The Brief

Half a million property owners in L.A. could participate in an unconventional vote this fall that would determine the fate of the city’s street lighting infrastructure.

The ballots, if necessary steps are first taken by the City Council, will ask property owners whether they’d pay more in fees to increase the city’s street light budget, which has largely remained stagnant for three decades because of state law.

Miguel Sangalang, the executive director of the city’s Bureau of Street Lighting, said that an increase in revenue could dramatically reduce the wait time for street light repairs, replace aging infrastructure and provide the funding and staffing he said the bureau needs to fortify infrastructure against relentless copper wire theft.

“We’re trying to right-size operations to match the needs today,” Sangalang told LAist. “We have this 100-year-old infrastructure that we need to start replacing. We’re facing new theft and vandalism.”

Why is the street light budget frozen?

Approximately 90% of the city’s Bureau of Street Lighting budget comes from an assessment that people who own property illuminated by lights pay on their county property tax bill.

The exact assessment per parcel depends on whether it’s commercial or residential and how much the property benefits from street lighting, among other factors.

The average annual assessment throughout the city is about $80, according to a third-party analysis of the bureau’s revenue. Owners of most single-family homes pay around $53 per year, Sangalang told local officials in April.

The rates have been the same ever since California voters approved Proposition 218 in 1996. The initiative limits how much cities and towns can increase local revenue, including from “special benefits” like street lighting.

The city can’t approve a higher assessment for streetlight repairs without approval from property owners.

L.A. City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said a fee increase has been a long time coming.

“There’s been no reason why these fees haven’t been updated to meet current standards,” Hernandez said. “It’s just that there hasn’t been the political will to do that.”

The city hired Matrix Consulting in 2024 to analyze the revenue the Bureau of Street Lighting needs to maintain its network.

The third-party study found that the assessments the bureau currently collects equate to 45% of what it needs to “properly maintain and operate the system,” according to a summary of the report from the City Administrative Officer.

The consulting group determined that “property assessments need to increase at an average of 123%” to meet the needs of the bureau in the 2025 to 2026 fiscal year, according to the summary.

“The funding level recommended by Matrix will allow the [Bureau of Street Lighting] to reduce service response times to two days, allow for preventative maintenance to further the lifespan of lighting assets and [establish] a pole replacement program,” the summary said.

What’s the timeline for the vote, and how would it work?

Before ballots are sent out, the L.A. City Council has to approve what’s called an engineer’s report, which will quantify the proposed assessment increases for each parcel and show how the extra revenue will help the Bureau of Street Lighting meet the cost of maintaining service and implementing improvements.

Sanglang said he hopes to present the necessary paperwork before local leaders this summer and have ballots sent out in the fall.

“ We're hoping to share all the information that we have to try and convince the voters to vote in the way that would help the street lighting network,” Sangalang said.

One of the unique aspects of this process is that the power of one vote might not equal the power of another. The ballots will be weighted “according to proportional financial obligation,” a spokesperson for the Bureau of Street Lighting said in a statement.

The city of L.A.'s Bureau of Street Lighting has a staff of about 180 people responsible for maintaining a network of nearly a quarter million street lights scattered across 470 square miles.

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Kavish Harjai / LAist

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“A majority approval exists if weighted ballots submitted in favor exceed weighted ballots submitted in opposition to the assessment,” according to the spokesperson. “If a majority of the weighted votes do not oppose the assessments, the agency may vote to levy the assessment.”

If the timeline holds and property owners approve, the increased assessments could be effective as soon as the start of 2026.

Sanglang said the vote could mean the difference between a two-day turnaround time to fix a broken streetlight and the year-long timeline he said is currently projected if the assessment isn’t increased.

Hernandez acknowledged that convincing property owners to pay more for street lighting could be difficult, especially considering the city recently increased sanitation fees.

“It might feel like we’re just piling on these fees, but also this work should have been getting done,” Hernandez said. “ My colleagues, in the current configuration we're in — we're doing a lot of cleanup of the dereliction of duty from the past.”

Santa Clarita attempted a similar process to increase street lighting fees in 2018. Ballots there were never tabulated after residents complained of poor communication from the city, which terminated proceedings soon after, according to a review of City Council meetings at the time.

As a result, more than 35,600 property owners in Santa Clarita pay, and have paid for the last three decades, just above $12.30 annually for street light maintenance, according to Andrew Adams, the city’s special districts manager.

Forty thousand properties in the city in a different streetlight maintenance district pay a higher rate of $66 that increases with inflation, Adams said.

The city of L.A. also has different streetlight maintenance districts. Unlike in the city of Santa Clarita, where more than half of property owners in the streetlight maintenance district essentially subsidize upkeep for others, 98% of property owners in Los Angeles pay assessments that have been frozen since Proposition 218.

Miguel Sangalang, the director of the Bureau of Street Lighting, talks about the pilot program under one of the new solar streetlights in front of the Children's Community School with Mayor Karen Bass, L.A. City Councilmember Imelda Padilla, and members of the Van Nuys community.

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Makenna Sievertson

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LAist

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The state of street lighting in L.A.

Requests made through 311 for street light service have ballooned from 15,600 requests for service in 2016 to 46,000 requests last year, according to an LAist analysis of data.

Sangalang said the disrepair is partially attributed to an increase in copper wire theft.

It’s an epidemic that today causes 40% of all streetlight repairs, he said. He added that just two years ago, only a quarter of all service calls were because of theft.

Along a six-block stretch of Broadway in South L.A., crews from the Bureau of Street Lighting worked for four days in May to restore streetlights that have been out since 2023 because of copper wire theft.

“By the time we get to 2025 [requests], it’s probably gonna be … 2027,” Daniel Franco, the copper wire theft supervisor for the bureau, told an LAist reporter at the repair site. “We’re trying to catch up. Jobs keep popping up.”

Daniel Franco, the supervisor of the Bureau of Street Lighting's copper wire theft team, said there's a big backlog in street light repairs in the city of L.A.

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The crew of about 12 workers first repaired and rewired the lights at the site, then filled the boxes where the wires are stored with rocks and concrete and welded wraps around poles.

The thefts divert attention from routine maintenance and add costs and extra labor, Franco said. The fortification steps make it more difficult for thieves to steal the wire and will also make it more difficult for future crews to perform routine maintenance on the same lights, he said.

Sangalang said the bureau has taken steps to become “an incredibly efficient machine,” including lowering power costs by using LED lighting and beginning to deploy solar-powered lights.

Indeed, since the last time LAist analyzed 311 data in March, the bureau closed an additional 5,560 requests for streetlight repairs made in 2024.

“Our issue is one of scale,” Sangalang said, adding that the bureau has a staff of about 180 people to maintain a network of 220,000 streetlights across 470 square miles.

The issues affecting the bureau, he said, will have “a snowball effect on the larger system.”

“Every machine needs to refuel at some point, and we’re at that point,” Sangalang 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.