To Los Angeles City Council members searching desperately for cuts amid a budget crisis, the Fire Department’s emergency incident technicians are “drivers” whose main role is chauffeuring battalion chiefs to emergencies.
But LAFD officials say the position is much more than that. Emergency incident technicians are firefighters who play a key role in coordinating the response to fires, and losing them would put lives at risk, according to LAFD interim Chief Ronnie Villanueva.
“This is going to come back and bite us. This is not a matter of them just being a driver. It is not a driver. You have to just take that out of your minds of transporting someone somewhere,” Villanueva said, addressing the City Council’s budget committee at a hearing on Thursday.
Five months after the Palisades fire destroyed thousands of homes and prompted questions about whether the Fire Department was equipped to fight such a massive blaze, the budget committee moved forward with a recommendation to cut the emergency incident technician positions.
Of the 42 positions, 27 are currently filled. Those firefighters would not lose their jobs but would be reassigned, saving the city more than $7 million in the next fiscal year and about $10 million every year after that, according to City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo.
The city is facing a nearly $1-billion budget shortfall largely due to rising personnel costs, soaring legal payouts and a slowdown in the local economy. Mayor Karen Bass’ 2025-26 budget proposal, which suggested laying off more than 1,600 city employees, did not include reassigning the emergency incident technicians.
The budget committee, which stressed that the overall Fire Department budget is increasing, also recommended nixing Bass’ plan for creating a new unit within the department that would have added 67 employees to address issues stemming from the homelessness crisis.
At Thursday’s budget hearing, Councilmember Tim McOsker, who has two children who are firefighters, argued for cutting the emergency incident technician position, calling it “basically an aide.”
When Villanueva asked McOsker to put a cost on a firefighter’s life, McOsker said, “Invaluable.”
“I can say the same thing about very many of the 1,300 positions we’re cutting, because we’re also going to not be doing sidewalks, streets, curbs, gutters, tree trimming, changing out lights, making our communities safe,” McOsker added. “The reality is we have to balance a budget.”
The budget committee has sent its initial recommendations to Chief Legislative Analyst Sharon Tso, the City Council’s top policy advisor, who on Friday will present the committee with a full menu of strategies for cutting costs while preserving as many services as possible. The committee is then expected to finalize its recommendations and send the proposed budget to the full council, which must approve a final budget by the end of the month.
On the way to a scene, a “command team” consisting of a chief and an emergency incident technician “might be responsible to provide direction to the rescue of a trapped firefighter or civilians, firefighter tracking, and handle the risk management of a rapidly escalating incident,” Capt. Erik Scott, an LAFD spokesperson, said in a statement.
“The more complex the incident, the greater the need for Emergency Incident Technicians to facilitate emergency incident mitigation,” Scott added, with the types of incidents including “structure fires, brush fires, multi-casualty incidents, earthquakes, train collisions, building collapses, active shooter, airport and port emergencies etc.”
Gregg Avery, who retired last year as a battalion chief after 37 years with the LAFD, said that during his career, emergency incident technicians were called aides, then staff assistants. But Avery thought of them more as partners. The four EITs who worked for him often helped him with strategic decisions, and he encouraged them to question his decisions and offer advice.
“The EIT happens to drive the car. But to call them a driver is a bit demeaning and a bit minimizing,” he said.
While an EIT drives a battalion chief to a fire or other emergency, both work the radios to develop strategies for tackling the situation, according to Avery and a video produced by the LAFD. They communicate with fire commanders, firefighters on the scene, police officers and agencies such as the Department of Water and Power and the U.S. Forest Service.
At the scene, they work with the incident commander to keep track of firefighters and other personnel — a crucial role in chaotic situations when forgetting a single firefighter’s location could be fatal, both Villanueva and Avery said.
But at the Thursday budget hearing, Villanueva struggled to articulate what EITs do when they aren’t responding to scenes.
“They visit fire stations and they deliver mail. They talk about the current events. If there’s any questions they need to be asked … the EIT will assist with those. They do staffing,” Villanueva said.
According to Avery, EITs act as liaisons between firefighters and battalion chiefs. Since they are firefighters themselves and members of the labor union, they can relate to the rank-and-file, Avery said.
The EIT positions were cut once before — in 2010, during another major budget crunch in the Great Recession. Since then, the department has been adding them back.
Avery remembers working without an EIT after the cuts.
“Emergency operations were profoundly different and not as good,” he said.
‘The Kitchen’ is closing: Reactions as food talk show is nixed
It’s almost a wrap for “The Kitchen.”
Food Network announced Monday that its long-running weekend culinary talk show “The Kitchen” is coming to an end. The final episode of the series, co-hosted by network favorites Sunny Anderson, Katie Lee Biegel, Jeff Mauro, Geoffrey Zakarian and recurring guest Alex Guarnaschelli, will air Dec. 13.
