Rae Huang talks to LAist about why she should be LA's next mayor (Transcript)

Here's a transcript of the conversation that took place Monday, April 20, on the campus of Loyola Marymount University in front of a live audience of students and other guests.

Larry Mantle: Ms. Huang, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it.

Rae Huang: Thank you for having me. This is such an honor.

How she'd tackle her first government role

Larry Mantle: Well, like another challenger of Mayor Bass, Adam Miller, you haven't served in elected office, but you have the experience of interacting with the city in your nonprofit role. What frustrations have you experienced leading nonprofit organizations in dealing with the city's processes?

Huang: Yeah, the challenges that we've been facing are that because I work directly with so many communities and neighbors on the ground, we've been so frustrated with the fact that the city hasn't been helping us meet our needs our crises of housing affordability, our crises of being able to have good work, only needing one job to be able to survive in this economy.

So we have taken it into our own hands. Together we've been able to pass important measures such as Measure A, Measure ULA. We've been able to work to win successes like passing the Olympic wage. We've had to do the good work of making sure that we can provide for all of our Angelenos, but the challenge is that City Hall has not been doing their job.

Instead, what we see oftentimes is they weaken the work that we've moved forward. We remember that with Measure ULA, more voters voted for ULA than they did even for Mayor Bass at the time. People knew what they wanted, they knew the solutions we needed. And over the last year we've been seeing our own city leaders trying to weaken this measure that voters move forward.

So that's a example of the frustrations.

Mantle: Do you see a downside to ULA or not? Do you think it's worked well?

Huang: I think that Measure ULA has been working well in ensuring of homelessness prevention. We've been seeing numbers drop in terms of the numbers of homelessness, which is fantastic.

And I would say that's because of a lot of the efforts we put into tenant protection, enforcement, as well as supporting with emergency measures and support for seniors for experiencing homelessness, and we just recently have been able to see the money come through so that we can start building affordable housing.

We have yet to see this happen. I will tell you, there's a lot of criticism on Measure ULA preventing the development of supply and being able to grow more -

Mantle: Multifamily structures particularly.

Rae Huang: Yes, however, what we've seen recently in a recent report actually that came out is that's not been the case.

Supply has not been delayed because of Measure ULA, and so we still have many years to see whether or another year or so they see whether or not that will happen. And also I do very strongly believe that because there's a whole coalition that worked together with Measure ULA, if we are going to make any changes, it should not be coming from the top deciding what's gonna happen, especially the way that Mayor Bass did through the state legislature, but together with community making these decisions collaboratively. I wanna also mention that SCANPH, the Southern California Affordable Housing Nonprofit Partnership, the organization and coalition of affordable housing developers, they themselves were supportive of Measure ULA, they agree that we need to be ensuring that we're gonna protect that funding and that revenue towards development of affordable housing.

How she'd balance priorities

Mantle: Like our previous guest Councilmember, Nithya Raman, who's also running for Mayor, you two are a Democratic Socialist and identify that way. So you advocate for a number of things, increase minimum wage, you mentioned ULA, other higher safety nets, larger safety nets for Angelenos.

When you assess the trade-offs, 'cause most of these do come with trade-offs. If they were that easy to do and if they were uniformly good, people would rush to pass them. You have to fight for them.

How do you assess what the trade-offs are? For example, if it's a higher wage, what that might mean to job loss or how it might depress tourism or if you're looking at ULA, whether it might depress construction of larger apartment complexes. How do you do that analysis to decide, yeah, this is something I wanna support.

Huang: The analysis comes from the ground in that we, together with researchers and experts and policy experts here in the city, work collaboratively together, such that labor unions come together with community organizations, come together with university researchers to ensure that we actually are doing our due diligence to ensure that this is going to be a benefit for the community.

Ultimately, we are in favor of what's gonna support our working families who are most impacted by these situations. And so when we make decisions, for example, around small business economic development, we're gonna be thinking about what's gonna benefit them as we're also increasing minimum wages to ensure that we're not going to hurt any of our small businesses,

How she'd handle homelessness spending and oversight

Mantle: The L.A. city, county, and the state have all struggled in responding to homelessness. They've spent billions of dollars. People have cycled in and out of the system, and we've had audits, including at the state level. We've had prosecutions of people, LAHSA, for example, the L.A.

Homeless Services Authority, was giving millions of dollars allegedly to an organization that didn't even have a real board. It’s alleged they didn't even have real people on the board. If you're elected mayor, what would you do to try and deal with the fraud, the waste that goes on to make sure that the money really goes to programs and individuals in need?

