Archive: County

The total jumped 23 percent over last year despite many more homeless people being moved into housing. So it could have been even worse.

Maya Lau comes to the LAT from Baton Rouge, where she covered crime and investigations.

Edelman represented the Westside and the Fairfax area for 29 years and led the fight for children's services, AIDS treatment, mental health services and the arts.

After grand jury indictment, the former lawman could get 20 years but probably wouldn't.

LA County's disgraced former sheriff withdraws his guilty plea for lying to the FBI about jail abuse.

Six months for his crimes is not enough, U.S. District Court Judge Percy Anderson rules.

It's Kathryn Barger and Darrell Park in the 5th district.

Tom Angel forwarded derogatory jokes and as criticism built, McDonnell couldn't save him.

Newsweek goes long on an exploration of the mysteries about Richardson and the LA Sheriff's Department.

The disgraced former undersheriff could face 15 years in prison when sentenced for conspiracy and obstruction of justice.

The first liberal 4-1 majority looks almost certain after this year's elections.

The former LA County coroner will return on an interim basis to keep things running.

An unusual open letter from McDonnell says "these cases slice across all socio-economic and racial lines."

Mark Fajardo was here less than three years and says the department is understaffed due to budget issues.

"It’s the climate equivalent of the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico," the Guardian says. More than 3,000 Angelenos remain out of their homes.

Kuehl gets the last word after one of the regulars calls the Jewish supervisor an "anti-Semitic scumbag."

Before he left the gang life as a teenager, Sal Martinez did five stints in juvenile hall, was stabbed four times and shot twice.

Red wiggler worms now help with the composting so less food waste gets sent to landfills.

The Republican who goes back to the original community college board in LA wants to follow 36 years on the Board of Supervisors with a term on the state Senate.

The action brings the county in line with Los Angeles City Hall. Over to you Long Beach, Glendale and Santa Clarita.

Los Angeles is getting credit for trying to fix the technology side of the old-fashioned and embarrassing way that the U.S. conducts elections.

Chief executive office is weakened and now if you run the hospitals or mental health services, you again have to report to an elected politician.

Marrero left La Opinión in December after 24 years to work for new LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis. She's going to back to work on election coverage.

Two other deputies took previous plea deals and testified. This is the case of the jail visitor who was beaten up.

The measure, which could come up next week, seeks to have LA County follow the city of Los Angeles in imposing a new, higher minimum wage.

Task Force 2 reunited with families Sunday at the base in Pacoima.

The federal grand jury is investigating corruption in the LA County jails and the attempt by sheriff's officials to hide a federal informant from the FBI.

County health inspections are spotty even at restaurants with confirmed cases of poisoning, says report by Joel Grover.

The urban search and rescue team has previously gone to Haiti, Japan, New Zealand and the Hurricane Katrina destruction zone.

Inmate Elana Pritchard's cartoons in LA Weekly of the indignities and shortages in LA County's women's jail led to changes.

The retirement tour of trial reporter Linda Deutsch continued today at the Los Angeles County Hall of Administration.

Jim McDonnell visits with Larry Mantle at KPCC, sits with Conan Nolan at KNBC and allows backstage access to photographer John McCoy of the Daily News.

The longtime politics writer and columnist for Spanish-language La Opinión is leaving the paper to become the communications deputy for new county Supervisor Hilda Solis.

Solis' new chief deputy is a former reporter at the Los Angeles Times — and Solis' executive assistant was assistant to the LA Times editor. Plus more Solis and Sheila Kuehl staff news.

Monday is the day when new county officials are sworn in. Sheila Kuehl has tapped a veteran of Zev Yaroslavsky's office to be her chief deputy. Details of the day inside.

Here is the video I mentioned the other day of Vin Scully's amusing send-off to termed-out county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. Also: A longer video celebrating Yaroslavsky.

Among the speakers were former mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, former supervisor Yvonne Burke and current board chairman Don Knabe, LACMA director Michael Govan, the former county CAO David Janssen and (via video) Vin Scully. Sheila Kuehl received a very warm reception.

The inexperienced candidate who appears to be unseating fellow Democrat Raul Bocanegra in the Valley's 39th Assembly district has expanded her lead to 235 votes.

Elizabeth Warren visits with LA and Hollywood progressives. City Council races start to take an interesting shape. Still counting in that Valley assembly race, possibly "the biggest political upset of the year" in LA. Monday columns and much more.

