The Brief

To those barreling through city streets: Your days of speeding are numbered.

Automatic speed cameras will start issuing tickets along Long Beach’s most nefarious roadways next year, in a bid to curb rising traffic fatalities and injuries.

This comes after the Long Beach City Council on Tuesday approved two plans that outline the locations for the cameras, explain their placement, chart the expected cost of the program and govern how data will be collected.

Officials expect to install the cameras in the spring and begin issuing warning citations for 60 days through the summer. Speeding drivers will begin receiving fines in the fall.

How will it work?

The 18 camera locations were chosen for their high rates of street racing, speeding and pedestrian collisions. Most locations are also in or near a school zone.

Cameras had to be placed within either a federally designated safety corridor, school zone or an area that has received calls for enforcement for four separate incidents within the last two years.

A screenshot from a City Council presentation shows the locations for speed cameras.

There is some overlap. Long Beach Boulevard, for example, will have cameras installed at three locations, each for different reasons: one between E. San Antonio Drive and 45th Street, due to being a high-injury network and a bustling truck route; another between Victoria and Market Street for its rampant street racing despite being a school zone; and a third one covering Artesia Boulevard to 70th Street, due to having the highest rate of street racing in the city. It is also a common route for trucks.

There will be warnings you’re approaching a speed camera, said Public Works Director Josh Hickman. Signage will be posted within 500 feet of the pole-mounted devices with “Photo Enforced” in bold below, with other signage posted further back to allow drivers a chance to decelerate.

The only data collected will be a photograph of a driver’s rear license plate. Using that, Public Works employees will issue tickets to their registered owners, who could be a different person than the driver. Cameras will not photograph people’s faces, and license plate data will not be shared with any law enforcement.

Drivers will have time to adjust. Tickets issued in the first 60 days will come only with a warning. Afterwards, owners of any car speeding over 11 mph face a fine of $50, with a cost escalator up to $500 for those driving 100 mph.

Tickets can be paid, negotiated down as much as 80% based on income level or swapped for community service. Data is erased once the ticket is resolved.

The program will cost $835,000 in the first year, with an annual operating cost of about $1.6 million. Over the five-year period it’s expected to run, officials estimate it will cost a total of $8.9 million, covered wholly by citations issued.

Any additional profits from citations will be used to pay for traffic calming improvements, like speed bumps, flashing beacons and lane narrowing.

How’d we get here?

This comes two years after the city was approved to join a state pilot for speed cameras alongside six other cities. But so far, only one, San Francisco, has launched the program, while others continue to lag behind.

Since the bill authorizing the pilot was signed in October 2023, there have been more than 3,200 crashes in Long Beach — of those, more than 20% resulted from speeding, according to state collision data. Of the nearly 3,000 people injured in traffic collisions in 2024, speed was the leading factor in a quarter of the crashes.

According to a 2025 report released last week by the Southern California Association of Governments. The city from 2014 to 2024 saw more than 400 people killed and another 40,000 injured by collisions.

Long Beach’s 55 traffic fatal collisions this year have outpaced homicides and exceeded last year’s total of 36 killed in crashes.

Erin Hoops, with the pro-street-safety group Carlite Long Beach, said this has been “the deadliest year since before the 1990s.”

What’s next?

The pilot will be deemed a success if it can bring a 20% reduction in excessive speeding or repeat offenses at the chosen locations, officials said.

“I know there’s a lot of enthusiasm here, on the public side, the City Council side, I think the timing couldn’t be better,” said Mayor Rex Richardson. “The traffic safety, the incidents of vehicle fatalities have increased post-pandemic and also fluctuate wildly.”

Depending on the pilot’s success, council members said they plan to push California legislators to bring additional cameras to nearby state roads, including Pacific Coast Highway.

Recent legislation will allow Caltrans to install 35 cameras to ticket drivers speeding through construction and maintenance zones along PCH. Signed in October, it will run through 2032.

How does the public feel?

Despite the public concern over fatalities, the camera’s introduction was received with mixed results. Surveys that ran from October to November found 48% of respondents opposed the cameras, while 41% supported them. Ninety-five of the 98 responses received focused on the city’s impact report, though officials were scant on details of what was said in the responses.

No changes were made as a result of the public engagement, officials said.

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.