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U.S. Senator and L.A. Supervisor to Deliver UCLA Luskin Commencement Addresses Political trailblazers Laphonza Butler and Lindsey Horvath will send off the Class of 2024 on June 14

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UCLA Luskin’s Class of 2024 will hear from two trailblazing California political leaders at Commencement ceremonies on Friday, June 14.

Lindsey P. Horvath, the youngest woman ever to be elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, will address the School’s graduating master’s and doctoral students at 9 a.m. at UCLA’s Royce Hall. 

Laphonza Butler, the first openly LGBTQ+ person to represent California in the U.S. Senate, will speak to students earning UCLA Luskin’s bachelor of public affairs at 3 p.m. on the patio of Kerckhoff Hall. 

“Sen. Butler and Supervisor Horvath are distinguished leaders who have broken down great barriers to serve the public good,” said Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, interim dean of the Luskin School. “Their commitment to serving the diverse communities of California with passion and integrity will be an inspiration to our graduates, particularly those who aspire to hold public office.” 

Butler, 44, was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October 2023 to complete the term of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein. She has used the office to champion housing equity, gun reforms, reproductive freedom, environmental protection and the rights of working families.

Prior to her appointment, Butler was president of EMILYs List, which is dedicated to electing Democratic women who support abortion rights, and served as a labor organizer and leader, including her election as president of California’s largest home care and nursing home workers union at age 30. 

Raised in the town of Magnolia, Mississippi, to working-class parents, Butler graduated from Jackson State University, part of the United States’ network of historically Black colleges and universities. Her public service roles include a term serving on the UC Board of Regents.

Supervisor Horvath, 41, has represented the more than 2 million people of Los Angeles County’s 3rd District, stretching from the Ventura County line to West Hollywood to San Fernando, since December 2022. 

Her priorities include transportation and mobility issues, the rights of women and the LGBTQ+ community, and meeting the needs of older Americans. She is the only renter serving on the board, broadening the perspective of L.A. County leadership.

Prior to her election as supervisor, Horvath was a city councilmember and the longest consecutively serving mayor of West Hollywood.  

A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Horvath also earned a certificate in nonprofit management and fundraising from UCLA Extension.

Learn more about the 2024 commencements at UCLA Luskin.

Loukaitou-Sideris on Making Transit Hubs More Welcoming

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Professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, interim dean of UCLA Luskin, spoke to WHYY about efforts to restore confidence in the SEPTA public transit system serving the Philadelphia area. Financial pressures have delayed infrastructure projects to improve safety and accessibility on the system’s aging subway network, and some riders say they are anxious about recent episodes of violence. Loukaitou-Sideris, an authority on transit safety who studied SEPTA during the COVID-19 pandemic, said the openness of transportation hubs is a mark of both inclusivity and inherent risk. “If we all start getting afraid of agoraphobia and not going to these public spaces, we will end up in a cocoon of private spaces,” she said. Loukaitou-Sideris added that she is encouraged by Philadelphia’s Hub of Hope, a space within the SEPTA system where unhoused individuals can receive essentials such as food and medical care.

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Reframing Perspectives on Who’s Helped, Hurt by Minimum Wage Hikes

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Urban Planning Professor Chris Tilly spoke to news outlets about the impact of California’s new wage law on fast-food chains as well as smaller businesses. The law sets a $20 minimum hourly wage for fast-food workers at chains with 60 or more restaurants nationwide. But the impact is also felt by local ethnic restaurants and other small businesses, which must compete to retain workers. “These grassroots businesses are part of the glue that holds communities together, and they’re what give the community an identity,” Tilly told the Los Angeles Times. He also spoke to USA Today about the wage hike’s effect on consumer prices and hiring practices. “The big critique of minimum wages is ultimately it’s a job killer, that it hurts the people that you’re trying to help,” but data from the last three decades has not shown those effects, Tilly said. “We do have to think about how to help people. But to do that by hurting other low-income people doesn’t seem like the right strategy to me.”

Read the L.A. Times column
Read the USA Today article

 

Persistent Gaps for Black Californians Would Take Over 248 Years to Close

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Almost two decades ago, the inaugural State of Black California report, authored by UCLA Luskin Public Policy Professor Michael Stoll, was the first to provide a comprehensive look at how the material conditions and socioeconomic outcomes for Black Californians fared compared to other racial and ethnic groups. The latest report, published by the Black Policy Project, an initiative of the UCLA Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, builds upon its predecessor by providing a comparative analysis with a sobering message: Despite improvements in the quality of life for Black communities in California since 2000, racial inequality stubbornly persists and may continue to do so for centuries to come unless more is done. Using an extensive set of census data, researchers found:

  • Black Californians’ overall socioeconomic outcomes improved by an average of 21.7% from 2000 to 2020, yet they still have the lowest index score of all racial minority groups and a 30% lower score than white Californians.
  • For the first time in decades, the Black Californian population decreased in size, from 2.2 million to 2.1 million, and many moved out of urban centers.
  • The biggest improvements in outcomes were bolstered by policy changes, particularly in relation to education and criminal justice.

