The most important stories for you to know today
After a dozen serious accidents last year at the intersection of the105 Freeway and Studebaker Road, Caltrans has begun work to address safety concerns.The accidents resulted in injuries, property damages and in two instances, fatalities.
Caltrans has begun a project to install rumble strips, a safety feature that vibrates vehicles when they cross them, on the exit ramp as well as a flashing signal on top of “End of Freeway” signs.In a statement to LAist, Caltrans said they are also installing “KEEP CLEAR” pavement markings and a crosswalk at the signal at the intersection.After 12 accidents that have resulted in injuries, property damage and two fatalities, Caltrans has begun construction work to address safety concerns at an intersection in Norwalk where the 105 Freeway ends at Studebaker Road. Supervisor Janice Hahn called the intersection a “crash magnet” in a letter to the California State Transportation Agency because of the freeway’s abrupt end. “The medical building that used to operate on the other side of the road has since been closed due to the number of times it was struck by vehicles,” Hahn wrote in the letter.“The end of this freeway has been badly designed and will probably lead to more fatalities unless corrected,” Hahn wrote. Caltrans has begun a project to install rumble strips on the exit ramp, a safety feature that vibrates vehicles when they cross them. A flashing signal on top of “End of Freeway” signs, “KEEP CLEAR” pavement markings, and a crosswalk at the signal at the intersection will also be installed. “Caltrans is also in the process of beginning a separate project that would enhance intersection lighting,” the statement continued. A Caltrans spokesperson told LAist that officials from the State Transportation Department met with city officials last August to begin talks about addressing the dangers at that intersection. The transportation agency has since had regular meetings with the city, as recently as last week.Members of the press walk through the sculpture titled "Intersection II" by Richard Serra during the press preview May 29, 2007 at the Museum of Modern Art, "Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years".UCLA, the L.A. County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena.Bottom line, his work was like nothing that came before. “What you hope for is that unexpected youth will come along and not deal with the linear history but break new ground and that's what continues to happen decade after decade,” Serra said in 2006 at the unveiling of a sculpture next to South Coast Plaza.He was proud to say that before he was an artist, he’d worked at Bethlehem Steel while he was a freshman playing football at UC Berkeley. “I came from a generation of artists that were blue-collar,” Serra said in 2006. A former aerospace engineer working for the Disney Hall architec showed Serra a French computer program that allowed visualization of these kinds of shapes in 3-D. Richard Serra died last Tuesday. In the last 50 years, he had become a giant in American and world art. Southern Californians have plenty of opportunities to see a wide variety of his work because of his long relationship with regional arts institutions and philanthropists.He was proud to say that before he was an artist he’d worked at Bethlehem Steel while he was a freshman playing football at UC Berkeley. “I came from a generation of artists that were blue collar,” Serra told me in 2006, during the unveiling of a sculpture in Costa Mesa. “One of my closest friends is Phil Glass, he also worked steel mills. Another close friend of mine — a great sculptor named Serra wanted to be a painter during the time of abstract art and minimalism, the Western art movement that broke from depicting people, landscapes, or other natural images and sought a purification of the material used to make the art. “What you see is what you see,”and began doing that to metal, sometimes melting it and splashing it on gallery walls.In the last several decades, Serra mostly created pieces with 2-inch thick plates of COR-TEN steel, often 15 feet tall and 40 feet or longer. He preferred this kind of steel because over time it developed a patina of various shades of amber depending on the location of the piece.," installed in the public plaza of a federal building in New York City. The national controversy that ensued in the next decade entangled office workers ticked off that their lunch walks were interrupted, as well as a federal judge and political conservatives who said Serra’s art was a waste of public money.Serra’s signature sculptures dot Los Angeles The public can see Serra’s work across Southern California, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, UCLA, Pasadena, and Costa Mesa.If we could look through the knot-hole in the fence of the late billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad’s home in Los Angeles, we could see"No Problem," four 15-foot-tall conical sheets and predecessors to Serra’s Torqued Ellipses. The Broad hasat the Gilbert Friesen residence in Los Angeles. It’s part of a series of work that used natural slopes in the land and juxtaposed slabs of steel with the drops in elevation some slight, some steep. It’s unclear if the Friesen sculpture is still there. And if you see Disney Hall and have a Serra-déjà vu moment — there’s a connection. In the 1990s, Serra was trying to figure out how to bend his sheets of metal around two parallel ellipses while torquing those ellipses 90 degrees or more from each other. It was hard. He didn’t see it occur in nature. At the time, L.A. architect Frank Gehry was trying to solve a similar problem to create sheets of steel to cover buildings. A former aerospace engineer working for Gehry’s showed Serra a French computer program that allowed visualization of these kinds of shapes in 3-D.LACMA