Speaker 1: Well, the city council might only give you sixty seconds
Speaker 1: to where your grievance is.
Speaker 2: Oh hi, i'd like.
Speaker 3: To start go to the first caller on the phone.
Speaker 1: Twell, if you're lucky, now we're giving you a full
Speaker 1: sixty minutes. It's a KABC News Blitz with Randy Wang
Speaker 1: and our long recap of the day's top local stories.
Speaker 1: Fung your drive home, and unlike the City Council, we're
Speaker 1: the perfect vehicle to actually get your voice heard. The
Speaker 1: KABC News Blitz with Randy Wang starts no, No, No.
Speaker 3: It is the News Blitz with Randy Wang on Talk
Speaker 3: Radio seven ninety KABC. This is your daily rundown of
Speaker 3: everything you need to know that's going on in California,
Speaker 3: Southern California, the Bay Area, Sacramento, San Diego, and the
Speaker 3: Central Valley. We cover all of it. I put a
Speaker 3: list together every single day of all the stories that
Speaker 3: I found that you may have missed at Randywangradio dot
Speaker 3: substack dot com and check out the YouTube channel for
Speaker 3: all of our arm demand content for the John Phillips
Speaker 3: Show and This Show and the Accountability podcast at Johnny
Speaker 3: Don't Like dot com. Our next guest is running for
Speaker 3: governor of California. His website is Goldentogether dot com. Steve Hilton,
Speaker 3: Welcome to the Newsplitz.
Speaker 2: Great to be with you, Rennie. How are you doing.
Speaker 3: I'm doing fantastic, except for the fact that I live
Speaker 3: in Los Angeles and it just took me an hour
Speaker 3: and a half to go seventeen miles to get from
Speaker 3: Culver City to my home studio.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's something going on. We're heading north into LA
Speaker 2: from Orange County. It's a bit of a disaster. So,
Speaker 2: you know, this is what we have to deal with
Speaker 2: with these people in charge that don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 3: So, Steve, you have officially launched the second phase of
Speaker 3: your campaign as we go into November, and you specifically
Speaker 3: chose to launch phase two of your campaign in Boyle
Speaker 3: Heights at the site of the Lineage warehouse fire and
Speaker 3: ensuing disaster where residents feel like they're completely ignored from
Speaker 3: their local city and their local county leaders. The situation
Speaker 3: seems to be getting worse by the day, where now
Speaker 3: we have reports of disease spreading flies that are getting
Speaker 3: into the neighborhood and nobody seems to be doing anything
Speaker 3: to help for the people that are living there. So
Speaker 3: tell us why you decided to launch your campaign Phase
Speaker 3: two in Boil Heights and tell us what's going on
Speaker 3: down there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's a symbol of the failure of
Speaker 2: this one party rule. I mean, this is a working
Speaker 2: class Latino community that's been completely abandoned by the Democrats.
Speaker 2: And this is a party that goes on and on
Speaker 2: and on about how they're for working people and they're
Speaker 2: the Latinos and they're on their side, and that's all
Speaker 2: that you need to know, and just vote for us
Speaker 2: because we're your people. Meanwhile, an actual community has been
Speaker 2: completely abandoned, as you said, I mean I've been there
Speaker 2: many times in fact, since the disaster. But you had
Speaker 2: the fire raging for a week, and then since then
Speaker 2: for five weeks now more six, you've got we had
Speaker 2: eighty fights being removed. Now finally you had eighty five
Speaker 2: million pounds of rotting meat, and we were there in
Speaker 2: the middle of all that, and you had the flies.
Speaker 2: We took place with our event that we used to
Speaker 2: launch our campaign was at a small business owner who
Speaker 2: has had a complete collapse in his business because customers
Speaker 2: aren't coming, no one's helping him. Flies, rats disease. It's
Speaker 2: just a symbol of their failure right across the state
Speaker 2: because small business owners, working people in California are bearing
Speaker 2: the brunt of the insane costs and the taxes and
Speaker 2: the regulations. You know, I was a small business owner,
Speaker 2: ran restaurants for a couple of years in England. I've
Speaker 2: started businesses here as well, and it was back in England,
Speaker 2: and it's just a nightmare if you're running a business.
Speaker 2: It's a nightmare just to pay the bills. And that's
Speaker 2: why the focus of my campaign. We've got a very
Speaker 2: simple message for this phase of our campaign. Enough is
Speaker 2: enough fixed California. It's practical, it's not ideological. There's many
Speaker 2: people here in California who know that we need a change.
Speaker 2: There's a majority for change, and that's who we're speaking
Speaker 2: to with a positive, practical plan.
Speaker 3: The residents of Boyle Heights feel completely ignored and sometimes
Speaker 3: lied to by people like La Mayor Karen Bass, Supervisor
Speaker 3: Hilda Sliserve in our favorite La County Public Health Director
Speaker 3: Barbara Ferrara, where originally the message was that the smoke
Speaker 3: was not unsafe and you did not need to evacuate.
Speaker 3: Then when the rotting smell comes out, will give you
Speaker 3: one air purifier. If your lungs are fold with liquid,
Speaker 3: we'll give you taile and all. Now we find out
Speaker 3: there's some great reporting from NBC four that the mayor
Speaker 3: and the supervisors and Barbara Ferrara were all emailing back
Speaker 3: and forth with each other about these disease spreading flies
Speaker 3: that if they get into open wounds, can cause all
Speaker 3: kinds of illness and kill people. And it wasn't any
Speaker 3: of our local electeds that told the public about this.
