The Brief

More than a month before the Palisades Fire, then-Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley issued a dire warning: Her department was woefully understaffed, response times were high, equipment was in disrepair and emergency preparedness was suffering.

It's not clear whether a better funded agency would have slowed the firestorm. Firefighters faced gale force winds of up to 100 mph when the fire broke out.

What is clear is that day-to-day service calls — most of them for medical help — suffer because L.A. has one of the smallest big city fire departments in the country.

“In many ways, the current staffing, deployment model and size of the LAFD has not changed since the 1960s,” Crowley wrote in a November memo to the Board of Fire Commissioners.

The population of the city has grown to more than 3.9 million, from 2.5 million in 1960, but the number of firefighters has not grown proportionately.

Crowley has since been fired by Mayor Karen Bass, who last Friday cited the chief’s failure to increase the number of on-duty firefighters in the hours before the Palisades Fire and her unwillingness to participate in an evaluation of the department’s response to the disaster.

In a statement after her firing, Crowley did not address the Palisades Fire or the mayor’s accusations directly but said she based her actions “on taking care of our firefighters so that they could take care of our communities.”

But Crowley has not been the only one ringing the alarm that the LAFD is stretched to the limit.

Reports obtained by LAist through public records requests found rescue ambulances and fire trucks from the department’s 106 stations have scrambled from one call to the next with ever-increasing response times in recent years.

“It's not about one budget. It's not about one mayor. It's about decades of neglect of the LAFD,” said Freddy Escobar, president of United Firefighters of Los Angeles. “The 911 caller is going to pay the ultimate sacrifice because we don’t have the resources.”

Kristin Crowley was removed from her position as LAFD chief last week, but she plans to remain with the department.

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Myung J. Chun

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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Longer response times

L.A. has just under one firefighter per 1,000 residents. Since 1986, the average number of firefighters in densely populated cities across the country ranged from 1.54 to 1.81 per 1,000, according to the National Fire Protection Association.

As calls for service have increased, so have response times. The overall response time for 90% of calls jumped more than a minute, to 7 minutes and 53 seconds, from 2018 to 2022, according to a 2024 Standards of Cover analysis by the International Association of Firefighters. The IAFF is a labor union of firefighters that also provides analysis of fire operations to local fire departments.

The National Fire Protection Association recommends a 4-minute standard.

Response times are especially complicated in L.A., according to a separate 2023 Standards of Cover report by Citygate Associates. Citygate is a consulting firm that evaluates fire departments across the country.

The challenges include a “hilly topography in some areas, and a public road pattern that, in certain areas, is geographically challenged with rivers, open spaces, and/or a lack of major cross-connecting roadways,” according to the report.

As areas continue to redevelop and add population, the department will need adjustments “just to maintain, much less improve, response times,” the report reads.

Medical calls dominate resources

L.A’s Fire Department responds to more than 500,000 calls for service per year. More than 80% are calls from people who need medical help. The department takes more than 600 people to hospitals every day. It treats hundreds more people on scene, and many of them are unhoused.

The LAFD responds to more than 66,000 calls per year related to the city’s unhoused population, according to the department.

“If we were a hospital, we would have the largest emergency room in the country,” Battalion Chief Eric Roberts said in an interview.

According to the Citygate report, fire trucks are too often busy with medical calls, stretching call times for fires and other calls. The consulting firm recommends expanding the use of lightweight pickup trucks to respond to less serious medical calls and small fires. They’re called fast response vehicles, and the LAFD has three of them.

“The alternative response program needs to scale massively and quickly to lower the workload placed on fire units back down to moderate and serious emergencies,” the Citygate report states. “Well over 100 new non-firefighter personnel must be hired and trained for alternative response measures to meet the service needs of the city.”

The report also recommends staffing 12 to 15 new rescue ambulances and building one new fire station — in the northern San Fernando Valley.

The International Association of Firefighters study recommends adding 32 rescue ambulances and 378 firefighters. In addition, the study recommended adding 62 new fire stations.

Neither study placed a cost on their recommendations.

Personnel by the numbers

Over the past five years, the number of sworn and civilian personnel at the department has stayed relatively constant, rising only slightly to 3,877, from 3,831, according to budget documents. But in the latest budget for the fiscal year that started July 1, 2024, the department lost 58 positions from the year before.

In a December report, Crowley recommended adding 438 positions.

“I think it's important for us to look at what resources do we want to grow,” said Councilmember Tim McOsker, who sits on the city’s Public Safety Committee. “If we have new stations, if we have new apparatus, we need to have persons assigned to them.”

