The Brief

The Orange County Board of Supervisors declared a state of emergency Thursday afternoon in the aftermath of the fire that destroyed a World War II era hangar in Tustin earlier this week.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District has found asbestos and heavy metals including lead, arsenic and nickel in air and ash samples, according to a county news release.

Why a state of emergency?

Orange County Supervisor Donald Wagner said the state of emergency declaration is needed to speed up the process of getting clean-up help from the state and federal governments. Wagner's district surrounds the former U.S. Navy base where the hangar burned.

He said it was important to get expert help with the toxic clean-up and get the Navy, which owns the site, “on it quickly and on it right."

Ten U.S. Congress members from Southern California also sent a letter to the Navy on Thursday, requesting information about the building materials used to build the hangar and whether the Navy has a plan for cleaning up the fire and mitigating the effects on the surrounding community, among other questions.

LAist made several attempts to reach a Navy spokesperson late Thursday afternoon but didn't receive a response.

Supervisor Katrina Foley told LAist the Navy has so far refused to take leadership on the fire response. "It's their building, their property," she said. "They should do something…and not just rely on the locals to handle their mess."

The cause of the fire is still unknown. Wagner said the Orange County Fire Authority wasn't yet able to do a full investigation because of safety concerns in the still-smoldering building.

Should nearby residents be concerned?

The South Coast Air Quality Management District has advised Orange County residents who may be affected by windblown smoke, ash or debris to limit outdoor activity and avoid touching ash. Authorities also urged residents to avoid kicking the ash back up into the air, for example, by not using a mechanical blower to clean it up. More tips are available online.

Schools and parks in Tustin were closed Thursday. A Veteran’s Day event in Tustin scheduled for Saturday was canceled.

The city of Los Angeles is facing increasing pressure to fix its crumbling pedestrian infrastructure.

LAist has learned that the city has been in regular mediation sessions over allegations that it is breaching the terms of a nearly $1.4 billion settlement agreement to repair sidewalks and construct curb ramps.

Paula Pearlman, one of four lawyers monitoring implementation of the settlement, said she and her colleagues are concerned about the city’s backlog of sidewalk repair requests and its progress installing curb ramps when it resurfaces streets.

Mediation comes in the city’s 10th year of a 30-year settlement agreement in a class-action lawsuit brought by people with mobility disabilities in the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

“As a result of the city’s repeated breaches of the settlement agreement, to this day residents and visitors to the city of Los Angeles who have mobility disabilities are denied full and equal access to sidewalks and other pedestrian walkways,” Guy Wallace, another one of the lawyers, said in an email to LAist.

While the substance of the mediation sessions is confidential, the lawyers have been meeting with city officials nearly monthly since the beginning of the year and have exchanged proposals and counterproposals to address areas of disagreement, according to Pearlman.

“The City is continuing in good faith legal negotiations,” the office of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement.

If issues persist beyond mediation, the lawyers can file a motion to have the court step in and resolve disputes, according to the settlement agreement.

More than 5,000 repair requests 

As part of the settlement, the city launched its Sidewalk Repair Program. Through that program, people with mobility disabilities can submit requests for the city to remediate faulty sidewalks, curb ramps or other pedestrian barriers.

As of Oct. 21, the city is facing a backlog of nearly 5,000 such requests, according to an LAist analysis of data from the Bureau of Engineering, which administers the program. That figure does not include requests Angelenos file through the city’s 311 system.

Since the settlement became effective in 2016, the city has completed 1,750 repairs, according to the bureau.

“The backlog reflects the reality that the annual volume of incoming requests exceeds the resources allocated annually to address these requests,” Mary Nemick, director of communications for the bureau, said in an email.

How much does the city spend on sidewalks through the program?

The Willits settlement agreement dictates the city needs to spend $31 million annually on its Sidewalk Repair Program. That amount is adjusted every five years to account for inflation, so in the latest budget, the city put nearly $36 million toward the program.

The mayor’s office said it has continued to meet the funding requirement every year Bass has been in office, though it acknowledges that the current funding level is “insufficient to address the entire citywide backlog of broken sidewalks, meaning the overall state of repair improves very slowly.”

The timeline for even the highest-priority repairs is one to five years, Sidewalk Repair Program Division Manager Julia Sanchez de la Vega said to the L.A. City Council Public Works committee in June. It can take up to 10 years to address low- to medium-priority requests, she added.

