By any honest measure, Los Angeles – a city once envied for its sunshine, innovation, and cinematic dreams – has become a mismanaged catastrophe masquerading as a municipality. In this vast theme park of dysfunction, where the streets are littered with syringes, tents and broken dreams, the absence of a strong, competent, business-minded leadership has never been more glaring.
What Los Angeles needs is not another smooth-talking, smiling political sycophant promising to “build coalitions” but a tough, unflinching, no-nonsense business executive who can read a balance sheet, demand results and fire incompetence without checking how many followers someone has on Twitter.
Let us begin with the numbers – those cruel, impartial gods of truth. The city’s budget has swelled to nearly $13 billion, yet basic services have crumbled.
Homelessness has ballooned by more than 80% over the past decade despite pouring billions into an ever-expanding web of “nonprofit” contractors who seem more interested in perpetuating the crisis than solving it.
Skid Row stretches beyond its historical borders – its influence metastasizing into Echo Park, Venice, Hollywood and parts of the San Fernando Valley like an untreated infection.
Once-glittering districts now resemble open-air asylums. Retail stores are fleeing the city, not unlike East Berliners of old, desperate to escape a failed experiment in social engineering. Target, CVS and other national brands are shuttering locations, citing rampant theft and the unwillingness of City Hall to prosecute even the most flagrant criminal acts. Meanwhile, the L.A. Metro has become a dangerous wasteland, hemorrhaging riders due to violent crime and filth – so much so that only 14% of pre-pandemic riders have returned. Imagine a company that lost 86% of its customers and still dared to call itself a “success.”
Strong leadership needed
This level of decline isn’t just accidental. It is the direct result of leadership that is allergic to accountability, blinded by ideology, and utterly unfamiliar with the principles of operational efficiency. A competent business executive – let’s say someone with the ruthless clarity of a Lee Iacocca or the turnaround tenacity of a Howard Schultz – would look at L.A. and see a brand in crisis, a bloated enterprise hemorrhaging resources while alienating its core users.
What would a really strong CEO do? First, conduct a top-to-bottom audit of all city departments. Redundant, underperforming programs would be axed. The dead weight would be jettisoned. Contracts – especially the shady ones enriching politically connected nonprofits – would be re-bid with performance-based incentives. Results, not intentions, would rule the day.
Second, a laser-focused, business-minded mayor would treat public safety as a non-negotiable deliverable, not a political football. The absurdity of a city where police are discouraged from proactive enforcement while criminals are coddled in the name of “equity” is the kind of thinking that makes investors run and tourists shudder. Public order is not optional; it is foundational. No business thrives in chaos.
Third, homelessness would be addressed not with more overpriced housing projects costing $700,000 per unit but with scalable, modular shelters coupled with tough-love requirements for treatment and employment. A businessperson understands that you get more of it if you subsidize dysfunction. If you reward productivity and accountability, you transform lives and save money.
Creating a brand
But most importantly, a business executive in the mayor’s seat would understand branding. L.A.’s brand is in ruins. Once the cultural and economic envy of the world, it is now the butt of late-night jokes and cautionary tales. Reviving that brand means streamlining bureaucracy so entrepreneurs aren’t strangled by red tape. It means restoring confidence in the city’s ability to protect life, property and investment. And yes – it means someone in charge who can speak hard truths without fear of being “canceled.”
The current leadership class in Los Angeles, with its parade of ineffectual careerists, is rotting from incompetence and ideological captivity. They confuse virtue signaling for strategy and press conferences for performance. Talk. Talk. Talk.
Los Angeles doesn’t need more progressive poetry readings at City Hall. It requires a decisive leader who can meet payroll, balance budgets and measure success in units other than smiles and hashtags.
History reminds us that great cities are not immune to decay. Detroit was once the beating heart of American industrial power. Today, it is a punchline.
Cities can be pulled back from the abyss when run with a CEO’s mindset – results-oriented, tough, and guided by metrics, not sentimentality.
Los Angeles stands at a similar precipice. Either we choose leadership that treats this city like the multibillion-dollar enterprise it is, or we continue our descent into the realm of irrelevance, dysfunction, and despair. If we truly love Los Angeles, we must elect someone who can fix it – not someone who merely feels sorry for it.
Isn’t it time we stopped treating this city like a protest movement and started managing it like a business, where actual results matter?
Michael Levine is a veteran Los Angeles public relations executive who has represented Academy Award and Grammy Award winners. He has written many books including “Broken Windows, Broken Business.”
