What to watch out for in L.A. city and county in 2024

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record. It’s David Zahniser, bringing you the latest news out of the city government, and Rebecca Ellis, bringing you the big developments out of the county, with help from our colleagues Jaclyn Cosgrove and Dakota Smith.

A few days into the new year, it’s hard to know what unforeseen corruption scandals, staffing shakeups or political crises will rock local government in 2024.

But it’s clear that many of the problems that were top of mind for Angelenos in 2023 — homelessness, mental health, the quality of government services — are not going away this year. And it’s not too hard to hazard a guess at the big-ticket policy issues local politicians will be obsessing over.

Here are five big things Angelenos can expect city and county government to make a priority this year.

Balancing the budget

Mayor Karen Bass had a smooth ride last year when she unveiled her first city budget, easily winning approval from the City Council for a record $1.3 billion to address homelessness.

Things could get more complicated this year, as her team works to balance the budget while covering the cost of salary increases — not just for police officers but for thousands of civilian city workers: clerks, custodians, landscapers, mechanics and many others represented by the Coalition of L.A. City Unions.

Coalition contracts, which head to a vote in the coming weeks, will almost certainly create new financial pressures at City Hall. Bass also will have to decide whether to seek another quarter-billion dollars this year for Inside Safe, the initiative moving unhoused Angelenos indoors. At the same time, she will be looking for ways to reduce the cost of the hotels and motels that have been serving as interim housing under the Inside Safe program.

Criminal justice

Over at the county’s Hall of Administration, the new year will bring renewed pressure on politicians to turn things around inside jails and juvenile halls.

Last year delivered a steady stream of grim headlines about those facilities. In the juvenile halls, one teen died of a drug overdose. The Times obtained video of another crying out for his mother as he was restrained by officers — an incident some experts characterized as child abuse. The conditions were so dire that a state oversight agency ordered most of the youth in the halls out.

The conditions facing adults were even worse. Jails remained dangerously overcrowded. Forty-five inmates died. Two supervisors wanted to declare those facilities a “humanitarian crisis.”

The still-fresh leaders of the two departments — Sheriff Robert Luna and Probation Chief Guillermo Viera Rosa — say they’re working on fixes. Luna told The Times last month he’s formulating a plan to create something akin to a “care campus” so he can finally close Men’s Central Jail, the aging facility that county supervisors first ordered shut down more than two years ago.

Viera Rosa, meanwhile, is racing to fix familiar problems — too few staff, too little programming — that have developed at the newest juvenile hall, in Downey. The department has until Wednesday to address issues outlined recently by state regulators or risk yet another state-ordered closure down the road.

Convention conundrum

The City Council has spent years trying to figure out when and how to expand the Los Angeles Convention Center, as it attempts to stay competitive with counterparts in Anaheim, San Diego and elsewhere. Plans for the project were shelved in 2020 in the wake of COVID-19, which devastated the tourism industry and left the facility dormant for more than a year.

This year, the council will return to that question, deciding whether to move ahead — and if so, whether that massive upgrade should be completed in time for the 2028 Olympic Games.

“This is a vote on the future of downtown,” said Doane Liu, executive director of the City Tourism Department.

Two options on the table will be expensive, taking a serious bite out of the budget, according to a report issued last month. If the city carries out the expansion on its own, the project is expected to cost taxpayers $48 million per year over the next three decades, even after convention advertising and other revenue is factored in. If the city hires a private developer to build and operate the facility, the cost would increase, reaching $103 million per year over the next 30 years, the report says.

CARE Court convenes

All eyes will be on California’s most populous county as it rolls out CARE Court, the state-funded program designed to treat people struggling with serious mental illness.

Signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2022, the CARE Act requires every California county to open courts that coordinate voluntary treatment and services to people with psychotic disorders. The program was launched in L.A. County in late November, with officials hopeful it would reduce the region’s homeless population, which disproportionately experiences severe mental health disorders.

Advocates say the success of CARE Court will hinge on L.A., by far the largest county to take the initiative on, doing it right.

County officials say they’re off to a strong start, predicting that as many as 4,500 people could be enrolled during the program’s first year. That could mean fewer emergency visits, they said, and fewer mental health crises playing out on the street.

