Los Angeles was still burning two weeks ago when Mayor Karen Bass turned to one of this city’s most prominent developers and asked him to serve as her rebuilding czar after vast parts of the region were leveled by wildfires.
Steve Soboroff, a longtime civic leader and onetime resident of the Pacific Palisades, the coastal enclave that was particularly hard hit, would unite residents of the affluent community and the sprawling Los Angeles metropolis behind a common and urgent purpose, the mayor said. In a news conference, he was anointed the “chief recovery officer.”
But since his appointment, it has become clear that Mr. Soboroff, 76, will not be the only chief in the Los Angeles recovery effort. The latest sign came this week as Rick Caruso, a billionaire developer, announced his own commission of civic leaders to help spur the rebuilding.
“I hope that, like many crises do, this will bring people together to work together,” said Mr. Caruso, who ran against Ms. Bass for mayor in 2022 and has told associates he is considering a challenge to her again in 2026.
With Mr. Caruso’s entry onto the field, there are now four separate independent rebuilding committees and one mayoral rebuilding czar claiming leadership roles in what will be one of the costliest reconstruction projects in the history of the state. The early skirmishing, featuring some of the most powerful and wealthy people in Los Angeles, as well as a president and a governor, marks the beginning of what is shaping up as a long battle in which billions of dollars, and the future of Los Angeles itself, is at stake.
Before Mr. Caruso made his announcement, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California created a “public-private philanthropic initiative supporting Los Angeles.” President Trump, on a visit to inspect the damage, said he intended to name a federal rebuilding commission. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of The Los Angeles Times, who has been seeking to establish himself as a player in his city as his newspaper has been wracked by upheaval, pledged in an essay to create his own committee.
The disjointed response of the region’s civic and business network is the latest symptom of the fractured political and civic environment that has long characterized this part of the country. (A case in point: The Palisades fire was in Los Angeles city, and thus under Ms. Bass’s jurisdiction, while the Altadena fire was in an unincorporated part of Los Angeles and under county government oversight.)
“This is the manifestation of a political system that is decentralized by nature,” said Fernando Guerra, the head of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. He said the emergence of these competing forces could yield some good ideas, but was just as likely to raise a question that has loomed over the city since Jan. 7, when the first spark ignited: “Who’s in charge?”
So, at this early date, it is not clear precisely what the four commissions and the mayor’s czar will do in the months and years ahead. Nor is it clear how — or if — they will attempt to work together, nor whether anyone has the authority to oversee and coordinate these different spheres of power. Disaster recovery at this scale costs far more than even the wealthiest individuals can muster, and most of the funding flows from insurance and the state and federal government.
The jostling that is already taking place suggests a lack of confidence in government itself, and particularly in Ms. Bass, who has come under heavy criticism for her response to the fires over these difficult few weeks. Three of the commissions were created by some of the most vocal critics of her performance since the fires broke out: Mr. Trump, Mr. Soon-Shiong and Mr. Caruso. Mr. Newsom has notably avoided criticizing his fellow Democrat during this crisis, but he often has seemed a more visible figure than Ms. Bass.
Mr. Caruso’s move has clear political implications. A former Republican who registered as a Democrat before he began his mayoral campaign in the liberal-dominated city, he is viewed by Republicans and Democrats as positioning himself to run for mayor or, perhaps, governor.
His committee, filled with prominent Los Angeles builders and bankers, resembles a government-in-waiting. Among them: Carey Smith, the president and chief executive of the engineering conglomerate Parsons; Andy Cohen of the architecture and design company Gensler; Ted Sarandos, the chief executive of Netflix, and his wife, Nicole Avant, a prominent Democratic donor; and Joe Lonsdale, the co-founder of the tech giant Palantir, a Trump supporter and the founder of a conservative think tank.
To be sure, the decision by many of these civic leaders to join Mr. Caruso’s commission reflects concern about the city where they live or work, and is in keeping with the spirit of altruism that has been seen across Los Angeles in the weeks since the fire. But many of them could stand to gain should Mr. Caruso become mayor, and their involvement elevates their own power and standing in the community.
