hagerty consulting

Six months to the day that flames ravaged Altadena and Pacific Palisades, Mayor Karen Bass was preparing to mark the occasion alongside Gov. Gavin Newsom and other leaders.

But instead of heading north to the Pasadena news conference last week, the mayor’s black SUV made a detour to MacArthur Park, where a cavalcade of federal agents in tactical gear had descended on the heart of immigrant Los Angeles.

In a seafoam blue suit, Bass muscled her way through the crowds and could be heard on a live news feed pushing the agents to leave.

Ultimately, she sent an underling to join Newsom and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla to discuss fire rebuilding and recovery, as she held an impromptu City Hall news conference decrying the immigration raid.

This is the delicate dance Bass has found herself doing in recent weeks. Recovering from one of the costliest natural disasters in American history remains a daily slog, even as a new and urgent crisis demands her attention.

The federal immigration assault on Los Angeles has granted Bass a second chance at leading her city through civic catastrophe. Her political image was badly bruised in the wake of the fires, but she has compensated amid a string of historically good headlines.

Killings have plummeted, with Los Angeles on pace for the lowest homicide total in nearly 60 years. Bass has also made progress on the seemingly intractable homelessness crisis for the second consecutive year, with a nearly 8% decrease in the number of people sleeping on city streets in 2024.

A “Karen Bass Resign Now” sign on Alma Real Drive on July 9 in Pacific Palisades.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

But there is a widening gulf between Pacific Palisades, where the annihilation remains palpable as far as the eye can see, and the rest of the city, where attention has largely flickered to other issues. Amid her successes, the mayor still faces harsh critics in the wealthy coastal enclave.

“The mayor has been very clear that every day that families can’t return home is a day too long, and she will continue taking action to expedite every aspect of the recovery effort to get them home,” Bass spokesperson Zach Seidl said.

Bass was on a diplomatic trip to Ghana, despite warnings of severe winds, when the conflagration erupted in early January. She floundered upon her return, fumbling questions about her trip, facing public criticism from her fire chief (whom she later ousted) and appearing out of sync with other leaders and her own chief recovery officer.

Those initial days cast a long shadow for the city’s 43rd mayor, but Bass has regained some of her footing in the months since. She has made herself a fixture in the Palisades, even when the community has not always welcomed her with open arms, and has attempted to expedite recovery by pulling the levers of government. Her office also led regular community briefings with detailed Q&A sessions.

Bass issued a swath of executive orders to aid recovery, creating a one-stop rebuilding center, providing tax relief for businesses affected by the fires and expediting permitting. The one-stop center has served more than 3,500 individuals, according to the mayor’s office.

Felipe Ortega raises the California flag at Gladstones Malibu on July 2 in Malibu. After sustaining damage from the fire, Gladstones reopened for business earlier this month.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

A number of restaurants and other amenities have also reopened in the neighborhood. The Starbucks on Palisades Drive is set to return later this month.

Bass frequently touts the Palisades fire recovery as the fastest in modern California history, though recent natural disasters don’t offer an apples-to-apples comparison.

Sue Pascoe, a Palisades resident who lost her home in the Via Bluffs neighborhood and helms a hyperlocal website called Circling the News, said the mayor has made some inroads.

“I think she’s tried very hard to repair relationships. She’s come up there a whole lot,” Pascoe said. “But I’m not sure it’s worked, to be honest with you.”

When Bass visits the Palisades, said Maryam Zar, head of the Palisades Recovery Coalition, residents tell her she has not done enough to hasten rebuilding.

“She always seems truly mind-boggled by that” accusation, Zar said. “She looks at us like, ‘Really? What have I not done?’”

The issue, in Pascoe’s view, is more about the limitations of the office than Bass’ leadership. Residents traumatized by the loss of their homes and infuriated by a broken insurance system and cumbersome rebuilding process would like to see the mayor wave a magic wand, slash red tape on construction and direct the full might of local government to reviving the neighborhood.

