Assemblymember Harabedian - Legislative Responses to Eaton Fire’s Devastation

Assemblymember John Harabedian, whose district includes Altadena, Pasadena, and Sierra Madre, has spent much of his first term turning the Eaton Fire's hard lessons into legislation. Speaking with TPR after the close of session, Harabedian reflects on AB 1642, his newly signed bill setting first-in-the-nation standards for testing and clearing smoke-damaged homes, and on why the Assembly let SB 492 die rather than declare "mission accomplished." The Assemblymember also explains why he has changed his mind on undergrounding, and names the one question he says every candidate for insurance commissioner must answer. Read the interview here.

A Conversation with Bill Witte

Bill Witte, co-founder and now chairman emeritus of Related California, stepped back from day-to-day leadership at the start of 2026 after nearly four decades building market-rate and affordable housing across the West Coast. One of TPR’s longest-running interview subjects, weighs downtown Los Angeles’s housing ambitions against the realities of construction costs, capital markets, and City Hall—and offers the one test he would apply to every housing bill in Sacramento.

Carmelita Ramírez-Sánchez & Catherine Baltazar: Lineage Fire

This past June 17th, fire broke out at the roughly 500,000-square-foot Lineage cold storage facility on the seam between Boyle Heights and unincorporated East Los Angeles. It burned through reignitions until knockdown on June 24, prompting a number of shelter-in-place orders and emergency declarations from both Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom. TPRVX, to better understand the Impacts and response, spoke with Carmelita Ramírez-Sánchez , executive director of the Boyle Heights Arts Conservatory, which operates a neighborhood resilience hub, and Catherine Baltazar, associate director of advocacy and organizing at Climate Resolve. The focus is on the response, the jurisdictional gaps it exposed, and why implementation, not legislation, is the binding constraint.

Wildfire Survivor Network’s Joy Chen on: Recovery & Accountability

Twenty months after the Eaton Fire, a pickleball WhatsApp group from the Altadena Town & Country Club has become one of the more consequential forces in California utility and insurance policy. The Every Fire Survivor's Network (EFSN)now speaks for more than 10,000 Eaton and Palisades survivors, and its executive director, Joy Chen – a former Los Angeles deputy mayor and Fortune 500 executive recruiter – spent the summer in Sacramento arguing that California does not have a wildfire liability problem so much as a fire causation problem.

Felicia Marcus "A New Bridge With Another Expiration Date"

In conversation, Felicia Marcus, the William C. Landreth Visiting Fellow at Stanford's Water in the West program and former chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board, assesses the plan federal officials have just accepted to cut Colorado River use through 2028 which she calls a large band-aid rather than the tourniquet the basin needs. She reflects on 25 years of living beyond the river's means, the compact arithmetic that set the overallocation in motion, and the shift required from two-year interim patches toward a durable post-2026 framework. Drawing on service at the federal, state, and municipal levels, Marcus argues that Washington has abandoned the "800-pound gorilla" role that once produced the Bay-Delta Accord and the Quantification Settlement Agreement. Her prescription rests on financing and inclusion – capital to scale conservation and retrofits, and negotiations that reach past the seven state delegations to local agencies, academics, and tribes.

Mayor Karen Bass, the New LA Metro Board Chair’s State of the Agency Address: "The Most Consequential Year in a Generation"

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass delivered her State of the Agency Address at Union Station as she takes over as LA Metro Board Chair for the 2026–2027 fiscal year — her second time holding the gavel. Bass laid out four priorities for the coming year: Metro Safe, Metro Affordable, Metro Reliable, and Metro Ready as the agency prepares for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, pointing to the system's second-largest ridership in the country, more than 300 million boardings last year, and the recent World Cup activations as a successful "dress rehearsal" for the Games.

Ambassador Eric Garcetti on Rebuilding the Global Order and LA's Olympic Legacy

Ambassador Eric Garcetti, former Mayor of Los Angeles and most recently U.S. Ambassador to India, opened VX2026's second day with an extended metaphor: the postwar international order as a building now beginning to crumble, and the choice facing this generation between remaining tenants and firefighters, or becoming its engineers and architects. In his welcoming remarks, Garcetti makes the case that climate progress in America is happening at the city and state level even as the federal administration asserts otherwise.

Pasadena Looks to Invest in Spurring Revenue through Placemaking

Pasadena City Councilmember Rick Cole once was described appropriately by the LA Times as “one of Southern California’s most visionary planning thinkers.” A City Planning Commissioner before successfully returning to the City Council after a 29 year hiatus during which he worked on award-winning General Plans for Azusa and Ventura as City Manager in those cities. He also spearheaded the adoption of the most recent Downtown Plan for Santa Monica in 2017.