Part of the department’s short staffing problem dates to the 2008 recession, when city tax revenue plummeted. The department lost more than 10% of its positions and mothballed fire trucks.

“We reduced our resources in a way that we have not fully recovered from,” Roberts said.

McOsker agreed.

“Over a number of years — many, many years — we have not put enough money into the Fire Department,” McOsker said, adding that the Palisades Fire has increased urgency. The councilmember, whose District 15 includes San Pedro, Wilmington and Watts, said he thinks “everyone in the city recognizes that it's important to have adequate fire services.”

Calls for increased funding for the Fire Department come as the city faces budget problems. Four months into the fiscal year that began July 1, the city had already overspent its budget by nearly $300 million, according to the city administrative officer.

“We might have to shrink in other areas,” McOsker said.

Councilmember Traci Park, whose District 11 includes the Pacific Palisades, said the city will have to make some hard decisions.

“We can’t keep investing in and doubling down on programs that aren’t getting us results,” Park said. “And I feel like homelessness is a good example of that.”

The question is whether reducing spending on homelessness would increase the burden on the Fire Department.

More from Crowley

Crowley, who has elected to stay with the department in a lower rank, decried the loss of civilian staff and overtime variable staffing hours, warning the reduction has “severely limited the department’s capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large scale emergencies.”

As the Palisades Fire was burning, Crowley said $17 million in cuts to her department in last year’s budget hampered the department’s response — in part because there are not enough mechanics to fix broken fire trucks.

A spokesperson for Mayor Karen Bass said the signing of a labor contract that boosted salaries for firefighters and the funding of new equipment resulted in a net increase in funding for the department of $110 million. But Crowley said it still wasn’t enough.

“We are screaming to be properly funded,” Crowley, the first woman and first gay person to lead the department, told a T.V. station during the first few days of the fire.

In that December report, she requested 438 new sworn and civilian positions for her department as part of a 7.6% increase in her operating budget.

Park, meanwhile, is seeking to place a bond measure on next year’s ballot that would increase funding for the Fire Department.

The councilmember’s proposal has been referred to the City Council’s Rules Committee.

LAist Senior Reporter Ted Rohrlich contributed to this report.

California’s Board of Equalization is a coveted spot once again for state lawmakers looking for a new gig almost a decade after then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law gutting the organization of any serious governing responsibility.

This year, three current state lawmakers are competing for seats on the nation’s only elected tax board. They’re among some two dozen candidates on the ballot for its four elected positions, which are divided by geographic districts.

The board has long been a launching pad to higher offices in California politics — Fiona Ma served on it before becoming state treasurer, as did Betty Yee and Malia Cohen before each being elected state controller.

The agency itself is a throwback to the 19th Century. It’s rooted in an 1879 constitutional amendment that created it and charged it with “equalizing” county property tax assessments statewide.

From that narrow mandate, it swelled to become a juggernaut that collected a third of the state’s tax revenue and provided a venue for people and businesses to contest their tax bills in front of the elected board. It survived numerous efforts by governors to kill it outright, including attempts by Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

That is until 2017, when a cascade of allegations about board members misusing the office to promote themselves led to an authoritative state audit that lawmakers could not ignore.

Brown signed a law stripping the agency of any powers beyond what voters gave it in 1879 and created two new departments that report to the governor instead of the elected board: one to collect sales and use taxes and another to hear taxpayer appeals.

After that, Board of Equalization elections tended to be lower profile contests. Ted Gaines, a former Republican state lawmaker from the Sacramento area, won a seat. Former Democratic Assemblymember Sally Lieber is up for reelection on the board this year. The other members had experience in local politics instead of inside the Capitol.

“We’re lean but we’re not mean,” said Lieber, the incumbent for District 2, which includes 19 counties centered on the Bay Area. “I think the Board of Equalization is the right size in the system right now…I do really believe that the board has a role to play in being a forum for taxpayers to come forward to.”

