SPENCER PRATT’S FIRST BIG TEST: Will Voters Reject Karen Bass?
Despite a city budget of nearly $14 billion — more than the gross domestic product of NATO member Montenegro — city infrastructure is in terrible shape, blamed on pervasive under-investment for decades. The Los Angeles Times noted that the city hadn’t repaved a single street for a six-month stretch and declared that the city had “surrendered to the potholes.” (Hey, it’s not like Los Angelenos drive much, right?)
Where’s all the money going? In some cases, exceptionally well-paid city employees. In 2024, a fire battalion chief was paid $905,060, including $650,510 in overtime pay on a base salary of $135,306. Now, we all love firefighters, but that is more than quite a few players on the Los Angeles Rams football team will make this season.
As of 2024 — the most recent year available — at least 15 city employees were paid more than $600,000 in compensation, including the Chief Port Pilot of the city of Los Angeles, who was paid $704,027.
Eighty-seven city employees were paid more than $500,000 in a single year. The one-hundredth highest-compensated city employee was a port pilot in Los Angeles Harbor who was paid $495,022. (The league minimum annual salary in Major League Baseball is $780,000, so roughly one hundred city employees are making about two-thirds of what bottom-of-the-roster players on the Los Angeles Dodgers are making this year.)
Mayor Bass’s annual salary is about $301,000, but she said she has taken a pay cut, but has refused to disclose the amount.
The city’s Democratic tax-and-spend establishment has killed the geese that had been laying the golden eggs.
The 72-year-old Bass — apparently one of the finalists to be Joe Biden’s running mate back in 2020 — has failed her city so thoroughly that you half expect Oliver Queen to show up with a bow and arrow.
The options for the city of Los Angeles are to continue the current status quo, move even further to the left with Raman, or try something new with Pratt and his “Common Spence.” If the city does not choose the Pratt option, we’re left to wonder why anyone dissatisfied with the city’s direction would stick around.
Choose wisely, Los Angeles.