| LA County Sheriff’s Department to re-test some 4,000 DNA samples amid concerns about potentially incomplete results – Daily News |
| LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced Wednesday it plans to re-test about 4,000 DNA samples after learning the agency used testing kits over a roughly eight-month period that were found by the manufacturer to occasionally deliver incomplete results. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2025-03-26 |
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| Pomeranian rescued from Palisades Fire inspires state bill to protect pets in disasters | LAist |
| A state bill introduced by a Southern California lawmaker aims to protect pets during emergencies and evacuations. [Article] |
| by , . 2025-03-26 |
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| Due to cost, bid canceled to extend A (Gold) Line light-rail to Claremont, Montclair – Daily News |
| A potential contract for constructing the long-awaited light-rail extension from Pomona into San Bernardino County was rejected because the bid ran hundreds of millions of dollars over budget due to inflation, rising labor costs, market uncertainty and Trump’s tariffs, officials announced on Wednesday, March 26. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2025-03-26 |
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| LA City Council votes to explore seizing control of LAHSA spending | LAist |
| The Los Angeles City Council is directing city officials to look into pulling hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from the region’s homeless service agency after two audits found failures to ensure money was spent properly. [Article] |
| by , . 2025-03-26 |
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| Uber, Lyft could owe California gig workers billions of dollars |
| Uber and Lyft drivers rallied at three California city halls today, calling attention to a long-running lawsuit against the companies over thousands of wage-theft claims that could be worth billions of dollars. [Article] |
| by , CalMatters. 2025-03-26 |
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| Humboldt County employee union rallies after impasse in labor talks – Times-Standard |
| Tuesday, a few dozen county employees rallied outside the Humboldt County courthouse, brandishing signs and shaking homemade noisemakers of sunflower seeds in bottles. The local AFSCME unit represents over 1,000 people, an estimated two thirds of Humboldt County employees. Organizers are in contract negotiations with county leadership and say they declared an impasse this week in negotiations. [Article] |
| by , . 2025-03-26 |
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| Stormwater project to bring new greenery to Wilmington |
| A pair of Measure W-funded projects are expected to bring new greenery to Wilmington while also treating stormwater pollution in the Dominguez Channel and the Los Angeles harbor area, per an initial study published recently by the City of Los Angeles.
The Wilmington Greening Infrastructure Projects, an initiative from the City of Los Angeles Bureaus of Engineering and Sanitation, will be split into two phases. [Article] |
| by , . 2025-03-26 |
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| DOJ is investigating LASD for possible 2nd Amendment violations - Los Angeles Times |
| The federal Department of Justice says it has launched an investigation into whether the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department is violating people’s gun rights with excessive fees and wait times for concealed carry permits.
The DOJ announced Thursday afternoon that it was opening an investigation into the Sheriff’s Department’s possible abuse of 2nd Amendment rights, part of a broader review of “restrictive firearms-related laws” in California and other states.
The federal authorities cited a lawsuit that challenged the 18-month delay plaintiffs faced in receiving concealed carry licenses from LASD as a reason for the probe. A DOJ news release stated that it is likely others are “experiencing similarly long delays that are unduly burdening, or effectively denying, the Second Amendment rights of the people of Los Angeles.”
The Justice Department called California a “particularly egregious offender” that has resisted the Supreme Court’s recent pro-2nd Amendment rulings and enacted new legislation to further restrict the right to bear arms. Last month, Trump directed Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi to launch a review of 2nd Amendment law and infringements nationwide. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Times. 2025-03-26 |
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| How looming tariffs are hurting California's wine and liquor industry - Los Angeles Times |
| Back in December, alcohol importer Raza Zaidi in San Francisco placed an order for a pallet of gins, liqueurs and bitters from a Mexican spirits producer.
As the truck made its way north toward the border several weeks later, it was up against the clock: On Feb. 1, President Trump had announced plans to impose 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada.
Those levies went into effect March 4 — the day Zaidi’s pallet of 1,000 bottles arrived at the port of entry in Laredo, Texas. But in a reversal two days later, Trump said he would temporarily lift the tariffs on many Mexican and Canadian goods for a month.
The rapid back-and-forth caused confusion at the border crossing, Zaidi said, as customs authorities figured out how to assess shipments that had arrived during the brief window of time that the tariffs were in place. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Times. 2025-03-26 |
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| California legislators give early OK to more accountability for those who threaten schools and churches – Daily News |
| Threats of mass shootings or bombs at schools or places of worship have become increasingly commonplace. But some prosecutors say if the person who made the threat didn’t name a specific individual they were targeting, it’s harder to legally charge them. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2025-03-26 |
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| Design Commission Continues Mixed-Use Project After Traffic and Privacy Concerns Arise – Pasadena Now |
| Local residents near a proposed 2771 East Foothill development voiced strong objections over traffic congestion, parking shortages, and privacy issues at Tuesday’s meeting of the Design Commission.
The Commission ultimately voted to continue the review of the mixed-use project, which involves demolishing two existing buildings to construct a new three-to-four-story structure with ground floor commercial space and 20 residential units. [Article] |
| by , . 2025-03-26 |
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| L.A. teachers union pursues big salary hike and bold ideals in opposition to Trump agenda - Los Angeles Times |
| At a time when President Trump has threatened to cut education funding to institutions that cross him, the Los Angeles teachers union is having a throwback moment: It’s pushing an aggressive social justice and diversity agenda — and demanding a big raise from the L.A Unified School District.