“It’s the end of an era,” Biegel said in her Instagram story sharing the news. “Thank you so much to all of our fans. The Kitchen was the greatest professional honor of my life and I will be forever grateful.” Biegel has served as one of the show’s co-hosts since its 2014 premiere.
Mauro, who has also been with the show since the beginning, echoed her sentiments on his own Instagram post.
“I always knew what we had was special — rare, a unicorn, an anomaly,” Mauro said in a lengthy caption thanking fans and colleagues. “I got to spend a dozen years with my best friends — cooking, laughing, and eating life-changing bites from some of the world’s greatest chefs and cooks.”
Currently in its 40th season, the Daytime Emmy-nominated cooking-themed talk show featured its hosts and guests sharing recipes, discussing food trends and offering other food tips. In addition to celebrated chefs and culinary personalities, “The Kitchen” opened its doors to various actors, musicians and celebrities.
“For over a decade Sunny, Katie, Jeff, Geoffrey and more recently Alex have engaged audiences with their individual and distinct food sensibilities and sense of humor that together make ‘The Kitchen’ a delicious way to spend an hour,” Warner Bros. Discovery head of food content Betsy Ayala said in a statement.
“Everyone knows all good parties end up in ‘The Kitchen,’ where the conversation, laughs and food flow; the best parties probably end a little bit earlier than some guests would like, but we’ve got twelve years of memories and wanted to celebrate this team’s hard work during one final holiday season.”
Food Network titan Bobby Flay congratulated the show’s team for “an iconic run” in the comments on Food Network’s Instagram post sharing the news.
“Thank you to the Kitchen and its fabulous chefs and hosts for holding it down in daytime on [Food Network] for the last decade,” Flay wrote.
Other Food Network stars also chimed in with tributes in the comments responding to the announcement.
“I loved this show because it reminded me of why I fell in love with cooking in the first place,” wrote Aarti Sequeira, Season 6 winner of “The Next Food Network Star,” “lots of voices and hands working together in a kitchen with equal servings of love and sass!!!!”
“[C]ongrats on an incredible show — one of my favorites to watch and to be part of,” “Chopped” judge Marc Murphy wrote. “You’re all legends.”
Fellow “Chopped” judge Tiffani Faison also congratulated the show’s staff for “a run worthy only of this team.”
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Plan to sell off public land in the West nixed from GOP bill
A controversial plan to sell hundreds of thousands of acres of public land across Western states — including California — was axed from the Republican tax and spending bill amid bipartisan backlash, prompting celebration from conservationists.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who spearheaded the proposal, announced he was pulling the provision on Saturday night on the social media platform X. Lee had said the land sale was intended to ease the financial burden of housing, pointing to a lack of affordability afflicting families in many communities.
“Because of the strict constraints of the budget reconciliation process, I was unable to secure clear, enforceable safeguards to guarantee that these lands would be sold only to American families — not to China, not to BlackRock and not to any foreign interests,” he wrote in the post.
For that reason, he said, he was withdrawing the measure from the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that Trump has said he wants passed by July 4.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, speaks at a hearing in January.
(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)
Lee’s failed measure would have mandated the sale of between roughly 600,000 and 1.2 million acres of Bureau of Land Management land in 11 Western states, including California. The areas available for auction were supposed to be located within a five-mile radius of population centers.
The effort represented a scaled-back version of a plan that was nixed from the reconciliation bill on Monday for violating Senate rules. The initial plan would have allowed for the sale of up to 3.3 million acres of land managed by BLM and the U.S. Forest Service.
Lee’s decision to scrap the proposal arrived after at least four Republican senators from Western states vowed to vote for an amendment to strike the proposal from the bill.
At lease five House Republicans also voiced their opposition to the plan, including Reps. David Valadao of California and Ryan Zinke of Montana, who served as the Interior secretary during Trump’s first term.
The death of the provision was celebrated by conservationists as well as recreation advocates, including hunters and anglers, even as they steeled themselves for an ongoing fight over federal lands.
The Trump administration has taken steps to open public lands for energy and resource extraction, including recently announcing it would rescind a rule that protects 58.5 million acres of national forestland from road construction and timber harvesting.
Some critics saw the now-scrapped proposed land sale as means to offset tax cuts in the reconciliation bill.
“This is a victory for everyone who hikes, hunts, explores and cherishes these places, but it’s not the end of the threats to our public lands,” said Athan Manuel, director of Sierra Club’s Lands Protection Program, in a statement. “Donald Trump and his allies in Congress have made it clear they will use every tool at their disposal to give away our public lands to billionaires and corporate polluters.”
Chris Wood, president and chief executive of Trout Unlimited — a nonprofit dedicated to conserving rivers and streams to support trout and salmon — described protecting public lands as “the most nonpartisan issue in the country.”
“This is certainly not the first attempt to privatize or transfer our public lands, and it won’t be the last,” Wood said in a statement. “We must stay vigilant and defend the places we love to fish, hike, hunt and explore.”
