David Zahniser

LOS ANGELES SCHOOL OFFICIALS hit the electoral jackpot in November, persuading voters to pass a $4 billion school-construction bond measure — the fourth in less than a decade and the second within two years. Even some district leaders were surprised by how enthusiastically voters embraced Measure Y. Five months after......

FROM THE MOMENT Mayor AntonioVillaraigosa won the mayoral election, the whispers began at Los Angeles International Airport: Kim Day, the top official in charge of the airport agency, was a marked woman. It made sense — Day had embraced an $11 billion plan for remodeling LAX that Villaraigosa detested and,......

MAYOR ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA put himself squarely in the center of the battle to save the 14-acre South Central Community Garden, orchestrating the behind-the-scenes effort to buy the land from a Brentwood developer. Now it turns out that the mayor’s intervention could end up costing the city anywhere from $2 million......

BY THE THIRD DAY OF WALKOUTS at Los Angeles County high schools, the region — and the city’s political and public-safety leaders — were clearly worn out. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Police Chief William Bratton and other top officials wanted the students back in the classroom, and the grown-ups who were......

MAYOR ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA DIDN’T DROP any huge policy bombshells during his three-day Mayoral Takeover tour of New York City’s public-education system. There was a friendly meeting with a teachers’ union representative, a tour of a high-achieving school and the obligatory photo ops with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who now......

LOS ANGELES CITY COUNCILWOMAN Janice Hahn stepped onto the Jordan High School basketball court a few weeks back for the type of ceremony that would make any hometown proud — a halftime show honoring a student who scored an out-of-town college athletic scholarship. In Watts, a neighborhood of Los Angeles......

MAKING A SHARP TURN in his bid to take over the Los Angeles Unified School District, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Friday that he will likely work to keep the school board intact as a publicly elected body — even as he presses ahead with plans for obtaining the power to......

Second-place school board candidate Christopher Arellano may have wanted out of the June 6 runoff election, but it turns out he’s not going anywhere. L.A. City Clerk Frank Martinez said Thursday that a legal opinion from City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo states that Arellano —whose campaign collapsed following revelations about his......

How far is Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa willing to go to save the South Central Community Garden? That’s the question being debated behind closed doors by the park advocates, policy analysts and the city’s extensive legal staff. Villaraigosa drew some raised eyebrows last week after the L.A. Weekly reported that his......

SECOND-PLACE school-board candidate Christopher Arellano, whose campaign was rocked by revelations about his past and who was on the verge of losing the endorsement of the powerful teachers’ union, officially pulled the plug this week on his stalled campaign, telling supporters and union leaders that he will step aside in......