Speaker 1: Well, the city council might only give you sixty seconds
Speaker 1: to where your grievance is.
Speaker 2: Oh hi, I'd like to go to the first caller
Speaker 2: on the phone.
Speaker 1: Well, if you're lucky, now we're giving you a full
Speaker 1: sixty minutes. It's a KABC News Blitz with Randy Wang
Speaker 1: and our long recap of the day's top local stories.
Speaker 1: Fun your drive home, and unlike the City Council, we're
Speaker 1: the perfect vehicle to actually get your voice heard. The
Speaker 1: JABC News Blitz with Randy Wang starts no, No, No.
Speaker 2: It is the News Blitz with Randy Wang on Talk
Speaker 2: radio seven ninety KABC. This is your daily rundown of
Speaker 2: everything you need to know that's going on in the
Speaker 2: state of California, Southern California, the Bay Area, Sacramento, San Diego,
Speaker 2: in the Central Valley. I compile a list every single
Speaker 2: day of all the stories that I found that you
Speaker 2: might find interesting at Randywangradio dot substack dot com, and
Speaker 2: make sure to check out our YouTube channel Johnny Don't
Speaker 2: dot com for the John Phillips Show and the Accountability Podcast.
Speaker 2: Let's get right into this. You may have heard that
Speaker 2: there was a debate last night in Sherman Oaks between
Speaker 2: La Mayor Karen Bass and her challenger, city Councilwoman Nythia Ramen.
Speaker 2: It was not broadcast anywhere that was easy to find
Speaker 2: because they put it out on Zoom and they ran
Speaker 2: out of participants, so unless you subscribe to the Punjabi
Speaker 2: Live channel, it was really hard to watch this thing
Speaker 2: last night. But the Sherman Oaks Homos Association did put
Speaker 2: it out on their YouTube page this morning. So let's
Speaker 2: listen to it all together. I'm gonna tell you right now,
Speaker 2: I have listened to this entire hour and a half debate,
Speaker 2: which luckily the show's only an hour and we have
Speaker 2: commercial breaks, so I can't play you all of it.
Speaker 2: But my one takeaway is, as I tried to decide
Speaker 2: between voting for Karen Bass or voting for Nithia Rahman,
Speaker 2: because those are my only two choices, you cannot write
Speaker 2: in a candidate for a runoff, as much as you
Speaker 2: want to write in Spencer Pratt, you cannot do that.
Speaker 2: And as I listen to these two candidates blame each
Speaker 2: other for everything, blame the county for everything, the only
Speaker 2: thought running in my head is if I have to
Speaker 2: choose between voting for idiot one an idiot two. The
Speaker 2: vote I really want to make at this point is
Speaker 2: to vote with my feet and move out of the
Speaker 2: city of Los Angeles, because these are my choices and
Speaker 2: I'm not happy about it. Without further ado, here is
Speaker 2: last night's disaster of a debate, moderated by one of
Speaker 2: the best in the business, Phil Schuman of Fox eleven.
Speaker 3: Mayor Bass. Obviously, homeless is the big issue.
Speaker 2: So yeah, wasn't she supposed to solve that by twenty
Speaker 2: twenty six? I guess not.
Speaker 4: We're going to start just by asking you to remind
Speaker 4: our audience, tell our audience what your priorities are, if
Speaker 4: you have to list the top priority or top two
Speaker 4: or three priorities, given where we're at in twenty twenty six,
Speaker 4: given what you know has worked and hasn't worked.
Speaker 5: First of all, good evening everyone, I'm happy to be
Speaker 5: here with you today. In the street homelessness period, we
Speaker 5: absolutely have to do that.
Speaker 2: You said you were going to do that, but now.
Speaker 5: We need to increase massively the number of Angelinos that
Speaker 5: we get off of our streets. We need to look
Speaker 5: for less expensive ways, moving away from motels, using city
Speaker 5: owned property, to put up new and improved and more
Speaker 5: modern shelters and also providing the services that people need.
Speaker 5: We've already started to do this. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 5: just last week we cut the ribbon for one of
Speaker 5: these developments in an adjacent city council district. But we
Speaker 5: have to get people off the streets.
Speaker 2: It's hard for you to hear, but I can hear
Speaker 2: it because I have headphones on. There's a siren going
Speaker 2: on in the background.
Speaker 5: But after that, we actually need to transform the entire system.
Speaker 5: The city needs to be in control right now. One
Speaker 5: of the fundamental dysfunctional features of the system is it's
Speaker 5: governed by the city, it's governed by the county, and
Speaker 5: it's governed by LASSA. So, for example, the city gets
Speaker 5: people off the streets and into housing, but LASA in
Speaker 5: the county controls who moves from shelters in interim housing
Speaker 5: into permanent housing. The other thing the city and the county,
Speaker 5: the city and the LASA control is the services. So,
Speaker 5: in other words, the county.
Speaker 2: If you're confused yet, well, welcome to Los Angeles, Shaggy.
Speaker 2: You are right.
Speaker 6: The bureaucracy is real, and it's.
Speaker 2: One thing that I'll agree with Karen Bass. Our system
Speaker 2: and the way that it's set up is a joke.
Speaker 2: The problem is Karen Bass is not running as a
Speaker 2: first timer here. She's been in office for four years.
