LA Mayor Bass's spending priorities, cuts to the LAFD, affected effort to fight wildfires: Report

Los Angeles slashed funding for the fire department last year by $17.6 million, but only after some controversial contracts and payouts agreed to by Mayor Karen Bass, according to a new report. 

The problem began last year after Bass’s involvement in the settling of contract negotiations with public sector unions, according to the New York Post. 

The settlements provided the city’s civilian employees with 20 to 25 percent wage hikes over five years and provided other benefits that cost the city $4.5 billion over the life of the contracts, based on an analysis by the city’s administrative officer, according to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.

In addition, a “series of unintended payouts stemming from judgments against the city in personal injury lawsuits brought Los Angeles to the brink,” according to The Post. 

“Los Angeles is teetering on the edge of a fiscal emergency, with its finances in ‘dire’ condition and no money to cover unplanned expenses after a series of lawsuit payouts blew a hole in the city’s already-tight budget,” the Los Angeles Times wrote in an editorial in October 2024, calling it a “self-inflicted” wound for Bass. 

The Times warned that the city’s rainy day expense fund, which is required to be 10% of the $8-billion general fund budget, was coming close to being below 2.75%, which could trigger a fiscal emergency.

“Mayor Bass’s tenure is another unfortunate example of the failure of progressive governance in California. Bass has spent much of her mayoral energy negotiating more generous salary contracts for municipal employees rather than focusing on core city needs such as firefighting,” according to a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

“Although fires can and do start anywhere, the obvious failures of LA’s fire response are in part the result of Mayor Bass’s focus on supporting municipal unions and progressive causes rather than the needs of the city’s citizens.”

In a report from last month, L.A. Fire Chief Kristen Crowley said that the “budgetary reductions have adversely affected the Department’s ability to maintain core operations, such as technology and communication infrastructure, payroll processing, training, fire prevention, and community education.” 

“Ultimately, loss of funding impairs the Department’s ability to mitigate wildland fires and other hazards effectively,” the report stated.

Bass pushed back on the analysis at a news conference on Thursday, saying that the budget cuts have not affected the LAFD’s ability to fight the wildfires. “I think if you go back and look at the reductions that have been made, there were no reductions that would have impacted the situation we were dealing with over the last couple of days,” she said, according to CNN. 

“It’s important to understand that we were in tough budgetary times. Everybody knew that, but the impact of our budget really did not affect what we’ve been going through over the last few days.”