Karen Bass talks to LAist about why she should be reelected mayor of LA (Transcript)

Here's a transcript of the conversation that took place Monday, April 27, on the campus of Loyola Marymount University in front of a live audience of students and other guests.

Larry Mantle: Mayor Karen Bass is running for reelection to a second term. Mayor Bass, welcome to AirTalk and to LMU. Good to have you with us.

Karen Bass: Thank you, and it's always good to be back at LMU.

Mantle: I know you've spoken to professor Guerra's classes here many times.

Bass: Many years in a row. That's right.

On lessons learned from the 2025 fires

Mantle: Let me start: in multiple polls your approval rating has shown half or more likely voters with an unfavorable view of your leadership.

The obvious turning point: your handling of the Palisades fire when you were out of the country with a delegation in Ghana. You admitted over a year ago that taking the trip was a mistake. But beyond that decision, what else, if anything, would you have done differently in your post-fire response?

Bass: Oh my goodness. I would have to say, what would I have done the same? I think, first of all, in terms of this being the worst natural disaster that we have had in Los Angeles, and I think it's about us as a city adapting to climate change and unexpected events, and I think that our city needed to be better prepared for the unexpected events.

For example, in the Palisades during that fire, there were hurricane strength winds. And we've always had Santa Ana winds that have been strong, but not a hundred mile an hour winds, and then bringing people together afterwards. We were fortunate, frankly, that the administration did an unprecedented number of Army Corps of Engineers that were deployed to the Palisades.

So we were able to get the clearing of the debris in record time, months and months before it would've been. And then we took a lot of the lessons that we learned in addressing homelessness and expediting the permitting process, and applied that to the Palisades.

Mantle: We did have though, in California, fires in residential neighborhoods that were devastating up in Santa Rosa. The Coffey Park neighborhood was completely destroyed by a very similar type of fire, moving extremely fast in very high winds. So I understand we hadn't seen anything like this perhaps since the Bel Air Fire of the sixties.

But, this was not unprecedented. Let me rephrase my question. What do you feel you learned from going through this kind of a test of your leadership, that you feel you could do better if, let's hope it doesn't happen, but if something similar were to happen and you were reelected?

Bass: Sure. I will tell you, the most obvious thing is being here, making sure that our city is absolutely prepared. And that was one of the things that didn't happen.

In terms of what happens when there is a weather danger, a weather emergency, the departments come together and they say, this is what the forecast is showing. It looks as though we are going to have a problem, whether it's the rain, mudslides, whatever, and all of the departments and everybody is lined up to pre-deployment to get everything ready in advance.

And that didn't happen in the city. It also didn't happen in the county. And so what has happened since then, I think is indicative of what I would've done differently, which is we go overboard now in terms of planning pre-deployment, making sure that there are fire engines all around vulnerable areas.

Even if we don't necessarily expect that it's going to be devastating, but being very aggressive with prevention and that did not take place.

Mantle: There's so many areas of the city of Los Angeles though vulnerable to this kind of a fire from Sunland-Tajunga out in the northeast, all the way through coastal communities.

Bass: So let me give you —

Mantle: Are the resources there to predeploy in all these areas?

Bass: There's predeployment, but there's also the prevention that needed to take place ahead of time, which is brush clearance, which is making sure that everything around will not ignite in the way that it did you know, in the Palisades.

And so the brush clearance has become a big issue. And we certainly have done that. And one of the problems in the Palisades was also the city and the state and the lines where the state is responsible and the city is responsible. Honestly, I don't have a lot of patience with that. So to me, I'm gonna clear the brush, whether it's the state or whether it's the city —

Mantle: Has that jurisdictional issue of who controls which piece of land in the mountain brush area, has that been resolved?

Bass: It hasn't been resolved in the sense that it's clear the state does this and the city does that. What I'm describing is that I would clear the brush, and we'll clear the brush regardless of whose jurisdiction it is. I'm not gonna clear it part way and say I'm gonna leave it to the state.