Speaker 2: So it took her four years to realize that our
Speaker 2: system that we've had for thirty years is a mess
Speaker 2: where the city and the county don't talk to each
Speaker 2: other other. And they created LASA to start talking to
Speaker 2: each other, and they still don't talk to each other.
Speaker 2: And the whole point was, Oh, we're gonna, you know,
Speaker 2: we're gonna make sure that we stopped passing the buck
Speaker 2: and blaming the city and the county, blaming the city
Speaker 2: and the city, blaming the county. Well, nope, we're doing
Speaker 2: lots of that.
Speaker 5: He controls the services and you know, and everybody in
Speaker 5: your nose. Until we address drugs and until we address
Speaker 5: mental health, we will not be able to end homelessness
Speaker 5: in this city.
Speaker 2: All right. That is fascinating. Karen Bass has been wandering
Speaker 2: around for the last four years, not wanting to talk
Speaker 2: about the drug crisis and the mental health crisis. She
Speaker 2: will specifically go on and talk about her chicken and
Speaker 2: egg theory that she believes that you probably started doing
Speaker 2: drugs because you were homeless, because and you remember what
Speaker 2: she said at that opening of the of the housing
Speaker 2: for elderly in Woodland Hills, you need to you meth
Speaker 2: at night or you're going to get sexually assaulted on
Speaker 2: the streets.
Speaker 5: We also know that it's a chicken and egg issue.
Speaker 2: Now because she's trying to run to the right of
Speaker 2: Nethia Rahman, she'll admit that it's a drug problem that's
Speaker 2: driving what we're seeing on the streets.
Speaker 5: That is absolutely an imperative given that the county and
Speaker 5: LASSA determines who gets the housing. What that means is
Speaker 5: is that sometimes they put people from neighboring cities in
Speaker 5: housing that the city controls, that the city pays for,
Speaker 5: and so we absolutely have to get the services. If
Speaker 5: the city controls the system completely, we can have our
Speaker 5: own contracts with federally qualified health clinics to get people
Speaker 5: the healthcare that they need, especially in terms of drugs
Speaker 5: and mental health. I believe in ending street homelessness, period.
Speaker 2: But here's the question, what have you been doing to
Speaker 2: move us towards that? Because this whole administration started with
Speaker 2: locking arms with the county, Well, we're not doing that anymore.
Speaker 2: What we're saying is we don't need the county, and
Speaker 2: maybe that's the point. I will say. I do think
Speaker 2: our system is a mess, and I think this is
Speaker 2: true for so many different categories. The County of Los
Speaker 2: Angeles is too big, the City of Los Angeles is
Speaker 2: too big. The governments do not meld well, and they
Speaker 2: do not talk to each other, and they constantly blame
Speaker 2: each other for everything. So maybe we need to split
Speaker 2: up the county reduce the size of the city. Maybe
Speaker 2: we need a system like San Francisco, where the city
Speaker 2: and the county are the same entity. San Francisco has
Speaker 2: its problems, but at least you don't have the city
Speaker 2: and the county passing the buck back and forth because
Speaker 2: it's the same people.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Still shocking to everybody in here that thirty years into
Speaker 4: this we're still debating the structure and the hierarchy and
Speaker 4: the strategy.
Speaker 2: That's right, So, Phil, can you run for mayor? You
Speaker 2: have a bitter head on your shoulders than these two combined.
Speaker 4: Council person ram in two minutes, same subject.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So I think Angelino's are really fed up with
Speaker 7: this issue. They're fed up with spending hundreds of millions
Speaker 7: of dollars a year and not seeing the results that
Speaker 7: they deserve on their streets. I think they have lost
Speaker 7: trust in faith in the system, and by the way,
Speaker 7: people on the streets have lost trust and faith in
Speaker 7: the system in.
Speaker 6: The system as well. Can you guys hear me?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Great, We're in like a high school auditorium for this thing.
Speaker 7: And I feel like the last three and a half years,
Speaker 7: where this mayor has spent four hundred million dollars on
Speaker 7: inside safe refused audits, spent heavily on a program that
Speaker 7: has sent forty percent of participants back to the streets,
Speaker 7: and spent sometimes one hundred thousand dollars a year per person,
Speaker 7: have actually made some of these issues worse.
Speaker 6: And I've pushed back on this.
Speaker 2: That's right. I'm the voice of common sense at city
Speaker 2: Hall from DSA candidate at the Araman. Sure, and the.
Speaker 6: Problems that the system has had in city Hall. But
Speaker 6: here's what I would do to change it.
Speaker 7: One, within the first six months of me being in office,
Speaker 7: I would audit every dollar and I would track the
Speaker 7: performance of every dollar.
Speaker 6: And we've already laid the groundwork.
Speaker 2: And then what do you do when you have nonprofits
Speaker 2: that are either not helping the problem or making the
Speaker 2: problem worse, like I don't know, Homeless Healthcare Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: the nonprofit that we pay to pass out meth pipes.
Speaker 2: Are you going to cancel that program? I don't think so.
Speaker 7: For that in my time in city council, by creating
Speaker 7: data for the first time about beds and performance and outcomes,
Speaker 7: and I would use that to make sure all of
Speaker 7: your dollars are being spent wisely.
