Los Angeles Is In A 4-Year Sprint To Deliver A Car-Free 2028 Olympics

BY JAY L. ZAGORSKY

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MARKETS,

PUBLIC POLICY AND LAW,

BOSTON UNIVERSITY

With the Olympic torch extinguished in Paris, all eyes are turning to Los Angeles for the 2028 Olympics.

The host city has promised that the next Summer Games will be “car-free.”

For people who know Los Angeles, this seems overly optimistic. The car remains king in LA, despite growing public transit options.

When LA hosted the Games in 1932, it had an extensive public transportation system, with buses and an extensive network of electric streetcars. Today, the trolleys are long gone; riders say city buses don’t come on schedule, and bus stops are dirty. What happened?

This question fascinates me because I am a business professor who studies why society abandons and then sometimes returns to certain technologies, such as vinyl records, landline phones and metal coins. The demise of electric streetcars in Los Angeles and attempts to bring them back today vividly demonstrate the costs and challenges of such revivals.
Riding the Red and Yellow Cars

Transportation is a critical priority in any city, but especially so in Los Angeles, which has been a sprawling metropolis from the start.

In the early 1900s, railroad magnate Henry Huntington, who owned vast tracts of land around LA, started subdividing his holdings into small plots and building homes. In order to attract buyers, he also built a trolley system that whisked residents from outlying areas to jobs and shopping downtown.

By the 1930s, Los Angeles had a vibrant public transportation network, with over 1,000 miles of electric streetcar routes, operated by two companies: Pacific Electric Railway, with its “Red Cars,” and Los Angeles Railway, with its “Yellow Cars.”

The system wasn’t perfect by any means. Many people felt that streetcars were inconvenient and also unhealthy when they were jammed with riders. Moreover, streetcars were slow because they had to share the road with automobiles. As auto usage climbed and roads became congested, travel times increased.

Nonetheless, many Angelenos rode the streetcars – especially during World War II, when gasoline was rationed and automobile plants shifted to producing military vehicles.

Demise of public transit

The end of the war marked the end of the line for streetcars. The war effort had transformed oil, tire and car companies into behemoths, and these industries needed new buyers for goods from the massive factories they had built for military production. Civilians and returning soldiers were tired of rationing and war privations, and they wanted to spend money on goods such as cars.

After years of heavy usage during the war, Los Angeles’ streetcar system needed an expensive capital upgrade. But in the mid-1940s, most of the system was sold to a company called National City Lines, which was partly owned by the carmaker General Motors, the oil companies Standard Oil of California and Phillips Petroleum, and the Firestone tire company.

These powerful forces had no incentive to maintain or improve the old electric streetcar system. National City ripped up tracks and replaced the streetcars with buses that were built by General Motors, used Firestone tires and ran on gasoline.

There is a long-running academic debate over whether self-serving corporate interests purposely killed LA’s streetcar system. Some researchers argue that the system would have died on its own, like many other streetcar networks around the world.

The controversy even spilled over into pop culture in the 1988 movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” which came down firmly on the conspiracy side.

What’s undisputed is that, starting in the mid-1940s, powerful social forces transformed Los Angeles so that commuters had only two choices: drive or take a public bus. As a result, LA became so choked with traffic that it often took hours to cross the city.

In 1990, the Los Angeles Times reported that people were putting refrigerators, desks and televisions in their cars to cope with getting stuck in horrendous traffic. A swath of movies, from “Falling Down” to “Clueless” to “La La Land,” have featured the next-level challenge of driving in LA.

Traffic was also a concern when LA hosted the 1984 Summer Games, but the Games went off smoothly. Organizers convinced over 1 million people to ride buses, and they got many trucks to drive during off-peak hours. The 2028 games, however, will have roughly 50% more athletes competing, which means thousands more coaches, family, friends and spectators. So simply dusting off plans from 40 years ago won’t work.

Olympic transportation plans

Today, Los Angeles is slowly rebuilding a more robust public transportation system. In addition to buses, it now has six light-rail lines – the new name for electric streetcars – and two subways. Many follow the same routes that electric trolleys once traveled. Rebuilding this network is costing the public billions, since the old system was completely dismantled.

Three key improvements are planned for the Olympics. First, LA’s airport terminals will be connected to the rail system. Second, the Los Angeles organizing committee is planning heavily on using buses to move people. It will do this by reassigning some lanes away from cars and making them available for 3,000 more buses, which will be borrowed from other locales.

Finally, there are plans to permanently increase bicycle lanes around the city. However, one major initiative, a bike path along the Los Angeles River, is still under an environmental review that may not be completed by 2028.

Car-free for 17 days

I expect that organizers will pull off a car-free Olympics, simply by making driving and parking conditions so awful during the Games that people are forced to take public transportation to sports venues around the city. After the Games end, however, most of LA is likely to quickly revert to its car-centric ways.

As Casey Wasserman, chair of the LA 2028 organizing committee, recently put it: “The unique thing about Olympic Games is for 17 days you can fix a lot of problems when you can set the rules – for traffic, for fans, for commerce – than you do on a normal day in Los Angeles.”