So looking at prevention, and then now that we're rebuilding in the Palisades, looking at home hardening and rebuilding differently. I will tell you though, that if you compare what happened in the Palisades to fires in other areas in California, we are way, way ahead of where those fires are. So there's been so much misinformation, and what I feel bad about is that some of the misinformation is very deliberate and it's people preying on grief.

And so for example, “No permits have been issued” when we've issued over 2,000 permits for over a thousand properties. Homes are being rebuilt at record speed. We have over 400 homes that are actively under construction now. People will begin moving in this summer. And so things are moving forward. I was talking to developers today because I had a press conference, which we'll get into I'm sure in a few minutes, and they were talking about how great things are in terms of the permitting process.

The biggest problem in the Palisades now is the insurance industry and the banking industry. So you have hundreds of people that have been issued permits and plans have been approved, but they're still not ready to rebuild because they wanna make sure that they're gonna be insured and they're gonna make sure that they have the financing to rebuild. So we're going at record speed and we plan to continue to do that.

On her homelessness program, Inside Safe

Mantle: Mayor Bass, let's move on to talk about the Inside Safe — your signature program designed to move Angelinos from the streets to short term, then permanent housing. It's been costly with average hotel stays of nearly a year.

L.A. Times recent analysis found 40% of those who'd been served by the program were back on the street. What results do you see from your Inside Safe program that you think justify what I think is $104 million you put in for the next year budget, as you look at the cost benefit, what makes it worth it to you?

Bass: I'll tell you what makes it worth it to me is that this is the first time two years in a row, we have had a reduction in street homelessness. We have cleared over 120 encampments and, people might have short memories, but there are not the number of encampments that there has been on our streets. And if you look at the money spent, I wanna talk about the money saved in terms of fire department with fire calls, because one of the leading causes of fire in our city are homeless-related fires.

If you look at the medical calls that are tied to homelessness, those are down dramatically. If there's no encampment there, there's no call. If you look at police calls, if you look at quality of life, if you look at businesses that are now able to function because there's not an encampment in front. If you look at schools where parents can actually walk down the street and kids don't have to walk down the middle of the street because the sidewalks are blocked.

So to me, the cost benefit is very clear.

Mantle: Mayor Bass are you, when you look at the return though of 40%, are you able to track where people are going? Or are they lost once they leave?

Bass: What is interesting is, and we were having this discussion before, it's the type of analysis that needs to be done and looking at, so 40% of people left inside safe, we don't know where they are. That's one of the problems with the system.

So my job when I came in, I declared a state of emergency on day one because to me it is an emergency to have people dying on our streets in the second largest city in the country and I did not wanna spend a year studying what was wrong with the system.

It was clear it was dysfunctional. It's been dysfunctional for the last 35 years, and so I know the system needs to be completely overhauled. I will tell you that I came in, I disrupted the status quo and didn't realize that there's a lot of people that think it's okay to be on the street. That feel that the answer is one thing, which is to build housing.

Mantle: There are experts though, Professor Blasi at UCLA would be one who think that this just is not sustainable, that the cost of a program like this, the cost for the hotel rooms, not having places for people to go to be permanently housed, that this is essentially a house of cards.

What do you say to that critique?

Bass: What I say to it is easy.

First of all, along with Inside Safe, I also did an executive directive in my first couple of weeks to expedite the building of housing. We need more housing, there's no question about that. So I'm fast tracking 42,000 units of affordable housing and 6,000 of those units are under construction right now.

The problem in our city over the last 35 years has been the policy was: the only solution was to build, which in effect, they didn't mean to do this, but the de facto result of that was: you stay on the street until we build you something.

That is completely unacceptable. New York didn't do that. New York has 80,000 homeless people and 97% of them are in some type of housing or shelter. We chose to implement a very dogmatic way of going about addressing homelessness, and it's what led to an explosion of people being on our street.

If we had come up with a system of long-term interim housing where somebody could be for a year to a year-and-a-half because, make no mistake, somebody who has been on the street for years, their life has collapsed. You can't just plop them in an apartment. You have to deal with whatever led to their life collapsing. And I know that is a contributing factor to the number of people that have left, but why have 60% stayed?

