traffic safety nonprofit Streets are for Everyone. “This is what happens to a parent when they lose a child.”

The city has seen 8% more fatal traffic collisions this year than during the same period last year, according to LAPD data from the end of August.

Advocates said an emergency declaration would better coordinate resources to respond to traffic fatalities, which have exceeded the rate of homicides for the last three years.

“ This is not a matter of we don't know what to do,” Damian Kevitt, who leads Streets are for Everyone, said Tuesday. “This is a matter of we know exactly what to do. We’re just not making this a priority as a city.”

Kevitt said more than 1,250 people signed an open letter delivered to the mayor and L.A. City Council. One of the demands listed in the letter is for the city to restore transportation department staff.

Earlier this year, the city gave up $100 million in state grants to make streets safer because it did not have the personnel to complete the projects in compliance with state-mandated deadlines.

Draft executive directive on Vision Zero

It appears there had been momentum from the mayor’s office earlier this year to issue an executive directive recommitting the city to its Vision Zero goals of reducing traffic fatalities to zero.

According to emails from May shared with LAist, the mayor’s senior director of transportation told an activist that a draft executive directive was “under review” and expected to be released “within the next three weeks.”

The email was sent to Jonathan Hale, who organizes community members to paint crosswalks where there have been pedestrian-involved collisions.

The executive directive has yet to be released.

LAist submitted a public records request for drafts of the executive directive, but on Sept. 14, the mayor’s office responded saying it could not disclose any records.

“[The records] include drafts and/or deliberative process for which the public interest served in nondisclosure clearly outweighs the public interest served by the disclosure,” the office said.

The mayor’s office has not responded to requests for comment about the draft executive directive.

A new report commissioned by Olympics organizers estimates that the 2028 Games will generate at least $20 billion in economic output across Greater Los Angeles.

The analysis, prepared for LA28 by the nonprofit Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation’s Institute for Applied Economics, looked at the economic effects of L.A. hosting the Olympics and Paralympics. It includes organizing committee spending, capital investments, publicly funded transportation and security investments, and tourism. 

In total, the report projects that new economic activity across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties could total somewhere between $20.5 billion and $25.4 billion and add around 126,000 and 152,000 jobs to the economy.

A second less conservative methodology employed by the researchers estimates the overall economic output could be even higher, between $35.4 and $40.6 billion and up to 224,000 new jobs.

“ Together, they provide a responsible range, not an exaggerated promise,” Stephen Cheung, CEO of the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, said at a news conference announcing the report on Tuesday. “ If we work together with intention, the Games can leave Los Angeles with more than unforgettable memories. They can leave us with stronger businesses, greater opportunities, and a more connected regional economy.”

Despite the 2028 Games being advertised as a "no-build" Olympics, the biggest chunk of spending laid out in the report is on capital projects, including the $2.6 billion L.A. Convention Center renovation, billions in LAX improvements, major transit projects like Metro ExpressLanes on the 105 Freeway, and venue renovations, such as upgrades to Rose Bowl Stadium.

The report also estimates that around $5.7 billion of LA28’s spending will be in the five county region. LA28 has a $7.1 billion budget and has pledged to keep 75% of its spending in the Greater L.A. area, and put 25% toward small businesses.

“ That economic impact is going to be felt far and wide and across Los Angeles, as well as the Southern California region,” LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover said Tuesday.

The report is the second economic analysis forecasting the effects of the 2028 Games to come out this month. A separate report submitted to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors in early September estimated that the Games would produce more than $13 billion in direct spending and a total economic output of $19.2 billion in Los Angeles County alone.

The same report also laid out the potential uneven distribution of economic benefits to the region, including limited benefits for Olympic venue sites that are not tourist destinations and parts of Los Angeles being excluded from the Games altogether.

HR&A Advisors, the consultant group that put the report together, identified Carson, Pomona, the City of Industry and Exposition Park as locations that are hosting Olympic events, but that could end up being “passthrough areas.”

“Although these areas may be active during the day, they may struggle to capture spending from visitors who pass through but do not spend money outside the venue,” the report states.

The county report also questioned what economic benefits will flow to parts of L.A. County that will be disconnected from Olympic and Paralympic activities, like Antelope Valley and Southeast Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, the analysis found that L.A.’s typical tourist destinations — including downtown L.A., Old Town Pasadena, downtown Long Beach and the Venice Boardwalk — can expect to be active areas for economic activity during summer 2028.

The Palisades and Eaton Fires last year destroyed thousands of homes in Los Angeles County. Thousands more were left standing, but choked with toxic fire residue.

On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of bills that will make California the first state in the nation to establish smoke damage testing and cleaning standards for insurance companies.

Assembly Bills 1642 and 1795 will require insurers to test for smoke damage, cover the cost of cleaning contaminants, and keep paying for a homeowner’s alternative living expenses until the home is found safe to reoccupy.

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control will have until the end of 2028 to develop testing and cleaning standards for lead and asbestos, and until the end of 2029 to set rules for heavy metals and other pollutants.

Reaction to the bill

According to the state Department of Insurance, property owners filed 13,000 smoke damage claims for standing homes after the January 2025 fires. While insurers have covered testing and cleaning in many cases, other homeowners are still unable to return home as they battle with insurance companies over addressing smoke damage.

In a news release Tuesday, the governor and an author of one of the bills praised the changes to state law.

“These new protections will make insurer obligations clearer and give homeowners more financial flexibility when they need it most,” Newsom said.

Assemblymember John Harabedian said: “Science, not an insurance company’s opinions, will determine whether a home is safe.”

Insurance industry groups had opposed shifting rules and regulation away from the state Department of Insurance and to the Department of Toxic Substances Control.

Altadena residents pushed for change

Testing efforts by a group known as Eaton Fire Residents United found that lead, asbestos and heavy metals were still present in homes even after they were cleaned by professional remediation companies. Jane Lawton Potelle is the group’s executive director.

“California is leading the nation in how to recover safely after an urban wildfire,” she said in a news release about the laws’ passage.

Public health officials said smoke from the L.A. County fires was particularly toxic because it emanated from urban areas. The structures that burned often had lead paint and asbestos insulation.

The fires also destroyed cars, appliances and other human-made materials. This created more pollutants than smoke from fires in rural areas, which mainly burn through vegetation.

LAist covered the push to change smoke damage policies in a recent episode of our podcast Imperfect Paradise, which breaks down what these changes could mean for insurers, homeowners and how California adapts to climate change.