boasts that the 2006 sculpture that’s on display now at the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA could be Serra’s greatest work. What do you think?. It’s a smaller torqued ellipse and gives the viewer an opportunity to walk in and around and see that amber patina out in the real world and how it responds to drizzle, rain, and people leaving their marks on it.One of the things that makes this piece interesting is that it’s from 1970, early in Serra’s career and the same year Serra had a solo show at the storied but now defunct Pasadena Art Museum. While so much of Serra’s work is vertical, this piece is horizontal but hints at a relationship with the monumentality of the Earth’s arc. It’s located in the front part of the museum, to the right of the accessible ramp leading to the Norton Simon’s main entrance.Remember the controversy when Serra created a commissioned sculpture for a plaza? Well, philanthropist Henry Segerstrom commissioned Serra to do the same. Serra took a different approach than Tilted Arc. “I think what was needed here was not something horizontal, but something vertical that would collect people much like a Campanile in an Italian plaza,” Serra told LAist in 2006 at the unveiling.The 2004 sculpture is an example of Serra’s massive forged steel cubes. The train station’s arcs provide a nice allusion to arcs at a monasteryGemini G.E.L. has a series of eight etchings. They're only on view until April 5. If you miss that one,. The piece is part of a larger show of photographs and prints related to Gemini G.E.L. and its impact on the art world in L.A. and beyond.The contract for weekly COVID-19 testing of Santa Ana Unified students and staff was one of the most lucrative pandemic-era school testing contracts in California.LAist has learned that the U.S. Attorney's Office subpoenaed records last year about Santa Ana Unified’s COVID-19 testing agreements, worth well over $100 million.Documents obtained from the district show that the FBI has been investigating the district’s pandemic-era COVID-19 testing agreements with private businesses, including several owned by Todd Ament, the disgraced former Anaheim Chamber of Commerce president.The documents show that Ament, convicted of other corruption charges in 2022, secured and managed COVID-19 testing agreements with the district for his own and other businesses. In an investigation commissioned by the Anaheim City Council, some of Ament’s associates in the testing business alleged that Ament sought illegal"kickbacks."Federal, state and school district authorities declined to speak to us about the school district's COVID-19 testing operation and investigations into potential illegalities. Ament and others involved in the testing operation also declined to speak to LAist for this story.now is a key figure in a federal probe into possible corruptionsubpoenaed records last year about Santa Ana Unified’s COVID-19 testing agreements , including those with companies owned or affiliated with Todd Ament, the disgraced former Anaheim Chamber of Commerce President, and his wife, Lea Ament, a former local hospital executive, who also had a role in the testing business. provide new insights into allegations by former associates that Todd Ament sought to illegally benefit from the deal. An LAist review of internal district documents and Santa Ana Unified school board meeting agendas found that. School board records show the board did not approve the reassignment. The FBI has been conducting a criminal investigation into the Santa Ana Unified School District's agreements with several companies that provided weekly COVID-19 testing to students and staff during the pandemic, according to documents obtained by LAist. The contract at the center of the FBI inquiry, for the 2021-2022 school year, was among the largest pandemic-era school testing contracts in the state. It was worth well over $100 million, according to an estimate given to independent investigators in a separate wide-ranging investigation, and LAist calculations. The testing was billed by the contractor directly to the federal government and private insurance companies. Santa Ana Unified is the second-largest school district in Orange County, with about 44,000 students and 5,000 employees.More than 775,000 COVID-19 tests were processed for students and staff in the district during the 2021-2022 school year, according to an email to the district from one of the testing partners. A former school board member told us, overall, testing went well:"At the beginning, it was disorganized, but that was to be expected," said John Palacio, who served on the Santa Ana Unified school board at the time. A federal subpoena reviewed by LAist targets records from the COVID-19 testing operation dating back to Aug. 1, 2021. The documents sought included communications, billing records and contracts with businesses owned by Todd Ament, and other businesses for which he served as a contact with the district, according to the subpoena and documents obtained by LAist from the district.He was a major player in Anaheim politics who led the city's chamber of commerce before he was indicted on a variety of corruption charges and pleaded guilty to several counts of fraud in 2022. In federal wiretaps conducted as part of that previous investigation, Ament described himself as part of a “cabal” of elected officials, political consultants, and business leaders that worked covertly to influence Anaheim politics. An FBI investigator described him in an affidavit as a “ringleader” of the group. Three months before the Santa Ana Unified school board approved a no-bid contract with a company tied to Ament, the district got 18 bids from other firms in response to a request for proposals for COVID-19 testing. The district scrapped that effort after the winning bidder sought to renegotiate some of the terms. Then, shortly