Bass v. Los Angeles: Karen Bass’ own brother highlights her failure

“Total burn down.”

That sounds like what Karen Bass and a leftist City Council have done, metaphorically, to Los Angeles.

But the phrase actually comes from court records that explain why Kenneth Bass is suing the city that his sister (poorly) governs.

The mayor’s brother, whose Malibu home was razed in the deadly 2025 Palisades Fire, has joined litigation against the city, the LA Department of Water and Power, and a range of other defendants.

Among the allegations: deficient fire preparation on the part of the city and its water utility, in part because the latter had left a nearby reservoir — built in part for firefighting — empty for a nearly year before the fire.

Question: How badly does a mayor have to perform for her own brother to sue the city she leads? 

It’s hardly news that Mayor Bass royally botched the fire issue, but her brother’s move adds an exclamation point.

Bass downplayed the news through advisers, who said Kenneth Bass’ loss has long been publicly known and there are thousands of plaintiffs in the legal action.

But a loss is not the same as a lawsuit, and the fact that thousands (some 40,000, in fact) are suing the city makes the case worse for Bass, not better.

And legal case aside, Bass is guilty of leadership failures.

A few lowlights: Not only was the mayor in Ghana when the blaze erupted, but while she was abroad, the city declined to deploy firefighters to the burn scar of a fire an arsonist had allegedly set in the Palisades just days before — a fire that reignited and roared through the area. Meanwhile, the LAPD failed to prioritize resident evacuations as the flames spread.

Download The California Post App, follow us on social, and subscribe to our newsletters

Later, the mayor deflected blame for the disaster, was slow to help fire victims, and was accused of watering down an after-fire report to make herself look better.

It’s all emblematic of a city culture that prioritizes optics over accountability, ideology over common sense, and spending over results. 

In fact, the ceaseless spending on issues such as homelessness is the intended result; the city ships tax dollars to nonprofits that entrench the problem to generate more money for solutions that never come. 

The focus is on the racket, not on clean streets or good governance or fire prevention. 

Karen Bass must hope that voters are blind to this, or overlook it out of partisan fidelity.

That’s how she avoids a total burn down of her campaign for reelection.