Contributor: Sacramento’s micromanaging of a single lane in the Hollywood Hills

By Michael SchneiderGuest contributor 

Sept. 2, 2026 9:06 AM PT

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.

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

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Ideas expressed in the pieceThe article argues that adding highly specific language about streets serving adjacent cemeteries in Los Angeles to a last-minute budget trailer bill amounts to Sacramento micromanaging a single lane on a single road, sidestepping normal committee hearings and public debate in favor of a fast-track process insulated from scrutiny.[1][14][12]It contends that this language, which requires a public hearing, City Council approval and concurrence from the mayor before reducing vehicle lanes on such streets, effectively bolts a permanent political veto onto what had been a technocratic safety decision already vetted and approved through the city’s standard process.[14][10][8]The column emphasizes that this intervention follows an intensive lobbying campaign by Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks and Mount Sinai Memorial Park, which collectively spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at City Hall and in Sacramento to block the Forest Lawn Drive safety project, and presents that spending as evidence that well-funded institutions can purchase tailor-made state laws.[10][14][6]It stresses that Forest Lawn Drive has recorded more than 95 crashes and four deaths since 2013, including a recent fatal collision and fire, and notes that city traffic modeling found the proposed lane reduction and protected bike lanes would add only about 15 seconds of delay during weekday rush hour and roughly a minute and a half on busy weekends while substantially improving safety and turn access.[10][12][9]The article argues that allowing a bespoke state statute to override a locally developed, fully funded safety project sets a dangerous precedent, signaling to wealthy interests that they can ask lawmakers to write one-off laws to stop everything from housing projects to bus lanes and park changes in their own neighborhoods.[6][5][10]It criticizes California leaders who warn about rising plutocracy while advancing a bill that, in the column’s view, delivers exactly the kind of special-interest carve-out they decry, and urges Gov. Gavin Newsom to veto the measure to prevent state-level interference from weakening local Vision Zero and street safety efforts.[14][10][11]The piece also highlights how hundreds of advocates and residents quickly contacted legislators to oppose the trailer bill language, yet lawmakers advanced it anyway, which the article presents as further proof that concentrated money outweighed community engagement and on-the-ground safety concerns.[10][5]Different views on the topicForest Lawn and Mount Sinai have characterized the legislation as a “momentous victory for common sense,” arguing that it elevates the voices of local residents, worshippers and mourners who fear that the proposed “road diet” will create severe gridlock, delay funeral processions and make it harder for families to reach services on time.[1][2][10]Representatives of the cemeteries have described the lane-reduction plan as a “permanent traffic disaster” and “unnecessary,” asserting that removing a travel lane in each direction would effectively cut car capacity in half, produce long backups on Forest Lawn Drive and nearby routes, and turn the corridor into a bottleneck during peak hours, holidays and major events.[2][3][13]Opponents at public meetings, including members of the Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council, have argued that bicycle traffic on Forest Lawn Drive appears relatively low and that it does not warrant a major reconfiguration of a heavily used commuter route between the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood, especially if that change risks worsening congestion for the vast majority of users who drive.[2][13][10]Mayor Karen Bass has paused the original lane-reduction plan, citing what the mayor’s office describes as widespread opposition from local businesses, faith leaders and community members, and has directed city departments to develop an alternative design that preserves all existing vehicle lanes while still adding protected bike lanes and signal modifications to address safety concerns.[4][7][11]Supporters of the state bill have framed it as a procedural safeguard rather than a ban, noting that it merely requires a public hearing and formal approval from the City Council and mayor before lanes can be removed on streets that provide the only access to multiple cemeteries, which they say ensures that any such changes receive clear, accountable signoff from elected leaders.[14][12]Some local critics of the original project argue that city traffic models underestimate real-world congestion, particularly on weekends and holidays when services at the cemeteries coincide with trips to Griffith Park, and maintain that retaining two lanes in each direction offers crucial redundancy for turn movements, emergency vehicles and heavy surges in auto traffic.[1][4][10]Additionally, opponents contend that limited transportation dollars and political capital should focus on corridors with higher day-to-day bicycle use or transit ridership, and question whether a protected bike lane on Forest Lawn Drive is the best use of resources given their perception that the road functions primarily as an auto-oriented connector and funeral access route.[2][3][13]