Before the fierce criticism for the planned salary of her head of forest fire recovery of $ 500,000 for 90 days of work, the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, reversed the course on Saturday night and said that Steve Soboroff would not receive any compensation.
The original Soboroff salary, which would have been completely financed by beneficial organizations, was first informed by The Times at dawn on Saturday. Soboroff had defended the agreement, saying that his experience made the price worth it.
After his reversal, Bass said in a statement: “Steve is always there for Los Angeles. Today I talked to him and asked him to modify his agreement and work for free. He said yes. We agree that we do not need anything that distracts the recovery work we are doing. ”
When Bass first took advantage of Soboroff to intervene last month when his forest fire recovery tsar, the real estate developer seemed to be ready to provide a very necessary political elevator to a mayor whose initial emergency response had hesitated.
As a lifelong civic leader who raised his family in Pacific Palisades, Soboroff gave the mayor a direct line to the campfire. And he was already known for his work developing thousands of houses in Playa Vista.
But the revelation that Soboroff would be paid $ 500,000 for three months caused reprisons of Palisades residents and several public figures, threatening to undermine their effectiveness to help the mayor restore confidence in the city and their reconstruction efforts.
Soboroff, who had spoken with The Times previously about criticism, refused to comment on Saturday night beyond confirming that he would work without charge.
After The Times initially reported Soboroff's salary, several residents of Pacific Palisades expressed indignation on Saturday.
The councilor of the city of Los Angeles, Monica Rodríguez, who is in the Committee of the Council of five members that supervises the recovery, also expressed angry at the amount, qualifying her as “obscene.”
Rodríguez said that it was “irritating” that philanthropic groups would provide $ 750,000 for only two people: $ 500,000 for Soboroff, plus $ 250,000 for the real estate executive Randy Johnson, who will inform Soboroff about reconstruction efforts.
Bass said Saturday night that Johnson would also work without pay, saying that he was “grateful for his generosity and experience.”
The mayor's team refused to appoint the charity organizations that the Soboroff salary should have covered. It is not clear how these organizations had raised money or what else could go. But Rodriguez had questioned whether the donors of those groups knew how their money would be used.
Ric Grenelll, who is the envoy of President Trump for special missions, also spoke early on Saturday, calling for the payment of “offensive” soboroff in an X position.
“They pay me $ 0, like many people,” Grenell wrote, who sat next to Trump at a round table in Pacific Palisades last month. “It is good that there are strings in federal money for California.”
Bass suggested earlier this week that the scope of Soboroff's work could decrease, saying that it would mainly focus on rebuilding the Palisades Historical Business District. Soboroff played that notion, saying that he is regularly interacting with federal agencies.
When asked about Rodríguez and others's criticism, Soboroff said early on Saturday that his salary was justified by his specialized experience and the radical tasks he was assuming. He said he left aside other real estate and environmental consulting works, which loses that potential income, to focus exclusively on forest fire recovery efforts.
Soboroff previously served at the Police Commissioners Board and in the commission that supervises the Department of Recreation and Parks, both volunteer positions.
“I have been doing this for 35 years for free in some of the largest civic projects for the city of Los Angeles. But nobody asked me to leave everything. This time they did, “said Soboroff, 76.” And I said that it is fine, under the condition that my salary did not get money from the city, or any survivor of forest fires that would otherwise benefit from that money. “
Bass called Soboroff as his recovery tsar on January 17. For weeks, neither the mayor's team would explain how it was going to be compensated or how much.
On Friday, appearing at a morning press conference on recovery of forest fires, Bass and Soboroff again declined to say how much they would pay him. Ten hours later, after the additional consultations of The Times, the mayor's team published the information.
In that email, Bass spokesman Zach Seidl, said the extensive record of Soboroff in business and in the city's commissions, saying: “There is simply no one like Steve.”
The controversy about the payment of Soboroff marked the second time in just over a week that Bass reversed a decision after criticism.
Last week, he said that Pacific Palisades would reopen to the public, which caused a generalized frustration of residents and the city councilor member, Traci Park, about the risks of crimes and security. Later, the mayor announced that the neighborhood would remain closed.
The resident of Pacific Palisades, Larry Vein, whose house suffered damage by smoke, criticized the Soboroff salary agreement on Saturday morning, saying that no one should supervise the recovery of “financial gain.”
Steve Danton, who lost his home in the fire of Palisades and lives in a temporary apartment in Marina del Rey, had an even stronger reaction, calling Soboroff's compensation as a “money taking.”
Danton, whose family has lived in Pacific Palisades since 1999, said the city had experienced a “leadership crisis” since the fires broke out. The lack of transparency around the Soboroff salary only joined the frustrations of the community, he said.
Soboroff defended his work the earliest Saturday, saying that he had pressed that the mayor hired an external project manager to guide the city agencies through the work of replacing the damaged or destroyed infrastructure such as lamppings, the systems of Sanitation and the Branch of Pacific Palisades of the Los Angeles Public Library. . Since he assumed his position, Soboroff said, he has also offered recommendations on the city's permits process, coordinated with federal agencies and sent questions of “thousands of residents.”
“At the end of the day, I am doing things that all these other people are only studying,” he said. “I am implementing to help people achieve their goals to return to their homes and recover their jobs.”
Bass and Soboroff have been a strange match.
Sometimes, Soboroff has talked about the mayor as they sent questions from the media, which forced her to muscle her path back to the conversation.
And Bass left Soboroff out of the circuit in at least one key decision: the moving last week, later reversed, to reopen Pacific Palisades to the public.
