Good morning, it’s Tuesday, May 19 and you can expect profuse sunshine (low 80s).
Why city leaders are scrambling to keep a tax repeal measure from the ballot.
By the time members of Los Angeles City Council amble to their seats this morning, a deal to avert a potential fiscal catastrophe in the city should be worked out — at least that’s the hope.
At issue is a proposed ballot measure that could suckerpunch the city into dire financial straits on the one hand, and a wage hike for tourism workers that was already approved last year on the other.
What does one have to do with the other, you might be wondering? Well, they are both part of a war between labor and business groups that’s been escalating for more than a year —with the council now desperately trying to broker a compromise, with something of a gun to its head.
A man walks past City Hall in downtown Los Angeles on April 1, 2025. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Here’s the broad-strokes background: The council voted last May to raise the minimum wage for hotel and airport workers ahead of the Olympics. That increase — which would bring wages to $30 an hour by 2028 and require higher healthcare payments from businesses — came over strenuous objections from an industry that says it never fully recovered from the pandemic.
That set off what the L.A. Times termed the “the summer of the burn-it-down ballot measure,” as labor and business groups engaged in a game of brinksmanship. Business groups tried to get a measure on the ballot to repeal the wage increase; in response, the hotel workers union proposed an explosive package of ballot measures that sought to raise the citywide minimum wage, require public votes on many large projects and penalize companies with large pay disparities between their CEOs and median workers. And then the business groups also went nuclear, with a proposal to repeal the city’s gross receipts tax — a move that, if successful, could upend the city’s finances.
The business groups failed to collect enough signatures to ask voters to repeal the tourism wage hike. But they ultimately succeeded at their far more incendiary gambit, gathering the signatures necessary to put the gross receipts tax repeal on the November ballot.
The city’s gross receipts tax has long been controversial because it taxes a business’s total revenue, rather than just its profit, and there have been efforts to rework the tax in the past. But the proposal at hand would completely eliminate the city’s second-largest source of tax revenue if approved by voters.
City leaders say that the tax loss would blow a catastrophic hole in the budget, requiring massive cuts to public safety, and debilitating homelessness response, street cleanliness and Olympics readiness efforts.
The gross receipts tax repeal proposal, however, isn’t just a nuclear bomb. It’s also a bargaining chip.
The backers of the proposal, which include Delta and United Airlines and a hotel trade group, have made clear that they are willing to yank it — if the council reverses or delays its Olympics tourism wage hike. (Unite Here Local 11, the politically potent union representing local hotel workers, has decried this as an unethical “shakedown scheme.”)
Which brings us back to the City Council.
Last week, during a contentious meeting, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson took the unusual step of having his colleagues vote on what he termed a “placeholder” motion to delay implementation of the wage hike, which was approved on a 9-6 vote. That would give city officials time to continue negotiating with labor and business groups for another week before voting on “something more complete” Tuesday, Harris-Dawson said. As of Monday night, it was still unclear whether a final compromise had been reached, or what, exactly, the council would be voting on Tuesday.
The battle could also play out before voters in November, with the city’s fiscal fate in the hands of its citizens.
Backers of the tax repeal have until August to withdraw it from the November ballot. Meanwhile, eligible workers are set to receive an incremental wage hike July 1, meaning many have already been planning their lives around it.
With a two-year renovation on the horizon, will La Brea Tar Pits’ famous rolling hills also be out of commission?
Going to the La Brea Tar Pits on a field trip is a core memory for many Angelenos. Yet the first nostalgic moment that comes to mind isn’t always the fiberglass mammoth stuck in the lake pit or the mounted skeletons inside the museum: It’s the recollection of rolling down the steep grassy hills that surround the museum.
But with the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum closing on July 7 for a two-year renovation project, will kids hopped up on Capri Sun still be able to roll down the hill during construction?
The answer is yes, according to Josh Chesler, the La Brea Tar Pits communications manager — with minor caveats: “There may be times where you can only roll down one side of the hill or where the hill may not be entirely available but we want to keep the entire area as available for people and open as we can.”
“It was recently rated as one of the best hills to roll down by the L.A. Times, and we definitely don’t want to lose that,” Chesler said of children tumbling and cartwheeling a stone’s throw from the world’s only active paleontological research site located in a major city.
—Pablo Goldstein
READING MATERIAL
TRAGEDY IN SAN DIEGO: Two alleged teenage gunmen killed three people at an Islamic Center in San Diego before killing themselves in what’s being investigated as a hate crime, according to the Associated Press. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass directed the LAPD to step up patrols at L.A.’s mosques in the wake of the attack.
THE SANDY FIRE: A wind-driven brush fire in Simi Valley forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate in Southern Simi Valley, with evacuation warnings stretching into Agoura Hills, Calabasas and Hidden Hills, as of Monday evening.
THE BIG TECH ERA: The Hollywood Reporter reports on how YouTube, Netflix and Amazon took over the upfronts — a star-studded annual presentation to advertisers and media buyers.
LISTING OF THE WEEK
For the price of a West L.A. fixer or a nice two- or three-bedroom in other parts of the city, you could be the proud owner of a roadhouse hotel and biker bar in Lake Hughes, roughly 1.5 hours from downtown L.A. without much traffic. (Lake Hughes is an unincorporated community northwest of Palmdale in the Angeles National Forest).
Built in 1929 with locally quarried river rocks, The Rock Inn is listed for $1.5 million. The primary structure “features striking arched windows, expansive stone fireplaces and a rugged aesthetic that resonates with both early 20th-century craftsmanship and modern rustic appeal.” The property currently operates as a seven-room boutique inn with a three-unit apartment.
AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: “Although the wind ...” by Izumi Shikibu, translated from the Japanese by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani.
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