But Los Angeles has a relatively weak mayoral system, compared with cities such as New York and Chicago.

The mayor is far from powerless, said Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation and a scholar of local government. But he or she shares authority with other entities, such as the 15-member City Council and the five-member L.A. County Board of Supervisors.

“To move things in L.A., you always need mayoral leadership, combined with the cooperation, collaboration — or hopefully not opposition — of a lot of powerful people in other offices,” Sonenshein said. “And yet, the mayor is still the recognized leader. So it’s a matter of matching up people’s expectation of leadership with how you can put the pieces together to get things done.”

Take the issue of waiving permit fees.

Construction workers rebuild a home on July 9 in Pacific Palisades.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

In February, City Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the fire-ravaged area, introduced a proposal to stop levying fees for permits to rebuild Palisades homes.

Pascoe and others cheered in late April when the mayor signed an executive order supporting Park’s plan.

But as Pascoe moved forward with rebuilding her longtime home, she was confused when her architect gave her a form to sign that said she would pay the city back if the City Council doesn’t move forward on the fee waivers.

As it turned out, Bass’ order did not cancel permit fees outright but suspended their collection, contingent on the council ultimately passing its ordinance, since the mayor can’t legally cancel the fees on her own.

Park’s proposal is still wending its way through the council approval process. Officials estimate that waiving the fees will cost around $86 million — a particularly eye-popping sum, given the city’s budget crisis, that may make approval difficult.

Apart from the limitations of her office, Bass has also confused residents and made her own path harder with a seemingly haphazard approach to delegating authority.

Mayor Karen Bass speaks at a discussion with local leaders and residents to mark 100 days since the start of the L.A. wildfires at Will Rogers State Beach on April 17.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Within a month of the blaze, Bass announced the hiring of Hagerty Consulting as a “world-class disaster recovery firm” that would coordinate “private and public entities.” To many residents, Bass had appeared to give the firm the gargantuan task of restoring the Palisades.

In reality, Hagerty was retained as a consultant to the city’s tiny, underfunded Emergency Management Department, whose general manager, Carol Parks, is designated by city charter as the recovery coordinator. Bass also brought out of retirement another former EMD chief, Jim Featherstone, who has served as de facto recovery chief behind the scenes.

But based on Bass’ public statements, many Angelenos thought the recovery would be led by a familiar face — Steve Soboroff.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and her disaster recovery czar Steve Soboroff, left, talk to media during a news conference at the Palisades Recreation Center on Jan. 27 in Pacific Palisades.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Soboroff, a developer, civic leader and longtime Palisades resident, signed on for a three-month stint as chief recovery officer and was initially tasked with creating a comprehensive strategy for rebuilding. But his role was soon dramatically scaled back. When he left in mid-April, Soboroff said he had been shut out from high-level planning essentially from the start and spoke candidly about his issues with Hagerty.

The city brought in a headhunter before Soboroff left, but the position has now been unfilled for longer than Soboroff’s 90-day tenure. (Seidl said Wednesday that the city is “in the process of interviewing and thoroughly vetting qualified candidates,” though he did not set a timeline.)

In June, Bass shifted course again by tapping AECOM, the global engineering firm, to develop a master recovery plan, including logistics and public-private partnerships.

Yet Bass’ office has said little to clarify how AECOM will work with Hagerty, and at a public meeting last month, leaders of the Emergency Management Department said that they, too, were in the dark about AECOM’s scope of work.

“We don’t know a whole lot about AECOM other than their reputation as a company,” Featherstone said at the City Council’s ad hoc recovery committee.

Seidl said Wednesday that AECOM would be working in “deep coordination” with Featherstone’s department while managing the overall rebuilding process. The firm is responsible for developing an infrastructure reconstruction plan, a logistics planning in coordination with local builders and suppliers and a master traffic plan as rebuilding activity increases, he said.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, left, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla and California Gov. Gavin Newsom tour the downtown business district of Pacific Palisades as the Palisades fire continues to burn on Jan. 8 in Los Angeles.