Speaker 6: Just like we did in my council district.
Speaker 7: The second thing that I would do is actually create
Speaker 7: the real leadership and management over this issue at city Hall.
Speaker 7: I've pushed to create a Bureau of Homelessness Oversight. It's
Speaker 7: been slow to be staffed, but we need to be
Speaker 7: in charge of these dollars right now.
Speaker 2: This is what the bureaucracy needs, is more of bureauocracy
Speaker 2: to look after the bureaucracy.
Speaker 7: Great city funds eight thousand beds, no one's in charge
Speaker 7: of filling them. No one is making sure that every
Speaker 7: dollar is being spent at city Hall, we leave it
Speaker 7: to someone else to do that. And finally, we need
Speaker 7: to deal with the mental health and substance use crisis
Speaker 7: on our streets. In my council district, we beg and
Speaker 7: plea for the county to show up, and they do sometimes.
Speaker 2: The one thing that Karen Bess and Nathia Rahman can
Speaker 2: agree at this pathetic debate is that everything is La
Speaker 2: County's fault. If that's the case, once again, maybe we
Speaker 2: shouldn't have a county that has ten million people in it.
Speaker 2: Maybe the city of Los Angeles is just too large
Speaker 2: and the county is just too large. Let's split it
Speaker 2: all up. Let's go back to the Valley Secession plan,
Speaker 2: and while we're at it, let's split up the county
Speaker 2: into five smaller counties. Because everything is run terribly here, and.
Speaker 7: We fill in the gaps by funding street medicine teams.
Speaker 6: I want to do the same thing citywide.
Speaker 7: No one's advocating for the city to get what we're
Speaker 7: paying for. By the way, with our tax dollars, we're
Speaker 7: paying for mental health beds that we're not getting, and
Speaker 7: I would be out there advocating for them using my
Speaker 7: seat as the mayor.
Speaker 3: Thank you, we're going to come back.
Speaker 5: Excuse me, so you might need to explain what the
Speaker 5: ground rules are, because if my opponent says something that's
Speaker 5: blatantly untrue.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's getting ugly quick here.
Speaker 5: Definitely want an opportunity to count it. So saying that
Speaker 5: it costs one hundred.
Speaker 3: Can you do it in thirty seconds?
Speaker 8: Sure?
Speaker 5: I said some beds saying that it costs one hundred
Speaker 5: thousand dollars, And you have said this on many occasions,
Speaker 5: that inside Safe costs eighty five thousand, one hundred thousand.
Speaker 8: Winks.
Speaker 2: Well, the monitor the number that I got for Monica
Speaker 2: Rodriguez is some of these beds are seventeen thousand dollars
Speaker 2: per homeless person per month. That's a hell of a
Speaker 2: lot of money. And where's that money going to? Wherehouse
Speaker 2: people in motels? There's a massive amount of grift going on.
Speaker 2: We could have cut all these people a check and
Speaker 2: the outcomes would be better. We could have not spent
Speaker 2: any money and the outcomes would have been better.
Speaker 5: You know perfectly well that the county reimburses for those services,
Speaker 5: which means if you look at inside Safe in your
Speaker 5: own department, and by the way, you are the chair
Speaker 5: or you were the chair of the Homelessness committee, and
Speaker 5: you know that we pay essentially the same amount for
Speaker 5: Inside safe as we do for other forms of it.
Speaker 7: We also pay for county taxes, so we are paying
Speaker 7: for art.
Speaker 3: We're going to come back to this issue. I can
Speaker 3: assure you we're.
Speaker 7: Paying for those costs no matter who's paying it, city
Speaker 7: or county.
Speaker 4: R The second general topic is public safety in the LAPD.
Speaker 4: Much debate over the LAPD's budget over the LAPD raises.
Speaker 2: Yes, Karen Bass has unsuccessfully tried to increase the ranks
Speaker 2: of the LAPD and if the iraman notably called to
Speaker 2: defund the police when she first got into office, over.
Speaker 4: The levels of personnel in the LAPD. So let's start
Speaker 4: with councilperson Ramen. When you were here during the primaries,
Speaker 4: you spent a lot of time defending your vote against
Speaker 4: the rais to the LAPD, saying that the money you
Speaker 4: need to be convinced that the money they already have
Speaker 4: is being spent correctly. Well, what are your thoughts to
Speaker 4: this group now several months later on public safety and
Speaker 4: the LAPD.
Speaker 6: Well, Look, everyone deserves to feel safe in the city.
Speaker 2: We need that, Yeah, So how can we get there?
Speaker 2: People don't feel safe, especially where this is going on
Speaker 2: in the San Fernando Valley, which has been plagued by
Speaker 2: NonStop burglaries.
Speaker 7: And we've been promised every single year that this mayor
Speaker 7: has been in office that we're going to grow the
Speaker 7: police force. And the contract I voted against gave salary
Speaker 7: raises to the PD that we couldn't afford. I think
Speaker 7: every city worker should be paid well. I think police
Speaker 7: officers should be paid well. This is not a dispute
Speaker 7: about that. This is about fiscal management of our public
Speaker 7: tax dollars. This contract gave raises to this PD that
Speaker 7: our city couldn't afford.
