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THE EASTSIDER - Everyone is now paying attention to Mayor Bass over how she is handling the fires sweeping all over Los Angeles. On the 10th, as it was all happening, it was all over the internet that the Mayor’s answer was “I’m not going down for this one”.
That may have been a bit premature. Remember that when the fires took off, she was off in a junket to Africa. As the LA Times reported,
“Bass herself was far from the city. As flames tore through Pacific Palisades, she was on a diplomatic mission in Africa, communicating with key city agencies from left town on Saturday as part of a presidential delegation to Ghana, just afair. Bass as the National Weather Service began ratcheting up its warnings about the coming windstorm. On Tuesday, she attended the inauguration of Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama, leaving City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson as L.A.’s acting mayor when the Palisades fire broke out.”
Thank you, Mayor Bass, a sometimes Angeleno. A look at Wikipedia shows that for the last 20 years or so, she has been – a lifer politician:
“Bass previously served in the US House of Representatives from 2011 to 2022 and in the California State Assembly from 2004 to 2020, serving as speaker during her final Assembly term.”
Clearly another lifer democrat flying to Sacramento and Washington DC.
The only reason that she’s currently the Mayor has to do with Eric Garcetti, who was termed out, and the Dems were terrified that Rick Caruso, rebranded as a democrat, just might win against a candidate who had been living more in Sacramento and Washington than LA. As we know now, with Garcetti backing her and the whole democratic establishment running scared, and pulling out all the stops, she won.
I call that a career politician. And then Eric Garcetti termed out, Bass found a path out of flying back and forth to DC, and Garcetti endorsed her against Rick Caruso. With all the Dems behind her, she became Mayor in 2022.
The problem is that she doesn’t really know LA City in any meaningful way. What I think saved her until now was the fact that Eric Garcetti gifted her his entire staff on the way out, and they of course do know the City.
As I wrote in CityWatch in November 2022,
“As this article was being prepped for posting, it was announced that Karen Bass won the Mayor’s race. However, it still clear that Angelenos are seriously divided.”
The LAFD
It is no surprise that the Fire Department has been underfunded for quite a while. Courtesy of a friend, I have a copy of the LAFD’s proposed budget sent to the Board of Fire Commissioners dated November 18, along with a copy of the Department’s Proposed Budget for 2025-2026.
Included in this is an important point -
In many ways, the current staffing, deployment model, and size of the LAFD have not changed since the 1960s. The population of the City of Los Angeles has increased from 2,479,015 in 1960 to 3,698,747 in 2020 while the LAFD shrank from 112 stations to 106 stations. During that span of time the staffing did not grow proportionally. At the same time, the call volume increased from 100,985 incidents in 1969 to 504,604 incidents in 2023.”
Remember, Bass reduced the Fire Department budget after becoming Mayor.
And Then Came the Fires
Here’s the problem. Between 6 years in the California Assembly, followed by 11 years in the House of Representatives, she’s just plain not that knowledgeable about the City of Los Angeles. Like its council districts, the Neighborhood Council System, its local politics.
Based on that reality, In many ways I can’t fault Mayor Bass’s reaction when LA erupted in flames.
And remember that there’s a significant budget deficit already. I can, however, for her saying she isn’t going down for this one at the same time that the Fire Department and the rest of the City family are doing everything that they can do to Angelenos get through what feels like the apocalypse.
A real Mayor would be all over the problems 24/7. Bass is a reluctant voice in the evening news meetings with the press. If she wants to be Mayor, she needs to open up the budget for whatever the LAFD needs to keep us safe. Is she up to it?
(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.)
