Council Restores $3.6 Million to Fire Department

In a preview of the bruising budget battle that could pit one public safety agency against the other next month, a rancorous and often emotional City Council agreed Friday to restore $3.6 million cut from the city Fire Department, some of it just a month ago.

The council’s unusually swift action followed the release of an internal Fire Department report linking the death of a captain nearly two weeks ago, in part, to the cutbacks. The preliminary investigation found that many factors contributed to the March 8 death of Capt. Joseph Dupee, including budget-induced reductions in the department’s command staff, which impair the department’s ability to account for firefighters at the scene of a blaze.

In a related development, sources confirmed that Mayor Richard Riordan’s office has asked Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks to cut his billion-dollar budget by $10 million. The mayor is looking for ways to boost Fire Department funding, which has been severely cut over the past three years.

On Friday, some council members charged that the Police Department’s budget has been protected--even expanded--at the expense of the firefighters--a contention with which Fire Chief William Bamattre agreed.

“There’s a lack of recognition that the Fire Department is an integral piece” of the city’s public safety effort, Bamattre said in an interview. “We’re kind of like a peacetime army: When you don’t need them, you don’t think about them.”

Councilman Mike Feuer said that the Fire Department has “been sacrificed to other services in this city.”

Over the past three years, cuts in the department’s budget have forced the elimination of many staff assistants responsible for helping battalion chiefs keep track of firefighters during significant fires. Just a month ago, the council extended those reductions, agreeing to cut five more of the staff assistants.

But on Friday, the council reversed itself, restoring nine of those positions and adding staffing to the department for a total of $3.6 million. The Fire Department budget has a nearly $7 million shortfall this year.

Despite its ultimately unanimous vote on the reversal, emotions ran high throughout the council chamber during the frequently bitter debate. Some observers speculated that lawmakers were fearful that Dupee’s death, the department’s first in 13 years, would be attributed to the economies they had imposed.

“The heat’s on them,” said Don Forrest, the firefighters union secretary. “They’re the ones who voted for the cuts.”

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Councilwoman Laura Chick, chairwoman of the council’s Public Safety Committee, said: “I very much think the death of Capt. Dupee brought a certain level of emotion and a certain level of expediency to this debate. We had a real example of the ultimate risk.

“The council will never make public safety cuts again--and particularly to the Fire Department--without being much more deliberative and thoughtful to the effects . . . the cuts will cause,” Chick added.

Speaking before a council chamber packed mostly with firefighters wearing union T-shirts, Councilman Nate Holden raised the ire of his colleagues by suggesting that the fire chief went along with the lawmakers’ previous cuts to further his own ambitions as chief. Union members applauded long and loudly.

But Councilman Joel Wachs, his voice at times shaking in anger, responded: “I think what you did today was the most callous thing I have ever seen. That was a public castration that was totally inexcusable.”

Wachs, whose colleagues applauded when he finished, said Holden had undermined the strength of the Fire Department by purposefully pitting the chief against the union.

Union leaders, however, said they blame Bamattre for failing to more aggressively protect the department.

“I think it’s painfully obvious to the people I represent that the chief made accommodations to the mayor’s office,” said Mike McOsker, vice president of United Firefighters Local 112.

Fire Department command officers say they were forced to take the cuts and to manage the department by juggling and moving resources around. During his first mayoral campaign, Riordan promised to put 3,000 more police officers on the streets, and he has boosted Police Department funding to accomplish that goal.

“I’m representing the Fire Department. I can’t answer your fiscal questions,” Bamattre told the council. “I’m here to answer your Fire Department questions. . . . We cannot continue to juggle resources.”

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LAPD and other city officials confirmed that the Police Department--known to some firefighters as “the blue hole”--has been asked to cut its budget $10 million, up from the $6 million requested earlier. The LAPD, however, has indicated that it needs to increase rather than decrease its funding.

Mayoral aides said all city departments have been asked to find additional cuts in their budgets, and they denied any link between the police cuts and the Fire Department.

Council members, who will begin their budget deliberations in a month, also received some sobering financial news from their administrative officer, Keith Comrie, who said the lawmakers will find themselves with a $100-million shortfall.

Although Comrie said the additional funding for the Fire Department “will not bankrupt the city,” he said the council will be faced with some difficult decisions.

The council agreed.

“All of us collectively share the responsibility for where we are now,” Feuer said. But in the end, firefighters said they viewed the council’s action “as only the beginning” in restoring their budget.

“Firefighters view it as a good start,” McOsker said. “We appreciate the support of the council . . . but this is not a happy occasion. There isn’t cause for jubilation.”

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Times staff writer Matt Lait contributed to this story.