Why is Karen Bass getting so much blame for the LA fires but county supervisors so little?

As the Palisades fire began, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone appeared before the Board of Supervisors for a previously scheduled discussion on how to spend the first $152 million in property taxes that county voters approved in November for fire protection and emergency response. 

Few other local governments could have this type of conversation, Supervisor Janice Hahn told him at the Jan. 7 meeting.

“Our voters will vote to raise their own taxes” to protect themselves and each other, Hahn said, “and that’s not the case in other parts of, probably, the state and it’s certainly not in other parts of the country.”

That’s not entirely true, but as the crisis unfolded in the following days, county leaders enjoyed the appearance of foresight and readiness — even after the Eaton fire practically erased the unincorporated community of Altadena, where the county is the only municipal government.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had no such luck.

It’s not merely that she was in Africa instead of in town when the fires broke out. Angry residents blamed her for the disaster not just in Pacific Palisades, which is part of her city, but Altadena, which isn’t. City of LA Fire Chief Kristin Crowley lashed out at the mayor’s ostensible budget cuts to her department, although careful analysis paints a more complex budget picture.

Mall developer Rick Caruso, whom Bass defeated in 2022, blamed city “mismanagement,” and explicitly called her out. So did Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who said his newspaper made a mistake in endorsing her but did not say why, other than to suggest that the disaster somehow proved that she was incompetent. Thousands of people signed petitions calling for Bass’ resignation. It was as if she had set the fires herself. 

Why does Bass get so much blame and county supervisors so little? 

The supervisors are helped in part by the structure of their government, which unlike the city holds no single mayor-like elected official accountable for the entire body’s performance. It’s the largest local jurisdiction in the U.S., with about 10 million residents, 117,000 employees, an annual budget of more than $50 billion and enormous responsibility for disaster preparedness and response, natural resource management, public safety, economic development and poverty.

Yet it has substantially the same representative structure as 56 smaller California counties (the combined city-county of San Francisco is the great exception): five supervisors elected by district and no single elected and publicly accountable executive. Los Angeles County is essentially a state without a governor.

The supervisors are rarely singled out for criticism — even amid crises like the January fires. No LA County supervisor has been defeated for reelection since 1980.

After the 2018 Woolsey fire — the region’s most destructive fire until this month — supervisors avoided angry residents at community meetings and instead left their fire chief to deal with the invective. During COVID lockdowns, opponents of mask and vaccine mandates harangued the county’s public health officer outside her home but largely ignored the supervisors, who approved the policies. When juvenile halls repeatedly fail to meet state standards and jails flunk even county inspections, the supervisors scold their underlings.

Their response to unhappy constituents is less “I’m sorry” than it is, “I know, right?”

In the midst of the current fire emergency, a county emergency alert system texted false evacuation warnings to millions of shaken residents. Board of Supervisors chair Kathryn Barger, whose district includes Altadena, expressed anger on her constituents’ behalf, and the county’s emergency management director offered profuse apologies. But in social media posts it was often Bass who was blamed, even though the county system is outside her purview.

Being a county supervisor can be hard work, but in times of crisis it’s a lot less uncomfortable than being a mayor.

County voters backed reforms

The dynamic is about to change. County voters in November narrowly approved Measure G to expand the Board of Supervisors from five members to nine and, importantly, to create an elected county executive — in essence, a county mayor or governor. For the first time, beginning in 2028, the nation’s largest local governmental jurisdiction will have a single elected official with ultimate authority and accountability. The supervisors, representing smaller districts, will continue to do what they do best: respond to constituent needs and demand answers from others.

The measure was championed by the newest LA County supervisor, Lindsey Horvath. As she toured the devastation in Pacific Palisades on Wednesday, consoling constituents and thanking relief workers and firefighters (including teams from Utah and Washington), she described her vast jurisdiction as “the most disaster-prone district in any county in the United States.”

In addition to the Palisades fire, her 3rd District simultaneously faced the Kenneth fire in West Hills, the Hurst fire in Sylmar and the Archer fire in Granada Hills — all on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains from the Palisades. She is for all practical purposes the municipal leader in the unincorporated (and threatened or damaged) communities of Topanga and Sunset Mesa, as Barger is in Altadena and numerous other communities. 

Barger’s district is even larger and includes parts of the San Gabriel Mountains and the Mojave Desert. She opposed Measure G, asserting it was insufficiently vetted. Still, she is familiar with the frustrating inaction that results in part from committee-type leadership and a lack of an accountable executive.

Barger is correct that many details of the new LA County government structure have yet to be determined, and are crucial. Having a single person to blame, like Bass, won’t automatically improve government if that accountability is not paired with sufficient authority. It won’t prevent ridiculous real-time political opportunism, like the nonsensical claim that fire hydrants failed because of environmental protection for delta smelt or the repulsive assertion that electing or appointing women and people of color to key positions undermines competence. 

Read More: Track California Wildfires

It also won’t change some peculiar aspects of LA County government. The city fire department, for example, must compete for shares of the city budget with services that — before the fires — were the top public priorities, including police and housing. The county department, on the other hand, is part of a fire protection district overseen by the Board of Supervisors, and funded directly by the type of dedicated property taxes that Hahn boasted about in the board’s meeting with the county fire chief.

A majority of voters in the Consolidated Fire Protection District of Los Angeles County approved the fire tax in 2020, after the Woosley fire, but the measure failed to achieve the necessary two-thirds vote. So Hahn, an experienced politician with strong ties to the firefighters’ union (and Horvath’s co-author on Measure G), left it to union members to gather signatures for the 2024 measure. Since it was put on the ballot as a citizens initiative, it required only a simple majority. This time it passed.

That kind of political savvy will continue to be as crucial to the next iteration of county government as it is to the current one.