Speaker 2: Well, she's half right. What happened was and there is
Speaker 2: a true bidding war that's out there. La wasn't nearly
Speaker 2: as competitive as much safer cities nearby. But when the
Speaker 2: city council, Karen Bass, everyone voted to give the police
Speaker 2: a raise, the equitable thing to do was also to
Speaker 2: give raises to every single city department. And that is
Speaker 2: partially what bankrupt died the city and.
Speaker 6: We suffered as a result. We had a billion dollar budget.
Speaker 7: Deficit as a result, and now across the entire city,
Speaker 7: we cut street lighting, we cut pothole repair. We have
Speaker 7: more potholes on our streets than we did before. We
Speaker 7: do less graffiti removal than we did before. We absolutely
Speaker 7: need to be able to at least retain the size
Speaker 7: of the police force.
Speaker 6: That we have right now, but we are not doing that.
Speaker 6: We are actually losing people every single year.
Speaker 2: It's almost like it doesn't matter how much money you
Speaker 2: throw at this. The on the line officers know that
Speaker 2: either Karen Bass or Nythia Rahman or Uni Seas are
Speaker 2: the rest of them. Nobody has their back, So why
Speaker 2: should they put their life in the line to work
Speaker 2: here when they're much more appreciated in Burbank or el Segunde.
Speaker 6: And I think we need to do better.
Speaker 7: And you deserve a city that responds to your calls
Speaker 7: for help, that shows up and is the right person
Speaker 7: to show up.
Speaker 2: Oh that's right, Nitya's whole idea here is nine one two.
Speaker 2: Call nine one one if someone's trying to stab you.
Speaker 2: But if it's just somebody who has a mental health
Speaker 2: crisis that hasn't stabbed you yet, well then call the
Speaker 2: unarmed Crisis Response and then when they get stabbed, then
Speaker 2: we'll call nine one one for the call for help.
Speaker 6: That you're putting out there. I think that's incredible.
Speaker 2: How many of our problems all stem from us not
Speaker 2: having looney bins anymore, us not having looney bins to
Speaker 2: put all the crazy people. Even though I don't think
Speaker 2: there's that many crazy people, there are some people out
Speaker 2: there that have schizophrenia. I'm sure it's it's it happens,
Speaker 2: and it is that we are not taking care of
Speaker 2: those people. But I think the vast majority we see
Speaker 2: on the streets every day is insanity and psychosis that
Speaker 2: was caused by drug use. It was caused by meth
Speaker 2: because we have decided to allow people to do meth
Speaker 2: on the streets thanks to our vote back in twenty
Speaker 2: fourteen on Prop forty seven, which correlation doesn't exactly equal causation,
Speaker 2: but that sure seems to be when the homeless problem
Speaker 2: exploded in California.
Speaker 6: Sobally important. So first of all, we need to do
Speaker 6: a few things.
Speaker 7: We need to make sure that we're getting clear data
Speaker 7: about crimes across every neighborhood under this mayor's leadership, we
Speaker 7: don't have that neighborhood level data, so we as residents
Speaker 7: don't know whether we're getting the kind of protection that
Speaker 7: we deserve. We need to make sure that we're changing
Speaker 7: our hiring practices. The last two recruit classes have had
Speaker 7: less than a third of the total capacity that they could.
Speaker 7: We can have sixte in each class. We have twenty
Speaker 7: in the last one, seventeen in the last one because
Speaker 7: our city hiring and personnel programs, which he's promised to change,
Speaker 7: have never been changed.
Speaker 6: But we also need to make.
Speaker 2: Sure Karen Bass has made a lot of empty promises.
Speaker 2: You're totally right in ethia, how are you going to
Speaker 2: be any better or that.
Speaker 7: For all of those calls for service where we don't
Speaker 7: need armed officers to go out that we're actually building
Speaker 7: out a citywide system.
Speaker 2: So what we need is to waste a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of money on ambassadors. You know, Unisses has this same
Speaker 2: idiotic theory. So here's what she'll say, and I'm paraphrasing.
Speaker 2: She'll say, you understand that every single time we have
Speaker 2: the police respond to a call, it costs about eighty
Speaker 2: five dollars. You understand that if we send out an
Speaker 2: unarmed crisis responder, these circle teams what have you, that's
Speaker 2: thirty five dollars a call. And you think to yourself,
Speaker 2: oh wow, that means we're saving a lot of money. Well,
Speaker 2: police aren't paid per call, and the unarmed crisis isn't
Speaker 2: paid per call. So now that we're paying the full
Speaker 2: time salary of the police officer and the unarmed crisis responder,
Speaker 2: each call to either of them is actually costing one
Speaker 2: hundred and thirty dollars. Hey, look at that, I did math.
Speaker 2: Stay right here. We've got a lot more of this
Speaker 2: awful debate and send me an email or give me
Speaker 2: a call at eight hundred two to two two five
Speaker 2: two two two if you want to react to this debate,
Speaker 2: or if you've come to the same conclusion as me,
Speaker 2: there is no answer here other than we gotta go.