before the school year started, Anza Vang, an executive with the Orange County Health Care Agency, recommended Ament to the school district as a testing partner, according to documents obtained by LAist. A spokesperson for the Orange County Health Care Agency, Ellen Guevara, told LAist in an email that the testing laboratory that got the contract, Diagnostic Laboratory Science ,"was one of a limited number of vendors at the time that were able to offer robust COVID-19 testing.” Ament helped broker the deal with DLS, according to district documents.Several representatives for the school district told LAist the state Attorney General's office is also actively investigating the testing operation. The AG’s office did not respond to requests for comment.The investigations into COVID-19 testing operations at Santa Ana Unified are a small snapshot of potential ethical and legal problems that occurred during the pandemic as unprecedented sums of money flowed from the federal government to address the public health emergency. Isaac Bledsoe, an investigator with the U.S. Office of Inspector General for the federal Department of Health and Human Services, told LAist the amount of money defrauded nationwide during the COVID-19 pandemic from patients and the federal government was"definitely hundreds of millions of dollars." And it's still happening. The watchdog agency's most recent enforcement action related to COVID-19 fraud was in April of 2023. Jodi Balma, a political science professor at Fullerton College who watches Orange County closely, said"the full report of misspending of COVID dollars has not begun to be written." She and others told LAist that the pandemic caused many public agencies to bypass some accountability standards to rapidly respond to the changing emergency.The documents LAist obtained from the district provide new details about Ament's involvement in securing a COVID-19 testing contract for his own and other businesses. Ament's company, alternately called Accurate Health Partners or Accurate Diagnostic Partners, coordinated the testing and delivered swabs to the lab for analysis. The documents also provide insights into accusations that Ament sought to illegally profit off of the contract in the form of"kickbacks," as alleged in aAment's wife, Lea Ament, a nurse and former local hospital executive, was also involved in the school district's testing operation through her husband’s company and another company, Care One Health Partners, according to school district documents. Until recently, Lea Ament was listed as the secretary of Care One Health Partners on business documents filed with the California Secretary of State. For years, Todd Ament played an outsized role in Anaheim politics before pleading guilty to federal criminal charges for defrauding a cannabis company, using federal COVID-19 business relief funds for personal expenses, and lying on his tax return. None of those crimes appear to be connected to the Santa Ana Unified contracts. Todd Ament’s guilty pleas in the Anaheim probe pre-date subpoenas in the FBI’s Santa Ana inquiry. The initial criminal complaint against Todd Ament in the Anaheim case was filed in May 2022 and noted that he had begun cooperating with the federal government. He has yet to be sentenced. Todd Ament did not respond to multiple calls and emails requesting comment for this story. Daniel Silva, who is listed as Ament's lawyer in recent court filings, also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.It's unclear where the investigations by the FBI and the California Attorney General’s office stand. Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office, which subpoenaed the records, said the agency could not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation. A spokesperson for the FBI also said they could not comment and could not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation. Lawyers, administrators, and current school board members for Santa Ana Unified said they could not comment because of the investigations. The documents LAist obtained through a public records request reveal details behind allegations made during an independent corruption investigation ordered in 2022 by the Anaheim City Council. That investigation came in the wake of a federal probe and included allegations of potential improprieties in the award and administration of the lucrative COVID-19 testing contract with the Santa Ana Unified School District for the 2021-2022 school year., released in late July of 2023, the Anaheim investigators included portions of interviews with sources alleging that Todd Ament used"behind the scenes" influence to obtain a COVID-19 testing contract with Santa Ana Unified and then sought kickbacks from the deal for him and his wife, Lea Ament. Eric Morgan, a representative of Diagnostic Laboratory Science , which initially held the school testing contract, told the investigators the contract was worth an estimated $128 million. Morgan estimated Todd Ament made $20-30 million from the district testing operation. According to the new documents obtained by LAist, as well as testimony cited in the Anaheim corruption report, Todd Ament helped broker a no-bid contract for weekly COVID-19 testing of students and staff for the 2021-2022 school year on behalf of DLS, an established local laboratory. The documents show that companies headed by Todd Ament and Lea Ament organized and oversaw the ordering and collection of saliva and nasal swabs for COVID-19 testing, and the delivery of those tests to the lab for analysis. An internal memo from the school district, written two days after Todd Ament was charged with unrelated federal crimes, described his role as"a 3rd party COVID testing vendor and laboratory contact for DLS and MEDLAB2020." MedLab2020 succeeded DLS in analyzing COVID-19 tests for the district.Listed agents: Matthew