This year voters will see more contentious elections for the tax board:

• In District 1 representing inland California, Republican state Sen. Shannon Grove of Bakersfield has more than $900,000 in a campaign account and name recognition from her representing the San Joaquin Valley in the Legislature since 2010. Democrats are putting up a fight for the district. Fresno City Councilmember Nelson Esparza is running with the party’s support.
• In District 2 representing coastal California north of Los Angeles, incumbent Lieber faces San Mateo Community College District Trustee John Pimentel. Lieber has the Democratic Party’s endorsement, but a number of Bay Area Democratic leaders are backing Pimentel, including state Treasurer Ma and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan.
• In District 3 representing the Los Angeles area, former Monterey Park City Councilmember Yvonne Yiu put up $760,000 of her own money and has about $1 million on hand. The race has another heavyweight in Assemblymember Mike Gipson, a Democrat from Gardena who has served in the Legislature since 2014. 
• District 4 representing the San Diego area has an especially crowded race with Democratic state Sen. Tom Umberg of Santa Ana, San Ysidro school board member Martín Arias, San Diego Unified School District board member Cody Peterson, and Denis Bilodeau, a Republican supported by San Diego Assemblymember Carl DeMaio’s Reform California organization.

A forum for California taxpayers

The board was always popular among taxpayer advocacy groups, who liked that it provided a forum to focus on tax issues in a capital where debates often center on labor and business.

“It’s a very useful elected body that answers to the voters,” said Susan Shelley, vice president of communications for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

Some of this year’s candidates are thinking of ways to make the most of the agency.

Arias believes the board could do more to assist homeowners and potential homeowners. As a taxpayer advocate in the San Diego County Assessor’s Office, he says he works with the Board of Equalization every day and has a front seat to how the system works.

“I think there’s a bigger opportunity here to make the Board of Equalization the constitutional office that it is — that it should be,” he said. “There’s a clear opportunity here for us to start advocating at the state level for all of our taxpayers, including those that don’t speak English.”

Umberg said he’d like the board to have more investigative power and resources. Citing instances in which San Bernardino and Los Angeles assessors have been arrested on felony charges, he said he’s most interested in the board’s oversight of property tax assessors.

“Although it’s not a high-profile job, it’s a critically important job, especially when we’ve got so many revenue challenges in California,” Umberg said in an interview with CalMatters.

Questioning BOE’s relevance

Advocating for the board’s expansion has drawn criticism from former board members and employees. Yee, a board member from 2004 to 2014, has been vocal about abolishing the board entirely because she believes that its limited responsibilities could be easily transferred to another department or agency.

“I just really do question how this board continues to have relevance,” she told CalMatters. “I sometimes feel like the board is really doing a lot of work in search of finding problems to solve. …I know with each of the board members, they feel very strongly about being a taxpayer advocate. But frankly, every public official should be a taxpayer advocate. ”

Democrats stopped short of killing the agency entirely because they would have had to put that question to voters.

“They should have just chopped the head of the snake off and done away with the Board of Equalization altogether,” said Mark DeSio, a former communications director for the board. “They didn’t do that. They left enough of the cancer to grow back.”

He cooperated with the audit that revealed misspending at the agency that appeared intended to promote its elected members as well as another that showed widespread nepotism in its hiring practices. He then lost his job in the reorganization and filed a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit against the state.

DeSio believes lawmakers want seats on the Board of Equalization because it allows them to maintain a high profile until they can run for office again.

“That was the recipe for disaster a few years back,” he said. “Somebody better watch these guys. They’re not there for the policy. It’s for the exposure.”

Cayla Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Even as gas prices continued to rise across the United States, sales of electric vehicles fell in April. That is in contrast to strong growth elsewhere in the world, such as Europe. But American drivers are gravitating toward at least one more efficient powertrain: hybrids.

Sales of new EVs fell roughly 18 percent from March to April, according to the latest data from Edmunds, an auto research firm. Another company, Cox Automotive, pegged the drop at closer to 6 percent. Either way, experts said it’s clear that high gas prices aren’t leading to a significant shift toward EVs.

“There was a lot of window shopping,” said Ivan Drury, director of insights at Edmunds, noting that searches for electrified vehicles on the company’s site were strong. “It did not translate to tire-kicking and purchases.”

Price remains the steepest barrier for most people, said Drury. While electric vehicles can be less expensive to operate over the long-term — especially when gas prices are high — the upfront costs remain significant. The average transaction price for an EV in April was $6,214 higher than for vehicles with internal combustion engines, Cox reported.

“It’s still a cost hurdle,” said Stephanie Brinley, a principal automotive analyst at S&P Global Mobility. “You don’t know how long it’s going to take to get that back.”

At Thursday’s average gas price of $4.56 per gallon, an EV buyer would have to drive more than 40,000 miles to make up the difference with a car that gets 30 mpg. Savings on maintenance, like oil changes, could accelerate that timeline, but factors such as higher insurance prices and having to install a home charger could make the payback period even longer. If fuel prices fall, the advantage of an EV also shrinks.

