Mayor Bass has rose-colored glasses on, her true record is bleak

Karen Bass painted a rosy picture of LA’s future in her “State of the City” address.

But she was short on details, leaving little idea of how LA is to reach that bright horizon.

The mayor welcomed upcoming sporting events — not just the NBA All-Star game later this month, the FIFA World Cup later this year, and the Summer Olympics in 2028, but also the Women’s U.S. Open Golf Championship in June.

That tournament is to be held at the Riviera Club in Pacific Palisades — surrounded by the empty lots that still haunt that community, a year after the devastating fire.

Hopefully, the prospect of hosting an international sporting event in the heart of the burn zone will spur LA’s efforts to pick up the unacceptably slow pace of recovery and rebuilding.

Bass lauded the neighbors who helped each other through the disaster, the heroism of the firefighters who rushed into danger, and the generosity of Angelenos to those who had lost everything.

In a nod to critics, she thanked displaced residents for their “honesty” — presumably, in telling her just how angry they are at the city’s failure to save their homes.

But she offered few new plans to help them rebuild, other than traveling to Sacramento to lobby for more spending — after being rebuffed last year.

The mayor also touted progress in fighting homelessness. Here, she can justly claim credit for small declines in the number of people living on the streets.

Yet the problem remains massive, and the city has spent billions of dollars on homelessness for a very modest result. 

She mentioned “affordability,” claiming that the city has “accelerated” the building of cheaper housing. 

But she said nothing about the collapse in residential construction, partly due to Measure ULA, the failing so-called “mansion tax” — which she promised last year to repeal, but has not.

The mayor devoted a significant portion of her address to attacking federal law enforcement, notably Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). 

She called for locals to protest “peacefully” against ICE’s presence in the city, saying that our democracy is “fragile.” 

But the mayor did not condemn the radical mobs who have rioted against ICE, destroyed government property, stalked innocent people, and attacked journalists.

The mayor cited the controversial case of Keith Porter, whom she called “a 43-year-old father of two” who was “shot to death by an off-duty ICE officer.” 

She omitted the fact that Porter had been firing a gun into the night, and — according to some reports — had aimed or fired it at the ICE agent. 

While all of the facts have yet to emerge, it is irresponsible to paint that incident as the result of law enforcement against criminal migrants.

She complained that the Border Patrol sent men on horseback into MacArthur Park. At least the mayor showed some interest in that public space, plagued by drugs, homelessness, and neglect.

Notably, violence has only occurred where mayors and governors have refused to cooperate with ICE in deporting the most hardened criminals. 

Where ICE has to go into communities on its own, tensions flare — and law-abiding migrants whose only crime may have been to enter without a visa are sometimes caught up in the enforcement net.

Bass clearly hopes that anti-ICE sentiment will be her ticket to re-election after her horrific mishandling of the Palisades Fire, which she herself admitted that she had “botched.”

If there was one lesson from Bass’s trip to Ghana during the fire, it is that her focus needs to be here at home — not on divisive national issues or the glamour of the international stage.