Should L.A. City Council still inform the public by bulletin board?

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Tony Barboza, with assistance from David Zahniser, Dakota Smith and Rebecca Ellis.

I recently joined our team of reporters covering Los Angeles city government. And what a moment to begin this new assignment. Los Angeles has been in crisis, struggling to respond to the deadly and destructive fires that have devastated Pacific Palisades and other communities.

When the City Council met Tuesday to begin the recovery and rebuilding process, there was a fast and hard-to-follow fusillade of motions and votes, with more than 20 fire-related actions approved the same day they were introduced.

As an 18-year L.A. Times veteran, I have been to City Hall many times to cover one story or another. But it had been a while since I spent much time in the 1928 Art Deco building, with its echoey hallways, marble-lined interior and stairs time-worn with indentations from decades of footsteps. So its many quirks stood out to me.

Some, like the industrial beige and brown “squawk boxes” in many offices, recall a bygone era, with their analog dials and real-time audio feed from the council chambers. Or the half-consumed bottle of Bacardi Gold rum left inside the drawer of the desk I inherited. Less endearing is the ugly or circus-like behavior from people who yell, sing, curse and hurl crude, racist or misogynist insults at city officials during meetings.

One of the most perplexing and seemingly antiquated features of City Hall got a lot of use Tuesday: a bulletin board where motions are posted for public viewing. This bulletin board, about seven feet high and stationed in the public section of the council chambers, is the only way to figure out in real time what legislative proposals the 15 council members are making.

On Tuesday, the motions affixed to the board included urgent proposals to protect people displaced by the fires from eviction and price-gouging, to speed up the arrival of federal disaster relief, to assess the risk of post-fire debris flows and to commission an independent “after-action” report on the emergency response.

City staffers pinned motions on top of other motions. Reporters and members of the public gathered in a scrum, reading and taking screenshots of the amassing sheets of paper.

Tracking what was being abruptly proposed and voted on was a two-person operation, with my colleague David Zahniser and me splitting the work of snapping photos of the motions, cataloging them in numerical order and quickly reading through them.

It’s not typical for the council to consider so many “special” motions, introduced and voted on during the same meeting. Council members said they had to move quickly and bypass the normal 72-hour waiting period for taking action because of the ongoing fire emergency.

But I had to wonder how any member of the public, following on television or online — or even in the room — could make sense of the crop of brand-new proposals.

Is this really how the nation’s second-largest city operates in 2025? Passing around sheets of paper, tacking them to a board and leaving it to the public to figure out for themselves what’s going on?

For some perspective, I called Avak Keotahian, a former assistant chief legislative analyst who retired last year after 46 years in L.A. city government and who has a wealth of knowledge about how City Hall works.

Keotahian explained how motions move through the chamber, from the councilmember who originates the idea and another member who seconds it, to the council president who initials it and the circulation of physical copies to all 15 council members on the floor. The City Clerk holds on to the originals for safekeeping, Keotahian said, and copies of each motion are then pinned to the bulletin board.

Keotahian defended the bulletin board, which he said has been in use since he began working in City Hall in 1977 and probably for many years before that. He said he understands the paper-centric approach might seem behind the times.

“It’s not surprising that that thought emerges in your mind,” he said. “Like what is this, the Roman Forum? And Julius Caesar brings out a scroll and puts it on the bulletin board?”

While the approach could be modernized with technology, he said, “this is a working legislative meeting, and you have to balance the goal of notification of the public with the need for the City Council to be able to maneuver,” for instance, by making on-the-spot edits and clarifications to proposals.

Emailed versions of the motions are sent to anyone who signs up for them but typically show up hours after the meetings have ended. On occasion, they don’t arrive in inboxes until the following day.

“Yes, it’s not instantaneous,” Keotahian said. “But if you’re looking for an electronic posting of the thought patterns and the trials and errors of the council, I don’t know of any legislative body that has that kind of detailed, minute-by-minute and play-by-play scrutiny.”

Still, I’m not convinced that the bulletin board offers enough transparency, especially when so many other aspects of our lives can be conducted online. I am also certain that it’s only one many bureaucratic quirks and tangles I’m going to run across on this beat.

Readers: What other idiosyncrasies should I know about the way L.A. City Hall works (or doesn’t)? If you want to share any, or ever have tips or suggestions for our reporting, my email is tony.barboza@latimes.com.

State of play

— MISSING MAYOR: As the Palisades fire exploded in Los Angeles on Jan. 7, Mayor Karen Bass was posing for photos at an embassy cocktail party in Ghana. The mayor’s activities during the fire’s critical first hours were revealed through photos posted on social media, The Times’ Julia Wick reported. It’s sure to add to the escalating criticism of Bass’ handling of the catastrophe.

— LOOKING TO REBUILD: On Monday, Bass issued an executive order aimed at speeding up rebuilding efforts for thousands of fire-leveled homes and businesses, saying it will clear red tape and bureaucracy and help get displaced Angelenos back home sooner.

— EVICTION PROTECTIONS: Among the 20 fire-related council actions taken on Tuesday, one proposed by Councilmember Traci Park prohibits evictions against tenants for having extra occupants or unauthorized pets that had to relocate because of the fires. A more expansive proposal from Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez and Hugo Soto-Martínez, which would freeze rent increases citywide for one year and ban evictions for tenants who face economic or medical hardship from the fires, was referred to committee for additional review.

— EMPTY RESERVOIR: As wildfires rapidly spread through Pacific Palisades, officials with the Department of Water and Power wrestled with a high-stakes choice: shut off water to nearby neighborhoods such as Brentwood or face diminishing water pressure on the front lines. Now, the City Council is seeking answers for why hydrants ran dry — and why the Santa Ynez Reservoir in Pacific Palisades has been out of commission for months.

— WILDFIRE PLANNING: Top Los Angeles Fire Department officials opted not to deploy available “ready reserve” engines and other resources ahead of warnings about Jan. 7’s “life-threatening” wind event and didn’t order firefighters to stay for an additional shift. The department started calling up more firefighters and deploying those additional engines only after the Palisades blaze was burning out of control, Times reporting found.

— PORT PICK: The council approved Bass’ appointment of Wilmington resident Yolanda De La Torre, a longtime executive for YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles, to the Board of Harbor Commissioners on Wednesday. Her appointment followed the recent passage of Charter Amendment HH, which requires the five-member commission to have at least two harbor-area residents, including one from San Pedro and one from Wilmington.

— EARLY RELEASE: A central figure in the DWP billing scandal has been released from prison months early. On Monday, a judge approved Paul Paradis’ request for a “compassionate release” and home confinement so he can have surgery. Paradis, who pleaded guilty to taking a $2.2-million kickback from another attorney, had been sentenced to 33 months. He is expected to be a witness in upcoming California State Bar trial proceedings related to the scandal.

— DISAPPEARING CHATS: The city’s long-running practice of auto-deleting Google Chat messages by employees after 24 hours has been reversed after a community group threatened to sue. The change was announced in an email to city workers Tuesday, which stated that Google Chat history was enabled “in response to user requests related to the citywide emergency.”

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe?: The mayor’s signature program to combat homelessness did not launch any operations in any new locations this week.
• On the docket for next week: The L.A. County Board of Supervisors will consider a resolution barring landlords in unincorporated areas from evicting tenants who are hosting evacuees, or their pets, in violation of a lease. The county will also consider suspending some restrictions on short-term rentals to ramp up available housing.