Collins, CEO, Secretary, CFOcommissioned by the Anaheim City Council in August 2022 and released in late July 2023 included allegations by people involved in Santa Ana Unified’s COVID-19 testing operation regarding Todd Ament’s role in securing and administering the contract. In their final report, investigators noted that Todd Ament"seemed to vanish" from the Anaheim political scene around the beginning of 2021. Witnesses told investigators that he saw lucrative business opportunities in COVID-19 testing as businesses and schools began to reopen, according to the corruption report. Two brothers, Firas and Moe Tamary, told investigators that they hired Todd Ament as a consultant for DLS for about three months at the beginning of 2021. Both Tamarys are listed as agents for DLS with the California Secretary of State. They told investigators that Ament then quit his consulting job with them to start up his own business, Accurate Diagnostic Partners . According to the report, Accurate Diagnostic Partners administered COVID-19 tests and collected swabs to be delivered to DLS for testing. Firas Tamary told investigators that Todd Ament claimed to have an"inside connection" at Santa Ana Unified and assured them they would get approval for a COVID-19 testing contract from the district's board of education. Firas Tamary also told investigators that he and his brother agreed with Ament on a fixed price they would pay him per swab collected, based on the Medicare reimbursement rate. Tamary told investigators that at one point Todd Ament asked for a higher rate, but the Tamary brothers told him that would be considered “a kickback” and was against the law, according to the report.One of the best things you can do to hold officials accountable is pay attention. Your city council, board of supervisors, school board and more all hold public meetings that anybody can attend. These are times you can talk to your elected officials directly and hear about the policies they’re voting on that affect your community.Meetings are held at 1601 E. Chestnut Avenue in Santa Ana. They are also broadcast live on Spectrum Cable, Channel 31, and repeated the following Saturday at 3 p.m. and Tuesday at 6 p.m. You can view previous meetings Learn the ins and outs of government jargon: Closed session, consent calendars, and more! We have definitions of commonly used termsAccording to the final report of the Anaheim investigation, the Tamarys said that Todd Ament claimed to have a better offer from another lab and tried to pressure DLS to pay him more. Firas Tamary said they declined, telling Todd Ament that paying him above the set reimbursement rate would violate several state and federal laws. That's when, Firas Tamary told investigators, Todd Ament"basically stole" the Santa Ana Unified contract from DLS and"found a different lab to work with," according to the report. LAist reached out to Moe Tamary, Firas Tamary and Eric Morgan via phone and email to request comment on this story. They did not respond to multiple requests. Shortly after the district's school board approved the COVID-19 testing contract with DLS, documents obtained by LAist show that Todd Ament began work to get the contract reassigned to a different lab: MedLab2020, whose CEO is Matthew Collins, according to business documents filed with the California Secretary of State. Collins did not respond to multiple requests for comment from LAist for this story.According to the criminal complaint filed against Todd Ament for his role in the Anaheim corruption scandal, Ament started cooperating with the FBI on Sept. 14, 2021. On Sept. 28, 2021, Todd Ament wrote to the district's head of risk management, Dr. Sara Nazir, saying he wanted to discuss a revision to the contract that would assign all rights and responsibilities for COVID-19 testing of students and staff to MedLab2020. He also included a new paragraph in the contract that would officially list his company, Accurate Diagnostic Partners, as a subcontractor for the first time, according to school district records. LAist was unable to find any record of the Santa Ana Unified school board approving the contract reassignment. An LAist review of board meeting agendas through January 2022 did not turn up any items related to the contract reassignment. John Palacio, the former Santa Ana Unified trustee who was on the school board at the time, told LAist he was unaware of the contract reassignment."And that is of serious concern to me as a board member because they have an obligation to inform the board, especially about something as significant as that contract," Palacio said. Palacio also said he had never heard of Todd Ament, or his involvement in the testing contract, until contacted by LAist for this story. District emails obtained by LAist show Palacio questioned district administrators about why the district hadn't gone out to bid for the contract, how testing companies would be paid, and whether the district had a budget for supporting the testing operation with staff and other logistics. He told LAist that district administrators told him at the time that the contract was no-cost and therefore didn't need to be put out for competitive bidding, and that testing would be paid, as the contract states, through private insurance or through the federalFermin Leal, a spokesperson for the district, told LAist that current school board members and staff could not comment on the matter because of the ongoing investigation.Morgan, the DLS representative, told the Anaheim investigators that Care One Health Partners was in charge of ordering the COVID-19 tests that were administered to Santa Ana Unified students and staff. Documents obtained by LAist show that Care One Health Partners also acted as an intermediary between insurance companies and students and staff to help troubleshoot billing problems. Lea Ament identifies herself