Speaker 2: It is time to leave Los Angeles because these are
Speaker 2: the people that are going to be in charge and
Speaker 2: they have no idea what they're doing. It's the News
Speaker 2: Blitz with Randy Wang on KABC. It's the News Blitz
Speaker 2: with Randy Wang on KABC. Let's go to Mark in
Speaker 2: downtown La Mark.
Speaker 8: Hello, Hello, he wit Randy. Yeah, Randy, am my aunt.
Speaker 2: You're on the air.
Speaker 8: Oh, I'm on the good good good.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 8: They got to round these people up.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 8: I came in, you know, I'm driving downtown. I had
Speaker 8: a business around an event downtown for years, you know,
Speaker 8: so I know downtown. My wife's closed downtown to the
Speaker 8: tail to save some money. I always had my He
Speaker 8: almost stole my phone out of my car because he
Speaker 8: knocked over this crazy wacko lunatic. He docked over two
Speaker 8: of those you know, automatic little carts that deliver food.
Speaker 8: So I just I just signed. I waved my finger around,
Speaker 8: wagged my finger at him. I don't do that, don't
Speaker 8: do that. He came charging at me. My window was open,
Speaker 8: and I said, hey, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I knew
Speaker 8: he's gonna try and break my window or something. So
Speaker 8: he reached in, tried to steal my phone anyway, got
Speaker 8: my phone, but he got to round these people up.
Speaker 8: And this city is you know, I don't know. I say,
Speaker 8: that's a guy who live in Culver City, you know,
Speaker 8: and incorporated the city with rowan police force.
Speaker 2: But U yeah, that's the way to go. I'm telling you,
Speaker 2: it's to get out. Is it just mean? Did Mark
Speaker 2: sound like Joe Crummy? It's the News Blitz with Randy
Speaker 2: Wang on KABC. It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang
Speaker 2: on KABC. Let's get back to this incredibly depressing debate
Speaker 2: between our only two choices for mayor, Karen Bass and
Speaker 2: Nithia Rahman, or as she's referred to by my friend
Speaker 2: Elizabeth barko'honna dumb mom, Donnie.
Speaker 6: Something I'm deeply committed to doing. I've created a plan
Speaker 6: for doing.
Speaker 7: We can take thousands of calls for service off of
Speaker 7: LAPD's plate and make sure that the entire city is safer.
Speaker 3: Do you want to follow up on anything she said?
Speaker 2: Or what you rather follow up?
Speaker 8: One?
Speaker 5: Just about everything that she said, But it is completely
Speaker 5: ironic that you're talking about the unarmed services such as
Speaker 5: the Circle program.
Speaker 2: When you asked Circle another stupid acronym program created by
Speaker 2: former Los Angeles mayor. Although I really pined for the
Speaker 2: good old days of Garcetti, I received things on both.
Speaker 5: Hope you in your district, like you have asked me repeatedly,
Speaker 5: we brought out the Circle program here. You have a
Speaker 5: lot of nerve talking about the hiring of police officers.
Speaker 2: You know what the valley would like police officers. The
Speaker 2: vast majority of LAPD is concentrated over the hill. The
Speaker 2: valley gets ignored in response times.
Speaker 5: And we've finally reached the point where we had a
Speaker 5: decent sized class and you voted against it, which was
Speaker 5: the reason we couldn't.
Speaker 6: Have the quit past. By the way, it didn't have.
Speaker 5: Voted against it, as you have voted against hiring police
Speaker 5: officers consistently.
Speaker 2: You talk about this is how these two work together.
Speaker 2: This is how these two talk to each other. Right now,
Speaker 2: what do you think it's been like the last four years?
Speaker 2: It is there's so much There is so much blame
Speaker 2: going around because nothing is working while in the City
Speaker 2: of Los Angeles, and the city Council is as equally
Speaker 2: to blame as the mayor for it. Nobody looks to.
Speaker 5: The police officers decently. We gave police officers a raise
Speaker 5: because we couldn't keep them in the city.
Speaker 3: Of lost sanity.
Speaker 5: I think that she's irresponsible in what she talks about
Speaker 5: because she talks about out of both sides of her mouth.
Speaker 5: She wants to study everything, and and I am one
Speaker 5: that believe in data and believe in studying. But the
Speaker 5: city Council and the City of Los Angeles is not
Speaker 5: an academic institution.
Speaker 2: We need to act.
Speaker 5: She does not act, she studies. I act. We got
Speaker 5: the police hired.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but your actions have not led to more policing,
Speaker 2: It has led to less policing. So even if Karen
Speaker 2: Bass says the right thing, the problem is she's running
Speaker 2: on a record of well, whatever you've gun has not worked.
Speaker 5: Gave them the rays that they deserved.
Speaker 6: And by the way, that's sorry, that that was sorry.
Speaker 6: I do you all have called.
Speaker 5: And I acted?
Speaker 3: What what does you feel she said was true?
Speaker 7: I do want to say, we do have time limits here,
Speaker 7: so I just want to make sure that we're honoring
Speaker 7: them thirty seconds.
Speaker 2: If you took out all the times where both of
Speaker 2: them complained about not getting enough time to speak, this
Speaker 2: debate would have only been a happening.
Speaker 7: And I just want to say I voted for budgets
Speaker 7: that have maintained and even expanded our police force. What
Speaker 7: I have voted against is a contract that bankrupted our city.
