The Brief

An Orange County supervisor is pushing forward with calls to dig deeper into how his colleague, Supervisor Andrew Do, routed millions of county dollars into a nonprofit overseen by Do’s 22-year-old daughter — without disclosing the family connection.

During the county supervisors’ meeting Tuesday, Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento noted his previous call for a review of the county’s funding of Viet America Society, which was first reported by LAist last month.

Timeline requested

“There is additional information that needs to be understood. I think that the public and members of this board need to understand it as well,” Sarmiento said at Tuesday’s meeting. He asked county CEO Frank Kim to develop a timeline of the funding.

“I think it's something that we all need to make sure that we at least — whether we individually understand [as supervisors] or we're able to share with the public — I think it's something that I'd like to have some, some response on,” Sarmiento said.

Kim responded that he’d be happy to put together a timeline and present it to Sarmiento and any other supervisors who are interested.

Kim noted staff have been reviewing the documents because of public records requests they’ve been receiving. LAist has been requesting contract and payment records around the nonprofit group over the last several weeks.

Do did not speak about the issue at Tuesday’s meeting, and hasn’t responded to multiple requests for comment from LAist about his role in directing millions in pandemic relief funds earmarked to feed struggling seniors to his daughter’s group.

LAist’s latest article, published Monday afternoon, reported that the nonprofit run by Do’s daughter, Rhiannon, failed to submit federally-required audits detailing how it spent the money. Sarmiento said he’s concerned about the missing audits LAist discovered.

A preliminary review by the county’s attorneys has not found anything illegal, Sarmiento said at Tuesday’s meeting.

But, Sarmiento said, “even if something is not legally incorrect doesn't make it ethically correct.”

The county’s top lawyer, Leon Page, declined to comment on whether the county had a duty to ensure the nonprofit submitted its required audits. Federal officials told LAist that the county did have that responsibility.

Ethics reform vote is delayed by a month

In response to LAist’s reporting, Sarmiento proposed a series of ethics reforms, which were initially scheduled to be up for approval Tuesday.

His proposal would require disclosure of supervisors’ family connections before votes, and boost public transparency about the dollars supervisors divvy up in their districts.

The county’s practice has been to let supervisors award multimillion-dollar contracts without public disclosure at meetings. Sarmiento’s proposal, if approved, would require a quarterly log of who’s getting those contracts.

The reforms were scheduled for a vote on Tuesday, and have had public support from Sarmiento and Supervisor Katrina Foley. They’re the two supervisors who have raised public concerns about Do’s actions.

Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, Sarmiento said he was delaying the reform vote to Jan. 23, to give time to adjust the proposal based on concerns raised by Kim and Supervisor Don Wagner.

Sarmiento said he remains committed to the core reforms.

“It's such an important item that I want to make sure that we get this right,” he said. “This is something that's not being tabled, this is something that's simply being [postponed].”

Sarmiento has said his reform proposal is partly in response to LAist’s reporting on Do.

'The public's trust is being eroded'

“The public's trust is being eroded by people who abuse the process,” he told LAist on Tuesday.

“I think it's important that the public understands what programs we're supporting [and] who's receiving public funds,” he added. “As we did in Santa Ana when I was mayor, we did a sunshine ordinance, we made sure that we had robust lobbyist disclosure policies. Those were things that I've always believed in.”

Sarmiento said the concerns that prompted the delay are around the proposal’s disclosure requirements for family members of supervisors’ staff, and the requirement that smaller nonprofits spend no more than 20% of their county funding on “indirect” or “administrative costs.”

“There's massive organizations [that receive county funding] and then there are very small organizations that don't have the sophistication,” Sarmiento told LAist. “So I wanted to make sure we were able to make sure they are treated fairly as well.”

Do does not address proposed reforms

Do did not speak about the proposed reforms at the meeting.

He left the meeting nearly an hour early, at the start of general public comments, and didn’t return. Do was the only supervisor to do so. He and his spokesperson Guadalupe Carrasco didn’t return text messages asking why he left.

The only public comment on the item was from Frances Marquez, a Cypress City Council member running for Do’s seat on the Board of Supervisors.

She said LAist’s reporting has revealed Do violated the public’s trust.

“As elected officials, the people of Orange County entrust us with doing what's right — to put their interests first, to abide by values of transparency, ethics, and accountability,” she said during her public comments.

“But as report after report has made it clear, allegations of corruption have put that trust into question,” she added. “Because an audit does not exist, we do not know if District 1's most at-risk residents received the meals they needed during a deadly pandemic.”

Do cannot run for re-election because of term limits, and has endorsed his co-chief of staff, Van Tran.

Tran has not responded to multiple requests for comment from LAist about the funding of Do’s daughter’s group.

