The Brief

The city of Los Angeles received 43% more street light complaints last year than it did the previous year, according to an LAist review of city data.

The neighborhoods with the highest number of complaints were downtown L.A. and Boyle Heights.

It’s part of a trend in which complaints about street lights in the city have increased significantly over nearly a decade — reaching a peak last year of nearly 46,000 complaints from people reporting outages. Around 40% of those complaints remain unresolved.

“If you don’t have a well-lit pathway ... it can make your walk really challenging,” said Cassy Horton, a cofounder of the Downtown Los Angeles Residents Association. “It almost segregates parts of our community from each other because it just is less easy to navigate to where you need to go.”

According to the city, there are several reasons for the backlog: people stealing copper wire from the street lights to sell or recycle, aging infrastructure, city budget shortages and a lack of maintenance staff.

Multiple complaints from residents reporting the same issues have also added to the problem, city authorities said.

“Data suggests this increase is largely due to constituents submitting multiple requests for the same issue to speed up resolution, combined with ongoing staffing and resource constraints that have added to the backlog,” L.A.’s Bureau of Street Lighting said in a statement.

LAist asked how many complaints were duplicates. The city has not yet responded to that request.

What do the data show?

The number of complaints to the city’s 311 system has ballooned over nearly 10 years, according to the data. In 2016, the city recorded about 15,600 complaints — that’s two-thirds fewer complaints than last year.

During that time, the largest relative spike in complaints occurred between 2021 and 2022, jumping 55% to 35,000, from approximately 23,000.

Since 2016, the numbers have gone down in three years, but the decreases were relatively small. The most recent reduction in complaints was between 2022 and 2023, when they fell by 8%.

More than 19,000 complaints made last year — 41% — remain open, meaning they haven’t yet been resolved, and 13,000 requests remain open from the previous year.

The data doesn’t include more granular details about each complaint. So it’s not immediately clear from the data alone how many complaints made from the same address are about a single issue, one of the reasons the bureau cited for the backlog.

But an LAist analysis estimates that 73% of the 27,000 complaints made last year that have been closed are likely for separate issues. LAist’s analysis found that proportion hovered around 90% most years since 2019.

In 2022, the year with the second-highest number of 311 complaints about streetlights, at least 76% of closed complaints were likely for separate issues, not duplicates.

In its explanation for the backlog, the bureau cited safety concerns when its teams were sent to repair street lights that have been “severely impacted by copper wire theft, particularly in areas obstructed by homeless and RV encampments.”

“These conditions not only delay repairs but also require coordination with the [Cleaning and Rapid Engagement, or CARE] team and LAPD to ensure safe access for our crews,” the bureau said.

The 311 data doesn’t include the suspected cause of each outage that prompted a complaint, but the bureau said around 40% of street light outages are because of people stealing copper wire and power. That’s up 10% to 15% from the bureau’s estimate in June 2024.

The bureau said reported incidents of copper wire and power theft have increased twelvefold in less than a decade.

Most outages are because of routine maintenance issues, like burned out bulbs or rusted materials, according to a report the bureau made to the City Council last year. In the report, the bureau also said “many” parts used to operate L.A.’s 223,000 street lights have been in service for nearly a century.

Property owners pay an annual fee that funds regular maintenance of street lights. The fee hasn’t increased since the late 1990s, so the bureau has collected $44 million a year for the last two and a half decades.

The budget for the current fiscal year eliminated 17% of positions in the bureau compared with the previous year. Those positions were all vacant at the time of the cuts but included some jobs focused on copper wire fortification and replacement, and regular maintenance.

“They don’t have the people power to work at their full capacity,” Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, whose district reports more street light issues than most other council districts, said to LAist.

To that end, Soto-Martinez is using $200,000 in discretionary funds from his office to fund overtime maintenance teams from the bureau to fix darkened streetlights over the weekends.

Downtown is the hardest hit

Gabriel Yeager, who works on improving public space for the DTLA Alliance, a business improvement district in downtown Los Angeles, said the work to restore working lights downtown is ongoing.

