The day after LAUSD incumbents cruised back into office, the feds opened a Title IX investigation into the district — and that timing isn't something anyone should gloss over. This is LA Politics and Urbanism Daily, Friday edition. We've got a board that just got a fresh mandate and a federal probe in the same 24 hours. Plus, two LAPD officers turning in their badges over paperwork, and a 66% fee hike on Airbnb hosts. Heavy week, so let's skip the warmup. Start with the schools. EdSource confirms Rocio Rivas and the other incumbents held — the early leads stuck, and the races came in without the big pro-charter money. And then iOSco News and Center Square have the federal Title IX investigation landing the very next morning. So the board that just won re-election now has a sequencing problem it can't vote away. Remember yesterday — acting superintendent Andres Chait had already come up in the wrestling coach clearance failure. Now the feds are auditing the whole system. The accountability fight just moved up a level. Newly re-elected leadership, meet federal oversight agency — in the same news cycle. The DACA-LAPD story from Fox 11: two officers on unpaid leave, badges and guns surrendered, because their federal renewals stalled. The city recruited them, trained them, certified them, paid for all of it — and a federal processing delay just pulled them off the street during a staffing crisis. The operational cost lands on the department, not on whoever's sitting on the paperwork. It's the most direct mobility-of-people story this week, and it has nothing to do with transit — people commuting in to serve LA, then getting pulled off the street by paperwork. And it's the second hit to LAPD capacity in two days — trained officers sidelined while the block-level crime feed goes dark. Those things compound. Last two: a step back on permitting, and City Planning's recommended 66% short-term rental fee hike, per Westside Current. That step back finally gives the Gabriel and Kung study a home. Zoning-compliant still doesn't mean a fast yes — CEQA review, discretionary approval, neighborhood council comment periods. City Hall treats those hurdles as features. That 44-unit Westlake project that died in permitting back in February? This study puts a structural name on what happened to it. And the fee hike comes out of the same dysfunction. The city can't process housing approvals on time, and now it's raising the cost of the informal supply that fills the gap. Same spreadsheet, two ways to fail. Westside Airbnb hosts are the least sympathetic crowd in this city, fine. But on a 66% hike, say where the money goes — back into enforcement, or just into general overhead. Somebody should say before the vote. Here's Chris Woodward at iOSco News:
(The Center Square) - The U.S. Department of Education has opened a Title IX investigation into the Los Angeles Unified School District over sexual misconduct allegations. The department contends the district is reassigning teachers accused of such misconduct to other schools, instead of removing from their position. But the district told The Center Square Wednesday that "reassignment" means sending the teachers home during the investigations.
So here's the sequence. Yesterday, EdSource confirms the LAUSD incumbents cruise back in — board's settled for this cycle. Then the next morning, the U.S. Department of Education opens a Title IX investigation into how the district handles teacher misconduct. The board got a fresh mandate and a federal probe in the same twenty-four hours. They own both now. And the substance is brutal — the Office for Civil Rights says LAUSD policies, quote, appear to automatically reassign teachers accused of misconduct to another school. The district's defense is that reassignment just means sending them home during the investigation. We flagged the acting superintendent and the wrestling coach clearance yesterday. Now the feds are auditing the whole misconduct-handling system. Same week LAPD is losing trained officers — schools and cops both bleeding institutional capacity at once. And note who's doing the auditing. The feds are on the record with LAUSD — while the county's twenty-six-million-dollar homeless care contracts are still grading their own homework. Okay, so if a developer already follows all the zoning rules — right height, right density, right neighborhood — why can getting a 'yes' in L.A. still drag on for years, and is any of that actually fixable? The short answer: zoning compliance gets you through the door, but there are still a bunch of rooms to clear before anyone hands you a permit. A peer-reviewed Journal of Urban Economics study by Gabriel and Kung, published this past August, looked specifically at L.A. and found that approval timing and uncertainty measurably suppress housing production. In other words, the delay itself — separate from the rules on paper — drags down supply. Some of that delay is scattered across city departments that don't move together: Planning, Building and Safety, Fire, and, crucially, LADWP. The California Business Journal reported on a nearly finished 176-unit complex at 2225 Sunset in Echo Park that's sitting empty because LADWP still hasn't completed the utility connection — a department inside the same city, on its own timeline. Meanwhile, L.A. is only at 17.8 percent of its state-mandated housing goal, with the 2029 deadline already past the halfway mark, and it still needs more than 300,000 units, per Kennedy Zak's analysis of RHNA data. Mayor Bass has basically acknowledged the system is broken: she signed Executive Directive 19 in April 2026 to cut delays across planning and permitting. City Hall is treating this as a policy choice, not some immovable fact of life. So if the mayor's signing directives to fix this, why is L.A. still only at 17.8 percent of its housing goal? What's keeping that directive from having teeth? The thing to watch is whether executive directives actually change behavior inside the departments. LADWP, LADBS, and Planning all have their own cultures and backlogs, and a mayoral order doesn't automatically rewire any of that. Commercial Observer reported in February that more multifamily developers are leaving the L.A. market entirely, so the window to course-correct before builders stop trying is shorter than the political calendar makes it look. The concrete test is utility connection timelines and over-the-counter permit turnaround: do they measurably improve in the next 12 to 18 months? That's the data to watch. This one's from EdSource:
Los Angeles Unified School District incumbents Rocio Rivas, Kelly Gonez and Nick Melvoin surged to strong leads Wednesday morning for three seats on the board of education and appear to be headed to reelection, the Los Angeles Times reported. The LAUSD “elections were the sleepiest in a decade,” Loyola Marymount University political science professor Fernando Guerra told the newspaper.
