LA City Council approves $473K salary for LAFD Chief Jamie Moore
The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday approved a $473,600 annual salary for Fire Chief Jaime Moore, about $18,000 more than his predecessor, Kristin Crowley, earned.
In a 12-0 vote, the City Council approved Moore’s salary, who took over the Los Angeles Fire Department from interim chief Ronnie Villanueva in October 2025. Mayor Karen Bass appointed Villanueva after she demoted Crowley from her position in February 2025 for handling of the Palisades Fire.
Council members Heather Hutt, Curren Price and John Lee were absent during the vote.
Bass recommended Moore’s salary, which was approved by the Executive Employee Relations Committee on Jan. 27. City officials considered a salary range between $303,595 and $538,369 for the fire chief that factored in the rate of inflation.
Crowley previously earned an annual salary of $367,100. County records showed that Anthony Marrone, the chief of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, earned a $475,000 salary in 2024.
When Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell was sworn in 2024, he received a $450,000 salary. Initially, the Board of Police Commissioners, which oversees the Los Angeles Police Department, had recommended a salary of $507,500 for McDonnell. The decision to lower the police chief’s pay came as a result of the city’s budgetary concerns.
Also, in 2024, Janisse Quiñones general manager of the Department of Water and Power, was hired and sworn in with a $750,000 salary. City officials recommended her pay, citing a need to remain competitive with utility executives.
The Los Angeles Fire Department and Mayor Bass have been criticized for their response during and after the Palisades Fire, which burned more than 23,000 acres, killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of structures.
In January, Moore acknowledged the fire after-action report was edited to reduce criticism of LAFD’s leadership.
Moore previously said he ordered a separate independent investigation into the Lachman Fire — a holdover fire from New Year’s Eve that later erupted into the Palisades Fire — to closely examine the department’s decisions and procedures and determine where improvements are needed.
He formally asked the Fire Safety Research Institute to include the Lachman Fire as part of its broader analysis of last January’s fires.
Moore previously stated the department has implemented several recommendations in the after-action report to bolster their operations and prevent future disasters.
Bass and the LAFD have been further criticized for allegedly altering the after-action report in order to shield themselves from “reputational harm” related to the Palisades Fire.
“Mayor Bass removed the previous fire chief over the chief’s refusal to do an after action report and for failure to pre-deploy. The notion that the mayor then took a U-turn and ‘watered down’ a report that justified her removal of the chief and her public criticisms of pre-deployment failures is just bonkers,” Yusef Robb, a senior adviser to Bass, said in a previous statement.
On Tuesday, former Fire Chief Crowley officially sued the city over her termination, accusing the mayor of retaliation. Crowley’s lawsuit claims Bass and city leaders’ decisions worsened the LAFD’s response to the fire, saying the city historically failed to properly fund the LAFD, leaving the agency under-manned and backlogged in the maintenance of vehicles and other equipment.
In response to the lawsuit, Robb said there was “nothing new here.”
“Ms. Crowley was removed from her post for her failure to predeploy and her decision to send 1,000 firefighters home instead of keeping them on duty on the morning the fires broke out. This lawsuit has no merit,” Robb said in a statement.