Los Angeles Mayor Bass adds insult to injury for wildfire victims

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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The wildfires that engulfed Los Angeles 13 months ago destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, with almost incalculable financial losses and they killed at least 31 people.

The rebuilding has barely begun, but insult is being added to the fire victims’ injuries as local officials — especially Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass — are engaging in a pointless game of finger-pointing.

When former Los Angeles Fire Chief Christine Crowley filed suit this weekclaiming that Bass fired her to shift the blame for the city’s chaotic response to the fire, it was only the latest an episode of a saga which began with Bass on a trip to Africa when flames engulfed her town.

When he was in Congress, Bass used his position as a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to travel widely on taxpayer money, particularly in Africa.

“I went to Africa every two months, all the time,” she told the New York Times in a 2021 interview, adding that giving up travel would be a negative aspect of becoming mayor. She told the Times that if elected, “not only will I live here, but I won’t travel abroad — the only places I would go would be D.C., Sacramento, San Francisco and New York, in conjunction with L.A.”

However, she made several international visits after the election, including one to Ghana, just as Los Angeles residents were being warned that Santa Ana’s warm winds could spark wildfires. So Bass was half a globe away when the fires broke out.

It was what political professionals call “bad optics.” And they were about to get worse.

Crowley claims her department has been deprived of money needed to improve fire responses. Bass denied the allegations and fired the boss.

Crowley’s lawsuit, which alleges Bass “orchestrated a campaign of revenge,” is the least of Bass’ fire-related worries as she seeks re-election this year.

In early December, the Los Angeles Times published exposés about how politics had interfered with a a supposedly dispassionate report on fire department responses to wildfires.

“For months after the Palisades fire, many who had lost their homes anxiously awaited the Los Angeles Fire Department’s follow-up report, which was expected to provide a candid assessment of how the agency handled the disaster.” first article in the Times said.

“The first draft was completed by August, possibly earlier.

“And then began the deletions and other changes — behind closed doors — in what amounted to an effort to play down the failures of city and LAFD leadership to prepare for and fight the Jan. 7 fire that killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes,” records obtained by The Times show.

In response to the Times’ revelation, Bass distanced himself from it and ordered a new investigation into the fire department’s responses, this time by new Fire Chief Jaime Moore.

But then the paper dropped another bombshell this month. It reported that “two sources familiar with Bass’s office said that after receiving an early draft, the mayor told then-Interim Fire Chief Ronny Villanueva that the report could expose the city to legal liability for those failures. Bass wanted key findings about the LAFD’s actions removed or mitigated before the report was released, the sources said — and that’s what happened.”

The Times reports are further confirmation that professional journalism is a vital check on political gaslighting.

It also demonstrates that Bass — who, until Los Angeles, had never run anything of note as she climbed the political ladder — is unprepared to run the nation’s second-largest city.

Finally, it is doubtful that Bass will lose his job. Although there will be dozens of names on the ballot, her only notable challenger is a left-leaning city council member, Nitya Ramapwho is even less qualified.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.