For Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a list of issues continues to pile up.
She began the year in the face of a barrage of criticism for handling the city’s Palisade fire. Her first absence, the removal of the candid fire chief, the unpredictable behaviour of her recovery emperor.
But even without that catastrophic emergency, there are other signs that the city has entered a period of uncertainty.
Even as housing costs rose, new home construction was steadily slower. Film and TV productions are fleeing the city, and are hurting the entertainment industry, which is already in danger. President Trump’s trade war and immigration crackdown threaten two other pillars of the economy: international trade and tourism.
On Monday, Bass will provide an overall city health assessment within the city’s address each year. That same day she releases the 2025-26 budget and plans to deal with yet another big issue: the city’s financial crisis.
Faced with a shortfall of around $100 million, Bass is weighing more than 1,500 city workers (whether or not to fire almost 5% of the workforce), but has eliminated some vacancies. These behind-the-scenes deliberations have many at city hall worried about the potential impact on street repairs, street lighting, animal shelters and public safety programs.
City Councilman Isabel Jurad, who took office in December, representing parts of the East Side, said he was surprised by the magnitude of the challenge.
Los Angeles City Councilman Isabel Jurado, who took office in December, said he was surprised at the magnitude of the challenges facing city hall.
(Ringo chiu / for the the the the alls
“We knew our urban services were broken, we knew there was no healthiest budgeting, but we didn’t have to consider thousands of layoffs,” she said.
Bass is about to project optimism to her. In an interview with the Times, she highlighted last year’s decline in street homelessness, a double-digit decline in recent murders and shootings, and fire recovery, which she said is moving faster than chasing other large wildfires.
“Cities have challenges. There is no doubt. They are not declining. In fact, cities are preparing to welcome the world in over a year,” Bass said, referring to the 2026 World Cup.
Bass said, Gov. He said he wants to avoid employee layoffs by ensuring financial relief from Gavin Newsom and the state legislature.
The mayor and several councillors went to Sacramento last month to highlight the city’s disastrous financial situation. The mayor also spoke with Newsom on a phone call Thursday about the crisis and the need for assistance.
“I didn’t hear from him that there was no hope. I hung up hope,” she said.
LA Mayor Karen Bass will mark 100 days since 100 days since La Wildfire launched at Will Rogers State Beach on Thursday in discussions with local leaders and residents.
(Carlin Steel/Los Angeles Times)
Bus is publicly promoting the state’s idea of financial relief, but her labor negotiators have been working behind the scenes to persuade the city’s employee unions to make financial concessions, including a postponed wage hike scheduled for upcoming fiscal years. These increases, supported by base over the past two years, are expected to add around $250 million to next year’s budget, which will take effect on July 1st.
So far, consultations have not produced any results.
Last month, the board of directors of the Los Angeles Police Protection League, which represents nearly 8,800 officers, opposed postponing salary increases.
“You deserve all the compensation you receive,” the union’s board said in a message to its members.
Service Employees United Nations Local 721, representing more than 10,000 private city workers, had an equally militant message.
David Green, president of the United Nations local 721 of its employees, has vowed to stop “out-touch bureaucrats” from balancing the budget for “urban workers background.”
(Al Cebu/Because of the era)
“We are not going to allow out-of-touch bureaucrats… we can’t balance the budget for city workers’ backgrounds,” said David Green, president of SEIU Local 721.
The prospect of deep reductions in urban services could further complicate bass bids for reelection. She still doesn’t have a well-funded challenger, but she remains a frequent target for criticism from real estate developer Rick Caruso, who failed in 2022.
Caruso has not said whether he will run the second time, but recently posted a video on social media highlighting the results of a new UCLA Ruskin School of Public Relations poll.
The actual survey of those, including residents who cannot participate in urban elections outside of LA, showed that 49% of respondents had a bass view that has risen significantly from the previous year.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass met in January with Pacific Palisade residents at Santa Moncia College to learn about debris removal logistics.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Mindy Romero, a political sociologist who runs USC’s comprehensive democracy center, said the Palisade fire and subsequent events erode some of the goodwill the mayor enjoyed in his first two years. She said Monday’s speech could allow the bass to reset the story.