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

From Paris To Los Angeles: How The City Is Preparing For The 2028 Olympics

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass holds the official Olympic flag returning to Los Angeles at the Los Angeles International Airport on Monday, August 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Damian Doverganes)

BY JAIMIE DING and ANDREW DALTON

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It’s Los Angeles’ turn for the torch. Mayor Karen Bass accepted the Olympic flag at the Paris closing ceremony Sunday, before handing it off to a key representative of LA’s local business — Tom Cruise — who in a pre-recorded trek via motorcycle, plane and parachute kicked off the countdown to 2028.

The city will become the third in the world to host the games three times as it adds to the storied years of 1932 and 1984. Here’s a look forward and back in time at the Olympics in LA.

LA’s Olympic trilogy

Los Angeles got the 2028 games as a consolation prize when Paris was picked for 2024.

Back in 1932, LA hosted its first Olympics. The city was the only bidder for the games at a time marred by the Great Depression and the absence of several nations. Yet memorable sport moments came from athletes including American athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias, who won golds in the new women’s events of javelin and hurdles.

Financial and cultural success gave 1984 a reputation as the “good” Olympics” which made seemingly every major world city want their own.

Emphasizing both the modern and the classical with a hand from Hollywood, the games opened with decathlon champion Rafer Johnson lighting the torch, a guy in a jetpack descending into the Memorial Coliseum and theme music by “Star Wars” maestro John Williams.

With Eastern Bloc countries boycotting, the U.S. dominated. Carl Lewis and Mary Lou Retton are among the athletes who became household names. A young Michael Jordan led the men’s basketball team to gold.

The games renewed, for a while, the global reputation of a city that had been perceived to be in decline.

“We want our games to be a modern games, youthful, full of the optimism that Southern California brings to the world and the globe,” Janet Evans, four-time Olympic gold medalist in swimming and chief athlete officer for the LA 2028 organizing committee, told The Associated Press in Paris.

Passing the torch

Bass, who arrives back in LA Monday, spent these games in Paris along with organizers and city officials, learning what it takes to host the world’s largest sporting event.

Joining her were LA28 Chairperson Casey Wasserman, an entertainment executive, and LA councilmember Traci Park, chair of the city Olympic committee.

“As we’ve seen here in Paris, the Olympics are an opportunity to make transformative change,” Bass said at a press conference ahead of the closing ceremony.

Venues old and new, plus a swimming stadium

Amid a stadium-and-arena boom, LA will polish existing structures rather than erect new ones.

“It’s a no-build games,” Evans said.

After Paris’ innovative opening ceremony on the Seine River, LA plans to open with a traditional, stadium-based approach at SoFi Stadium in neighboring Inglewood that also incorporates the century-old Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles itself.

Home to two NFL teams, SoFi has hosted a Super Bowl and several Taylor Swift concerts since opening in 2020. It will become what organizers say is the largest Olympic swimming venue ever. Its opening ceremony role means swimming will come after track and field for the first time since 1972.

Intuit Dome, the soon-to-open Inglewood home of the NBA’s Clippers, would be the games’ newest major venue and is the planned home for Olympic basketball. The Lakers’ downtown Crypto.com Arena will host gymnastics.

The toxicity of swimming in the Seine became a serious issue in Paris. That could put renewed focus on the Long Beach area waterfront when it hosts marathon swimming and triathlon races. Its cleanliness history is mixed but its ocean waters got consistently high marks in a 2023 analysis by nonprofit Heal the Bay.

The Long Beach shore was home to the pre-recorded performances during Sunday’s ceremony of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Billie Eilish, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, though it was easy to mistake for LA’s Venice Beach, where the journey of the flag begun by Cruise was shown ending moments earlier.

Trains, buses and traffic

A city that’s notoriously hard to traverse may seem like an odd fit for the Olympics, but it can work.

Bass said she plans to emulate the tactics of Tom Bradley, the mayor in 1984, whose traffic mitigations had some saying it was better than at non-Olympic times. They include asking local businesses to stagger workforce hours to reduce the number of cars on the road and allow work from home during the 17-day games.

Landing the Olympics under then-Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2017 gave the city an unusually long lead time for planning.

While it’s no Paris Metro, LA has built a subway since its last Olympics, with lines running past major venues.

In 2018, the city planned an ambitious slate of 28 bus and rail projects to transform public transit. Some were scrapped but others moved forward, including the extension of a subway line to connect downtown Los Angeles with UCLA, the planned home of the Olympic Village.

Another high-profile project is the Inglewood People Mover, an automated, three-stop rail line past major Olympic venues. It initially received a commitment of $1 billion in federal funding, but opposition from Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters led to a $200 million reduction, the Los Angeles Times reported. It’s unclear whether the line will be completed by 2028.

Metro recently received $900 million in funding through an infrastructure spending package and grants from the Biden administration, of which $139 million will go directly toward improving transportation by 2028 and the goal of a “car-free” Olympics.