in district documents obtained by LAist as the chief operating officer of Care One Health Partners, even though documents filed with the Secretary of State during the time of the contract identify her as the secretary of the company. In emails obtained by LAist, Lea Ament also identifies herself as president of her husband's company, Accurate Health Care, which was coordinating testing for the district. She is not listed as an officer of the company on records filed with the Secretary of State. Lea Ament was previously executive director of cancer services at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, but she left in 2021, according to a hospital spokesperson. Dr. Albert Lai, a pain medicine doctor based in Placentia, is listed in records filed with the Secretary of State as the chief executive officer of Care One Health Partners. Lai did not respond to messages seeking comment left at his office and other phone numbers listed for him. Morgan told Anaheim investigators that approximately 1 million tests would be ordered under the contract and Care One Health Partners would charge approximately $68 per test. He told investigators that Lea Ament would receive half of the money from every test. "Todd's wife somehow, even though there were doctors' names on everything, worked out where she got fifty percent of all the profits for Care One and obviously, he owned Accurate, so he was dipping into multiple places," Morgan told investigators, according to their report.Kris Murray, a former member of the Anaheim City Council who runs a consulting firm, was also involved in the testing operation at Santa Ana Unified. Murray developed FAQs about the testing program and communicated with students and staff about insurance problems on behalf of the Aments' companies and the district, documents show. Murray did not respond to LAist's requests for comment. It was not immediately clear who hired her to do the work and how much she was paid.On May 16, 2022, the federal government filed a criminal complaint against Todd Ament, detailing allegations that he defrauded a cannabis company, used federal COVID-19 business relief funds for personal expenses, and falsified tax returns. Two days later, on May 18, 2022, Santa Ana Unified staff sent an internal memo informing district administrators of the charges against Todd Ament. They also stated that Collins, the CEO of MedLab2020, told the district he had bought Accurate Health Partners from Todd Ament the week prior, and that Todd Ament would not have a role in the company going forward. In the Anaheim corruption report, Morgan, the DLS representative, told investigators he heard Collins had bought Todd Ament's company for $10 million. The district signed a new contract with MedLab2020 in the spring of 2022 to provide weekly COVID-19 testing to students and staff in the 2022-2023 school year. This time, the district was responsible for paying the company for staff testing, according to the contract obtained by LAist, but not for student testing, which would continue to be billed to students' insurance companies or to federal pandemic relief programs.MedLab2020 provided voluntary testing until the district received the federal government's subpoena on Feb. 6, 2023. In an email sent the next day, Nazir — who headed the school district's risk management department and oversaw COVID-19 testing for the district — advised that she was suspending MedLab2020 from conducting further COVID-19 tests on campus. Fermin Leal, the district’s spokesperson, told LAist that the district gradually shifted from in-person testing to providing at-home testing kits to students and staff during the 2022-2023 school year. Leal said those who wanted in-person testing were referred to community providers. By then, vaccines were widely available and the chaos of the early pandemic days were behind school administrators. LAist reviewed details of the Santa Ana Unified COVID-19 testing agreements with Jose Moreno, a former Anaheim city council member. Moreno has criticized the influence of Anaheim's business elite — which has often been behind closed doors — over public policymaking in recent years. "It's not surprising," Moreno said of Todd Ament's involvement in the highly lucrative no-bid contract. "Anytime there's public dollars that are supposed to help people, we see the same pigs at the trough," he said.Before COVID-19 vaccines were widely available, testing was considered crucial to preventing large outbreaks and opening schools and businesses. There was a rush to figure out which tests could reliably detect the virus quickly and how to make them widely available. With that rush came big opportunities for profit. "People who were not in the lab business were scrambling for ways to get into the lab business," said Michael Volpe, an Orange County-based lawyer who advised medical laboratories and adjacent businesses on COVID-19 billing practices during the pandemic. Volpe previously worked for a company, HealthQuest Esoterics, that responded to Santa Ana Unified's April 2021 request for proposals for COVID-19 testing. But the company ultimately decided not to bid. Under Santa Ana Unified's COVID-19 testing contract for the 2021-2022 school year, costs were to be billed to a student or staff member's private insurance or, if they didn't have insurance, directly to the federal government. Because much of that data isn't public, LAist hasn't been able to determine how much money was paid to the district's testing partners.To learn more about the total billing costs for testing at Santa Ana Unified, LAist has requested reimbursement data from CalOptima, Orange County's Medi-Cal agency. We have not yet received that data. The Medicare reimbursement rate for rapid-turnaround PCR tests at the time was $100 for processing a test, and $23.46 for collecting the specimen for testing.In one document