Stoll, the faculty director of the Black Policy Project who also authored this year’s report, noted that Black Californians closed the overall racial gap in social and economic outcomes with whites by only 4% since 2000. “According to that rate of change, closing the racial gap between Black and white Californians would take over 248 years,” he said. — Kacey Bonner and Barbra Ramos

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View the 2024 State of Black California report

 

Congestion-Pricing Ambitions Slowed by ‘Internal Trepidation’

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A Wall Street Journal story about legal challenges to a plan to launch a congestion-pricing zone in parts of Manhattan in June cited Michael Manville, chair of Urban Planning at UCLA Luskin. Pending litigation could delay the start of the program, which would charge passenger vehicles $15 during the day and $3.75 at night to enter the zone, with higher tolls for trucks. Many businesses and commuters argue that the program, approved in 2019, is ill-timed because communities continue to struggle in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Congestion-pricing zones have been successfully launched abroad, and transit advocates had hoped that New York’s program would spur action in other U.S. cities. But in places including San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles, momentum has slowed. “I would say it’s at a bit of a standstill,” Manvile said. “What’s happened in California, and particularly Los Angeles, is internal trepidation.”

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Accusations of Negligence in Shooting by 6-Year-Old

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Social Welfare Professor Ron Avi Astor spoke to the Washington Post about legal repercussions from the 2023 shooting of a Virginia teacher by her 6-year-old student. A grand jury indicted a former assistant principal with eight counts of felony child abuse, and the injured teacher has filed a $40 million suit against the school district, alleging negligence on the part of administrators. The former assistant principal is accused of disregarding at least three teachers’ warnings that the first-grader might be carrying a gun. “Maybe 10 or 15 years ago people could say, ‘I wasn’t educated. I didn’t know this could happen. I thought the kid was too young to have a gun,’” Astor said. “But in this day and age with all the data, reporting and training, it’s really problematic for a vice principal not to follow up on these warnings.” In another Washington Post story, Astor said that Americans are frustrated by the political impasse over proposals to restrict access to guns and are “just exhausted” by the bloodshed.

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Returning to Work, Revamping Commuting Habits

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Smart Cities Dive spoke to UCLA Luskin’s Donald Shoup for an article on companies attempting to change employees’ commuting habits as they return to in-person work. Historically, private car travel has been the predominant way U.S. workers get to work. An estimated 85% of employers offer free on-site parking, compared with just 13% that offer a transit subsidy, the article noted. Increasingly, employers are offering incentives to encourage commuting options including public transit, walking, biking and carpooling — and disincentives to drive alone, including raising the cost of parking. Shoup, a distinguished research professor of urban planning, is a proponent of the “parking cashout.” This system provides employees the option of compensation in the form of cash or other transportation benefits in exchange for giving up their free parking benefit. “All we’re saying is, when you drive, you pay. When you don’t drive, you save,” Shoup said.

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New Delays for LAX People Mover

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A Los Angeles Times story on delays in the construction of the $2-billion Automated People Mover at LAX cited Jacob Wasserman of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. The 2.25-mile elevated train, which will move people to and from airport terminals, parking lots, a rental car facility and the Metro connector, was originally expected to wrap up in 2023, but new forecasts point to an opening in fall of 2025. “The transit connection to LAX has been the white whale of L.A. rail transit. Some of that has to do with the kind of unique politics and financial structures of airports and transit agencies,” Wasserman said. “There are federal rules for [the] Federal Aviation Administration that say airport money has to stay at the airport.” Wasserman also told KNX radio that the People Mover’s opening will be welcomed but would not necessarily fix congestion issues on the airport’s notorious traffic loop.

Read the Los Angeles Times article
Listen to the KNX report

 

 

Restoring Confidence in New York’s Subway System

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UCLA Luskin Interim Dean Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris spoke to the New York Times about strategies to increase safety on New York’s subway system. A string of recent attacks, some involving firearms, have eroded many subway riders’ sense of security. To keep guns out of the subway system, officials should consider stepping up security screenings in ways that affect service as little as possible, said Loukaitou-Sideris, who co-authored a chapter of the 2015 book “Securing Transportation Systems.” In addition to conducting frequent and rigorous bag checks, transit officials could install metal detectors and X-ray machines — a more expensive option but one that the Shanghai Metro has implemented efficiently, Loukaitou-Sideris said. Transportation officials around the world have also been studying the addition of firearm-detecting sensors to fare-collection devices and ticketing machines. “You have to eliminate the opportunity to bring the gun on the train,” Loukaitou-Sideris said.

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A Spike in Entrepreneurship Among Latin American Immigrants

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Robert Fairlie, chair of UCLA Luskin Public Policy, spoke to the Wall Street Journal about a spike in entrepreneurship among Latin American immigrants, who are starting businesses at more than twice the rate of the U.S. population as a whole. Startups of all types swelled in 2020, as COVID-19 upended work lives, changed consumer behavior and created business opportunities, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data conducted by Fairlie. “COVID has put us on a different trajectory,” he said. One reason that Latin American immigrants have maintained a strong entrepreneurial momentum is their focus on sectors that have experienced increased demand since the onset of the pandemic, including food, services and delivery, Fairlie said.

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