“The biggest challenge is not waiting to 2028, but really taking the opportunity between now and 2028 to help Angelenos and visitors alike reimagine the transportation network as something that will be their first choice,” Metro CEO Stephanie Wiggins said.

Crime, safety and perception

While crime rates were considerably higher in 1984 than today, the countdown to 2028 comes as the issue has gotten increased attention and cast a social-media-amplified shadow.

The Olympics are designated as a national special security event, which makes the U.S. Secret Service the lead agency tasked with developing a security plan, supported by significant federal resources.

LA city and county law enforcement sent officers to Paris to observe, learn and assist as they prepare for their own 2028 games.

There are many more encampments on city streets than there were in 1984, and it’s unlikely LA will have solved its homeless crisis in the next four years. As the Paris games ended, California Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened to withhold funding from cities unable to clear encampments.

Ahead of the Games in Paris, organizers relocated thousands of unhoused people, a practice also used for the 2016 Rio de Janiero games and criticized by activists as “social cleansing.”

Tourists and finances

LA is the “next logical destination” for the Olympics, said Adam Burke, president and CEO of the LA Tourism and Convention Board. “LA has emerged as really one of the world’s sports capitals.”

First though, the city will host a FIFA World Cup event and U.S. Women’s Open in 2026 and another Super Bowl in 2027.

The city’s hotel industry has continued to see growth, adding 9,000 new hotel rooms in the past four years with more to come over the next four.

LA28 organizers are banking on ticket sales, sponsorships, payments from the International Olympic Committee and other revenue streams to cover the games’ $6.9 billion budget. The committee has brought in just over $1 billion toward a goal of $2.5 billion in domestic corporate sponsorships.

Associated Press Writer Noreen Nassir contributed from Paris.

LA Mayor Wants $1.3B For Homeless Crisis, Hotels For Housing

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, at podium, is welcomed to deliver her first State of the City address from City Hall in Los Angeles, Monday, April 17, 2023. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

B Y MICHAEL R. BLOOD

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Democratic Mayor Karen Bass, who was elected in November after promising to take on the city’s out-of-control homeless crisis, announced Monday she would recommend spending what she called a record $1.3 billion next year to get unhoused people into shelter and treatment programs.

The funding to be included in the mayor’s upcoming budget could be used in part to buy hotels or motels that would be converted to housing, while the city combs through its inventory of properties for those that could be used for sheltering homeless people. The former congresswoman’s remarks, in an annual address to City Council on the state of the city, came roughly four months into her first term.

Bass added that the budget also would include funds for substance abuse treatment beds for the unhoused, but she did not specify how many. And her signature program, dubbed Inside Safe that offers homeless people motel rooms and a path to permanent housing with services, has over 1,000 enrollees so far, she said.

Meanwhile, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has promised to deliver 500 units of temporary housing to the city, while the Biden administration has sent the city and county more than $200 million for homeless programs, she added.

“After years of frustration ... we can see a clearer path to a new Los Angeles,” Bass said, speaking inside the ornate City Council chambers. And “we have finally dispelled the myth that people do not want to come inside. They do.”

However, Bass added that much work needed to be done. “I cannot declare that the state of our city is where it needs to be,” she said.

Bass’ overall optimism would be expected for a mayor in the early months of a first term, but it also belies looming challenges that could reshape her time in office.

The city has expanded spending on homeless programs for years — then-Mayor Eric Garcetti signed a budget in 2021 with nearly $1 billion in homeless spending — but the unhoused population has continued to increase. Bass’ challenge is in plain sight in just about any neighborhood: homeless people living in trash-strewn encampments or rusty RVs along streets, below underpasses and clustered around freeway exits.

About half the homeless population — totaling over 40,000 citywide — struggles with drug or alcohol addiction, and about a third have serious mental illnesses. Homeless deaths average five a day.

Some economists see a recession coming that could slash city tax revenue at a time when Bass is expanding homeless spending, though opinions are divided on the direction of the economy. A recent report from city Controller Kenneth Mejia outlined a series of other concerns, including the need to investment more in repairing crumbling streets and sidewalks and higher pension costs for retirees that “already consume fully 15% of the city’s general fund budget.” Meanwhile, crime rates have been climbing, including for car thefts and shootings, while the police department has seen its staffing levels drop. Bass warned the number of police officers could drop below 9,000 – a tally not seen since 2002.

Bass said her budget for the year that begins July 1 recommends hiring hundreds of officers, along with a recruitment campaign and incentives for new hires. It also funnels new dollars into a team of social workers and clinical psychologists who could respond to emergency calls when a police officer is not required.

“We know safety goes far beyond lights and sirens,” she said.

Bass, the first Black woman to serve as LA’s mayor who was on President Joe Biden’s short list for vice president, defeated billionaire businessman Rick Caruso in the November election. She anchored her campaign to getting homeless people off the streets and into shelters, reversing spiking crime rates and developing housing that working-class families can afford.

Karen Bass Launches New Housing Program To Help Tackle Homelessness In Los Angeles

BY SHANNON DAWSON

LOS ANGELES (NEWS ONE) -- Karen Bass is already making powerful moves in her new role as the Mayor of Los Angeles. On Sunday, the 69-year-old politician announced plans to move the city’s homeless from tent encampments into hotels and motels through a new housing program set to launch Tuesday.