United Teachers Los Angeles President Cecily Myart-Cruz said her members are fully cognizant of Trump’s hostility to union priorities but are determined to stick with theirs.
“Trump’s laser-like focus attacks on immigrant families; LGBTQIA+ community; diversity, equity, inclusion; our kids — is hitting our communities hard,” Myart-Cruz said in a recent briefing to lay out bargaining demands ahead of the June 30 expiration of the current contract. “We are hearing those fears and seeing the concerns and worries throughout classrooms and school doors daily.”
The union’s platform “is not only about protecting Los Angeles students, educators and families over the next three years, but it means continuing to build a future that is monumental,” she said. “In a time when the federal government is trying to tear everything down, we will keep on building.”
At the center of the union platform is a push for automatic annual salary increases — meant to reward experience and additional education — at a proposed 3.25% a year for the first 10 years of an educator’s career. That would be more than 26 times the current annual bump in some cases, and the higher annual raises would be built in, without having to bargain for them in every contract cycle. Additional across-the-board raises would still be possible, and UTLA is proposing such a 3% raise in the second year of a two-year contract.
Wages aside, UTLA’s wide-ranging, socially conscious platform springs from 665 member meetings held at schools in the fall, when the union also sought broad input from students, parents and other community members. The union’s official bargaining team has 140 members. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Times. 2025-03-26 |
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| LASD to retest 4,000 DNA samples after using faulty tests for 8 months - Los Angeles Times |
| In August, a manufacturer of DNA testing kits sent a letter to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department warning officials to stop using certain test kits that had proved prone to giving incomplete results.
The letter eventually landed in front of a civilian employee at the department’s Scientific Services Bureau — but the employee didn’t throw the kits out or send them back, sheriff’s officials said Wednesday.
Instead, the department kept using the faulty kits for another six months, testing thousands of samples from an array of criminal cases and investigations.
It wasn’t until Monday that a Scientific Services Bureau supervisor discovered the testing-kit company’s notice and officials realized what had happened.
Now, the department has opened an internal administrative investigation into the incident as officials face the daunting task of retesting 4,000 samples and figuring out how much the flawed kits may have affected criminal cases. In some cases, existing samples may be too small to retest, the department said. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Times. 2025-03-26 |
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| LAHSA’s homeless count comes early and a new state bill proposes more oversight for shelters | LAist |
| Today on AirTalk, LAHSA released an incomplete data set alongside their claim that homelessness numbers went down. We're looking at a new California shelter oversight bill proposal in response to rampant mismanagement inside the homelessness organization. What will a zero-emission future look like for California ports and what's the plan to get there? [Article] |
| by , . 2025-03-26 |
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| What the arrest of a green card holder at Columbia University means for students at SoCal campuses | LAist |
| A recent string of high-profile immigration enforcement actions at Columbia and other universities has sparked fear and caution among some students and faculty in Southern California — especially those who aren’t U.S. citizens. [Article] |
| by , . 2025-03-26 |
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| Breed Street Shul restoration aims for completion by 2026 |
| After years of dedicated effort, the restoration of the historic Breed Street Shul is finally near, with an anticipated completion date of 2026. [Article] |
| by , . 2025-03-26 |
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| LA County approves $908 million in spending to curb homelessness | LAist |
| The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to approve a $908 million funding package for homeless services, including the first allocations under the new Measure A sales tax. [Article] |
| by , . 2025-03-26 |
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| Lyft, Uber drivers push for $1.3 billion wage settlement – Daily News |
| Pasadena rideshare driver Ricardo Valladares says he’s owed more than $680,000 in back pay and damages from rideshare companies Uber and Lyft in a wage theft case dating back nearly a decade. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2025-03-26 |
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| How California legislators aim to sweeten film tax credits for Hollywood - Los Angeles Times |
| California legislators are proposing to increase its film tax credit to cover up to 35% of qualified expenditures for movies and TV series shot in the Los Angeles region, as the state attempts to lure back production.
For productions shot outside of the region — which stretches out to Ontario International Airport, Agua Dulce, Piru and Pomona — there will be an additional 5% to the base tax rate, which means those projects could get a credit of 40%.
These new provisions are part of dual bills in the California State Assembly and Senate aimed at modernizing the state’s film and TV tax credit program to make it more competitive with other states and countries, said Assembly Member Rick Chavez Zbur, one of the co-authors. He called it a “jobs bill.”
“Our advantage here is we’ve got the soundstages, we’ve got the skilled workforces,” he said. “But all the other states are making investments. The longer we go without making our program competitive, what we’re doing is we’re basically helping other states with workforce development programs that make them more and more competitive with us.”
California currently provides a 20% to 25% tax credit to offset qualified production expenses, such as money spent on film crews and building sets. Production companies can apply the credit toward any tax liabilities they have in California.
Boosting the tax credit to 35% brings California more in line with the caps set by other states that have successfully lured Hollywood productions in recent years. Georgia, for example, provides up to a 30% credit for productions. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Times. 2025-03-26 |
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| Paradise reconstruction to take 20 years, mayor tells Realtors – Daily News |
| The mayor of Paradise has a message for residents of Pacific Palisades and Altadena: there is hope that they will be able to rebuild their fire-ravaged communities.
But it’s going to take decades, and the costs of reconstruction will skyrocket, possibly outpacing insurance, Paradise Mayor Steve Crowder said Wednesday, March 26, during a virtual California Association of Realtors forum about wildfire reconstruction in Los Angeles County. [Article] |
| by , Los Angeles Daily News. 2025-03-26 |
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