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.

As Los Angeles homeowners grapple with the expense of rebuilding after last year’s devastating fires, an L.A. City Councilmember is putting forward an idea that could lower some costs.

Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the Pacific Palisades, has introduced a motion to explore waiving part of the city’s portion of the local sales tax for fire victims who purchase rebuilding materials in the city.

The 1% of the local 9.75% sales tax that goes into the city’s general fund would be given back to consumers under the proposal. The waiver could apply to lumber, appliances and other rebuilding goods purchased within the city.

The motion, introduced Friday by Park and seconded by Councilmember John Lee, says: “The City should do everything within its power to alleviate the financial burden for these residents and businesses in order to facilitate their return and stabilize the Pacific Palisades community.”

Would it make much of a difference? 

Economists told LAist the proposal could help many homeowners mitigate the high cost of rebuilding, but likely wouldn’t tip the scales for under-insured, under-resourced property owners.

“It wouldn't hurt if it's very well designed and easy to use,” said Alexander Meeks, a director at the Santa Monica-based Milken Institute. “But I'm not sure if it's really going to tackle the scale of the financial challenge that survivors are facing.”

Meeks noted that the tax waiver wouldn’t lower up-front costs such as environmental testing, architectural design and permitting. And it may not help homeowners sourcing raw materials from outside the city.

Zhiyun Li, a UCLA Anderson School of Management economist, said the waiver could help some homeowners justify the additional cost of rebuilding more fire-safe structures.

“Homeowners must typically pay out of pocket to upgrade to IBHS+ standards, which are more stringent,” Li said. “The tax waiver could encourage upgrading to IBHS+ standards or investing more in mitigation, thereby reducing future risk and improving the likelihood of maintaining insurance coverage.”

What’s next for the proposal? 

The proposed tax relief would not be available to properties that have been sold since the fires started in January 2025.

The motion has been sent to the City Council’s budget and fire recovery committees. If approved by the full council, it would require the city administrative officer, the Office of Finance and the city attorney to report back to the council within 60 days on options for crafting a tax relief plan.

The motion calls for the report to consider factors such as how to minimize the burden of administering the tax relief, what documentation homeowners would have to submit and what it would cost the city to oversee the program.

Senate and House Republican leadership have resurrected a stalled plan to fund the Department of Homeland Security after a record 47-day funding lapse.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said in a joint statement on Wednesday that the House will take up a measure passed by the Senate last week to fund most of DHS except Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through the end of September.

Republicans would then attempt to fund ICE and Border Patrol for three years using a party-line budget reconciliation bill that would not require support from Democrats.

"In following this two-track approach, the Republican Congress will fully reopen the Department, make sure all federal workers are paid, and specifically fund immigration enforcement and border security for the next three years so that those law-enforcement activities can continue uninhibited," Thune and Johnson wrote.

The agreement comes nearly a week after House Republicans dismissed an identical plan, refusing to take up the Senate-passed measure and instead passing a 60-day short term funding bill for all of DHS that had little chance of overcoming Democratic opposition in the Senate.

Johnson called the agreement a "joke" and President Donald Trump declined to publicly endorse the deal. Trump had previously resisted any package that did not include his push to overhaul federal elections known as the Save America Act.

"I think any deal they make, I'm pretty much not happy with it," Trump told reporters last week.

Democrats welcomed the agreement as in line with their pledge not to give ICE any more money without reforms after immigration enforcement agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. But the deal does not include any of the policy demands Democrats are pressing for, such as a ban on masks for immigration enforcement officers and requiring warrants issued by a judge, not just the agency, to enter homes.

"For days, Republican divisions derailed a bipartisan agreement, making American families pay the price for their dysfunction," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in a statement Wednesday. "Throughout this fight, Senate Democrats never wavered."

Trump seemed to bless the revived plan earlier Wednesday, writing on social media that he wants a party-line bill to fund immigration enforcement on his desk by June 1.

"We are going to work as fast, and as focused, as possible to replenish funding for our Border and ICE Agents, and the Radical Left Democrats won't be able to stop us," Trump wrote.

Despite the shutdown, ICE has been minimally impacted because Republican lawmakers approved $75 billion for ICE through another party-line budget reconciliation bill last year.

Congress is on a two-week recess, but the Senate and House could move to fund all of DHS except ICE and CBP as early as Thursday using a procedure known as unanimous consent that allows the chambers to circumvent formal voting as long as no member objects.

Even during a recess when most members are not in Washington, this could be unpredictable, especially in the House, where many hard-line conservatives oppose a deal that does not fully fund DHS.

"Let's make this simple: caving to Democrats and not paying CBP and ICE is agreeing to defund Law Enforcement and leaving our borders wide open again," Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., a member of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, wrote on X. "If that's the vote, I'm a NO."

If a member does object, that could require waiting for another vote when all members are back from recess.

Claudia Grisales contributed reporting.
Copyright 2026 NPR

California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.

It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century.

Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.

But experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.

On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.

“I want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we’ve had — maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,” joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We’re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don’t know.”

State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing out the season at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs.

Only the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.

“I think everyone's anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.

“Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”

‘It’s pretty bizarre up here’ 

In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.

“It's pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.”

Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.

“That means we can get more work done,” he said.

It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin’s south shore.

Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread — from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles — even lawn furniture stacked against a house.

“In years past, I wouldn't even think of raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard's completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.”

‘A haystack fire’

Battalion chief David Acuña, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year’s snowpack.

Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.”

“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there's layers of fuel,” Acuña said.

Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña wasn’t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come.

But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher.

How this year’s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.

“This,” Abatzoglou said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.”

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