Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles tried to project a unified front with her fire chief amid obvious tension on Saturday, a day after the chief criticized city officials and said they had failed to adequately fund her department.
Ms. Bass has been faulted over a range of issues in recent days, including her absence when the fires broke out and a cut to the Fire Department’s budget that she approved last year.
Those attacks came not only from outside critics but also from Chief Kristin Crowley of the Fire Department, who said in a television interview with Fox 11 on Friday that firefighters had been hampered by a lack of funding over several years. If the city had allocated the department more money, she said, “we would’ve been in a better position” to battle the fires.
The reporter in the interview pressed her further, asking, “Did the city of Los Angeles fail you, and your department and our city?” Chief Crowley initially demurred, but after being asked twice more, she said that they had.
Ms. Bass met with Chief Crowley after the interview on Friday, and afterward, the mayor did not appear a news conference that she had been set to attend. There were false rumors that Ms. Bass had fired Chief Crowley.
But at a news conference on Saturday morning, the pair tried to show that they were working together. At one point, Ms. Bass turned to Chief Crowley and asked her to stand next to her at the podium, which she obliged.
One reporter asked the mayor directly if she had planned to fire Chief Crowley when they met on Friday, and Ms. Bass said she had not. Ms. Bass said several times that they would deal with their differences out of public view.
“The chief and I are in lock step,” Ms. Bass said, adding that their priorities were putting out the fires and saving lives.
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