Mayor Karen Bass’s misplaced priorities are allowing the Los Angeles government to devolve into dysfunctional chaos.
Bass has allowed labor unions to run rampant over the governing process, starting when she imposed a $30 per hour minimum wage for tourism workers for the 2028 Olympics. When businesses that would be saddled with the additional costs decided to try to repeal the union-supported wage hike through a citywide referendum, the unions decided they would push several unrelated referendums designed to punish those and other businesses, including a referendum supporting a $30 per hour minimum wage for all workers.
According to left-wing Politico, this feud, started by Bass’s economic illiteracy, is already distracting local officials from the city’s looming $1 billion budget shortfall. “Such disputes were typically refereed by elected officials,” we are told, but Bass and her fellow Los Angeles Democrats have allowed labor unions to continue to take over City Hall. Bass herself is pressuring businesses to stand down but “has not put similar pressure on Unite Here Local 11, which endorsed her candidacy in 2022, to pull back from the ballot.” Embarrassing the United States on the world stage at the 2028 Olympics is just another negative side effect of Bass allowing labor unions to call the shots in the city…