SACRAMENTO — Los Angeles Democrat Karen Bass vowed urgent action to address California’s budget crisis Tuesday when she was sworn in as Assembly speaker, the first African American woman to lead a legislative body in U.S. history.
Bass held no elected office before winning an Assembly seat in 2004 to represent a district that includes West Los Angeles, Culver City and Baldwin Hills. A physician assistant raised by a homemaker and mail carrier in the Venice-Fairfax area, Bass sought in the early 1990s to find solutions to drug addiction, gun violence and other social ills she witnessed treating emergency room patients.
The Community Coalition, a nonprofit group she founded, helped limit the number of liquor stores that reopened in South Los Angeles after the 1992 riots. The group also helped bring more laundromats and grocery stores to the area. It also worked to close low-rent motels and replace cigarette and alcohol billboards near schools.
In the Legislature, Bass is best known as a fierce advocate for the state’s roughly 80,000 foster children.