Huang: First thing I’d do when I get into office, I want to ensure that our city controllers are able to audit Inside Safe. We do need to ensure and see what's been happening there so we don't repeat those same problems. The second is, because so much of what happened with the Inside Safe Program happened behind closed doors, we need to actually be able to make the full process transparent so that way we are actually having bids from contracts from other outside organizations so that we know what's coming in and we're able to tell the public through a dashboard to ensure that we are actually keeping up with the projections and the goals that we have.

Mantle: And how do you do that? Because that requires staff to do that. That's not necessarily all automated. Humans need to look at it to determine, for example, that the board members are actual real people. So how would you pay for that because enforcement and oversight does require a budget.

Huang: That's right. This is why one of the things that perhaps makes me unique as a candidate right now is that I do think we need to be divesting money budget from the police and be investing it into our community services, for example. Today the budget was released by Mayor Bass, although I have yet to really take a really strong good look at it, we know that some of the departments, for example, were eliminated, such as the Youth Development Department, the Aging Department, the Economic Workforce Development Department, if I have that correct in my reading of the budget recommendations right now.

And that when we're talking about safety, we're talking about ensuring that people like get into homes, that people who are on the streets are able to be alleviated and actually have a safe place to put their head and be able to recover.

Mantle: Ms. Huang, we're talking, by the way, with Rae Huang, who's candidate for mayor of Los Angeles. She's been a housing advocate who has been working, interrelating with L.A. City government and county government, for a number of years. Ms. Huang, in looking at ways to try and monitor these expenditures, and trying to balance all of this out, how do you work with the county and even the state to do this? Because one of the problems is that everybody is very siloed and with LAHSA, of course, it's a city-county partnership, but that's seemingly gone off the rails now. So how do fix that?

Huang: Yeah. That is one of my greatest frustrations and actually one of the reasons why I am running and why I feel like I am fit to be able to do this job.

My whole career has been focused around doing coalition work, building coalitions across sectors, across regions, across various community interests to be able to come together to solve the problem that we need. The way that I will be doing that as mayor is that currently we do not have a capital infrastructure plan for the city.

We have one for the Olympics. But what we need is one for Angelenos. We need to be able to see where we're gonna progress in two years, in five years, in 10 years from now, to actually have a cohesive vision and plan to be able to strengthen our city. And also make sure that we do meet our 100% renewable energy goals by 2035.

And so together as I pull together the various departments, the county officials, our city council members, and even together with the state, we can work out and create the plan we need. For our capital infrastructure plan and then begin to work together towards that vision. And I'll be doing that with directed departments that I'll be, or with a particular office, that I will be able to set up to ensure that we'll be able to maintain those healthy relationships.

Mantle: You may have a different idea of how to do that, but would seem to me one of the things you would probably need, if you're gonna be doing the longer term budgeting that you're talking about, capital or other investment is reserve enough to buffer the differences in revenue from year to year.

Huang: That's right.

Mantle: You have to have the shock absorber or you're always that what you've planned for you can't do. Do you support doing that? And what size of a reserve to be able to do the longer term planning do you think would be adequate?

Huang: Yeah, I don't have a number in my mind right now because I think I'm still working that out and I think it's something they'll be doing together as I'm progressing towards the office, however.

I will tell you that the plan to be able to build that does involve, one of the things I plan to do is opening an office of revenue and in innovation, you might remember actually this during Garcetti's administration, where there was an office dedicated to identify revenue that we could find where we were inefficient with our dollars to ensure that we're utilizing that well as well as identifying new forms of revenue that we could create.

Reducing LAPD's size, and other police reforms

Mantle: Let me move on and talk about law enforcement 'cause you've talked about reducing the size of the LAPD, putting those funds into social programs, Ms. Huang. So what is your ideal size of the department?

Huang: I would say that I don't have an ideal size. What I would say is, what I plan on doing is expanding our unarmed crisis response programs that we currently have in the city. We know that circle and also UMCR has been productive. We've recently made that permanent here in the city. I want to expand that citywide.

I saw that Mayor Bass is also interested, although she has not put the funding into that. What I plan on doing is actually, when I am in office, placing people on the police commission who agree with me to ensure that we are gonna be expanding into a model that includes an unarmed crisis response. And so that way we can ensure that our police officers are not the first ones who are arriving to every single 911 call.

But actually we can ensure when people are in crisis, they're being met with the needs that they have in the crisis that they do have. And also, I will say one of the important things for me in particular is that I would like to fire Chief McDonnell. He has not been shown to be able to follow the law, the state law, for example, which has a mandate to ensure that federal agents do not wear masks while they are around the city around our state.

But Chief McDonnell has continually said that he refuses to follow that law. We've seen collusion between ICE agents and also LAPD. So we need to end those relationships and we also need to ensure that our that our police are continually not attacking our protestors, which we've seen assault, including of our teenagers up in the valley recently.

