Because the Palisades hearth started, Los Angeles County Hearth Chief Anthony Marrone appeared earlier than the Board of Supervisors for a beforehand scheduled dialogue on the way to spend the primary $152 million in property taxes that county voters authorised in November for hearth safety and emergency response.
Few different native governments might have such a dialog, Supervisor Janice Hahn instructed him on the Jan. 7 assembly.
“Our voters will vote to raise their own taxes” to guard themselves and one another, Hahn stated, “and that’s not the case in other parts of, probably, the state and it’s certainly not in other parts of the country.”
That’s not totally true, however because the disaster unfolded within the following days, county leaders loved the looks of foresight and readiness — even after the Eaton hearth virtually erased the unincorporated neighborhood of Altadena, the place the county is the one municipal authorities.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had no such luck.
It’s not merely that she was in Africa as an alternative of on the town when the fires broke out. Offended residents blamed her for the catastrophe not simply in Pacific Palisades, which is a part of her metropolis, however Altadena, which isn’t. Metropolis of LA Hearth Chief Kristin Crowley lashed out on the mayor’s ostensible funds cuts to her division, though cautious evaluation paints a extra complicated funds image.
Mall developer Rick Caruso, whom Bass defeated in 2022, blamed metropolis “mismanagement,” and explicitly referred to as her out. So did Los Angeles Instances proprietor Patrick Quickly-Shiong, who stated his newspaper made a mistake in endorsing her however didn’t say why, aside from to recommend that the catastrophe one way or the other proved that she was incompetent. Hundreds of individuals signed petitions calling for Bass’ resignation. It was as if she had set the fires herself.
Why does Bass get a lot blame and county supervisors so little?
The supervisors are helped partially by the construction of their authorities, which not like the town holds no single mayor-like elected official accountable for your entire physique’s efficiency. It’s the most important native jurisdiction within the U.S., with about 10 million residents, 117,000 staff, an annual funds of greater than $50 billion and massive accountability for catastrophe preparedness and response, pure useful resource administration, public security, financial growth and poverty.
But it has considerably the identical consultant construction as 56 smaller California counties (the mixed city-county of San Francisco is the good exception): 5 supervisors elected by district and no single elected and publicly accountable government. Los Angeles County is actually a state and not using a governor.
The supervisors are not often singled out for criticism — even amid crises just like the January fires. No LA County supervisor has been defeated for reelection since 1980.
After the 2018 Woolsey hearth — the area’s most damaging hearth till this month — supervisors averted indignant residents at neighborhood conferences and as an alternative left their hearth chief to deal with the invective. Throughout COVID lockdowns, opponents of masks and vaccine mandates harangued the county’s public well being officer outdoors her house however largely ignored the supervisors, who authorised the insurance policies. When juvenile halls repeatedly fail to fulfill state requirements and jails flunk even county inspections, the supervisors scold their underlings.
Their response to sad constituents is much less “I’m sorry” than it’s, “I know, right?”
Within the midst of the present hearth emergency, a county emergency alert system texted false evacuation warnings to hundreds of thousands of shaken residents. Board of Supervisors chair Kathryn Barger, whose district consists of Altadena, expressed anger on her constituents’ behalf, and the county’s emergency administration director provided profuse apologies. However in social media posts it was usually Bass who was blamed, regardless that the county system is outdoors her purview.
Being a county supervisor might be exhausting work, however in instances of disaster it’s quite a bit much less uncomfortable than being a mayor.
County voters backed reforms
The dynamic is about to vary. County voters in November narrowly authorised Measure G to increase the Board of Supervisors from 5 members to 9 and, importantly, to create an elected county government — in essence, a county mayor or governor. For the primary time, starting in 2028, the nation’s largest native governmental jurisdiction can have a single elected official with final authority and accountability. The supervisors, representing smaller districts, will proceed to do what they do finest: reply to constituent wants and demand solutions from others.
The measure was championed by the latest LA County supervisor, Lindsey Horvath. As she toured the devastation in Pacific Palisades on Wednesday, consoling constituents and thanking aid employees and firefighters (together with groups from Utah and Washington), she described her huge jurisdiction as “the most disaster-prone district in any county in the United States.”
Along with the Palisades hearth, her third District concurrently confronted the Kenneth hearth in West Hills, the Hurst hearth in Sylmar and the Archer hearth in Granada Hills — all on the opposite aspect of the Santa Monica Mountains from the Palisades. She is for all sensible functions the municipal chief within the unincorporated (and threatened or broken) communities of Topanga and Sundown Mesa, as Barger is in Altadena and quite a few different communities.
Barger’s district is even bigger and consists of components of the San Gabriel Mountains and the Mojave Desert. She opposed Measure G, asserting it was insufficiently vetted. Nonetheless, she is accustomed to the irritating inaction that ends in half from committee-type management and a scarcity of an accountable government.
Barger is right that many particulars of the brand new LA County authorities construction have but to be decided, and are essential. Having a single particular person responsible, like Bass, gained’t robotically enhance authorities if that accountability will not be paired with adequate authority. It gained’t stop ridiculous real-time political opportunism, just like the nonsensical declare that fireside hydrants failed due to environmental safety for delta smelt or the repulsive assertion that electing or appointing girls and other people of coloration to key positions undermines competence.
Learn Extra: Monitor California Wildfires
It additionally gained’t change some peculiar elements of LA County authorities. Town hearth division, for instance, should compete for shares of the town funds with providers that — earlier than the fires — had been the highest public priorities, together with police and housing. The county division, then again, is an element of a hearth safety district overseen by the Board of Supervisors, and funded immediately by the kind of devoted property taxes that Hahn boasted about within the board’s assembly with the county hearth chief.
A majority of voters within the Consolidated Hearth Safety District of Los Angeles County authorised the fireplace tax in 2020, after the Woosley hearth, however the measure failed to attain the mandatory two-thirds vote. So Hahn, an skilled politician with sturdy ties to the firefighters’ union (and Horvath’s co-author on Measure G), left it to union members to collect signatures for the 2024 measure. Because it was placed on the poll as a residents initiative, it required solely a easy majority. This time it handed.
That sort of political savvy will proceed to be as essential to the subsequent iteration of county authorities as it’s to the present one.