Mantle: Now, Mayor Bass. Let's talk about different forms of housing. Would you support more congregate housing, which brings down the cost —

Bass: Yes.

Mantle: Even if people don't wanna live in them, saying you can’t be on the street, that’s the option you have.

Bass: Let me just tell you that one of the things that we learned. Again, my job was to act because the city and the county had not acted for years, which is why we had the explosion. And inside Safe is the first time we've had a reduction. So right away we looked at, we knew the hotels were too expensive.

So we have looked at cheaper ways of doing things, and we're actually doing that too on city land because one of the things that has happened with congregate housing is the market has produced new and improved models. So you have a modicum of privacy. What I don't support and what doesn't work is a big warehouse with a bunch of cots in it where people do not feel safe.

So there's newer and better models of congregate housing. There's tiny homes. I don't like the original, which we would call a tool shed. There are better tiny homes, and so we are in the process of doing that on city owned land,

Mantle: But even those smaller, tiny homes, isn't there a wait list for people to go into?

Bass: Yes, but again, I think that's the problem with how we went about it before is that what, what would happen in the city is an outreach worker would go to a tent and I would say do you want housing? You tell me yes, and I take your name and then I leave and I come back and look for you four or five months later and hope your tent is there.

Then we wind up having essentially vacancies while we're looking for somebody. I think that's crazy what we have done in Inside Safe, which has made a big difference. We don't cherry pick like that. We take everybody, we go to an encampment and we take everybody. We have found that it is a rare situation where somebody refuses to go in.

Very rare.

Creating an infrastructure plan

Mantle: We have a student question from Conor Boland.

Conor Boland: Mayor Bass, you just released your budget. Many people are frustrated about infrastructure, including the streets and potholes. More specifically, how long it's taken Metro and LAX to build their projects.

We know that DWP has again closed the reservoir for repair in the Palisades too. Now my question for you is: what is the plan for the next four years taking from your current budget to plan for the building of infrastructure and prioritizing these services?

Bass: Absolutely. Thank you. I think that's a great question and believe it or not, one of the things that I found coming home and working as mayor is that there's so much of our city that is really out of date, meaning that the city is functioning still on paper. We did not have, in the nation's second largest city, a comprehensive infrastructure plan. Surprise, things like what you described happened.

Now Metro and the LAX, that's a whole different subject. So I have, for the last couple of years, worked on a comprehensive infrastructure plan, which we are ready to release and should be releasing in the next few days, that lays out a method, a timeline, a strategy for how to deal with our city's infrastructure, and that includes everything.

But let me give you one example because one thing you didn't mention was streetlights. And streetlights has been something that has really been a problem in all of our neighborhoods. So what the city did is we would replace copper lights.

Well, OK, we're going through this national crisis of copper theft.

So why do you replace copper lights when you can deal with your environmental goals, and there's nothing to steal if it's solar? And people, what they would say to me is, “It's cheaper to replace copper.”

It isn't cheaper because two weeks later you're gonna have to replace it again. So I launched a program just a few weeks ago to install 60,000 solar lights around the city, and that is gonna deal with the entire backlog of streets being out.

The other thing that I did in early on was call on LAPD to do a copper wire task force, but that's whack-a-mole going after the people that steal copper. I wanna go after the people that buy copper.

Mantle: How is it that the city of Los Angeles doesn't have a more robust infrastructure fund that’s set up. Last week we were talking with Councilmember Raman, who's running for mayor and said we don't have a robust infrastructure plan. You said you're gonna announce one, but how does this happen? All the needs in an aging city like Los Angeles, that there hasn't been money set aside for that?

Bass: I think that's a very good question. The bottom line is there hasn't been, the bottom line is there hasn't even been a plan. You're talking about the money. There hasn't been a plan. I joke sometimes and say that the city of Los Angeles, in many ways functions like a small town.