Speaker 3: It was local news reporting. So I don't know if
Speaker 3: they were trying to sweep this under the rug. The
Speaker 3: residents are now calling for an evacuation. But here's my question.
Speaker 3: We know that the current governor has completely ignored this situation.
Speaker 3: When we have such failures at the local level, as
Speaker 3: we have seen for this disaster or the palisades and
Speaker 3: eaten fires before, what should the state be doing, and
Speaker 3: what should the governor be doing? And what would you
Speaker 3: be doing if you were the governor right now?
Speaker 2: So the role in this situation is to make sure
Speaker 2: that the local leaders, if you can call them that,
Speaker 2: certainly not in the case of LA doing their job.
Speaker 2: That I believe philosophically and practically as well in the
Speaker 2: decentralization of power. I think the lesson of history when
Speaker 2: you try and centralize power and the extreme versions of it,
Speaker 2: like the communist regimes in Soviet Union Eastern Europe, trying
Speaker 2: to run everything from the center. It's a disaster. You
Speaker 2: don't have the information. I always believe in local control.
Speaker 2: I don't like Sacramento bossing everyone around, telling everyone what
Speaker 2: to do. That's my starting point. But it's also the
Speaker 2: responsibility of the governor to make sure that people don't suffer.
Speaker 2: And if the local leadership is just not delivering, you've
Speaker 2: got to step in. And I'm both in a proactive way.
Speaker 2: For example, I've said on homelessness, I've got a very
Speaker 2: simple approach to that, which is a three point plan.
Speaker 2: You've got to enforce the law, remove people. You've got
Speaker 2: to get people off the streets. Number two, get them
Speaker 2: off drugs, and number three get them into mental health treatment.
Speaker 2: And if I'll give the local politicians a limited amount
Speaker 2: of time to get that done. To clean up homelessness,
Speaker 2: is this scandal that's gone on for twenty years with
Speaker 2: billions and billions of dollars of our money. But I've
Speaker 2: said very clearly, if they won't do it, then after
Speaker 2: a certain amount of time, I will step in and
Speaker 2: get it done because we cannot tolerate this, because enough
Speaker 2: is enough of the homelessness. And in the situation like this,
Speaker 2: which is an emergency, the governor has to say enough
Speaker 2: is enough much more quickly as you say it. Had
Speaker 2: nothing really to say about it at all, And it's
Speaker 2: just completely outrageous that in our second city of America
Speaker 2: this is going on. You've got medieval style diseases spreading.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's just totally unacceptable.
Speaker 3: Well, speaking with Steve Hilton, who is running for governor,
Speaker 3: his website is Goldentogether dot com. You touched on homelessness.
Speaker 3: We do have the new numbers out in Los Angeles
Speaker 3: and they're not good. The numbers are up. Could be
Speaker 3: because Karen Bess's buddy is no longer cooking the books
Speaker 3: at LASA after she had to resign in shame, what
Speaker 3: have you. But one of the things that Gavin Newsom
Speaker 3: has said over the last many years is that, hey,
Speaker 3: we've got our court decisions, clean up these dam encampments.
Speaker 3: And he'll usually say that clean up these damn encampments,
Speaker 3: and to which LA County and LA City has always
Speaker 3: scoffed at him and says, we're not going to do that.
Speaker 3: And then when Gavin Newsom gets asked, well, why aren't
Speaker 3: you doing anything about Los Angeles ignoring your executive orders
Speaker 3: on cleaning the dam encampments, He'll say, localism is determined.
Speaker 3: So if you have counties like LA that are ignoring
Speaker 3: doing the basics of clearing the public spaces, how do you,
Speaker 3: to use everyone's favorite word, hold local electeds accountable? As governor?
Speaker 2: I don't think it's the people who hold local electeds
Speaker 2: accountable are the voters. My job is to just make
Speaker 2: practical things happen as governors. So it's not about you know, holding,
Speaker 2: it's about saying, right, you haven't done it, I will.
Speaker 2: It's much much more direct, if you see what I mean.
Speaker 2: There's a concept in public policy known as earned autonomy,
Speaker 2: which is if you show that you can do something
Speaker 2: on your own, great, you go ahead and do it.
Speaker 2: But if you can't, if you can't deliver, then you
Speaker 2: lose that autonomy. And I think that's the situation we're
Speaker 2: in where you have these really serious scandals going on,
Speaker 2: where you've got failure after failure year after you see
Speaker 2: the same in the education system where you've got a
Speaker 2: school that's just complete failing year after year, then you
Speaker 2: take it. You know, you don't happen children's lives. They
Speaker 2: are at stake every year, every school year that students
Speaker 2: go to a school bus, just a complete disaster that's
Speaker 2: affecting their whole life. You can't just sort of wait
Speaker 2: around and hope that somebody comes to their senses in
Speaker 2: the local council or whatever it may be. That is
Speaker 2: just not okay.
Speaker 3: You know, when you talk about the schools in the
Speaker 3: state of California, we're in a situation in this state
Speaker 3: where you look at our budget and we're because of
Speaker 3: Prop ninety eight, we're required to spend a certain amount
Speaker 3: of the budget on education. So even when we have
Speaker 3: higher than expected revenues, even more money is going to
Speaker 3: the schools. Yet every teacher will tell you they can't
Speaker 3: afford to do the job. Every district says they're broke,
Speaker 3: and the performance is just inadequate compared to what we're
Speaker 3: paying compared to other states. How does a Governor Hilton
Speaker 3: fix California school system?