The Sidewalk Repair Program is not the only way the city invests in pedestrian improvements. In September, the mayor joined other city leaders to break ground on a project that will involve installing ADA-compliant curb ramps and high-visibility crosswalks, among other improvements, in downtown L.A. and Chinatown.

What’s the city doing to expedite repairs?

The city of L.A. has embarked on a project to use light detection and ranging technology, also known as LIDAR, to provide a point-in-time snapshot of the condition of its pedestrian infrastructure. The city has completed the scan for one-third of the city, including areas around 2028 Olympic Games venues.

The current budget includes $10 million to complete the scan citywide, which officials hope will help proactively prioritize maintenance and coordinate work across departments.

Although California lawmakers recently passed a suite of laws intended to bring transparency to the development of new data centers, local communities across the state are signaling that disclosure isn't enough.

California currently ranks third among U.S. states in overall data center density, according to independent trackers like the US Data Center Map, with the state home to 366 of such facilities that are either fully operational, under construction, or moving through the planning process. Local elected officials are proposing data center moratoriums to slow that momentum — if not stop it in its tracks.

In the first half of October alone, Oakland’s city council unanimously approved a 45-day moratorium on new approvals, making it the first city in Alameda County and the fourth in the Bay Area to adopt such a measure. San Francisco approved a similar moratorium this month, while the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors postponed a vote to permanently ban large-scale data centers, often called hyperscale facilities, on unincorporated land after receiving an overwhelming volume of public feedback. In Santa Clara, city officials considered a moratorium vote, and are moving forward with new rules to govern data center development, including more stringent water and air pollution regulations. Alhambra residents will vote on a moratorium measure in the November election.

Across California, at least 26 resolutions, moratoriums, or bans on data center development have been passed or proposed since June, according to the D.C.-based non-governmental organization Food & Water Watch, which tracks similar proposals nationwide.

The escalating pushback underscores a widening gap between state-level regulation and municipal action. While Gov. Gavin Newsom last month signed into law seven new measures that focus primarily on disclosure requirements, environmental impact studies, and grid protection, grassroots groups and city councils are moving fast to halt construction entirely.

"I have a hard time remembering something that caught fire the way the opposition to data centers has," said Nicole Ghio, California Director at Food & Water Watch. "Local municipalities have been able to respond quicker to the grassroots wave of opposition of people saying, 'Hold on, let's press pause. Let's actually figure out what we're doing before we commit to this huge change.'"

Opponents say these energy-hungry facilities strain power grids, potentially deplete water supplies and pollute the air, and contribute to broader economic anxieties around AI-driven job elimination. The anti-data-center movement cuts across party lines; conservative group Humans First, for example, finished its nationwide Data Center Revolt tour this month with three stops in California, joining a chorus of figures on the left who call for local control as well as additional environmental and consumer protections.

"This is very much a unifying issue," Ghio noted, adding that residents are alarmed by potential rate hikes and environmental degradation. "This is not a future that I think a lot of people want. I mean, it's a great future if you're a tech billionaire. It's not a great future if you're a regular American."

Industry proponents, however, argue that halting infrastructure development risks eroding critical national interests. Doug Kelly, CEO of the policy advocacy coalition American Edge Project, framed the current buildout as an essential infrastructure race.

"Artificial intelligence and the data centers that power it, this is the next foundational block of infrastructure that America is building out," Kelly said, comparing it to historical investments in railroads and highways.

Kelly acknowledged that past developments lacked sufficient community input, leading to local friction. To address these fears without stopping construction, his organization promotes an "AI Community Compact" — an agreement offering local guarantees to protect ratepayers from cost spikes, safeguard resources, and promise early transparency.

"So, communities can decide whether they want data centers there or not, but they shouldn't just blanket ban them because then you lose all your negotiating power,” Kelly said. “You're literally saying ‘we want this billion-dollar investment to go somewhere else, anywhere but here.’"

Yet for local advocates, piecemeal guarantees and disclosure laws fall short of addressing the underlying risk. Advocates point to a one-year pause on hyperscale data centers that New York’s governor ordered in July as a roadmap, hoping state legislators will eventually follow local leaders' lead.

As cities continue to draft temporary freezes and outright bans, the tension between local community control and global technological dominance remains unresolved. State transparency laws may have opened the books on data center growth, but local opponents are making it clear that seeing the plans isn't the same as approving them.

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

Tom Skerritt, the Emmy-winning actor who embodied a solid, wry authority figure, whether as a flight instructor in “Top Gun,” a tough-but-fair sheriff on TV’s “Picket Fences” or the doomed captain of “Alien,” has died. He was 93.