Yeager said that last year, DTLA Alliance worked with the Bureau of Street Lighting and then-councilmember Kevin de León’s office to fix 12 blocks of faulty street lights and string lights on 30 trees on 7th street.

“All of that calls attention [to] the importance of well-lit streets,” Yeager said. “They’re more inviting; they’re more welcoming; they’re more walkable. It’s easier to promote business.”

But there’s more to be done.

The Downtown L.A. Residents Association sent a letter to the bureau, Councilmember Ysabel Jurado and Mayor Karen Bass in early February asking the city “take action to address the lack of adequate lighting in downtown.”

More than 180 downtown residents added testimonies, saying a more illuminated city could attract families to live downtown and help pedestrians navigate uneven surfaces and other hazards on the sidewalks.

In a statement to LAist, Jurado confirmed she received the letter.

“Making sure Angelenos have well-lit public spaces has broad implications on quality of life, sense of safety and economic development,” she wrote.

In December, at her first City Council meeting, Jurado filed a motion directing the bureau to analyze street lighting issues in downtown L.A. and assess which areas might be suitable for alternative technologies, like solar-powered lights.

The City Council passed the motion unanimously. A report is expected in the next couple of weeks.

This story was originally published by Boyle Heights Beat on Nov. 21, 2025.

Rocío Jimenez of East Los Angeles beamed with pride watching her 13-year-old daughter perform at one of LA’s most iconic venues, the Hollywood Bowl.

With fellow members of the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles, or YOLA, she sang “Hasta la Raíz,” alongside Mexican singer-songwriter Natalia Lafourcade, with Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

“It was incredible to see this blend of cultures, classical music and Latino composers,” Jimenez said of the 2024 performance. “It’s great to see us in those spaces.” Seeing an artist like Lafourcade work with YOLA students is proof, she said, “that there are ways and paths to achieve greatness.”

Now, the YOLA program at Esteban E. Torres High School, which was part of the performance, is facing cuts.

This week, parents and students learned that the LA Phil is reducing programming at YOLA’s Torres site, according to an email sent to parents. Programming will take place through Dec. 12, the email notes, adding that orchestra rehearsals for currently enrolled YOLA students will take place twice per week in January. “We will help place interested students at other YOLA programs,” the email reads. Parents say cuts at Torres involve beginner programs.

“This decision comes as we assess how to best serve the Los Angeles community with recent economic challenges and shifts in funding for the organization,” the LA Phil said in a statement to Boyle Heights Beat on Thursday. “The LA Phil is committed to continuing YOLA programs in East LA and expanding the program into other parts of Los Angeles.”

YOLA, which was founded by the LA Phil, provides free instruments and ensemble training for thousands of young musicians who are 5 through 18 years old. The after-school program operates at sites across LA, including in Inglewood, Rampart District and Rampart/MacArthur Park. YOLA at Torres serves 165 students who attend East LA area schools, such as James A. Garfield High School and KIPP charter schools.

Families and community members call the announcement abrupt and urged the LA Phil to “clearly and publicly address whether internal organizational pressures played any role in the decision to reduce programming at the Torres site,” according to a press release with statements from parents.

“Parents report being told that all instructors at the Torres site would be removed except for the conductors. Families fear that this is not simply a reduction — but the beginning of a dismantling of YOLA at Torres,” according to the release.

In the release, parents noted that cuts come at a time when communities like East LA are grappling with fear and instability due to immigration raids that began over the summer. YOLA, they said, has been a safe space. They emphasized that no other YOLA site in LA “is being cut or reduced due to ‘funding.’”

“Only Torres — the site serving East LA’s predominantly Latino community — is affected,” they said in the release.

The programming reduction comes as staff at all YOLA sites filed for union representation with the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada, according to the YOLA United Teaching Artists Instagram page.

On Instagram, Yola United Teaching Artists said that AFM Local 47 reached out to LA Phil management to notify them “of our majority support for unionization at all YOLA facilities and asking them to voluntarily recognize and bargain with the union.”

