Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass announced Thursday, Jan. 9, that she had spoken with President Joe Biden and that the federal government will pay for 100% of firefighting costs stemming from this week’s multiple wildfires, as she continued to deal with comments from critics about her leadership.
Bass has in recent days faced criticism for her decision to leave town ahead of deadly windstorms to be part of a U.S. presidential delegation to Africa for the inauguration of Ghana’s new president, John Dramani Mahama. Forecasters had predicted the windstorms and had issued weather warnings before the trip.
In addition, some critics blamed city officials, including Bass, for not doing enough to mitigate fire risks before this week’s devastating events.
Bass left for her pre-planned trip to Ghana on Saturday and did not return until Wednesday, when she visited Pacific Palisades along with Gov. Gavin Newsom and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla to survey the damage.
On Thursday evening, the mayor announced during a press conference that she had spoken with Biden about having the federal government cover all costs of the disaster response.
“This is unprecedented because this is usually not 100%,” Bass said during a news conference where she was joined by a representative from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a number of state and federal elected officials.
Bass also said the city would remove red tape in order to “aggressively rebuild” homes and infrastructure and clear the way so small businesses can reopen more quickly.
“We will reject those who seek in this emergency – when lives are at stake and lives have been lost – we will reject those who seek to divide us and seek to misinform,” Bass said in response to her critics.
“We will rebuild our city and we will do whatever is necessary to get us past this crisis. And we can do that by being united,” she added.
Billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso, who ran against Bass for mayor in 2022, has been among her most vocal critics this week.
In an interview with a local news station, Caruso – who previously told reporters his daughter lost her home in the Palisades fire – slammed city leaders for “mismanagement” due to the scarcity of water in fighting the fires. He also said he believed dry brush on land owned by the city and county in the Palisades hillsides hadn’t been removed or pruned for decades, contributing to the quick spread of fires.
But beyond suggesting that the public deserved answers from both the L.A. City Council and L.A. County, Caruso also singled out his former political rival.
“We’ve got a mayor that’s out of the country, and we’ve got a city that’s burning,” he said, according to a clip of the interview that Caruso reposted on the social media platform X.
During the days that Bass was out of town, she or a member of her staff continued posting updates on social media to inform the public about the expected windstorms and the city’s emergency response efforts.
This included a warning about “an expected destructive and potentially life-threatening windstorm,” posted Monday evening, subsequent updates about evacuation orders and available shelters, plus videos of members of the L.A. Fire Department on the ground in Pacific Palisades and other first responders assisting with emergency response.
Bass declared a state of emergency on Tuesday, ahead of her return to L.A.
During a press conference Wednesday, Bass addressed some of the criticisms that had been raised about her ability to lead in a crisis while away, noting she was in regular communication with first responders and officials back home while traveling back from Ghana.
“I’ve been in constant contact with our fire commanders, with county, state and federal officials. I took the fastest route back which included being on a military plane, which facilitated our communications. So I was able to be on the phone the entire time of the flight,” Bass said.
Fernando Guerra, director of the Leavey Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University and a political science professor, said Thursday that how a leader will be remembered is “often defined by moments of crises.”
While he believes the attacks on Bass have been unfair, he said the mayor hasn’t done enough to counter false claims or narratives that aren’t entirely accurate.
‘If I do have one criticism of Mayor Bass, it’s that she is not being more forceful against these narratives,” Guerra said. “She is letting misinformed individuals capture the narrative. You can’t do that as a leader. You have to capture the narrative.”
Critics on social media have alleged that Bass cut the city fire department’s budget by $23 million.
On Thursday, a spokesperson for L.A. City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who was budget chair last year, said the city increased the fire department’s overall budget by approximately $53 million in the current fiscal year. However, $76 million – intended to pay for fire department personnel – was placed in a fund separate from the fire department’s regular account when the budget was adopted because contract negotiations with department employees were still taking place at the time.
Also earlier this week, a video showed a reporter for Sky News, a British news outlet, asking Bass during her travel back from Ghana if she felt she should apologize to Angelenos for “being absent whilst their homes were burning.” The reporter peppered Bass with questions, but she remained silent during the airport encounter.
Guerra said there’s still time for the mayor to recover from this week’s negative press and that her response to the fires over the next couple of weeks – including shoring up federal resources from President Biden before he leaves office – will be critical for Bass politically. The mayor is seeking reelection next year.
“A crisis can define you, but you better define yourself before you are defined,” Guerra said Thursday afternoon.
Just hours after Guerra’s interview with the Los Angeles Daily News, Bass announced the disaster funding from the federal government.