Speaker 2: So we've got to change the well. First of all,
Speaker 2: you run the state boarder. You appoint the state Board
Speaker 2: of Education, which has a very big role in the
Speaker 2: curriculum min what happens in school, and so you can
Speaker 2: have a large amount of control there. Secondly, we just
Speaker 2: have to get some of these basic points right. If
Speaker 2: you look at there's a very instructive comparison with Mississippi.
Speaker 2: So we have now in California, less than half the
Speaker 2: students in our public schools meet basic standards in English
Speaker 2: with reading and math. Reading in English with math it's
Speaker 2: down to like thirty, it's about a third. It's completely catastrophic,
Speaker 2: and it's been going on for years. And you look
Speaker 2: at Mississippi. They made some reforms about ten years ago.
Speaker 2: They were at the bottom of the league tables for education.
Speaker 2: Now they're near the top. We're at the bottom. They
Speaker 2: spend one third as much as we do. There's some
Speaker 2: basic things they do. For example, they say, look, if
Speaker 2: you can't read by third grade, then you're not going
Speaker 2: up to fourth grade. The reason for that is that
Speaker 2: up to that time, basically kids are learning to read.
Speaker 2: But after that you're, as they say, reading to learn.
Speaker 2: And if you can't read, you can't learn, can't learn anything,
Speaker 2: and that's had a transformative effect, just making sure that
Speaker 2: you don't enter fourth grade until you're fully competent and
Speaker 2: meet grade level at reading. So these are the simple
Speaker 2: kinds of changes that we need to make here in California.
Speaker 3: We're speaking with Steve Hilton, who is running for governor
Speaker 3: of California. You can go to his website. There is
Speaker 3: a lot of policy information on there. Goldentogether dot com.
Speaker 3: That's goldentogether dot com. One of the fights that our
Speaker 3: current governor has been going through the last couple of
Speaker 3: weeks is this battle between him and the state worker
Speaker 3: is represented by the SEIU up and down the state,
Speaker 3: a lot in Sacramento, but also in places like San Diego,
Speaker 3: what have you where? When COVID happened and Gavin Newsom
Speaker 3: and Barbara Ferrera locked everybody down, a lot of these
Speaker 3: jobs went remote. Some of the people that have been
Speaker 3: hired there have been remote full time since they started.
Speaker 3: Maybe they go in two or three days a week.
Speaker 3: Gavivan Newsom says, nope. I first, everyone goes in no
Speaker 3: matter what, four days a week, and you should be
Speaker 3: grateful for that. And meanwhile, there's not enough office space
Speaker 3: for some of these people. There's not enough parking places
Speaker 3: in Sacramento for some of these people, and some of
Speaker 3: the employees are complaining about added costs to parking, childcare,
Speaker 3: what have you. What is your take on what's going
Speaker 3: on between Newsom and the SEIU when it comes to
Speaker 3: in person work for state workers.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that the first point I would make
Speaker 2: is that we've got too many. The budget has not
Speaker 2: nearly doubled in the last ten years. The number of
Speaker 2: state employees has gone up astronomically under gavenuwsome it's and
Speaker 2: we've got to cut back. I mean, we've got to
Speaker 2: cut taxes to help working people. My plan is your
Speaker 2: first one hundred and fifty grand tax free above that
Speaker 2: eight percent flat tax, so that we are pro growth
Speaker 2: and attract business. It's essential. We're in an economic emergency
Speaker 2: in California. We've got the high poverty rate in the country,
Speaker 2: the highest unemployment rate, with fiftieth out of fifty for
Speaker 2: business climate, and I think that if Piserah wins in November,
Speaker 2: then the exodus of business that we've seen in the
Speaker 2: last few years is going to turn into a stampede.
Speaker 2: So we have to cut back this bloated budget, and
Speaker 2: that includes the numbers. That's what I'm more focused on
Speaker 2: is not where they work, but how many of them
Speaker 2: there are, and what they're doing and what we're getting.
Speaker 2: In response to that, I would like to hear the
Speaker 2: views of all the people concerned before making a final decision.
Speaker 2: I haven't done that yet. I haven't sat down with
Speaker 2: all the different sides of this, but I'm really you know,
Speaker 2: the central point is that with the budget's too big,
Speaker 2: the workforce is too large, and the results are not
Speaker 2: good enough. And that's what I'm going to be focused on.
Speaker 3: Well, and that is something that you have pointed out
Speaker 3: that has gotten a lot of people's attention that seven
Speaker 3: years ago the budget of the state of California was
Speaker 3: around two hundred billion. Here we are at three hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty billion, and every department says they're broke. I
Speaker 3: don't understand how it happened.
Speaker 2: I know, well, it's because of all these it's the
Speaker 2: corruption of the system and Passerah. Of course, my opponent
Speaker 2: is that is the creature of this machine that's that's
Speaker 2: has run California. The unions are a big part of that.
