Of Course It Made an Impact
LA mayor Karen Bass insists that budget cuts to the fire department made no difference. Really?
Let’s establish this right off the top: Budget cuts or not, the LA fires were doomed to be catastrophic. You can point to LA wasting their time by focusing on creating an Equity and Human Resources Bureau at the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) and stupidly deciding that too many white men are working as firefighters, but these wildfires were going to be pretty bad regardless of all that.
That said, Karen Bass, the mayor of LA, doesn’t want you to believe that cutting the LAFD’s budget by over $17 million was a mistake. Per CNN:
“There were no reductions that were made that would have impacted the situation that we were dealing with over the last couple of days,” Bass said Thursday.
“There was a little bit of confusion because money was allocated to be distributed later on, which was actually going to support salaries and other parts of the fire department,” she said. But “the impact of our budget really did not impact what we’ve been going through over the last few days.”
When a reporter asked Bass about the budget and reserve funds, the mayor said she’s “not here to talk about the status of our budget.”
No impact, huh?
For perspective, the fire department’s total budget is around $819 million. That’s no small amount of money. But $17 million is no small amount either. In fact, LAFD Chief Kristin Crowley reported back in December that the budget cut had “adversely affected the Department’s ability to maintain core operations.” Of course these cuts were going to affect the fire department’s response at some level.
Thankfully, the LAFD is receiving help from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the Los Angeles County Fire Department along with federal assistance. Still, the LAFD would have been able to ensure at least a modestly better response if it was properly funded.
There’s plenty to talk about how progressive policies in general guaranteed worse conditions for the fires. A lot of that can be debated too. But there’s not much to debate about whether cutting the LAFD’s budget was a good idea. It wasn’t. If Mayor Bass doesn’t want to acknowledge that mistake, then shame on her.