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Los Angeles News & Updates from EKA – June 30, 2025

EKA Spotlight

EKA attended the California Air Quality Awards hosted by the Coalition for Clean Air on June 20th, 2025. Their mission is to protect public health, improve air quality, and prevent climate change. Honorees were California Senator Caroline Menjivar and Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath for Leadership in Government.

Key Updates

LA City Council OKs resolution declaring fiscal emergency amid $1B deficit

In a 14-0 vote, council members signed off on the resolution, which authorizes the city to move forward with actions for fiscal year 2025-26 to address a roughly $1 billion deficit. That includes plans to lay off about 614 city employees and reduce an allocation of about $4.2 million to the Public Matching Campaign Trust Fund, among other things.

The spending plan reduced expenditures in some areas and included cost-saving measures to address a $1 billion deficit, but is larger than the $12.9 billion budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year.

Revised LAUSD budget saves jobs today, trims future retiree health benefit contributions

The Los Angeles Board of Education on June 24 approved an $18.8-billion budget that postpones layoffs for a year but pays for higher spending in part by reducing proposed contributions to a trust fund for retiree health benefits.

The approved revised budget removed $645 million over the next three years from contributions toward retiree health benefits to an account that could instead fund wage increases for employees, among other possible uses.

What's Happening in LA

Spotlight Item

Create a rebuilding authority and fire control district, expert panel urges in post-LA fires report

LA County Board of Supervisors commissioned a report on climate action and fire-safe recovery in the aftermath of the Palisades and Eaton fire.

The panel of disaster response engineers, financiers and UCLA researchers who produced the 172-page report suggested creating two new governmental structures. The first is a resilient rebuilding authority, which would be focused on helping affected residents and business owners rebuild with fire-resistant tools. The other is a new fire control district, which would work on reducing fire risk through planting California-native vegetation or creating “defensive” buffer zones that can slow or stop the spread of wildfires.

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