“We have reason to believe they learned about the organizing efforts through other channels,” the Instagram post read. “Unfortunately, we believe that, in response to our unionization efforts, they took the punitive step of letting the TAs at the YOLA [at] Torres go,” the post continued.

The group said it filed for representation with the National Labor Relations Board as well as filing unfair labor practice charges against the LA Phil. “This is unlawful, and we will fight it together,” they said.

Carolyn McKnight, a former principal at Torres East LA Performing Arts Magnet, told the Boyle Heights Beat that she worked on bringing the program to the school. Losing it, she said, “will be a huge loss for arts education in our community.”

She added that because of the program, students received access to tutoring, college application guidance and opportunities to travel to places like Seoul, Mexico City and London.

“Having free music instruction for kids from third grade through high school for any kid willing to show up with the full support of their parents – it is priceless,” McKnight said via email.

LA Phil Chief People Officer Emanuel Maxwell met with parents and students at Torres High on Wednesday. Students held signs, declaring “LA Phil: Don’t Silence Us!” and “Músicos Si Capitalismo No.”

“Kids love YOLA, and they can’t stop us from going to our dreams,” a young boy shouted into a microphone as he faced Maxwell.

“Our teachers aren’t only our support musically and educationally, but they’re there to help us mentally,” another student said. “You taking that away from us, is taking away a support that some of us don’t have at home.”

Luisa Rios, a Garfield High parent whose son is involved in YOLA at Torres, was inspired to see youth “fighting for something that they’re passionate about.”

“They felt disrespected. You could see the emotion,” she said. “A lot of these students are pursuing higher education based on [wanting] to become a professional orchestra player.”

As for Jimenez, she is looking for solutions. “We were not given the chance to even fundraise,” she said.

“We would love to just find a solution, to find a way where everyone wins, and honor the LA Phil’s mission,” she said. “We love the program. It’s devastating.”

At a time when the federal government is dismantling civil rights protections in K-12 schools, California is expanding them — although some wonder how far the state will go to combat discrimination in schools.

A new law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last month, creates an Office of Civil Rights within the California Department of Education. The office will have a staff of at least six, including an antisemitism coordinator, who will educate school districts about the harms of bias and investigate discrimination complaints.

“I think it’s a good idea and the state of California will pull it off. The risks are small and the possibility for good is large,” said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. “But for it to be successful, it has to have real responsibility and real power.”

The new law stems from a surge in antisemitic incidents in California last year following the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in Israel and the ensuing violence in Gaza. Authored by Assemblyman Rick Zbur and Assemblywoman Dawn Addis, the law is intended to eliminate anti-Jewish and other bias in the classroom and ensure that students of all ethnicities and religions feel protected.

But the road to Newsom’s desk was not smooth. The bill faced tough opposition from the California Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union, which argued that the law would limit teachers’ right to free speech by curbing their ability to discuss the conflict in Gaza or other topical issues. The union declined to comment for this article.

Zbur, a Democrat from Los Angeles who was among the law’s authors, said the new Office of Civil Rights and the antisemitism coordinator are not intended to punish teachers. The idea, he said, is to help schools stamp out bullying, discrimination and other acts targeting specific groups of students.

“The idea that this law is about policing is hogwash,” Zbur said. “It’s intended to be productive, to provide districts with resources so they can prevent students from being harmed in school.”

Federal layoffs and closures

Discrimination has long been illegal in California schools. Individuals who feel they’ve been discriminated against can file complaints with the state’s Civil Rights Department or with their local school district. But much K-12 anti-discrimination enforcement has fallen on the federal government’s Office of Civil Rights. Created in the mid-1960s, the office investigates complaints about a range of issues, such as school segregation, unfair discipline practices and whether students with disabilities or English learners are receiving the services they’re entitled to.

In March, the Trump administration announced it was laying off nearly half of the U.S. Department of Education workforce and closing numerous branches of the Office of Civil Rights, including the one in California. That’s meant a steep decline in the number of cases and long delays for those the office investigates. In the three months after the Department of Education cuts, for example, the office received nearly 5,000 complaints but investigated only 309.