After 20 years on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, Zev Yaroslavsky is getting ready to leave his offices in the Hall of Administration.

The museum has summoned the media on Thursday morning to announce what the release calls the largest gift of art in the museum's history. The donor is Jerrold Perenchio.

Kuehl got 52.8 percent of the vote and will form, with Mark Ridley-Thomas and another newcomer, Hilda Solis, a majority of public union-backed supervisors on the board.

Supervisor Yaroslavsky says he remains neutral in the race between Sheila Kuehl and Bobby Shriver, and he asked Shriver to stop claiming otherwise. Plus more politics notes.

If publisher and Shriver backer Austin Beutner had any role in the decision, it doesn't show. The editorial says Sheila Kuehl "best embodies the qualities needed for the new era."

I'm still traveling and trying not to pay close attention to LA politics or media, but this is too intriguing to pass up.

Some 10,000 square feet of landscaping needs to be replaced and repairs are already underway on the popular splash pad fountain.

David Montero, who got to the Register last year, will cover LA county government and some general assignment.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday ordered an independent review of Los Angeles County Sheriff Department crime statistics, following on the questions about the integrity of LAPD numbers.

The Board of Supervisors voted 3-2 today to defeat a push by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas to create a civilian oversight board that would help guide the troubled Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky cast the key no vote.

Zevweb has a nice feature on how the documentary came to tell the story of the emergency room at County-USC Medical Center on the Eastside.

John Duran got 16 percent of the vote in the Board of Supervisors primary, a bloc that was coveted by Shriver and co-finalist Sheila Kuehl. Now she says it's no big deal since she already won West Hollywood.

Shriver has effusive praise for California's groundbreaking law, but never mentions who sponsored it. Could that be because it's Sheila Kuehl and she's running against another Shriver?

The deputies could face up to 15 years in prison for hiding a jail inmate from federal investigators.

The lineup didn't change overnight, but some of the November general election races came into sharper focus.

Sheila Kuehl leads the race for Zev Yaroslavsky's seat, Jim McDonnell comes close to an outright win for sheriff, and it looks like a Republican versus a Democrat in the final race to succeed Henry Waxman. Plus a lot more.

County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas' Twitter account posted this pic of the boss grabbing a pic of his own after a meeting with young Jewish leaders in the Crenshaw district.

Dr. Jonathan E. Fielding, the county's high-profile director of public health, this morning announced his retirement from the post. Fielding says in a statement that he will go back to his position at UCLA, where his name is on the Fielding School of Public Health.

The morning's news includes an obituary of Ron Smith, the mostly Republican political candidate who ran big campaigns in Los Angeles, San Francisco and statewide.

Warren Olney gets the party started at tonight's SPJ event. Next week it's the Press Club.

An April 5 fundraiser for Board of Supervisors candidate Sheila Kuehl is billed as "A Night at the Movies with Zelda" — and the contribution levels are right out of her old show, "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis."

The cracked, splintering benches at the upper level of the Hollywood Bowl were last replaced in 1981. New benches of Alaskan yellow cedar are now being installed.

A dismissal motion filed Tuesday in federal court alleges that former Sheriff Lee Baca and former undersheriff Paul Tanaka personally ordered the hiding of federal jailhouse informant Anthony Brown.

The 48-hour rainfall map shows less than four inches at most stations around the county, but that's a lot more than we are used to getting. Video of the wave inside.

Celeste Fremon has covered for many years the foibles and scandals of Lee Baca's sheriff's department, and in the new issue of Los Angeles Magazine she gets more than 10,000 words to explain for newcomers the "morass" that formed under the management of Baca and top deputy (and now candidate) Paul Tanaka.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky put out a statement this morning confirming that he will not run for the Henry Waxman seat in Congress. (In case you were going to ask.)

The covered, county-maintained patio where loyalists of Undersheriff Paul Tanaka could enter with a private token and smoke cigars, apparently illegally, will be turned into a barbecue area.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey has revamped her media office with a trio of former journalists. Office veteran Jane Robison gets a new title and the office is on Twitter.

John Scott and his wife both gave up Los Angeles sheriff's department careers out of concern about the direction under Lee Baca. Now Scott gets the rest of the year to leave his mark.

Shriver and Sheila Kuehl are both of Santa Monica but they look to be the main choices for Democratic voters across a wide swath of Los Angeles County.

