By JOSE HERRERA
City News Service
LOS ANGELES (CNS) – Mayor Karen Bass today touted progress in the dual housing and homelessness crises in the city and the record pace of rebuilding fire-devastated Pacific Palisades, but she also announced in her State of the City Address that she’s proposing municipal employee layoffs to help eliminate a nearly $1 billion budget deficit.
“My proposed budget, unfortunately, includes layoffs, which is a decision of absolute last resort,” Bass said during her speech at City Hall.
“So let me assure you, our hard-working public servants, that I will never stop fighting for you.”
Bass noted that she will be in Sacramento later this week alongside City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto to lobby state legislators on a potential bill intended to cap damages paid out by municipalities. Additionally, city officials are waiting on an answer from Gov. Gavin Newsom about a $2 billion funding request to help with budget strains while mitigating city worker layoffs and fire recovery costs.
According to the mayor, the city is taking steps to make L.A. run more efficiently by consolidating departments and restoring the reserve fund, which has been depleted due to an increase in liability payouts.
She said streamlining city services is necessary to make government more efficient. For example, she said upgrades or maintenance to a single street can involve multiple departments, resulting in work being delayed.
“This is a broken system, and to turn L.A. around, we have to fix this,” Bass added.
Bass spoke on the recovery effort underway in the Pacific Palisades, which was significantly destroyed by the Palisades Fire on Jan. 7. Multiple fires broke out in the city of L.A., as well as the Eaton Fire in Altadena, an unincorporated area of the county of L.A. The mayor once again stated that recovery is on track to be the fastest in California history.
“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,” Bass said.
The mayor discussed three new initiatives to help Palisades residents build faster. Bass said the city will establish a self-certification program to reduce redundancy in the permitting process; use AI technology for plan check reviews; and she also called on the City Council to pass an ordinance that would waive all plan check and permit fees so Angelenos can rebuild in the Palisades.
She also used her speech to highlight what she called the city’s success in public safety, noting that overall crime declined in 2024. Bass reported that the Los Angeles Police Department reached a four-year high in job applications, but she said the hiring process needs to be streamlined to get more officers on the streets.
The mayor emphasized that she will continue her signature program, Inside Safe, to address encampments and bring unhoused people inside into temporary housing.
City officials have touted the results of the 2024 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, which noted there was a reduction in homelessness for the first time in six years. There was a 10% reduction in street homelessness in the city of L.A., as well as a 38% reduction in encampments.
She noted the county’s recent decision to withdraw funding from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, saying she was concerned the move could undue recent successes.
“Moving forward, we must make sure we have a comprehensive and regional approach.”
The county Board of Supervisors advanced a proposal to create its own department to manage regional homeless services, effectively defunding LAHSA — a joint city-county agency criticized for inefficiency, waste and lack of transparency. LAHSA officials said the agency grew rapidly in recent years and has since taken steps to address those issues.
The new county agency is expected to be in place by Jan. 1, with all funding pulled from LAHSA and transferred to the new department by July 1, 2026.
Bass focused on economic development in the city, with investments in jobs, housing and opportunities. But she noted that tariffs and trade wars can make the local economy worse.
“But we are fighting here in L.A. to create better-paying jobs. And make no mistake — we will protect every Angeleno, no matter where you are from, no matter when you arrived in L.A. … because we know how much immigrants contribute to our city in so many ways,” Bass said.
In the end, the mayor had a single message for city workers and Angelenos: Let’s work together and turn Los Angeles around.
“The state of our city is this — homelessness is down, crime is down. These are tough, tough challenges, and they show that we can do so much more,” Bass said during her speech at City Hall. “We need a fundamental overhaul of city government to deliver the clean, safe, healthy and orderly neighborhoods that Angelenos deserve in the place they call home — and to reverse decades of failure on homelessness.”
In response to the mayor’s speech, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, in an email to CNS, said Bass refuses to take responsibility for the failures of her administration.
“The lack of preparation ahead of the January fires and the failures of communication between the LADWP and the fire department about water resources were written off as ‘a natural disaster,”’ the association said.
“The reckless overspending, including agreeing to unaffordable multi-year labor contracts for the civilian workforce, has contributed to a projected $1 billion budget deficit that now makes layoffs necessary, and the mayor is appealing to L.A. residents to volunteer their time on one Saturday a month to clean up the city. This is just a sad failure of governance.”
The association criticized Bass’ homelessness policies, noting that her real record includes the “financial mismanagement and lack of accountability for contracts and spending that was identified by a court-ordered audit.”
On housing, the association argued Bass has failed to acknowledge or understand the challenges faced by rental housing providers, calling the city’s regulations “one-sided” and “extremely punitive and hostile” to property owners.
“Missing from the speech was any plan to encourage business growth and job creation in Los Angeles. Selective assistance, such as the film/TV credit and LAX contract set-asides for first-time prime contractors, are no substitute for addressing the overall factors that drive businesses out of Los Angeles, including high taxes, rising utility costs and excessively burdensome regulations,” the association said.