The Brief

Thousands of municipal jobs in the city of L.A. have gone unfilled since the end of the pandemic, with vacancy rates in some departments at double or even triple their pre-pandemic levels.

City officials chalk it up to a number of factors, including a greater number of resignations during COVID and slow hiring practices. The result: Angelenos are frustrated by response times for city services, and city workers are stressed out by higher workloads and, in some instances, mandatory overtime.

“Across the city, we are finding that because of our vacancy rates, we are providing less than the service that we should be providing to our constituents,” said City Councilmember Tim McOsker, who chairs the council’s Personnel, Audits and Hiring Committee.

Some of those vacancy rates are startling. A decade ago, the vacancy rate for city jobs was 10%, excluding the Department of Water and Power, L.A. World Airports, and the Harbor Department. Just before the pandemic, it was 11%.

Today, there is a 17.4% vacancy rate citywide, or 9,786 unfilled positions, according to a September report by L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia.

It’s even worse in some departments. The Bureau of Street Lighting faces a 32% rate, the Recreation and Parks Department has a 23% rate and the Sanitation Department has a 21% rate. Sanitation alone has more than 800 unfilled jobs.

Mejia’s report called it “a growing crisis that affects every Angeleno’s safety and well-being,” adding that the staffing shortage is “chronic and rampant.”

Mayor Karen Bass admits the vacancy rate is a problem. “You call up and you want something picked up and you wonder why it takes so long — that’s exactly why,” Bass told LAist.

“City services are slower,” she said.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass (center) attended a recent L.A. city job fair.

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Frank Stoltze

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LAist

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At Sanitation, spokesperson Elena Stern acknowledged the high vacancy rate but maintained the department is picking up more tonnage of trash in recent years. That’s little consolation for Steve Lomke, who’s tired of the trash accumulating on the streets of his Fairfax District neighborhood.

“It’s just depressing,” he said.

When visitors come from out of town, he likes to walk them from his home a few blocks to CBS Television City.

“They’re appalled by the amount of trash on the sidewalk,” said Lomke, 70, a retired architect. “It’s not good for the morale of the city.”

Behind the numbers 

 Why are vacancy rates so high? COVID is largely to blame, says Dana Brown, who heads the city’s personnel department. More than 2,000 people took early retirement under a city program designed to address a dramatic drop in revenues in 2020, she said.

“That’s how we got behind,” she said. “We are still catching up.”

Like all employers, the city was also affected by the Great Resignation — the pandemic-era phenomenon of young people leaving their jobs and baby boomers retiring.

Brown also said onerous civil service rules make rapid hiring nearly impossible.

Slow testing, interviewing, and vetting processes add to what can be a six-month or more ordeal of hiring somebody new to the city.

“The processes are a little archaic,” Brown said.

Brown also said her own department is struggling with a 12% vacancy rate, slowing hiring.

High vacancy rates can mean a city job is harder

Vacancy rates and their effects vary across departments. With a vacancy rate of 15%, the Housing Department “has said that one of the challenges with enforcing tenant protections is having adequate staff to follow up on the complaints,” said Chief Deputy Controller Rick Cole.

The LAPD’s response time for non-emergency calls can be over an hour as a result of a 16% vacancy rate, according to Chief Michel Moore. “That’s just one result” of having fewer officers, he said.

Some police reform advocates hail a shrinking department, saying police should hand over a lot of duties to unarmed responders anyway.

There are 500 open positions at LAX.

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Kelly Barrie

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Courtesy of Los Angeles World Airports

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LAX has 500 positions open — some alongside Joe Martinez, who works the day shift as a mechanic at a city maintenance facility near the tarmac, fixing airport trucks, buses, and other vehicles.

“It is very stressful for us,” Martinez told LAist during a recent break from work. “We are trying to play catch-up on a daily basis.”

For at least three years now, he and his colleagues have been scrambling to keep up amid a mechanic shortage that plagues the shop. Martinez, 57, said he’s regularly forced to work mandatory overtime because nearly half of LAX mechanic jobs are unfilled.

The airport never closes, and the need for repairs never ceases. “It's kinda like ‘OK, am I going to be home for the holidays. Am I going to have to give up Christmas and Thanksgiving with my family?” Martinez said.

The controller’s report makes note of vacancies leading to “an increase in overtime costs, labor tension, stress and potential increases in worker compensation costs over the long run.”

Possible solutions

The report by the controller makes a series of recommendations, including overhauling the civil service system. That’s unlikely, given it would require changes to the city charter.

The controller also recommends convening a task force of city and union leaders and building on programs like Targeted Local Hiring, which provides people who live in the city a faster track to entry-level jobs.

