LOS ANGELES, California — Mayor Karen Bass tried to strike an upbeat tone as she delivered the bad news Monday in her “State of the City” speech, cutting 400 civilian jobs in the L.A. Police Department next year.
The Los Angeles Times reported:
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass released a proposed budget on Monday that would eliminate a nearly $1 billion financial gap by cutting more than 2,700 city positions — about 1,650 of them through layoffs.
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The $14 billion spending plan, which covers the 2025-26 fiscal year, would provide funding for scores of new hires at the fire department, three months after the Palisades fire destroyed thousands of homes and killed 12 people.
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At the Los Angeles Police Department, more than 400 workers would be targeted for layoffs, all of them civilians, according to figures prepared by city budget officials. The number of police officers would continue on its gradual downward trajectory, with new hires failing to keep pace with attrition.
Bass also claimed that the process of recovery and building after the Palisades Fire was the fastest in the history of the state:
Today, in reporting on the State of our City, I report to Los Angeles that the recovery in the Palisades is on track to be the fastest in California history. We’re not just moving fast to move fast. We know that the faster we can rebuild, the faster we can heal. We still have a long way to go, and for those who have lost a home, each and every day is a day too long. We want to be fast, we want to be safe and we want to be resilient.
We have issued permits to rebuild twice as fast as after the Camp and Woolsey fires, we restored water nearly a year and a half faster than after the Camp Fire, and we restored power in just two months. Los Angeles, I assure you, rebuilding is underway.
Many residents, frustrated by delays in debris removal, building permits, and insurance company payouts, would disagree.
Bass said the city would start using AI technology to speed up the process of approving building permits, and called on the City Council “to pass an ordinance to waive all plan check and permit fees so that Angelenos can get home.”
However, skeptical residents are running out of time. And many refuse to forget that she was out of the country when the fires broke out in January, breaking a campaign promise to refuse international travel.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
