Los Angeles Firefighters Begged the City Not to Cut Funding

Less than a month ago, LA's Fire Chief warned Mayor Karen Bass of "unprecedented operational challenges"

It’s quite something to watch billionaires and conservative activists toggle between lectures about how the government needs to spend trillions of dollars less in the name of “government efficiency” followed by moaning that government isn’t able to respond to emergencies. The phrase “they want their cake and eat it too” has always struck me as a stupid one, because what is the point of holding on to a cake? Who wants to just have a cake? Just to look at it? These billionaires want their wealth and want the government to be free and perfect too — and they want to dump endless carbon and methane into the climate and have it not react in any way. That’s not as pithy as the cake line, but that’s what they want.

In Los Angeles, they want to build mansions on hillsides that have burned for millennia, and they don’t want to give the fire department the budget they need to hire mechanics to fix their trucks. But they want the trucks to work anyway.

While the city continues to burn, a debate is raging over what the fire department’s true budget was. What’s more important though is what its capacity is. Our correspondent Jessica Burbank took a close look at the decisions made by city policy makers and linked them directly to the hobbled fire department. Her story is below.

-Ryan

Firefighters to save homes in Pacific Palisades, California on Thursday January 9, 2025. Photo: Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images.

The Los Angeles Fire Department knew it was severely underfunded long before this fire. “We don't have enough firefighters and medics, we don't have enough fire engines, we don't have enough trucks and ambulances in the field,” Freddy Escobar, an LAFD Captain II told the city during his testimony at a budget hearing on May 1, 2024. “And we don't have the equipment and staffing that we need to respond to half a million emergency calls for service every year,” added Escobar, who is union president of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City (UFLAC).

The captain explained that demand for fire and rescue had doubled while resources dwindled. “The LAFD has fewer firefighters and medics today than we had 15 years ago, but our emergency calls for service has increased by more than 50% during that same time,” testified Escobar.

As of May 2, 2024, 86 emergency vehicles were out of commission in Los Angeles because funds had not been allocated to hire sheet metal workers and mechanics to fix them. This includes: 40 fire engines (which carry water and are used to fight fires), 36 ambulances, and 10 fire trucks (which carry equipment, like ladders and rescue supplies). As Captain Chuong Ho testified during a budget hearing, “It just makes no sense to have million dollar fire trucks and engines taken out of service and sidelined because we don't have enough mechanics to keep them running.”

As multiple fires engulfed entire neighborhoods in Los Angeles this week, a debate over the Los Angeles Fire Department budget has unfolded on social media. All things told, a larger LAFD budget would have made little if any difference in the enormous scale of the fires – at least four of them at once – which have been driven so far and so quickly by the famous Santa Ana winds. But the ability of the Fire Department to act as first responders, to evacuate and rescue people quickly, has a direct connection to the budget.

“We're at the breaking point where our firefighters can no longer do more with less,” testified Fire Chief Kristin M. Crowley, in a budget hearing at city hall concerning the 2024-25 fiscal year. She made clear the LAFD was struggling: “This service delivery model is no longer sustainable.”

“Stations are outdated and ill-equipped, technology meant to protect our first responders like PFAS extractors sit waiting to be installed, and critical fire response equipment goes without maintenance,” testified Councilmember Traci Park, during the May 2, 2024 budget hearing.

Focusing on the topline budget numbers tends to overlook the granular issues. The online debate about the LAFD budget took off when Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the LA Times, tweeted that LA Mayor Karen Bass had cut the department’s budget. “Fires in LA are sadly no surprise, yet the Mayor cut LA Fire Department’s budget by $23M,” he posted. “Competence matters… Follow @latimes for live coverage.”

A debate over the numbers flared up. City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who serves as chair of the budget committee, was cited by Politico, saying, “In fact, the city’s fire budget increased more than $50 million year-over-year compared to the last budget cycle.” It is hard to know what Blumenfeld’s office was referring to, as no budget documents reflect this figure.

The LAFD will likely go over budget this year, with an estimated $920 million total expenditure in fiscal year 2024-25. However, this is nowhere near a $50 million increase compared to the 2023-24 total expenditure at $903.8 million — they had to spend $66 million more than the city budgeted for.

City Controller Kenneth Mejia’s office confirmed to Drop Site News, “LAFD’s operating budget did get reduced by $17.6M.” Despite the LAFD’s appeal to the city for more staff, “part of that reduction included 61 total positions (civilian) being eliminated,” according to Mejia’s office. Drop Site News reached out to Councilmember Bob Blumenfield for comment but has yet to hear back.

The Fire Chief mentioned the $17.6 million year-over-year budget cut in July and December. The approved LAFD 2024-25 budget, authored by Bass, is $819.6 million, compared to $837.2 million in 2023-24.

That also means this year’s LAFD budget is $84.3 million less than last year’s total expenditure. As a result, Chief Crowley expects the department will be forced to spend over budget again to meet needs for staffing, fleet maintenance, and purchase new vehicles — all while sacrificing when it comes to responding to large-scale emergencies.

Chuong Ho, LAFD Captain II and UFLAC Vice President, testified against the proposed budget cuts on May 2, 2024, and asked city council to “add back $5.8 million” for overtime. The department currently relies on overtime hours because it is short-staffed. “Until we can finally and properly staff our fire department, we need to utilize these v-staffed [variably staffed] hours to provide coverage for these resources,” Ho said. Whatever was budgeted for overtime, this crisis will push it far beyond that figure.