Speaker 2: The government unions and they get what they want, but
Speaker 2: working people and small businesses lose out. So if you look,
Speaker 2: I mean just going back to your earlier conversation about
Speaker 2: the earlier conversation about schools. Another thing I hear all
Speaker 2: the time in our town halls up and down the
Speaker 2: state where we've gone hundreds of events now thousands and
Speaker 2: thousands of people coming out. A really common theme question
Speaker 2: is what's going on. We paid the highest taxes in
Speaker 2: the country. We have massive local taxes, property taxes, pass
Speaker 2: so that was the different taxes locally, sales tax of course,
Speaker 2: and yet with the schools, they keep coming and asking
Speaker 2: us to pay for supplies, for basic supplies like books
Speaker 2: and pennies and paper. You know what's going on that
Speaker 2: we are being asked to chip in for that when
Speaker 2: we're paying all these taxes. And then a lot of
Speaker 2: people also bring up the lottery. We thought the lottery
Speaker 2: was supposed to be going to this, So what is
Speaker 2: going on? Where is our money going? We're the richest
Speaker 2: state in the richest country on earth, and yet everything
Speaker 2: is falling apart and people just feel ripped off. Now,
Speaker 2: one answer to that is if you look at the
Speaker 2: actual budgets in school districts nineteen about and I think
Speaker 2: it's either nineteen and a half or nineteen a quarter.
Speaker 2: Percent of the money that comes in to the school
Speaker 2: districts goes straight out to pay for teacher pensions, like
Speaker 2: nearly one fifth of the money. So that needs to
Speaker 2: be reformed, for example. And that's what's really going on.
Speaker 2: You've had no one in charge in California who's taken
Speaker 2: any kind of interest in this Newsom's been totally checked
Speaker 2: out for years. He's only interested in his next job,
Speaker 2: running for president, and so all these problems have been
Speaker 2: allowed to fester. We've got a complete fiscal crisis, the
Speaker 2: worst business climate, as I mentioned, and it's a serious moment.
Speaker 2: We've got to wake up. If we don't change direction,
Speaker 2: then I really fear where things are going. And I
Speaker 2: know people look at this race and say, wow, how
Speaker 2: are you going to win? It's so Democrat and whatever.
Speaker 2: There was a poll out the other week sixty one
Speaker 2: for me, thirty six for I'm sorry the other way around,
Speaker 2: sixty one for Psserra, thirty six for me, and say,
Speaker 2: people say, well, how are you going to win? Well,
Speaker 2: we can win because actually there's also sixty odd percent
Speaker 2: who think we need change in California's that's a good number.
Speaker 2: That's the majority for change that we need to appeal to.
Speaker 2: When we look at our poll, it shows that thirty
Speaker 2: three percent are solidly for me, forty one percent as
Speaker 2: solidly for Bessera, twenty six percent are undecided, mostly working
Speaker 2: class people. That's another reason we're in Paul Heights. That's
Speaker 2: the group that's going to decide the selection. And then
Speaker 2: you look at Pisserra, I mean, well, you couldn't think
Speaker 2: of a worse candidate. I mean he's absolutely more of
Speaker 2: the same when a majority of Californians want change. He's
Speaker 2: totally incompetent in the eyes of his colleagues in the
Speaker 2: Biden administration, I mean Susan Rice called him an idiot
Speaker 2: and a bitch ass. And then you've got his absolutely
Speaker 2: appalling record as HHS Secretary, which we're highlighting this week.
Speaker 2: For example, there's the massive scandal of the Passera migrant
Speaker 2: child abuse camps, which is barely being uncovered, and we
Speaker 2: left today we'd a press conference at one of the
Speaker 2: camps in Pomona with a whistleblower who worked there describing
Speaker 2: how all the vetting was removed for the sponsors and
Speaker 2: the places that these thousands and thousands of migrant children.
Speaker 2: Let's just remember the scale of it. When during the
Speaker 2: Biden border crisis, four hundred and seventy nine thousand migrant
Speaker 2: children unaccompanied came into the country. All of them were
Speaker 2: the responsibility of Passera. He had them in these camps.
Speaker 2: He didn't like the pictures of kids in camps, so
Speaker 2: he said, get them out of here as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2: He talked about turning into an assembly line, that's a quote.
Speaker 2: And as a result, they just stopped vetting these people.
Speaker 2: So children were sent into the hands of child sex traffickers,
Speaker 2: to child labor exploitative employers. Stories of you know, fourteen
Speaker 2: year old girls being raped by their sponsors, thirteen year
Speaker 2: old boys on an assembly line, their arms ripped off,
Speaker 2: which is completely horrific, horrific, And the total number of
Speaker 2: kids that were lost by Bissera, people had completely lost
Speaker 2: touch with them. It's not eighty five thousand, as some
Speaker 2: people have been reporting, based on a very early New
Speaker 2: York Times report, three hundred and nineteen thousand, three hundred
Speaker 2: and nineteen thousand kids missing today. That number the Trumpe
Speaker 2: administration to trying to track them down. Today that number
Speaker 2: is one hundred and forty thousand still today Passerah's lost kids.
Speaker 2: One hundred thousand of those are under thirteen somewhere in
Speaker 2: the country, mostly in California. This is an absolutely massive scandal.
Speaker 2: Pisserah turned the HHS into the biggest child trafficking operation
Speaker 2: in history. And that's another reason that we're feeling confident
Speaker 2: about our chances. Once we get out there and make
Speaker 2: these arguments, I think that actually we can turn this
Speaker 2: around because we can't let things go on like this
Speaker 2: in California.
Speaker 3: You don't get to choose your opponents. But I feel
Speaker 3: like you've got the best possible situation in Besarah, last
Speaker 3: question before you go, because this has been on my
Speaker 3: mind all day. You're stuck in traffic right now. I
Speaker 3: was stuck in traffic for an hour and a half.
