There’s an old saying in politics: the smaller the stakes, the nastier the fight. Known as Sayre’s Law, it’s often applied to academia, but it fits local government perfectly. If you’ve ever seen Parks and Recreation, where officials treat dog park disputes like negotiations over nuclear arms reductions, you get the idea.
But it’s no joke when local politics become so dysfunctional that they prevent people from rebuilding their lives. That’s what’s happening in Southern California, where many residents are still struggling to recover after this year’s devastating Pacific Palisades fire, which killed nearly 30 people and destroyed more than 18,000 homes and businesses.
The irony? Despite Los Angeles’s immense wealth, rebuilding has proven nearly impossible. The county is a patchwork of 88 incorporated cities—each with its own government, environmental rules, permitting processes, NIMBY instincts, and personalities—all colliding in a textbook case of Sayre’s Law.
Now, there’s a flicker of hope. The state’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Climate Action and Fire-Safe Recovery (yes, that’s the actual name) has proposed a new Resilient Rebuilding Authority. The goal: cut through the bureaucratic mess by coordinating rebuilding efforts across jurisdictions and streamlining the county’s byzantine permitting system.
In other words, California created so much red tape that it now needs another government agency just to help people rebuild their homes—a solution that, as a conservative, feels like classic big government overreach. The better answer would be to cut the red tape entirely. Still, given the current mess, this is at least a step in the right direction.
The change could also help curb the kind of petty local interference that has long delayed recovery efforts. Just look at Malibu, one of the wealthiest communities on Earth.
After the Woolsey Fire destroyed hundreds of homes there in 2018, a resident noted at a 2022 city council meeting that only 82 of the 500 homes lost had been rebuilt.
One reason permitting takes so long is petty infighting amongst city official. In that same meeting, it was revealed that Jo Drummond, a Malibu resident and Commissioner of the city’s Public Works Commission – and who tragically lost her own home in the recent Palisades Fire – sent a letter to the California Coastal Commission (CCC), and threatened litigation against the city itself, arguing that Malibu city councilmember Karen Farrer skirted regulations by trying to rebuild to a larger footprint than Malibu code allowed.
Regardless of who was right in the dispute, the net result was that the letter to the CCC put a total of 26 rebuilding projects on hold until the matter was resolved. This wasn’t even the first time that infighting in Malibu caused such delays. In summer 2020, residents staged a mini revolt after three members of Malibu’s Planning Commission voted against a rebuilding permit on the grounds that the new home didn’t meet the “neighborhood character,” an oft-maligned catch-all term that Malibu officials have used for decades to deny building permits for home renovations they don’t like.
“‘Neighborhood character’ is one of the most involved but least defined concepts in Malibu’s planning process,” argued a recent Malibu Times opinion piece published this June. “I’ve seen projects delayed, appealed, or denied for vague aesthetic reasons.”
The rebuilding response in Los Angeles can’t operate in this arbitrary, inefficient, ridiculous manner. As former LA Mayor Eric Garcetti recently told The New York Times, it will be “absolutely critical to act like we’re one city and not a collection of 88 villages.” This is one of the reasons that government in California has become a nationwide punchline that doesn’t need a setup.
If Gov. Gavin Newsom really has national aspirations, he needs to show that Los Angeles can do something well other than stage a riot.
Given the devastating impacts of the Woolsey, Franklin, and Palisades fires that wreaked havoc over the region in the last decade, there can be little doubt that these destructive blazes will be a part of life in Los Angeles County as our climate continues to change, making it imperative that we change the way we approach rebuilding our homes and our communities.
The creation of the Resilient Rebuilding Authority is a recommendation that lawmakers in Sacramento should adopt immediately so that rebuilding efforts can be coordinated in a timely, equal manner, rather than subject to the whims of local officials whose personal biases on “neighborhood character” often don’t have their neighbors’ best interests at heart.
This also leaves one wondering: If it’s this bad for rich people in Malibu, how awful must it be for normal people in the rest of the county?
Jared Whitley is a freelance writer and DC politico, having worked in the US Senate and White House. In 2016, the Best of the West competition named him best columnist for the Western US, including California.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIzTtrVWZFw&authuser=0
Copyright © 2025 California Business Journal. All Rights Reserved.
For California Business Journal Disclaimers, go to /terms-conditions/.
