Steve Soboroff reportedly had some comments about working as Los Angeles’ "Fire Recovery Czar" for free.
According to an article first published by The Hollywood Reporter, Soboroff spoke to an alumni group at Harvard-Westlake School last week, where he talked about how the city initially was going to pay him $500,000 over 90 days for the job and how he found out the city never actually had the money to pay him in the first place.
According to the outlet, he told the group his choices were to “go public and quit and say I was lied to, and here are my emails here are my texts, or say, ‘I will do it for free and hope that it comes around later on.’”
Soboroff later spoke with the outlet about his comments, saying, “If I said I was lied to, then I was wrong. That was a misstatement by me. There’s no proof that the mayor deceived me on purpose. I was disappointed in what happened but I’m choosing to stay on until the end because I have to put the trains on the tracks.”
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Soboroff continued to backtrack his comments, telling the Los Angeles Times, “That was not what I feel and not what I meant.”
Sarah Sadhwani, a political analyst at Pomona College, told L.A.’s Morning News this is all more bad PR for Mayor Karen Bass.
“Steve Soboroff was on her team and yet comes out just on the heels of this controversy with the fire chief, making all of these comments about how he wasn't actually expecting to get paid,” she said. “He uses the term being lied to, and that just simply paints a narrative yet again against the mayor, which is not going to help her at all in this political firestorm that she has been facing.”
Soboroff was appointed by Mayor Bass on Jan. 17.
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