Los Angeles Mayor Proposes Deeper Cuts

May 12, 2025

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who is considered a liberal and progressive, is proposing to lay off 1,647 workers, as well as eliminating more than 2,800 vacant positions in the past year.

These cuts mean fewer street repairs, more potholes remaining unpatched, and more streets unswept. Repairs of broken street lights, which already take as long as a year, will take even longer. Trees that are now being trimmed once every 17 years might have to wait as long as 25 years to be trimmed.

Many other city services are also on the chopping block, including affordable child care, for example. Today, the city runs only 10 child care centers, hardly a drop in the bucket for a city of four million—and now most of these facilities are faced with closure because of the layoffs Bass is proposing.

Also, at risk are some of the few cultural and recreational programs accessible to working class families, including the Lincoln Youth Art Center, and historic sites such as the Watts Towers, and the Hollyhock House at the Barnsdall Art Park.

Mayor Bass says these cuts are necessary because the city is facing a budget deficit of 1 billion dollars. It may be a sign of the ongoing economic crisis, but the cuts Bass is proposing show the priorities of the politicians who run the city government. There is no change in the ongoing expansion of the Convention Center, for example, which is expected to cost 5 billion dollars eventually. Nor any cuts in the preparations for the 2028 Olympics, whose final bill is expected to top 7 billion dollars. And L.A.’s taxpayers are supposed to cover a big part of these huge bills.

In other words, economic crisis or not, these politicians will not slow down with the expensive projects big capitalists expect to profit from.