Former LAPD official Jim McDonnell has endorsements from Chief Charlie Beck, DA Jackie Lacey, City Attorney Mike Feuer and Supervisor Don Knabe, among others. He is currently the chief of police in Long Beach.

"I might run for something in the future, but I just don’t think I want another campaign now,” former controller and mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel said Thursday. Here's who is in.

Sheriff Lee Baca said he is retiring for personal reasons and also to avoid the negative coverage of the Sheriff's Department in the upcoming campaign.

Media say that Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca informed the county's elected supervisors and his key staff that he will announce on Tuesday. Gone by end of the month. Long Beach police chief Jim McDonnell reportedly looking at getting in the race.

It's time again for the annual ritual in Los Angeles County — the mass burial of unclaimed or indigent individuals left in the coroner's morgue.

Former governor Gray Davis, former city attorney Carmen Trutanich and high-profile defense lawyer Mark Geragos are co-hosting a $1,500-per-napkin fundraiser for Baca next week.

Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy Deputy Elton Simmons has written thousands of traffic tickets in 20 years — that's 25,000 traffic stops, says a story by CBS News. They got it from an LA Times story last September.

LAT puts staffers on the Garcetti beat, the Board of Supervisors, MTA and a new assignment to explore the use of power here and around California.

Mark Fajardo, who grew up on the Eastside as the son of a deputy sheriff, is ready for all that coroner to the stars stuff. As ready as anyone can be. Good luck, dude.

Deposed undersheriff says that Baca used the department to hire friends and relatives, micromanaged, and ordered the hiding of an jail inmate from the FBI. None of these allegations were made while Tanaka served as a senior but controversial aide, Baca's team points out.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky writes on his blog that his position on same-sex marriage didn't evolve so much as flip 180 degrees after a conversation with his daughter a decade ago. He says now that in 2008 he presided at the wedding of City Clerk June Lagmay and her partner.

Noguez could go to work on Monday, Hilda Solis talks about LA, endorsements in Campaign 2013, Berkeley's Chez Panisse closed by fire and more items inside.

There hasn't been a stormier career lately in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department than that of Paul Tanaka. Today the department announced that Tanaka will step down as the number two sheriff's official and retire on August 1. He was reelected Tuesday to a third term as mayor of Gardena.

The Board of Supervisors gave the go-ahead Tuesday for expansion of the new medical center that opened in 2008. Details such as when and exactly where remain to be decided.

A bird named Apollo has got a serious turkey vulture crush on a bearded, soft-spoken Los Angeles County animal keeper named Dave Stives. Check it out.

Yet another controversy over a mayoral campaign mailer by candidate Jan Perry. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky released a statement this morning criticizing Perry's use of his name in a mailer. He does not endorse Perry.

The county has produced a nice video showing the restoration work going on inside the long-vacant Hall of Justice in Downtown Los Angeles. The sheriff's department and the DA will move back in when work is done in 2014, assuming all goes well.

The county of Los Angeles has put together a video explaining how the Affordable Care Act is already changing medical care for the two million uninsured in the county, and how county departments are preparing for the full impact once the new act takes effect. Watch inside.

Vishal Makhija was put onto a special medical plane at LAX today for a flight home to Mumbai, almost nine months after he was seriously injured by a hit-and-run driver in Boyle Heights. Los Angeles County is paying the $19,200 cost — and considers it a bargain.

Gibbons, a public information officer for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office for 24 years, announced today she will be retiring on March 31. She was a former courthouse reporter.

The former congresswoman from the Eastside and San Gabriel Valley is expected by many to run for the Board of Supervisors when Gloria Molina is termed out in 2014.

The recycling of Christmas trees in Los Angeles County is actually kind of complicated. Some will be buried in landfills, but still be considered recycled. And it makes sense.

Wednesday was the day of the annual interring in Boyle Heights of cremated human remains that were never picked up from the coroner by family members. A couple of dozen people attended a brief ceremony, among them county Supervisor Don Knabe.

Also: Measure J, the transit tax extension, ends with 66.11 percent of the vote, and needed 66.66 percent to pass. How close did it come? If you take the 2,863,951...

On Wednesday's show, I'm told that KCET's "SoCal Connected" digs into the ties between Supervisor Don Knabe, his son Matt Knabe, and the clients of Matt's lobbying firm, Englander Knabe and Allen.

The percentage of yes votes keeps going up, but not fast enough to make passage likely. There are only so many votes left to count.