Brown said her department is working to improve hiring practices. She pointed to a pilot program with the Engineers and Architects Association to allow outside candidates to apply for certain jobs previously open only to current employees.

“That is a huge, huge step in the direction of allowing people to bring their professional talent into the city,” she said.

At the same time, finding a city job online isn’t easy. Not all jobs are listed on the personnel website. You have to go to each individual department’s website to see everything that’s available.

Brown is also finding that her personnel department needs to adjust its recruiting message.

Young jobseekers are as interested in meaningful work as lucrative government pensions.

A personnel official with L.A. County agreed.

“Traditionally we have not had to rely on that message” of government as a social service that helps communities, said Johan Julin, chief of hiring strategies for the county.  “We are realizing that really resonates with the younger generation.”

The county vacancy rate is 14%. It's typically 6 or 7%, according to Julin.

'Confusing' application process

Charles Goldman, a senior economist at the RAND Corporation who co-authored a study on public sector hiring in 2021, said young people found the process of applying for jobs “very confusing.”

“They often were not sure where to go to make an application or to find job listings,” he said. “College and university students have low awareness of the range of opportunities available in the public sector,” his report said.

The city is in part relying on an old solution to address some of these issues — they're holding more job fairs.

At a recent fair in Wilmington, Erin Meyers visited a booth set up by the L.A. Harbor Department. He recently graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from Cal State Long Beach.

Meyers, 26, landed an interview next month, but knows the process for getting hired by the city is “somewhat daunting.” Still, he thinks it's worth it.

“In terms of the work-life balance, it’s preferred,” said Meyers, comparing a city job to one in the private sector. “I would argue that being able to go home at a set time is more important than getting an extra 5K a year.”

His mother, Gina Martinez, is “thrilled.”

“I would love it if he went to work for the city,” she said.

An East Hollywood nursing home that nearly lost its license this year because of repeated state citations for deaths of residents at the facility was cited again last month after another person died.

The California Department of Public Health cited Brier Oak on Sunset after a 92-year-old resident bled to death on Sept. 27. Staff members had continued injecting her with blood thinners over a 40-hour period in violation of clinical guidelines.

It’s an AA citation, the most severe the department issues when violations of care standards are determined to be a substantial factor in someone’s death. The facility faces a $120,000 fine.

These kinds of citations are rare. The department has recently issued, on average, fewer than 20 AA citations yearly across more than 1,200 skilled nursing facilities in California.

Brier Oak has received three AA citations for patient deaths since late 2022.

State regulations require authorities to suspend or revoke the licenses of any facilities that get two AA citations within a period of 24 months.

The state Public Health Department began that process with Brier Oak in May based on resident deaths in 2022 and 2024. But officials dropped that effort later because they say they determined the two patient deaths had occurred 26 months apart — just outside of the two-year window.

A spokesperson for the company that owns Brier Oak told LAist it has appealed the first two citations and is considering whether to appeal the third.

Advocates for nursing home residents say the recent death could have been avoided if the state had taken action.

“There were red flags, and a lot of these red flags existed prior to the death of this poor resident,” said Tony Chicotel, senior staff attorney with  California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.

The state said Brier Oak has until Dec. 19 to notify the department if it intends to appeal.

What led to the patient deaths?

In the recent death at Brier Oak cited by the state, multiple communication and technical failures by nursing staff led to the patient bleeding out over a period of 40 hours, according to the citation.

The 92-year-old patient was immobile and had been prescribed a blood thinner called heparin to help prevent blood clots from forming. But once a patient is bleeding, those injections make bleeding worse, and potentially fatal.

When nursing staff found bright red blood in the resident’s diaper the day before she died, Brier Oak failed to follow established processes for documenting the bleeding or communicating it to a nurse practitioner or medical doctor, according to the citation.

Nurses told state authorities they delayed informing physicians because they “get mad” when contacted in the middle of the night.

The facility’s staff also failed to fully assess the patient to determine the possible causes of the bleeding and or to properly monitor the issue during crucial periods, according to the citation.

She suffered four internal bleeding episodes over 40 hours and continued to receive blood thinner injections.

The citation says a nurse practitioner at Brier Oak told state licensing authorities later that if she’d been informed about the patient’s ongoing bleeding, she would have stopped the blood thinner and sent her to a hospital.

In 2022, Brier Oak received a AA citation after a 62-year-old woman died from respiratory failure in part because nurses hadn’t been trained to operate her breathing machine.

In 2024, the nursing home got another AA citation. This time, a 63-year-old woman with paraplegia and severe obesity fell from her bed and died while a nursing assistant was changing her. The assistant was alone, even though the woman’s care plan required two staff members.

Who owns Brier Oak?

Brier Oak on Sunset is primarily owned by Genesis Healthcare, a publicly-traded nursing home operator that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July.

