Mini-Mall Model Troublesome, Yaroslavsky Says

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Los Angeles Initiative Director Zev Yaroslavsky spoke to Curbed LA about the development of mini-malls in Southern California. Yaroslasvky said that mini-malls were popular with the public but not so popular from a planning standpoint. “I viewed the new mini-mall model as troublesome,” he said, noting that mini-malls broke up the pedestrian character of streets by providing parking in front of the businesses. Yaroslavsky said Proposition U, a 1986 initiative he sponsored when he served on the Los Angeles City Council, limited commercial development but was not in response to the reemergence of mini-malls. Rather, it was in response to massive buildings. “People were fed up with the changing scale of new buildings in commercial zones adjacent to residential neighborhoods,” he said.

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Yaroslavsky on Race to Succeed Ridley-Thomas

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Los Angeles Wave about the upcoming race to succeed county Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas. Term limits will force Ridley-Thomas to give up his 2nd District seat on the powerful Board of Supervisors. If no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote in a March primary, the top two vote-getters will face off in November. Of the eight candidates who have emerged so far, the three with the highest chance of winning the election are Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson, state Sen. Holly Mitchell and former Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry, according to Yaroslavsky. Perry, who has already raised more than $500,000 for the campaign, has “surprised some people with the amount of money she’s raised,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a horse race.”

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Yaroslavsky on Frustrations Over Combating Homelessness

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke with KCRW’s Press Play shortly after President Trump criticized California cities for the spread of homelessness during a trip to the state. Yaroslavsky took issue with Trump “coming in here and lecturing to us about what’s wrong with our housing policy,” saying several of the administration’s actions are responsible for pushing citizens onto the streets. He also said the root of homelessness is income inequality, not the availability of housing units. “The bottom line is this: We have an affordable housing crisis. We don’t have a market-rate housing crisis.” Yaroslavsky argued against loosening rules on zoning and development. “The proposals that have come out of Sacramento to eliminate the single-family homes and the duplex zones and the quadruplex zones in the city and allow seven-story massive apartment buildings with no parking is not the answer,” he said. “The people who are squeezed in this housing environment are people who are of low and moderate income, and that’s 40 to 45 percent of the city.”

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Yaroslavsky Weighs In on Democratic Debate

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, provided in-studio commentary on KCAL9 following a debate of the top 10 Democratic presidential candidates. Vice President Joe Biden, who bore most of the criticism during the three-hour debate, “has had his challenges with syntax, so to speak, but he hung in there,” Yaroslavsky said. Biden’s poll numbers are slowly falling, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s are on the rise, he said. But he cautioned that no one should take front-runner status for granted. Candidates with low polling numbers who fared well in the debate included Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris, and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, he said. “They all had an opportunity to reintroduce themselves to the American people, and they did well,” Yaroslavsky said. But he added, “It’s a crapshoot right now.”

 

Yaroslavsky on Labor-Tech Faceoff as a Campaign Barometer

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Associated Press about a faceoff between Big Labor and Big Tech that has become an issue in the Democratic presidential primary. Several major Democratic White House hopefuls have expressed support for a California bill backed by labor and opposed by tech giants such as Uber and Lyft, the article said. The bill would make it harder for tech companies to classify workers as independent contractors, who are not entitled to minimum wage or workers’ compensation. “It says something about where the candidates think the primary voters are on this issue,” Yaroslavsky said. They “may believe that labor can be more helpful to them than the high-tech companies can be to them in a caucus state or a primary.”

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Yaroslavsky on Tug-of-War Over Rehired Deputy

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to KCAL9 News after a judge overturned L.A. County Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s decision to reinstate a fired deputy. The county Board of Supervisors had sued the sheriff’s department, contending that the deputy, who was let go over accusations of stalking and domestic violence, should not have been rehired. “This is not about some policy decision. This is not about whether you should put more police on the streets in Valinda or more in Willowbrook,” said Yaroslavsky, a former county supervisor. “This is about whether the sheriff’s department is going to hire or reinstate deputies who violated their oath of office.” He added, “If you’re a taxpayer or a voter in Los Angeles County, what the sheriff is doing is exposing your pocketbook to huge lawsuits, huge liabilities that the taxpayers are going to have to pay for.”

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Yaroslavsky on County Election Chief’s Grand Plan

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the L.A. Times about the county’s election chief, who is spearheading an overhaul of the voting system. Since Dean Logan became the registrar-recorder and clerk for Los Angeles County in 2008, he has advocated for replacing an antiquated balloting system. The new $300-million system known as Voting Solutions for All People will face its first test in March, when it is introduced countywide for the presidential primary election. Voters will use the new machines at a smaller number of multipurpose “vote centers” that will replace the roughly 5,000 traditional polling places. Yaroslavsky, who served on the county Board of Supervisors from 1994 to 2014, expressed confidence in Logan. “He’s got an engineer’s mind with an artist’s vision,” Yaroslavsky said. “If you’re in an airplane that has a problem in midair, he’s the kind of guy you would want as the pilot.”

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Yaroslavsky and Newton on Power of Endorsements

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A Long Beach Post article on upcoming local elections called on two UCLA Luskin experts to weigh in on the power of political endorsements. The public is thirsty for authenticity, and that can be more meaningful than prominent backers, Los Angeles Initiative Director Zev Yaroslavsky said. “The landscape is littered with insurgent candidacies that have prevailed and surprised a lot of people,” said Yaroslavsky, a former Los Angeles city councilman and county supervisor. Unions that offer endorsements often mobilize their members to campaign for candidates, which could make a difference in a low-turnout area, public policy lecturer Jim Newton added. But the impact of endorsements is limited, he said. “It really is an instance where voters have the last word,” Newton said. “In the end, voters can say ‘no’ to that.”

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Yaroslavsky on Feud Between Mayor and Union

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the L.A. Times about the political feud between Mayor Eric Garcetti and the union that represents workers at the Department of Water and Power. The union has run a series of television and radio commercials attacking Garcetti’s plan to address climate change, saying it would eliminate thousands of jobs amid a serious housing crisis. Much of the opposition is driven by Garcetti’s plan to close three DWP natural gas plants but that is not mentioned in the ad, the story notes. “Unless you’re on the inside, you don’t really know what this is all about,” Yaroslavsky said. “You don’t know that it’s about shutting down fossil-fuel-powered plants in the basin.” Noting that the ads may be aimed at City Council members, Yaroslavsky said the union’s message may be: “This is what we’re doing to the mayor. Imagine what we can do to you.”

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Yaroslavsky on the Impact of a Garcetti Endorsement

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, was quoted in a McClatchy article about the potential impact of a political endorsement by L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti.  The mayor has appeared at campaign events with some of the Democrats vying to be their party’s 2020 nominee for president, but he is reportedly torn over whether to endorse one before California’s March 3 primary. In a tight race, Garcetti’s endorsement “could make a difference,” Yaroslavsky said. “It would be a one- or two-day headline, and it could give somebody momentum.” An endorsement would be valuable in Los Angeles’ notoriously expensive media market and could solidify interest from donors and organizers, the article noted. Yaroslavsky said the fluid nature of the primary “may be one of the reasons he’s holding out. Maybe one or two of his favorites fall by the wayside and then he doesn’t have to alienate anybody.”

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