During an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Bass shared more details about the forthcoming initiative, noting how the program would not “address everybody, but it is going to address, hopefully, a significant number,” according to AP News. Under the plan, none of the city’s homeless community will be forced to move from their current location, Bass clarified. “This is not coercing people. This is not ticketing people or incarcerating people. This is moving people from tents to hotels or motels,” she added.



Homelessness is a big issue in Los Angeles



Solving the city’s homelessness crisis has been at the top of Bass’s priority list. On her first day as mayor, Bass promised to build more housing to help quell the issue, allocating nearly $1.2 billion of the city’s budget. Nearly 40,000 people experience homelessness in Los Angeles. The crisis disproportionately impacts Black, Latinos, and the formerly incarcerated.

Under the initiative, Karen Bass hopes to house over 17,000 homeless people in her first year. Upon taking office, the former House representative said that she would work closely with officials to train outreach workers to move homeless communities off the streets. The teams will include trained outreach workers, medical and mental health professionals, and social workers. The program will also create job opportunities for the formerly unhoused to work directly with street teams. “As individuals with lived experience, they play a vital role as trusted messengers in helping others find the same stability they did,” her website notes.

Karen Bass’s passion for homelessness advocacy extends back to her early days with the Community Coalition. The former social worker helped push for converting motels into housing for the homeless in the 1990s, decades before COVID-19 spawned the creation of Project Roomkey, a federally funded homeless relief initiative in the state of California.

Faced With Tight Transition, Mayor-Elect Bass Invites Garcetti Staff To Stay On Through April

Karen Bass

BY JULIA WICK AND BENJAMIN ORESKES

LOS ANGELES (LOS ANGELES TIMES) -- Mayor-elect Karen Bass has invited all staffers in Mayor Eric Garcetti's office to remain in their jobs through April, according to a letter sent last week — an atypical move intended to steady the ship amid an unusually short transition period.

Incoming mayors regularly retain some staff from the previous administration, particularly during the first months of their administration, even as they appoint new deputy mayors and consider which general managers to keep around. But extending a blanket offer is unusual.

Though deputy mayors and other senior staffers were included in the invitation, Bass spokesperson Zach Seidl said the incoming mayor will probably fill many of those high-level positions with her own people well before April. He added that Bass is expected to name her chief of staff imminently, with some other senior names to follow.


"To maintain stability in city government during this unprecedented three-week transition, the mayor-elect has asked staff to be available to continue working to ensure vital services continue," Seidl said.

Bass faces a tighter timeline than her two most recent predecessors, who both knew voting results shortly after the polls closed and took office about six weeks later. But Bass' race wasn't called until eight days after the election, with her set to take office about 3½ weeks after that.

The shorter window is an unintended byproduct of shifting voting methods: Angelenos have increasingly utilized mail-in ballots in recent years, which take longer to process and count.

The mayor-elect's term officially begins on Dec. 12, though Bass might be sworn in on Dec. 11.

“I am extending an opportunity for continued employment up to April 22, 2023, to all active employees currently serving in the mayor's office. This employment will be exempt and at-will, and the mayor's office retains the right to terminate the employment of any individual at any time," Bass wrote in the Nov. 22 letter, adding that current employees could interview for permanent jobs during the transition period.


Bass' memo to staffers was accompanied by a lengthy letter from Garcetti, who effusively praised the incoming mayor and called her decision to offer the four-month employment buffer a reflection of her values as someone "who recognizes the good work of other public servants."

Garcetti also thanked Bass for "assuring employees and their families that they will be able to pay their bills, use their healthcare, and have a shot at continuing their careers just before the holidays."

The two-term outgoing mayor declined to weigh in during this year's mayoral contest, but he appeared to offer a retroactive endorsement of Bass in his letter, saying he was "filled with great joy, optimism, and relief" when the election was called for Bass.

"I can confess now that about 11 years ago I encouraged Karen to run for mayor in the 2013 election. ... And when she said she wasn't going to run, I decided to throw my hat in the ring and, well, as they say, the rest is history," Garcetti wrote, nodding to his own election as mayor that year.

Multiple city officials said there was a good deal of anxiety about the short time between this year's election and the inauguration. The mayor’s office has prepared briefings for Bass covering topics including advocacy priorities and basic processes, such as how the mayor signs a motion when it’s been transmitted from the City Council.

"It is very common in my experience that some members of the outgoing team stay with the new team," said retired city official Rich Llewellyn, who served as Garcetti's transition director in 2013. Llewellyn characterized the blanket offer of continued — albeit temporary — employment to all staffers as a bit unusual, but he said he thought it could be an advantageous move, providing more continuity as Bass builds her team.

"The philosophies of the staffs are usually not dramatically different" because the office is ostensibly a nonpartisan position largely held by Democrats, Llewellyn said.

But Bass’ letter could also signal to critics that she’s open to continuing city policies — at least in the short term — carried out by Garcetti, potentially frustrating activists who want immediate changes when it comes to homelessness or transportation.