Speaker 2: You know, there are other ways we could save money. Right,
Speaker 2: let's go back to topic one. How about we stopped
Speaker 2: spending money on.
Speaker 6: The That's really important to understand.
Speaker 3: We're going to come back to this.
Speaker 2: Interesting thought process, and you know it is something that
Speaker 2: doesn't get talked about enough. You know, we used to
Speaker 2: spend so much less on the people living in our streets,
Speaker 2: and there used to be so many fewer people living
Speaker 2: in our streets because the answer was if somebody is
Speaker 2: on the street smoking meth, you arrest them and they
Speaker 2: go to prison, and you know what that means. That
Speaker 2: means the state has to pay for them. But because
Speaker 2: of prison realignment and AB one oh nine in Prop.
Speaker 2: Forty seven, we decriminalize these things. So now those people
Speaker 2: that were a part of the state's budget to deal
Speaker 2: with whether they went to a state mental hospital, they
Speaker 2: went to a state rehab, or they went to prison,
Speaker 2: now they're part of the county's budget and they're part
Speaker 2: of the city's budget because we don't want to put
Speaker 2: these people away and we want to enable their drug problem.
Speaker 2: So it's blown the budget of a whole lot of cities,
Speaker 2: especially the ones that tell me.
Speaker 7: Sorry, we have to be good fiscal stewards. Words of
Speaker 7: our public dollars.
Speaker 2: Neither of you are and to pay. Can you imagine
Speaker 2: what this debate would have been like if it was
Speaker 2: Best and Spencer produp there at least we'd be having
Speaker 2: a real debate, not a blame public.
Speaker 7: Dollars for political games, no political support in elections.
Speaker 6: It's not the way that we.
Speaker 3: Should be running our business and the economy.
Speaker 4: Each candidate is two minutes to talk about their top
Speaker 4: ideas to stimulate business, bring business back.
Speaker 8: Make.
Speaker 3: Business and Los Angeles more business friendly. Let's start with
Speaker 3: may Or Best.
Speaker 5: Sure, well, I started working with the business community five
Speaker 5: years ago, and they had specific suggestions for why it
Speaker 5: was so difficult to do business here. I put those
Speaker 5: in the form of an executive directive, and in that
Speaker 5: executive directive, it ordered departments to make it easier to
Speaker 5: do business. We appointed a film Zar because filming in
Speaker 5: la is obviously our critical business, so our films are provides.
Speaker 2: Karen Bass, by the way, did hold a press conference
Speaker 2: today where she urged Rob Bonta and Paramount to settle
Speaker 2: this dispute that's going on in this lawsuit to block
Speaker 2: that merger because Paramount is very actively looking to move
Speaker 2: to Austin, Texas now. But then Karen Bass is like,
Speaker 2: and let's talk to some of the people that are
Speaker 2: helping me with what I think we need to do
Speaker 2: to solve these problems and get production back in Hollywood,
Speaker 2: And she brings on the head of Aatzi and look,
Speaker 2: I'm just saying this is a union member. We're never
Speaker 2: going to solve this problem until we admit that some
Speaker 2: of the problem here is that the unions have made
Speaker 2: their rules and regulations and minimums way too strict. And
Speaker 2: that's why production isn't just leaving Los Angeles, it's leaving California,
Speaker 2: and it's also leaving Georgia, and it's going to other
Speaker 2: countries Toronto, and it's going to the UK. It's because
Speaker 2: the unions are very, very rigid when it comes to
Speaker 2: what they think people should be paid. And I understand
Speaker 2: that's their moo, but when there's no wiggle room, people
Speaker 2: do go other place or services.
Speaker 5: For anybody that wants to film here. We've also reduced
Speaker 5: the price of filming, so if you ask me for
Speaker 5: things that I would do. In addition, we want to
Speaker 5: have a centralized Development Services Authority.
Speaker 2: Again, Bass been in charge for the last four years.
Speaker 2: When she talks about all the things that we're gonna do,
Speaker 2: why aren't you doing them right now? Yes, right now.
Speaker 5: To develop anything in the City of Los Angeles, you
Speaker 5: have to go through twelve different departments. So this centralized
Speaker 5: authority would be the lead agency, so you only need
Speaker 5: to go to one department.
Speaker 2: That sounds great. Why aren't we just doing that right now,
Speaker 2: like today, like instead of doing this debate, Why don't
Speaker 2: you go to start Why don't we Phil Schumann, seriously,
Speaker 2: can you run? Well?
Speaker 5: You say, why don't we have that already? Because the
Speaker 5: way the city has functioned, But over the years I
Speaker 5: have begun that type of transformation.
Speaker 2: Listen, this is, by the way, if you're wondering why
Speaker 2: we're seeing the rise of the DSA, whether this is
Speaker 2: a whether this is something that you know the DSA
Speaker 2: can actually do something about or not, the reason that
Speaker 2: the DSA are gaining in popularity, whether they can actually
Speaker 2: deliver on their promises or not. They're making the very
Speaker 2: real criticism that the establishment, and no one is more
Speaker 2: establishment in this room than Karen Bass. They tout incremental
Speaker 2: slow change as progress, and people have had enough. They
Speaker 2: want to see a wrecking ball. They want to see
Speaker 2: a massive movement. Massive change doesn't mean that they're going
Speaker 2: to get that or that things are going to get better,
Speaker 2: but that is one of the very real criticisms. Is
Speaker 2: talking about how difficult it is to do business in
Speaker 2: the city of Los Angeles. You've got to talk to
Speaker 2: twelve different departments, and over the last three years, I've
Speaker 2: been developing a change for that that isn't good enough.
