One of them led the effort. The rest knew — or should have. None of them told you.
While West Hollywood businesses were drowning in unlicensed vendors, exploding propane carts, armed “enforcers”, and illegal sidewalk bars serving minors, your city council was not fighting for you.
One of them — Councilmember John Erickson — was actively lobbying against you.
Erickson serves as Chief of Staff at the Alliance for a Better Community, a high-powered Latino advocacy organization with a $2.3 million budget and a dedicated lobbying arm in Sacramento. His job, in his employer’s own words, leading “ongoing policy development and strategic lobbying efforts.”
In 2025, Erickson’s employer supported a brand-new piece of state legislation, the “Street Vendor Business Protection Act,” (Senate Bill 635) that strips cities like West Hollywood of tools to regulate the unlicensed vendors destroying your block.
This new law took effect January 1, 2026. It didn’t exist before this legislative session.
It appears Erickson spent 2025 leading the lobbying behind this new law — a law designed to make your problem permanent. He sat on the dais twice a month and never said a word about it.
The rest of the council? They either knew and stayed silent, or didn’t bother to ask. Either way, they failed you.
Erickson: The One Who Pulled the Trigger
Let’s be precise about what Erickson’s day job is.
His employer isn’t a small community group. It’s a $2.3 million operation led by CEO Vanessa Aramayo, who has spent 25 years leading policy campaigns at the state and federal level. It leads statewide coalitions on education, immigration, and health policy. This is a professional lobbying machine. And according to the organization’s own website, John Erickson runs the day-to-day strategic lobbying operations.
SB 635 is not just some old law. It’s a new measure that prohibits cities from collecting immigration status or criminal history from vendor permit applicants, bars cities from sharing vendor information with federal authorities, and restricts when cities can deny or revoke vending permits.
Erickson’s employer formally supported this new legislation. Erickson leads his employer’s lobbying. And throughout the entire period — ten months on the council dais, from the time he took the job in December 2024 through the crisis of October 2025 — he never once disclosed to the business community, to the public, or apparently to his fellow councilmembers that his employer was behind the new law.
Ten months. Dozens of public comments from desperate business owners. Reports of exploding carts, illegal alcohol sales to minors, “enforcers” threatening your staff, and grease destroying the AIDS memorial trees. He heard all of it. He never raised the vendor issue himself — not once. He never proposed a solution. He never acknowledged his employer’s role. He collected his council stipend, collected his lobbying salary, and kept his mouth shut.
Until when on October 20, 2025, Councilmember Danny Hang introduced a modest motion asking staff to simply study enforcement options. Erickson couldn’t let it pass — it would undermine the very law his organization had just helped push through Sacramento. So he killed it, and in doing so, revealed a sliver of what he’d been hiding. His exact words, from the public record:
“However, working for a Latino immigration organization, I cannot in good conscience vote for this in its current form.“
That admission shocked the room. But even then, the full picture didn’t come out. People were angry that he cited his employer.
What no one reported — until now — is that his employer wasn’t just philosophically opposed to enforcement. His employer was running the lobbying operation behind the specific new state law designed to prevent your city from doing exactly what Hang was proposing.
Erickson didn’t just have a conflict of interest. It appears he was the senior strategist behind the very policy that was strangling your businesses. And he never told you.
The Pattern He Hoped You Wouldn’t Notice
The October 20th confession gets the attention because it was dramatic — Erickson publicly announcing his employer controlled his vote. But the real story is the ten months of silence that preceded it.
From December 2024, when Erickson took the lobbying job, through October 2025, when Hang finally forced the issue, the vendor crisis in West Hollywood escalated from a nuisance to a full-blown emergency. During that entire period:
Erickson never once raised the vendor issue at a council meeting. Not as a discussion item. Not as a question to staff. Not as a comment during public testimony. While business owners were testifying about carts exploding into flames and armed enforcers threatening their employees, Erickson sat in silence.
He never disclosed to the business community that his employer was lobbying Sacramento on new street vendor legislation. He never filed a conflict of interest statement. He never recused himself from any discussion touching vendor enforcement.
When Vice Mayor Heilman requested a report on public safety issues with street vendors at the May 5, 2025 meeting, Erickson said nothing. The report appears to have gone nowhere.
When the city’s Director of Community Safety, Danny Rivas, told the council that enforcement wasn’t working because vendors ignored the penalties, Erickson offered no solutions — even though his day job gave him direct insight into the policy landscape.
This wasn’t a single bad vote. It was a ten-month pattern of deliberate silence from a councilmember who knew more about what was happening to your enforcement tools than anyone else on that dais — because his day job was making it happen. He watched the crisis build, knew his employer was working to ensure your city couldn’t respond, and said nothing until Danny Hang cornered him.
Hang and Byers: The Ones Who Covered for Him
Danny Hang and Chelsea Byers are Erickson’s political allies. They ran together. They were backed by the same union — UNITE HERE Local 11 spent six figures on their combined campaigns. They were sworn in together on December 16, 2024. They are a political unit.