And we need to ensure the safety of all Angelenos.

Mantle: We're talking with Rae Huang, candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles. It's AirTalk on LAist 89.3, and the LAist app. You mentioned your disappointment, that you'd fire Chief McDonnell for a number of reasons, including not enforcing the state law against law enforcement agents, including federal agents wearing masks.

Do you think it's realistic that a chief of any local law enforcement department would tell her or his officers to arrest federal agents who are masked? Do you think that's realistic that they would do that?

Huang: I do. In fact, the attorney general in Minnesota was actually talking about the fact that these are our city laws that you need to follow when you're in our jurisdiction. And so ultimately, I will be holding state or federal agents accountable and directing our city attorney to prosecute those who break the law.

Mantle: Certainly they could be prosecuted under the law at least without a court challenge to this point that stops it.

But asking officers, local officers to actually arrest a federal officer, you have an example of where that's happened in the country or I guess, what makes that realistic to you?

Huang: What is realistic for me is that if we cannot have local officers whose whole duty is to protect and serve the people of Los Angeles and they cannot follow through with that, then something is clearly wrong with the current system.

Mantle: We understand there is a division. Between federal, state, and local laws. So there, there's certain supremacy issues that are involved in different law enforcement. But you do think that will eventually happen? Because there's certainly a lot of cities where people would want to see their local law enforcement intervene against ICE.

You think we're gonna see that?

Huang: I think that if we are in a moment in our country and in our city where we need to stand up and draw the line, this is the moment for us to do that.

Navigating union negotiations

Mantle: We're talking with Rae Huang, candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles. The city council voted a couple of years ago to give substantial raises to many of the bargaining units of public employees, city employees.

The city has been dealing with what's essentially a structural deficit and finding it difficult to be able to do this. Labor unions are big backers of L.A. City Council members. To what extent would you be willing as a part of this negotiation process to push back on union demands in negotiations?

Huang: I work very closely with labor unions. I believe that they are the rallying force right now to be able to fight. To ensure that billionaire companies and corporations don't continue to take advantage of our lives and own every single part of where we live, where we eat, where we sleep. And I will continue to work with labor unions to ensure that they and I work together closely to ensure that we have both safe workplaces, that we are able to fight for strengthened, to ensure that we're able to make the city a healthy, good place for workers to live and work in.

Mantle: But my question is at what point, 'cause you'd be representing the city's interest, not the labor unions if you're elected mayor. So to what extent would you push back, or would you just roll over for the unions?

Where would you draw the line? What would be your criteria? If you're saying, “no, the city can't afford that, we can't do that.” What makes you tell a union that?

Huang: I believe very strongly in partnerships with organizations and with unions that are ready to work towards progress for our city.

So certainly if there is a union by which, or an organization such as the LAPPL would be one union, for example, strongly --

Mantle: Police Protective League, the union for officers.

Huang: Correct, that I disagree strongly with for the most part. I would say that by and large, I have worked very closely with SEIU 721, with AFSCME 3299.I've worked with Unite Here, local 11. These are all unions who I, UTLA, These are all unions who are fighting for us, and I actually see them as, I welcome them as close partners to be able to help us ensure that this city is a place where their workers can thrive, where families can thrive, where students can thrive, where our children and families can thrive.

Mantle: So what, I guess what I'm trying to get at is where would you, what are the criteria that you would use in saying to a union, “hey, we'd love to do that. We can't afford to do that.”

Huang: I think you look at the numbers and if it's something ultimately at the end of the day, it requires, all that we do requires negotiation to actually understand what is plausible and what is implausible.

I am somebody who is very efficient. And you do the math period, full stop. And but I will say that. A lot of times, and this is what we see a lot with public officials, this is a lot of what we see in in the political class, is that we push back in being able to dream big and vision big, because we constantly will say we just don't have the, we don't have the money.

For example, right now in the state budget, less than 2% of our state budget has been going to homelessness housing since 2018, less than 2% of our massive budget in the state. And yet the state constantly says over and over again, our state leaders say housing is our biggest priority. Then why is less than 2%?

Last year, less than 5.5% of our budget went to housing and homelessness. Maybe what we need to be asking is not so much of will you roll over and can you do the math of, let's take a look at our budget and understand that it is a moral document. It tells us exactly what we believe in and what we value.

This is why I will be actually bringing and ushering in a participatory budgeting process. What is that? It is when when residents of Los Angeles get to decide where their budget should go. I've been a part of the People's Budget, Los Angeles Coalition since 2020.

Balancing the city budget

Mantle: So who would sit on that panel? Or how would you convene that feedback from LA residents?

