Ring of Fires

Alissa, Godfrey, and guest co-host Loraine Lundquist track local wildfires, an oil spill, and a leaking tank of methyl methacrylate in Garden Grove. LA Mayor Karen Bass fires her heat officer and other climate champions flee the administration. Then: LA’s Capital Infrastructure Program has finally been launched! How it would transform the city budget process, which just concluded.

Listen on below, on Apple Podcasts, via Spotify, or almost anywhere you get your podcasts.

EPISODE NOTES

Alissa, Godfrey, and guest co-host Loraine Lundquist track local wildfires, an oil spill, and a leaking tank of methyl methacrylate in Garden Grove. LA Mayor Karen Bass fires her heat officer and other climate champions flee the administration. Then: LA’s Capital Infrastructure Program has finally been launched! How it would transform the city budget process, which just concluded.

LA Podcast is seeking a part-time Digital Producer! Work with our small but mighty team on show notes, social media, and other digital assets for our weekly local news roundup. Go here for the full description and interest form

Several fires continue to burn in Southern California, wreaking havoc on air quality

The Sandy Fire may have been caused by a tractor doing brush clearance; the Santa Rosa Island Fire was started when a shipwrecked sailor set off an emergency flare

Although the Sandy Fire is close to the Santa Susana Nation Laboratory, the site does not pose a threat. In fact, the Woolsey Fire, which literally started on the campus, burned about 80 percent of the site already, and out of 360 samples taken three weeks after the fire, only 3% showed high activities of radioactive isotopes

Meanwhile, about 40,000 people were evacuated in Garden Grove due to a leak in a 7,000-gallon tank of methyl methacrylate, the chemical used to make plexiglass, that could potentially explode at the GKN Aerospace facility. The evacuation zone is so large because they don’t know which way the wind will blow the gas

And a crude oil pipeline was severed in East LA by utility crews, spewing 2,500 gallons of oil into the LA River

Sammy Roth broke the news that LA Mayor Karen Bass fired her heat officer, Marta Segura. This — and the departure of other environmental leaders — is calling this administration’s climate commitment into question, as the mayor releases an unambitious climate plan

LA’s rankings in the Trust for Public Land’s annual ParkScore report has dropped to 93 out of 100, much to Alissa’s dismay

Different ballots are also due June 2 — for property owners to raise the streetlight assessmentsthat haven’t been increased since the 1990s

Both these problems would be addressed if LA had a Capital Infrastructure Program (CIP) allowing the city to budget for improvements, service, and maintenance five years at a time, instead of just one — and the CIP was finally released!

Alissa writes about the CIP, why it’s just focused on Olympics related projects for now, and how these basic changes could help restore infrastructural trust in the city

There are ten proposed recommendations for the CIP, many of which would need to be made through charter reform. The CIP would also help resolve a lot of the issues with LA’s budget, which was just approved this week

One of those reforms is naming a public works director, Investing in Place’s Jessica Meaney tells Steve Lopez at the Los Angeles Times:  “If the city gets this right, she said, implementation of the infrastructure plan “could finally show Angelenos the true scale of deferred maintenance, make trade-offs visible, and create a road map for better sidewalks, streets, parks, and accessibility’”

The ballot measure to repeal the business tax was also abandoned after the council approved a shameful deal to delay the Olympic wage for up to 18 months, which Bass said at a Politico event Wednesday she personally stepped in to help negotiate

If you’re listening to this Monday, join LA Forward Institute in Grand Park from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. for food, music, and cheering on the Amazing Vote Center Race. Tuesday there’s a ballot party in Highland Park and Thursday there’s a ballot party in the West Valley (hosted by Loraine!). And here’s LA Forward’s voter guide

Subscribe to Mike’s podcast What’s Next, Los Angeles to hear interviews with candidates all over LA County

Support LA Podcast by becoming a paid subscriber at thinkforward.la

This week’s episode was produced by Sophie Bridges

The reporting and analysis you hear in the show is put together by our rotating cast of producers and co-hosts every week. All opinions expressed on the show are solely those of co-hosts and may not represent the views of LA Forward

Alissa Walker writes the newsletter Torched, tracking LA’s megaevent progress. Find her at @awalkerinla on Instagram and @awalkerinla.bsky.social on Bluesky

Godfrey Plata is the deputy director of LA Forward and is @godfreyplata on Instagram

Loraine Lundquist is chair of LA Forward’s board, an astrophysicist, and a sustainability policy expert who earned 49.4% of the vote as a candidate for LA City Council