The Brief

A recent warning about the state of city finances in Los Angeles struck a dire note.

“We will need to be vigilant in how we proceed,” cautioned Matt Szabo, the city administrative officer at a Budget and Finance Committee meeting last week. “Our reserves are getting dangerously close to the ... emergency level.”

The reasons why are detailed in a financial status report Szabo released late last month. It documents precarious city finances driven by a mix of dwindling revenues and some big unexpected expenses, including the costs of responding to the L.A. wildfires.

Another major over-expenditure: civil payouts.

The city of Los Angeles is expected to pay at least $320 million in settlements and judgments this fiscal year, which ends in June, according to the financial status report. That’s more than three and a half times the money budgeted for such risks.

Liability payouts — which settle claims and lawsuits against the city for wrongdoing, including internal staff harassment, police use of force and injuries — have been a considerable expense for many years. In the current fiscal year, the city has paid more than $37 million in just two cases — the LAPD bomb squad fireworks explosion that injured more than two dozen people and displaced residents for years, as well as a shooting in which an off-duty LAPD officer killed a mentally disabled man in another county.

LAist examined city checkbook data, made available online by the city controller’s office, to analyze all payments made for liability claims since fiscal year 2018.

Here’s what we found:

• The most recent yearly budget set aside $87 million to handle such payouts, an amount that has hardly changed in eight years.
• The city was over budget just two months into this fiscal year.
• Last fiscal year, payouts exceeded the budget within seven months.
  

Why it matters

This is the second year in a row the city’s overall budget has faced financial headwinds. Last year, for the first time since the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, overspending and low revenue led to the city’s reserve funds falling below minimum levels required by city policy. This winter, legal settlements and deferred maintenance costs drove up the city’s spending further, and those costs have continued to rise.

When the city overspends on liability payouts, money is taken from other funds, such as the general fund and reserve accounts, to cover those costs.

Making those transfers has larger implications:

• City policy is to maintain reserve funds of at least 5% of budgeted general fund receipts, and if the reserve fund goes below 2.75%, the City Council must vote and declare an “urgent economic necessity” to use the remaining funds from the Emergency Reserve Account.
• Currently, the city’s reserve fund is at 3.28%, a level Szabo described this month as “dangerously close” to emergency levels.
• If additional cost-saving measures aren’t taken, using the reserves to solve remaining overspending would reduce levels to 2.22%.

What we know about liability claims

The Los Angeles Police Department has the highest liability payouts of any city department, with $100 million in claims in fiscal year 2024, according to an LAist analysis of city checkbook data. The department with the next highest amount in payouts was public works, with $45 million in claims across the street services, sanitation and engineering bureaus.

An additional $106 million in fiscal year 2024 liability payouts reviewed by LAist were not associated with any specific department in city data.

“At the end of the day, every dollar that we spend on lawsuits is a dollar that we're not spending on making our neighborhoods safer,” Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, chair of the Budget and Finance Committee, told LAist. “Whether it's LAPD or sidewalks or trip-and-falls, we really have to get ahead of the problem instead of paying for it much bigger on the back end.”

Yaroslavsky said the city needs to do more realistic and transparent budgeting while addressing the root causes of liability payouts. She said the city is “focused on solutions that reduce risk, improve public safety and protect city resources.” When it comes to the Police Department, Yaroslavsky said reforms include expanding the use of alternative response teams for mental health crises, as well as improving training and accountability practices.

City Controller Kenneth Mejia also shared concerns with LAist about addressing the root issues that lead to liability payouts, saying that if current trends continue, decreases in revenue combined with overspending could extend a citywide hiring freeze and cause service reductions. The city began its hiring freeze in January 2024, followed by cuts to over 1,700 positions last July, according to the controller’s office.

“This is the second year in a row where we budgeted high revenue amounts, and we're not reaching that amount,” Mejia said. “The city really needs to budget better, more conservatively and more realistically.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who proposes and signs the budget, did not respond to requests for comment.

Details of the payouts

The following accounts of the city's largest liability payments from fiscal year 2024 are based on court and federal documents. 

United States ex rel. Mei Ling v. City of L.A. — $38,659,715.21

A settlement was reached between the city and Mei Ling after what she claims was years of discrimination because of her disability, preventing her from finding affordable, accessible housing.

Tammy Murillo v. City of Los Angeles, et al. — $25,097,461.25

A district court jury found the city and two police officers liable for excessive force and battery, civil rights violations and negligence in the killing of Jesse Murillo, who was a 32-year-old Navy veteran.

Ismael Soto Luna v. City of Los Angeles, et al. — $10,500,000 (An additional $10,500,000 was paid in 2025.)

