Karen Bass took a sledgehammer to LA’s budget. She's handed out billions to special interest groups while fighting audits and transparency.

Basic services are failing across the City. Homelessness is back on the rise. Los Angeles is more expensive than ever.

Bass has done enough. Vote her out.

Karen Bass is a reckless spender and Los Angeles is now in its third straight year of budget crisis. She led the charge on contracts that shot a $1 Billion hole in the City budget.¹ Then just a year later, led the charge on expanding the convention center, which will cost Angelenos $5.9 Billion over the next 30 years and never pay for itself according to experts.²

Just months before the Palisades fire, Mayor Karen Bass signed a budget that cut roughly $17 million from the Los Angeles Fire Department.³ The fire chief warned that the cuts were hurting readiness for large emergencies.⁴ Weeks later, the Palisades fire destroyed thousands of homes.

The amount annually paid out in liability claims has more than tripled to $287 Million since she was elected.⁵ Her flagship homeless program Inside Safe has cost the city over $400 Million but almost half of those helped have ended up back on the street.

Meanwhile, Street Services have been cut 25%, roads are filled with potholes and sidewalks are unable to be repaired.⁶ Tens of thousands of streetlights are out. Departments, desperate for funds, are raising fees. Trash and sewer fees have doubled for many.⁷ A streetlight fee increase was shot down by voters.⁸ We are paying more for worse services.

Isn’t LA expensive enough?

Karen Bass hides the truth. Instead of accountability after the Palisades fire, Karen Bass blamed and fired the fire chief⁹ (who sued her for defamation in response).¹⁰ Bass’s office then modified the Palisades Fire After-action Report, trying to lay blame somewhere else. The report was so significantly modified that the original author declined to endorse it.¹¹ The fire department and the mayor's office denied dozens of records requests, and the LA Times has had to sue three times to get answers.¹²

Bass’s phone is set to delete texts after 30 days, far shorter than the brown act requires.¹³ Her press office reportedly used WhatsApp groups that erase themselves every 24 hours.¹⁴

When the Lineage Fire broke out, Bass allowed a consultant for Lineage to stay in a private WhatsApp group for a week after.¹⁵ At the same time, Bass claimed “the air isn’t dangerous” while air regulators measured very unhealthy conditions and residents described nausea, headaches, bloody noses, and asthma.

For years the City Controller has been trying to audit Mayor Bass’s homelessness program Inside Safe, but she has refused.¹⁶ A federal judge found the city misreported its progress, and a court-ordered audit couldn't fully account for $2.3 billion in homelessness funding.¹⁷

Karen Bass doesn’t show up for Los Angeles. In 2021, Bass promised not to travel abroad as mayor.¹⁸ In January 2025, with wind warnings out and the Palisades about to burn, she was in Ghana.¹⁹ In June, a warehouse fire sent toxic smoke across Boyle Heights hours after she left for Chicago.²⁰

She's also absent from the jobs she already has. LAist found she skipped 13 of 21 meetings of LAHSA, the agency running the city's homeless programs, while it burned through billions.²¹ She stepped down days before a House subcommittee hearing on that agency, then told Congress she was "not available."²²

Bass has missed half of her Metro Board votes, and even left during public comment to take phone calls from wealthy homeowners. She’s skipped multiple mayoral debates.²³

Why give Bass four more years of a job she keeps leaving?