Speaker 3: There's a story coming out of San Diego where people
Speaker 3: who can't afford to live in San Diego that have
Speaker 3: moved to riverside commute. They're commuting has gotten so much
Speaker 3: worse over the last few years because so many people
Speaker 3: have done just that. Where it used to take an
Speaker 3: hour to go down the fifteen from Riverside to San Diego.
Speaker 3: Now it takes two hours each way, and Caltran says,
Speaker 3: we've got to fix for that. We're going to put
Speaker 3: an hov express lane for carpooling and it will open
Speaker 3: in twenty fifty. Is there a better way?
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, that's insane, that's insane. I haven't heard that.
Speaker 2: These people aren't choke. I mean it's like it's like
Speaker 2: the high I mean, it's like his high speed rail,
Speaker 2: but worse. I mean, it's like Besarah saying he's going
Speaker 2: to finish high speed rail on time and on budget.
Speaker 2: He said that the other week in Fresno on time
Speaker 2: was six years ago. These people aren't serious. I think
Speaker 2: that we have to, you know, we as another example,
Speaker 2: we have the highest gas tax in the country, the
Speaker 2: highest vehicle registration, absolutely gouging people, ripping people off. In
Speaker 2: most states, vehicle registration is under one hundred dollars a year.
Speaker 2: Here in California five six, seven, eight hundred, over one
Speaker 2: thousand for some people, over two thousand to some. I've
Speaker 2: got a commitment to cap vehicle registration at seventy one
Speaker 2: dollars per vehicle. Play. Yeah, that's the basic registration fee
Speaker 2: before they add on all these extra taxes. But at
Speaker 2: the same time they say, oh, well, how are you
Speaker 2: going to pay for the roads?
Speaker 4: We have?
Speaker 2: The worst roads in the country were rated fifty. That
Speaker 2: there's two measures of roads. On one of them, we're
Speaker 2: forty ninth Alaska is fifty. On the other we're fiftieth,
Speaker 2: and yet we pay the most. It's just unbelievable. We
Speaker 2: got to take that money. And hey, why I met
Speaker 2: a lady who runs a construction company, does public works
Speaker 2: and infrastructure. She told all over the country. She told
Speaker 2: me it costs four times as much to build the
Speaker 2: exact same piece of road, the equivalent piece of roads
Speaker 2: in California as it does in Texas, where they also operate,
Speaker 2: because of all these ridiculous regulations and their unions, you know,
Speaker 2: Project Labor Agreement, Community Workforce Agreement, endless environmental nonsense that
Speaker 2: doesn't even help the environment, just makes it all more
Speaker 2: expensive and time consuming. We got plenty of money, we
Speaker 2: just need to spend it properly, and of course we
Speaker 2: need modernized roads.
Speaker 3: Steve Hilton running for governor of California. The website is
Speaker 3: Goldentogether dot com.
Speaker 2: Steve.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for joining us today and we'll
Speaker 3: talk soon.
Speaker 2: Great to be with you, Andy, Thank you.
Speaker 3: It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang on KBC. It's
Speaker 3: the News Blitz with Randy Wang on Talk Radio seven
Speaker 3: ninety KABC. This is your daily rundown of everything that
Speaker 3: you need to know that's going on in Southern California,
Speaker 3: the Bay Area, Sacramento, San Diego, and the Central Valley.
Speaker 3: I put a list together every single day of all
Speaker 3: my show prep and you can check it out at
Speaker 3: Randy Wang Radio dot substack dot com. And we got
Speaker 3: tons of video content for you. The live streaming John
Speaker 3: Phillips Show. You can watch this show on video. You
Speaker 3: can watch the Accountability Podcast all at Johnny Dontlike dot com.
Speaker 3: That's Johnny Dontlike dot com, or if you prefer, Randywangradio
Speaker 3: dot com sends you to the same place. Our next
Speaker 3: guest is the president of an organization called Vision Burbank,
Speaker 3: fighting three letters that scare every person living in Burbank.
Speaker 3: Right now, b RT, let's find out what this is
Speaker 3: all about. David Donahue, Welcome to the News Splitz.
Speaker 4: Happy to be here. Thank you, Randy.
Speaker 3: David tell us about your organization and what is the
Speaker 3: big fight going on specifically on all of.
