The Council moved on Measure ULA Wednesday — and now we have to ask whether what they did was even theirs to do. If you're just catching up: Measure ULA is LA's high-value real-estate transfer tax. It funds affordable housing and tenant assistance, and it's taken heat over what it's doing to big property sales and new construction. The city's own timeline already had a checkpoint coming — after June 30, ULA's thresholds climb to 5.4 million and 10.9 million dollars. This is LA Politics and Urbanism Daily. So City Hall wants to loosen the tax voters passed — today, what they're actually allowed to touch, and what happens when we hit June 30. Westside Current broke the first step. Let's start with what Wednesday actually was. Here's my problem with the word 'loosen' — Westside Current calls it a first step, but a first step can mean a motion, a committee referral, or a real vote. Those are very different animals. Right, and it matters because LAist's step-back lays down a hard ceiling: the Council cannot unilaterally rewrite the rate or the core structure. That goes back to voters. So whatever they did Wednesday either fits under that ceiling or it doesn't. Name the move, then tell us which bucket it's in. And that's the whole ballgame. If it's cosmetic, it does nothing about the suppression. If it's substantive, it's not legal without the ballot. Pick one, City Hall. The test case is the Raman carveout — we've been pricing that at about a 177 million dollar revenue cut. Wednesday's action is where that number either survives or gets bargained down. And nobody on that dais wants to say out loud whether 177 million is on the chopping block. Funny how that works. There's a cleaner contrast sitting right next to it, though. The ADU ordinance in today's rundown amends the Municipal Code directly — Sections 12.03, 12.22, and 12.33. No voter sign-off needed. Exactly — the ADU paperwork moves because it's theirs to move. Three sections, amended, done. The permit counter is another story, but the legal authority is clean. Two reform tracks: one the Council owns outright, one it doesn't. That's the governance story this week. And they keep reaching for the track they don't own. RAND gives the city a suppression number and a unit gap, and the response is to fiddle with a tax through a vote that might not even hold up. There's also a modeling wrinkle. You've got the June 30 threshold change and a loosening move landing at the same time — two variables shifting on top of Manville's 50-percent sales-drop finding. Which means whatever happens to deal volume this summer, everyone gets to claim it proves their point. Two levers, zero clean attribution. Last thing — the ULA Coalition's 2023 program guidelines didn't anticipate the Council reshaping the structure from the inside. Now it's on the table. And if the Council rewrites the framework, does the expenditure piece SAJE and SCANPH have been steering survive, or does that quietly get reshuffled too? I want that answered before anyone celebrates a 'reform track.' We're staying on Measure ULA implementation and impacts — follow the show and you won't miss what comes next. Here's Westside Current:
LOS ANGELES— Leaders took the first step Wednesday toward loosening Measure ULA, advancing a proposal that would exempt newly built multi-family and mixed-use residential buildings from the city’s property transfer tax on high-value sales for 10 years. The move comes as council members weigh housing production concerns, Palisades Fire recovery, and a statewide tax measure that could threaten Measure ULA altogether.
Westside Current has it first: Wednesday, the Council voted 9-5 to direct attorneys to draft ballot language. So let's be precise — the Council hasn't loosened ULA. It's starting the paperwork to ask voters to loosen it. Right, and that 9-5 vote tells you exactly which way the wind's blowing. Hernandez, Jurado, Padilla, Rodriguez, Soto-Martínez — that's your no bloc. Everyone else wants the exemption for a building's first decade of high-value sales. And note Curren Price recused — he's a landlord. Credit where it's due: cleanest disclosure in the whole vote. Here's what I keep circling on — the Palisades Fire carveout passed unanimously: a five-year exemption for fire-impacted owners. Nobody fought that. But the new-construction exemption? That took a fight, because that's the one that actually moves the housing math. Our Measure ULA story now has a live ballot path — 9-5 to draft a 10-year exemption for new multi-family and mixed-use. And the urgency tracks: there's a statewide measure circling that could gut ULA entirely, so the Council's racing to set its own terms first. Okay, so City Hall is talking about tweaking Measure ULA — the so-called mansion tax — but voters passed it. Can the Council just rewrite it whenever they want, or does this have to go back to the ballot? Yeah, that's the fight right now. Short answer: the Council can't unilaterally change the tax rate or the core structure of a voter-approved measure. Any substantive rewrite has to go back to voters. That's why Councilmember Nithya Raman introduced a motion earlier this year to put a 'mansion tax do-over' on the June 2026 ballot — explicitly as a way to restart apartment development and fend off a statewide anti-tax campaign, per CalMatters. What the Council can do on its own is create narrower administrative exemptions, and it's already looking at those. A City Attorney report is examining two: a one-time exemption for Palisades Fire survivors who sell within three years of the fire, and an exemption for affordable housing nonprofits that sell to for-profit buyers and reinvest the savings into new affordable units, per Council File 25-0006-S86. Those are targeted workarounds. The rate cut, the structural piece, needs a ballot measure — and in June 2026, the Council voted to pursue that path, according to LAist. And while the Council is working on its own reform ballot measure, isn't there already a separate statewide measure that could just wipe ULA out entirely from Sacramento? Exactly — and that's the gun to the Council's head here. California's Secretary of State certified a statewide anti-tax proposition for the November 2026 ballot that would roll back transfer taxes like ULA across the state, with Los Angeles squarely in its crosshairs, per CalMatters. That's what's driving the 'Mend It, Don't End It' coalition — business leaders, labor, housing advocates — to push the Council to move fast on homegrown reforms. Their warning is simple: without changes, ULA could collapse under both political and legal pressure. So watch November. If the statewide measure passes, the local reform conversation is basically over. Cityclerk writes:
ACCESSORY DWELLING UNIT (ADU). An attached or detached residential dwelling unit that provides complete independent living facilities for one or more persons and is located on a lot with a proposed or existing primary residence. It shall include permanent provisions for living, sleeping, eating, cooking, and sanitation on the same lot as the single-family or multifamily dwelling is or will be situated.
