THE HUTCHINSON REPORT: There’s tough sledding ahead for L.A.’s next mayor

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Contributing Columnist

It’s mindboggling. One month away from the crucial primary election for Los Angeles mayor and more than half of Los Angeles residents say they have no firm pick yet in the race.

Equally stunning, a huge percentage of residents know little to nothing about the horde of candidates running to unseat L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.

It makes one wonder just how many of them have bothered to watch the debates the candidates have had. And how many have taken any time to scrutinize their positions on such vital issues as everything from the fire dangers to the homeless debacle.

Then there’s this troubling fact. In polls, most residents give Bass a failing grade as mayor. None of this bodes well for the city, and even more foreboding for the candidate who eventually comes out on top.

In truth, there are only three candidates that have any shot at the top spot. Bass, of course, former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, and Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nithya Raman,

Since the start of the mayor’s race, I have received a steady stream of online comments from readers. With only a slight variation, their message is almost universally the same.

The city is listing badly. City Hall is dysfunctional. Homelessness, public safety, fiscal waste and mismanagement, and a bloated, ultimately non-sustainable budget are chronic problems that may continue to pile up. 

Though the mayoral contenders only passingly mention Bass by name as the culprit in this alleged badly adrift L.A., it takes no imagination to know whom they target for the city’s woes.

The crucial issue, as always, will be which candidate can actually deliver on the deluge of promises that they are making to solve the city’s mountainous problems. Let’s walk through the checklist. 

Homelessness is the runaway number one crisis issue. The city has spent tens of millions, tossed up a few encampments and makeshift housing here and there, and repeatedly demanded taxpayers cough up millions on the pledge that their dollars will be used to end homelessness. Yet many of L.A. streets, parks, freeway sides and underpasses, still look Dystopian.

The prime answer is massive expansion of affordable housing followed by an equally massive investment in drug and alcohol counseling, job finding and placement, skills training and retraining, child care, nutrition and the ongoing monitoring of service programs to make a lasting dent in the problem.

That is a long, hard, uphill process. There are no quick fixes. The occupant of the mayor’s office at City Hall must understand that.

The homeless crisis does not exist in a vacuum. It has a nefarious twin that is virtually unchecked. High rents make housing and apartment affordability in L.A. a bad joke and swells the homeless numbers.

The mayoral winner must craft and push the City Council to enact a solid land-use plan to rein in upscale development. That means taking checkbook politics out of the development process while ensuring the building and subsidizing of more affordable housing.

Next is getting a handle on L.A.’s rampant sprawl that has turned freeways and streets into stalled parking lots for hours on end. The answer is the continued expansion of light transit, busways, traffic signal coordination and synchronization, traffic flow monitors at major thoroughfares and carpooling incentives.

Related to this is the issue of climate change and the environmental damage that poses grave peril to the city. The challenge is in greening the city, cooling the city, cleaning the air, providing clean and safe drinking water, reducing the massive amounts of carbon and fossil fuels that unchecked emissions, drilling and manufacturing and refining dump into the air and water. That requires a full-blown implementation of a green agenda, with funding, goals, and timetables for getting measured results.

Then there is the always thorny issue of misconduct by Los Angeles police officers. How a mayor manages it is perennially the issue that mayors walk a tightrope on.

The mayoral winner must understand that there are legions of voters who are fed up with the malaise, the fog of government and the self-serving that has often enveloped the mayor’s office. The taint of corruption, cronyism, manipulation, scheming, and secrecy has been an ugly trademark of the City Council. That must end. And the mayoral winner must not trust the City Council to reform itself.

That means clamping down on special interest deal-making in and outside City Hall, trimming a bloated city bureaucracy and sneaky tax increases that smack of old-fashioned political pork barreling.

Put bluntly, there must be a “not for sale” sign on City Hall. A major key to ensuring the smooth, effective, resident-friendly operation of city government is tough, hard monitoring, oversight and review, and accountability of city agencies.

That starts with keeping a tight rein on the people who run those agencies. The mayor’s job is to make the right choices to head those agencies. In the absence of that, city agencies turn into top-heavy bureaucratic wasteful, crony-ridden entities.

The mayoral winner will have to hit the ground running. That requires political smarts, connections, ability and expertise to grapple effectively with L.A.’s colossal woes. There’s not much time left for the crop of wanna-be L.A. mayors to convince L.A. voters that one of them is up to that task.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His forthcoming book is “The Epstein Distraction” (Amazon ebook and Middle Passage Press). He also hosts the weekly news and issues commentary radio show “The Hutchinson Report” Wednesdays at 6 p.m. at ktymgospel.net and Facebook Livestreamed at facebook.com/earl.o.hutchinson.