Commentary: Sacramento's micromanaging of a single lane in the Hollywood Hills

Michael Schneider, Los Angeles Times on Sep 4, 2026

Published in Op Eds

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How much does it cost to write your own law in California? About $500,000.

That’s what Forest Lawn and Mt. Sinai cemeteries have spent on lobbyists since 2025 to kill one road safety project, on one street, in Los Angeles. This week, in the final hours of the legislative session, Sacramento gave them their money’s worth.

Here’s what the money bought. Last Friday, just before 10 p.m. — two hours ahead of the deadline to amend any bill this session — new language appeared in Assembly Bill 194, a budget trailer bill. Trailer bills exist to clean up the budget’s plumbing. They skip committees, cannot be amended and go straight to floor votes. They are the last place in Sacramento where a controversial idea can appear without any debate, which is exactly why this path was chosen.

The language never mentions Forest Lawn Drive, the street at issue. It doesn’t have to. It applies only to “a city with a population of 2,000,000 or more” — there is exactly one in California — and only to a street that “provides the only access to two or more adjacent cemeteries.” There is exactly one of those in Los Angeles. The Legislature’s own analysis drops the pretense: The bullet point describing the amendment is titled “Forest Lawn Drive Public Hearing Requirements” and states flatly that the definition “applies to Forest Lawn Drive in the City of Los Angeles.”

And what would this custom-built law do? It would create bureaucratic and political hurdles before Los Angeles could remove a vehicular travel lane on Forest Lawn Drive, something city engineers deemed necessary to make the street safer. Thanks to the law, the city would need a public hearing, a City Council vote and the mayor’s sign-off. In other words: a permanent political veto, bolted onto a safety project the city’s normal process already approved.

Why? Because although city engineers and experts showed minimal traffic impact and improved cemetery access with the addition of a center turn lane, the cemeteries are convinced it will cause gridlock and hurt their businesses.

Forget, for a minute, the merits of that project — the three years of community meetings and engineering design, city data showing only 15 seconds of added delay at rush hour, the improved access to the cemeteries themselves, the people who died on this street and made the project necessary in the first place. This fight stopped being about the merits the moment it moved to a midnight amendment in Sacramento.

Follow the money instead. It’s all on file. City Ethics Commission records show that the lobbying firm Rick Taylor and Associates was paid $360,000 by a law firm working on the cemeteries’ behalf, with opposition to the Forest Lawn Drive project listed as the subject of the work. State disclosures show an additional $125,000 in a single quarter to lobby the governor’s office. Roughly half a million dollars — to stop a road reconfiguration on a one-mile stretch of asphalt.

And on Monday, the Assembly and the Senate approved this very special bill.

Now imagine what this precedent buys next. A billionaire who dislikes the housing project down the block. A millionaire who wants a bus lane gone, a park redesigned, a public street bent to private will. If the Legislature will write a law for one street, it will write a law for anything — and as of Friday night, everyone knows the price. Advocates certainly noticed: More than 500 people emailed their state representatives within 48 hours of the language surfacing. The cemeteries noticed too. In a joint statement, they called the bill’s prospective passage a “momentous victory.”

That’s one way to describe it.

California’s leaders have spent the last two years warning that America is sliding toward a government of, by and for the wealthy. This week, they voted to give the wealthy what they wanted, without debate or discussion. Now only Gov. Gavin Newsom’s veto pen can stop this horrible precedent.

And about those merits we set aside: Since 2013, Forest Lawn Drive has seen more than 95 crashes and four deaths. The most recent was last month, when a driver slammed into a tree and the car burst into flames with the driver stuck inside, right in front of Mt. Sinai. The cemeteries have enough customers. Sacramento shouldn’t pass a law that sends them more.

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Michael Schneider is the founder and chief executive of Streets for All.