Kaan Ayhan scored on the final kick of the match, and Turkey beat the United States 3-2 Thursday night for its only win of the World Cup.

Auston Trusty scored in the third minute and Sebastian Berhalter got a tying goal early in the second half for the Americans, who had already won Group D with victories over Paraguay and Australia. Coach Mauricio Pochettino’s team will meet Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Round of 32 on Wednesday.

Pochettino fielded nine new starters for this low-stakes game, but Christian Pulisic entered in the 58th minute. He hadn’t played since the first half of the Americans’ opener due to a calf injury.

Arda Güler and Orkun Kökçü scored in the first half of a resilient performance by Turkey, which had already been eliminated after losing its first two matches despite largely dominating both statistically.

Turkey improbably won in the eighth minute of stoppage time when Can Uzun got the ball in space on the back post and pushed it past sprawling goalkeeper Matt Turner to Ayhan, who slid to knock it home.

The game’s meaninglessness didn’t matter to the raucous sellout crowd that packed SoFi Stadium. The American team’s fan base has been energized by its strong start to this home World Cup -- and this Los Angeles-area crowd was still chanting and standing when Berhalter airmailed a long corner to Trusty, who made the stadium shake when he banged it home inside the back post.

Trusty’s goal was the Americans’ seventh of the tournament, tying their scoring record for any World Cup before knockout play even begins. It was also the 173rd goal of this tournament, breaking the record for the most combined goals scored in a World Cup set in Qatar four years ago — and doing it in four fewer matches.

Turkey evened it in the 10th minute with an excellent two-man game from Baris Alper Yilmaz and Güler, the 21-year-old Real Madrid rising star.

Berhalter tied it in the 49th minute by running on to a loose ball about 20 yards from the net for a vicious strike.

Pulisic replaced Tim Weah in the 58th minute for his first game action since the first half of their 4-1 victory over Paraguay nearly two weeks ago.

Pulisic said this week that he is ready to play again after coming out at halftime with a calf injury in the Americans’ home World Cup opener. The AC Milan midfielder entered the 2-2 game to an enormous roar, and he created a scoring opportunity just a couple of minutes later with a dynamic run down the left side.

Pulisic nearly scored again in the 63rd minute, but his quick shot off a nice pass from Berhalter was knocked off the goalpost by Turkey goalkeeper Ugurcan Cakir, and Brenden Aaronson botched the resulting sitter.

The traditional way of voting in Huntington Beach could be upended after a judge’s ruling this week in a case accusing the city of diluting the electoral power of its Latino residents.

What happened?

The judge ordered Surf City to adopt ranked-choice voting for the November general election. Ranked-choice voting is where voters rank all candidates in order of preference, so if your first choice is eliminated, your vote transfers to your second-choice candidate.

It’s also the type of voting that helped Zohran Mamdani seize victory in the New York City mayoral race.

Why it matters

The ruling comes in a legal challenge to the city’s at-large elections, arguing Latino voters are unfairly disadvantaged and unable to elect a candidate of their choice. Orange County Superior Court Judge Craig Griffin agreed with the plaintiffs’ argument that “racially polarized voting has regularly occurred in Huntington Beach elections.”

The backstory

The case was brought to court more than two years ago by the nonprofit group Southwest Voter Registration Education Project and Victor Valladares, a Huntington Beach resident and local Democratic activist.

They argued that the city’s predominantly Latino neighborhood of Oak View had suffered decades of neglect, in part because residents there lacked the voting power to get representation in city government.

The bigger picture

Dozens of cities across Orange County and elsewhere in California have faced similar challenges to at-large elections over the past decade. Most have settled out of court by adopting district elections, whereby voters elect a candidate to represent their area, rather than citywide.

The change has coincided with an increase in Latino city council members in some Orange County cities.

Why ranked-choice voting?

Judge Griffin wrote that ordering the city to adopt ranked-choice voting was a “less drastic remedy” to bolster Latinos’ voting power than district elections. Currently in Huntington Beach, all residents vote citywide for city council seats, and the top vote-getters win.

With district elections, only people within a particular district can vote for a particular seat, which advocates say helps ensure districts see themselves represented in their local government bodies.

Among the advantages of a ranked-choice system, advocates say, is that it gives voters more freedom to vote for their favorite candidate, even if they think that person won’t ultimately win.

What does the ruling say, exactly?

The ruling orders Huntington Beach to implement ranked-choice voting for the November 2026 general election, if the Orange County Registrar of Voters can support the quick switch. The ruling also calls for the city to elect all seven councilmembers at once, rather than staggering the elections, as it currently does per the city’s charter.

Judge Griffin had delayed his ruling earlier this year to consider the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which ruled that race cannot play a role in the drawing of voting districts. Griffin ultimately determined that “nothing in Callais alters this Court’s decision” in the Huntington Beach case.

