Mayor Karen Bass previously approved a merit-based pay raise of 2.5% for former Fire Chief Kristen Crowley — weeks later firing Crowley over what Bass characterized as leadership failures related to January’s wildfires.
A week before the Palisades fire erupted on Jan. 7, Bass sent a letter to City Controller Kenneth Mejia’s office, which stated she completed a written evaluation of the fire chief.
According to the controller’s office, they received about 20 letters that day from the mayor’s office notifying the payroll department of approved merit pay increases for 20 employees under the mayor’s supervision, including Crowley.
“(I) have approved an increase in her compensation of 2.5%, effective Jan. 12, 2025. I ask that you implement this increase as authorized by the interim guidelines,” the letter read.
Tensions with Crowley increased upon Bass’ return to the city when Crowley made public comments critical of what she described as the city’s under-funding of the LAFD. That led to a one-on-one meeting between the two, but no punitive actions were taken against Crowley at the time.
In announcing her decision to fire Crowley on Feb. 21, Bass questioned the department’s failure to pre-deploy about 1,000 firefighters the morning of Jan. 7, when a dramatic Santa Ana wind event sparked the fire, as well as Crowley’s alleged refusal to prepare an after-action report on the firefight.
She also said Crowley had failed to give her a weather update prior to the historic windstorm as she had done for other potentially dangerous weather events — despite such warnings being widely publicized for several days prior to Jan. 7.
Crowley unsuccessfully appealed her termination to the Los Angeles City Council, which voted 13-2 against reinstating the fire chief.
Crowley refuted the mayor’s claim that she refused to conduct an after-action report, calling it a “false accusation.”
“I recommended simply to collaborate with Gov. (Gavin) Newsom’s already selected and funded agency, the Fire Safety Research Institute or FSRI, because they are already conducting an independent analysis of the wind storm and fire events in the Los Angeles and Ventura counties,” Crowley said.
The former fire chief defended herself against the other allegations as well.