How hard is it to get public records from the LA Bureau of Engineering? Pretty freaking hard
LA is spending millions on its sidewalk repair program — the total for the 2024-25 fiscal year was about $44 million — and seeing scant results.
Last summer, I submitted a public records request for the quarterly presentations for LA's sidewalk program via NextRequest (the online platform used by LA's Bureau of Engineering). All told, it took about nine months for BOE to release three PDFs into my care.
Why?
Some background: After people with mobility disabilities sued the city, LA committed to spending $31 million per year on fixing sidewalks and adding curb ramps for a total commitment of roughly $1.4 billion over 30 years.
How is the program going? Not great — disability advocate Cynde Soto called the city's progress "infuriating" in an interview for Streetsblog LA.
Just how bad is it? According to ADA Coordinator Natalie Sparrow speaking at a 2025 conference, the sidewalk program is building 50 curb ramps and fixing 15 miles of sidewalk every year.
Back to the records I requested: I wanted to see the quarterly sidewalk presentations for the Community Advisory Committee because they list out everything the sidewalk program has completed.
Why are these presentations not public? You'd have to ask BOE.
I requested the presentations July 2025 and didn't get them till April 2026.
Why does it matter? LA is spending millions on its sidewalk repair program — the total for the 2024-25 fiscal year was about $44 million — and seeing scant results.
To break down the numbers for the 2023-24 fiscal year, the city spent about $40 million and fixed 11.51 miles of sidewalk and built 52 curb ramps, per the SRP website and the quarterly presentation from July 2024.
There are noises that the LA city controller's office might audit the program.
Wanna dig into the docs yourself? Here are the quarterly presentations:
Safe Sidewalks Presentation 04-25-24
Safe Sidewalks Presentation 07-25-24
Safe Sidewalks Presentation 10-22-24