Election drama

And of course, 2024 will bring an election — one that could leave city and county government looking very different at the end of the year.

At City Hall, contests are underway for seven of the City Council’s 15 seats. All but one of those races features an incumbent seeking another term. Meanwhile, three of the five county supervisors — Janice Hahn, Kathryn Barger and Holly Mitchell — are defending their seats against challengers. Finally, there is the lone countywide race, with Dist. Atty. George Gascón seeking to fend off a small army of opponents and win a second term.

The primary, scheduled for March 5, is right around the corner. In contests where no candidate secures a majority of the vote, a runoff will be held Nov. 5 between the top two.

State of play

— FIREFIGHTER FUNDS: The union that represents L.A. city firefighters continued its spending spree in the run-up to the March primary election, purchasing more than $400,000 in campaign materials promoting its favored candidates. United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112 released a new video in support of Councilmember Heather Hutt and paid for other materials supporting Councilmembers John Lee and Marqueece Harris-Dawson.

— TALE OF THE TAPE: Two DWP commissioners, including current board president Cynthia McClain-Hill, were secretly recorded in 2019 having a private phone call with two executives, assuring them of their support for a $3.6-million contract that was awarded a few weeks later, The Times reports. The contents of that recording have sparked criticism from ethics experts, who said city commissioners — volunteer appointees of the mayor — should not be involved in direct conversations with potential contractors. The two commissioners say the call was proper.

— PRISON PROPOSAL: Federal prosecutors are seeking a 13-year prison sentence for former Los Angeles City Councilmember Jose Huizar for his role in a bribery and racketeering scheme. In their sentencing memo, prosecutors said Huizar placed his “lust for money and power above the rights and interests of the people he was elected to serve.” Huizar’s lawyers, while describing him as a “philanderer, a gambler and an alcoholic,” said he should not receive more than nine years.

— EVICTION WAVE: With pandemic moratoriums expiring, eviction cases rose sharply in 2023, bringing the total number of cases to more than 43,000, The Times reports. But it’s not all bad news for renters. Tenant advocates say renter protections enacted last year helped slow the crisis, with the numbers turning out better than they feared.

— CONCERN ON CAHUENGA: Last month, The Times gave a progress report on Bass’ Inside Safe program to move homeless people indoors, noting that some locations targeted by the mayor’s office — including Cahuenga Boulevard at the 101 Freeway in Hollywood — had been repopulated by encampments. ABC7 made its own visit to the overpass this week, pressing Bass on her promise to move unhoused residents in those areas indoors before the end of 2023. “We’re a little late,” she responded. “But I guarantee you we are going for it.”

— HEARING FROM HORVATH: L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath will speak to the Westside Urban Forum on Thursday at the Helms Design Center in Culver City. Horvath, who represents parts of the Westside and San Fernando Valley, is serving this year as the chair of the Board of Supervisors. Registration info can be found here.

— DINING OUTSIDE: County supervisors are scheduled to vote next week on an ordinance allowing restaurants in unincorporated areas — East Los Angeles, Altadena, Lennox and other communities — to continue with outdoor dining on sidewalks, alleys and streets.

— LANCASTER SHOOTING: Body-camera footage released by the Sheriff’s Department shows a deputy who fatally shot a 27-year-old Black woman in Lancaster in December was first handed a Taser. The footage shows the deputy dropped the Taser and then fired a handgun at the woman, who, authorities say, was armed with a kitchen knife.

—SUFFERING SROS: Two of the city’s biggest landlords of single-room occupancy hotels, or SROs, in Skid Row have been struggling to make their units habitable, The Times reports. Issues at those buildings has left some of the city’s most vulnerable Angelenos without reliable housing and threatened to worsen the region’s homelessness crisis.

Quick hits

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature initiative to bring homeless Angelenos indoors did not launch any new operations. However, Bass appeared with Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez and County Supervisor Hilda Solis in Cypress Park to celebrate the opening of a 95-bed interim homeless housing facility that will offer an array of social services.

• On the docket for next week: The City Planning Commission takes up two big-ticket items on the city’s Eastside on Thursday: the USC Discovery and Translational Hub, a seven-story research facility planned in Lincoln Heights, as well as a sweeping update to the Boyle Heights Community Plan.