A settlement was reached between the city and Ismael Soto Luna after an L.A. County jury found the city liable for a streetlight in dangerous condition causing harm to Soto. The jury also found that this risk was foreseeable by the city, and the city had enough time to protect against such an incident.

Ruben Martinez et al v. City of Los Angeles et al — $8,000,000

A settlement was reached between the city and Ruben Martinez after prosecutors agreed that Martinez was wrongfully imprisoned for 12 years for five robberies.

Malcolm Thomas v. City of Los Angeles, et al. — $7,885,000

A settlement was reached between the city and Malcolm Thomas after what he claims was discrimination based on disability and retaliation while he served as a police officer and instructor at the Los Angeles Police Academy.

And here are the notable payments so far in 2025.

BD Impotex, LLC v. City of Los Angeles — $20,000,000

A settlement was reached between the city and residents of South L.A. after the detonation of illegal fireworks by the LAPD bomb squad. The explosion injured 27 people, including 18 civilians, and caused severe damage to homes and vehicles, according to a federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives report, causing some residents to be displaced.

Paula French, et al. v. City of Los Angeles, et al. — $17,700,000

A district court jury found that the city was liable for use of excessive force by an LAPD officer that caused the death of a mentally disabled man outside of a Costco in Corona and severely injured his parents.

How does approving the budget work?

Most city budget negotiations happen behind closed doors. Starting in the early fall, the L.A. mayor works with city department heads to figure out what the budget should look like. The mayor outlines her priorities, and department heads submit specific requests for consideration.

The mayor releases the official budget proposal in April. Then the City Council’s budget committee holds a series of hearings to discuss the proposal and listen to feedback from the public. The committee submits recommendations for changes.

The full City Council then has to vote on the proposed budget and the recommended changes. The approved budget takes effect on July 1, running through June 30 of the following year — this is what’s known as a “fiscal year.” Each fiscal year is referred to based on the year the budget ends. For example, the current budget year is 2025. It runs from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025.

Keep an eye on your local government

The best way to keep tabs on your local government is by attending public meetings for your city council or local boards. Here are a few tips to get you started.

• Find meeting schedules and agendas: 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 the schedule and meeting agenda on your local government’s website, or posted physically at your local city hall. Find more tips here.
  
• Learn the jargon: Closed session, consent calendars and more! We have definitions for commonly used terms here.
  
• How to give public comment: Every public meeting allows community members to give comment, whether or not it’s about something on the agenda. The meeting agenda will have specific instructions for giving public comment. Review more details here.
  

LAist’s Brianna Lee contributed to this report.

Dan Shimell, an attorney and a new face in local politics, is Santa Ana’s next mayor after a shocking win against incumbent Valerie Amezcua. His win has become one of the most surprising upsets in Orange County’s general election and marks a shift for a city that previously elected its first Latina mayor.

Amezcua congratulated Shimell on social media late Monday night after the last round of election results nearly doubled Shimell’s lead. As of Tuesday night, Shimell held a 5-point lead over Amezcua. Amezcua did not respond to LAist’s requests for comment.

“It has been the honor of my life to serve the people of Santa Ana,” Amezcua said in a post. “Together, we have accomplished great things. We invested in our neighborhoods, expanded opportunity for families, and strengthened the services that make Santa Ana home. Our work was never about one person. It was about all of us moving this community forward.”

Aside from Shimell, progressives Sandra de Anda and Isuri S. Ramos are also projected to win City Council seats, deepening the Santa Ana City Council’s progressive bench.

A flashpoint in Amezcua’s re-election campaign was during the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that rattled much of Southern California, including Santa Ana, Orange County’s only sanctuary city. The raids sparked protests that drew a heavy law enforcement response from Santa Ana police, including rubber bullets and tear gas.

In Amezcua’s first public response, she accused protesters of inciting chaos and violence. She later walked back her comments in a city statement, saying most protesters were demonstrating peacefully and that she did not support the raids.

Shimell told LAist he thinks Santa Ana voters, especially young and first-time voters, went to the polls to vote for those who can't.

“Those who have been or might in the future be impacted by immigration policy and enforcement,” Shimell added. “Taking a bold stance on immigration and police accountability seemed to resonate with voters I spoke with, and stood in stark contrast to the [police]-backed candidates who remained largely silent on those issues.”

What does this say about Santa Ana politics? 

Orange County Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento served as mayor of the city from 2020 to 2022, and his current district includes Santa Ana. Sarmiento told LAist that the results were surprising but reflected the change voters want to see in their elected officials.

“I think the underlying message is that money and establishment conventional politics no longer is the formula to success in a campaign in the city,” Sarmiento said. “It's really the influence of people and voters over money. That's really the theme here.”

