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[ PLANNING WATCH LA ](https://www.citywatchla.com/planning-watch-la)
# When L.A. City Planning Operates in the Shadows
October 15 2026
Written by Tom Glick.
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PLANNING WATCH - Los Angeles faces a fundamental question: Is the city making planning more efficient by taking the public out of the process? From the Missing Middle ordinance and Charter Amendment PL to rising appeal fees and the next mayor’s priorities, a troubling pattern is emerging: more administrative power and fewer meaningful opportunities for residents to challenge decisions that reshape their neighborhoods.
The city presents these changes as efforts to improve efficiency, consistency, and accountability. But faster decisions are not necessarily better decisions. Los Angeles needs a more effective planning system, not one that weakens public scrutiny or makes government less responsive.
### Missing Middle: More Density, Less Public Scrutiny
The Missing Middle LA initiative could substantially change neighborhoods across Los Angeles by expanding opportunities for additional housing. Housing production is a legitimate priority, but sweeping changes to development rules demand careful analysis and meaningful public review.
Released on September 4, just before Labor Day, the proposals included 11 ordinance packages scheduled for a Planning Commission hearing on October 1, with written comments accepted through October 16. Residents had little time to assess the proposals’ economic and neighborhood impacts or understand how the rules might interact and affect individual properties.
A hearing and an opportunity to submit comments do not guarantee meaningful participation when residents lack sufficient time and information. The question is not whether every neighborhood objection should prevail, but whether the city will seriously consider those objections before adopting rules that could permanently change communities.
### When Residents Have to Fight for Answers
Over the past several years, more and more planning decisions have been handled administratively, often with fewer opportunities for public review or input. At the same time, disputes involving individual projects have raised questions about Planning’s decisions, legal interpretations, and responses to residents challenging approvals. When decisions are made administratively rather than through a public hearing, residents may have fewer opportunities to question the reasoning, understand how rules apply to their properties, or determine whether the city has complied with its own requirements.
Opaque procedures and incomplete answers force residents to make repeated inquiries and navigate technical regulations and legal standards just to understand decisions affecting their neighborhoods. Residents should not have to become amateur land-use attorneys to determine whether the city has followed its own rules. The burden of explaining and justifying government decisions belongs to the city—not to the people who must live with their consequences.
Planning must provide clear answers, acknowledge mistakes, and demonstrate compliance with the law. When more decisions are made administratively, with limited public involvement and explanations that are difficult to obtain, the issue extends beyond individual projects to a broader question: whether residents have a meaningful opportunity to participate in decisions that shape their neighborhoods—and whether the public can trust the process at all.
### Rising Appeal Fees: Pricing Residents Out of Oversight
The Los Angeles Department of City Planning has proposed raising non-applicant appeal fees from $229 to $1,145 for residents within a project’s noticing or mailing radius, and to $2,289 for those outside it. On August 25, 2026, Councilmember Bob Blumenfield and his colleagues on the Planning and Land Use Management (PLUM) Committee advanced the proposal. On October 6, the Budget and Finance Committee concurred. Both committees unanimously supported the proposed increases.
Blumenfield’s role merits attention. He is the only member serving on both committees, holding a leadership position on each as chair or vice chair. That gave him two opportunities to scrutinize Planning’s assumptions, weigh the proposed increases against residents’ right to challenge government decisions, and ask whether better internal efficiency could reduce the need to shift costs onto the public. He cites a doubling of appeals over three years and roughly $4 million in city subsidies to cover the cost of processing them.
But before making residents pay five to ten times more, why hasn’t the city addressed Planning’s inefficiencies? Los Angeles’s community plan program is at least five years behind schedule, yet the financial cost of those delays has not been publicly accounted for. The Council should demand an accounting of Planning’s expenditures, missed deadlines, and performance before shifting more costs onto residents.
Why is making public oversight more expensive a priority, while making Planning more efficient is not?
Los Angeles routinely subsidizes programs that do not recover their costs because their public benefits justify the expense. Appeals serve an equally important purpose: they allow residents to challenge decisions that may be legally flawed or harmful to their communities. If appeals are too costly to administer, the city should improve efficiency—not price residents out of the process. Wealthier communities may be able to raise money and hire professional help, while lower-income residents struggle to absorb the increases.
