Restored Shōya House at The Huntington demonstrates sustainable living practices
Newly signed legislation to bring speed cameras to LA, Long Beach, Glendale
Pg 27
Pg 15
VISIT ANAHEIMPRESS.COM
Thursday, October 19-October 25, 2023
Local. Relevant. Trusted.
VOL. 9,
NO. 143
Local newspapers are vanishing. Bass, 6 LA City Council members How should we remember them? conclude D.C. talks with federal officials By Daniel Golden, ProPublica
M
ayor Karen Bass and a delegation of six Los Angeles City Council members on Wednesday wrapped up three days of meetings with national leaders in Washington, D.C., to advocate for additional resources for the city — one day after Bass said the delegation has put a "fix in motion" after learning LA could be at risk of losing more than $100 million in Veterans Affairs benefits. The delegation — including Council President Paul Krekorian and council members Bob Blumenfield, Eunisses Hernandez, Heather Hutt, Traci Park and Hugo Soto-Martinez — was in Washington to meet with White House officials and members of California's congressional delegation. Meetings will conclude Wednesday evening, and some council members will leave that night and others the following morning, according to Bass' office. Bass and council members have been staying at a hotel near the White House, and will return to LA just as they arrived — traveling on economy tickets, according to Bass' office. The funds for the trip came from their respective offices. During Tuesday's meeting with Secretary Denis McDonough of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, he informed the city leaders that Congress wants to "claw back" money to balance the federal budget — but that a "legislative fix could save it," Bass told KNX News.
By Jose Herrera, City News Service
This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
A
LA officials meet with U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, fifth from left, in the nation's capital. | Photo courtesy of Mayor Karen Bass/X
That appears to be already in the works, following the delegation's meeting Tuesday with Sen. Alex Padilla, D-California. The city contingent has more meetings scheduled for Wednesday with other members of the LA area's congressional delegation — at which the veterans issue will likely be prominent. "In addition, we learned that many cities have not utilized their (housing) vouchers," Bass told KNX. "So, needless to say, I wanted to be the first in line to make sure that LA gets any unused vouchers that other cities don't need. ... "I'll tell you why," she added. "There isn't any city around that is dealing with the numbers (of homelessness) that we're dealing with." Krekorian, meanwhile, told City News Service on Tuesday afternoon that it was "another busy day for us." He said city leaders had "detailed conversations" with McDonough and U.S. Depart-
ment of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge. Los Angeles has a quartermillion veterans, and too many of them are living on the streets, Krekorian said. The talks with McDonough served as an opportunity to speak in depth about how to best provide job opportunities, housing and other services for veterans, he added. "With regard to HUD, we had discussions about hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding related to housing the unhoused and providing greater affordability," Krekorian said. The council president reiterated it's important for the delegation to be there, advocating on behalf of the city, because "nature abhors a vacuum, and so does Washington." "If you are not here, and if you're not advocating for the people of Los Angeles, then somebody else will be here
advocating for the people of other cities. So in order to make sure that Los Angeles is treated fairly and equitably, it's important that the leaders of our city be here to have those face-to-face discussions," Krekorian said. Soto-Martinez told City News Service on Tuesday that Bass' relationships with leaders in Washington — the mayor is a former member of the House of Representatives — are "shining through." "Oftentimes when you meet folks, you have to build relationships and get to know them — but in every single meeting we've been at people know her (Bass). She has a ton of credibility, and so we're going (straight) into the needs of Angelenos," Soto-Martinez said. As a result of the trip, the City Council canceled its regularly scheduled meetings for Tuesday and Wednesday. The council will resume meetings on Friday, according to Krekorian's office.
sign that reads “Somewhere Worth Seeing” welcomes travelers to Ware, a faded mill town surrounded by the hills and steeples of western Massachusetts. But these days, hardly any news outlets find Ware worth a visit, even as its leaders wrangle over issues vital to its future. Inside the brick, fortresslike Town Hall on a humid summer evening, Town Manager Stuart Beckley informed the five members of the Selectboard, Ware’s council, of an important proposal. A company was offering to buy Ware’s water and sewer services, which need tens of millions of dollars in upgrades. That’s a consequential choice for a town of 10,000 with an annual budget of $36 million. A sale would provide an infusion of $9.7 million. But private utilities often increase rates, raising the prospect that Ware’s many poor and elderly residents might face onerous bills down the road. The Selectboard didn’t reach a consensus that night. Instead, one of the members berated Beckley for moving ahead with privatizing even though the position of town planner had been vacant since March. “We’ve been through four of them ... in less than six years,” Keith Kruckas said. “So we’re not going to blame it on COVID. We’re not going to blame it on other towns paying more money. We’re going to blame it on poor management.” From there, the discus-
sion descended into bickering between Kruckas and Beckley. “You’ve been harping all night, point after point after point,” Beckley said. “So is there anything that I do that you like?” I thought Ware residents should know about the challenges their town faces and its decision-makers’ squabbling. But I was the only journalist among the six onlookers in the room, and I wasn’t there to cover the board. There was nobody from a daily newspaper in the area or from a television or radio station. Decades ago, at least three outlets sent reporters to every session of Ware’s governing board: a weekly community paper, a local radio station and my old employer, the Daily News in Springfield, the third biggest city in Massachusetts. Daily News reporters covered towns throughout western Massachusetts and into northern Connecticut. The paper had a correspondent who focused on Ware and a few nearby towns, and he attended meetings of town officials from the Board of Assessors to the Cemetery Commission. Today, Ware is close to becoming a news desert. Townspeople complain that the media have forgotten them, Beckley told me. What remains, he said, is “a lot of Facebook speculation, where people are guessing at the news. It’s quite rampant here.” One reporter from the weekly paper, the Ware River See Newspapers Page 13