Santa Ana City Councilmember Thai Viet Phan told LAist that the race results were somewhat surprising — but spoke to a larger trend.

“[In] the election results throughout the country … you saw a very leftward shift, with not just candidates but also just how voters voted,” Phan said. “I think that was reflected here in Santa Ana on the council.”

Amezcua outspent Shimell — by a lot

Shimell raised about $28,500 in his campaign for mayor. Amezcua raised more than $75,000 and received more than $200,000 in outside support — more than half of that came from the Santa Ana Police Officers Association.

Mike Moodian, a public policy professor at Chapman University, told LAist that in many ways, the races capture the zeitgeist of Santa Ana.

“Here we saw that there was a police union-backed group, and there was a resistance to that,” Moodian said. “People might have seen the incumbent mayor as part of a police union-backed establishment."

He explained that voters may have looked at Shimell as a fresh face who can represent more people and that the city is experiencing a deeper progressive shift.

“I find the residents of Santa Ana tend to be much more involved and engaged in local politics than most other cities in Orange County. So you also have a well-informed, engaged citizenry that showed up, and the voices were heard in Santa Ana,” Moodian said.

Moodian said Amezcua may have lost support from some voters because they were unsatisfied with her response to immigration enforcement.

What’s next?

Ballots are still being counted. The OC Registrar of Voters posts updates every day, except Sundays, at 5 p.m. Election results will be certified by Dec. 3. You can find updates on key measures and other races here.

For seven years, Nazmul Chaudhry has been trying to get the city of Los Angeles to fix a broken sidewalk in front of his store.

Chaudhry owns Deshi Food, a restaurant and grocery store in Little Bangladesh. Before I could even begin our interview, he led me to the front of his store to show me the sidewalk that pedestrians sidestep and electric scooter riders slow down around.

He said he’s tried to get the attention of city officials, but nothing has been done.

The broken sidewalk in front of Nazmul Chaudhry's shop in Little Bangladesh.

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Yusra Farzan

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LAist

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He’s hoping that will soon change. He said then-candidate Nithya Raman spent time in the historic enclave just north of Koreatown this fall, talking with community members about their problems. For the first time since he moved to the United States in 1989, Chaudhry is excited about a mayoral election.

“Everybody's happy because we've never seen anyone [come] like that directly to us,” Chaudhry said.

Mayor-elect Raman is of Indian descent and an immigrant. When she takes office, she will be the first South Asian mayor of Los Angeles. Chaudhry is proud of that distinction. But what means more to him is that Raman spent time walking the streets of Little Bangladesh, visiting businesses and speaking to community members about their concerns. Chaudhry said that, because of that, he asked all his customers and family members to vote for Raman. At dinner parties, Chaudhry said, Bengalis would share how they were excited to vote for Raman in this election.

Nazmul Chaudhry and one of his customers, Mohamed Hassen. They both voted for Nithya Raman for mayor.

In the Little Bangladesh area, vote returns to date show Raman with a 2-to-1 margin over Mayor Karen Bass.

 "Hopefully she's gonna take care of the city," Chaudhry said.

His business has been hit hard after federal immigration raids ramped up in Southern California. People are afraid to leave their homes for fear of being taken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And for those who do come to his store, he said, they are met with increased prices because of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump's administration on imported goods.

Nazmul Chaudry offers a lunch buffet at his restaurant but he has seen a drop in foot traffic after ICE raids ramped up.

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Yusra Farzan

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LAist

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"Everybody's suffering actually these days," Chaudhry said. “If you see, Nov. 3 is a huge change because people [are] fed up."

Chaudhry also said city services don’t do a good job keeping the streets clean. So he takes it upon himself to pick up trash in front of his shop.

A few weeks before Election Day, Raman posted a social media video from Little Bangladesh addressing the trash along the street.

His relatives in New York told Chaudhry that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, also of Indian descent, has “changed the whole city.” He’s hoping for some of that change in Los Angeles when Raman takes office in December.

Shift away from identity politics

While Raman’s Indian background was a feature of her campaign, it was “not the central thesis,” said Sara Sadhwani,  an associate professor of politics at Pomona College and a senior researcher with AAPI Data.

In 2020, when Kamala Harris, also of Indian descent, was running for vice president, Sadhwani said, she conducted research on Indian Americans who wanted to see more representation in politics. In 2024, some of them turned away from Harris.

“When the economy is bad, identity slips away as the top issue on someone's mind,” she said.

Identity politics, Sadhwani said, was important in 2008 when the nation elected the first Black president, Barack Obama.

Los Angeles mayor-elect Nithya Raman poses for a photograph with family members after casting her vote on Election Day during the midterm elections at the Silverlake Community Church.