Speaker 4: Well, I tell you, Vision Burbank was started about five
Speaker 4: years ago after we heard about Metro what they were
Speaker 4: going to do to take away two lanes of traffic
Speaker 4: on either direction of Olive Avenue basically between all Amida
Speaker 4: and front End Glen Oaks. So a bunch of concerned
Speaker 4: residents business owners got together foreigned Vision Burbank and began
Speaker 4: fighting against it. And so what we advocated for and
Speaker 4: won through the vote of City Hall was that meant
Speaker 4: that the city would allow for mixed flow, meaning that
Speaker 4: the bus could travel, the dr tam could travel on
Speaker 4: Olive Avenue and it would share it with the rest
Speaker 4: of the cars and the rest of the commuters. Well,
Speaker 4: Metro didn't want that, and they have said, well we
Speaker 4: want a dedicated lane, and we're like it's going to
Speaker 4: really have a really negative impact to the businesses and
Speaker 4: to the residents because there's this thing you know, when
Speaker 4: you have a big change to a major arterial through
Speaker 4: a city and you reduced the lane, what you happen
Speaker 4: you have cut through traffic. The City of Burbank, their
Speaker 4: staff has actually studied the number of amount of cut
Speaker 4: through traffic that would happen just with the increased density
Speaker 4: with normal housing. But they and they estimated that it
Speaker 4: would be really significant. So what we decide again, we
Speaker 4: thought we had won this battle that is going to
Speaker 4: be dedicated lane until Metro could show that they had
Speaker 4: seventeen thousand riders per day. Well, Metro, in my opinion,
Speaker 4: has been horribly disingenuous. They've said, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're
Speaker 4: we hear you, Burbank, We hear you, Vision Burbank, we
Speaker 4: hear all you people saying you want dedicated lanes. We
Speaker 4: hear you, we hear you. And we just were like, okay,
Speaker 4: we think we again, we think we've won this. Well,
Speaker 4: fast forward several years until now that they're trying to
Speaker 4: pull permits. They have said that the memorandum of understanding
Speaker 4: that the city since to Metro failed to include the
Speaker 4: language to have a dedicated lane. It was a separate letter.
Speaker 4: So we found out that it's like no, no, no,
Speaker 4: We've been doing this for almost five years communicating to Metro, now,
Speaker 4: we do not want you to take away a lane
Speaker 4: of traffic on Olive Avenue to save hold on ninety seconds.
Speaker 4: That's all that it would say, Brandy, is if you
Speaker 4: the bus gets off the one thirty four gets on
Speaker 4: Olive and having its own dedicated lane and metered lights
Speaker 4: would only save ninety seconds and what it would do
Speaker 4: to the community is just catastrophic. So Metro is now
Speaker 4: suing us. So when I say, yes, the City of
Speaker 4: Burbank not mesuing the City of Burbank to get the
Speaker 4: job permits, the building permits so that they can start
Speaker 4: construction of the dedicated lanes through Burbank. And thankfully, and
Speaker 4: I really have to give a huge shout out to
Speaker 4: Vice Mayor Zozette Mullens and council Member Christopher Rizzotti. They've
Speaker 4: stood up up. They stood up against Metro and said no,
Speaker 4: we said mixed flow, not dedicated lane, and they were
Speaker 4: advocating and they supported the city to sue Metro. Well
Speaker 4: before that happened, Randy, Metro sued the city at Burbank
Speaker 4: and took them to court. First coordinating was October, excuse
Speaker 4: me was July seventeenth, and the judge basically said no
Speaker 4: to Metro, you cannot have your order to demand the
Speaker 4: city give permits. And so now we have a next
Speaker 4: court date is August nineteenth, where the judge will hear,
Speaker 4: you know, just the arguments, the continued arguments from the
Speaker 4: city of Burbank.
Speaker 3: That is quite a fight. And it's one of those
Speaker 3: things where it seems like, you know, it's one of
Speaker 3: these things that we hear about for years and years
Speaker 3: and years. Not really, this fight is going on over
Speaker 3: and over and over again. What's wild is how far
Speaker 3: or they fight for the dedicated bus only lane. You know,
Speaker 3: there are certain places that have these, and like I
Speaker 3: drive around Culver City a lot, and in Culver City
Speaker 3: there is a lot of traffic and there's a lot
Speaker 3: of empty lanes that nobody's allowed to use because the
Speaker 3: buses don't come that often. But you know, I was
Speaker 3: just in a major metropolitan city. I just spent a
Speaker 3: week in Toronto, Canada, and Toronto has those cable cars
Speaker 3: all throughout the downtown area. But even though they're cable cars,
Speaker 3: they do not have a dedicated lane for themselves. They
Speaker 3: share the road with the cars. The cars get out
Speaker 3: of the way and have to stop, of course when
Speaker 3: the cable car is loading and unloading. And for the
Speaker 3: most part, Toronto gets around a little better than the
Speaker 3: insanity that we have in Los Angeles, and I understand that,
Speaker 3: you know, we want Metro to be more connected. People
Speaker 3: will never ride it if it doesn't go everywhere, and
Speaker 3: right now it barely goes anywhere. But this seems to
Speaker 3: be a bigger net loss than a net positive for
Speaker 3: especially the people of the city of Burbank.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, Randy. And the other part of this is Senate
Speaker 4: Bill seventy nine, and that's one of the big elephants
Speaker 4: in the room. Sen Bill seventy nine. It will allow
Speaker 4: up to five six story apartment buildings within a half
Speaker 4: mile of a TOD bus stop. And if you look
Speaker 4: at the map that we have on vision Burbank dot org,
Speaker 4: it shows this huge slot that goes along the middle
Speaker 4: of Burbank where a developer could buy a single family
Speaker 4: residential property, normal house and build up to five or
Speaker 4: six stories with no required parking. And that's something that
Speaker 4: I believe was really not well thought out by now
Speaker 4: Congressman war Friedman. And now we do have it as
Speaker 4: the law, and it says if a developer wants to build,
Speaker 4: they can do it by right within a half mile
Speaker 4: of a TOD bus stop up to five six seven
Speaker 4: stories with no required parking. Here's the part that has
Speaker 4: really frightened a lot of people that are paying close
Speaker 4: attention to this. It is the amount of the infrastructure
Speaker 4: with the water, sewer and gas and electricity that would
Speaker 4: be required. City Attorney Joan McDougal for the Burbank has
Speaker 4: no idea what is going to cost, but he does
Speaker 4: know and the city manager justin Hess, they do know
Speaker 4: that with the current housing element that they have to
Speaker 4: be to be compliant with HCD, because we have a
Speaker 4: very we have a compliant accepted housing element with the HCD.
