The Brief

For years, advocates for a more democratic Los Angeles have called for expanding the size of the City Council beyond the current 15 members.

The idea gained momentum in 2022, after the release of secretly recorded audio that came to be known as the City Hall tapes scandal. Two former and one current member of the council were caught engaging in a conversation that included racist and derogatory remarks.

Many proponents of council expansion hoped it would be placed on the November ballot, while the fervor for reform remained strong.

That’s not going to happen.

Council President Paul Krekorian, who created an Ad Hoc Committee on Governance Reform and promised to take up the issue, said last week that he plans to refer the idea of expanding the size of the panel to a yet-to-be-created charter commission.

The move would indefinitely delay any plan to increase the size of what many believe to be a council too small to represent a sprawling city of nearly 4 million people.

Advocates of the idea said increasing the size of the 15-member City Council would make the panel better reflect the diversity of L.A. and allow residents more access to council members. They pointed to New York, with its 51 council members and Chicago with 50.

The size of the L.A. council has remained the same for 100 years, even as the city has grown dramatically.

The ad hoc committee has had a year-and-a-half to consider the idea.

“This ongoing discussion will require more public input and analysis than can be completed in time for the November ballot,” Krekorian said in a statement to LAist.

The council would have had to act by early July to place any measure on the ballot.

Supporters of council expansion expressed disappointment at the delay.

“It's frustrating to see it get punted,” said David Levitus, who heads LA Forward, a group that works on strengthening democracy.

He cited a poll that showed two-thirds of Angelenos supported expansion, a possible shift in voter sentiment. In past decades, L.A. voters have turned down proposals on three previous occasions to increase the council size.

Jeremy Payne of Catalyst California, which advocates for racial justice, said the time was ripe for expansion.

“We are at a pivotal point following the audio leak, and I want to make sure we seize the opportunity for change,” he said in an interview. “Our council districts are too large for residents to feel truly represented.”

L.A. City Council members represent about 265,000 residents each, the largest local council districts in the country. In New York, each council member represents about 173,000 residents. In Chicago, council members are called aldermen and represent about 55,000 residents each.

Krekorian said he supports expanding the council to 23 members “in order to create greater responsiveness, more potential for inclusiveness, and reduced influence of political campaign funds.”

He has touted progress on other reforms in the wake of the tapes scandal, which involved three members of the City Council and a labor leader secretly discussing how to redraw the council’s district boundaries to maintain their own power. The conversation led to the resignations of Council President Nury Martinez and the head of the L.A. County Federation of Labor, Ron Herrera. Former Councilmember Gil Cedillo was voted out of office before the tapes were released.

The only participant in the conversation to have survived the scandal was Councilmember Kevin de León, who faces reelection in November. Earlier this month, Krekorian reinstated De León to his committee assignments after removing him in the wake of the scandal.

To address the type of backroom dealing that played out on the audio tapes, the council has placed on the November ballot a measure that would create an independent redistricting commission to draw City Council district boundaries, taking the decision out of the hands of the council itself.

Council members have been split on whether to increase the size of the government body, which would dilute their individual power.

“I’m just not convinced that more politicians makes for better government,” said Councilmember Traci Park, who represents an area that stretches from Venice to Brentwood.

“I have yet to see any evidence that constituents in city’s with larger councils are any more satisfied with their local elected representatives than our constituents in Los Angeles are with us,” she said.

She argued a bigger budget for her council office would help her improve services to constituents.

Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who represents the western San Fernando Valley, said of expansion: “You may have less ability to come to compromises.”

Still, he supports adding council members “to have more diversity.”

Levitus of LA Forward suspects opposition is more likely tied to the change in power council expansion would produce. “Expanding the council is going to mean each individual council member is less powerful and the council as a whole is less powerful in relation to the mayor,” he said.

Levitus’ group favors increasing the size of the council to 29.

He said “we need the threat that voters will do this themselves,” by gathering signatures to place a measure on the ballot.

The L.A. Governance Reform Project, a group of leading local scholars, has urged the council to place on the ballot a measure to expand its size and another that would increase the number of school board members at the L.A. Unified School District.