Skerritt died Wednesday of natural causes, his family said in a statement. “While the world knew Tom through his remarkable acting career, we knew him for his humor, curiosity, wisdom, generosity and the love he brought into our lives. He cared deeply about imagination, creativity, storytelling, service, veterans, the natural world and helping others find and share their own voices,” the statement said.

Skerritt was twice nominated for an Emmy — both for “Picket Fences,” winning outstanding lead actor in a drama series in 1993. Other career highlights include playing the patient husband of Shirley MacLaine in “Turning Point,” Sally Field’s husband in “Steel Magnolias” and a scheming opportunist who stands in the way of Jodie Foster’s attempt to communicate with extraterrestrial life in “Contact.”

“A writer once described me as a character actor locked in a leading man’s body, and I’ve always loved that. It’s a nice compliment. I’ve been able to walk the line between television and features,” he told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 1997.

Onstage, he was the narrator in “Our Town” at Seattle’s Intiman Theatre in 2004 and made his Broadway debut in 2013 in an adaptation of John Grisham’s “A Time to Kill,” in which The Associated Press wrote he “nicely pulls off a charming disgraced and drunken lawyer.”

Skerritt’s early life

Skerritt grew up in a middle-class Detroit family, his father a small businessman and his mother a housewife. He had two brothers; a sister died as a child.

He spent four years in the Air Force, attended Wayne State University and then switched to the University of California, Los Angeles, to study filmmaking, inspired by a viewing of “Citizen Kane.”

His performance in a Los Angeles theater production of “The Rainmaker” led to his first film role — a supporting role as a sergeant in the 1962 scrappy, $250,000 independent Korean War film “War Hunt.” The movie marked the debuts of Skerritt, Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack and Francis Ford Coppola.

Redford and Skerritt were vying for the same lead role, with the former winning out. Years later, Redford, now directing, paid Skerritt back with compound interest in “A River Runs Through It,” handing him the plum role of the stern Rev. John Maclean, a minister whose governing passions are his faith and fly-fishing. The New York Times was impressed by his “halting, thoughtful manner.”

Redford, who died last year, became a lifelong friend. “There was such a deep connection we made with each other that it matured into a level-headed friendship,” Redford told the Seattle Times in 2007. “His values were close to mine, and he kept his integrity.”

‘Alien’ and ‘Top Gun’

After “War Hunt,” however, Skerritt still struggled for screen time, landing a small role in “M.A.S.H.” and “Thieves Like Us” for Robert Altman, and doing a bit part as a motorcycle cop in “Harold and Maude” for Hal Ashby.

Things changed with “The Turning Point,” which earned him a National Board of Review win. Then came “Alien,” with Skerritt playing the beleaguered and doomed captain of the ship Nostromo, crouched in a dark, claustrophobic duct, hunting the alien with a sputtering flamethrower. He told the Seattle Times that what appealed to him in the script was that the lead actor disappeared and “the woman becomes the hero. I really like that idea.”

Things shifted again after that, including a memorable role as Tom Cruise’s instructor in the landmark “Top Gun”: “Gentlemen, you are the top 1% of all Naval aviators. The elite. The best of the best. We’ll make you better,” he told the students. “This school is about combat. There are no points for second place.”

Skerritt achieved perhaps his best notices as the kindly sheriff in “Picket Fences,” a comedy created by David E. Kelley that won 14 Emmy Awards — one for Skerritt — and a Golden Globe over its four-year run from 1992 to 1996.

Skerritt co-starred opposite Kathy Baker, playing his doctor wife in the community of Rome, Wisconsin, a place with bizarre happenings, like having a robber leaving a trail of frogs or the pope becoming the primary witness to a murder.

“It was written by the best writer on television,” he told the A.V. Club in 2019. “That was the magic and brilliance of it. Because I wasn’t trying to do a series, but then they said Kathy Baker was going to do it, and I thought, ‘She’s fabulous — what do they want me for?’”

Also on the small screen, Skerritt played William Walker on ABC’s “Brothers and Sisters,” Jimmy Ford on TNT’s “Leverage” and he had the recurring character Evan Drake on “Cheers.” He starred in the Hallmark movie “What the Deaf Man Heard,” co-starring Matthew Modine, Judith Ivey and James Earl Jones. He also modeled for Guess jeans.

Directing and writing — his initial dream — had been overtaken by a career in front of the camera, though he managed to direct and star in the 1997 television movie “Divided by Hate.”