Speaker 4: It's going to cost the City of Burbank between one
Speaker 4: hundred and fifteen million to seven hundred million dollars just
Speaker 4: for the plan build out to meet our regional housing
Speaker 4: needs assessment for this cycle. What SB seventy nine does
Speaker 4: is it takes that and just throws it out the
Speaker 4: window because it could potentially be another one billion dollars
Speaker 4: on top of what could be seven hundred million dollars.
Speaker 4: So the City of Burbank, its residents, and its business
Speaker 4: owners would be on the hook for what I am
Speaker 4: calling an unfunded state mandate through SB seventy nine. And
Speaker 4: here's the other kicker that is we just Burbank is
Speaker 4: just the target of Sacramento. Scott Wiener and a lot
Speaker 4: of these people, like the Senator of Maria, Elena Drazzo,
Speaker 4: who wrote this bill, s B thirteen sixty one. That's
Speaker 4: be thirteen sixty one would prohibit a jurisdiction from not
Speaker 4: issuing permits to the city of Burbank. It would make
Speaker 4: it illegal for a city like Burbank to fight back
Speaker 4: to ask for local control other compliant housing elements. And
Speaker 4: to me, that is just pretty scary when you look
Speaker 4: at the power that some of those people in Sacramento
Speaker 4: have a city like Burbank.
Speaker 3: We'll speaking with David Donahue. The website is Vision Burbank
Speaker 3: dot org. If people that are in Burbank want to
Speaker 3: get involved, they want to help out, what what can
Speaker 3: they do? What do you need from the public here?
Speaker 4: Thank you very much for that question and I appreciate it.
Speaker 4: The Division Burbank dot org. On our website, you can
Speaker 4: sign up for our newsletter and we give regular updates
Speaker 4: of what's happening in city, in city Hall and in Sacramento,
Speaker 4: and are also working and collaborating with our neighborhood voices.
Speaker 4: What we want to be able to do is build
Speaker 4: a broad coalition to be able to fight back. People
Speaker 4: can donate. We're a five oh one C four nonprofit
Speaker 4: and they can. The fundraising helps us get the word
Speaker 4: out and it else also helps us organized, because we
Speaker 4: really do need to sort of join arms and be
Speaker 4: able to fight back for local control.
Speaker 3: We're speaking with David Donahue, whose website is Vision Burbank
Speaker 3: dot com. I just have to ask this based on
Speaker 3: you know, there are maybe people that are listening to
Speaker 3: what you're hearing today, and I'm sure there are people
Speaker 3: that are very sympathetic, but there may be other people
Speaker 3: that are listening in here. Okay. Burbank residents are opposing
Speaker 3: a metro line that could connect Burbank and Pasadena and
Speaker 3: the valley. They're opposing SB seventy nine, which could create
Speaker 3: more housing. The medium price of a home in the
Speaker 3: city of Burbank is one point two million. I can't
Speaker 3: even afford to live in the city of Burbank. What
Speaker 3: would you say to people that hear everything that you're
Speaker 3: opposing and call it nimbiism?
Speaker 4: Absolutely good question. Vision Burbank has said in council chambers
Speaker 4: and publicly that we are not against transportation. We want
Speaker 4: to dedicate the dedicated lane after seventeen thousand, would we
Speaker 4: would support that. We do not want a dedicated lane
Speaker 4: if the writership is not up to it. So having
Speaker 4: mixed flow until they reach those numbers is with a
Speaker 4: fair compromise. The housing element, again, the City of Burbank
Speaker 4: has already been told by the state that they have
Speaker 4: to have additional eighty eight hundred homes built in the
Speaker 4: next cycle. The city has a compliant housing element. We're
Speaker 4: already building hundreds and hundreds of new housing units, so
Speaker 4: they are coming online. The problem with unmitigated, unplanned, unfunded construction,
Speaker 4: which is what SB seventy nine does, is it puts
Speaker 4: a lot of pressure on the infrastructure and then if
Speaker 4: that then demands a lot more money from the residents
Speaker 4: and the business owners. So it's just having some local
Speaker 4: control and having a conversation. Yes, we want to build
Speaker 4: more housing. The City of Burbank is doing it, but
Speaker 4: let's have it planned. Let's have a little bit more
Speaker 4: of a conversation about it.
Speaker 3: The website is vision Burbank dot org. That is Vision
Speaker 3: Burbank dot org. David Donahue with Vision Burbank, thank you
Speaker 3: so much for joining us today.
Speaker 4: My pleasure, Randy, thank you.
Speaker 3: It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang on KABC. Hey,
Speaker 3: let's get this out of the way. I've got a
Speaker 3: nice surprise for you. Seven ninety KABC welcomes Gypsy Kings
Speaker 3: featuring Nicholas Reyes at the Greek Theater on August seven,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six. Tickets are on sale now at ticketmaster
Speaker 3: dot com, but right now calling number nine at one
Speaker 3: eight at eight seven ninety five two two two gets
Speaker 3: a pair of tickets to the show. Tickets furnished by
Speaker 3: Nita Lander Concerts. Good luck dialing programming. Note, as I
Speaker 3: wrap up our five of broadcasting today, I'm not done.
