Crime Problem · LA Governance · May 26, 2026

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LA Firefighters Pool $1 Million to Bypass City Hall.
Karen Bass Cut the Budget. Fired the Chief. Now the Union Is Going Around Her.

Sunday, May 25, 2026. The New York Postreports that the rank-and-file of the Los Angeles Fire Department — sixteen months after the Palisades Fire flattened a swath of the city — have taken a step their union leadership openly calls “rarely seen.” Members of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112 (UFLAC) have pooled more than $1 million of their own money to bypass the City Council and Mayor Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) and put a half-cent sales-tax measure directly before voters on the November 2026 ballot.

The measure — petitioned for at a January 15, 2026 press conference at Fire Station 58 and now actively gathering the ~154,000 signaturesrequired to qualify — would raise the city sales-tax rate from 9.75% to 10.25% and earmark roughly $345 million per year for the LAFD: new stations, replacement engines, and the staffing the union says City Hall has refused to fund for sixty-six years.

The context is unsparing. In April 2024 Mayor Bass proposed a $23 million cut to the fire department; the City Council reduced that to $17.6 million; she signed it. In January 2025 the Palisades Fire ignited and Chief Kristin Crowleywent public with a memo saying the cuts had “adversely affected the Department's ability to maintain core operations.” In February 2025 Bass fired Crowley. The union has been at war with the mayor since.

• $1M+pooled by firefightersPersonal contributions from UFLAC Local 112 members to fund a ballot petition bypassing City Hall — NY Post, May 25, 2026
• $17.6MLAFD budget cutSigned by Mayor Karen Bass June 2024 — five months before the Palisades Fire — PolitiFact, ABC7, FOX 11
• 7:53avg LA response timeNearly eight minutes vs. the ~4-minute national NFPA standard — UFLAC / NY Post, May 25, 2026
• +8firefighter positions since 19603,379 (1960) → 3,387 (2026) while emergency calls grew from ~100,000 to ~500,000 — UFLAC / NY Post

Public-employee unions do not, as a rule, sue their own city for more funding while their pension checks are signed by City Hall. LAFD's rank-and-file rarely make public war on a sitting mayor. UFLAC Local 112 is doing both. The union pooled more than $1 millionfrom its own members — not federation dollars, not outside PAC money — to fund a ballot petition that would raise the city sales-tax rate by half a cent and route the proceeds straight into the fire department, with a citizen-oversight committee instead of the council's appropriations process. The signature deadline runs in April. The vote, if qualified, runs November 2026 — on the same ballot as the mayor's seat.

“It's a domino effect. You're covering one area, and another area is left without coverage.”

Doug Coates, First Vice President, UFLAC Local 112 · New York Post · May 25, 2026

The internal arithmetic UFLAC laid out to the New York Post is the cleanest case yet for the measure. In 1960, Los Angeles had roughly 2.5 million residents and 3,379 sworn firefighter positions; today, with a population approaching 4 million, the department has 3,387sworn positions — an increase of eight bodies in sixty-six years. Emergency calls in the same window went from roughly 100,000 per year to nearly 500,000. By population benchmarks UFLAC cites, the city should have more than 7,300 firefighters; it is operating at roughly half that level. Average response time runs 7 minutes 53 seconds against an NFPA standard of approximately four minutes. Over half the city's 106 fire stations are more than fifty years old.

The timeline of how LAFD got here is on the public record. In April 2024, Mayor Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) proposed a $23 million cut to LAFD's operating budget. In May 2024, the Los Angeles City Council modified the figure to a $17.6 million reduction. In June 2024, Bass signed the budget, leaving LAFD at roughly $819.6 million — a 2% year-over-year cut. After negotiations in November 2024, the city added back $76 millionspecifically for firefighter salaries, bringing the 2024–25 total to about $895.6 million. Two months later, the Palisades Fire ignited.

On February 21, 2025, Bass removed Fire Chief Kristin Crowley— the first openly gay woman to lead the department — effective immediately. Bass said Crowley had failed to put on-duty firefighters in position the morning of the Palisades Fire and had refused to file an after-action report. Crowley filed an appeal under the city charter, which requires ten of fifteen council votesto reinstate her. The vote did not happen. In a statement issued through CBS Los Angeles, Crowley said the budget cuts “limited the Department's response to a certain factor — it was cut and it did impact our ability to provide service.”

UFLAC, then under President Freddie Escobar, called the termination “outrageous” and said Crowley was being “made a scapegoat… for telling the truth.” Escobar was subsequently suspended from the union presidency and has filed his own lawsuit against the Bass administration alleging a campaign of retaliation. That suit is pending. Defendants in pending civil litigation are presumed innocent of the conduct alleged until adjudicated.

In February 2026, the Los Angeles Timesreported that Mayor Bass had personally directed the interim fire chief to soften key findings in the official after-action report on the Palisades response — warning that an unflinching version could expose the city to legal liability. Bass's office denied that the report was altered. The Times stood by the story. Businessman Rick Caruso— the runner-up in the 2022 mayoral race — posted on X that the report alleged “an intentional act of covering up the actions that led to people dying.”

The measure proposes a half-cent (0.5%) sales-tax increase — from 9.75% to 10.25%— earmarked specifically for LAFD. UFLAC estimates first-year revenue at ~$345 million, scaling to roughly $10 billion by 2050. The text would fund thirty new fire stations and add more than 1,000 sworn firefighters, with a citizen oversight committee appointed to verify spending. Mayor Bass has publicly endorsedthe ballot push, calling it a “game-changer” — a posture the union notes is harder to square with the cuts she proposed two years earlier.

UFLAC needs roughly 154,000 valid signatures by the April 2026 deadline (since cleared, with the union continuing to bank a cushion above the threshold). The City Clerk will certify in summer 2026; the measure goes before voters on November 3, 2026, the same ballot that decides the mayor's race. The first Karen Bass recall attempt — filed March 18, 2025 by Palisades-area residents — failed in August 2025 without reaching the 330,000-signature threshold. The organizers said they would redirect their effort to the 2026 ballot box. They have a vehicle now.