Men by a wide margin opposed requiring condoms on porn actors in LA County. Women, by an equally large margin, favored condoms. Blacks favored condoms. Whites opposed the new rule, strongly. Voters in the city of West Hollywood also rejected the condom mandate for porn films.

As of Thursday afternoon, about 549,000 mail ballots have already been returned to the LA County Registrar-Recorder. Just over a majority, 50.59 percent of the ballots, have come back from Democrats. Some 29.65 percent have come in from Republicans.

A judge on Monday set Assessor John Noguez's bail at $1.16 million, the amount the prosecutors allege he cost taxpayers by lowering property tax assessments for the clients of a consultant accused of bribing Noguez.

DA investigators arrested embattled Assessor John Noguez this morning at his home in Huntington Park. Allegations include bribery and corruption. Two others were also arrested.

That story yesterday out of the Los Cerritos Community News tying developer Rick Caruso's properties to the emerging probe around tax reductions by Assessor John Noguez drew a strong objection today from the fill-in assessor appointed by the Board of Supervisors. "Several erroneous conclusions based on nonexistent evidence," says a letter to the paper's publisher from Santos Kreimann.

In its final report, issued this morning, the Citizens’ Commission on Jail Violence put a lot of the blame on Sheriff Lee Baca and his number two, Paul Tanaka, and said the department needs to be reformed top to bottom and undergo a management shakeup. Civilian oversight is also needed.

Washington, charged with defrauding banks by falsely claiming identity theft, is one of more than 40 arrests this year of staffers at the county probation department.

On Sept. 11 at the Hollywood Bowl, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky narrated the Abraham Lincoln parts of it “A Lincoln Portrait,” by Aaron Copland. Watch the video.

The county's Hall of Records might be the least appreciated of the government office buildings strewn around what used to be called downtown's Civic Center. I would bet that many visitors to Grand Park, which will open a new section on its back side in September, have no idea of the building's name or function. Its name is actually a misnomer these days — the county Registrar-Recorder took most of the eponymous records to Norwalk more than a decade ago. But the hall has sterling LA architectural roots.

Zev Yaroslavsky said today that he will finish out his term on the county Board of Supervisors and not make a bid to become mayor of Los Angeles. "While I have never been a supporter of term limits, I do believe that four decades is long enough for any citizen to hold elective office, especially in an executive capacity."

Leophis Hester, a licensed vocational nurse at Harbor/UCLA Medical Center, started working for Los Angeles County in 1952. That makes her #1 among the county's 101,000 employees. She should get to hang out with Vin Scully or something.

A really nice, detailed and clearly told cover story in the LA Weekly by Gene Maddaus reconstructs how corruption and under-the-table payments at the Coliseum offices came to be commonplace under general manager Pat Lynch — while the appointed overseers on the Coliseum Commission failed to oversee. It came to light only due to an accident, Maddaus writes.

You may have noticed that Sheriff Lee Baca is under intense scrutiny for his management of the Los Angeles County jail system. Nonetheless, Gov. Jerry Bown just announced he is appointing Baca to the Board of State and Community Corrections.

County Public Health's "Show Us Your Package" competition to design an official condom wrapper has a winner. It's Adam Lyons, 32, of Hollywood.

Mitchell H. Katz, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, calls the Supreme Court ruling that upheld the Obama health care law a victory for the county's uninsured.

Fill-in county assessor Santos Kreimann took over this week and has reassigned two of the top deputies to John Noguez, who's on leave during a DA investigation into his office. Both had contributed to Noguez's political campaigns and were promoted after his 2010 election.

Longtime county staffer Santos H. Kreimann was proposed by county CEO William Fujioka to take over as chief deputy assessor. Kreimann has been Director of Beaches and Harbors for three years and change.

He asks the county Board of Supervisors to appoint a Chief Deputy Assessor to run the office while he is gone. Noguez is under investigation by the DA's public corruption unit over allegations of improper tax assessments to benefit political campaign contributors.

Starting July 1, Los Angeles County's public health department has to start enforcing new state standards for tattoo studios and artists. The Safe Body Art Act, as it's called, passed in October. Now the county's Body Art Unit figures to be swamped.

Los Angeles County's elected tax assessor, John Noguez, should resign, District Attorney Steve Cooley told a gaggle of reporters today. It goes further than his pretty harsh comments yesterday about the investigation into the assessor's alleged dealings with campaign donors and clients of consultants who sell their ability to get property tax bills lowered. "I don't think he should be there,'' Cooley is reported saying. "In my view, he should resign in light of everything that's come out publicly and because it's interfering with the discharge of that important office's critical functions."

