“It wasn’t me.”
That’s Karen Bass’ unofficial motto as she runs for reelection this November.
In a radio interview published this week, Mayor Karen Bass told Angelenos that she’s not responsible for the city’s dilapidated streets.
After all, she said, city infrastructure has crumbled for decades –– decades! –– and “those sidewalks did not break because I’m mayor.”
And then: “I promise I didn’t break those sidewalks.”
A smart aleck might say it’s good to know the mayor’s not a sidewalk vandal. And Bass did eventually hear herself talk and add, “The potholes are my responsibility to fill them up.”
But what does it say about Bass that her first instinct was to blame her predecessors? Her second was to quip that it’s not “because I’m mayor”? And her third was to say, literally, “I didn’t do it”?
This is the top elected official of the second-largest city in America.
She should be serious, effective and accountable.
Instead, she’s admitting failure, laughing it off, and deflecting blame.
Bass has ducked accountability on a range of issues, from public safety to the Palisades Fire to LA’s homelessness crisis.
This time it’s street repair –– which entails far more than just filling potholes.
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Last year, under Bass’ watch, LA steered away from full street repaving in favor of patchwork fixes.
This approach costs less in the short-term, and can dodge pricey ADA-required curb ramps. But the half-measures can rack up huge costs over time as the patches erode, broader deterioration sets in, and the pavement keeps (yes) crumbling.
The reality is, Bass and far-left City Council members have spent years prioritizing ideological fancies over city basics like street repair. That’s a record they own.
While Angelenos deserve better, they won’t get it from Bass’ opponent on Nov. 3.
Nithya Raman is a radical who’s been unproductive in her nearly six years on the council. She spews word salads, can’t defend her socialist views, and delivered the worst debating performance in recent memory from someone not named Joe Biden.
And who can forget Raman’s own take on infrastructure “fixes”? Last month, she gloated over a newly painted crosswalk in her district –– bright yellow paint slapped over cracked and dilapidated pavement. What a joke.
In a similar vein, Bass recently celebrated the filling of a pothole.
Oh, how standards in LA have slipped. This is Third World-level stuff in one of America’s grandest cities.
Both candidates for mayor disclaim responsibility for the mess, of course, while boasting of pathetic “fixes” that do almost nothing to address the real problems.
“It wasn’t me,” indeed.
The post How Karen Bass, Nithya Raman have driven LA off the road appeared first on New York Post.
