A story that should make your blood boil. LA has lost 57,000 jobs in film and TV during the four years Karen Bass has been mayor. But it still took Mayor Bass almost THREE YEARS to appoint a film czar. Now shows set in Los Angeles are being shot in ... New Jersey.
In the debate last night, the mayor talked about how much she wants to do as mayor, after four years of being the mayor. Homelessness is up, the population of the city shrinking, we're not paving roads because the city can't build a ramp for less than 50 grand, and we're WAY behind on the city's own plan to build new housing even as the mayor caves to NIMBYs to try to fight development all over LA.
So Bass spends the night pandering to a small group of mostly white and wealthy homeowners in Sherman Oaks. But those homeowners are ALSO angry about rising homelessness and declining services which are in fact downstream of their policy preferences! It's a farce.
The fundamental question for LA is: who will govern with the urgency and aggressiveness that reflects the actual scale of the emergency in this city? Bass hasn't. Nithya would.