World Peace says he was "over-excited" when he smashed the head of James Harden of the Oklahama City Thunder. Officials of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health are forgiving of their very public partner.

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Sheriff Lee Baca and let stand a ruling that says he can be personally sued for racial violence in the county jails, which Baca's department runs.

I can't put it any better than reporter Jack Dolan in the LA Times.

When the Las Virgenes bookmobile shuts down Friday, there will be just four left in the county library system.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and the head of the county's beaches department will meet the media at 6 p.m. on the steps of the Hall of Administration to further explain the Board of Supervisors' vote on beach Frisbees.

County officials seek to clarify all the misinformation out there — but yes, Frisbee throwing is still illegal during summer.

One from Channel 9 and the other from the LA Times could not disagree more.

Capt. Mike Parker of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is in Las Vegas talking up the electronic features of a black-and-white developed for the county by Raytheon.

Lots of roads in the higher elevations of Los Angeles County are having snow closures after Monday's storm.

Lindsay Lohan, Mel Gibson, Phil Spector, even Conrad Murray — Sgt. Steve Wheatcroft has walked them all past the paparazzi and into court.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky blogs that the jail, built mostly during the Kennedy Administration, is "a deeply depressing place, filled with 4,000 or more men crammed into dank cells." With photos.

The Probation Chief for Stanislaus County has been tapped to take over Los Angeles County’s troubled Department of Probation.

The new Citizens Commission on Jail Violence, created on a unanimous vote of the Board of Supervisors, will have seven members yet to be named.

Citizens commission will be asked to “conduct a review of the nature, depth and cause of the problem of inappropriate deputy use of force in the jails, and to recommend corrective action as necessary.”

Tonight on KCRW's "Which Way, L.A.?," Sheriff Baca said maybe deputies shouldn't start their careers with years of jail duty.

Forget that stuff about only low-level offenders being part of the state's transfer of cases back to Los Angeles County.

Another turn in the stories of alleged abuse by sheriff's deputies assigned to the Los Angeles County jails.

In her last story before leaving the Daily Journal for Warren Olney's team at KCRW, staff writer Anna Scott details lucrative outside consulting by Michael Gennaco's county-funded Office of Independent Review.

The Board of Supervisors has the votes to dump Don Blevins as head of the county's troubled Probation Department, but Celeste Fremon says it appears he will get the chance to resign.

The suit on behalf of plastics manufacturer Hilex-Poly relies on the state's Proposition 26, which says fees levied on Californians should only cover the cost of a service.

Supervisors Mark Ridley-Thomas and Don Knabe joined Warren Olney on "Which Way, L.A.?" to continue the conversation over redistricting.

Some Latinos were moved from Gloria Molina's district to Don Knabe's, and voila, there were four votes to leave the Board of Supervisors' districts pretty close to what they are today.

LA County Probation Chief Donald Blevins has been informed that he's no longer needed, according to Celeste Fremon at Witness L.A.

The parents of Mitrice Richardson have reached a tentative agreement to settle their lawsuits against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for $900,000, the L.A. Times says.

In the September issue of Los Angeles magazine, Mike Kessler reconstructs the sheriff's and coroner's departments mishandling of Mitrice Richardson's disappearance and the subsequent investigation into her death.

County supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky finally had something to say about the newly drawn election districts submitted by colleagues Gloria Molina and Mark Ridley-Thomas.

Michele Chimienti is a Los Angeles County civil engineer who oversaw upgrades of the flood control dam in Big Tujunga Canyon — and she's a world-class fencer.

A $25,000 raise given to the guy in charge of the Coliseum's not-so-savory finances appears to have done the trick.

An anonymous donor in Bellingham, Washington sent Los Angeles County a casher's check for $10,000 with a handwritten note: In this time of economic difficulties, governments need all the...

Christina Villacorte of the Daily News has the more human story of the pain caused by thefts by a trustee.

Janice Min's THR makeover, Farrah Fawcett's death, Sheriff Baca's special recruit, how L.A. County cities fit together plus some quotables.

On tonight's "Which Way, L.A.?" on KCRW, the Times' Jim Newton came on to lay out the calm outsider's view of why the county Board of Supervisors is all torn apart over the work of CEO William Fujioka. Then the Supes came on.

