Will having ‘too many cooks’ complicate recovery from deadly Los Angeles fires?

A proverb said to have arisen in 16th-century England postulates that “too many cooks spoil the broth.” When too many people are working on a project without clear accountability, it may produce a shoddy outcome.

In fact, research conducted at Princeton University 11 years ago appears to validate this. Iain Couzin, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and the study’s senior author, said it undercuts the so-called “wisdom-of-crowds” theory that champions multiple inputs.

“It’s a starting point that opens up the possibility of capturing collective decision-making in a more realistic environment,” Couzin said in a statement at the time. “When we do see small groups of animals or organisms making decisions they are not necessarily compromising accuracy. They might actually do worse if more individuals were involved. I think that’s the new insight.”

Examples of spoiled broth abound in the political realm, but a very obvious and current example is California’s haphazard approach to its worst-in-the-nation homelessness crisis.

Multiple state agencies, cities and counties all deal with aspects of the situation. Despite an estimated $24 billion expended since Gavin Newsom became governor in 2019, the number of homeless people in California has continued to rise and the state auditor has found that Newsom’s Interagency Council on Homelessness, which was supposed to coordinate state efforts, had failed to do so.

Local homelessness efforts have also suffered from a lack of clear responsibility with city and county officials pointing fingers at each other.

What’s happening or not on homelessness is a warning that a new crisis — recovery from the highly destructive and deadly wildfires that swept through Los Angeles — could be botched.

On Monday, UCLA’s Anderson School of Management estimated property losses of between $95 billion and $164 billion, and other estimates range as high as $250 billion. The tasks of cleaning up, financing and rebuilding schools and other public infrastructure, as well as thousands of homes and commercial structures, are almost unfathomably difficult.

As the fires were finally tamed, political figures such as Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and local civic leaders and organizations began raising money and proposing pathways for recovery operations.

However, as the Los Angeles Times has reported, the plethora of recovery organizations makes it difficult to determine who’s really in charge, a lack of clarity compounded by fires having struck both neighborhoods within the city limits, such as Pacific Palisades, and those governed by the county, such as Altadena.

The recovery response got off to a bad start when Bass appointed Steve Soboroff, a prominent civic leader, as her recovery czar only to face backlash about being paid $500,000 for a few months’ work. He ultimately agreed to work for free, but the flap implied that decisions were being made without being fully vetted.

Meanwhile, Rick Caruso, another civic leader whom Bass defeated to become mayor, has announced his own recovery effort, sparked by losses suffered by members of his family, and has sharply criticized Bass, who faces a reelection campaign next year.

Newsom has spent many days visibly monitoring firefighting efforts, getting a $2.5 billion allocation from the Legislature and seeking federal funds from President Donald Trump, a longtime political foil. However, just after making a quick trip to Washington to bolster requests for money, Newsom signed legislation appropriating millions of dollars to battle Trump in court over other issues, most prominently immigration.

Newsom also issued a decree waiving regulations to allow homeowners to rebuild their homes, even in neighborhoods shown to be prone to destruction in previous fires.

Historians will see the fires that blackened much of Los Angeles this year as one of the state’s most significant events and how recovery is managed, or mismanaged, will be legend.