“The state of the city, the state of the state, the state of the coalition — all of these types of reports are always about notifying the public, but they are also about setting the tone,” Romero said.
Democratic strategist Darry Sragow said the complaints felt by LA voters exceeded the recovery of wildfires.
The complaints range not only from major issues such as loss of jobs in the entertainment industry, but also from daily issues such as broken sidewalks, pockmarked streets, long 911 wait times.
“There’s a sense that things are out of control,” he said.
Sragow argues that the city’s financial problems are largely self-harm. He then expressed strong doubts about the storm that had arrived from Sacramento.
“I don’t know there’s a lot of sympathy for plowing up huge amounts of state money to save LA,” he said.
On the stage of her City of the City speech, Bass began dropping tips on her upcoming budget. Appearing at Pacific Palisade this week to commemorate the 100th day after the fire began, she said she would not cut the fire department’s budget.
She also doesn’t plan to cut internal security, her signature initiative to combat homelessness, she told The Times. “We still have to solve the city’s problems,” she said.
Some city council members are beginning to raise concerns about the cost of internal safes.
Mayor Karen Bass signed her first urban budget in 2023, providing $1.3 billion to address the homeless crisis. Now, some people are worried about the costs of the city’s homelessness program.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
By early March, Safe had moved more than 4,000 homeless people indoors, according to the public dashboard. Of that total, about 1,350 people eventually returned to the streets, with 70 more dead.
Bass reduced the deficit for certain types of affordable housing projects as part of her efforts to reduce homelessness. However, home construction is still on downward trajectory.
Last year, the city’s Building Bureau issued construction permits for 8,706 homes, according to a report from research firm Hilgard Analytics.
Mott Smith, chairing the Infill Builder Council, an advocacy group focusing on development issues, said the city has failed to make meaningful progress in approving policies that facilitate the construction of homes. As a result, he said major investors and lenders are fleeing the Los Angeles market.
“Even the most stubborn boosters question whether it makes sense to do business here,” said Smith, who worked for an urban working group focused on streamlining the permitting process.
Smith said slower housing developments have deprived property tax growth and its ability to serve is diminishing.
Advocates in the entertainment industry have argued similar cases as the loss of local film and television filming has ripple effects on the economy and weakens the city’s tax base.
With fewer local productions, LA entertainment workers are spending less at supermarkets, restaurants, dry cleaners and other businesses.
“People don’t put money in the economy,” Levinson said.
Last month, city manager Matt Sabo informed city councils that slowing down regional economic activity would likely result in tax revenues falling below $335 million, below previous forecasts.
Bass said he will continue to push for expanded tax credits for the entertainment industry while also searching for ways to reduce shooting costs locally. In the housing, she said she wants a faster permit system, but she believes the problem is caused by market forces such as higher interest rates.
Some city hall people fear that the budget crisis could reduce repairs to city infrastructure, such as streets and sidewalks.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Meanwhile, the city faces yet another financial problem. The increased cost of payments resulting from police misconduct, broken sidewalks and other types of lawsuits against the city.
The city will need to add $100 million to legal payments for both the settlement and ry appellate for next year’s budget year, Sabo recently told council.
The base portrayed a sluggish economic activity and rising legal payments as the biggest drivers of urban budget struggles. She expressed zero regret over her decision to raise wages for police officers and other city employees, saying a move is needed to prevent workers from leaving.
Former city councillor Bernard C. Parks ran the council’s budget committee for eight years, but believes much of the city’s financial difficulties stem from the high costs of civil servant pay contracts.
Parks, a former LAPD chief who served on the council from 2003 to 2015, said he adopted a strategy to spend taxpayer funds early in his political career. “Don’t put anything on a budget that can’t be maintained.”
Currently, according to the park, all layoffs approved by the city mean some sort of reduction in urban services.
Times staff writer Noah Goldberg contributed to this report.
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