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Los Angeles mayoral candidate Austin Beutner took aim at the rising cost of basic city services Thursday, saying Mayor Karen Bass and her administration have contributed to an affordability crisis that is “crushing families.”

Beutner, appearing outside Van Nuys City Hall, pointed to the City Council’s recent decision to increase trash collection fees to nearly $56 per month, up from $36.32 for single-family homes and duplexes and $24.33 for three- and four-unit apartment buildings.

Since Bass took office in December 2022, the city also hiked sewer service fees, which are on track to double over a four-year period. In addition, Beutner said, the Department of Water and Power pushed up the cost of water and electrical service by 52% and 19%, respectively.

“I’m talking about the cost-of-living crisis that’s crushing families,” he said. “L.A. is a very, very special place, but every day it’s becoming less affordable.”

Beutner, speaking before a group of reporters, would not commit to rolling back any of those increases. Instead, he urged Bass to call a special session of the City Council to explain the decisions that led to the increases.

“Tell me the cost of those choices, and then we can have an informed conversation as to whether it was a good choice or a bad choice — or whether I’d make the same choice,” said Beutner, who has worked as superintendent of L.A. schools and as a high-level deputy mayor.

When the City Council took up the sewer rates last year, sanitation officials argued the increase was needed to cover rising construction and labor costs — and ramp up the repair and replacement of aging pipes.

This year sanitation officials also pushed for a package of trash fee hikes, saying the rates had not increased in 17 years. They argued that the city’s budget has been subsidizing the cost of residential trash pickup for customers in single-family homes and small apartments.

Doug Herman, spokesperson for the Bass reelection campaign, defended the trash and sewer service fee increases, saying both were long overdue. Bass took action, he said, because previous city leaders failed to make the hard choices necessary to balance the budget and fix deteriorating sewer pipes.

“Nobody was willing to face the music and request the rate hikes to do that necessary work,” he said.

DWP spokesperson Michelle Figueroa acknowledged that electrical rates have gone up. However, she said in an email, the DWP’s residential rates remain lower than other utilities, including Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric.

By focusing on cost-of-living concerns, Beutner’s campaign has been emphasizing an issue that is at the forefront of next week’s election for New York City mayor. In that contest, State Assembly member Zohran Mamdani has promised to lower consumer costs, in part by freezing the rent for rent-stabilized apartments and making rides on city buses free.

Since announcing his candidacy this month, Beutner has offered few cost-of-living policy prescriptions, other than to say he supports “in concept” Senate Bill 79, a newly signed state law that allows taller, denser buildings to be approved near public transit stops. Instead, he mostly has derided a wide array of increases, including a recent hike in parking rates.

Beutner contends that the city’s various increases will add more than $1,200 per year to the average household customer’s bill from the Department of Water and Power, which includes the cost not just of utilities but also trash removal and sewer service.

Herman pushed back on that estimate, saying it relies on “flawed assumptions,” incorporating fees that apply to only a portion of ratepayers.

In a new campaign video, Beutner warned that city leaders also are laying plans to more than double what property owners pay in street lighting assessments. He also accused the DWP of relying increasingly on “adjustment factors” to increase the amount customers pay for water and electricity, instead of hiking the base rate.

The DWP needs to be more transparent about those increases and why they were needed, Beutner said.

US president attacks John Brennan and James Comey amid reports two men are under investigation over Trump-Russia probe.

United States President Donald Trump has suggested that former CIA director John Brennan and ex-FBI chief James Comey may have to “pay a price” amid reports that the two men are under criminal investigation.

Asked about reports on Wednesday that Brennan and Comey are being investigated by the FBI, Trump said he did not know anything other than what he had read in the news, but he viewed both as “very dishonest people”.

“I think they’re crooked as hell and maybe they have to pay a price for that,” Trump told reporters during a meeting with African leaders at the White House.

“I believe they are truly bad people and dishonest people, so whatever happens happens.”

Fox News, which first reported on the probe, said the two men were being scrutinised over unspecified “potential wrongdoing” related to investigations into the 2016 Trump campaign’s connections to Russia.

Multiple other outlets, including CNN and The New York Times, confirmed the investigation.

The FBI declined to comment. The US Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.

In an interview with MSNBC, Brennan said he had not been contacted by the authorities, but any investigation was “clearly” politically biased.

“I think this is, unfortunately, a very sad and tragic example of the continued politicisation of the intelligence community, of the national security process,” Brennan said.

“And quite frankly, I’m really shocked that individuals are willing to sacrifice their reputations, their credibility, their decency.”

Comey did not respond to a request for comment sent through his website.

Trump has repeatedly hit out at Brennan and Comey over their role in what he has dubbed the “Russia hoax”.

A 2019 report released by special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Trump, but did not find that his campaign “conspired or coordinated” with Moscow.