So I come in to these areas in the city that have been dysfunctional for decades. And I am addressing them. So coming forward with a comprehensive infrastructure plan will be something that hasn't happened in our city in, I don't even know how long. Decades.

Mantle: Why is it the city, the size of Los Angeles with all the employees it has, that when you compare the response in a variety of things from fixing potholes, street repairs, tree trimming, police response, that it takes much longer to provide those services than neighboring cities. Because you think with L.A. there could be some economies of scale because you've got a much larger workforce. People out sick, you can reassign. Why is L.A. struggling with this?

Bass: I think that it's the way the city has been organized over all of these years.

But it's what I inherited and it's what I've been tackling from day one and plan to continue to do that because I find it to be woefully unacceptable.

Mantle: But you must have a diagnosis for how we got to this place. Is it something, within the culture of the city, what is it that led us to accept this?

Bass: If you want me to describe the culture of the city, I would describe it as slow and no. I think it is, “this is the way we've always done things.” But, and I don't know what Fernando might think of this, but I do think that part of it is term limits because, and again, politically it's, you can't argue against term limits.

But I do think that term limits has been an issue because, the mayor's here for a minute. New mayor comes in, throws out everything, next mayor comes in. The same thing with the council, and I think that if you look back in history, Fernando, I wonder when the last time the city's infrastructure was in decent shape.

For example, the downtown mall. When I came back to the city, I found so much in disrepair, and I think during Bradley's time and during the council, then when people were serving for very long periods of time, they were more accountable because voters would hold 'em accountable. If you're here for a minute and gone the next, and running for something in your third term as a council member, the accountability is is fleeting.

Mantle: I just want to identify for our AirTalk listeners that Fernando is Professor Fernando Guerra of Loyola Marymount University. We're at LMU in the Ahmanson Auditorium with a group of students from Loyola Marymount.

Concerns over the cost of the LA28 Olympics

Mantle: Mayor Bass, let's talk about the Olympics. There are concerns that with the 2028 L.A. Games, if they don't reach revenue targets, the city could be on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars. What is your plan if you're reelected to protect Los Angeles financially?

Bass: Exactly. One of the things that I did when I came in was hired Paul Krekorian, who was terming out of council. He was involved in the bid, e was chair of the budget committee for 10 years and he was the president of the city council.

And so I thought he would be best equipped to come in to make sure that the city was prepared for the games, meaning the areas around the venues, et cetera. And then working with LA28, but doing it to protect the city's finances, working closely with LA28.

Now what I hear Is that ticket sales and fundraising is going very well, ahead of target, and so if it continues on like this, we should be fine.

But I am very concerned because I did inherit that from the bid, which was different than 1984 because in 1984 it was explicit. There was a ballot initiative that said that the city could not incur any of the expenses.

Mantle: But if I'm not mistaken, there still hasn't been the delivery of the contract terms for the city to either accept or deny from LA28. So it's still uncertain the degree of exposure.

Bass: Although what is happening, I know the contract that you're talking about is a contract with LA28 and the city for all of the expenses that we would incur in terms of preparing our venues. So it has been basically approved. I don't think it's been voted on by the council, but it's been approved by my office. Approved by the council, up to a vote, and now it's with the city attorney's office.

Mantle: So you feel comfortable that the city is not gonna face unexpected costs because LA 28 struggles financially?

Bass: I do. There's no evidence that there's a struggle financially.

Criticisms of LAPD

Mantle: Alright, your pick to lead the LAPD, Chief Jim McDonnell is facing multiple criticisms, including a failure to enforce the state law against federal and other officers wearing masks, which of course federal court has now weighed in on and stopped.

But before that, people said LAPD should enforce this, officer inflicted injuries to protestors, large liability payouts to people injured by officers, and there are even claims of subtle cooperation with ICE. Again, I don't know to which degree any of that is substantiated, but these are criticisms of the chief.

Do you consider any of them valid?