On Tuesday, the Department of Education went even further, spinning off some of the agency’s largest responsibilities to other federal departments — including much of the administration of elementary and high school funding. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s conservative vision for the country that so far Trump has followed, calls for the Office of Civil Rights to become part of the Department of Justice and for it to “reject gender ideology and critical race theory.”

The U.S. Department of Education didn’t respond to a request for comment.

‘Cutting off funding, that’s what works’

California’s new Office of Civil Rights will have a director and several coordinators who will oversee anti-discrimination cases based on race and ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and religion. The director and anti-discrimination coordinators will be appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Legislature, likely after Jan. 1.

The office will provide schools with materials about preventing discrimination, and work with districts that have been the subject of complaints from students, families or the public. In serious cases, the office will recommend more intensive assistance to the state Department of Education to correct problems. For districts that persistently flout anti-discrimination laws, “the department may use any means necessary to effect compliance,” according to laws already in place. That may include cutting funding for textbooks or other materials found to be discriminatory.

The office will also submit an annual report to the Legislature on the overall picture of discrimination in schools, including the number of complaints, how they were resolved, and their outcomes.

But to be successful, the office will have to be nonpartisan, transparent and fair, Orfield said. Cases against a school should include strong evidence, and schools should have the opportunity to defend themselves and appeal a verdict if they believe it was wrongly issued.

And the office should not shy away from cutting funds to schools that don’t comply, he said. In the 1960s and ‘70s, the federal Office of Civil Rights cut funds to more than 100 schools in the South that refused to desegregate — a move that may have been the only way to force compliance, Orfield said.

“Cutting off funding, that’s what works,” he said. “Although if you’re going to have sanctions, there must be due process.”

Photo ops and reports?

Mark Rosenbaum, senior special counsel for strategic litigation for the public interest law firm Public Counsel, agreed that enforcement will be the key to whether the new office is effective.

“If the office just issues reports and does photo ops, we don’t need another one of those,” Rosenbaum said. “The issue is whether or not they can enforce these rights across the board.”

He’d also like to see the office take a more proactive approach instead of only responding to individuals’ complaints. Education itself, he said, is a civil right, and too many students are not receiving the high-quality lessons in safe, well-equipped schools that they’re entitled to. Rosenbaum’s firm recently sued the state over substandard school facilities.

Still, he’s happy to see the office get off the ground, particularly in light of the federal cuts to civil rights enforcement.

“There’s an urgency for California to fill a void,” Rosenbaum said. “It should have happened decades ago, but it’s a good start.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

The U.S. government on Thursday released a new crash test dummy design that advocates believe will help make cars safer for women.

The Department of Transportation will consider using the dummy in the government's vehicle crash test five star-ratings once a final rule is adopted, the agency said in a news release.

Women are 73% more likely to be injured in a head-on crash, and they are 17% more likely to be killed in a car crash, than men.

The standard crash test dummy used in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration five-star vehicle testing was developed in 1978 and was modeled after a 5-foot-9 (175-centimeter), 171-pound (78-kilogram) man. The female dummy is smaller and has a rubber jacket to represent breasts. It's routinely tested in the passenger or back seat but seldom in the driver's seat, even though the majority of licensed drivers are women.

The new female dummy endorsed by the department more accurately reflects differences between men and women, including the shape of the neck, collarbone, pelvis, and legs. It's outfitted with more than 150 sensors, the department said.

Some American automakers have been skeptical, arguing the new model may exaggerate injury risks and undercut the value of some safety features such as seat belts and airbags.

Lawmakers and transportation secretaries from the past two presidential administrations have expressed support for new crash test rules and safety requirements but developments have been slow.

U.S. Sens. Deb Fischer, a Republican from Nebraska, and Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, both released statements welcoming the female crash test dummy announcement.

"Any progress here is good because there's simply no good reason why women are more likely to be injured or die in car crashes," Duckworth said.