Deputy mayors are particularly visible roles, serving as a public face for the administration at events and, in some cases, acting as a liaison with city unions.

The most recent public staff list for Garcetti’s office lists seven deputy mayors, including Jose “Che” Ramirez, who works on homeless policies. Over the last year, several longtime Garcetti deputy mayors left, including Jeff Gorell, former deputy mayor for public safety, and Nina Hachigian, formerly deputy mayor for international affairs.

One senior Garcetti official who received the letter but declined to be named said several top staffers were interviewing or had jobs lined up and didn’t expect to stay. This person added that the invitation from Bass was a relief for lower-level officials.

“It was reassuring for mid-level or junior staff,“ the official said. “They would be smart to do it. There’s a lot of institutional knowledge and it’s a very short transition period.”

Bass, who officially declared victory a little less than two weeks ago, has been relatively reticent about her transition plans. Bass campaign manager Jenny Delwood has been one of the point people on the transition effort, along with campaign policy director Joey Freeman, according to several people with knowledge of the situation. But the mayor-elect has yet to publicly announce any members of her transition team.

Those transition team announcements will come this week and a public jobs portal will also be released shortly, according to Seidl.

Garcetti and former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa both took office prior to a shift in the city's election calendar, with their elections held in late May before taking office on July 1.

Garcetti publicly announced Llewellyn as his transition director about 10 days after being elected and about a month before taking office in 2013. He eschewed a high-profile transition committee in favor of working with Llewellyn and a small team of trusted volunteers, gathering around town for a “back-to-basics” listening tour.

Eight years before, Villaraigosa took a very different tack. Nine days after declaring victory in 2005, he announced an 81-member transition team stacked with local power brokers to build his new administration.

But Villaraigosa's predecessor, Mayor James K. Hahn, faced a similarly tight turnaround in 2001 — he took office less than a month after being elected, thanks to a June election schedule that year. Hahn named his transition director and incoming chief of staff in the days immediately following his election.

Bass has repeatedly said she will declare a state of emergency on homelessness on her first day in office and previously identified large homeless encampments as her initial focus.

Since declaring victory, Bass has also been meeting with members of the City Council "to make sure that the city is ready to move on Day 1 on her top priorities of moving unhoused Angelenos inside immediately and making Los Angeles safer and more affordable," Seidl said.

Times staff writers James Rainey and Dakota Smith contributed to this report.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Karen Bass vows to ‘solve homelessness’ and to be an agent of change as first female mayor of Los Angeles

CNN

Los Angeles Mayor-elect Karen Bass promised to solve the city’s homelessness crisis in her first address after winning election as the first woman to lead the nation’s second-largest city.

In a speech Thursday at the historic Wilshire Ebell Theatre, the Democratic congresswoman called on voters from across the city to become part of the solution as she embarks on an effort to try to house more than 40,000 people who are living on the streets. Touching on her own roots as a coalition builder, she sent a warning shot to wealthier neighborhoods that have resisted plans to build affordable housing in their areas: “You’re not going to be able to house 40,000 people in only the low-income areas – that is just not the case.”

“The crisis we face affects us all and all of us must be part of the solution,” Bass said. “Being a coalition builder is not coming together to sing Kumbaya. … Being a coalition builder is about marshalling all of the resources, all of the skills, the knowledge, the talent of this city.”

“The people of Los Angeles have sent a clear message. It’s time for change, and it’s time for urgency,” Bass continued. “Many Angelenos do not feel safe in their neighborhoods, and families are being priced out of their communities. This must change. … To the people of Los Angeles, my message is we are going to solve homelessness. We are going to prevent and respond urgently to crime, and Los Angeles will no longer be unaffordable for working families.”

Bass is embarking on those enormous tasks after defeating real estate magnate Rick Caruso, CNN projects, in a race in which he spent more than $104 million – outspending his opponent by more than 11-to-1.

She put together a winning coalition of voters by building on the two constituencies that have powered her earlier wins in her Los Angeles-area congressional district – Black voters and White progressives from the city’s west side – and expanding on that base as she promised to bring together LA’s diverse communities, while dismissing Caruso’s broadsides against longtime politicians who he said had failed to solve the city’s most pressing problems.

Caruso, a former Republican-turned-independent who became a Democrat before announcing his run in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, had hoped to increase turnout among independents, moderates and Latinos – putting more than $10 million into Spanish-language media to drive his message that an outsider would be best suited to tackle voters’ concerns about crime, homelessness and corruption at City Hall. Tens of thousands of ballots are still being counted in Los Angeles County, but Bass was able to build an insurmountable lead – in part by deploying an army of volunteers to knock on doors across the city.

Bass, who will succeed term-limited Mayor Eric Garcetti, will take charge of the city’s government at a moment of upheaval at City Hall. A recently leaked audio recording revealed several city councilmembers making openly racist remarks behind closed doors in a 2021 meeting in which they discussed their frustration with maps proposed by the city’s redistricting commission.

