Kristin Crowley won’t go quietly.
The former fire chief of the city of Los Angeles appealed to the City Council on Tuesday, seeking a reversal of her abrupt termination by Mayor Karen Bass. Point by point, she refuted the mayor’s stated reasons for firing her.
Crowley said she did not “refuse” to do an after-action report, she told the Fire Commission that the fires in early January were enormously complex incidents, beyond the limited resources of the already-strained Los Angeles Fire Department. She said she recommended that the city work with the larger investigation already ordered by the governor. She said the commissioners did not express disagreement with that assessment.
Crowley denied sending a thousand firefighters home instead of to the Palisades to fight the fires, pointing out that the lack of available apparatus meant they wouldn’t have been able to do anything.
The United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112 backed her up, saying in a statement that the department has “nearly 100 broken down fire engines, trucks and ambulances in the maintenance yard because of civilian mechanic job cuts.”
Firefighters showed up in force to support Crowley in Tuesday’s council meeting, speaking out during more than an hour of public comment about the impact of chronic underfunding and recent budget cuts, and defending Crowley as a truth-teller who stood up for the people doing the dangerous work on the ground, vocal in her efforts to get them the resources they needed to do the job.
Of the fifteen members of the City Council, only Monica Rodriguez and Traci Park voted to reverse Crowley’s firing, far short of the 10 votes needed. Rodriguez said she had been warned a few hours before Tuesday’s meeting about her support for Crowley, reporting that she had been asked if she was “ready to accept the political ramifications.”
The City of Los Angeles runs like an episode of “The Sopranos.” Loyalty to the Boss is the only factor determining who makes it to the next episode.
City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson told Fox 11 News on February 27 that the problem with Crowley was timing. He criticized her for publicly criticizing the mayor’s cuts to the LAFD budget while the fires were still burning.
But Crowley had been sounding the alarm long before the Palisades fire. In a written report to the Fire Commission on December 17, she warned that the budget cuts, especially $7 million in cuts to the funding for overtime hours, created “unprecedented operational challenges due to the elimination of critical civilian positions.” Mechanics, for example.
The bigger question for residents and voters in Los Angeles is why the fire department is chronically underfunded. Why is anything in the budget a higher priority than public safety?
Harris-Dawson told Fox 11 News, “I’m happy with my vote on the budget. The City Council has a lot of priorities, many of which are life and death, including fire. Fire isn’t the only thing that’s life and death.”
This is classic government horsefeathers, to use a word that can be printed in a family newspaper. “Fire the firemen first” is a well-worn strategy for fending off across-the-board budget reductions that cut into treasured political pork. It’s also useful for frightening voters into approving even higher taxes.
Crowley stated publicly that cuts to the department’s budget were endangering life and property in Los Angeles. She was fired for being right.
The mayor has the power to fire the fire chief, but firing Crowley doesn’t solve Bass’ problem, which is that now, everybody knows the rest of the story.
A recall of the mayor was launched this week with major funding from Nicole Shanahan, the running mate of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in his independent campaign for the presidency. She has the resources to fund the recall and to end the political career of Karen Bass permanently.
Meanwhile, as the mayor scapegoats Crowley for the Palisades fire, two state Assembly members from the L.A. area have decided to scapegoat private firefighters. Assembly Bill 1075 from Isaac Bryan and Tina McKinnor seeks to prevent privately contracted firefighters from hooking up their equipment to fire hydrants.
State Farm won’t be happy, but Tony Soprano would be proud.
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