Los Angeles Mayor Responds to Rick Caruso’s Criticism of Palisades Fire Response

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and a billionaire developer with an outsized footprint in the city, Rick Caruso, are at it again.

During an appearance at Bloomberg’s Screentime event Wednesday evening, Bass sharply rebuked Caruso’s statement earlier in the day that “government failure on an epic level,” starting with his leadership, was responsible for the devastation of the Palisades fire in January.

“Well, the way he characterized me was like Trump,” she said. “But I was just saddened by it, honestly, because that response was beneath him.” The mayor added: “I think he is sad and bitter. »

She continued, “It’s exploiting tragedy, it’s exploiting grief. This is when the city needs to pull together. Why would you do that? So he’s better than that and I was just disappointed and sad.”

Bass added that Caruso was in his office a few weeks earlier as they worked together on a solution to issues raised by the so-called “mansion tax,” a real estate transfer tax that took effect in 2023 and generally applies to properties with a gross value of more than $5 million.

Caruso, the impresario behind The Grove and The Americana at Brand shopping centers, criticized the government’s response to the fire in a statement released Wednesday. Caruso was responding to news that a Florida man had been arrested for allegedly starting a Jan. 1 smoldering fire that was fanned into the massive Palisades wildfire by high winds days later.

“What makes the situation today even more difficult is that everything we feared about the possibility of avoiding this catastrophe turned out to be 100 percent true,” he said in a statement. “This was a failure of government on an epic level, starting with Mayor Bass. His and the city’s incompetence, mismanagement, and failure to plan, prepare, and pre-deploy directly led to the deaths of people, thousands of lives upended, and exposed the consequences of ineffective and incapable leadership.”

Bass and Caruso faced off in the 2022 mayoral race, which Bass won after Caruso spent a historic $104 million on his campaign. Bass will campaign for re-election next year, which she promised during her Screentime appearance would be her last. Caruso said he is considering running for mayor of Los Angeles or governor of California.