The leaked audio, which was posted anonymously on Reddit and obtained by the Los Angeles Times, burst into public view in early October after the newspaper detailed the racist remarks in an October 9 story – sparking widespread calls for the councilmembers involved to resign. The audio was from a year-old conversation between then-City Council President Nury Martinez, Councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León and then-Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera.

In an October 10 tweet, Bass said that Los Angeles “must move in a new direction and that is not possible unless the four individuals caught on that tape resign from their offices immediately.” (Bass, who had been endorsed by Martinez, was criticized for not calling for their resignations immediately after the details emerged in the October 9 LA Times story). Martinez at first stepped down as Council president. Ultimately, she and Herrera both resigned. Cedillo and de León apologized for their roles in the conversation but resisted calls to step down.

“I will not accept corruption or cronyism,” Bass said on Thursday.

Bass will assume the new office on December 12 – a notably quick transition. When she takes office, the four largest cities in the US will all have Black mayors – that includes Eric Adams of New York City, Lori Lightfoot of Chicago and Sylvester Turner of Houston.

Bass noted Thursday that one of her first acts as mayor will be to declare a state of emergency on homelessness and to identify “very specific areas where we will get people housed.” Both Bass and Caruso had said they would declare a state of emergency on homelessness – though critics have said it will largely be a symbolic move. Bass said Thursday she would outline her plans in more detail when she assumes office in December.

The six-term congresswoman had emphasized the depth of her policy experience in her campaign after winning accolades from colleagues on both sides of the aisle for her work on areas such as criminal justice and prison reform, foster care and child welfare. She began her career as a physician assistant in the emergency room in Los Angeles County, and later sought to bring together Black and Latino community organizers in South LA in the early 1990s to address the root causes of crime and the crack epidemic through the nonprofit she co-founded, Community Coalition.

In 2004, she was elected to the California state Assembly, where she made history some four years later as the first Black woman to serve as speaker of a state. Following the 2008 financial crisis, her work with other state legislative leaders to make tough budget decisions earned her a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2010.

During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden vetted Bass, the then-chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, to be his running mate in 2020 while she was leading negotiations on legislation to create greater police accountability following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

On Thursday, she said she welcomed Caruso voters “in every aspect of my administration” and said she hoped to be able to collaborate with her former opponent as she begins her new role.

When asked whether she would still consider Caruso a friend after their fierce contest – given that he spent more than $100 million, much of it his own money, to defeat her – she said she viewed campaigns “like an athletic competition. You fight with everything that you have. But when the when the game is over, it’s over.”

In Ailing LA, Mayor-Elect Karen Bass Promises Unity, Change

Los Angeles Mayor-elect Karen Bass speaks at a news conference in Los Angeles, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022. Bass defeated developer Rick Caruso to become the next mayor of Los Angeles on Wednesday, making her the first Black woman to hold the post as City Hall contends with an out-of-control homeless crisis, rising crime rates and multiple scandals that have shaken trust in government. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

BY MICHAEL R. BLOOD

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Karen Bass, the first Black woman elected Los Angeles mayor, sketched her vision Thursday to reform the scandal-plagued City Hall and solve an out-of-control homeless crisis.

A day after her historic victory over billionaire developer Rick Caruso, Bass appeared before cheering supporters in the sun-soaked courtyard at the headquarters of a women’s philanthropic group, where she let slip a bit of relief the contest was over.

“That was a tough campaign,” said Bass, a Democratic congresswoman.

She takes office Dec. 12 as the City Council faces a racism scandal that led to the resignation of its former president and calls for the resignation of two more members. More than 40,000 people are homeless, and there is widespread anxiety over crime that has ranged from daytime robberies on city sidewalks to smash-and-grab thefts at luxury stores.

Trash-strewn homeless encampments and rusty RVs can be found in virtually every neighborhood in the nation’s second-largest city.

Flashing a beaming smile, Bass struck a tone of unity, with a multi-ethnic crowd of staffers and supporters arrayed behind her that broke into chants of “Karen! Karen!”

“No matter who you voted for, no matter who you are or where you live, I will be a mayor for you,” she said, saying she was eager to win the trust of those who supported her rival, Caruso.

“The crisis we face affects us all, and all of us must be part of the solution,” she added.

In a seven-minute speech long on optimism and light on specifics, Bass echoed her main themes from the campaign — getting homeless people off the streets and into shelters, reversing spiking crime rates and developing housing that working-class families can afford.

She describes herself as a coalition builder who will mobilize “all of the resources, all of the skills, the knowledge, the talent of the city.”

She will replace beleaguered Democrat Eric Garcetti, who will conclude two bumpy terms with his nomination to become U.S. ambassador to India stalled in the Senate — apparently over sexual misconduct allegations against a former top Garcetti adviser.

Bass — a former state Assembly speaker who was on President Joe Biden’s short list for vice president — overcame more than $100 million in spending by Caruso’s campaign while arguing she was the better pick to heal a troubled city of nearly 4 million.

Caruso, a former Republican who became a Democrat shortly before entering the race, had represented a turn to the political right. He argued that Bass and other longtime politicians were responsible for leading the city into multiple crises.