In a December report titled “Toward a Better Governed City of Los Angeles,” the group said the council should increase to 25 members, with 20 members elected by districts and five elected from regional seats that are larger than individual council seats.

It also recommended increasing the size of the LAUSD board from seven to 11 members.

Both would require changes to the city charter, which require a vote of the people.

Last week, the council asked the city attorney to draw up language for an ordinance that would create a charter reform commission, which the council president said was “the most appropriate place” to continue the discussion about expansion..

Krekorian has said new the commission would be able to ask the City Council to place both council and school board expansion on the ballot in 2026.

The ultimate decision for placing a measure on the ballot falls with the City Council.

“A Charter amendment for expanding the Council drafted by such a commission, rather than the Council itself, might well attract more public support, and I believe that approach now offers the best chance for achieving this important goal," he added.

The council also voted last week to place a series of ethics reforms on the ballot, including one that would triple the fines the Ethics Commission could impose on council members and others who violate city ethics rules, including campaign finance laws.

California has managed a remarkable feat over the past 20 years. Even as its economy has grown to overtake Germany’s as the fourth-largest in the world, the state’s consumption of gasoline has declined by almost 15%, and consumption of petroleum diesel has fallen by around two-thirds. This has happened due to some of the world’s most aggressive climate policies, including a tax on carbon emissions and a strict requirement to adopt clean-burning fuels such as “renewable diesel” made from fats and oils.

During the same period, California’s production of crude oil has also fallen by around half, and many oil wells have shut down. The state now imports almost two-thirds of its crude oil from tanker ships, which is cheaper and more practical because it is separated by steep mountains from oil-producing zones such as Texas. Some of the state’s largest gasoline and diesel refineries are also shutting down amid declining demand, which will make the state dependent on imports of refined gasoline, too.

The state’s diminished fossil-fuel sector has made it especially vulnerable to the oil shock of the Israeli-U.S. war with Iran — and to interventions from the Trump administration that could delay or even reverse California’s trend toward renewable energy. Gas prices in the state have spiked toward $7 a gallon in recent weeks, the highest prices in the country. As other economies clamp down on fuel exports, it’s possible the state could face even higher crude prices or a shortage of gasoline.

Two weeks after the war began, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department issued a legal memorandum arguing that the federal government can use the Defense Production Act to preempt state law in the event of energy emergencies. The Department of Energy then moved to restart a long-defunct California offshore oil pipeline owned by the company Sable Offshore. The order from Energy Secretary Chris Wright cited “California’s reliance on foreign oil vulnerable to geopolitical disruption,” with “a significant share traveling through the Strait of Hormuz.” The pipeline has been shut down since a 2015 oil spill that killed hundreds of animals, and state officials had not given it clearance to reopen. On the very next day, the pipeline reopened. California has sued to shut it back down.

For now, the Sable pipeline is ramping up to process around 50,000 barrels a day, which would provide around 3 percent of the state’s daily oil needs. Chevron has already said it will buy and refine 20,000 barrels of crude from the pipeline starting in April. The addition of new supply from Sable could lower costs for refineries, said Mike Umbro, an energy entrepreneur who runs Californians for Energy and Science, an educational nonprofit that advocates for increased oil production. Beyond Sable, though, there aren’t many good options for increasing crude supplies in the short term.

“Sacramento’s saying, ‘You don’t have a long-term future here,’ so the companies aren’t going to dump a bunch of money in to increase production,” Umbro said.

Nevertheless, the Interior Department said this week it would consider a proposal from another offshore oil company to frack undersea oil wells in order to increase production. The administration has also held oil lease sales on federal land in California, and has sued to block a state law that would limit drilling near homes and schools, both measures that would open up more onshore oil production in the state.

But more upstream oil production won’t help resolve the current fuel crunch. Even as some oil producers consider pumping more crude, no one has suggested building more refineries. In fact, Chevron and other large refinery owners have warned that California’s “cap-and-invest” program — a carbon tax that gets more expensive as time goes on — could soon drive them out of the state. The California Air Resources Board, the state’s climate regulator, is supposed to debut new rules for the carbon tax later this year, which would reduce the amount of free emissions refineries would be allowed to emit and make refineries less likely to stay in California.