“It’s very difficult for people to wrap their head around, ‘Hey, if I spend this $55,000, I might over time save’,” said Drury. “It requires a bit more math than most people want to go through.”

The calculus is much simpler for hybrid vehicles, which utilize batteries that can improve fuel economy by 25 to 45 percent without needing to plug in. A Honda CR-V, for example, gets around 29 mpg while the hybrid version gets 37. More and more popular models are only available as hybrids, a strategy that Toyota has perhaps embraced most notably. Last year, it ditched the gas-only version of the Camry sedan. The 2026 RAV4 followed suit.

Overall, Edmunds data shows that sales of hybrids are up 20 percent year-over-year and nearly 50 percent since February, when the U.S.-Iran conflict began. Sales of gas-powered gas are up about 11 percent over those same two months.

“I think this is going to be a hybrid moment,” said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of industry insights at Cox Automotive. “There are a lot of options.”

Used EVs provided another somewhat bright spot, she said. The segment saw a 3 percent increase in sales from March to April and a price premium of only $1,096 over used internal combustion vehicles. Used EVs also sold faster than their used gas-powered counterparts. “They’re really selling efficiently,” said Valdez Streaty, who added that there should be a glut of EVs available throughout the year as leases end. “I don’t think the inventory will be an issue.”

With Iran maintaining its hold over the Strait of Hormuz and summer travel season looming, gas prices appear set to keep climbing — which would only make an EV more appealing. Other parts of the world have seen significant jumps in sales since the conflict began, with Europe experiencing a surge and China setting an export record in April, according to BloombergNEF.

In the United States, though, it seems that only people already in the market for EVs are making the leap. “Edge-case people,” as Brinley called them. Dramatic pump readings “might nudge them because they were already in that direction,” she said. “But what we’re unlikely to see is a shift in current [internal combustion car] owners just fundamentally making that change simply because of gas prices.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/solutions/why-hybrids-not-evs-are-winning-over-u-s-consumers/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

James L. Jones Jr., 69, a self-described “community pastor” and a tireless advocate for Black communities in Los Angeles, was an enthusiastic supporter of Karen Bass’ mayoral bid in 2022, when she made history as the first woman, and first Black woman, to be elected L.A. mayor.

As Bass seeks reelection, Jones is supporting her again. Despite the political turmoil and criticism she has faced during her first term, Jones, known as Reverend JJ, believes she has a plan for Black progress that may not be evident, but is long range and strategic.

“I believe that in my heart of hearts, Karen’s not one of those people who follows polls,” said Jones. “In the end she’ll do what’s right for the people.”

When Angelenos elected Bass four years ago, she seemed like the right person to bridge the ideals of the post-George Floyd era and whatever moment was coming next. She was a seasoned politician — a former state legislator, congresswoman and native Angeleno with a history of grassroots organizing and coalition building in a city that was leaning more progressive.

But in 2022, there was trouble on the horizon. The nation’s Floyd-inspired reexamination of racial equity was losing ground to a growing MAGA backlash that had helped kill a major federal bill to reform policing, among other initiatives. Big blue cities like Los Angeles that had seen big protests for racial justice were being cast as chaotic and ungovernable.

Four years later, the ideals that propelled Bass’ election have taken a beating. Trump’s return to the White House has elevated long-simmering anti-“wokeness” and white resentment into federal policy. And the administration has focused special ire on California and Los Angeles, where Bass is in charge of the nation’s largest city currently led by a Black mayor.

Bass is taking a beating too. As she seeks reelection in the June 2 primary, the mayor is weathering criticism from many sides that she’s done too little about everything, from the homelessness and housing crisis that she made a signature issue to her response to the epic January 2025 wildfire that destroyed thousands of homes in Pacific Palisades, one of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods.

Despite facing more voter uncertainty this time around, Bass is leading in the polls, with 30% support among likely voters, according to the latest survey by Emerson College Polling/Inside California Politics. While Bass’ support has jumped 10 points since March, she would have to get more than 50% of the vote to avoid a runoff with the other top vote-getter in November.

Her most formidable challengers in the crowded primary are Councilwoman Nithya Raman, a Democratic socialist to Bass’ left who is campaigning on housing affordability and a host of other progressive causes, and Spencer Pratt, a former reality show star with no political experience who skews conservative and touts cleaning up crime and homelessness. A former Bass ally, Raman pledges to do better than the mayor on reducing homelessness and increasing new housing production; Pratt decries corrupt leadership and talks chiefly about making L.A. great again, a la MAGA. Pratt and Raman are polling at 22% and 19%, respectively.