Bass: I am concerned, certainly. But I think that one of the things that's been so difficult for us as a city, to me, I will never forget June 6th of last year, we were just coming out of the fires just enough to exhale a bit, and then our city is invaded by the federal government, our own government.

And what has happened there with 700 Marines and 4,000 National Guard was just completely egregious. But I think it was difficult for people to understand the supremacy of the federal government and the fact that we can say whatever we wanna say or pass whatever laws we wanna pass, but federal law overrides that. And so what I'm encouraged by though is that there have been some court cases that we've won because, I think it's so clear that the administration has overstepped, that has resulted in a lot of deaths, not just the deaths that have been publicized. A lot of people have died in detention centers, a lot of people have died fleeing ice.

I'm very proud of the fact that our city has a very solid and robust immigrant rights community, immigrant rights organizations, many of whom I've worked with for decades, and they have been involved a hundred percent in my administration in terms of policies that we've done. So to try to use the maximum authority of the city, for example, I did an executive directive that said that no city department can cooperate with ICE or allow ICE to stage on their property.

So what ICE has been doing is occasionally they'll sneak onto city property and try to stage a raid. They went to a police department as a matter of fact, expecting to see a friendly audience and they were turned away. I think it was unfortunate that the chief said that he wouldn't enforce it.

But really he was making reference to the policy that it happened —

Mantle: The federal supremacy you’re speaking of —

Bass: Exactly. But it is in court right now, so there isn't anything that can be enforced, but in anticipation and in hope of a positive court decision. I did order the police commission to come up with standards and policies on how they would implement the policy, should we get a favorable court decision.

Handling the city's revenue

Mantle: I want to talk about the city's challenge with volatile revenue, much like the state of California, where it swings widely up and down. And in your budget proposal, you've got, I think it's around a 5% reserve, if I'm not mistaken, that you've called for.

Bass: That's correct.

Mantle: Given how volatile the revenue is, is that really gonna be sufficient for Los Angeles if we deal with an economic downturn?

Bass: I think that it is. I think, frankly, the greatest challenge that we have concerning an economic downturn is the uncertainty from Washington, that we don't know one minute or next whether we'll have tariffs, how the war will impact us, whether or not he will cut federal programs.

So we're in this era of uncertainty, which then of course impacts the economy as well, because people are reluctant to open businesses and do other things if they don't know what is going to happen.

Mantle: So you feel that's sufficient?

Bass: I do.

What makes her uniquely suited for the job

Mantle: And I finally wanted to ask you, and I'm asking this of all the candidates, what is it about you, and I'm not talking about your experience, your education about anything work related, but you as a person, your characteristics that you think make you particularly suited to be mayor of Los Angeles?

Bass: Sure. First of all, it's the way I've lived my life. I made a decision as a child that I wanted to spend my entire life fighting for justice.

In every aspect of my life that has been the consistent thing, in that I have always worked and prided myself in building coalitions and collaborations. I get along with people, even if people have extremely different political viewpoints than I do, and I think that is very well suited to be the mayor of the city because you have to bring together people who are in extreme disagreement. Although I did spend time in Congress, so talk about disagreement. There's nothing like it is, like it was there. And I think that those are basic characteristics.

People understand my heart, understand why I do things. It is never about self-promotion. I don't even like referring to my life. As a career, my life has been a mission and if you look at my life, I have been very consistent in what I believe in fighting for those beliefs. And I believe that is the core of what I love about our city.

Mantle: And given the unfavorability that you're seeing in these polls, you think you can turn that around, that you can win back the support of Angelenos?

Bass: I do think I can. And I think that the electorate around the country is in a foul mood, period. Incumbents, I don't care what you're running for, are not actually the most popular folks. But if you also look at the polling, with one exception, I am quite a bit ahead of the other candidates.

Mantle: She's referring to the Center for the Study of Los Angeles Poll from Loyola Marymount University.

Bass: I couldn't let that pass, Professor Guerra.

Mantle: Thank you so much, Mayor Bass for joining us today on AirTalk here at LMU.

Bass: Thank you.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and grammar.