Commentary: From the scene of South L.A.'s erupting sidewalks, 5 questions for Bass and Raman

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OK, I’ll admit it.I’m going to miss Spencer Pratt.I had never heard of the former reality TV star before he said God wanted him to be mayor of Los Angeles.

And now that he’s out of the race, he’s still serving up lazy fastballs down the middle of the plate, calling the top two vote-getters — Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman — dummies and morons.Quick question for Pratt: If you’re on record claiming that 9/11 was an inside job and the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax, and you run for office in a deep blue city with President Trump’s backing but not much of a plan or even a clue as to what a mayor can or can’t do, should you be calling other people morons?And yet the pouting Pratt pulled more than 200,000 votes.So sore loser or not, he tapped into a lack of faith in elected officials and simmering frustration with City Hall, which happen to be the essence of today’s column.I have five questions for Bass and Raman.

They’re somewhat inter-related and have to do with matters I hear about regularly from readers:Infrastructure (sidewalks, streets, etc).Homelessness (billions of dollars spent, and a long way to go).Parks (L.A.’s national ranking for quality and accessibility just dropped again).Trash and blight (no explanation needed, right?).And focus.(Do the candidates have a clear set of goals and a plan for achieving them?)We’ve got five months to visit and revisit these topics, and today I’m going to focus on the first, so here we go.A few days ago, I met with Earl Ofari Hutchinson of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable.

Hutchinson is a longtime community activist and commentator, and he had just launched a torpedo in the direction of City Hall.“There are hundreds of busted, dangerous sidewalks in South L A that have gone unrepaired for years,” he wrote to his network of followers.“They cause hundreds of injuries, and have resulte...

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Publisher: Los Angeles Times

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