obtained by LAist from the school district, a staff member's explanation of benefits from their insurance company noted the cost for each COVID-19 test conducted at $190. In late 2021, MedLab2020's published price for each rapid turn-around PCR test was $300, according to their website, accessed via theof providers paid through that program shows that MedLab2020, the laboratory that handled most of the testing at Santa Ana Unified, received $103 million in federal funds through the uninsured program — the third highest amount of any provider in California. Besides Santa Ana Unified, MedLab2020 did testing for at least one other school district. Using these numbers, LAist calculated that the Santa Ana Unified testing contract for the 2021-2022 school year may have been worth more than $200 million — far higher than the amount estimated by Eric Morgan, a representative of DLS, in his interview with Anaheim investigators. To learn more about the total billing costs for testing at Santa Ana Unified, LAist has requested reimbursement data from CalOptima, Orange County's Medi-Cal agency. We have not yet received that data.We are here to investigate abuse of power, misconduct and negligence in government, business, and any venue where the public is affected.Good morning and happy Tuesday! Today we have a nice break from the unusual weather we've had — today will be warm with highs in the 70s.The coasts will be on the cooler end, with highs in the upper 60s except for Long Beach, where daytime highs will reach 70 degrees. More inland, expect highs in the mid 70s, and up to 80 degrees in the warmest parts of the San Fernando Valley. In the high desert, it will reach up to 73 degrees, and up to 81 degrees in the Coachella Valley.Our friends at KCRW are hosting storytelling night The Moth at the United Theater . Always an evening of laughs, tears, and incredible true stories, this month’s theme is"Where the Heart Is" and features host Amir Baghdadchi and an array of talented storytellers.Ethics Reform Stalls In LA, Lifesaving Skills Now Easier To Access In LA County & A USC Basketball Coach Moves On — The A.M. EditionAs state lawmakers return from spring recess, the next few months will be when representation really matters. But how well are they doing? A series of CalMatters stories explores that big question.It can’t be easy to be a Republican in predominantly blue California.. He represents her values, she said, but also, his legislative director has “moved mountains” for her to solve problems she’s had with state agencies, such as getting an ID from the Department of Motor Vehicles.And as the Legislature returns to work — with key deadlines to pass bills and approve the state budget in the next three months — Californians of all political persuasions are looking to lawmakers to represent them.talked to more than a dozen members of the largest new class of lawmakers in California’s history about the lessons they learned after their first year. And we exploredBut legislators aren’t the only ones who represent constituents. We also explored how state agencies — part of the executive branch — often fail to complete one of the And as the state continues to navigate another year of a budget deficit, CalMatters will continue to explore the ways the three branches of state government respond to the demands and needs of 39 million residents.It's been nearly a year and a half since elected leaders at Los Angeles City Hall promised ethics reforms after a series of scandals forced the City Council president to resign and sent other members of the council to federal prison. In the wake of those events, political leaders said reform would be a top priority. And yet there's been no action.The changes were first proposed by the city Ethics Commission in October 2022. The proposals include increasing the amount of fines the Ethics Commission can impose, giving the panel the ability to place reforms directly on the ballot, and providing the panel with attorneys who are independent of the city attorney, one of the elected leaders the commission watchdogs.“Given all of the scandals that have been going on, all of the corruption at City Hall, it's really high time that they at least have a discussion on this,” said Sean McMorris, the Transparency, Ethics and Accountability Program manager for Common Cause.A spokesperson for City Council President Paul Krekorian said the Ad Hoc Committee on Governance Reform would discuss reform proposals at an April meeting, which has yet to be scheduled. But he said ethics reform may be pushed back to the 2026 elections.It's been nearly a year and a half since elected leaders at Los Angeles City Hall promised ethics reforms after a series of scandals forced the City Council president to resign and sent other members of the council to federal prison. In the wake of those events, political leaders said reform would be a top priority. And yet there’s been no action — no hearings, no votes — on proposed changes to the City Charter that would make the Ethics Commission more independent and give it more power. The changes were first proposed by the commission in October 2022. “Given all of the scandals that have been going on, all of the corruption at City Hall, it's really high time that they at least have a discussion on this,” said Sean McMorris, the Transparency, Ethics and Accountability Program manager for Common Cause, an organization that fights for government accountability.The City Council has until early July to act to place the proposals on the November ballot. The proposals include increasing the amount of fines the Ethics Commission can impose, giving the panel the ability to place reforms directly on the ballot, and providing the panel with attorneys who are independent of the city attorney, one of the elected leaders the commission watchdogs.What do current City Council members say? A