(Eric Thayer / Getty Images)

Hagerty, meanwhile, continues to work with EMD and has charged the city nearly $2 million thus far, Seidl said, most of which is reimbursable by the federal government.

Zar, head of the Palisades Recovery Coalition, said she was told to expect a meeting with AECOM more than a month ago, but that meeting has been delayed “week after week after week, for four or five weeks.”

“That organized recovery structure isn’t there, and that void is really creating space for Palisadians to be fearful, fight against each other, and be divided,” said Zar. “That our leaders and lawmakers have yet to come to the table with a plan is unforgivable.”

The work awarded to Hagerty, AECOM and another firm, IEM, which is assisting in federal reimbursements, prompted City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez to remark in June, “For a broke city, we find a lot of money to give out a lot of contracts.”

Bass’ 2022 mayoral opponent Rick Caruso has been a frequent — and very public — antagonist since the fires, questioning delays and taking other shots at the mayor.

Caruso’s Steadfast L.A., the nonprofit he launched to support fire victims, pushed for an artificial intelligence tool that could swiftly flag code violations in construction plans and trim permit processing times.

Steadfast representatives got buy-in from L.A. County. When they presented the tool to Bass’ team, they said they encountered general support but a plodding pace. Frustrated, Caruso reached out to Newsom, who, according to Caruso, quickly championed the technology, pushing the city to embrace it.

Bass’ spokesperson disputed the suggestion of delays, saying the mayor’s team has discussed technological innovations with Newsom’s office since February.

This week, L.A. County rolled out a pilot program in which fire survivors can use the AI plan-check tool. The city launched beta testing of the tool Wednesday.

The episode exemplified to Caruso why the recovery has moved slowly.

“There’s no decision-making process to get things done with a sense of urgency,” he said.

Nearly five months after a firestorm laid waste to a wide swath of Pacific Palisades, Mayor Karen Bass announced Friday that the global infrastructure firm AECOM will help develop a master plan for rebuilding the area, as well as a plan for reconstructing utilities and other infrastructure.

The firm will work alongside both the city and Hagerty Consulting, which Bass tapped as a recovery contractor in early February, according to the mayor’s office.

Hagerty, an Illinois-based disaster recovery firm, has a yearlong contract with the city for up to $10 million but has faced persistent questions about the specifics of its work.

The mayor’s office did not immediately answer when asked Friday whether Hagerty’s role was being scaled back.

In late January, the mayor, along with four council members and other city officials, heard presentations from Hagerty, AECOM and a third firm also seeking to be the city’s disaster recovery contractor.

After Bass selected Hagerty in February, she said the city was still in discussions with AECOM about a separate contract.

“An unprecedented natural disaster requires an unprecedented, all-hands-on-deck response — all levels of government, philanthropy, the private sector and educational institutions coming together to support the community and rebuild as quickly and safely as possible,” Bass said in a written statement Friday. “AECOM’s expertise in long-term infrastructure planning and design will only further expedite our work to get families home.”

The mayor’s office also did not immediately respond when asked whether the city now has a contract with AECOM, or what the specifics of that contract, including the compensation, are.

Steve Soboroff, a longtime local developer and Bass’ former chief recovery officer, publicly criticized Bass’ decision to choose Hagerty over AECOM as the city’s initial disaster recovery contractor. In an interview in mid-April as he was leaving his post, Soboroff raised questions about Hagerty’s role and said he thought AECOM should have been hired instead.

Along with developing a comprehensive rebuilding master plan and supporting the Palisades’ infrastructure reconstruction, AECOM will help coordinate broader public and private rebuilding efforts.

The company will work on a “logistics plan for materials management in coordination with local builders and suppliers” as well as a master traffic plan as more homeowners leap into the rebuilding process, according to a news release.

AECOM is also the “official venue infrastructure partner” for the 2028 Olympic Games, according to a March news release from LA28.

