Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said President Trump lacks the authority to fast-track wildfire rebuilding efforts in her own backyard after he signed an executive order aimed at speeding up the sluggish process.
“I’m calling on the President to issue a new Executive Order to demand the insurance industry pay people for their losses so that survivors can afford to rebuild,” Bass said in a statement to The Post.
The mayor said that Trump has “no authority over the local permitting process” and should focus on making insurers pay claims and speeding up FEMA funding.
“The President should handle his business, because we are handling ours,” Bass said.
The mayor’s comments come as the president signed the order Tuesday aimed at expediting the rebuilding a year after devastating fires torched entire city blocks and left thousands homeless.
“I want to see if we can take over the city and state and just give the people their permits they want to build,” Trump told the California Post Friday in an exclusive Oval Office interview when he signed the seven-page order.
Bass said the order was “another meaningless political stunt” to distract from what is happening in Minnesota and other U.S. cities.
Trump had blamed California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Bass for the painfully slow rebuilding of homes.
“One of the greatest failures of elected political leadership in American history, from enabling the wildfires to failing to manage them, and it continues today with the abject failure to rebuild,” he said.