spokesperson for City Council President Paul Krekorian, who chairs the committee, said a hearing to consider reform would be scheduled for later this month. Krekorian became council president after Nury Martinez resigned the position in October 2022.Martinez's exit was part of the fallout from the leak that year of secretly recorded City Hall tapes in which she and others could be heard making racist and derogatory remarks. Ethics reform “is very likely going to be on the agenda,” Hugh Esten, Krekorian's spokesperson, said to LAist, adding that the current council president “would be happy to see Ethics Commission reform on the ballot.” But Esten also said Krekorian supports creating a charter reform commission to consider ethics reform instead of bringing it before the committee. That would be a lengthy process and likely mean no proposals would make it to the ballot until 2026. “I share some of those concerns that we are not moving quickly enough,” said Councilmember Nithya Raman, a member of the government reform committee. She also said she supports strengthening the Ethics Commission. Over the past three years, former council members Mitch Englander, Jose Huizar and Mark Ridley-Thomas have been sentenced to federal prison on corruption charges. Councilmember Curren Price faces corruption charges in state court. And the city Ethics Commission has accused Councilmember John Lee of accepting illegal gifts from developers. He is not facing criminal charges.One proposed reform would double the fine the commission could impose to $10,000 per violation of ethics rules, such as accepting illegal campaign contributions. The fines have been the same for nearly 30 years. Under the proposed change, violators would also be liable for the cost of enforcement actions, which could run into the tens of thousands of dollars.“There are really really big things in there that would change the culture at City Hall and make it easier for the Ethics Commission to bring meaningful enforcement,” said Rob Quan of Unrig L.A., a City Hall watchdog group. Another proposal would give the Ethics Commission the authority to place ballot measures directly before voters, bypassing the City Council. It's designed to avoid the current situation where the council has been slow to act on ethics reform. “Right now, City Council can just sit on anything and everything,” said Jamie York, a longtime activist on ethics reform.“It's more a way to get the City Council to work with the Ethics Commission in the future,” said Jeffery Daar, president of the five-member L.A. Ethics Commission. Other reforms include providing independent counsel to the commission and creating a budget with increases tied to the cost of living index so that City Council could not limit the effectiveness of the panel by cutting its budget. “It's essentially City Council giving up some of their power and allowing themselves to be policed,” McMorris said. And that is not always popular with elected officials, he added. York said city leaders have done a lot of “pontificating” about ethics reform, but have taken little concrete action. “I think ultimately they’re scared of a power structure changing and I think that they’re scared of accountability,” York said. Daar, the Ethics Commission president, said he is guardedly optimistic that reform will move forward.Frank Stoltze explores who has power and how they use it at a time when our democratic systems have been under threat.Brenda Hennessy spoke of the importance of learning CPR. Her son Cash Hennessy was saved by CPR when he had a cardiac arrest while he was playing football. He was 13.Do you know how to apply a tourniquet, use a defibrillator or help someone who is overdosing? You'll be able to learn online and in-person. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is launching the Community Readiness Champions Initiative to train residents to save lives.sessions to learn hands-only CPR , how to administer the opioid overdose reversal medication naloxone, how to use a defibrillator, how to recognize substance abuse disorders and how to stop bleeding from a deep cut or gunshot wound.The U.S. continues to see a staggering number of opioid-related deaths, driven in large part by the spread of synthetic opioids such as illicit fentanyl.Naloxone, which comes in a nasal spray and an injectable drug, can reverse the effects of an opioid overdose and restore a person's breathing. A person's heart can stop during an overdose, so hands-only CPR is often used with naloxone to try to save the person.Southern California Edison customers will receive a $86 California Climate Credit on their April bill. They will receive the same rebate again in October. SoCalGas customers will receive a one-time credit of $73.41 in April.Funding for the rebates comes from California's Greenhouse Gas Cap-and-Trade program. Through the program, utility companies pay the California Public Utilities Commission for emitting greenhouse gasses. These funds are then used by the state towards achieving their climate goals with a portion going to residents and small businesses as a rebate on their utility bills.This combination of 2003 and 2006 photos shows a northern spotted owl, left, in the Deschutes National Forest near Camp Sherman, Ore., and a barred owl in East Burke, Vt.A proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to kill roughly half a million barred owls to protect the spotted owl has conservationists and animal welfare advocates debating the moral issue of killing one species to protect another.In a March 25 letter responding to the proposal, a group of 75 organizations urged Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, to scrap what it calls a"reckless" plan."Non-lethal management actions to protect spotted owls and their habitats should be made the priority action," it read. But the USFWS says if no action is taken