Higher fees do not distinguish frivolous appeals from well-founded ones; they make both more expensive. Residents may abandon challenges not because questionable approvals are sound, but because appeals have become unaffordable. Cost recovery may be a pretext for addressing Planning’s frustration with the volume of appeals by making them more expensive and discouraging residents from filing them. Whatever the department’s intent, the practical effect could be to deter legitimate appeals along with frivolous ones.
Both committees should have examined the consequences for public participation and considered alternatives for improving efficiency before advancing the proposal. Instead, they unanimously supported increases that could make it significantly harder for residents to challenge government decisions. Democracy is not a loss leader. Planning should improve its efficiency without placing meaningful public oversight beyond the financial reach of the people it serves.
### Charter Amendment PL: Concentrating Power, Weakening Oversight
Charter Amendment PL is presented as a way to streamline Los Angeles planning. But will it improve decision-making or make decisions harder to challenge?
The amendment would replace seven Area Planning Commissions, comprising 35 commissioners, with a single Neighborhood Appeals Commission of at least seven members. It would also change deadlines so that, in specified circumstances, commission decisions and certain General Plan amendments could take effect or become final if the City Council fails to act in time. In addition, it would allow certain Charter restrictions on floor area to be changed by ordinance and assign designated Planning staff some quasi-judicial review functions.
These changes raise concerns about local knowledge, independent review, and accountability. One smaller commission would handle appeals from across the city, potentially weakening neighborhood-level expertise. Decisions could become final through Council inaction rather than an affirmative vote, while Planning staff could assume quasi-judicial responsibilities in disputes involving the department’s own decisions.
Before granting government more latitude, voters should ask what safeguards will remain when Planning gets it wrong—and whether those safeguards will be accessible in practice, not merely on paper.
### The Next Mayor Matters, Too
The mayor appoints department leadership, sets priorities, and shapes how city government responds to residents. The next mayor will help determine whether Planning becomes more transparent and responsive—or continues along its current course.
Karen Bass has had four years to address concerns about Planning’s transparency while pursuing faster housing production and streamlined approvals. Her administration should be judged not just by how quickly projects move forward, but by whether residents receive clear explanations and meaningful responses when they raise concerns.
Nithya Raman, a Councilmember representing District 4, brings planning experience and a progressive land-use agenda. But policy ambition is not the same as effective leadership. In May 2026, the Los Angeles Times reported difficulties in Raman’s relationships with fellow councilmembers and some neighborhood groups. Valley community leaders have also expressed frustration with their lack of access to Raman and her office, raising questions about how effectively she communicates with the constituents she represents.
If Raman has struggled to maintain regular contact with neighborhood leaders in her own district, voters have reason to question whether becoming mayor would improve her accessibility—or magnify the problem. Just ask residents on Babcock Avenue in Studio City, who spent nearly four years pressing her office to remove an encampment without receiving a meaningful response. Only after a fire broke out at the site a few months ago did Raman show up, hold a press conference, and blame the mayor.
Her progressive housing agenda may appeal to voters seeking sweeping change, but policy ambitions are no substitute for responsive leadership. Residents deserve a mayor who listens, answers questions, takes their concerns seriously, and does not show up only when it is politically convenient.
Neither candidate should be judged by promises alone. Los Angeles needs a mayor who insists that Planning follow the law, explain its decisions, and preserve meaningful public review. Transparency is not an obstacle to progress. It is a basic requirement of trustworthy government.
### Efficiency Without Accountability Is Not Reform
The Missing Middle ordinance, disputed project decisions, Charter Amendment PL, rising appeal fees, and the next mayor’s approach to administrative power all raise the same fundamental question: Who gets to shape Los Angeles neighborhoods, and who gets left watching from the sidelines? Through compressed review schedules, unclear explanations, concentrated authority, and increasingly expensive appeals, the city risks giving government greater flexibility while diminishing the public’s ability to hold it accountable.
Los Angeles deserves a planning system that makes sound decisions efficiently while preserving adequate time for review, transparent explanations, affordable appeals, and independent oversight. Administrative reform need not come at the expense of public participation. When planning decisions are made behind closed doors, explanations are hard to obtain, and appeals become too expensive for ordinary residents, government risks retreating further into the shadows. Los Angeles residents should not be left in the dark about decisions that will shape their neighborhoods. Planning must operate in the open, with residents treated as partners in shaping their communities—not spectators arriving after decisions have already been made.
***(Tom Glick** is a former Los Angeles City Planning Department Planner with over three decades of municipal expertise. Since 2017, they have served as a Board Member for the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association, continuing their commitment to local land-use policy and community advocacy.)*
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