"Exposing years-old concerns about California's resilience to wildfires, a government whistleblower and other witnesses in a recent state trial alleged that cleanup operations after some of the largest fires in state history were plagued by mismanagement and overspending - and that toxic contamination was at times left behind in local communities. Steven Larson, a former state debris operations manager in the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, failed to convince a jury that he was wrongly fired by the agency for flagging those and other issues to his supervisors."
"Still, the little-discussed trial provided a rare window into a billion-dollar public-private industry that is rapidly expanding - and becoming increasingly expensive for taxpayers and lucrative for contractors - given the increased threat of fires from climate change. It raised serious questions about the state's fire response and management capabilities at a time when the Trump administration says it is aggressively searching for "waste, fraud and abuse" in government spending, proposing cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and clashing with state leaders over the best way to respond to future wildfires in California."
A former state debris operations manager and other witnesses alleged mismanagement, overspending, and occasional toxic contamination remained after cleanup of some of California's largest wildfires. A jury found that the manager was retaliated against but also that the agency had legitimate reasons to dismiss him. The case exposed the expanding, billion-dollar public-private debris-removal industry and rising taxpayer costs as contractors profit amid climate-driven wildfire threats. The proceedings coincided with federal scrutiny of waste, proposed FEMA budget cuts, and similar debris work overseen by FEMA and the Army Corps following recent California fires.
Read at Los Angeles Times
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]