Speaker 2: And when people see that government acts so slowly, cannot
Speaker 2: respond to the needs of its people, that's when people
Speaker 2: go to the extremes, whether the extreme populism on the
Speaker 2: right or the extreme socialism on the left. That is
Speaker 2: what is driving it is because right now the people
Speaker 2: that are in charge can't get anything done. Even if
Speaker 2: she's saying the right things, she's openly admitting she can't
Speaker 2: do any of it. Just like that video she put
Speaker 2: out last week where someone asked her to put a
Speaker 2: pothole and in the forty five second video she couldn't
Speaker 2: fill the pothole. We've got more of this nonsense. The
Speaker 2: big takeaway for me is pack your bags, folks. It
Speaker 2: is time to vote with your feet and get out
Speaker 2: of the city of Los Angeles. You want to stay
Speaker 2: in one of the incorporated cities in the county, go
Speaker 2: for it. But you know what, go to Orange County,
Speaker 2: go to Ventura County. It's time to go. These people
Speaker 2: do not deserve our tax dollars because the only way
Speaker 2: things are going to change is when people do The
Speaker 2: only thing they can do. Now, we can't vote for
Speaker 2: anybody who's got common sense, so we've got to vote
Speaker 2: with our feet, and I for one, am actively looking
Speaker 2: into this. Right now. It's the News Blitz with Randy
Speaker 2: Wang on KABC. It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang
Speaker 2: on Kay ABC. Hey, do I have something exciting for you?
Speaker 2: Seven ninety KABC welcomes Allison Krause and The Union Station
Speaker 2: featuring Jerry Douglas with special guests THEO Lawrence at the
Speaker 2: Pacific Amphitheater on August twenty ninth. Tickets are on sale
Speaker 2: now at pacamp dot com, but right now call it
Speaker 2: number nine at one eighty eight seven ninety five two
Speaker 2: two two gets a pair of tickets to the show.
Speaker 2: Tickets furnished by the Pacific Amphitheater. Good Luck Dialing. Coming
Speaker 2: to the theaters this weekend. Tony the Bio pick about
Speaker 2: Anthony boar Dane that should probably get some people interested.
Speaker 2: Spa weekend which seems to be a fun, raunchy comedy. Ooh,
Speaker 2: a fun runchy female comedy that sounds fun. I might
Speaker 2: get the wife to watch that. And another insidious movie.
Speaker 2: I don't really do horror. Let's get back to one
Speaker 2: of the more depressing debates I've ever had to listen
Speaker 2: to Bass and Rahman at the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Associations.
Speaker 5: That we learned from the Palisades lessons that we learned
Speaker 5: from homelessness, where we had one stop shops. Now we
Speaker 5: need one central agency so you don't have to go
Speaker 5: to twelve different departments. We also need to expand workforce housing.
Speaker 5: One thing that I have done is fast tracked forty
Speaker 5: two thousand units of housing and also moved adaptive reuse
Speaker 5: so that we have been able to change hundreds of
Speaker 5: units of empty office space.
Speaker 2: Hundreds. You know how big this city is. These are
Speaker 2: such tiny, little nothing accomplishments into housing.
Speaker 5: But we need to build housing that are starter homes,
Speaker 5: such as town homes and condos.
Speaker 2: But we're not going to build any of those as
Speaker 2: long as we have the mansion tax. But you know
Speaker 2: that I have to.
Speaker 5: Change state law to do some of that. Because I
Speaker 5: served in Sacramento, I know how to get the law changed.
Speaker 5: So we have been working with businesses. We had forty
Speaker 5: five million dollars in new contracts for small businesses, and
Speaker 5: we've also been hosting summits for small businesses so they
Speaker 5: could prepare for contracts when the Olympics come in a
Speaker 5: couple of years. But in other words, for business to
Speaker 5: work in the city, the city has to be safe
Speaker 5: and we have to have an adequate number of law enforcement.
Speaker 5: A study is not going to get you there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but your policies haven't gotten us there either. It
Speaker 2: is a battle between worse and worser. Time to vote
Speaker 2: with our feed people.
Speaker 4: I don't know if she wants to study it as
Speaker 4: much as she was saying. She wants to make sure
Speaker 4: that the dollars are accounted for.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's what comes out of her work.
Speaker 4: So on the topic of business and the economy, to
Speaker 4: make Los Angeles more business friendly.
Speaker 7: Yes, so we we desperately need to bring businesses back
Speaker 7: to LA. We need to make sure the businesses know
Speaker 7: that this is a business friendly city again and right now.
Speaker 7: I've been talking to small business owners, restauranteurs, people who
Speaker 7: are involved in much bigger scale businesses across the higher city,
Speaker 7: and what they're saying is that they have a city
Speaker 7: hall and a mayor who has not invited them in
Speaker 7: and who has not created the supportive environment for them
Speaker 7: to grow sore.