Huang: It is a survey where we invite residents to participate. It will be a process, but we have natural, already organized spaces such as a neighborhood city council where they're in each council or each neighborhood where people can participate in shape and be in dialogue about where they want their money to go. And I will tell you, each year since 2020, we've had tens of thousands of people participate in this budgeting survey. And guess what's not at the top? It's not the police. And guess what? At the very top. It's always housing. Also, at the very bottom actually I'll say is traffic enforcement, which is funny enough, parking enforcement.

But the other thing is that ultimately what I am trying to say is that we are constantly asked,

Mantle: But realistically, the state budget, the city of L.A. budget are at historic highs, so it's not like the city isn't spending money, it spends a ton of money. The state, you're mentioning whatever the percentage is on housing, 40% under prop 98 is guaranteed to go to education. Healthcare is now the biggest part of the state budget it's ever been. Education and health are huge priorities. It’s not the state or like the city or the county aren't spending on other services. I guess the question is how, as expenditures grow and grow and revenue doesn't grow as much, how then do you balance a budget?

Huang: I believe you might have heard of the billionaires tax that also we have in the state right now.

Mantle: Yes. It's a one one-time tax.

Huang: Yes, it's a one-time tax, but these are the kinds of innovative revenue solutions that we can create in our city, our state.

California is the fourth largest economy in the world, right? L.A. is one third of that largest economy in the world. We make up one third of that economy. We have the wealth in our city, but we are not seeing that in the streets. We're not seeing this amongst our working families. It's time that we actually begin, and this is why I am somebody who is willing to and supportive of taxing the wealthy, to ensure taxing our billionaires, to ensure that we actually have the wealth going into our communities so that we can see working streetlights again.

So we can actually ensure that we have no more potholes, to ensure that we can finally expand transit. By the way, one of the things that we can do very easily is make buses fast and free. We can make buses free.

Mantle: As economists say, there's simply no way to tax the wealthy enough to pay for all of this. You have to raise taxes on middle class people. You would have to do that. Would you support the middle class paying more in taxes than they do now?

Huang: I will support the kinds of taxes we need to ensure that everybody has enough. Our middle class is being squeezed right now. I do believe that we have enough on the very top end of our economic spectrum to be able to ensure that we will have enough for the city.

And I do believe very much that the police is taking up half of our budget right now in the city, and we can reallocate that budget to other things that we need in the city. So that way we are not actually, again, eliminating departments like the Youth Development Department, by the way, which I recently for a couple of times now, have been visiting the Jim Gilliam Recreation Center with their youth counselors, by which they have told me that their budget has been cut so significantly now, the youth counselors themselves have to pull in their little money that they have to be able to provide for their youth and their families. This is despicable. This is not the city that we need to have right now. We need to be ensuring that we're prioritizing resources for our community members.

Mantle: We're talking with Rae Huang, who's candidate for mayor of Los Angeles. Just real briefly, I want to ask you about city services, neighboring cities to Los Angeles are typically able to execute more quickly to address resident complaints, whether it's filling a pothole, fixing a sidewalk, police response.

What would you do if elected mayor to see Los Angeles improve in its providing of services?

Huang: Like I just said, I think that I would be putting money back into the departments that we need it to.

We know that we've been cutting significantly in other departments. This is why when small business owners actually call into the city for support, they're unable to get a phone call back or any support to be able to figure out their fees or their licensee for many weeks or months on end.

And it delays their ability to be able to be a small business. So we need to ensure that every single one of these departments are well-funded and well-resourced. Our staff, I've talked to many city staff who are in all areas of the departments of our city, and they tell me over and over again that they love their job.

Some of them have been working there for 20 years, in one case, 30 years. And they're frustrated with the fact that they do not have support for them to do their job. And so it's time that we actually ensure that we provide our staff, our city who, our city staff, who cares and loves the city for them to be able to do their job well.

What makes her uniquely suited for the job

Mantle: Ms. Huang, in closing, I'm asking all the candidates that I'm interviewing this, what is it about you as a person, setting aside your education, your professional experience, but how you're wired, your personality, what makes you go, so to speak, your intellect, what is it that you think makes you well suited to be mayor of Los Angeles?

Huang: I am somebody who is very grounded in my values. I'm somebody who does not sway too far from the wind. My roots are grounded. And I know what I stand for and I do not sway from that. And I'm somebody who is also a pastor. I've been doing mediation work for many years. I've been a consultant, a strategic visionary consultant for many organizations and even public institutions.

And I build coalitions. And so I believe that in this moment in our city we are looking for somebody who's able to bring people together in a very divisive moment of our city and our country.

Mantle: Ms. Huang, thank you very much for being with us. We appreciate it.

Huang: Thank you so much.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and grammar.