In recent years, Los Angeles’ city leadership has labored in an often harsh, unsettling spotlight, with epic problems roiling the metropolis.
Attempts to focus on the burgeoning woes of homelessness and the skyrocketing cost of living from the Valley to the Coast were often diverted by self-inflicted crises at City Hall. Among them: The latest corruption scandal that landed a councilmember in prison and the leak of an audio recording that stunned Angelenos when city leaders were heard engaging in a racist conversation.
Karen Bass, who in 2022 defeated a billionaire developer in the costliest campaign in the city’s history, promised a fresh break from the city’s self-inflicted wounds.
And in the months since, things were going relatively well. The six-term former congresswoman, once on Joe Biden’s short list for the vice presidency, enjoyed seemingly wide popularity.
And then came Jan. 7, when an fierce windstorm fueled a mammoth urban fire that tore through the Palisades, leaving unprecedented destruction in its path.
It was a moment that demanded unity among leaders, a single unified focus among agencies for an effective response. But amid the heartbreak, and even as officials worked hard to organize a response, a fire-weary public saw weeks of simmering tensions between arguably its two most important leaders of the moment — the mayor and the fire chief — spill into public view.
Those tensions boiled over on Friday, when an embattled Bass fired the city’s fire chief, Kristin Crowley.
The action sparked quick criticism of an already politically wounded Bass, whose performance in the early days of responding to the Palisades fire brought widespread criticism.
The businessman/philanthropist she beat three years ago, Rick Caruso — stay tuned, he’s a potential opponent again — swiftly slammed Bass’ move.
”We need real leadership, not more blame passing,” he posted moments after the announcement.
Another critic, City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez, said Crowley — the first woman and first LGBTQ fire chief, appointed by former Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2022 — was made a “scapegoat” and called the action a “baseless termination” of a veteran department head for shining light on a lack funding for her department.
For Bass, the action represents what several pundits say was an inevitable reset, not just for her own mayorship but for the trajectory of a fire recovery potentially shaken by this rift between top leaders.
Bass herself must win, the pundits say, the kind of trust that many in the Eaton fire scar have put in L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who has stepped up to become the de-facto mayor of unincorporated Altadena.
“If you don’t have trust, it’s going to be much more difficult to achieve whatever common good you’re trying to achieve as you try to alleviate conditions that caused catastrophes like this in the first place,” said Jaime Regalado, professor emeritus at Cal State L.A.
It will take more than a minute.
Bass’ firing of Crowley was the coda to weeks of tension between arguably the two most vital leaders in this particular crisis.
On Jan. 10, just three days after the Palisades fire broke out, Crowley lashed out at city leaders, saying that budget cuts to her department, which she had warned about before the fires, hampered firefighters’ ability to respond. That led to a one-on-one closed door meeting between the pair.
It didn’t help that the heat had already been turned up on Bass, who faced a barrage of criticism over her role in handling of the wildfire. She departed on a diplomatic trip to Ghana days before the fires exploded, despite warnings about severe wind and conditions ripe for a major fire.
In those early days, in exchanges with the press, Bass seemed defensive and ill-prepared to defend her decision. Crowley’s public criticism of city leadership, meanwhile, drew media scrutiny of the city’s budget and its strategy for first responders.
In a post on X on Friday, Democratic strategist Michael Trujillo suggested that the firing of Crowley was a kind of re-set for the department, and one that breaks form the past mayoral administration and that could set her own mayorship back on track.
“I applaud Mayor Bass for firing the Fire Chief,” he wrote, while also taking a swipe at former L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti’s appointments during his tenure. “Removing his hires promptly from city leadership is the “fresh start” our Fire Department needs.”
Despite criticism of Bass’ action, Trujillo and other observers pointed to what they said was its inevitability. As the city moves into recovery mode, and processing the lessons from the fire, the tension between one of its top public safety leaders and the mayor could not continue.
Former L.A. City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky said the tension between Crowley and Bass was not sustainable in a moment of crisis, nor as the city recovers from it.
“It should have happened in January. But she wasn’t going to make it in the middle when the fires were still raging. I’m not surprised. Eventually it was going to happen,” he said.
Pundits agreed that amid the current situation, it’s hard to see a winner at City Hall in all this. But they do see a scenario where Bass and the city are able to get back on track to lead the recovery.
It’s clear that Bass’s pick for incoming interim chief, former Chief Deputy Ronnie Villanueva, a 41-year LAFD veteran, will have his work cut out for him.
For now, he’ll be the face of the department as it processes what went wrong in the response to the fire — the lack of hydrant pressure, how resources were allocated, problems with infrastructure.
And there will likely be a deep dive into the fire department’s budget. What were the gaps in funding and how do they get filled?
“He’s gonna be the face of the department now, and he’s going to be the person that goes to the mayor and city county and say ‘here’s what I need,’” Yaroslavsky said.
Former L.A. City Councilmember Dennis Zine was confident the city will get back on course, but it should come with some rejiggered priorities, he said.
“It’ll recover,” he said. “It always does. It’s just another episode in the city of Los Angeles’ long history of situations that have generated controversy, hostility and the removal of certain employees.”
But for Zine, himself a former veteran LAPD officer, not enough spotlight has been put on the City Council’s role in appropriated funds for the fire department.
“In this case, I don’t blame the fire chief, I don’t blame the firefighters, I don’t even blame the mayor. I blame the City Council,” he said. “They are the ones responsible for approving everything.”
Zine noted that the council has to better appropriate funding to public safety, to be ready for future disasters.
“God forbid we have an earthquake. What’s the city gonna do then?” he said.
While many pundits agree that Bass’s mayorship was wounded by the rift and the response to it, it may be too early to tell whether it was fatal to her leadership during the recovery.
“The real test is going to be about rebuilding,” Trujillo said.
The re-set, in a way, had begun in the days leading up to Friday’s firing, with Bass going on the offensive, now that the urgency of needing to control the fires has passed.
In an afternoon news conference Friday, Bass pledged support for a full investigation of what occurred leading up to the Palisades fire.
At this point, Crowley has not responded to her dismissal or Bass’ allegations.
Bass said that earlier the week, the president of the city’s Fire Commission instructed Crowley to prepare an after-action report. But, Bass said, Crowley refused.
In part, such a report would analyze the department’s model of pre-deployment during the January windstorm and critical fire danger. As the Santa Ana wind event began, firefighters were sent out to areas of concern such as Hollywood, the San Fernando Valley and the Palisades.
“We all know that 1,000 firefighters that could have been on duty on the morning the fires broke, but were instead sent home on Chief Crowley’s watch,” Bass said. “These actions required her removal.”
In a written statement, the mayor also said she fired Crowley “in the best interests” of L.A.’s public safety and the operations of the L.A. Fire Department.
The move also came after interviews in recent days where Bass was critical of Crowley for not informing her of the extreme Santa Ana winds and fire conditions that resulted in the fire.
“This isn’t a happy situation,” Trujillo said. “But now Mayor Bass gets to put her stamp on what kind of fire department she wants,” he added, referencing what he said was a laudable choice of former county Sheriff Jim McConnell as the LAPD’s new chief.
Ultimately, he said, voters will have the final say on whether that stamp is successful, with Bass up for re-election in 2026.
“Voters will have a year and half to see if Mayor Bass has met the task of rebuilding L.A.,” Trujillo said.