Carol Parks, the chief of Los Angeles’ Emergency Management Department, sat before a budget committee last year and painted a dire picture.

Although tasked with responding to crises in the nation’s most disaster-prone region, her department had received just a tiny fraction of the city’s budget and was getting by with a staff of roughly 30.

There was no staffer devoted full-time to disaster recovery, which meant that if an earthquake or major wildfire struck, the city would have to scramble.

But the City Council and Mayor Karen Bass balked at devoting more money to the department.

Seven months later, flames tore through Pacific Palisades and nearby communities, destroying more than 6,000 structures and displacing tens of thousands.

Now, the Emergency Management Department is in charge of coordinating the monumental task of recovery — but with a budget smaller than what the city’s Police Department uses in roughly two days.

To supplement the bare-bones emergency management team, Bass turned to an Illinois-based disaster recovery firm, Hagerty Consulting, inking a yearlong contract for up to $10 million. She also brought a former EMD general manager, Jim Featherstone, back from retirement to serve as the de facto recovery chief.

More than four months after the fire, Palisades residents and some of their elected officials are increasingly frustrated, asking: Who is in charge? What have they been doing? How is Hagerty spending its time? And what is the plan to restore the Palisades?

L.A. brings on Hagerty

As flames chewed through the Palisades on Jan. 7, EMD assigned a mid-level staffer to take on the recovery. Soon, Featherstone — a former firefighter who once served as interim LAFD chief — arrived at the emergency operations center.

In public, Bass touted civic leader Steve Soboroff as the city’s recovery czar, with a controversy over his salary taking center stage for a period.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, left, and her disaster recovery czar Steve Soboroff, right, at Palisades Recreation Center in January.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

In practice, Featherstone — a self-described “operator” and “tactical person” — assumed the recovery director role, helping to choreograph a massive, multiagency response.

Zach Seidl, a spokesperson for Bass, disputed that characterization and said the two men had different roles. Featherstone’s “role is largely internal to the City,” while Soboroff, whose term ended last month, “worked externally with the community along with other engagement teams within the Mayor’s Office,” Seidl said in an email.

While the city code puts EMD in charge of coordinating disaster recovery, it operates with fewer resources than similar departments in other large California cities. A 2022 audit found that L.A. spent $1.56 per resident on emergency management — far less than Long Beach at $2.26 and San Francisco at $7.59.

With such a small team for a 469-square-mile city, EMD has struggled to staff its emergency operations center in crises, prepare for events like the 2028 Olympics and help residents recover from smaller-scale calamities like building fires, storms and mudslides.

Parks told the City Council in a 2024 memo that her department “lacks the experience and dedicated staff to oversee long-term recovery projects.” After recent emergencies, EMD handled recovery duties “on an ad hoc basis,” yielding “delays, postponements and possible denial of disaster relief funds,” she wrote.

To boost EMD, Bass in early February tapped Hagerty after hearing proposals from firms including AECOM and IEM. Her reasons for choosing Hagerty were unclear, although the firm had already signed a wildfire recovery contract with L.A. County’s emergency management office and had long worked with the state Office of Emergency Services.

It’s not unusual for a state or local government to retain a recovery consultant after a disaster, even if it has a recovery arm of its own. Hagerty has routinely been hired to help with hurricane recovery, including managing billions of dollars in funding after Superstorm Sandy in New York in 2012.

Because Bass hired Hagerty under her emergency authority, the city has also solicited bids for a longer-term recovery contract worth $30 million over three years, with Hagerty among the companies vying for it.

Initially, Hagerty spent “a significant amount” of time compensating for the lack of a city recovery team, said Featherstone, who supervises Hagerty’s work, at a budget hearing last month.

By contrast, L.A. County had a dedicated recovery operation that consultants could plug into — and the muscle memory from recent disasters like the Woolsey fire.

