Traffic stops, school money, and your landlord's tax bill — apparently reform week is real. And, yeah, it is a lot. It's The LA Daily Fix — I'm Cassidy, Devin's here, and we've got a packed Friday: City Council moving on police stops, a lawsuit saying LAUSD raided two billion in high-need student funds, Measure ULA finally getting permanent rules, and a small-business property tax break from the Assessor's office. The traffic-stop vote is the headline, sure, but the LAPD policy still hasn't moved. So is this reform, or just a press release with a gavel sound effect? That's the gap we're digging into — the vote versus the actual policy. Stick around. Here's AOL:
The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday voted in favor of new restrictions on so-called "pretextual" traffic stops, signaling a growing impatience with the Police Commission's failure to rein in a controversial LAPD tactic that critics say enables racial discrimination.
City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to push the Police Commission to restrict pretextual traffic stops — the kind where a busted taillight turns into a search of your car. Unanimous is not nothing. But the LAPD policy still hasn't actually changed. The Commission has been sitting on this for years while the research piled up. Black and brown Angelenos getting pulled over for equipment violations at disproportionate rates — none of that is new. The Council basically had to shame them in public to get any movement at all. The model here is San Francisco's policy — no stops for minor equipment issues unless there's an actual imminent safety threat. Pedestrians and cyclists would be covered too, not just drivers. Padilla put it bluntly: Board of Police Commissioners, no excuses. A unanimous Council vote is about as loud a political signal as you can send short of legislation. If the Commission still drags its feet after this, that's a choice — and the Council ought to remember it has budget leverage. United to House LA writes:
Drafted by homeless service providers, affordable housing nonprofits, labor unions, and renters’ rights groups, Measure ULA will create an unprecedented funding stream for affordable housing production and homelessness prevention in the City of Los Angeles. Over 200 organizations signed on in support of the movement, which earned nearly 58% of the vote in November of 2022.
Measure ULA passed with 58% of the vote in 2022 — a transfer tax on high-end property sales to fund affordable housing and homelessness prevention. Now the coalition behind it has put out permanent program guidelines, drafted by more than 140 organizations. That's the blueprint for how the money actually gets spent. Credit where it's due — United to House LA and SCANPH put this together. And the fact that it took until January 2024 to lock in permanent guidelines tells you a lot about how slow implementation has been, even for a measure voters clearly wanted. Guidelines written by the people who actually do homeless services and affordable housing — not City Hall consultants. That's the right move. Whether the bureaucracy lets them execute is the real question, and, honestly, I wouldn't bet on the bureaucracy making it easy. This one's from Big Education Ape:
The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is violating state law by refusing to use state education funds specifically targeted to help low-income students, English language learners and foster youth to increase or improve services for those students, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the Community Coalition of South Los Angeles and LAUSD parent Reyna Frias.
A lawsuit filed in LA Superior Court says LAUSD is planning to illegally divert more than two billion dollars — money state law specifically earmarked for low-income kids, English learners, and foster youth. Public Advocates and the ACLU are behind it, so this is not some fly-by-night filing. Two billion dollars. Over a decade. Cooked through accounting tricks so the district doesn't have to actually improve services for the kids who need them most. That's exactly the kind of bureaucratic shell game that makes people lose faith in public institutions. The law here is the 2013 Local Control Funding Formula — it was supposed to be the fix, the reform that finally pushed dollars toward high-need students. The allegation is that LAUSD has been quietly undermining it ever since. South LA families are the ones suing. Not a think tank, not a downtown law firm acting alone — a parent named Reyna Frias and the Community Coalition. That's the community most harmed, and they're the ones doing the work. LAUSD should be embarrassed. Here's 2 Urban Girls:
A recent internal study conducted by the Assessor’s Office found that it costs approximately $174 in staff time and administrative resources to process and assess a $5,000 business property account. By comparison, that assessment generates only about $50 in annual property tax revenue.
Hat tip to 2 Urban Girls for this one — the LA County Board of Supervisors just approved raising the small-business personal property tax threshold from five thousand dollars to ten thousand. Jeff Prang's office pushed it through, and it kicks in next assessment cycle. This is the rare bureaucratic fix that actually makes sense — the county was spending a hundred and seventy-four bucks in staff time to collect fifty dollars in tax revenue. That's not fiscal responsibility. That's fiscal cosplay. Doubling the threshold means a lot of small operators — your corner shops, your taqueria with a used refrigerator on the books — just got some paperwork off their plate. That's real, even if it isn't glamorous. You’ll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes, so if something stuck with you, you can jump in and read more when you have a minute.
That’s The LA Daily Fix for this Friday. Thanks for listening, and have a good weekend. This is a Lantern Podcast.