By David ZahniserStaff Writer
Jan. 10, 2025 2:15 PM PT
When Mayor Karen Bass unveiled her budget plan for 2024-25, she called for a 2.7% reduction in spending at the Los Angeles Fire Department. Her proposal, unveiled in April, sought $23 million in cuts to the department, with much of it focused on reduced equipment purchases.
But while her citywide spending proposal was being reviewed, Bass was also in closed-door negotiations over a major boost in pay for the city’s 3,300 firefighters. Those pay hikes — four years of raises and an array of other financial incentives — were not finalized until several months after her budget went into effect.
The City Council approved the firefighter raises in November, adding more than $53 million in additional salary costs. By then, the council had also signed off on $58 million for new firetrucks and other department purchases.
Once those two line items were added, the fire department’s operating budget actually grew by more than 7% compared to the prior fiscal year, according to the city’s financial analysts.
The issue of fire department spending, boring and burdened with specifics in normal times, is now a critical issue in Los Angeles following the massive destruction caused by a wildfire in Pacific Palisades, which continues to burn. The Eaton fire, which has destroyed swaths of Altadena, is outside L.A. city limits.
While the L.A. fire department’s annual operating budget has been growing overall — and is on track to exceed $950 million — the agency also has had to scale back some of its operations.
Bass and other officials said the reductions have not affected the department’s ability to fight the Palisades fire.
After the blaze broke out on Tuesday, critics of the Los Angeles Police Department seized on the numbers in Bass’ 2024-25 budget document, arguing that funds allocated for police came at the expense of firefighters. Elon Musk, owner of the social media platform X, shared a post that bemoaned “LAFD underfunding.” Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns the Los Angeles Times, has also criticized the city’s handling of the fire department budget on social media and elsewhere.
Bass, who was in Africa when the fire broke out, has sought to counter the budget cut narrative, saying that spending at the department has grown during the current year. She said funding for firefighter raises was part of her budget from the beginning — but was included in an account separate from the fire department budget.
“Money was allocated to be distributed later on, which actually went to support salaries and other parts of the fire department,” Bass told reporters at a briefing on Thursday.