to cull the barred owl population, the northern spotted owl faces extinction.The barred owl is crowding out its less aggressive relative, the northern spotted owl, in the Northwestern states, according to the USFWS. To ensure the survival of the northern spotted owl, a threatened species, the service is proposing the mass removal of over 470,000 barred owls across California, Washington and Oregon over a three-decade span. The proposed action will also help prevent declines in the California spotted owls, another species facing competition from barred owls, it said.A proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to kill roughly half a million barred owls to protect the spotted owl has conservationists and animal welfare advocates debating the moral issue of killing one species to protect another.In a March 25 letter responding to the proposal, a group of 75 organizations urged Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, to scrap what it calls a"reckless" plan."Non-lethal management actions to protect spotted owls and their habitats should be made the priority action," it read. But the USFWS says if no action is taken to cull the barred owl population, the northern spotted owl faces extinction. The barred owl is crowding out its less aggressive relative, the northern spotted owl, in the Northwestern states, according to the USFWS. To ensure the survival of the northern spotted owl, a threatened species, the service is proposing the mass removal of over 470,000 barred owls across California, Washington and Oregon over a three-decade span. The proposed action will also help prevent declines in the California spotted owls, another species facing competition from barred owls, it said.Wayne Pacelle, president of the Center for a Human Economy and its lobbying arm, Animal Wellness Action, who co-authored the letter, called the plan"unworkable." He says it's doubtful that the government's plan can be successfully executed across such a long time frame. "If you don't do it dutifully and religiously every single year for 30 years, it has no chance of succeeding," Pacelle told NPR. He argues that lethal management programs often succeed on closed ecosystems such as islands, but a management plan covering such a vast region wouldn't be as effective. Cameron Barrows, a retired emeritus researcher at the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of California-Riverside, says that without a barred owl management strategy, spotted owls will disappear. "If nothing is done to slow the encroachment of barred owls, you will lose spotted owls," he said."There aren't a lot of choices left." To him, the letter opposing the proposal effectively"means 'We'd rather have barred owls than spotted owls,'"he said."We are not celebrating this management plan in issuing our support," said Claire Catania, the executive director of Birds Connect Seattle. But, she says, her organization recognizes its necessity.Conservation experts who support the proposal say it's a difficult but necessary plan that will help solve a problem that humans helped create.under the Endangered Species Act after environmentalists fought to protect the bird's habitat from the logging industry. The threatened designation also means the Fish and Wildlife Service is legally required to protect the northern spotted owl. But around the same time, the barred owl, originally native to the Eastern U.S., emerged as another threat as it moved West, encroaching on spotted owl territory. Human-driven habitat destruction spurred the barred owls to expand across the country, Catania says. Their move west has since displaced their"smaller, less aggressive cousins," the spotted owl, according to The spotted owl's habitat — old-growth forests — has become"very patchy" due to deforestation and are accessible to the more adaptable barred owl, saysThe Fish and Wildlife Service's proposal, outlined in a draft report assessing its environmental impact, is the latest attempt in a more than two-decade effort to save the spotted owl from extinction., the FWS began a four-year experiment to kill up to 3,600 barred owls in the northwest. According to Barrows, this strategy"slowed down but didn't stop" the barred owl invasion. The public comment period for the proposal closed in January. A final proposal is expected in this spring or summer,
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Farmers Branch glow-in-the-dark park reopens after repairs, safety improvementsIt was because of this popularity and other issues that the Joya Glow Park had to close for over a week. One notable change is a chain link fence surrounding the park's perimeter so it can be locked up at night.
Read more »
Safety improvements possibly coming to Monon Trail's 86th Street crossingTaj Simmons is a multimedia journalist who joined WRTV in August 2023.
Read more »
Family friend IDs victims in horrific San Francisco crash, calls for safety improvements at vigilFlowers and candles lie at the scene of Saturday's deadly collision in San Francisco where a family of four were crashed into by an SUV at a bus stop in the West Portal neighborhood.
Read more »
Driver hurt in Renton wreck visits victims' memorial; Residents demand safety improvementsA woman involved in the horrific crash on a King County road near Renton earlier this week paid her respects to the victims at a growing memorial.
Read more »
Nashville leaders eyeing list of safety improvements after Riley Strain's deathThe family of Riley Strain has headed back to their home in Missouri after the heart-wrenching discovery Friday of their 22-year-old son's body.
Read more »
Supervisor Hahn calls for safety improvements at end of 105 Freeway in NorwalkLos Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn has sent a letter to the state asking for immediate safety measures at the Norwalk terminus of the 105 Freeway.
Read more »