“The structure had to be built out,” Featherstone told council members at the budget hearing. “Folks were pulled out of their regular day-to-day functions … to start to build out a recovery capability.”

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass speaks with Pacific Palisades residents at a debris removal town hall on Jan. 26 in Santa Monica.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

That structure is a series of tactical teams focused on issues including infrastructure, economics, health and housing. Under each umbrella are multiple working groups composed of several city departments working with federal and regional agencies.

Under the infrastructure team, for example, is a debris removal group, a utilities team and a group for hazards such as mudslides, according to a recording of a recovery meeting reviewed by The Times. The housing team, meanwhile, brings together the Department of Building and Safety and the city Planning Department to streamline the permitting process.

Debris removal was one of the first orders of business — so that group was among the first to be organized and has been the “busiest,” as one EMD staffer said in a recording of an internal March meeting.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has the primary responsibility for clearing debris from lots, with most expected to be done by Memorial Day and the rest largely due to be finished this summer. The city, with Hagerty, helped explain the debris removal process to residents, including the decision to opt in to the Army Corps cleanup or do it on their own.

With Hagerty’s guidance, the Emergency Management Department also created a dashboard showing the progress of debris removal, with real-time maps tracking the status of each lot.

Tracey Phillips, a Hagerty executive, told City Council members in March that her firm was organizing these tactical teams and holding weekly meetings so that “we can develop a short-term and mid-term operational framework.”

“This is the first step to that: [determining] who the players are, getting them in the room, getting them trained up and developing that operational cadence,” Phillips explained. “It’s already happening — it’s just not being reported and it’s not kind of coalesced yet.”

As of mid-March, Hagerty had about 22 employees working on Palisades fire recovery, billing the city at hourly rates ranging from $80 to nearly $400 per employee.

City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez is among those who say that some of the money used for Hagerty would have been better spent bolstering the Emergency Management Department’s rank and file — as Parks had requested last year.

“I don’t understand their purpose. I don’t need another contractor,” Rodriguez said in an interview. “What my city staff needs is staff to do the work.”

Asked whether funding for Hagerty would be better spent on EMD, Seidl, the spokesperson for Bass, said most of the firm’s work is reimbursable by the federal government, a point that Featherstone made at a March budget hearing. Featherstone also suggested that Hagerty’s guidance could yield more funding in the long run because of the firm’s expertise with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Hagerty and Featherstone declined interview requests from The Times. Joseph Riser, a spokesperson for EMD, provided written responses to questions.

EMD was “very pleased” with Hagerty for building out recovery teams “where they did not previously exist,” Riser said, noting that the firm has improved coordination and provided “high-level briefings” to City Hall and department general managers, among other duties.

Seidl emphasized that the mayor has taken steps to preserve EMD’s budget, “even in difficult budget times like this year.” He also touted steps the city has taken to hasten the recovery, like a one-stop permitting and rebuilding center, measures to allow for the re-issuance of permits for homes built in recent years, and restoring water and power in two months compared to the 18 months it took in Paradise after the 2018 Camp fire.

“Despite one of the worst natural disasters in recent history, L.A.’s recovery effort is on track to be the fastest in modern California history,” Seidl said.

Palisades residents strike back

Some Palisades residents say that Hagerty and EMD — and ultimately, Bass and her team — have done a poor job of communicating what their plan is going forward.

Citing the cornucopia of government agencies involved in the rebuild, City Councilmember Traci Park, whose district includes the Palisades, said, “Sometimes it feels like there are so many people in charge that no one is in charge.”

Maryam Zar, who runs the Palisades Recovery Coalition, said that at times, “we feel like we are doing this ourselves.”

Pacific Palisades residents attend a town hall on the L.A. Fire Health Study featuring leading scientists on post-fire health in the backyard of a private residence on Tuesday in Los Angeles. The study is a 10-year effort to study the exposures to dangerous substances and consequent health effects.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Zar and her group have been among the most vocal advocates for a logistics plan governing how thousands of homes will be rebuilt in a community with narrow streets and already-snarled traffic.