So when Erickson took the lobbying job that same month, it defies belief that Hang and Byers didn’t know what the organization does. It defies belief that they didn’t know the organization was backing new legislation to restrict cities’ authority over unlicensed street vendors. These are sophisticated political operators backed by sophisticated political organizations. They talk. They coordinate. They strategize.
Yet when Hang introduced his enforcement motion on October 20th, and Erickson announced from the dais that his employer prevented him from supporting it, Hang acted surprised. He folded. He tabled his own bill. He had the votes to pass it — Heilman backed him immediately — but he chose his relationship with Erickson over the businesses that elected him.
And Byers? She piled on. She cited the county’s suspension of public health enforcement “in light of the immigration raids” as reason to do nothing — conflating a temporary county health inspection pause with a city’s right to study its own enforcement options. She gave Erickson the political cover he needed.
Was Hang’s motion real, or was it theater? Was it designed to give the business community a headline — “West Hollywood Wants to Crack Down on Unlicensed Street Vendors” — while ensuring the outcome was pre-determined? That’s a question for the business owners who showed up that night believing someone was finally fighting for them.
The motion was tabled 4-0. It was promised for November 17th. It never came back.
Heilman: The One With No Excuse
Lauren Meister left the October 20th meeting early for a medical emergency. She wasn’t in the room when Erickson made his confession. That’s not an excuse for every councilmember who was — but it’s context that matters.
John Heilman has no such excuse. He was right there.
Heilman has been on the West Hollywood City Council, on and off, for decades. He has more institutional knowledge than the other four combined. He knows what a conflict of interest looks like. He knows what the Fair Political Practices Commission requires. He knows that when a councilmember says — out loud, on the record — that his employer prevents him from voting on a public safety matter, that is a textbook disqualifying conflict under the Political Reform Act.
Heilman said he “fully supported” Hang’s motion. Then he watched Erickson kill it and did nothing. He didn’t demand a recusal. He didn’t raise the conflict. He didn’t call for the item to proceed without Erickson’s participation. He didn’t bring it back at the next meeting. He didn’t bring it back at any meeting.
This is the longest-serving councilmember in West Hollywood history. He heard a colleague announce — into the public record — that his outside employer controls his votes on a public safety matter. And he sat there.
If Heilman had done his duty — if he had simply said “Councilmember Erickson has just stated a conflict and should recuse, and this motion should proceed” — the item would have passed and city staff would have come back with enforcement options before the new SB 635 took effect on January 1st.
He didn’t. And now it’s too late. The new law is in effect. The window Hang’s motion could have opened is closed — because Erickson slammed it shut while the council’s most experienced member watched in silence.
What It Cost You
Here’s what happened while your entire city council was asleep at the switch — or worse.
BlockParty WeHo closed after 16 years on Santa Monica Boulevard. The sign: “Homelessness, hot dog vendors and multiple assaults on staff have disrupted both daytime and nighttime operations.”
Hot dog carts exploded into flames on crowded sidewalks. Three patrons were burned.
An organized street vendor operation deployed “enforcers” who told nightclub employees: “We have enforcers, leave us alone.”
Baddie Blast, an illegal pop-up bar with a menu advertising drinks called “Bloody Cunt” and “Monster Dick,” operated directly across from the Sheriff’s station — week after week, with zero enforcement.
Cooking grease was poured onto AIDS memorial trees and across public sidewalks, requiring city cleanup crews to deploy bio-remediation powder.
Business owners sent frantic emails to code compliance documenting nine unlicensed vendors between Micky’s and Flaming Saddles. The emails went unanswered.
All of this happened while one of your councilmembers was lobbying for the new law that made enforcement harder — and the other four did nothing to stop him.
Request an opinion from the City Attorney. Councilmembers may request that the City Attorney seek an opinion based on the facts from the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) which investigates conflicts of interest under the Political Reform Act. Erickson’s own words are the starting point. His employer’s lobbying for the new SB 635 is evidence the conflict ran far deeper than a philosophical disagreement. Any California resident can file.
Show up at the next council meeting. Public comment is your time. Ask Erickson — on the record — whether he personally lobbied for SB 635. Ask him why he never disclosed it. Ask him why he sat in silence for ten months while your businesses were dying and his employer was lobbying against you in Sacramento. Ask Hang and Byers whether they knew. Ask Heilman and Meister why they never demanded a recusal. Read Erickson’s own words back to him from the October 20th transcript.
The Bottom Line
Your city council failed you. One of them appears to have been actively working against you — leading a professional lobbying operation in Sacramento to pass a brand-new state law stripping your city of enforcement tools, while sitting on the dais pretending to represent your interests, while never once raising the issue or disclosing the conflict across ten months of escalating crisis. Two of them appear to have known about the conflict and provided cover. Two more heard the confession and did nothing.
Four councilmembers. Zero accountability. And now BlockParty is closed, your sidewalks are covered in grease, and the brand-new state law your councilmember’s organization helped pass means it’s harder than ever to fix it.
They did this to you. And none of them told you.