Once the largest nursing home operator in the U.S., Genesis was facing billions in debt when it declared bankruptcy, according to court filings. That includes millions in potential damages from lawsuits related to patient care failures.

In a brief statement to LAist, a company spokesperson said it's still considering whether or not to appeal the recent citation at Brier Oak.

The citation should trigger a suspension or revocation of the facility's license, according to state regulations. The latter means it would have to close its doors. The two most recent deaths and citations at the facility occurred within the two-year window.

The California Department of Public Health confirmed it cited Brier Oak on Nov. 26.

The department said the facility submitted a required written response before a Dec. 6 deadline, showing how it will fix the problems and prevent them from happening again..

The department determined Brier Oak was back in compliance during an onsite visit last week, a representative told LAist.

Brier Oak on Sunset currently houses about 150 patients, according to state records.

A bankruptcy judge has stalled the proposed sale of Genesis Healthcare to an affiliate of one of its investors.

Experts say it’s unclear whether the state would revoke the license of an owner who is actively trying to sell and turn over operations to someone else.

It’s been a rough start to ski and snowboard season for California mountain towns. Snowfall is well below average, but Christmas could come with some of the white stuff. Here's where things stand:

Hmmm. Didn’t we just have a record storm?

Yes. That big atmospheric river that hit Southern California last month made it one of the wettest Novembers on records. But since then, it’s been unusually warm and dry, which is not good for mountain towns that depend on snow, and the outdoor enthusiasts that flock to them.

How bad is it?

California’s snowpack is about 20% of normal for this time of the year, according to the state’s snow-tracking website. Southern California isn’t quite as bad off — we’ve gotten about half our normal snowfall so far.

As for the resorts, only about 20% of the terrain at Bear Mountain in Big Bear is open. About 35% of Mammoth Mountain is open.

Can’t they just make snow?

They are, but the unusually warm temperatures have curbed resorts’ ability to make enough snow to open more terrain. “If you're blowing water into 40-degrees, it's going to stay water,” said Justin Kanton, a spokesperson for Big Bear Mountain Resort. “ So as much as people probably would want us to just crank the snow guns all day, every day up here and just get things moving, that's not really possible.”

But there’s a silver lining!

The dry weather has allowed Caltrans to make good progress toward opening Highway 38, said Evan Engle, who chairs the board of the Big Bear Chamber of Commerce. The road typically handles up to 40% of traffic up to the mountain town, Engle said. But it’s been closed since September when it got washed out by Tropical Storm Mario.

Getting it open as soon as possible is key to keeping visitor traffic manageable, and getting supplies to Big Bear.

What’s the snow outlook?

SoCal mountains are likely to see some precipitation around Christmas, said Kyle Wheeler, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. But with temperatures not expected to drop much, it’s uncertain how much of it will be white, Wheeler said.

If you go to Big Bear: 

• If you plan to hit the slopes, get on it early, when the snow is at its best given the warm conditions. 
• No snow? There’s more to do than ski and snowboard. Check this list of winter fun events.  
• Worried about traffic? Consider going up earlier in the week. If you can’t do that, consider taking Highway 18 through Lucerne Valley. It’s a longer route if you’re coming from L.A., but less traveled, and less likely to make you car sick (fewer tight curves). 

The Los Angeles Police Department used more than 2,400 crowd control munitions in response to protests from June 6 to 14, according to a new report.

Officers used a total of 2,431 less-lethal projectile rounds and 35 canisters of tear gas over the nine days, according to LAPD reports. The department recorded 12 injuries officers caused with those weapons.

The LAPD released the missing report last week after LAist identified the use of crowd control weapons on four different days in June that had not been reported according to state law. Assembly Bill 48, which went into effect in 2022, limits when and how crowd control weapons can be used, and requires law enforcement agencies to publicly release reports on their use within 60 days.

A 30-day extension for these reports can be granted in some cases, but the LAPD released this report about three months late even if an extension was justified.

Officials acknowledged they were out of compliance on Dec. 10 before releasing the report, saying the delay “stems from the extraordinary volume and complexity of incidents” over that time.

This report is different from others

It is unusual for a crowd control report to include more than one day, and the report for June 9 through 14 covered six days and “45 sepearte [sic] non categorical use of force incidents.”

It does not describe any of those use of force incidents specifically, and the LAPD has not yet responded to LAist’s request for more detailed descriptions of those incidents.

The report also considered the entire six days to have been one continuous protest, though it included several anti-ICE protests over the week and the national “No Kings” protest on June 14.

Two reports released earlier this year for June 6 and 8 covered single days and provided more detailed descriptions of incidents where the LAPD used less-lethal munitions against protesters.