The oil industry’s argument against these regulations follows the same logic as the Trump administration’s. “Continued erosion of California’s refining capacity risks increased reliance on imported fuels that are slower to arrive, more exposed to global supply disruptions, and less reliable during emergencies or periods of heightened geopolitical risk,” Andy Walz, a senior executive at Chevron, wrote in a letter to state leaders.

At the CERAWeek energy conference this week in Texas, Walz said he believes the state could soon have a shortage of gasoline and jet fuel, and that Chevron might close its own refineries within a decade. Those refineries account for 30% of capacity, and losing them could cause huge supply shortages for Bay Area drivers, Central Valley farmers, and even Air Force bases.

Democrats and environmental groups in the state, meanwhile, say that the refiners may be crying wolf about the state’s carbon tax. They see the Iran crisis as more evidence that the state should lean harder into its transition away from oil. Indeed, as Katelyn Roedner Sutter, the California state director for the Environmental Defense Fund, sees it, the current gas spike may only speed up the state’s energy transition by making electric vehicles even more attractive. Governor Gavin Newsom’s latest budget proposed a subsidy for first-time EV buyers, designed to replace the repealed Inflation Reduction Act tax credits, and she said the Iran crisis could strengthen the governor’s case.

“I do think the war actually makes it even more important to move forward with this, because I think it just underscores how vulnerable we are, being so dependent on fossil fuels,” she said.

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/energy/trump-iran-california-oil-sable/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

Tickets to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles will go on sale Thursday.

The much-anticipated drop is the first opportunity to get seats at Olympic events, including the opening and closing ceremonies — and it's for locals only. The sale will be open to those who pre-registered to buy tickets, and not everyone will be chosen. Fans will be randomly selected and given a time slot to buy tickets.

Fans with eligible Southern California or Oklahoma City ZIP codes will be notified via email if they're selected for a slot to buy tickets in the pre-sale, which runs April 2 to 6. After that, fans from around the world will have their first chance to get tickets from April 9 to 19.

Those who are chosen from the draw will be notified 48 hours ahead of their time slot to buy tickets online, and will have two days to select and purchase their tickets. That means people will know as early as Tuesday if they've been selected to buy tickets.

Each fan can snag up to 12 tickets, and an additional 12 tickets to the Olympic soccer tournament. Tickets to the opening and closing ceremonies are limited to four per person.

If you aren't chosen for the first ticket drop, there will be more in the months to come. Plus, come 2027 there will be a re-sale market for tickets.

How the draw works

If you get an email that you've been selected to buy Olympics tickets, it will include the time window you have to purchase tickets and a link to the website where you can buy them.

You'll have 48 hours to buy tickets, but LA28 recommends logging in as soon as you can to get the best ticket options. Once tickets are in your cart, you'll have 30 minutes to buy them.

LA28 warned fans that they could encounter online queues when buying tickets. Some people reported this when registering for tickets, too.

The ticket site will allow fans to search events by sport, venue and location. Once you choose an event, you'll book in a seating category — but actual seat numbers will be assigned later on.

Fans who want to game out their purchases ahead of time can look at the competition schedule here.

If you purchase tickets in the locals pre-sale, the billing address for the card you buy the tickets with will need to have one of the qualifying local ZIP codes. Here in Southern California, that includes people in L.A., Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.

Prices

Prices for Olympics tickets will vary widely. The cheapest tickets will be $28 a pop, with the priciest tickets upwards of $1,000, according to Olympic organizers.

The majority of tickets to the Olympic Games will run into triple digits. According to LA28, half the tickets will be more than $200 and around 5% of tickets will be more than $1,000. In total, there will be 14 million tickets available across the Olympics and Paralympics.

What exactly different events will cost — and how expensive tickets might get — isn't clear yet. An example in a Youtube explainer posted by LA28 showed ticket options for Track and Field preliminary competitions at the Coliseum ranging from $28 to $1,035.65.

According to the video, there will also be standing room-only tickets for some events.

Tickets to the Paralympic Games will go on sale next year.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

The Koreatown Senior & Community Center is bringing back its free lunch program for seniors, this time with its longest guaranteed run yet.

The center is partnering with the YMCA under a two-year agreement, which would allow the program — for the first time — to run continuously for that long. In the past, the center’s free lunch program typically lasted only a few months at a time before funding cuts forced it to scale back or stop temporarily.

