Los Angeles "Chief Recovery Officer" Steve Soboroff said Saturday night that he would work for free, after coming under fire for earning $500,000 for three months of work, even though his salary was to have been paid privately.
The post Steve Soboroff Agrees to Work for Free, After $500,000 Salary Exposed appeared first on Breitbart.
Los Angeles “Chief Recovery Officer” Steve Soboroff said Saturday night that he would work for free, after coming under fire for earning $500,000 for three months of work, even though his salary was to have been paid privately.
Earlier in the day, as Breitbart News reported, Ambassador Ric Grenell, who is representing President Donald Trump in overseeing the recovery effort from last month’s devastating fires, criticized Soboroff harshly for his salary.
Grenell’s sentiments were shared by many residents, who vented their outrage at Soboroff making a fortune off their misfortune.
“Steve Soboroff should be embarrassed to accept $500,000 for 3 months work (and [assistant] Randy Johnson for accepting $250,000 for the same period). This is an absurd rate of pay,” one resident wrote on NextDoor, a social media app that connects neighbors. “Even if the funds are coming from philanthropic sources, why is the money not going to the many many people who have llost [sic] everything? Why would an elderly and wealthy man think it proper to take this money home? Disgusting.”
The Los Angeles Times reported:
Faced with fierce criticism over her chief wildfire recovery officer’s planned salary of $500,000 for 90 days of work, Mayor Karen Bass reversed course Saturday evening and said Steve Soboroff would receive no compensation.
…[T]he revelation that Soboroff would be paid $500,000 over three months drew searing rebukes from Palisades residents and several public figures, threatening to undermine his effectiveness in helping the mayor restore confidence in the city and its rebuilding efforts.
…
The mayor’s team declined to name the charitable organizations that would have covered Soboroff’s salary. It is not clear how those organizations raised the money or what else it might have been earmarked for.
Soboroff told Breitbart News last month that a process to select an “owner’s rep” for the rebuilding process would be competitive. Mayor Karen Bass selected a consulting firm after secret meetings with three firms behind closed doors.
The winning firm, Hagerty Consulting, is run by the left-wing former mayor of the liberal enclave of Evanston, Illinois, who signed an acknowledgement that the land on which his town sits was stolen from Native Americans.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
