Red tape

With polls showing a tight contest days before the Nov. 3 election, LA City Councilmember Nithya Raman has detailed plans to challenge incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. Her platform includes moving the city's homelessness budget away from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, giving the city controller broad audit power, and cutting encampments by half before the 2028 Olympics. On housing, she pledges a "shot clock" for permits, self-certification for simple projects, new high-rise zones, and a Office of Tenant Protections. On public safety, Raman would expand unarmed crisis response teams and has signaled she would replace LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell.

Bass, in office since 2022, has faced scrutiny over wildfire response, federal immigration enforcement, and homelessness policy, issues likely to shape how voters weigh the race's outcome.

A decades-old dispute over a 31,000-square-foot strip of protected parkland in Leonia, New Jersey, has stalled a land sale that Kulite Industries, the borough's largest employer, needs to build an employee parking lot. The state Department of Environmental Protection won't grant permanent access through Overpeck County Park until Leonia resolves a separate issue: its public works buildings, built in 1974, encroach on land classified under the state's Green Acres program.

Fixing the encroachment would require either demolishing the DPW facility or providing five acres of replacement land per acre affected, both costly for taxpayers. Mayor Bill Ziegler has pressed the county, DEP, and Governor Mikie Sherrill's office for relief, while Kulite, which employs nearly 900 people and is being courted by other states, says the parking shortage threatens its ability to stay in New Jersey.

California's High-Speed Rail Authority secured only one of the several legislative priorities it said were needed to keep the Merced-to-Bakersfield rail segment on schedule. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1425, letting the authority issue permits to utilities, local governments and developers on authority-controlled land, but broader proposals—faster environmental reviews, expedited court dispute resolution, sales tax exemptions on construction materials, and new authority to tap local tax revenue near the rail line—stalled or were never formally introduced. Local officials strongly opposed the tax-revenue idea, calling it a raid on funds needed for services and road repairs.

A separate bill from Sen. Henry Stern to let the authority spend more state climate funds outside the Central Valley segment died in committee, as did a utility-relocation bill from Sen. Scott Wiener. The authority and lawmakers traded blame over the losses. The project, now estimated to cost $126-231 billion with full buildout by 2040, depends on $1 billion in annual state carbon-auction funding that could shrink under pending climate rule changes, adding further uncertainty to its timeline.