Missing from all the criticism of how Bass has fallen short is how or whether her election has benefited L.A.’s Black community. It’s a population that is rapidly continuing to dwindle — to roughly 8% today from a peak of 18% in 1970 — besieged by gentrification, stratospheric housing costs, underemployment and shrinking political representation, all of it aggravated by the racial hostility emanating from Washington. That norm-shattering phenomenon has tended to eclipse discussion of racial crises happening locally, with good reason. But politics are still local, and many Angelenos who supported Bass in 2022 hoped that electing the second Black mayor in the city’s history would help move the needle on longstanding Black problems dating back to 1992 that have reached yet another inflection point.

But public assessments of Bass by Black leaders the last four years, including this election cycle, have been muted to nonexistent. The exception is Black Lives Matter Grassroots L.A., which has routinely taken her to task for increasing police funding instead of allocating more resources to social and other services — a core part of the post-George Floyd reforms. Observers say the reticence among Black leaders is partly due to the fact that Bass has been so inundated with crises, some not of her making — especially the Palisades fire. The view that Bass committed a fatal mistake by being on a diplomatic trip to Ghana when the fires broke out has more or less defined her politically since.

That’s unfair, said Michael Guynn, a veteran social worker and community activist who lives near Florence and Normandie avenues, a famous site of the 1992 racial unrest.

“I don’t give a damn if she was out of the country — she got back when she could,” Guynn said. “They blamed her for what the fire department was responsible for.”

Then there’s the racism that dogs Black elected officials, women in particular. Pratt, who lost his home in the Palisades fire last year, has invoked Donald Trump-like rhetoric to belittle L.A.’s first Black woman mayor. That includes an official campaign poster that depicts Bass stuffed in a trash can and says “throw out Karen Basura,” the Spanish word for trash, echoing Trump’s disparaging of Somali immigrants — a demographic that includes Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar — as “garbage.”

But the takedown isn’t only coming from the MAGA right, said Genethia Hudley-Hayes, former president of L.A.’s civilian Fire Commission and a Bass appointee who stepped down in March.

“There’s always the bigotry of, ‘We rallied around this Black woman and she hasn’t performed,’” said Hudley-Hayes. “She’s not a superwoman. That’s part of the ‘I’m mad’ vote in L.A.”

Another hurdle for Bass, Guynn said, is the unrealistic expectation that she would dramatically reduce or even eliminate homelessness.

“She couldn’t get a fair break because of that,” he said, adding that “everybody hates homelessness and wants it to go away, but nobody wants to do the work.”

Homelessness certainly qualifies as a Black concern: 32% of unhoused people in the city are African American, according to the city’s latest count. Bass’ signature program Inside Safe, which seeks to get people off the street and into temporary housing, has made inroads. But the mayor’s efforts have been hampered by what City Hall observers say is a larger problem of messaging, management and oversight. The scandal involving a subcontractor accused of defrauding the city’s homeless services authority of $23 million is a painful reminder of that.

Hudley-Hayes says that it points to the need for the mayor of L.A. to be a skilled executive, a skill that Bass doesn’t have, at least not yet.

“You need collaboration, which is different from coalition building, different from the activism of Community Coalition,” she said, referring to the grassroots South L.A. organization co-founded by Bass.

Deep understanding of the roles of not just the 41 city departments but of bigger entities like the county is essential not just for running the city but for effecting racial justice as well.

“Homelessness is important, but you have to ask, what are the structures that create homelessness? It’s not just a city problem but a regional problem,” said Hudley-Hayes. “Inside Safe is a program, not a strategy.”

But being a better executive wouldn’t automatically guarantee improvements for Black people. Tom Bradley, who was mayor from 1973 to 1993, is venerated both as a coalition builder and astute manager who improved many parts of the city. But he didn’t do enough for L.A.’s Black populace. While the Black middle class flourished during the Bradley years, in part because Black municipal employment flourished, the larger working class and poor in South L.A. did not.

Hudley-Hayes argues the mayor’s lack of accountability to L.A.’s Black population as a whole is longstanding, and not unique to elected officials like Bradley or Bass. Local branches of civil rights groups like the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference — which Hudley-Hayes once led — also play a part in accountability, though they have declined notably over the years. But Hudley-Hayes notes that accountability works two ways.

“Black people have individual agency, but we have to exercise it together,” she said. “We have to pool our experience. It means nothing if we don’t demand what we want.”

Even — especially — in these trying times, and in a city with as much possibility as L.A., problems notwithstanding — those demands should still matter.

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