Fischer introduced legislation, the She Drives Act, that would require the most advanced testing devices available, including a female crash test dummy. Duckworth is a co-sponsor.

"It's far past time to make these testing standards permanent, which will help save thousands of lives and make America's roads safer for all drivers," Fischer said.

The department said the new specifications will be available for manufacturers to build models and for the automotive industry to begin testing them in vehicles.

Copyright 2025 NPR

Less than a year from the midterm elections, state and local voting officials from both major political parties are actively preparing for the possibility of interference by a federal government helmed by President Donald Trump.

The problem is, no one knows what might be coming.

Steve Simon, the Democratic secretary of state of Minnesota, likened it to planning for natural disasters.

"You have to use your imagination to consider and plan for the most extreme scenario," Simon said.

Carly Koppes, the Republican clerk of Weld County in Colorado, said officials in her state are shoring up their relationships with local law enforcement and county and state attorney's offices, to make sure any effort to interfere with voting is "met with a pretty good force of resistance."

"We have to plan for the worst and hope we get the best," Koppes said. "I think we're all kind of conditioned at this point to expect anything and everything, and our bingo cards keep getting bigger and bigger with things that we would have never have had on them."

Trump, who continues to spread false claims about voting in America, issued an executive order in the spring that sought to mandate major changes to the elections system. That order has so far mostly been blocked by the courts, but he's teased other executive action as well. And his administration is still investigating his loss five years ago, while pardoning people associated with his efforts to try to overturn that defeat.

All of that has made it clear to those in the elections community that Trump plans to have a heavy hand in their processes next year. Here are a few things voting officials are watching for.

More executive action to take control of voting

The Constitution is clear: States control their own election processes, with Congress able to set guidelines for federal races. The president has virtually no authority when it comes to voting.

But Trump is testing that, and those in his circle have pushed fringe theories for how he can change how ballots are cast and counted.

Earlier this month, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the White House is working on a new executive order that will seemingly target mail voting. Trump also said earlier this year that he wanted to ban some voting machines, though it's unclear exactly what he was referring to.

Election officials agree he does not have the legal authority to do either of those things. But recently, Trump ally and attorney Cleta Mitchell, who advised Trump in 2020, broached a bolder strategy to enact election changes: declaring a national emergency.

"The president's authority is limited in his role with regard to elections except where there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States — as I think that we can establish with the porous system that we have," Mitchell said on a podcast appearance in September.

It would be keeping with one of Trump's broader policy strategies: This year he's invoked presidential emergency powers more frequently than any other modern president.

Election experts say there's no legal basis for Mitchell's theory, but numerous voting officials told NPR it's something that's come up in conversations about next year.

U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., who previously oversaw voting in California as secretary of state, also brought up the scenario recently on the Senate floor.

"If the Trump White House tried to declare some fake national emergency to create a pretense for federal intervention, I will force a vote here in the Senate to stop it," Padilla said.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi listens as President Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House on Oct. 15.

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Troops on the ground

Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, a Democrat, says six months ago he wouldn't have taken the premise of federal troops at polling places seriously.

But seeing how the National Guard was deployed — and justified — this summer changed his thinking.

"You have National Guard deploying to cities to supposedly quell these 'demonstrations' — basically people in frog suits and riding their bikes naked is the biggest threat," Hobbs said. "And yeah, I start thinking that maybe it could be possible."

Ahead of the 2020 election, Trump spoke of a desire to have federal law enforcement patrol voting locations, and this year, his former adviser Steve Bannon said on his War Room podcast that he hopes Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are patrolling polling places in the midterms.

Legal experts say such intervention is clearly illegal, but until the federal government disavows such actions clearly, Simon said voting officials have to game out how to respond.

"One thing that would help is if someone at the federal government would come out and categorically say, 'No, no, no, stop the presses, stop everything. You'll never have to worry about that. That's not something we would ever consider doing,'" Simon said. "That would go a long way."

