Fire Recovery Committee Wants Answers Around Contracts

Karen Bass’ office likes to tout L.A.’s recovery effort as “on track to be the fastest in state history.” What it’s less chatty about, though, is the cost and funding sources for the consultants paid to assist in the city’s rebuilding.

That’ll change if the city council approves a motion requesting details around those contracts.

There’s plenty at stake. The longer the charred landscape from over 6,800 destroyed structures sits, the more glaring the lack of transparency is in a city dogged by a housing shortage and the antsier a highly engaged resident population gets.

But first, council members will have to come back from summer recess, which runs July 2 through July 29, in order to tackle the specifics.

A motion passed by the the City Council’s Ad Hoc Committee for LA Recovery June 23 underscored the importance of Bass’ office and the Emergency Management Department — the two entities overseeing contract work with AECOM and Hagerty Consulting, respectively — working with the City Administrative Officer and Chief Legislative Analyst on providing basic information surrounding the firms’ work to the city council.

The motion, presented by Council member Monica Rodriguez — representative of the 7th District, which includes Sylmar, Pacoima and Sunland-Tujunga among other places — explicitly seeks names and resumes of employees assigned, hours billed to date, payments made, funding sources, scope of work and timeline for delivery of services.

Rodriguez told The Real Deal through a spokesperson she was first made aware of the contracts with Hagerty and AECOM through press releases issued Feb. 7 and June 6, respectively, by the mayor’s office.

“I am eager for the council president to schedule it as this motion is an important step toward ensuring transparency and accountability in the city’s recovery process,” Rodriguez said via her representative, confirming no date has been provided for when the motion will be brought before the full council.

A spokesperson for the city clerk’s office said meeting agendas for when the council returns from recess have not yet been confirmed, making it unclear when the motion will be reviewed.

That the Ad Hoc Committee had to ask for such information highlights a disconnect across the city departments handling the recovery process from the devastation of January’s Palisades Fire.

“The contracts were awarded without a public process, and at this time, the specific roles and responsibilities of each contractor remain unclear,” the motion said in relation to Hagerty Consulting and AECOM. “The funding sources for these contracts has not been identified, nor has the scope of work for the expected work product.”

From the Hagerty Consulting Zoom meeting presentation given in April to the Pacific Palisades Community Council and residents.

“Tell us what you’re doing”

In the case of Chicago-based Hagerty, the firm was tapped under Bass’ January emergency declaration, and charged with “planning, response, recovery, financial management and operations,” according to information provided in an email by Paige Sterling, a spokesperson for Bass.

So far, Hagerty has provided debris removal expertise and training to the city’s Emergency Management Department. It also created a dashboard showing which sites have been cleared of debris and which have not by the Army Corps of Engineers.

That’s not to be confused with a separate dashboard the Department of Building and Safety was charged with developing to show the progress of permitting within the Palisades. As of June 23, there were 554 permit applications, with 121 issued.

Hagerty’s also assisted with writing what are called justification letters to the Army Corps of Engineers for debris removal on properties that don’t typically qualify for assistance. That has so far included two mobile home parks, 12 city parcels, the Presbyterian church parking lot, eight private schools and 10 commercial properties — a total that, for all its variety, represents a sliver of the burn zone.

All in, that saved the city about $9 million, according to an update provided to the Ad Hoc Committee last month from Emergency Management Department’s general manager, Jim Featherstone. Less clear is whether Hagerty’s work provided direct savings to Palisades residents.

Hagerty did not respond to requests for comment. Founder and President Steve Hagerty declined any comment when TRD visited his firm’s unmarked Evanston, Illinois, headquarters in June. The executive cited terms of the company’s contract with the city for his inability to take questions and instead referred inquiries to the company’s communications director, Jessi Widhalm.

An email sent to Widhalm was not returned, nor was one sent to Harrison Newton, the Hagerty representative who made a presentation via Zoom to the Pacific Palisades Community Council in April. The meetingr raised more questions from several of the residents in attendance than answers from Newton.

Attendees peppered Newton with questions around what Hagerty has done about infrastructure, public health, who the firm has spoken to from the community, what its deliverables are and how it’s spending the money it’s being paid. That list of questions also included resident David Howard bluntly asking, “Tell us what you’re doing, where the money’s going and how it’s being spent — concrete items of what you’re doing to get this fixed!”

Newton, like Hagerty, repeatedly declined to answer most questions during that community meeting.

“What we want to do is capture the questions and then we want to be able to be responsive in a thorough fashion,” Newton told residents, saying the company would take the questions back to “our city partners” in a bid “to be aligned in the answers we provide.”

More than three months have passed since that meeting and neither Newton nor a Hagerty representative have provided any follow up to residents’ questions, Sue Kohl, president of the PPCC, confirmed to TRD.

Instead, residents were left “completely frustrated,” Kohl said of the meeting’s outcome.

Hagerty’s contract, which was struck in February, runs through Feb. 13, 2026 for an amount not to exceed $10 million, according to a copy of the contract available through the city’s procurement website. Bass’ office declined to provide a figure that Hagerty Consulting has been paid to date.

Hourly wages paid out to Hagerty range from $80 for an administrator to a high of $400 for the former Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator/state director, according to the rate table outlined in the contract. Most of the rates are in the $200s and include $200 per hour for a “closeout specialist” to $295 for a project executive.

“Somewhere between $1 and infinite”

Even less information is available on the AECOM contract announced in June. How much the firm, whose name sits atop a downtown Los Angeles skyscraper, will be paid and from what funding source are unclear to council members and Bass herself as of late June.

Bass’ office confirmed AECOM was selected from a list of “pre-qualified on-call” civil engineering firms after a solicitation went out. Being on that list allowed for an expedited approval.

The firm’s role is to focus on infrastructure as it relates to utilities and organize the logistics to address traffic concerns that are expected to mount as rebuilding begins on a mass scale.

Beyond that, Emergency Management Department’s Featherstone told the Ad Hoc Committee for LA Recovery last month that AECOM is the “third leg of the stool” in the recovery.

“But we don’t know a whole lot about AECOM other than their reputation as a company,” Featherstone said during the meeting.

The two other “legs” in the current scenario would be Hagerty and a third firm, IEM International, which is being managed by the Chief Administrative Officer to help with documentation for grants and Federal Emergency Management Agency reimbursements. As of June 23, $1 million had been spent toward the IEM contract, which has a $5 million ceiling, CAO’s Patty Huber said during last month’s Ad Hoc meeting.

Out from that list is Steve Soboroff, who was appointed chief recovery officer in January to lead the initial, 90-day phase of the recovery. Soboroff’s work included working with the US Army Corps of Engineers on debris removal, relocating schools and finding donors for the rebuilding of the Palisades playground, according to Bass’ office.

Bass’ office has tasked the Chief Administrative Officer with identifying funding for the AECOM contract, which was still being worked on as of that June Ad Hoc meeting. It was suggested at that time the money would likely come from the general fund as AECOM’s work will not be FEMA reimbursable.

LA City Council member Tim McOsker, who also sits on the Ad Hoc Committee, was unable to squeeze out even an estimated range during that meeting on the cost of AECOM’s contract. An inquiry to his office on whether McOsker has since received any information on cost or funding source was not returned.

That leaves the answer on cost to be, as McOsker offered during that June meeting, “somewhere between $1 and infinite.”

With additional reporting provided by Jerry Sullivan.