Mayor Bass has rose-colored glasses on, her true record is bleak

Karen Bass painted a rosy picture of LA’s future in her “State of the City” address.But she was short on details, leaving little idea of how LA is to reach that bright horizon.The mayor welcomed upcoming sporting events — not just the NBA All-Star game later this month, the FIFA World Cup later this year, and the Summer Olympics in 2028, but also the Women’s U.S.Open Golf Championship in June.That tournament is to be held at the Riviera Club in Pacific Palisades — surrounded by the empty lots that still haunt that community, a year after the devastating fire.Hopefully, the prospect of hosting an international sporting event in the heart of the burn zone will spur LA’s efforts to pick up the unacceptably slow pace of recovery and rebuilding.Bass lauded the neighbors who helped each other through the disaster, the heroism of the firefighters who rushed into danger, and the generosity of Angelenos to those who had lost everything.In a nod to critics, she thanked displaced residents for their “honesty” — presumably, in telling her just how angry they are at the city’s failure to save their homes.But she offered few new plans to help them rebuild, other than traveling to Sacramento to lobby for more spending — after being rebuffed last year.The mayor also touted progress in fighting homelessness.

Here, she can justly claim credit for small declines in the number of people living on the streets.Yet the problem remains massive, and the city has spent billions of dollars on homelessness for a very modest result. She mentioned “affordability,” claiming that the city has “accelerated” the building of cheaper housing. But she said nothing about the collapse in residential construction, partly due to Measure ULA, the failing so-called “mansion tax” — which she promised last year to repeal, but has not.The mayor devoted a significant portion of her address to attacking federal law enforcement, notably Immigration and Customs Enforcement (...