Garcetti interview: The mayor as urban policy wonk

Credit: Jennifer Fujikawa

Los Angeles Magazine is posting the full video this week of a breakfast session with Mayor Eric Garcetti held last week at the Hollywood Roosevelt hotel. In the free-flowing interview with editor Mary Melton, Garcetti talks about bringing Lucy Jones into City Hall as his earthquake and risk adviser, how it's more fun having executive power than holding the hands of 14 city council members, and the complexity of governing Los Angeles overlaid on the political and administrative backdrop of 88 cities, five counties and more than ten million people. He also gives his thoughts on why so few people voted in the election that chose him — it's a national phenomenon, Garcetti says. There's an interesting discussion of who does and does not see themselves as a civic leader of LA — and also on whether to even use "LA" as a shorthand for Los Angeles. And he takes on the impression that his profile is lower than some might like.

It's an interesting deeper-than-usual chat with the mayor, who has now been in office for nine months. Garcetti, by the way, predicts that the opening of the Expo Line connecting downtown to the beach in Santa Monica will be "a huge game-changer."