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Frederic J. Brown

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AFP via Getty Images

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“ We're ushering in a new political generation of millennials and Gen Z; diversity is just expected at this point amongst a vast majority of Americans,” she said, highlighting how at the last census more people identified as multiracial.

Nationally too, Sadhwani said, thec ountry is seeing a shift. South Asians have gone from “model minority” to “governing minority.”

”The old script was that for Indian Americans, for South Asians, that being that quiet professional is what success meant,” she said. “When we look at Raman and also Mamdani, they're fighting for executive power in very visible, very messy city politics, and they won not by following the rules, but they won by challenging the status quo.”

South Asians as a political force

That idea resonates with Faizah Malik, managing attorney for housing justice at Public Counsel and a former L.A. City Council candidate.

“When we were growing up, our parents said, ‘Just keep your head down, go to school, get educated, make a nice life for your family, and that's it,’” she said. “Politics was not really part of the conversation, but I think what we're seeing is that we can run for office, we can win by being our full selves.”

This is an exciting time, she said, for “South Asian political empowerment,” with Raman set to join Mamdani in leading the country’s two largest cities.

Malik said that, as a housing advocate, she cares about Raman’s fight “to build more housing around the city that people can afford, her fight to keep renters in their homes, to prevent homelessness, her fight to try and really solve our homelessness crisis but also be efficient with our public dollars.”

Nikita Chaudhry, an actor and political organizer, wants to see Raman revitalize L.A.’s film industry, “to call the city the home of Hollywood again.”

“Having that kind of representation and knowing that it exists is really exciting because I think and hope it will activate South Asian Americans of all ages to get more involved in their communities,” Chaudhry said.

Raman's and Mamdani’s victories were years in the making, Chaudhry said: from organizing in their communities to holding other elected positions to engaging voters who are otherwise ignored by elected officials. And she hopes that it will inspire other South Asians to become more involved in their communities.

“If you're feeling activated, if you're feeling excited, that's great," she said. "Take that energy and the time and the skills and the specificity of what fires you up towards your local organization, towards your neighborhood, towards your community.”

As the race to represent L.A.’s Council District 9 remains too close to call, candidate Estuardo Mazariegos’ campaign has accused the campaign of Jose Ugarte, the front-runner, of potential ballot tampering.

The Mazariegos campaign made the accusations Monday, saying it had filed a complaint with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. In a press release, the campaign alleged that representatives for the Ugarte campaign had collected voters’ ballots to drop off without signing the appropriate line identifying the individual who returned the ballot.

In one case, Mazariegos’ team accused Ugarte campaigners of filling out a ballot on a voter’s behalf without her knowledge of who she was voting for.

“Taking people’s ballots, filling them out, and not following legal voter assistance guidelines in a district that has faced so much disenfranchisement is disgusting,” Mazariegos said in a statement.

Mike Sanchez, a spokesperson for the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, said his office had forwarded the news release to the district attorney for review. He also pointed to the California Elections Code, which says that a “ballot shall not be disqualified solely because the person authorized to return it did not provide on the identification envelope their name or signature.”

Under California law, a voter can authorize another person to return their mail-in ballot — an approach also called ballot harvesting.

Justin Levitt, a  professor of constitutional law at Loyola Marymount University, told AirTalk Tuesday that there is no legal limit on the number of ballots an individual can turn in on others’ behalf, so long as they aren’t being compensated per ballot returned.

“Even if there were some sort of administrative wrongdoing, as long as there's no indication of fraud with the ballot itself, those ballots will all be counted,” he said.

Levitt said, however, that signing a ballot and then handing it to someone else to fill out would be illegal.

“ To the extent that there are allegations now that the DA may investigate, I suspect that's what they'll be focusing on,” Levitt continued.

The Mazariegos campaign also sent a collection of photos to the press, including one of a campaigner, USC student Amir King, returning a stack of ballots at a ballot drop box.

The Mazariegos campaign alleged that representatives for the Ugarte campaign had collected voters’ ballots to drop off without signing the appropriate line identifying the individual who returned the ballot.

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Courtesy of Estuardo Mazariegos' Campaign

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Ugarte’s campaign responded to the accusations by pointing to a post by King on Instagram in which he accused the Mazariegos campaign of bullying him and making false claims about him.

“Why is he attacking me? For participating in our democracy, as is my right under California state law and for helping others participate in democracy, as is their right under California state law,” King said in the post.

As of Tuesday morning, just under 300 ballots separate Ugarte and Mazariegos, with 44,000 ballots left to count in L.A. County. It’s not clear how many ballots in Council District 9 are left to count.