#ryders-law-city-council-intro-967

#ryders-law-city-council-intro-967

John Kaehny has written and successfully lobbied for the passage of state and New York City laws related to government transparency and accountability, including the first open data law in the world in 2012.

Campaigner Aysha Hawcutt stated that residents were 'not anti-homes', but believed the Adlington plan was 'the wrong proposal in the wrong place'. She expressed pride in the community's resilience against the development threats.

Raman described the city as rudderless and criticized the rebuilding effort as indefensibly slow, citing a lack of leadership on critical issues like insurance and health concerns.

My goals for 2026 are to advance affordable housing, protect public land for public good and strengthen neighborhood resiliency. I am focused on ensuring city agencies are responsive to community concerns, supporting small businesses and making Lower Manhattan more livable for working families.

Portland's transition to a new form of government last January brought new practices and procedures for the City Council. Among the largest changes, impacting both the Council and members of the public, was the introduction of eight policy committees. The committees, which considered topics including transportation, climate, finance, homelessness, and public safety, were intended to provide a focused venue for councilors to introduce legislation and hold conversations on specific topics, as well as to hear public testimony.

The retreat is an opportunity to step away from the regular meeting agenda and focus on long-term planning, priorities and the financial health of our city. These retreats are an important part of good governance, allowing the council and city staff to look ahead thoughtfully and ensure we are aligned on the challenges and opportunities before us.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani's pick to head the city's Law Department was confirmed by the New York City Council after promising to be a lawyer for the entire city, not just the mayor, at his confirmation hearing last week. Steven Banks, who served as the city's homelessness czar at the city's Department of Homeless Services under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, is set to return to City Hall after being confirmed Thursday via a 42-6 City Council vote, with one abstention.

The state's vehicle code currently requires that cities and counties sell impounded vehicles that are worth more than $500 at auction. AB 630, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law in October, increased the financial threshold for L.A. and Alameda counties, allowing them to dismantle vehicles worth up to $4,000. That, in turn, spares those jurisdictions from going through the more cumbersome process of auctioning off the vehicles, backers of the bill said.

The city of Los Angeles violated the state's open meeting law when council members took up a plan to clear 9,800 homeless encampments behind closed doors, a judge ruled this week. In a 10-page decision, L.A. County Superior Court Judge Curtis Kin said the City Council ran afoul of the Ralph M. Brown Act by approving the encampment strategy during a Jan. 31, 2024, closed session.

I had to set fire to my scorecard, and to the column I had just drafted, which touched on all the expected big-name challengers who had bowed out of the mayoral race in the past several days: L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, billionaire businessman Rick Caruso (who forced a runoff with Bass the last time around), and former L.A. Unified schools chief Austin Beutner.

Oakland leaders have declined for the second time to reappoint two incumbents to the Police Commission, the civilian body overseeing the Oakland Police Department. At the City Council meeting Tuesday night, all but two council members - Carroll Fife and Noel Gallo - voted to reject the nominees submitted by the Police Commission Selection Panel in December: Ricardo Garcia-Acosta, chair of the commission, and Omar Farmer, an alternate commissioner. The commissioners' terms expired in October, but both have continued to serve in a holdover capacity.

In some ways, it was just another campaign coffee: Los Angeles mayoral candidate Austin Beutner in a roomful of voters talking about his career and life accomplishments. But this was no ordinary meet-and-greet. Beutner was standing inside a partially rebuilt house - with no doors, no windows and no drywall - in an area leveled by the Palisades fire. In the living room, about a dozen people spoke about what they had been through, from the frantic evacuation to the sight of smoldering ruins to the battle to get rebuilding permits.

On the last day of January, hundreds of people filled the pews of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Koreatown to hear not the word of God but the gospel of the Democratic Socialists of America. It was the local chapter's bimonthly meeting and also a kickoff event for a year during which they planned to build on an already impressive foothold in L.A. politics.