Lee, in the Saturday X post, suggested the issue remained in play.
He said he believed the federal government owns too much land — and that it is mismanaging it. Locked-away land in his state of Utah, he claimed, drives up taxes and limits the ability to build homes.
“President Trump promised to put underutilized federal land to work for American families, and I look forward to helping him achieve that in a way that respects the legacy of our public lands and reflects the values of the people who use them most.”
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Drivers or partners? An LAFD role could be nixed amid budget woes
To Los Angeles City Council members searching desperately for cuts amid a budget crisis, the Fire Department’s emergency incident technicians are “drivers” whose main role is chauffeuring battalion chiefs to emergencies.
But LAFD officials say the position is much more than that. Emergency incident technicians are firefighters who play a key role in coordinating the response to fires, and losing them would put lives at risk, according to LAFD interim Chief Ronnie Villanueva.
“This is going to come back and bite us. This is not a matter of them just being a driver. It is not a driver. You have to just take that out of your minds of transporting someone somewhere,” Villanueva said, addressing the City Council’s budget committee at a hearing on Thursday.
Five months after the Palisades fire destroyed thousands of homes and prompted questions about whether the Fire Department was equipped to fight such a massive blaze, the budget committee moved forward with a recommendation to cut the emergency incident technician positions.
Of the 42 positions, 27 are currently filled. Those firefighters would not lose their jobs but would be reassigned, saving the city more than $7 million in the next fiscal year and about $10 million every year after that, according to City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo.
The city is facing a nearly $1-billion budget shortfall largely due to rising personnel costs, soaring legal payouts and a slowdown in the local economy. Mayor Karen Bass’ 2025-26 budget proposal, which suggested laying off more than 1,600 city employees, did not include reassigning the emergency incident technicians.
The budget committee, which stressed that the overall Fire Department budget is increasing, also recommended nixing Bass’ plan for creating a new unit within the department that would have added 67 employees to address issues stemming from the homelessness crisis.
At Thursday’s budget hearing, Councilmember Tim McOsker, who has two children who are firefighters, argued for cutting the emergency incident technician position, calling it “basically an aide.”
When Villanueva asked McOsker to put a cost on a firefighter’s life, McOsker said, “Invaluable.”
“I can say the same thing about very many of the 1,300 positions we’re cutting, because we’re also going to not be doing sidewalks, streets, curbs, gutters, tree trimming, changing out lights, making our communities safe,” McOsker added. “The reality is we have to balance a budget.”
The budget committee has sent its initial recommendations to Chief Legislative Analyst Sharon Tso, the City Council’s top policy advisor, who on Friday will present the committee with a full menu of strategies for cutting costs while preserving as many services as possible. The committee is then expected to finalize its recommendations and send the proposed budget to the full council, which must approve a final budget by the end of the month.
On the way to a scene, a “command team” consisting of a chief and an emergency incident technician “might be responsible to provide direction to the rescue of a trapped firefighter or civilians, firefighter tracking, and handle the risk management of a rapidly escalating incident,” Capt. Erik Scott, an LAFD spokesperson, said in a statement.
“The more complex the incident, the greater the need for Emergency Incident Technicians to facilitate emergency incident mitigation,” Scott added, with the types of incidents including “structure fires, brush fires, multi-casualty incidents, earthquakes, train collisions, building collapses, active shooter, airport and port emergencies etc.”
Gregg Avery, who retired last year as a battalion chief after 37 years with the LAFD, said that during his career, emergency incident technicians were called aides, then staff assistants. But Avery thought of them more as partners. The four EITs who worked for him often helped him with strategic decisions, and he encouraged them to question his decisions and offer advice.
“The EIT happens to drive the car. But to call them a driver is a bit demeaning and a bit minimizing,” he said.
While an EIT drives a battalion chief to a fire or other emergency, both work the radios to develop strategies for tackling the situation, according to Avery and a video produced by the LAFD. They communicate with fire commanders, firefighters on the scene, police officers and agencies such as the Department of Water and Power and the U.S. Forest Service.
At the scene, they work with the incident commander to keep track of firefighters and other personnel — a crucial role in chaotic situations when forgetting a single firefighter’s location could be fatal, both Villanueva and Avery said.
But at the Thursday budget hearing, Villanueva struggled to articulate what EITs do when they aren’t responding to scenes.
“They visit fire stations and they deliver mail. They talk about the current events. If there’s any questions they need to be asked … the EIT will assist with those. They do staffing,” Villanueva said.
According to Avery, EITs act as liaisons between firefighters and battalion chiefs. Since they are firefighters themselves and members of the labor union, they can relate to the rank-and-file, Avery said.
The EIT positions were cut once before — in 2010, during another major budget crunch in the Great Recession. Since then, the department has been adding them back.
Avery remembers working without an EIT after the cuts.
“Emergency operations were profoundly different and not as good,” he said.
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