Los Angeles Fires: Water & Power Officials Among Top-Paid City Employees
Mayor Bass also under fire during trip to Ghana as city battles catastrophic fires, reported LAFD budget cut.
While homes and businesses in Los Angeles are being destroyed by wildfires, Mayor Karen Bass is herself taking a beating by California residents and the press for being outside the country while her city burns.
It’s not quite as bad as when New York City Mayor Eric Adams — currently under indictment for unrelated alleged crimes — left the city as it was hit by an icy winter storm in December 2022.
Sure, LA Mayor Bass was already in Ghana for the inauguration of President John Mahama when the fire started, and she was making her way back to LA on Wednesday, The Hill reported.
But the real scandal is her $300,154 pay in 2023, plus benefits, making her the second highest paid mayor in the country, just after her San Francisco counterpart.
The San Francisco mayor — who was London Breed last year, but as of Wednesday’s swearing in, is Daniel Lurie — makes $383,760.
Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, whose paper is covering the fire extensively, posted on X.com Wednesday that Bass had cut the Los Angeles Fire Department budget by $23 million, and that reports of empty fire hydrants in the Palisades were a concern. “Competence matters,” he wrote.
Eclipsing Bass’ compensation is Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley. She’s the first woman and first openly LGBTQ+ person to hold her post, and the one in charge of fighting the deadly fires.
Crowley’s 2023 pay was an absurd $439,772 — $412,493 base pay and $27,278 “other” pay.
That would be one thing if she approached the job as the well-trained, experienced fire fighter and administrator that she appears on paper — having been a firefighter, paramedic, engineer, fire inspector, captain, battalion chief, assistant chief, fire marshal and deputy chief for 22 years before becoming chief.
But when she accepted the nomination in 2022, she made sure diversity, equity and inclusion goals were front-and-center.
“As the fire chief, if confirmed, I vow to take a strategic and balanced approach to ensure we meet the needs of the community we serve,” as Newsweek quoted her. “We will focus our efforts on increasing our operational effectiveness, enhancing firefighter safety and well-being, and fully commit to fostering a diverse, equitable and inclusive culture within the LAFD.”
Shortly after, then-Mayor Eric Garcetti and Crowley launched the LAFD’s first-ever Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Bureau “focused on ensuring a safe, diverse, and inclusive workplace for all.”
“We believe in, and are committed to, justice in Los Angeles — and we focus an equity lens on every aspect of our work,” said Mayor Eric Garcetti. “The Bureau of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion will help to ensure that our progress is permanent and we’re always moving forward with a city government and institutions that reflect and value our diversity.”
DEI isn’t quite helping contain the fires, just like it doesn’t help better educate students, better inform scientists researching diseases, and doctors dispensing treatment.
Fires don’t care about a person’s skin color, ethnicity, their gender or sexual preference.
TOP PAID LA CITY EMPLOYEES
Frustratingly enough, Crowley isn’t anywhere close to the highest paid City of LA employee.
The ten highest paid people in 2023 collected between $606,095 and $857,458, with the average person taking home $321,828 in overtime alone.
All but two of the employees -- a fire captain and a Port of Los Angeles pilot -- worked for the city’s Department of Water and Power, as reports of the water shortage have emerged.
UPDATED: Department of Water & Power (DWP) CEO Janisse Quinones was hired in May 2024 at a salary of $750,000 annually. KABC News reported that city council members and DWP board members thought it necessary to “attract private-sector talent.” Quinones was previously vice president of electric operations at Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E). Her predecessor at DWP, Martin Adams, made $435,000.
According to the local ABC affiliate, Quinones’ hiring “comes as the utility needs to follow new rules to produce 100% clean energy by 2035.”
Open the Books will continue to share relevant public spending data as the story develops...
I would love to have an explanation of the "overtime". If our city employees ( ok I am really a refugee from LA ) were in a corporate world and making $500K per year the demand for overtime would be laughed at.
Perhaps we should be paying our frontline military overtime.
Oh, shit. Someone flipped on the light and there they scatter.