1 Day Before Fires Started, LA Mayor Tried Cutting $49 Million More from Fire Dept: Report
Los Angeles Democratic Mayor Karen Bass reportedly tried to cut nearly $49 million from the Los Angeles County Fire Department budget shortly before deadly wildfires broke out in the area.
The budget cuts, as discussed in a memo leaked to the U.K. Daily Mail by a whistleblower, would have shuttered 16 fire stations across the city.
The memo said that the LAFD was “still going through” a $48.8 million “budget reduction exercise” with the City Attorney’s Office for the 2024 and 2025 fiscal year.
“The only way to provide a cost savings would be to close as many as 16 fire stations,” the document said.
That would have represented “at least one fire station per City Council District,” significantly impacting the ability of firefighters to respond in emergencies.
“The details of this plan have not yet been developed,” the document stressed. “This is a worst-case scenario and is NOT happening yet.”
The memo was dated Jan. 6, which is only one day before the fires started in the wealthy Pacific Palisades area.
Bass also cut $17.6 million from the LAFD in her latest budget, provoking criticism of her leadership as the fires destroy entire neighborhoods and force hundreds of thousands to evacuate.
Several current and former LAFD officials blasted the leadership of Los Angeles over the attempted budget cuts.
“They did not want this out. It’s an internal memo not to be distributed,” one 25-year veteran of the agency, who is still serving, told the Daily Mail.
“It comes from top brass downtown, City Hall. They’re trying to allocate more money for the homeless, and they need to start taking from everybody,” that firefighter added.
“But we already exhausted our budget. It’s already tapped,” the firefighter continued. “That’s why they cut the fire academy in half, so they could save more money. That’s why we’re not testing if hydrants work any more. We’re doing everything we can to save money.”
Another source told the outlet that “Bass wanted to cut even more” and was adamant that the LAFD somehow find more ways to reduce spending.
This entire situation shows how poor the leadership of Los Angeles and the state government of California has unsurprisingly turned out to be amid this crisis.
By refusing to enforce the law against criminals, incentivizing illegal immigration, focusing on diversity hiring, raising property prices through aggressive regulations, and hiking taxes on working people, among several other policies that could be mentioned, these Democratic leaders created the perfect storm to ensure that the city of Los Angeles folded as soon as a disaster hit.
As there is no end in sight to many of the fires, the LAFD will in any case be scraping for every penny they can find.
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