Karen Bass Says LAPD Will Stop Citing Street Vendors. She Also Personally Signed Off on a Cart Program That Still Hasn't Delivered.

By Matt Geller, Founding President, National Food Truck Association.

Last updated August 28, 2026.

Mayor Karen Bass spent last week defending a comment that compared food vendors to homeless encampments. This week, her office announced a fix: the LAPD will stop issuing criminal citations to street vendors and will dismiss the ones issued in error.

It sounds like a real concession. It isn't one. And it isn't even the promise Bass should be held to.

What Bass actually said, and what changed

During a debate with City Council member Nithya Raman, her opponent in November's mayoral race, Bass said: "I do not think that you should have a food vendor in front of a restaurant. Period." She went on to compare the situation to encampments outside restaurants and schools, suggesting vendors should eventually move into brick-and-mortar locations.

The backlash was immediate. Sergio Jimenez, an organizer who has worked with LA street vendors for close to a decade, called it "a slap in the face." Raman, speaking at a taco stand the next day, said Bass "took a shot at street vendors."

By Thursday, Bass's office was walking it back, telling reporters the mayor "stands firmly with street vendors" and had directed LAPD to stop issuing criminal citations tied to an anti-camping ordinance that had reportedly been used against vendors at MacArthur Park.

The part nobody's reporting: enforcement was already paused

Here's what the timeline leaves out. NFTA has a copy of an April 30, 2026 email from James Dragan, Director of the Specialized Food Inspection Branch at LA County's Department of Public Health, addressed to our team and an LAPD officer. It reads, in part:

"There has been a pause on the enforcement response to the unregulated sidewalk food vending marketplace complaints due to safety concerns for our field staff associated with federal immigration enforcement activities occurring in some areas... We are continuing to monitor complaints and will resume the enforcement activities when conditions allow."

That's four months before Bass's comments. County health inspectors, who typically accompany LAPD on unpermitted vending enforcement, stopped responding to complaints back in the spring because ICE activity made it unsafe for field staff to do their jobs. LAPD doesn't generally go after unpermitted carts on its own; it relies on DPH inspectors to make the call on food safety violations. If DPH isn't showing up, there's not much for LAPD to enforce in the first place.

A second email, from Liza Frias, Director of Environmental Health at DPH, confirms the department has also shifted its whole enforcement philosophy: away from street-level vendors, toward the commercial kitchens supplying them.

"Public Health is continuing to address unpermitted food vending but has shifted its focus from street level unpermitted sidewalk food vending enforcement, to instead target the larger organizations that control many street level operations... During previous street level enforcement actions, inspectors encountered the employees of these operations, rather than the owner/operator, who are the ultimate responsible party."

So when City Hall announces that LAPD will "stop" criminal citations, it's formalizing a policy that was already true on the ground. It costs the mayor's office nothing, and it lets her collect credit for a concession she isn't actually making.

Bass already made a bigger promise, and put her name on it

Here's the one that actually matters.

In September 2024, Bass's office initiated a funding package sending City money to LA County to manufacture and distribute free, legal sidewalk vending carts. The City Council approved it 13-0. Bass concurred and finalized the deal herself on October 5, 2024. It wasn't a passing comment in a debate. It was a signed commitment.

Fifteen months later, on January 12, 2026, LA County DEO and the City's Economic and Workforce Development Department jointly announced the results: the Sidewalk Vending Cart Program, a $2.8 million initiative promising more than 280 free, health-code-compliant carts to vendors across the county and the city. DEO Director Kelly LoBianco called it a program that would let "hundreds of hard-working vendors ... operate safely, legally, and sustainably." Board Chair Hilda Solis called it "more than a program" and "a chance to support small business growth, economic stability, and even generational wealth." The county said applicants could expect a cart within roughly 12 weeks of applying.

That was eight months ago.

The carts from Bass's own program are stuck too

Records from Revolution Carts, one of three manufacturers awarded contracts under this program, show two purchase orders placed on March 25, 2026, five months after the public launch: 25 grill carts for the DEO side of the program, and 16 grill carts earmarked specifically for the City of Los Angeles side, to be distributed through partner organization ICON. Combined, that's 41 carts worth $539,745.01.

Both orders list an expected delivery window of April 30 to August 31, 2026. As of the order date, the delivery location for both was still marked "TBD." That window closes this weekend, and there's no public indication any of the 41 carts have reached a vendor.

This is the part that lands directly on the mayor, not the county bureaucracy. Bass didn't just comment on this issue. She initiated the City's funding request, signed the deal, and stood behind a launch event promising vendors carts in three months. Eight months after that launch, the carts tied to her own program are sitting in a warehouse instead of on a street corner.

And that's not even the county's slowest vendor program

There's a second, older, entirely separate program worth knowing about, because it shows this isn't a one-time hiccup. It's a pattern.

Since December 2022, LA County's Department of Economic Opportunity has run a subaward with the nonprofit Inclusive Action for the City, funded with American Rescue Plan dollars, specifically to get vendors legal carts. NFTA has spent months reviewing this subaward's three amendments and 43 months of DEO cash fund requests as part of an accountability investigation with Inclusive Action for the City. Here's what we found:

The county tripled the price tag for the same 20 carts across two amendments, while zeroing out the auxiliary sink budget those high-risk carts need to legally operate and quietly deleting two vending districts vendors were supposed to get access to. The money didn't disappear. Amendment 3 moved it out of sinks, engineering, and fabrication fees and into the Carts line, dollar for dollar. An internal county email from March 2025 confirms DPH had already approved standard plans for two cart types under this subaward, meaning units could have been built immediately. Sixteen months later, Amendment 3 specified a different cart type entirely instead.

This is a different agreement from the one Bass signed, funded through a different pot of money. But the county manages cart production for both programs, and that's part of why the same bottleneck shows up everywhere you look: as of this writing, 119 finished, code-compliant carts sit in inventory across the county's contracted manufacturers, 42 grill, 48 tamale, and 29 ice cream, spanning both funding streams. It doesn't matter whether the money came from ARP-SV-01 or the mayor's own $2.8 million program. The carts get built. They don't get handed out.

What this actually adds up to

Put the pieces side by side. The mayor makes a comment that infuriates vendors and their advocates, and her office responds with an announcement that changes nothing on the ground, because the enforcement had already stopped months earlier for unrelated reasons. Meanwhile the program Bass herself signed off on, launched with her county partners at a press conference, and promised vendors carts within 12 weeks, has carts sitting in a warehouse eight months later with a delivery window closing this week. A separate county program aimed at the same goal has delivered nothing at all in 43 months. Different funding, different paperwork, same county managing production, same result: 119 finished carts sitting in inventory and nowhere near enough vendors holding one.

Jimenez called the LAPD announcement "a positive step," and it probably is. Nobody wants vendors saddled with criminal records for working. But a positive step that costs nothing and changes nothing on the ground isn't the same as progress. Bass didn't just talk about legalizing vendors. She signed her name to a program built to do it. The carts exist. Someone just has to actually hand them out.

NFTA is continuing to track both cart programs and will publish updates as the county's September 1 reporting deadline approaches.

Disclosure: NFTA's founding president, Matt Geller, is also the founder of Revolution Carts, one of the manufacturers contracted to build carts under the Sidewalk Vending Cart Program, and the vendor on the purchase orders referenced above. Revolution Carts also holds part of the separate ARP-SV-01 cart procurement. The figures above are drawn from public council and county records, the executed ARP-SV-01 agreement and its amendments, DEO's own cash fund requests, and Revolution Carts' own purchase order records.