Karen Bass wants to save the planet. LA? Never mind

LA mayor Karen Bass leads a city reeling from street disorder, a failed homelessness response, wildfires, depleted police staffing, and a fiscal crisis. 

So of course, now is a good time for a new climate plan. 

Rather than fix her city’s problems, the mayor has chosen to double down on ideology.

Her plan calls for 100 percent renewable energy by 2035, an all-electric city bus fleet by 2028, 120,000 new electric vehicle chargers by 2030, new restrictions on oil and gas extraction, and hundreds of millions in climate-related spending. 

That may sound impressive to activists, environmental groups, and the usual collection of progressive true believers. To everyone else, it should sound like a mayor who has completely lost sight of what city government is supposed to do.

Read the room.

LA is not begging for more ideological posturing from City Hall. It is begging for leadership and for competent government. 

Residents want safer streets, basic order, functioning services, and some sign that the people in charge understand the city is in deep trouble. 

Instead, Bass is acting like the keynote speaker at a left-wing policy summit, rolling out another sweeping agenda built for applause lines rather than results.

This is not an argument against clean air, water recycling, or reasonable conservation. A serious city should care about those things. 

But a serious mayor knows that priorities matter, and so does timing. And there is no prudence behind all of this climate-alarmism spending, which is putatively expensive but yet has virtually no impact on planet-wide human-made carbon emissions.

Bass is governing as if Los Angeles were in a position to indulge progressive wish lists. It is not. The city is struggling to perform the basics. 

Her homelessness strategy has burned through enormous sums while too many people wind up right back on the street. 

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LAPD staffing remains badly depleted. Core services are under pressure. Public confidence is weak. And hanging over all of it is a budget emergency so severe that Bass went to Sacramento, hat in hand, looking for nearly $1 billion in relief, only to come home without the bailout she wanted.

This is not fiscal strain. It is a fiscal crisis.

And while City Hall chases ideological trophies, LA is supposed to be preparing to host the World Cup and then the 2028 Olympic Games. 

Few serious observers look at the city’s condition and see a government operating with the urgency, discipline, and competence those events demand. 

Bass is not governing like the mayor of a city that needs to get its house in order. She is governing like someone who still believes the biggest problem in LA is that government has not been progressive enough.

That is not pragmatism. That is delusion.

Unfortunately for LA, Bass is not even facing serious pressure from a credible alternative. 

One opponent is a city council member somehow running to her left, which hardly seems possible given the moment. 

Another is a Republican running in very liberal Los Angeles, where realistically his ceiling is about 20% of the vote in a best-case scenario.

That brings us to the harsh reality: Karen Bass remains the overwhelming favorite to win another four years as mayor.

And that should alarm anyone who wants Los Angeles governed with even a minimum level of competence. 

The city is visibly fraying. The budget is in crisis. The basics are slipping. And still the answer from City Hall is more ideological theater.

The tragedy is that the city of Los Angeles has so much potential, and yet is another example of how poor decision-making, over and over again, can take something so beautiful and turn it into a tragic story.

Jon Fleischman is a longtime California political strategist. His writing can be found on his Substack at www.SoDoesItMatter.com.