Leadership and criticism always go hand in hand. This is a truism that obtains whether leadership is popularly elected, appointed or simply seized. As the saying goes, someone is always a critic. Public criticism — particularly nit-picking criticism — is always easy. It’s doing something effective within and without the emergency that counts.
In the recent great L.A. wild fire disaster — that really was more Southern California than just L.A — pundits and critics looking for someone to fault pounced quickly onto the bright idea of attacking Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and her administration, for being responsible for allowing the fires to get out of control. The wild fires devastated several very, very well-to-do communities. When screechers lock onto a target, the truth or accuracy of their venom is rarely held in check by mere facts.
Okay, so what’s the essence of the “charges” against the good mayor? Calling her “an irresponsible and incompetent affirmative action (and DEI hire) mayor who was galavanting around Africa, partying on the taxpayer’s dime when this once-in-a-generation fire broke out,” said critics like Elon Musk (who’s really feeling his Cheerios right now). Also, defeated mayoral candidate Rick Caruso, said that Mayor Bass slashed the Los Angeles Fire Department’s (LAFD) share of the city budget by over $23 million, which created a situation that supposedly caused fire hydrants to run dry and starved brave L.A. firefighters of the resources they needed to battle what was essentially a once-in-a-generation fire. The claim was that the Bass administration, because it is incompetent, made budgetary decisions that left the L.A. fire department and associated fire fighters unprepared to do battle with this grand emergency. Therefore, the criticism goes, because of poor leadership, it is the Bass administration that is responsible for the loss of over 1,000 homes and neighborhoods in the L.A. area last week, and the fear and stress which accompanied the fires.
Combating this type of over-the-top blarney with facts should not be necessary, since a blind man could see through this MAGA-based haze of unhinged, tendentious nonsense, but here’s just a little factual and relevant information.
Bass did not slash the Los Angeles Fire Department’s share of the city budget by $23 million, a cut claimed to have caused fire hydrants to run dry in the areas assaulted by the fire, and brave firefighters not to be supplied with the resources they needed to successfully battle what was a once-in-a-lifetime firebomb that exploded in the L.A. hills. In fact, the city’s fire budget that the mayor approved increased more than $50 million compared to the last budget cycle, and beyond that even the police department got its regular lion’s share of the municipal budget.
Moreover, the critics, including Mr. Trump, who usually makes up his own “facts” anyway, falsely claimed, without any evidence, that because of the Bass administration in L.A., “There was no water in the fire hydrants to fight the flames!” said Trump. A real expert, however, from the Pacific Institute, a California research organization that focuses on water research, told national media that, “the real issue in L.A. and other urban areas is that urban water systems these days are not built or designed to fight massive, urban wildfires”. What happened in L.A. was less a function of bad government planning than it was simply the limits of modern civilization. In fact, in a similar situation with the absence of rain, very dry brush , and recurruing Santa Ana winds can — and will — explode Southern California again with this type of scenario, no matter who’s in charge of local or state government.
Usually, I’ve been in Southern California for over 30 years, and I’ve never seen it not rain during this period, it always rains between Christmas and the first week in January. The rain provides the moisture necessary to save the hills once the wind inevitably comes barreling in. The real test for the Bass administration will be how prepared Los Angeles gets for the upcoming 2028.
International Olympics, given how successful and profitable those games were the last time L.A. hosted them in 1984. Karen Bass has thus far been a very good mayoral steward for Los Angeles, a leader through consensus-building, and we are all the better for it. The L.A. current area fires, this time, have been truly devastating, but Mayor Bass is not to blame for that tragedy nor for how well we responded.
Donald Trump spread an alert through a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, claiming there was “NO WATER IN THE FIRE HYDRANTS.” His right-wing minions took the hint and started dumping on Bass.
But Peter Gleick, co-founder of the Pacific Institute, a California research organization that focuses on water, told the New York Times not to get it twisted. “The real issue is that urban water systems are not built or designed to fight massive, urban wildfires,” he said.
Bass’s biggest sin, though? Being in Africa when the fire erupted. Reporters have taunted her by asking questions such as, “How was your taxpayer-funded trip to Africa?”
Even as dangerous flames began whipping through the air Tuesday night, razing homes and claiming lives, Rick Caruso — a billionaire real-estate developer and erstwhile Democrat who ran against Bass as a Republican in the 2022 Los Angeles mayoral race — was busy trashing the woman who defeated him. He phoned into Fox 11 Los Angeles’s live television coverage and complained that Bass was an absentee mayor “and we’ve got a city that’s burning.”
Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.
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