The group has circulated ideas that include a concrete plant in the Palisades, short-term housing for construction crews and one-way roads to ease congestion.

Zar said that Hagerty has “shown up to community meetings, and they have been so unable to deliver any kind of information.”

In an interview, Park said that “for weeks and weeks now,” she also has been asking Hagerty and city departments for “a logistics and operations plan” for moving people, vehicles and materials in and out of the Palisades.

Park has visited Lahaina, Hawaii, which was devastated by a wildfire in 2023, and studied other communities rebuilding from fires. She said those areas had consultants who were “very, very engaged” with communities in identifying priorities and solving problems. She wants the city and Hagerty to push forward on a longer-term recovery plan that establishes criteria for fire-safe rebuilding and a timeline for restoring parks, schools, libraries and businesses.

“I know that those things can take significant time to develop. But this is Los Angeles, and this is the Pacific Palisades, and we are not waiting around,” she said, adding that she and her constituents were “moving at warp speed.”

Riser, the EMD spokesperson, said that traffic and logistics were not handled in a “single, static, formal plan,” but that problems were being addressed in coordination with city and state agencies. He also said EMD has brought in traffic experts to “structure this work more effectively.”

“Recovery is dynamic and complex and changes daily as debris is cleared, infrastructure is repaired, and reentry phases evolve,” Riser said.

Frustration with Hagerty boiled over at an April 10 meeting of the Palisades community council, where Hagerty representative Harrison Newton touted recovery as “a chance to become more resilient to the next disaster.”

Residents could barely contain their fury, criticizing Newton for an abstract presentation that seemed divorced from their real needs around rebuilding, permitting and traffic control.

“It feels extremely generic,” said Lee Ann Daly, who then turned her ire toward City Hall. “You need to know that we have a trust issue with the people who are paying you. … We have a trust issue, and it’s huge.”

Palisades resident Kimberly Bloom, whose home burned in the fire, pressed Newton to provide a “concrete example” of Hagerty’s work in a prior disaster “that is not just another layer of bureaucracy, because that’s what it feels like at the moment.”

Newton referred residents to Hagerty’s website and spoke of how his firm provides “augmentation support,” prompting residents to interrupt and criticize his use of jargon.

After some back and forth, Newton emphasized that he and his team were trying to accelerate the city’s response to the issues raised by residents. Hagerty, he said, was “bringing more people to bear so they’re less thinly stretched, and you’re achieving work faster.”

What lies ahead

So far, more than 1,500 parcels in the Palisades have received a final sign-off from L.A. County that they are cleared of debris, paving the way to begin rebuilding.

As of this week, 54 construction permits for 40 addresses have been issued in the Palisades, said Seidl, who noted that hundreds of permit applications are now under review.

The burden will increasingly shift onto city agencies like the Department of Building and Safety to serve thousands of homeowners and businesses seeking plan checks, permits, inspections and certificates of occupancy.

The logistics of whole neighborhoods undertaking simultaneous construction projects on hillside streets, with only a few major arteries in and out, will test the recovery framework that EMD and Hagerty have been working to erect.

In the coming weeks, Bass is expected to name a new chief recovery officer, and her team is “currently interviewing … qualified candidates,” Seidl said. Featherstone, who was initially hired on a 120-day appointment, is now serving as an assistant general manager at EMD, and Parks, the EMD chief, has asked for funding in the coming fiscal year’s budget to keep him.

Hagerty could be replaced by a different firm if it loses the competitive bidding process for the multi-year recovery contract. One of the many “deliverables” for that contract is developing a long-term recovery plan.

That type of overarching plan governing the rebuilding — and direct communication about the plan — is what residents and local officials say they have been pleading for.

“We have more debris clearing to do, but we are also breaking ground on new buildings,” said Councilmember Park. “If we don’t get those plans under control and in place, this is going to turn into ‘The Hunger Games’ very quickly.”