The proposed budget deleted “73 vacant non-firefighter civilian positions in the Department” and transferred funding from salary accounts to the overtime pay accounts. These non-firefighter civilian positions include sheet metal workers, welders, and mechanics, who keep the fleet of LAFD vehicles operational. In May, Captain Ho reiterated how important these vacant non-fire fighter positions are: “Members of this committee need to know that fire trucks, engines, and ambulances are consistently in need of repairs and services.”

While the overtime pay account is underfunded, pulling funds from critical supply and maintenance positions may mean the firefighters working overtime lack enough trucks to drive in times of high demand.

Some online users interpreted the transfer of funds from staffing accounts to overtime pay as a good sign: “The budget changes to firefighter salaries and overtime reflect ACTUAL the staffing: Firefighters like overtime pay!” The reality is, critical staff positions were cut, and while firefighters may ”like“ overtime pay, the reliance on overtime hours was a major concern for the LAFD during the budget hearings.

Councilmember Park clarified: “While this budget makes investments in recruitment, we are still nowhere near a sustainable level of sworn personnel to be able to respond to any emergency at a moment's notice,” the district 11 representative continued, “the already existing staffing crisis is why, sadly, LAFD has to rely in part on variable overtime to plug operational and coverage gaps necessary to keeping all of Los Angeles safe.”

Notably, the account for overtime pay was not just a concern for the LAFD. The City Clerk’s Chief Legislative Analyst, Sharon Tso, flagged the issue in a memo sent to city hall on April 30, 2024 – before budget hearings began. In the report, the fire department made up four of the twelve “potentially underfunded” accounts:

Tso noted the LAFD spent an estimated $52.9 million in 2023-24 on sick leave, overtime pay, field equipment repair, and operating supplies. The 2024-25 proposed budget from Mayor Bass only allocated $18.8 million for those same accounts. If expenditure patterns remain the same this fiscal year, the LAFD would be short an estimated $34.1 million.

The city council’s modification of the proposed budget met some, but certainly not all, of the LAFD’s critical needs outlined in the May hearings. The LAFD reduced their asks to: $5.8 million for overtime accounts to pay current staff, and 149 sworn and 16 civilian positions to be reinstated. The LAFD managed to claw back only $5.3 million from the proposed $23 million cut. In the end, councilman Tim McOsker told Drop Site News, four of the requested 11 positions to rehabilitate the old rigs were restored.

The LAFD is feeling the effects of underfunding. Less than a month ago, on December 17, 2024, Crowley’s office sent a memo to Mayor Bass, warning of “unprecedented operational challenges due to the elimination of critical civilian positions and a $7 million reduction in Overtime Variable Staffing Hours (V-Hours).”

On December 4, 2024, the Los Angeles Board of Fire Commissioners warned that the cuts have “severely limited the Department’s capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires, earthquakes, hazardous material incidents, and large public events.”

Still, confusion around the previous year’s one-time expenses led one X user to conclude this year’s budget cut was negligible. In fiscal year 2023-24, “the department spent $12 million on new SCBAs because the old set expired. This was not a recurring expense!” suggesting the LAFD simply would not have additional equipment purchases to make in the following year. This is not the case.

In reality, the $12 million budgeted for the Self Contained Breathing Apparatuses (SCBAs) did not even cover half of the required SCBAs in 2023-24. In total, the LAFD used $30 million for 2,500 new SCBAs. They had to spend $18 million over-budget to cover the purchase, dipping into the city-wide Unappropriated Balance (UB) account – a prime example of the LAFD’s chronic underfunding.

With emergency calls on the rise and equipment outdated, the department has more large one-time purchases to make in 2024-25. The LAFD will again have to spend over budget to meet their needs. In a July memo, Chief Crowley addressed the likely overspending, with total expenditure estimated at $920 million in 2024-25. The chief emphasized that this year’s budget cut deleted, “onetime funding in various spending accounts.” As a result, the over budget spending will include, “new fleet purchases,” a one-time expense that is likely to exceed $50 million.

Politico wrote, citing Blumenfield, that the fire budget was cut because, “The city was in the process of negotiating a new contract with the fire department at the time the budget was being crafted, so additional funding for the department was set aside in a separate fund until that deal was finalized in November.”

Mejia’s office explained that the out-of-budget spending would come from a city-wide “Unappropriated Balance (UB)” account for payroll reconciliation—almost $105 million in funds intended to cover payroll changes and are not specific to any department.

And, Mejia’s office said, the Fire Department has not actually been given those funds yet. “Our City’s accounting system shows no indication that funds have been transferred to cover the raises in the LAFD MOU/labor agreement recently approved on November 5, 2024.” Mejia’s office explained that as of “January 9, 2025, only $35M has been transferred.” That money was transferred “mainly to cover the city’s liability payouts, litigation, and outside counsel expenses.” Mejia’s office concluded: “We do not see funds transferred for the Fire Department’s raises.”

The fire department's resources and personnel are spread thin partially because of the homeless crisis in Los Angeles. “We are on the frontlines of this homeless crisis,” said Captain Freddy Escobar. “Fifty percent of the fires we respond to come from our homeless population. And the city reportedly spends $1.3 billion each year on homeless programs, but the LAFD is scheduled to receive a $23 million cut? This makes absolutely no sense,” he told the budget committee back in May.

While the LAFD is strapped for cash as fires burn throughout Los Angeles county, the city has spent less than half of their homeless budget, with $701 million unspent as of November 14, 2024. So far, the city spent $599 million of the $1.3 billion budgeted. City Controller Mejia's office is the first-ever to formally track City homeless spending.

This week, Mayor Karen Bass was given the opportunity to address the controversy surrounding the LAFD budget. Bass was questioned by SkyNews on the subject, while traveling home from Ghana. Bass responded with palpably awkward silence.