Right next to the ULA fight we just hit, there's this — an ordinance amending Sections 12.03, 12.22, and 12.33 of the Municipal Code on ADUs and junior ADUs. That's the contrast. With ULA, the Council can't rewrite it on its own — voters own that. Here, the Council just amends the code directly, no ballot required. Two reform tracks, two totally different levels of difficulty. And look what the easy track produces. New definitions for accessory dwelling units, junior units, movable tiny houses — pages of paperwork conforming to state law. The city loves the reform it controls outright. The paper keeps moving. Whether the permit counter moves is a separate question this ordinance doesn't answer. It really is the cleaner track, though. No legal ceiling, no return to voters. If you want more units faster, this is where the Council actually has the pen. Has the pen, sure. But does defining a movable tiny house into the code get anyone a key faster, or just give us a tidier code? From Los Angeles Mayor's Office:
This year, the Mayor’s continued comprehensive approach to confronting the homelessness crisis demonstrated sustained change: More than 23,000 Angelenos moved into temporary housing – thousands more than the year before Mayor Bass took office; Permanent housing move-ins have nearly doubled compared to 2022; * Mayor Bass launched a first-of-its-kind partnership that is saving taxpayers millions and opened housing faster;
So this is the Mayor's 2024 year-end report — permanent housing move-ins nearly doubled since she took office, more than 23,000 people moved into temporary housing, and street homelessness dropped 10 percent. Right, and the timing here is something. This victory lap lands the same week the Council's trying to loosen the very tax that funds a chunk of this — the ULA piece we just hit. The line I'd circle is "first decline in homelessness in years." That's real if it holds — but it's a year-old report being resurfaced today, so I want to know what those move-in numbers look like now, not in December 2024. "Historic policy changes to slash red tape, eliminate building obstacles." Fine — then point me to the permit counter. The ADU ordinance amends Sections 12.03, 12.22, and 12.33. That's paperwork moving. The units are the test, and I'd like the units. And note the framing — "at lower cost to taxpayers," philanthropy partnership. That's the pitch right as the revenue source it leans on is being renegotiated upstairs. Convenient. Here's RAND Corporation:
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), like many law enforcement agencies nationwide, faces challenges related to staffing and morale along with other organizational issues. RAND was asked by the Los Angeles Police Foundation to assess LAPD recruitment, hiring, and retention; the Department’s complaint system and disciplinary practices; and the LAPD’s organizational structure.
So RAND was hired by the Police Foundation — not the city, the Foundation — to grade the LAPD on recruiting, discipline, and how it's actually organized. June 2025, prepared for the Chief. Six authors, RAND Justice Policy Program. And the framing is right up top: staffing and morale, same as agencies nationwide. It reads less like an LA scandal report than a structural diagnosis. And look who's footing the bill. The Police Foundation — private money — commissions an assessment of the public department. RAND even prints the disclaimer that the findings don't reflect their clients' opinions. Read that twice. The scope line does exactly what scope lines do — it tells you where the pressure was. Recruitment, hiring, retention; the complaint system and discipline; the org chart. Those are the three buckets they were paid to examine. Here's the contrast that gets me, after the ULA piece we just hit. The Council can move toward changing a voter-approved tax in a week, but the LAPD disciplinary system gets a quiet outside study delivered to one man — the Chief. Recommendations to the Chief, not the Council, not the voters. If you follow Los Angeles politics, you might also like California Governor's Race — daily 2026 coverage of the candidates, polling, debates, fundraising, and policy, for voters who want more than horse-race takes. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
What we're watching next: city attorneys have to draft the Measure ULA ballot language before the Council can decide whether to put that 10-year new-housing exemption in front of voters.
As always, we've put links to every story in the show notes, so you can spend more time with the pieces that caught your ear today. That's Los Angeles Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.