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GELFAND’S WORLD - Will Karen Bass take the blame for the Palisades Fire, and will Rick Caruso run for mayor? There is little time remaining for Caruso to decide. We should know within hours. Austin Beutner had originally announced, but following the death of his daughter, he is withdrawing.
There are one or two fringe candidates, but in a giant media market like Los Angeles, it’s either Bass vs. Caruso or Bass by herself.
Let’s remind ourselves of a couple of things. It’s not Karen Bass’s fault that the fire happened, and it’s not surprising that some editing was done on the LAFD After Action report. Everything needs editing – the question is whether the editing was done to make things clearer or was done to make things opaque. The latter is what is traditionally referred to as a coverup.
She will be blamed if there are substantial differences in the report – going beyond the cosmetic – between the early drafts and the final draft. The problem for Bass is that the news media have gone on record claiming that she herself intervened in the process. A further problem for her is that they have done so right before the candidate filing deadline.
This is a big problem for her in a year that has not been great for this city.
Bass will take the blame for the empty reservoir that sits above the Pacific Palisades, whether or not she bears any direct responsibility. I will offer an opinion here: It is the overall approach taken by successive City Councils to increase city salaries in a 5% upward exponential growth curve that has beggared the city, and it is this chronic financial difficulty which makes for such problems. The reservoir repair is just one of thousands of such compromises. Ever notice how we suffer financial emergencies roughly every four years or so? It’s no surprise. CityWatch writers have warned the public repeatedly, but City Council members seem to owe their allegiance to a different entity than the public.
The problem for Karen Bass is that she has not been a leader in reversing this course. As mayor, she had a chance to say No on the most recent salary giveaway, but she did not. Rick Caruso can enter the race with a declaration that he will change course on city spending, and the way that he will do so is to submit budgets that work. He can be a fiscally conservative Democrat or a socially liberal Independent, and potentially go on to victory.
How much weight should the voters place on the Palisades Fire? It’s a complicated question, but notice that we’re not hearing too much about who is to blame for the Altadena Fire. We have an ignition source, but the public are not going after the fire departments or the elected leadership in the same way.
Back to Karen Bass: The real question the public ought to be considering is whether Bass has done a decent job as mayor, and yes, the response to the Palisades Fire is a legitimate part of that question. We should consider whether or not Bass was competent or incompetent in (a) preparing the city for any and all disasters (b) doing whatever jobs the mayor is supposed to do during the fire and (c) helping to pick up the pieces when the fire had finally been put out.
What could be useful is a recognition that this fire was a unique thing in our modern history, with winds that had not been experienced before, and what would be considered a 500 year event if we were to try to describe it. My guess is that the Palisades portion of the fires could have been caused by just about any spark.
There remain two potential questions at this point:
1) Is it true that Rick Caruso is going to decide to run? And if so, should we support him? The comedian’s counterargument is that he is a billionaire real estate developer, and we all know how well this has worked at the White House. (On the other hand, Caruso actually has brains, so that joke has limitations, but I can imagine a television commercial that shows side-by-side pictures of Caruso and Donald Trump, asking that very same question.)
2) The other question is whether Bass or the City of Los Angeles as a whole has done a credible job in the aftermath of the fire. I would like to suggest that the answer is a resounding No. It has to do with the failure by the mayor and the City Council to consider what changes would be useful to make at this point. This is the time when there is a chance to do important and useful city planning in the Pacific Palisades while there are still so many empty lots, and before all the bad decisions of the past get locked in by new construction. We had time after the fire and even now we have some time to consider, but there is nothing being done in that regard. We ought to take a look at City Council representative Traci Park, who represents the area, and ask what she has done in terms of such leadership. Maybe she has an answer, but I’m not seeing much. At a minimum, there ought to be a review of evacuation routes and how they will be managed during any subsequent natural disaster.
I suspect that Karen Bass got a little preoccupied with two things when she became mayor. The first was the homeless issue. She will be attacked for the spending, which is by any calculation excessive for what it accomplished. The other is the Olympics. She would have been better focused on getting the city’s financial house in order.
There is one thing that Bass ought to be graded on, but this will likely be ignored by the voters. That issue is the Charter review process which is currently running. I’m not seeing any leadership from Bass, just as I’m not hearing any substantial leadership from members of the City Council. (My own City Council representative is the one exception I am aware of.) There are substantial structural problems with the Charter, including our propensity to run deficits. This is where a fiscally responsible mayor would come in handy.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
