Los Angeles, California: Voters Poised to Approve Fire Department Sales Tax in Early Returns

LOS ANGELES (Orbit Post) Los Angeles voters were poised to approve a new sales tax for the Fire Department in early returns on Tuesday night, a half-cent increase that would raise the city sales tax rate and send hundreds of millions of dollars a year to a department reshaped by the January 2025 fires.

Measure FD had 53.52 percent support in early figures released by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, with 306,257 votes in favor and 266,025 against, MyNewsLA reported. The New York Post reported the measure ahead 54 percent to 46 percent in the first batch of results released at 8:17 p.m. A later Associated Press tally showed 386,446 votes in favor and 334,174 against, with the race still too early to call. Counting will continue for weeks, and final results are not expected until Nov. 27.

What the tax would do

If approved, the city sales tax would rise from 10.25 percent to 10.75 percent. The measure is projected to provide the Fire Department with an additional 345 million dollars a year, money the city says would build new fire stations, increase hiring and upgrade equipment. The voter-backed initiative needs only a simple majority to pass, rather than the two-thirds threshold required for some tax increases.

The firefighters union, United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112, put the measure on the ballot. The union says the department has about 3,400 firefighters across 106 fire stations, a number that has not changed since the 1960s. Union President Doug Coates told the Los Angeles Times in October that Measure FD is the most important public safety decision the city has faced in a generation. The department's own after-action report on the Palisades Fire found that limited staffing and dozens of aging or broken-down front-line vehicles hampered the response.

A fight over the cost

The proposal came in response to the January 2025 fires, which destroyed thousands of homes in Pacific Palisades and killed 12 people. Mayor Karen Bass and City Council members supported the tax.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union representing police officers, and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association opposed it. The taxpayers group estimated the tax would cost an average of 86 dollars per person a year and argued the city should find the money within its existing budget. "The city has a 15 billion dollar budget, and this is a tax that's intended to raise 345 million dollars, and they can't find 345 million dollars from cuts and efficiencies and changes in priorities?" Susan Shelley, the group's vice president of communications, told CBS LA.

Measure FD was one of 10 city and county measures on the Nov. 3 ballot, and all 10 received more than 50 percent support in early returns, according to the Registrar. City voters also backed Measure TE, a one-time mansion tax exemption for Pacific Palisades property owners, and county voters backed an independent ethics commission measure by a wide margin.