Cummings and Villaraigosa insisted that the data was accurate and that public safety had not been compromised by the reduction of fire engines and ambulances at more than one-fifth of the city's 106 fire stations.
Firefighters union criticizes Mayor Villaraigosa

But Pat McOsker, president of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City, had passed out a letter to reporters accusing the department and Villaraigosa of knowingly using "false statistics" to justify budget cuts that resulted in the public "being put in peril."

As the mayor and chief took questions, a reporter began reading from McOsker's letter. Villaraigosa interrupted the reporter.

"I wish you could take a picture of him. He's smiling the whole time," the mayor said as he looked toward McOsker, who was behind a row of journalists and television cameras.

"It's an outrageous letter," Villaraigosa said. "It is a reflection of the lack of leadership in that union for him to say the kinds of things that he did, because he knows it's not true."

Three years ago, as the union was in contract talks with the city, the group's members put up signs at firehouses across the city saying that the public was being put at risk by a plan backed by Villaraigosa to shut down fire engines and ambulances citywide on a rotating basis.

The mayor referred to the signs as he lashed out at McOsker during the news conference.

"He's the same guy," the mayor said, "that put up posters telling people that they were going to die."

Turns out the head of the firefighters union was right, the fire department used computer projections to come up with response times for 2008 and 2009, the only problem is that the hard data was available for those years and it wasn't included or referenced. A man was burned to death after a long wait and a woman lost some fingers after a 45 minute response but some how the Mayor and City Council members believed that if you closed 1 in 5 fire stations that response times would stay the same or get better.

It is time for my tinfoil hat moment, the Mayor gave huge pay and benefit increases to the cities public employee unions right before the fire department cuts were first suggested. I believe the Mayor was instrumental in these numbers being juggled because he had to come up with that money. His joke at a Council members fundraiser last night didn't help "where is the Fire Chief, is he should be here, I called him 5 minutes ago".

What does your Outpost experience say about a man who went to a law school below a tier 3 and failed the bar repeatedly, other than he had no choice but to be a politician?

 

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Being a politicians is really not that good of a career choice. Many of them have money already and think they can apply that knowledge to being a politician. The job itself is usually pretty thankless and it not about policy but getting power.

It is amazing that the system works at all.

 

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That apologists will rush in with any deflection/distraction that they can muster. Anyway, leftists have a long established track record of destroying everything they get their hands on.

Let me get this right. They had to reduce the Stations because they could not pay for them and honor the contracts with the Unions. Their choice was to reduce the manhour cost or reduce the Stations. The Unions said they had to honor the contract; which was the same thing as saying they had to close the stations. Fact; they could not afford to have the Stations under the current contract. Now a 20% reduction is cost seems to have caused one death and some finger loss. While I'm sorry for the death and finger loss it is hard to blame anyone but the Unions. You cannot pay people with magic money.

 

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I think it is safe to blame anyone who actually expects to get paid for what they do. Imagine how much more we could do if people didn't demand pay. Greedy bastards the lot of them IMO.

 

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So, are you saying a public sector union is right?

Good thing it's there to fight this, huh?

Which side is fighting for austerity? Are you saying he should have raised taxes to maintain public services? You do realize there are real life consequences to smaller government and less taxes don't you?Welcome to the world you are helping to create.


BTW:the two examples of late arrivals are nothing unless they are claiming late arrivals never happened under the old system.They don't even say the death or amputations were because of the late arrival,just that hey happened and emergency services was late.

 

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