In response to questions about forces outside polling places, and other scenarios mentioned in this story, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson characterized them as "baseless conspiracy theories and Democrat talking points" but did not directly answer whether the White House would commit not to send agents to voting locations. She reiterated that the president is permitted to send federal personnel to localities to help quell violent crime.

Who is a trusted source?

For the last decade, as voting officials have fought to dam up a tsunami of false information about their work, they've begged people in their communities to go to "trusted sources" for election information.

In 2026, figuring out who is a trusted source may be more difficult than ever.

Along with Trump himself, his administration has elevated to prominent government roles numerous people who have a history of spreading false information about elections, and local officials worry their message may be drowned out by those with much bigger megaphones.

One of the hires alarming voting officials interviewed by NPR works at the Department of Homeland Security. Heather Honey, who's now deputy assistant secretary for elections integrity, worked alongside Mitchell for the past few years to help spread election conspiracy theories, including one about votes in Pennsylvania that Trump mentioned in his speech on Jan. 6, 2021, shortly before a mob stormed the Capitol.

"I equate this to having a moon landing conspiracy theorist and flat earther being offered a job at NASA," Hobbs said.

DHS did not respond to NPR's request for comment.

Numerous officials at the Department of Justice also have a history of election denial.

A poll worker holds "I Voted" stickers as people cast ballots on Nov. 4 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.

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Unprecedented demands

The insistence to relitigate 2020 also has voting officials worried about what sort of actions administration officials plan to take. Already this year, DOJ has made unprecedented requests to investigate voting machines, access old ballots, and accumulate mass amounts of voter data.

This summer, a consultant in Colorado contacted Koppes and other clerks in that state, in some cases saying he was associated with the White House and asking about accessing their voting machines.

The White House denied to CNN and other outlets authorizing the requests, but separately, in Missouri, a Department of Justice official reached out to clerks there asking basically the same thing.

In each instance, they were told no.

"Since 2020, people in the elections world have become even more knowledgeable of the responsibilities of the different levels of government [when it comes to voting equipment]," Koppes said.

A similar push and pull is playing out with elections data. The Trump administration has quickly built what is essentially a searchable national citizenship database, and is trying to entice states to run their voting records through it to root out noncitizens on voter rolls. While many Republican election officials have eagerly embraced the system, other GOP officials and their Democratic counterparts have been hesitant to engage with the tool, as there are questions about how well it works, what happens to the voting data once it's been run through the system and, in many states, whether even using the tool is legal under state law.

Still, the administration is intent to investigate voter rolls as it continues to push false narratives about widespread noncitizen voting. The DOJ recently sued eight states (all states Trump lost in 2020) in an effort to compel them to turn over their rolls.

"It's really not a red state or blue state thing," said Al Schmidt, the Republican secretary of state of Pennsylvania, in an interview with PBS News Hour about the data demands. "It is a — in my view, a concerning attempt, a concerning effort to consolidate and overreach at the federal level. In the United States of America, it's the states who run elections, not the federal government."

Vulnerable targets

Since Trump took office, the federal government has pulled back on virtually all of its work related to cybersecurity and elections. The Department of Homeland Security laid off employees focused on election security, and stopped funding a partnership that helped local elections offices share threat information.

Wesley Wilcox, a Republican election supervisor in Marion County, Fla., said smaller counties especially will be more vulnerable to cyberattacks due to the cuts, and Russia, China or any other U.S. adversary may see an opportunity.

"That's what I would do," Wilcox said. "I mean, if I were on that side of the fence, I'm like, 'OK, they're cutting this stuff out. Let's go get them.' You know, 'cause the defenses are down."

Secretary Hobbs, of Washington, told NPR that two years ago he was notified by DHS about a hack in one of his counties. The state responded immediately to make sure the breach wouldn't impact the voter registration database.

Now, Hobbs said, "I don't even know if I would have gotten that phone call, to tell you the truth."

In Arizona, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, said he didn't even contact DHS' cyber agency after an online candidate portal was hacked this summer because he didn't have confidence in the agency's "capacity to collaborate in good faith or to prioritize national security over political theater."
Copyright 2025 NPR