Zach Seidl, a spokesman for Ms. Bass, said the mayor welcomed “everyone’s help in this effort,” including that of the man she defeated for mayor.
“Mayor Bass is bringing the public, private, philanthropic and nonprofit sectors together to execute a monumental recovery for the Palisades,” Mr. Seidl said.
In past crises, such as the Northridge earthquake in 1994 and the Covid-19 pandemic, the mayor of Los Angeles effectively wielded the platform of the office to commandeer a civic response. There have been commissions and czars over the years — including one that oversaw the rebuilding of Los Angeles after the riots of 1992 — but the field has never been this crowded.
Mr. Soboroff, who as the mayor’s surrogate is likely to have significant influence in the rebuilding of the Palisades, which is in the city of Los Angeles, said he was not worried about the proliferation of commissions. He said he was hopeful that some of them would raise money to help residents whose insurance reimbursements fall short of what it costs to rebuild, as well as wages lost by workers in the area.
“I encourage all of them — all of them,” Mr. Soboroff said. “I’m there for any of them to give them my perceptions and recommendations and advice.”
“Are these guys in conflict?” Mr. Soboroff said. “Categorically no.”
In some sense, the glut of leaders reflects the unusual structure of Los Angeles, a county of 10 million people, governed by a board of supervisors, and nearly 90 cities, including Los Angeles.
Ms. Bass represents Los Angeles, but not Altadena. Days after she appointed Mr. Soboroff, Mr. Newsom announced the formation of a philanthropic effort called L.A. Rises, saying that it would coordinate with the city and aim to help fire victims outside the Los Angeles city limits.
Leading it, he said, would be other well-known civic leaders: Mark Walter, the chairman of the Los Angeles Dodgers; Casey Wasserman, the organizer of the 2028 Olympic Games, which Los Angeles is hosting; and Magic Johnson, the entrepreneur and retired Los Angeles Lakers point guard.
“My focus will be on Altadena,” Mr. Johnson said. “Because those people may be left behind.”
During a brief visit to Los Angeles, Mr. Trump clashed with Ms. Bass in a meeting with homeowners in the Palisades, while saying he had created his own commission to help California rebuild. His chief of choice for Los Angeles, which is overwhelmingly Democratic, would be his “envoy for special missions,” Richard Grenell, the Republican diplomat and longtime political operative.
Mr. Soon-Shiong, The Los Angeles Times’s owner, announced late last month the creation of a coalition of business leaders to weigh in on rebuilding. Mr. Soon-Shiong, in raising his profile, has increasingly criticized Democrats in California, while offering praise of Mr. Trump and Elon Musk.
“Today, I’m proud to announce the formation of a ‘Leadership Council to Rebuild L.A.,’ which will draw on the expertise and generosity of the private sector,” Dr. Soon-Shiong wrote with little elaboration in the Opinion section of his publication on Jan. 26 at the top of a series of “Love Letters from Angelenos.”
Mr. Caruso said he planned to spend millions of dollars of his own money on a nonprofit foundation that would convene leaders in the tech, construction and engineering industries and work as a clearinghouse for ways to speed rebuilding.
He said the group, called “Steadfast L.A.,” would not be at odds with the other initiatives, but would instead work with them. He said they were already working on some 40 ideas for speeding rebuilding, from artificial intelligence applications aimed at hastening building permits to a plan to place power lines underground.
“We’re rolling up our sleeves, getting our hands dirty and tackling issues that are preventing people from moving back in or starting to rebuild their homes quickly,” he said. “We’re here to help, but we’re also here to push people along.”
Jim Newton, a public policy lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a former editorial page editor with The Los Angeles Times, suggested that it might make more sense to combine Mr. Soboroff’s office with Mr. Newsom’s commission, given that they both are affiliated with government.
Mr. Newton said he was dubious that Mr. Caruso’s group would bring clarity to a muddled picture.
“It would be like Joe Biden creating the commission on government efficiency to advise the Trump White House,” he said of the Caruso commission. “I’m skeptical of that conceptually. I don’t meant to suggest any bad motive here; I just can’t imagine it would be welcome in this environment.”
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