If a UFO landed in Los Angeles and sprayed the city with a mysterious substance that caused restaurants to close, I’m not sure you’d be able to tell the difference. The idiotic policies of the city and state government are gradually having the same effect. 

This week, the iconic Langer’s Deli, established in 1947 and located across the street from MacArthur Park, showed its trash bill from the city-selected exclusive franchisee, Athens Services. For October 2026, the restaurant owes an eye-popping $4,230.64. The monthly bill jumped $1,777.62 from the previous month’s bill of $2,453.02 for the same service, same location. 

Maybe it’s a math error. Probably not.

Probably it’s due to the same loony state laws that are raising residential trash pick-up fees, with the added idiocy of the city’s exclusive trash franchises, a system that replaced freedom of choice, in which trash haulers competed to serve multi-family and commercial buildings.

Now if you operate a licensed and taxed business within the city limits, you’ll pay whatever is charged by the monopoly trash pick-up service provider.

To be clear, you can operate a business however you wish if it is not licensed and taxed. Want to run a restaurant on the sidewalk? That’s allowed by our useless city government. Mayoral candidate Nithya Raman even told our editorial board it made for a “vibrant” neighborhood.

Licensed and taxed restaurants are subject to all kinds of health, environmental, safety and labor regulations, plus inspections. Sidewalk restaurants are not. They can pop up right in front of a brick-and-mortar restaurant, fire up a grill that the South Coast Air Quality Management District has an entire floor of bureaucrats to regulate out of existence, and start selling food at prices that undercut their less portable neighbors.

Meanwhile, Langer’s Deli and other restaurants are forced to comply with Senate Bill 1383, idiotic legislation signed by former Governor Jerry Brown in 2016. It mandated a 75% reduction in the disposal of organic waste from the 2014 level by 2025. What makes it idiotic is the reason for the law. Food scraps in landfills, the law asserts, cause climate change.

Whereas throwing your money in the trash somehow stops climate change.

The entire state of California accounts for only about 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, so the costly recycling of carrot peels and coffee grounds to keep them out of landfills is not actually accomplishing anything, other than further raising the already high cost of living in California.

Nonetheless, 2025 arrived and the law kicked in. According to a study of trash fees commissioned by the City of Los Angeles, the mandate to reduce organic waste in landfills increased the cost of processing garbage in L.A. from $15.7 million in the 2021-22 budget to $52 million in the then-projected 2025-26 budget. So the trash fees charged to residents in single-family homes jumped from $36.32 per month to $55.94, with annual increases set to raise it to more than $65 per month by 2029.

That’s on top of the taxes residents pay, which formerly covered trash pick-up service before it became more complicated than the Manhattan Project.

In 2011, California enacted Assembly Bill 341, which set a goal of diverting 75 percent of waste from landfills by 2020. That led the City of Los Angeles to force businesses and multi-family buildings into a monopoly trash-hauling program, RecycLA, in 2017. Costs went up, and new restrictions limited the number and size of trash containers.

It’s probably just a coincidence that illegal dumping became a serious problem in California. State lawmakers dealt with it by banning rat poison. Now there’s a typhus outbreak in L.A. County spread by rats with fleas, but the L.A. County Public Health Department says it’s survivable with treatment. Everything’s fine.

What’s even more disgusting is that Los Angeles treats law-abiding businesses with open contempt. “Our staff spends time every day separating food waste because the law requires it,” said Langer’s Deli owner Norm Langer, “Then we watch it go into the same truck as everything else. We’re paying for separation that isn’t happening, and the city is counting it as landfill diversion.”

Useless state laws on garbage should be thrown in the trash. It’s time.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley