Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Mayor Bass, thank you so much for joining us. I do want to start with gas prices, obviously hot topic across the country. When I take a look at California, TRIPLEA tells me right now that the average gas price is pushing about six dollars per gallon. You think about Los Angeles, Obviously, it's a city that loves its cars. So what are you doing, as mayor, if anything, to try and help reduce the impact of those higher gas prices.
Well, let me just tell you that we are a city that loves our cars. However, we have spent the last three or four decades building out our public transportation system and so encouraging people to use public transit, encouraging people to carpool. We certainly hope that this ends soon enough, because gas prices were already high here because we have
chosen to text ourselves to improve our environment. So adding on the international events and just the uncertainty from Washington, you can only imagine the concern that has when affordability is the number one issue we're dealing with here period.
Let me stick with affordability if I can. I know that permits for new construction have fallen every year since you took office back in twenty twenty two. Curious why that is also curious what you can do as mayor to reverse that trend in Los Angeles.
Well, absolutely, Number one is making it easier to build, and so I did that within my first couple of weeks in office. I signed an executive directive to fast track the building, especially of housing, and we have forty thousand units that are currently going through that process now,
with several thousand actively under construction. But once we applied those lessons to affordable housing, then we began to apply those lessons in terms of cutting red tape to other types of building, whether it's commercial, show, residential, et cetera. And so that has helped now. Of course, the other thing that is creating a lot of difficulty is just the larger macro economic issues.
Absolutely, and you're seeing that across the country. I do want to talk specifically though about Hollywood, about the filmmaking industry. We learned earlier this year that we saw the consolidation of Paramount and Warner Brothers, a hard fought bidding war there on Paramount's part. The consensus is that this is likely going to lead to thousands of job cuts. You think about the unemployment rate in LA it already stands at about five point one percent, that was at the
end of twenty twenty five. That is higher than US and state averages. So with this wave of job cuts seen as likely, what are you doing to prepare?
Well, let me just tell you even before that the entertainment industry is one of our foundation industries, and so I have certainly been doing everything to make make sure that filming doesn't continue to leave and in fact increases in our city. And so the first thing, of course, was the advocacy on the tax credits on the state level, which did finally pass and get signed. I was involved when I was Speaker of the Assembly many years ago
in creating the first tax credits. But I meet with the industry regularly and they came up with a variety of things that the city could do to make filming easier. I put all of those into policy, put them into action, and we do have filming increasing in our city. Of course, I'm concerned about the merger. I think what a lot of people don't think about are all of the jobs that are associated, either directly are indirectly with the industry
and making sure that filming can be easier. We have over one hundred and nineteen new projects that have started in LA since the tax credits and these other initiatives have been put into place.
Preparing for two big sporting events. Let's start with the first, that's the World Cup, And I'm curious if you could describe the amount of investment you're having to make in security and indeed who's going to be footing the bill for all that.
Sure, well, we certainly are anticipating reimbursement from the federal government. You know, we were got the consideration for a national security event very early on, and so that unleashes a lot of support. But what we're doing as a city the game actually takes place in an adjacent city, Englewood, but we are preparing for tens of thousands, if not more, of visitors traveling throughout our city, and we're planning festivals
and watch parties all throughout our city. We anticipate having one hundred different events, and you know, the World Cup lasts over thirty days, so we're really seeing it as an economic boom to our area.
It's a similar situation when you think about what's happening in New York. Of course, the actual games are happening in New Jersey, but of course New York City is going to same things sort of see the benefit of that. I do want to talk about the Olympics. Of course, that is the other big sporting event. You have called for the ouster of Casey Wasserman as the LA twenty eight Olympic chair. You looked at his past ties to
Jeffrey Epstein. He's staying put. So with that in mind, given that history, how do you anticipate working together now?
Well, we'll continue to work together. I'm in conversation regularly. LA twenty eight is the independent nonprofit that is putting on the games. It's located nearby City Hall. We collaborate on a daily basis. I set up an Office of Major Events to handle all of the events. The culmination, of course, is the Olympics and the Paralympics. But we have the World Cup, the US Open for Golf for women, we have the Super Bowl. All of those things are happening before we get to the Olympics, and so we
continue to work together. The decision whether Casey Wasserman stays was up to the board. They've made their decision. My role is to make sure that the city of Los Angeles is ready to welcome thousands, tens of thousands of visitors from around the world, and that all of the venues that take place in the city of La are prepared.
I want to ask you for some comparison, if I could so, Dan Lurie and San Francisco has kind of shepherded that city from what was called a doom loop into a bit of a boom environment, thanks in part to AI. I'm curious how one mayor looks at another and the work that he or she does. Is there anything in his leadership that you admire or think might be transferable to your leadership of Los Angeles in this term? And if you're re elected to a second.
One, well, let me just tell you that one thing that has been very enjoyable about being mayor is that we are all in conversation and collaborate with each other and look at each other's experience. So actually, my view of San Francisco started with the former mayor, London Breed, who really focused on AI. She said she wanted it to be the AI capital of the world. And I see how he has continued that, and I'm sure he will expand it even further looking at his ties in
the business community. Now, you know, San Francisco is a much, much, much smaller city than Los Angeles is. We are so big, five hundred square miles that we don't have one big industry. I mean, the entertainment industry, of course is our rock, but so are several other industries as well well.
Mayor Bass. As David mentioned, you are up for reelection, so focusing explicitly on that, how would you say that Los Angeles is better off today than it was four years ago? And should you win that second term, what is your top goal?
Absolutely well, I ran because Los Angeles was the epicenter for the country in homelessness, especially street homelessness, and I am proud to say that after year after year year of homelessness increasing, and the national trend, frankly was an increase in homelessness of eighteen percent, we've had the exact opposite in Los Angeles, where we've had a decrease in
street homelessness of eighteen percent. This is a disfunctional system that has been dysfunctional for at least the last three decades, and so what I hope to accomplish by the end of my second term is establishing and creating a functional system that we get people off the street. We know how to do that, but we have to keep them off the street permanently, and we have to prevent more
people from falling onto into homelessness. So public safety is another key issue, and crime has been reduced to levels going back to the nineteen sixties. And then basic city services. So when you think of public safety, basic things like street lights. We've had a rash, like many other cities of copper theft, and so now pushing that furthers our environmental goals of changing from copper to solar. And I just announced the program a couple of days ago to
replace sixty thousand copper wire lights with solar lights. What the city had been doing for years and years is just replacing copper lights with copper lights that continued to be stolen. So basic quality of life, basic city services, homelessness, public safety, the things that I have worked on that we have made absolute objective progress in. I want to continue and take it across the finish line. All right.
The forty third mayor of the city of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, thank you very much, appreciate it.
Thank you for having me on