“Things happen,” he told The Ottawa Citizen in 1992. “You get hired for a film and the roles kept coming for me. I kept telling myself that if I stuck with acting it would be a really good training for what the problems are in directing. Then the family came along and I had to support them. The years flew by and there was a time when I said I would give up acting and really try to get into directing. But it hasn’t worked out that way and I have no regrets.”

He is survived by his third wife, Julie Tokashiki, and five children.

Before he heads out the door, Gov. Gavin Newsom must decide whether California will join 31 states in a new multibillion-dollar school choice program, funded by private donations, that President Donald Trump included last year in his One Big Beautiful Bill.

Like most Democratic governors, Newsom hasn’t signaled whether he’ll opt in to the law that advocates promise will greatly increase full or partial scholarships to private and religious schools, while potentially paying for auxiliary services in public schools, like tutoring.

The law’s intentionally broad, unrestricted language has made it contentious, with contrasting scenarios for how the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit program, also called the Education Freedom Tax Credit, will play out.

Under the program, an individual taxpayer can donate up to $1,700 annually to a qualifying grant-making organization, up to $3,400 for couples, and then receive a federal tax credit that lowers their taxes by the full amount. The nonprofit “scholarship-granting organizations” then combine individuals’ donations and distribute the money to school districts or to eligible families for private schools.

Advocates say federal tax credits will boost tuition assistance for families in voucher states, while introducing school choice in states like California, which bans using state funding for private and religious schools.

Although it was not their main intent, Republicans included public schools in the law. One nonpartisan analyst, Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, predicts that public schools will eventually become the biggest beneficiary, once they figure out how to tap into it.

“Given that anyone and everyone can donate without it costing them, it’s like a cost-free donation. We think the average taxpayer is going to lean toward donating to a [grant maker] that serves public schools.”

But opponents argue the program is a tactic to undermine public schools, which are already facing declining enrollments in blue states that have historically opposed voucher-like programs. One critic characterized the program as “a Trojan horse designed to bring the chaos of privatization into Democratic strongholds.”

Others say the program will primarily subsidize existing private school parents, not help low-income families trapped in their neighborhood schools. And the law’s free-market focus, its lack of oversight and failure to require civil rights protections will reinforce inequities and lead to abuse.

“The FSTC will become the largest source of waste, fraud and abuse we’ve seen in education — and most of it will be legal,” wrote Jon Valant, the director of Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings.

Congress’ hands-off policy

Valant and other critics blame Congress for tying governors’ hands. Under the law, governors cannot add accountability provisions or favor some scholarship-granting organizations, called SGOs, over others, such as those that give to public schools. Once they opt in and submit a list of all SGOs, their job is done.

SGOs must check students’ income eligibility and audit the money, but they’re not required to monitor programs or keep school achievement records.

Thomas Toch, founding director of FutureEd, an independent education policy institute at Georgetown University, said Congress should have learned from the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The law provided billions of dollars for parents in low-performing schools to obtain tutoring from contractors who were often unvetted, inexperienced and unmonitored. The Education Department’s inspector general found widespread fraud, falsified records, conflicts of interest and deceptive marketing.

“Sounds familiar,” Toch said.

Governors can’t tell the SGOs which students to serve, but SGOs can determine where to funnel dollars — to a public or private school, an elementary or high school, only to parochial school students or for specific programs. They’ll determine the scholarship amounts and the public school programs they’ll support.

There will be a wide universe of students to serve.

Students in families earning up to 300% of an area’s median income will be eligible — more than $400,000 in some wealthy Californian cities. Some donors may give to SGOs committed to services and scholarships for low-income children, but others may not.

The American Federation for Children, a proponent of the tax credit, projects that 51.7 million children — 90% of the total public and private school students — will be eligible for the benefits.

Based on an analysis of donors to a similar tax credit program in Ohio, Brookings predicts that more tax-credit program money will end up in wealthy communities. “We expect the FSTC to become a regressive funding source, even where those funds go to public school students.”

Lance Christensen, who has drafted school choice proposals as vice president of tax policy and government relations for the conservative California Policy Center, says the Brookings analysis is “shortsighted.” If 100,000 people — not even 1% of California’s 17 million income tax filers — donated $1,700, it would generate $170 million, he said. That amount would rise to $1.7 billion if one million taxpayers — only 6% of the state total — gave the maximum.

