LA Mayor Bass Delivers State of City Address: ‘We Must Reform How Our City Works’

The mayor discussed the city’s budget deficit, homelessness crisis, wildfire recovery, and public safety.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass speaks at LAPD Headquarters in Los Angeles on May 28, 2024. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Mayor Karen Bass delivered her annual State of the City address on Monday, highlighting the multiple crises facing Los Angeles and stating that the city’s government needs an overhaul.

“First of all, we must reform how our city works, and we must rebuild a city that works better for everyone that calls L.A. home,” Bass said in her speech at City Hall that commenced at 12 pm.

Bass discussed her priorities for Los Angeles, such as public safety and efforts to overhaul the city’s homelessness services. This all comes as the city faces a $1 billion budget deficit and recovers from January’s wildfires.

In her speech, Bass outlined the status of Los Angeles’ recovery from the wildfires it faced in January.

“The aftermath of this disaster weighs on our city, which already had huge challenges before us,” she said.

The mayor claimed that the recovery from the Pacific Palisades fire is on track to be the fastest in California’s history.

Los Angeles has issued permits to rebuild twice as fast as after the Camp and Woosley fires in 2018.

“We restored water nearly a year-and-a-half faster than after the Camp fire, and we restored power in just two months.”

Bass also highlighted an initiative to start using AI technology to support the city’s permitting process.

“Now, if successful, we will take both of these new initiatives citywide to accelerate building everywhere,” Bass said.

She also called on the Los Angeles City Council to pass an ordinance to waive all plan checks and permit fees. Bass said that the Army Corps of Engineers has cleared 500 properties in the Palisades area.

Bass also spoke of the city’s fiscal shortfall, on which City Controller Kenneth Mejia has been sounding the alarm.

The mayor said she is committed to improving  the deficit outlook, while maintaining the Inside Safe homeless program she championed as a way of removing encampments.

She also discussed Los Angeles County’s decision on April 1 to defund the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA).

She acknowledges that the city’s homelessness services system is broken, which is especially clear after the county withdrew from LAHSA.

“It must be transformed,” said Bass, who declared a state of emergency over homelessness her first day in office in 2022. “However, I’m concerned that there is the potential danger of going backwards into silos, and frankly, just creating new bureaucracy is not in and of itself transformational.”

“Now is confronting homelessness expensive? Of course it is, and we are working to lower costs and make sure that valuable tax dollars are being well spent, but leaving people on the street comes at an enormous human cost.”

Bass highlighted the reduction in violent crime and homicides in 2023 and noted a record number of police academy applications.

Bass noted that the Los Angeles Police Department has hit a four-year high in applications to join the LAPD.

“But, the frustrating part is that the city’s broken system now stands in the way of actually hiring those applicants,” she said.

To fix this problem, she hired a new General Manager of the City of Los Angeles Department of Personnel, Malaika Billups, to overhaul what the mayor referred to as bureaucratic madness.

Bass did highlight that violent and property crime are both down in the city, crediting a comprehensive approach to safety. She said that in 2024, homicides fell by 14 percent and that gang-related homicides in those communities most impacted fell by 45 percent. She also said that the number of shooting victims fell by 19 percent.

The mayor’s approval rating rapidly declined following the wildfires. She faced criticism over her handling of the disaster, particularly for being in Africa when the fires erupted, and over the deletion of her communications related to her wildfire response, when the Los Angeles Administrative Code requires most records to be kept for no less than two years.