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DEEGAN ON LA—County Supervisor Kathryn Barger and Councilmember Traci Park (CD11) are the two local politicos with the largest constituencies affected by the Palisades and Eaton (Altadena-Pasadena) fires.
One (Barger) is termed out in (2028, while the other (Park) is newly elected. Both have played huge roles in messaging to their constituents and the greater LA community succinct daily updates that provide a running narrative of where we’re at.
Steve Soboroff
Where we’re headed falls to Steve Soboroff, the mayor’s “recovery” point person, who sounds like he’s rushing to put out a fire, while his boss continues to attempt to get out ahead of events.
Off stage, Governor Newsom and President Trump hold the purse strings to potentially massive amounts of state and federal aid respectively.
How to manage the money will be as important as how the politicos manage the news. Not letting a good crisis go to waste, the president announced he’s had it with FEMA, the decades old federal emergency relief agency. In his often non-linear and weaving way of speaking, “47” has shortchanged the message, with the hyped soundbite being that he wants to dump FEMA.
What he has not done so well, is dropping the second shoe that should make everyone except the FEMA bureaucrats happy, is that the more efficient way to manage federal disaster funds is not by micro-managing from Washington, but managing them onsite by local leaders.
The fine print is that he has suggested states would be asked to pay 25% of costs while the feds will chip in 75% in cash, and then let locals manage the money instead of having strangers to the community counting the beans. Conceptually a good plan. No change in dollars, just how they would be administered.
Putting the spending decisions and bank accounts into the hands of people who know the affected communities best like Barger, Parks and Soboroff (as proxy for the mayor).
Of the many silver linings that may come out of the fire tragedy, the shifting of executive decision making from the federal to the state level matches Republican smaller government ideals and makes room for Democrats, in blue state California, to have a strong voice in the matter.
As it turns out nobody, not Barger, Parks, Newsom, Trump, Soboroff or Bass pins the tail on the donkey.
(Tim Deegan is a civic activist whose Deegan on LA weekly column about city planning, new urbanism, the environment, and the homeless appear in CityWatch. Tim can be reached at [email protected]. )
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