Speaker 6: We here's what we need to do. We need to
Speaker 6: have a real economic development strategy. We are a big city.
Speaker 6: We're the second largest city in America.
Speaker 2: Should be much smaller. Cut the city in half, cut
Speaker 2: it in five.
Speaker 6: We don't have that.
Speaker 7: We don't have a place in the city that's tasked
Speaker 7: with ensuring that we're diversifying our economy.
Speaker 6: I would establish that in the Mayor's.
Speaker 2: The city is four million people. Let's divide it into
Speaker 2: four one million person cities.
Speaker 7: Office and eventually make sure that we institutionalize that function
Speaker 7: in the city. I want to make sure small businesses, restaurants,
Speaker 7: retail storefronts who right now see city Hall as an obstacle.
Speaker 2: It takes eighteen you're part of city hall, two months.
Speaker 7: To get a permit to open a bakery that I
Speaker 7: just visited in Canoga Park.
Speaker 6: It's crazy. We want their tax.
Speaker 7: Dollars, and yet we make it's so hard for them
Speaker 7: to open. We have to make it simpler and easier
Speaker 7: for people to open up.
Speaker 2: You've been in city Hall for six years. You're saying
Speaker 2: that you can't get any of this done as a
Speaker 2: member of the city council. Shouldn't we all be kind
Speaker 2: of working together to solve what seems to be very
Speaker 2: obvious problems and how awful the city of Los Angeles
Speaker 2: is run. Neither of these people are the answer, and
Speaker 2: this is your only choice time to get out exactly.
Speaker 6: The kind of small businesses we need to support.
Speaker 7: And they've been waiting four years for those changes, and
Speaker 7: those changes still have not come. Finally, under this mayor's leadership,
Speaker 7: we lost forty thousand film jobs and it took nearly
Speaker 7: three years to a point a film liaison, the point
Speaker 7: person for making sure a film can happen here. And
Speaker 7: we need a tax credit and advocacy in Sacramento for
Speaker 7: the kind of tax credit that is the same that
Speaker 7: Georgia has, that's the same that New Jersey has that's
Speaker 7: taking jobs away from here, a tax credit with no
Speaker 7: cap no.
Speaker 2: We also don't like to talk about how the prolonged
Speaker 2: writers and Actors strike also helped kill the industry here.
Speaker 7: That accommodates above the line. This is the kind of
Speaker 7: tax credit that Angelino's deserve and one that I would
Speaker 7: be the loudest and strongest advocate for.
Speaker 5: Thank you, She's going to be the strongest and loudest.
Speaker 5: She's going to be the strongest and loudest advocate for
Speaker 5: something that You have been on the city council for
Speaker 5: six years. You've been a City of Hall twice as
Speaker 5: long as I have. I realize you.
Speaker 2: Want to picture you're the reason this city sucks. No,
Speaker 2: you're the reason this city sucks.
Speaker 5: So as somebody from the outside.
Speaker 2: But where were you?
Speaker 5: You've introduced no motions for the entertainment industry.
Speaker 2: I was insec I help the people out there, and
Speaker 2: I don't think any of these people are actually listening
Speaker 2: to me right now. But I hope somehow, some way,
Speaker 2: the people who happen to not vote in the primary,
Speaker 2: I wonder how they're feeling about the choice that they
Speaker 2: have now in November.
Speaker 5: I'm advocating. As a matter of fact, I did the
Speaker 5: first tax when I was Speaker of the House.
Speaker 2: You were nowhere.
Speaker 5: Even when it came time to vote for the entertainment industry.
Speaker 2: You walked on votes.
Speaker 5: As a matter of fact, I believe you have missed
Speaker 5: several thousand votes because you don't show up to work.
Speaker 2: Fair criticism Karen Bass about Nitia Rahman missing votes and
Speaker 2: not being around to do her job, But who was it?
Speaker 2: Who was the mayor of a large city that abandoned
Speaker 2: the city during a very high wind event that was
Speaker 2: nowhere to be found when a massive fire started. Was
Speaker 2: that it was you You really want to talk about
Speaker 2: not showing up to work. How when the Boyle Heights
Speaker 2: warehouse fire started. She was in Chicago at the Obama party.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, I have to be able to respond to that.
Speaker 6: I mean, this mayor, I think she knows.
Speaker 3: Have you missed several thousand votes?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean we all miss we all miss we
Speaker 7: all miss days of council, We all miss days of council.
Speaker 7: But she knows as well as I do that I
Speaker 7: have had regular absences because I've been appointed to external
Speaker 7: boards that lead me to miss regular council meetings because
Speaker 7: these bodies that I've been appointed to by the previous mayor,
Speaker 7: by this mayor, sometimes conflict with our council days. She
Speaker 7: also had some absences to take care of my kids
Speaker 7: or when I get sick, but nothing, nothing.
Speaker 2: Beyond the nor what a mess I'm telling you Right now,
Speaker 2: I am actively looking to move out of the city
Speaker 2: of Los Angeles, and these two are only accelerating that decision.
Speaker 2: Have a wonderful evening. Everybody will see you tomorrow for
Speaker 2: another news blitz with Randy Wang on KABC