“It’s time for change, and it’s time for urgency,” she said.

“We’re going to solve homelessness. We’re going to prevent and respond urgently to crime. And Los Angeles will no longer be unaffordable for working families,” she said.

Karen Bass Victory In Los Angeles Mayor’s Race Is A Referendum On Division

BY JULIO ESPERIAS

With heightened attention on the Los Angeles mayoral race, Karen Bass’ victory should be viewed as a referendum against the sort of divisive politics revealed in the infamous leaked audio recording.

The Los Angeles mayoral race this year contrasted two different viewpoints and, most importantly, two different approaches on what the future of LA should be.

It garnered national attention compared to past elections, and the angst across the city was palpable as Election Day loomed. Angelenos were exposed to a barrage of political ads on TV, social media – everywhere you can imagine. They were dominated by candidate Rick Caruso, a wealthy real estate developer who tried to buy his way into City Hall, spending $100 million of his own money.

That’s right – $100 million to run for LA mayor. And he failed. Congresswoman Karen Bass was declared the winner on Wednesday.

Those funds could have been used for important causes like homelessness. Instead, voters kept hearing promises from Caruso to expand the police department and take a tough-on-crime approach to governing. This brought back unsavory memories to many in LA. As a native Californian born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, I have seen firsthand the importance of local elections and the impact that law-and-order politics have on Black and brown communities.

For decades, people of color have been marginalized through discriminatory policies and divisive politics. I lived through the crack-cocaine epidemic that decimated communities in South Los Angeles. I lived through the 1980s and ‘90s and witnessed how the war on drugs, compounded by the rhetoric of the Reagan and Bush administrations, legitimized the militarization of the LAPD and mass incarceration of Black and Latino youth.

Voters wisely rejected Caruso’s platform and embraced a coalition-builder in Bass, who has spent her career representing Southern California in the state Legislature and Congress. For years, she has organized the community to push for civil rights, and been an architect of multiracial unity in South LA at the grassroots level.

After founding Community Coalition, a Black and brown South LA organization, she worked with the neighborhoods to empower residents to challenge the status quo and ensure that overlooked communities were given the resources and respect they deserved.

The politics of race relations in Los Angeles were exacerbated by the infamous leaked audio recording that exposed how city council and local labor leaders colluded for power. They cynically tried to pit Black and brown communities against each other.

But rather than divide the city, these recordings galvanized and united the communities. The views of these so-called leaders do not represent the values of Angelenos, and actually expanded efforts to establish solidarity among racial and ethnic groups. Voters capitalized on the moment and sought real commitments on the campaign trail to serve the needs of our most marginalized people.

Coalition-building took center stage with the heightened attention on Los Angeles politics. County supervisors put Measure A on the ballot to create much-needed accountability for the Sheriff’s Office, and voters were overwhelmingly in favor. To address the long-running and deepening homelessness crisis, a proposed tax on expensive property sales to help build affordable housing is also leading.

Building togetherness is a core part of Los Angeles history. The only way the city makes progress is when multiracial coalitions work together – just look at the coalitions built by former mayors Tom Bradley and Antonio Villaraigosa. They were successful in organizing and building support from every racial and ethnic group.

The outcome of this year’s election will reignite the people’s movement in Los Angeles. With Bass as mayor-elect and important ballot measures poised to pass, this election was a mandate of the people and a referendum on division.

READ ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

Karen Bass Becomes First Woman Elected Los Angeles Mayor

Mayor-Elect Karen Bass

BY REIS THEBAULT

LOS ANGELES (THE WASHINGTON POST) — U.S. Rep. Karen Bass was elected the next mayor of Los Angeles on Wednesday, taking the reins in the nation’s second-largest city during an intense period of soul-searching as it reels from a racism scandal and seeks fresh answers to seemingly intractable problems like homelessness and corruption.

The Democratic congresswoman prevailed over billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso to become the first woman elected to lead the city and just its second Black mayor. The race, Los Angeles’s most expensive contest ever, remained close until the final days of a week-long count, when Bass pulled decisively ahead and never lost her advantage. As of Wednesday evening, Bass held an insurmountable lead of just over six percentage points, and the Associated Press projected her the winner.

In Los Angeles, a liberal city that hasn’t elected a Republican mayor in more than two decades, Bass pitched herself as the progressive choice. But she also carried the imprimatur of the party establishment, winning endorsements from Democratic heavyweights like former president Barack Obama, President Biden and Vice President Harris. At a rally on the eve of the election, Harris, a fellow Californian, praised Bass for “fighting for the people whose voices aren’t in the room but must be present.”

Nonetheless, Bass faced a formidable challenge from Caruso, who sank $100 million of his own money into the race and looked to seize on Angelenos’ growing frustration with an uptick in violent crime.

“She was being outspent 10-to-1, but her reputation, connections, experience and base of support turned out to be too much for him to overcome — he would’ve beaten anyone but Karen Bass,” said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University in Los Angeles. “Her coalition held against what could have been seen as an overwhelming challenge, and not to mention a lot of unhappiness locally about the state of the city.”

