The relationship between Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass and the city’s chief recovery officer, Steve Soboroff, who she appointed in January to lead the first phase of the city’s wildfire rebuilding effort, is starting to fray.
At an event last week, Soboroff, a real estate developer and a former Los Angeles police commissioner, addressed public pushback over his announced salary for the position, which was created to help rebuild the city after the devastation caused by the Pacific Palisades and Eaton fires. Soboroff had been slated to make $500,000 for 90 days of work, but when that news broke in the Los Angeles Times, there was sharp public backlash. At the time, Bass’ office released a statement, saying Soboroff had agreed to work for free, but according to the 76-year-old former real estate developer, that doesn’t tell the whole story.
“This is one of the most expensive disasters in the history of America,” Soboroff said, defending the proposed salary to a crowd of Harvard-Westlake alumni at an event that was held at the school’s lower campus last week (Soboroff’s children previously attended the school).
Soboroff noted that it’s not uncommon for city consultants in situations like this to get paid low to mid-seven figures from the city. At the time, he said, he was already in talks with another undisclosed client that would have paid him close to one million dollars and by accepting the chief recovery officer role he would miss out on that sizable sum.
So Soboroff and Bass’ office agreed that he would take $500,000 for 90 days of work, which he says is about half of what he would typically bill on a project of this scope. “You can agree with it or not agree with it. It was a lot of money but it’s what I made in the last three jobs and half of what I was already making,” he said.
But according to Soboroff any discussion about the $500,000 figure was moot because the funds were never actually there.
“I have emails and texts saying, ‘everything is good. No, no, the contract is coming.’ Now I’m getting a lot of ‘I told you so’s’ from some of the best lawyers in Los Angeles,” he told the crowd of about 50 people. After getting the runaround for several weeks, he discovered that, in fact, there was “no contract” and added “then I found out they really didn’t have the money.”
When the story broke about his salary — the one that he says he was never going to receive anyway — Soboroff said he had two choices: “Go public and quit and say I was lied to, and here are my emails here are my texts, or say, ‘I will do it for free and hope that it comes around later on.’” He opted for the latter.
When The Hollywood Reporter reached Soboroff on Feb. 23 by phone, he walked back some of those comments. “If I said I was lied to, then I was wrong. That was a misstatement by me. There’s no proof that the mayor deceived me on purpose,” he said. “I was disappointed in what happened but I’m choosing to stay on until the end because I have to put the trains on the tracks.”
A spokesperson in the mayor’s office replied, “The recovery is months ahead of expectations — in fact, it’s the fastest large-scale debris removal operation in modern state history. As we shared a few weeks ago, the mayor asked Steve to modify his agreement and he said yes, agreeing that we don’t need anything distracting from the recovery work happening. He has always been in this for the people of the Palisades and the people who work there, and we are grateful.”
Soboroff, who unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2001, has been a fixture of L.A. civic life for decades and he was an early supporter of Bass’ mayoral run. Since the fires, Bass has faced widespread outrage over her decision to attend an overseas trip in Ghana as part of a Biden Administration delegation the same week that there was a high wind advisory and warning that it could lead to a life-threatening disaster. Bass returned to L.A. 24 hours after the fires ignited.
Last week, the mayor fired L.A. Fire Chief Kristin Crowley saying in a statement: “We know that 1,000 firefighters that could have been on duty on the morning the fires broke out were instead sent home on Chief Crowley’s watch. Furthermore, a necessary step to an investigation was the President of the Fire Commission telling Chief Crowley to do an after-action report on the fires. The Chief refused. These require her removal.”
Some, like developer Rick Caruso, who ran and lost against Bass in the mayor’s race, see the firing of Crowley as scapegoating. “Chief Crowley served Los Angeles well and spoke honestly about the severe and profoundly ill-conceived budget cuts the Bass administration made to the LAFD. That courage to speak the truth was brave, and I admire her,” Caruso said in a statement. “The mayor’s decision to ignore the warnings and leave the city was hers alone.”
Within L.A.’s real estate circles, it was widely rumored that Caruso and Soboroff had a frosty relationship, but in light of the friction both men now have with Bass, that might be changing. “I have mutual respect for Rick,” said Soboroff when asked about his relationship with Caruso. “You have two people that do the same thing — although he’s a lot more successful than I am — with two different styles. I’m more of a man of the masses and he’s of the classes but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong or that I’m right. I have respect for him but I didn’t vote for him.”