If all goes as planned, the program is expected to relaunch by late April.

“We’re committed to identifying funding beyond the two years,” said Mario Valenzuela, chief mission advancement officer at the YMCA. 

The program is returning as meal services for seniors across L.A. face ongoing funding challenges. In September, LA Public Press reported that some senior centers were cutting back on meals as pandemic-era funding expired and longer-term funding looked uncertain. Valenzuela said that across the YMCA’s 29 food distribution sites in the county, seniors now make up the majority of those seeking assistance.

The YMCA was awarded $7.5 million last year to address food insecurity, and Valenzuela said the Koreatown senior lunch program is one way those funds are being used.

The center launched its free lunch program in January 2024 with about 200 meals a day, funded by the city’s Department of Aging. But the number of meals steadily declined, from 200 to 50, before the program ended in early January.

Hyun-ok Lee, president of the board of the Koreatown Senior & Community Center, said the sudden halt was difficult for people who had come to rely on the meals.

“When the meal service suddenly stopped, a lot of seniors and people in the community really felt it,” Lee said.

After the program stopped, the center began looking for new funding sources. That effort eventually led to a connection with the YMCA, facilitated by Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, according to both the center and the YMCA.

“It was important for the Assemblymember to ensure that meals are culturally sensitive, especially for the seniors in our district, so we were able to connect the YMCA with KSCC and reinstitute the daily distribution of Korean lunch boxes at KSCC,” Nina Suh-Toma, Gonzalez’s field representative, said. 

Valenzuela said the organization stepped in after hearing from multiple senior centers that funding for services was being cut.

The Koreatown senior center’s free lunch program will cost between $210,000 and $250,000 a year and will initially provide 100 meals a day from Monday to Friday, with the goal of eventually increasing that number to 200.

Valenzuela said the program is part of a broader shift at the YMCA to work more directly in communities. 

“We can no longer just focus within our four walls,” he said. “We really have to meet the community where they’re at.”

The YMCA and the center are still working out the details of the partnership, including how meals will be distributed. Valenzuela said they’re currently looking for a food vendor that can provide Korean meals that are both culturally appropriate and meet nutritional guidelines.

Valenzuela said he’s already seeing growing demand for these services. 

“I think the emerging need is there are a lot of cuts coming down the pipeline particularly to social services and the most vulnerable population right now are seniors,” he said. “We’re seeing it across L.A. County.”

One of the many tools of the farmworker movement in the 1960s was Teatro Campesino, a traveling theater troupe that told the plight of the farmworkers through “actos,” or short skits.

It was a mostly male-dominated space until a group of Chicanas came together to tell the stories of women who were also part of the civil rights and farmworker movement.

Teatro Chicana was the product of Felicitas Nuñez, Delia Ravelo, Laura Garcia and dozens of other first generation college students attending San Diego State College, now known as San Diego State University, in the early 1970s. Their work is documented in the memoir Teatro Chicana.

“We protested the action and behavior of the males in MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán) because we didn’t agree with their disrespect, abuse and a lot of that was coming from the older Chicanos like people that were already professors, counselors and in administration,” Nuñez said.

One of their first performances was a seminar that the women put together for their mothers who visited them on campus called Chicana Goes to College.

“We just wanted to present how a young woman wanted to get out of a traditional home, very religious kind of atmosphere,” Nuñez said. “But towards the end, you know, the Chicana struggles through getting out of the house, struggles in college, and then struggles within the movimiento Chicano. She makes up her mind that she's gonna get educated regardless of being put down.”

Teatro Chicana performed at a UFW convention, in fields, anti-war demonstrations, high schools and anywhere they could. Their plays like Bronca challenged men to see women as more than notetakers, cooks and childcare.

Of course, it’s hard to talk about the farmworker movement without mentioning the late César Chávez, who was recently accused of sexually assaulting girls and women. Nunez and Garcia said the news was devastating but not that surprising.

“ If you look at the women in the teatro, out of the 17 women that wrote their memoir about 80% had been sexually molested, or abused within their families or a neighbor,” said Garcia. “ We need to talk about it in order to stop it.”