The elected county Board of Supervisors, and not their CEO William Fujioka, would run the Department of Children and Family Services and the probation department if a 3-2 vote on Tuesday holds up.

A KPCC video crew follows around the ceremonial props we told you about last month.

County supervisors used to have five giant ceremonial scissors — one each — for ribbon-cuttings and other essential events in the life of a district elected official. Only two remain, "closely guarded implements, ferried to events in custom-crafted cases and quickly packed away once the TV cameras have gone home."

Bikers aren't happy about rumble strips being added to the loop of canyon roads off Mulholland Highway where motorcyclists have raced for decades.themselves or others. T

The Daily News is looking to fill the Troy Anderson opening at the Hall of Administration.

Anderson covered the county Hall of Administration for the Daily News and its sister papers for about a decade.

Ploehn, who on Monday lost her position as director of the embattled Department of Family and Child Services, will keep her $260,000-a-year salary and serve as assistant county executive. "Ploehn's...

Trish Ploehn was removed Monday as director of Los Angeles County's Department of Children and Family Services, after months of turmoil and increasingly critical reports.

The L.A. County Sheriff's Department is joining the trend of public agencies and elected officials publishing their own news.

Robert J. Lopez, the night cops reporter at the Los Angeles Times, just tweeted the sad truth.

Over the past two years, Los Angeles County emergency responders have been quietly preparing for a massively bad scenario: explosion of a 10-kiloton "improvised nuclear device" in the San Fernando Valley.

David Lauter, the assistant managing editor for local coverage at the L.A. Times, responded this afternoon to critics of the paper's stories on the deaths of children who had been under the care of the county's Department of Child and Family Services.

An ever-louder chorus of complaints is being heard about coverage of child deaths and the county's Department of Child and Family Services by L.A. Times reporter Garret Therolf.

ZevWeb has posted a clarification about what happened with public documents left behind in the old Hall of Records in Downtown.

An L.A. Times editor disputes that the paper mischaracterized watchdog Michael Gennaco regarding Sheriff Lee Baca helping a donor.

The gift store at the Los Angeles County Coroner's office has been open for 17 years now (at least) and written about often. I even did one of those stories....

More children have died in each of the last two years from abuse or neglect after being under the eye of Los Angeles County's Department of Children and Family Services despite assurances by county officials that the problem was getting better, the LAT finds

The L.A. County sheriff's department, under fire since 2008 for having more than 4,000 untested rape evidence kits, says it now has sent its entire backlog of kits out for testing.

The Los Angeles County Probation Department's chief deputy says in "a searing critique" that his agency has been plagued by weak management, poor communication, entrenched perceptions of favoritism and staffers who would never have survived a rigorous background check.

Residents of upscale La Canada Flintridge live the longest of those in any Los Angeles County community: 87.8 years on average, according to a new report on life expectancy. Life expectancy is 15 years less in Westmont, an unincorporated area near South Los Angeles.

Some 19% of men in Los Angeles County smoke cigarettes compared to 10% of women, according to new estimates by the county Department of Public Health. African Americans smoke at a 25% rate compared to 15% for whites, 12% for Latinos and 11% for Asians, the study says. College educated and higher income? Lower smoking rates.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky's news web site has posted a story about the county's Chief Executive Office getting serious about spending on overly expensive office supplies. Excerpt: Somewhere out there in...

The surprising L.A. Times headline today that Los Angeles County's Department of Children and Family Services would "no longer strive to reunite families" proved to be a bit too surprising....

California Task Force 2 got a heroes welcome from friends and loved ones when the buses pulled into L.A. County Fire's urban search and rescue compound in Pacoima.

Metro desk reporter Mitchell Landesberg is the new religion writer at the Los Angeles Times. More staff moves in the memo from Metro honcho David Lauter.

I've mentioned several times how few reporters cover the county Board of Supervisors anymore, and how the pols would like a bit more attention. Nonetheless, the Supes have acted to...

You can now search the websites of Los Angeles County and all of the cities in the county simultaneously, using this custom Google search by Matthew Barrett of the MTA's...

Poking around on a project I came across the state's latest population estimates for the 88 cities in Los Angeles County. Good to be reminded that most of the county's...

There was yesterday's piece in the Christian Science Monitor (which prompted some email), now outgoing chief administrative officer David Janssen says Los Angeles County needs a powerful executive to make...

A judge told Newhall Land and Farming that it can go ahead with the Riverpark project. The Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Santa Clara River and...