Until recently, Caruso was a registered Republican, and his election would have represented a rightward lurch for the city. He promised to swell the city’s police force to record levels and build temporary housing to shelter 30,000 homeless people in his first 300 days in office. Bass has called Caruso’s proposal unrealistic and pledged to house about 17,000 people in her first year.

While some of his new party’s biggest names spurned him, Caruso received several splashy celebrity endorsements in a city of stars, including from Snoop Dogg, Kim Kardashian and Katy Perry.

Perry, who was born in Santa Barbara, shared a selfie of her electronic ballot cast for Caruso, saying she was voting for him “for a myriad of reasons (see the news) but in particular because Los Angeles is a hot mess atm.”

On that score, at least, both candidates agreed.

The city’s politics have been beset by scandal for years, but the latest made international headlines and shook the foundation of Los Angeles’s self-ascribed identity as the model multiethnic metropolis. Last month, a leaked recording emerged capturing four of the city’s most powerful Latino leaders disparaging colleagues and flinging racist remarks about a Black child, indigenous immigrants and Jewish residents.

The tape led to the resignation of City Council President Nury Martinez and Ron Herrera, head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, a local political powerhouse. The other two participants, council members Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo, have so far refused to step down. Cedillo was set to leave office at the end of the year, while de León, who has long held grander political aspirations, apologized for his role but said he intends to stay on over objections from top Democrats in California and beyond.

Even the White House, which rarely involves itself in such a local political fracas, weighed in, calling for everyone captured on the recording to resign, just one day ahead of Biden’s visit to Southern California, where he appeared with Bass in support of her candidacy.

In the last debate of the campaign, and the only one that followed the recording's release, Bass and Caruso agreed that council members had to go, but argued over who was better positioned to unite the city in the messy aftermath.

“Those officials must resign, but that’s not enough,” Bass said. “We need a new direction in L.A. and new leadership that will make sure we reject the politics of divide and conquer.”

Caruso cast the leaked conversation as another example of shady political dealing in the city — the four leaders were discussing how to draw new council district lines in order to boost Latino representation, largely to the detriment of Black voters.

“They went into a backroom to carve up the city for their own special interests, for themselves,” Caruso said during the debate. “The system is broken, and it’s full of corruption.”

Both said the city needs an independent redistricting commission.

Bass has for years worked with some of the figures implicated in the tape and she pointed to the track record of her nonprofit organization, the Community Coalition, which seeks to unite people across racial and ethnic lines, as a model for healing in the city. The group, known as “CoCo,” was mentioned several times on the recording as a derisive shorthand for Black political interests.

But even before the recording surfaced, Los Angeles was battling a staggering streak of scandals: A former city council member sentenced to more than a year in federal prison for obstructing a corruption investigation; another former member indicted in the same probe; and a third ex-council member charged in a separate corruption scheme.

And the political future of the outgoing mayor, Eric Garcetti, is in limbo, with his nomination to become U.S. ambassador to India still stalled in the Senate over questions about whether he was aware of sexual abuse allegations made against one of his former top advisers.

Along with the pall cast by these successive crises, Bass will likely find herself contending with a remade city council, which appears poised to welcome at least two new members aligned with the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America when the next term begins.

Activist Eunisses Hernandez, who defeated Cedillo in the primary, and labor organizer Hugo Soto-Martinez, who had a double-digit lead over incumbent Mitch O’Farrell as of Wednesday, would join sitting progressive members Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Nithya Raman, forming a new bloc ideologically to the left of the new mayor.

The 15-person body could become more fractious than ever as the newly powerful left flank weighs in on issues such as a recent ban on homeless encampments near schools: The council passed that measure in August over objections from activists and dissenting votes from its most liberal members. Harris-Dawson denounced the move, which outlaws encampments within 500 feet of schools and day-care centers, as inhumane. Bass supported the restrictions.

The mayor-elect, before her time in Congress, served as speaker of the California Assembly and was tasked with keeping members in line as the state navigated a brutal budget shortfall during the Great Recession — an experience cutting deals across political ideologies that may inform the next four years.

“If anyone has the capacity to bring contending parties together, it’s Bass,” said Cal State’s Sonenshein. “Then the question is, can that be transformed into leadership in this executive position?”

That leadership will be especially important in addressing the homelessness crisis, he added, which “has become the symbol of whether city hall and government in general in L.A. can function well.”

Bass’s election follows results from the Los Angeles County sheriff’s race, the area’s other marquee contest this year, which saw a retired police chief from Long Beach, Robert Luna, defeat the incumbent, Alex Villanueva. The ousted sheriff’s four years in office were defined by his brash leadership style and a series of controversies, including clashes with local leaders and a law enforcement oversight board. His critics say he has left the country’s largest sheriff’s department in shambles.

Luna and Bass, two of the highest-profile elected officials in Southern California, will take charge of their respective offices at a time when residents of Los Angeles — the city and county — are fed up with their leaders. Their jobs are different, but they will share at least one goal: rebuilding the public’s trust.