What’s next?

Both sides have two weeks to raise objections to the tentative ruling. Kevin Shenkman, the attorney representing the plaintiffs, said he would not be surprised if the city appeals. City Attorney Mike Vigliotta told LAist in an email that his office is “reviewing the decision with outside counsel that litigated the case and determining next steps.”

We reached out to the Orange County Registrar of Voters for comment, and did not hear back before publication. If and when that changes, we will update this story.

How to attend Huntington Beach City Council meetings

• Huntington Beach holds City Council meetings on the first and third Tuesday of each month at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 2000 Main St.
• You can also watch City Council meetings remotely on HBTV via Channel 3 or online, or via the city’s website. (You can also find videos of previous council meetings there.)
• The public comment period happens toward the beginning of meetings.
• The city generally posts agendas for City Council meetings on the previous Friday. You can find the agenda on the city’s calendar or sign up there to have agendas sent to your inbox.

LAist staff writer Sammy Marvin also contributed to this report.

A judge has ruled that a Metro bus project in a congested area of Los Angeles can go forward, for now, without incorporating bike lanes that street safety advocates argue are required by city law.

The $400 million project will add dedicated bus lanes along a more than 12-mile-long stretch of Vermont Avenue between 120th Street and Sunset Boulevard. The stretch of road has among the highest rates of pedestrian deaths and injuries in the city.

The ruling from June 15 is a preliminary decision on an injunction request that’s part of a lawsuit brought by Joe Linton, who argues that L.A.’s role in the design and permitting process of the project triggers Measure HLA street safety improvements. The L.A. City Attorney and Metro have rejected that interpretation of the law.

Linton filed the lawsuit in April 2025. He is the editor of the transportation publication Streetsblog LA. Linton is filing the suit as a resident of L.A., not in his capacity as an editor for Streetsblog.

What is Measure HLA?

In 2015, the L.A. City Council adopted Mobility Plan 2035, which identified networks of streets to improve with protected bike lanes, pedestrian signal improvements, bus lanes and other enhancements.

Seven years later, frustrated with a lack of progress on the plan, the local nonprofit Streets for All began campaigning for Measure HLA. The ballot measure, which was passed by voters in 2024, legally requires the city to implement Mobility Plan upgrades when it repaves at least one-eighth of a mile of a street located in one of the networks.

What are the key issues at stake in the lawsuit? 

There’s been a longstanding disagreement over whether Measure HLA applies to Metro’s work in city projects. Metro and the city of L.A. say the ordinance only applies to projects the city leads. Streets for All and Linton say the question of who leads a project is a technicality and that the city is obligated to follow Measure HLA because it’s responsible for approving certain elements of the project’s designs and permits.

The Mobility Plan calls for bike lanes along the same stretch of Vermont Avenue that Metro is working on.

Linton’s lawsuit says the city didn’t implement the bike lanes in accordance with Measure HLA when it resurfaced Vermont Avenue service roads in the past and that it should implement the improvements as part of the Vermont Transit Corridor project.

What are the details of the injunction? 

As the lawsuit plays out in court, Linton requested an injunction that sought to prevent the city from approving final design plans for the project without the bike lanes that Measure HLA calls for.

L.A. County Superior Court Judge Kristin Escalante denied the request on June 15. Escalante wrote in her decision that the city neither initiated the project nor selected Vermont Avenue for resurfacing and won’t be constructing the project itself.

“Metro’s coordination with the city does not transform the project into one made by or undertaken by the city,” Escalante wrote in her decision.

In April and June, Escalante denied Linton’s requests for pre-trial judgement on two other issues in his lawsuit, including deciding if resurfacing work on Vermont Avenue service roads triggered HLA-mandated upgrades and determining whether the city’s HLA ordinance represents an “impermissible amendment” of the ordinance.

What happens next?

The ruling is a preliminary decision. Linton said his legal team is preparing for the case to go to trial.

 “We didn’t lose at the end of the day,” Linton told LAist. “It’s a setback, but it’s a skirmish and not the outcome of the battle.”

Metro said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

LAist reached out to the L.A. City Attorney and did not hear back.

Are other legal battles taking place? 

Yes, there are two additional ongoing lawsuits that are related.

Linton filed a second lawsuit saying L.A. is using loopholes, like “large asphalt repairs,” to skirt Measure HLA requirements.

Separate from Measure HLA, Metro is working on another bus rapid transit project to connect North Hollywood and Pasadena with construction set to begin this summer. Metro filed a lawsuit in May saying Burbank is, without authority, refusing to grant the transit agency construction permits. On June 18, Metro filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to get the necessary permits so it can begin construction in July and ensure the bus project is ready for the 2028 Olympics.