Career prosecutors, not outside critics — career prosecutors — are saying the LA city attorney dropped cases to protect donors. That's your Monday. This is Los Angeles Politics and Urbanism Daily. Today we've got the city attorney's office, the mayor's homelessness promise, and LAUSD all under the microscope at once. And Bass is on camera at CNN saying she's "not close" to her own 2026 pledge. That's her words, not anyone else's framing. We'll get into all of it. From Nick Gerda at LAist:
As she runs for re-election, L.A. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto faces turmoil and claims of unethical behavior from career prosecutors in her office who have accused her of favoring political donors in criminal cases and questioned her administrative decisions and demeanor. The allegations have been laid out in emails and a memo obtained by LAist, as well as a sworn declaration to a court.
LAist has the receipts here — emails, a memo, and a sworn court declaration. Career prosecutors inside Hydee Feldstein Soto's own office are saying cases got dropped to protect political donors. That's coming from the people who work there. So the city attorney — the office that sits downstream of all those 41.18 clearances and encampment sweeps — may have been selling prosecutorial discretion. The clearing machine keeps moving, and the cases that bother donors just vanish. She's running for re-election while this lands. LAist broke it, and the sourcing is internal, which makes this a lot harder to wave away. Here's RealClearPolitics:
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass acknowledged LA is "not close" to meeting her 2026 promise to end homelessness in an interview with CNN's Elex Michaelson. Bass blamed decades of failed policies and bureaucratic resistance for the problem.
Bass on CNN with Elex Michaelson this week: "We haven't ended it. We're not close." That's the mayor's own answer when she's asked why she's so far off the promise she made to Jake Tapper in 2023. Seventeen-point-six percent down, and her explanation is that she didn't anticipate bureaucratic resistance from a city government she runs. And three days ago we were at a groundbreaking for 51 beds. To close the loop from earlier this week — Sierra Vista, 51 beds, Bass and Soto-Martínez both there — that's the project-level picture. Bass on CNN is the citywide picture. Those two numbers are not talking to each other. She also pointed to a decision made 20 to 25 years ago not to deal with street homelessness. Fair, that's real history. But it's also her saying she took the job knowing the system was broken and still put a hard date on fixing it. r/LosAngeles, weighing in:
Zero chance I consider voting for Bass. She's been an utter failure.
The "utter failure" line from r/LA is the emotional version of what Bass basically admitted herself. The 2026 question is whether voters separate a broken system from a mayor who overpromised what she could fix. r/LosAngeles, weighing in:
Counterpoint: the Mayor runs all of those services you describe as broken in your area. Council is a legislature, not an executive position.
The "the mayor runs the services" counterpoint is technically correct and totally misses the point. Bass was the one on CNN in 2023 saying 2026. She set the bar. The weak-mayor structure is the answer, but she handed them the hammer. Mariana Dale, writing in LA Local:
The Los Angeles Unified School Board on Thursday voted 5-2 to approve the elimination of 657 jobs concentrated in the district’s central offices. Thursday’s vote finalizes preliminary layoff notices issued earlier this year to information technology workers, office technicians and staff that support parents and families.
LAUSD's board voted five-to-two Thursday to cut 657 central office jobs — IT workers, office technicians, staff that support parents and families. They're calling it a fiscal stabilization plan, which is doing a lot of work for "we spent more than we took in for two straight years." And the 157 IT jobs that survive only survive because of a union contract that hasn't even been ratified yet. So right now, those jobs are still cut. The SEIU deal is a lifeline dangling over a cliff. The board also previewed more cuts, so this isn't the bottom of the hole — it's just the first invoice. And we still don't have a hard count on how many people are actually out the door by June 30, because retirements and resignations make the tally messy. Bass is on CNN admitting she's not close to her homelessness promise, the city attorney is accused of dropping cases for donors, and now the school district is cutting the staff that helps parents navigate the system. Three institutions, one news cycle, and none of it starts on the Westside. This one's from Los Angeles Wave Newspaper Group:
HOLLYWOOD — A housing developer and city officials celebrated the groundbreaking of a new tiny home village May 14 that is expected to open 51 beds, of which 10 will be dedicated for youth. Located on Sierra Vista Avenue, the housing project received $33 million in grant funding from the state.
Closing the loop on Sierra Vista — Wave Newspaper has the full numbers: 51 beds, 10 reserved for youth, $33 million in state grant funding, and an expected opening in early 2027. Bass and Soto-Martínez were both at the groundbreaking on May 14. Thirty-three million dollars for 51 beds — that's about $647,000 a bed. And Soto-Martínez said the city only has interim housing for about one-third of people on the streets. So we're celebrating a project that, by his own math, barely moves the fraction. He did call the gap "unacceptable" — which is the right word, even if the ceremony was the opposite of that. From Andri Luescher at Northdraft Media:
Andri Luescher's journey to build a modest home in the hills of Mount Washington, Los Angeles, is a testament to the complexities and inefficiencies of the city's permitting process. His story, detailed in the Los Angeles Times, is a fascinating exploration of the bureaucratic hurdles that developers face in the city, and it raises important questions about the future of housing development in Los Angeles.
Andri Luescher. Mount Washington. 1,400 square feet, three bedrooms — not a tower, not some giant development play, just one guy trying to build one house. And the 1993 Mount Washington specific plan has him bouncing between Building and Safety, Planning, and the Bureau of Engineering, probably a partridge in a pear tree. The specific plan was supposed to keep the neighborhood a "quiet, verdant retreat" — lovely phrase, until you realize it's also the thing that breaks a single-family permit review into three separate city departments in 2026. We watched a Westlake developer drop 44 units near the new D Line station because the friction wasn't worth it. That was a developer with lawyers and financing. Luescher is just a guy. If the machine eats him too, that's not a coincidence — that's the system working exactly the way the people who built it wanted. If you follow Los Angeles politics closely, check out California Governor's Race — daily 2026 race coverage on candidates, polling, debates, fundraising, and policy for voters who want more than horse-race takes. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
We've put links to all of today's stories in the show notes, so if one caught your ear, you can dig in from there.
That's Los Angeles Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.