In the 1950s, Los Angeles County’s raging growth and increasing national importance made it an essential local news beat. The Hall of Administration’s news corps included dozens of broadcast, print and wire reporters from as far away as Long Beach, the Antelope Valley and San Diego. Today, because of cuts in newsroom budgets and staffs, […]
Category: LA Times
The return of the recall
I’VE NEVER SEEN Los Angeles City Councilman Jack Weiss wearing a “Do I look like a people person?” T-shirt, but to some of his 5th District constituents, that’s his everyday vibe: aloof and abrasive. As a result, halfway through his second term, Weiss, could face a recall vote just as he commences a run for […]
California’s Rail Pokes Along as Others Race Ahead
If you are not driving, 186 mph isn’t a spectacular land speed. The horizon creeps along, subjectively, no quicker than it does at 65 mph. Absent the jerky, erratic motion often associated with rail travel, the train seems almost not to be moving at all. It’s only when you focus on fences that you realize […]
New Jail Options Needed
Even Sheriff Lee Baca probably knows that Los Angeles County’s jail system is failing. From October to April, inmates, including some key witnesses in murder cases, were being killed almost every month. The ratio of deputy guards to prisoners in the troubled Central Jail was an abysmal 1 to 45, according to the Sheriff’s Department. […]
A Chance for Hahn to Leave the Doghouse
As chief of Los Angeles Animal Services, Jerry Greenwalt may not have been the most important manager in L.A.’s city government. But his announced retirement in April provides Mayor James K. Hahn with at least two opportunities: to improve his most cantankerous city agency, and to show that he can clean up the appointive city […]
A Foul Political Wind Blowing In From Washington
Californians, who already have the dirtiest air in the nation, may have to breathe an extra 2.5 million new cars’ worth of atmospheric pollution by 2007. The state’s fresh extra tonnage of vaporous schmutz would come not from the exhaust-clogged skies of greater Los Angeles, nor from its new air-pollution hubs in the San Joaquin […]
Over the Long Haul, a Big Problem
Drive six miles up Sand Canyon Road, past well-shaded ranch houses, well-groomed horses and spotless white longhorns, up toward the steep, sage- covered hills of the Angeles National Forest and you’ll quickly sense why people live there: the utter silence of the slopes surrounding the Antelope Valley. You don’t even hear the drone of the […]
Zacarias Casts Shadow of Former School Board
Depending on your point of view, the overthrow of Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Ruben Zacarias was either the straightforward consequence of June’s lawful LAUSD election or a brutal palace coup. Whichever way you see it, you probably agreed that board President Genethia Hayes’ abrupt installation last week of attorney and former board member […]
Will Defeat at the Polls Get the School Board Off Its High Mesa?
On the east-facing cliff of the downtown mesa atop which sits the Los Angeles Unified School District offices, there’s a carved memorial to the last time these heights were stormed. The inscription tells how they were seized from local Californios by Mormon militiamen in the Mexican-American War, more than 150 years ago. No one had […]
Amid Good News, L.A. Gets a Pie in the Face
So Los Angeles can have itself a new pro football team, if it only can pony up the money and settle other details by September. Is that good news? Sports columnists, at least, say it is. Other reactions were more subdued. One insider at New Coliseum Ventures, the leading group to bring pro football back […]