“You’re talking about real money that could impact the way that parents legitimately think about their kids’ education,” Christensen said. “We have a lot of kids right now that are stuck in a system that doesn’t work for them and hasn’t worked for them for a long time, and the parents are just really frustrated.”

The Treasury Department and the IRS estimate that, by 2030, more than 11 million taxpayers will contribute $26 billion for scholarships and other grants.

Two visions for California donations

So far, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis are the only Democratic governors among the 31 participating states to opt in. (Virginia joined before Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger took office.) This year’s opt-in deadline is Jan. 1.

Two Californians who hope for different reasons that Newsom will sign on are Rachel Elginsmith and Evan Marwell.

Elginsmith is chief executive of the BASIC Fund in Oakland, the state’s largest nonsectarian SGO. Since its founding in 1998, it has distributed $200 million in partial scholarships for 30,000 students, from preschool to eighth grade attending 266 Catholic and nonreligious schools in the Bay Area.

The BASIC Fund would be well positioned to capitalize on the tax-credit by expanding its base of donors. “It would be more money, more kids, bigger scholarships — more of what we’re doing. It would be exciting,” she said.

Marwell, a San Francisco nonprofit entrepreneur, founded EducationSuperHighway, which helped districts plan and fund high-speed internet during the pandemic, and then co-founded Ignite Reading, an online tutoring for the early grades. His new mission: rechartering the EducationSuperHighway into a national SGO that will compete for taxpayers who want to choose first grade tutoring in reading for their tax credit donation.

Marwell said he has reached out to 45 governors, and expects that Democratic states will opt in. They will see the success of Colorado and New York, he said, and “they will start to hear from voters, ‘Why the heck are you not allowing our kids to get these scholarships that we’re contributing to?’ ” 

Newsom’s dilemma

Newsom will get grief whether he opts in or out. The National Education Association and teachers unions in California will thrash him if he signs on. “Taxpayer dollars should go to public schools open to all students, not private schools that can pick and choose their students,” the NEA said in a press release.

If he doesn’t opt in, he’ll be criticized for denying low-income families money to close the achievement gap, while forcing California taxpayers to give to out-of-state SGOs. As New York Gov. Hochul said in her Oct. 9 announcement, “I’m not going to leave money on the table when it could help our kids.”

There is a third option — do nothing, citing fatal flaws in the tax credit program’s design. That’s the advice of Rachel Cantor, director of education policy at the Progressive Policy Institute.

“If I was advising a Democratic governor, I would say, ‘No, don’t opt in. Expand public school choice in your state so that people do have choices. But this is a risky way to do it if your goal is to improve educational quality and open opportunity for people who don’t have it.’ ”

What we know about Trump’s Federal Scholarship Tax Credit program

Gov. Gavin Newsom must decide whether California will join 31 other states in participating in President Donald Trump’s school choice program. Here is how the program works: 

• Governors must opt in by Jan. 1 annually to participate in the program.
• Federal income tax filers, whether living in a participating state or not, can receive a tax credit of up to $1,700 ($3,400 for couples) by donating to a state-approved Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO).
• Governors cannot determine which organizations can serve as SGOs, beyond requiring 501(c) (3) nonprofit status and compliance with state nonprofit laws.
• SGOs certify scholarship recipients; the family income of recipients must be below 300% of the median income in the counties they live in (more than $400,000 in wealthy counties).
• SGOs determine the size of scholarships and grants and where the money they collect can be spent; they must spend 90% of the money they collect on scholarships and grants.
• The FSTC law does not require academic reporting and accountability requirements of private schools receiving program funds.
• Private school scholarships can cover tuition, fees, uniforms, books, technology, transportation and certain room-and-board costs.
• Grants for public school recipients can cover tutoring, extended-day and summer programs, college credit or Advanced Placement courses and potentially services and other expenses not covered by students with disabilities’ individualized education programs.

Timeline for the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit

July 4, 2025: President Trump signs the One Big Beautiful Bill that includes the  Education Freedom Tax Credit, also known as the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit.

Oct. 1, 2026: U.S. Treasury Departmentreleases draft regulations for the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit (FSTC) program; 60-day public comment period begins.

Dec. 15, 2026: The Treasury Department will host a public hearing at the IRS building in Washington, D.C.

Dec. 31, 2026: Deadline for states to submit their participation in the FSTC.

Jan. 1, 2027: Individual taxpayers can begin donating contributions to eligible SGOs.

Feb. 15, 2027: Deadline for states to submit their list of eligible scholarship-granting organizations to the IRS.