EdSource has the call: Rivas, Gonez, and Melvoin all cruised back in. Gonez ran unopposed in the east Valley — so that one barely counts as a race. Loyola Marymount's Fernando Guerra called it the sleepiest LAUSD election in a decade. The big political forces just declined to fight each other this cycle. The teachers union backed Rivas, a charter-friendly donor backed Melvoin, and they both win. Détente. Everybody keeps their seat. So the same board that signed off on the wrestling coach mess just got handed a fresh mandate. Sleepy election, wide-awake problems. And don't let the calendar blur this — incumbents win Wednesday, and the very next day a federal Title IX probe lands on the district. That board now owns both. FOX 11 Los Angeles, with Gina Silva:
Two Los Angeles Police Department officers who are DACA recipients were forced to turn in their badges and guns this week after federal processing delays caused their work authorization to lapse, leaving them on unpaid leave with no timeline for their return. Officers Pacheco and Carrillo — who asked FOX 11 not to use their first names — both with the LAPD since 2023, filed their DACA renewal applications months in advance.
Fox 11's Gina Silva has this: two LAPD officers, Pacheco and Carrillo, both DACA recipients, both on the force since 2023. They turned in their badges and guns this week because a federal renewal delay let their work authorization lapse. And they filed months in advance. The backlog grew more than 360 percent in the past year, so the paperwork timeline didn't save them. The city recruited these two, trained them, certified them — paid for all of it — and now they're sidelined with no return date. That's LAPD eating the cost of a federal backlog it can't touch. And it lands in the same week SpotCrime flagged the block-level crime feed going dark. So the department's shedding trained officers and shrinking what the public can see, at the same time. These are people who commute into LA to do a job for LA. A processing delay in Washington functionally pulls them off the street — and City Hall can't spin a staffing number it didn't cause. Right, and the officials calling for action — what action? You can't local-fix a federal backlog. Best case, somebody picks up a phone to USCIS and waits in the same line everyone else is in. This one's from Westside Current:
LOS ANGELES— The City's short-term rental program is getting more expensive to run — and officials want hosts to pay more of the bill. In a report submitted to the City Council, the Department of City Planning recommended raising fees on short-term rental hosts, including those using Airbnb, and increasing the city’s nightly home-sharing fee from $3.30 to $5.48.
City Planning wants to bump the nightly home-sharing fee 66% — three-thirty to five-forty-eight — because the program no longer covers its own cost to run. Fine. The report doesn't answer the part that matters: does the extra money go back into enforcement, or does it disappear into general overhead? And the application tiers are wild — four-oh-four for a regular home-share, but eleven thousand seven hundred for a discretionary extended application. Westside Current has the full schedule. That's a number aimed at a very specific kind of host. Here's what gets me. This is the same city that can't push a zoning-compliant permit out the door in under a year. Now it's raising the cost of the informal supply that fills the gap while the formal pipeline jams. So it all shows up on the same spreadsheet — housing approvals move too slowly, and the workaround gets pricier. Referred to PLUM May 29, no vote yet. It takes effect July 1 if it advances. And nobody's going to cry for an Airbnb host on the Westside. But 'more expensive to run' should come with a staffing number. Who's actually monitoring these listings? Got thoughts on today's stories, a tip we should chase, or a correction we need to hear? Send us a note at ladailyfix at lantern podcasts dot com. We're always listening.
If you want to dig a little deeper, we've put links to every story from today's briefing in the show notes. Follow whichever threads caught your ear.
That's Los Angeles Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.