Speaker 3: So I woke up this morning, went to my pilates class,
Speaker 3: which I always love. Then I taped the Accountability Podcast
Speaker 3: with John Phillips. The new episode airs at midnight. To
Speaker 3: upload it right after this show. But you'll be able
Speaker 3: to watch it. We've made it a lot easier now.
Speaker 3: It's just at Johnny don't like dot com that takes
Speaker 3: you to the one YouTube channel. It's the same YouTube
Speaker 3: channel for the John Phillips Show Live on demand John
Speaker 3: Phillips Show content, The news Blitz videos are short form content,
Speaker 3: and of course the Accountability podcast, So just go to
Speaker 3: Johnny Don't Like dot Com. Our newest episode, Johnny and
Speaker 3: I talk about the prospect of Kamala Harris running for
Speaker 3: president in twenty twenty eight because apparently some of her
Speaker 3: staffers told Andrew Yang that she was thinking about it.
Speaker 3: I then did Noon to three Live with John Phillips,
Speaker 3: fantastic show. I have so many good clips to upload
Speaker 3: to the channel tonight, including John's interview with Jennifer Van Lahar,
Speaker 3: John's interview with Seneca Scott, Johnny and I breaking down
Speaker 3: the new allegations against Shang Tao. Then I just did
Speaker 3: this show where we had two great interviews, and then
Speaker 3: I take a little break, I upload podcasts, I have
Speaker 3: a little dinner, maybe do a FaceTime with my wife
Speaker 3: because she's still in Toronto, and then I at eight
Speaker 3: o'clock will be joining our buddy Phil Moriello with the
Speaker 3: California Underground podcast once again. It streams at eight o'clock.
Speaker 3: You can watch it on Instagram or YouTube at California Underground.
Speaker 3: We'll be covering all kinds of subjects, including probably the
Speaker 3: Shantau thing. Gavin Newsom's diaper Gate and so many other issues.
Speaker 3: So I had a lot of fun last time, and
Speaker 3: I was I actually got asked back to do it
Speaker 3: last week, but I was in Toronto. And by the way,
Speaker 3: if you notice that, if it sounds like I'm saying
Speaker 3: that weird, that's how the locals say it. They don't
Speaker 3: say Toronto, they say Toronto. That's how it's done. I
Speaker 3: feel like I'm a local now. I've had so much
Speaker 3: Ontario beer that I should know that he asked me
Speaker 3: to do it last week. But I'm three hours later
Speaker 3: when I'm in Toronto, and so that means an eight
Speaker 3: pm live stream would be eleven pm. And that means
Speaker 3: that even though I get off of work at six pm,
Speaker 3: when I'm in Toronto, I don't get to have a
Speaker 3: drinkie at beer town. And well, I said, hey, let
Speaker 3: me know if you're available next week. So here we are.
Speaker 3: I'll be on the California Underground podcast tonight at eight o'clock.
Speaker 3: YouTube dot com slash at California Underground. Before we leave,
Speaker 3: I cannot get this story out of my head. So
Speaker 3: I was in an hour and a half traffic coming
Speaker 3: home because I guess there was a big rig that
Speaker 3: turned over in block four lanes. And it takes one
Speaker 3: bad accident to ruin the commutes for hundreds of thousands
Speaker 3: of people, well residents of Riverside who commute to San
Speaker 3: Diego for work. They're pulling their hair out every single
Speaker 3: day on that fifteen because ever since COVID, so many
Speaker 3: people moved to San Diego excuse me, to Riverside because
Speaker 3: they cannot afford to live in San Diego County, or
Speaker 3: they want a much bigger place, maybe they want a
Speaker 3: nicer place to raise their kids, a safer place, what
Speaker 3: have you. The commuting has gotten so awful, and some
Speaker 3: people have signed a petition saying, you know what we
Speaker 3: need to do. We need an express lane on the
Speaker 3: fifteen in between Riverside and San Diego, and Caltrend says,
Speaker 3: that's a great idea, an express lane where if you're
Speaker 3: in an hov you can bypass all that traffic. We'll
Speaker 3: get right on that. Estimated project completion time twenty fifty.
Speaker 3: They're in the planning phase to add an express lane
Speaker 3: to a freeway twenty five years from now. I don't
Speaker 3: think the people who are sitting in the commute have
Speaker 3: twenty five years, and that is why I think we
Speaker 3: have to completely rethink what we're doing here. You know,
Speaker 3: think about how much money we spent widening the four
Speaker 3: five freeway and that didn't do a damn thing. We
Speaker 3: never talk about building new freeways, which is a strange
Speaker 3: thing because if you talk about the fifteen in between
Speaker 3: Riverside and San Diego, there's a lot of desert out there.
Speaker 3: You could have another freeway, but all right, we're not
Speaker 3: going to do that. Well, why don't you do the
Speaker 3: simplest thing. If it's too expensive to build things, incentivize teleworking,
Speaker 3: because then no one's on the freeway just saying am
Speaker 3: I saying that selfishly? Yes, yes I am. Thank you
Speaker 3: all so much for being a part of the show.
Speaker 3: It's a pleasure to bring it to you every day.
Speaker 3: We got lots of on demand content for you. So
Speaker 3: now that we're off the air, check it out. YouTube
Speaker 3: has it all. Just go to Johnny don't like dot com.
Speaker 3: That's Johnny don't like dot com. It's the News Blitz
Speaker 3: with Randy Wang on KABC