Eric Garcetti, the Mayor of Los Angeles, knows how to travel. His recent 12 day trip to Asia included 80 delegates, yes that is not a typo, 80. They are all going to China, South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam on a trade mission.
The good news is the taxpayers are not footing the entire bill. Garcetti has sponsors that will pay for their trip. One of those sponsors Greenland Holdings Group is a Chinese real estate developer who is building $1-billion hotel and residential skyscraper planned in downtown. The City Council agreed this year to let Greenland keep $39.2 million in taxes expected from the project over the next 25 years. This does not sound like such a great deal to me, at least not for anyone in Los Angeles.
According to the LA Times, The mayor logged 112 days, or nearly one-third of his time, away from California over the last 12 months based on his public calendar. The Los Angeles Times sued recently after the city refused to turn over records detailing taxpayer costs for security on out-of-state trips taken by Mayor Eric Garcetti. The lawsuit, which accuses Los Angeles of violating the California Public Records Act and the California Constitution, seeks a court order to make the city turn over any information that is not exempt from public disclosure.
Another article in the Wall Street Journal pointed out that Garcetti has eaten in 83 different countries. The Journal writer noted, “The difference between traveling as a civilian and as a politician is: As a politician, you’re mostly in a hotel or government building and see nothing, really, of the place. It’s almost like meeting in a virtual-reality chamber with your counterparts.”
As Garcetti is jet setting and burning through taxpayer money and accepting donations to fund these trip there are 53,195 homeless people in Los Angeles County and 31,516 of them in the city. For the first time the homeless population has gone down by 5% but this is nothing to brag about. If Garcetti wants a shot to run for president he has to do something about the homeless population.
We should be aware that Chicago, the third largest city in the United States with a population of around 3 million, has a homeless population of under 6,000. Los Angeles population is around 4 million and our homeless population is 53,000. How is this even possible?
The United Nations made a trip to Los Angeles and visited skid row to monitor poverty and human rights. This is embarrassing to anyone living in Los Angeles. While we live in Los Angeles we see daily how bad the homeless situation is and the Mayor is off on another junket. The Mayor needs to spend more time in Los Angeles and do what he was elected to do, serve Angelenos.