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In the wake of the devastating fire at a bar in Crans-Montana, many Swiss citizens are asking themselves if their political system is fit for purpose.

Switzerland, often praised for its efficiency, has a very devolved system of government, in which villages and towns are run by local officials elected from and by the community.

It is a system the Swiss cherish, because they believe it ensures accountability.

But there are inherent weaknesses: hypothetically, the official approving a bar license or passing a fire-safety check is the friend, neighbour, or maybe even cousin of the bar owner.

When the news of the fire emerged on New Year’s Eve, first there was shock. Such devastating fires are not, people thought, supposed to happen in Switzerland.

Then there was grief – 40 young people lost their lives, 116 were injured, many of them very seriously. Questions followed – what caused such a catastrophe?

And finally, this week – fury when Crans-Montana’s Mayor, Nicolas Feraud, revealed that Le Constellation bar had not been inspected since 2019.

Crans-Montana is in the Swiss canton of Valais, where fire-safety inspections are the responsibility of Mayor Feraud and his colleagues, and they are supposed to happen every 12 months.

Not only had the checks not taken place, the mayor said, he had only become aware of this after the fire. And, he revealed, of 128 bars and restaurants in Crans-Montana, only 40 had been inspected in 2025.

Asked why, Feraud had no answer, though he did suggest Crans-Montana had too few inspectors for the number of properties that needed checking.

This was echoed by Romy Biner, the mayor of neighbouring upmarket resort Zermatt, who told local media that many communities in the canton of Valais did not have the required resources to inspect so many premises. This is not a line that plays well with many Swiss, who know that Crans-Montana and Zermatt are two of the richest winter resorts in the country.

So when Feraud faced the press, there were pointed questions from Swiss journalists: How well did the mayor know the bar’s owners? Had he ever been to the bar? And, was there any possibility of corruption?

“Absolutely not,” was his indignant answer to the last question.

The mother of two brothers who survived the fire also had questions. “We urgently need complete, transparent answers,” she wrote on social media.

When they escaped the burning bar, each of her sons had thought at first that the other was dead.

“They escaped, but they are deeply traumatised. They will carry the emotional scars forever.”

Those questions, from journalists and families, reveal the problems of Switzerland’s devolved political system.

Elected officials in towns like Crans-Montana have many responsibilities as well as fire safety – running schools and social services, even collecting taxes.

Most of these officials work part-time and, once elected, continue with their day jobs.

Nowadays some communes may be over-challenged trying to supply and oversee all the services a 21st-Century population expects, but Swiss voters expect better than what they heard from Mayor Feraud.

The headlines after his press conference were savage. Many demanded Mayor Feraud and his colleagues resign. Feraud ruled this out, saying, “we were elected by the people. You don’t abandon ship in the middle of a storm”.

“A failure right across the board”, wrote the broadsheet Tagesanzeiger. “Now Switzerland’s reputation is on the line.”

“An utter disaster”, wrote the tabloid Blick, “a total failure of fire safety checks.”

Reputational damage is something the Swiss both hate and fear. Switzerland is a rich country, in part because of its reputation for safety, stability, reliability, and, among its own citizens, accountability.

If those in charge damage that reputation, and put the country’s success at risk, the Swiss are unforgiving.

Heads rolled two decades ago when Swissair, the much-loved national airline, went bankrupt.

Once nicknamed affectionately “the flying bank”, Swissair’s management had made a series of risky financial investments that left the airline dangerously over-extended.

In 2008, banking giant UBS, in which many Swiss, especially pensioners, had shares, had to be bailed out by Swiss taxpayers to prevent not just its own downfall, but disastrous consequences for the global economy.

When the bank’s reckless over-exposure to subprime mortgages was revealed, there was outrage. At the bank’s annual general meeting that year, normally sedate elderly shareholders hissed and booed.

One even jumped on to the stage, demanding the management give up their generous bonuses, ironically waving a string of Swiss bratwursts under their noses “in case you go hungry”.

Crans-Montana, too, has aroused that same angry feeling of trust betrayed. But this is much worse than Swissair or UBS. Forty people, many of them teenagers, are dead. Dozens more have suffered life-changing injuries.

The Swiss authorities know there must be answers, quickly.

At Friday’s memorial service, the president of Valais, Matthias Reynard, was close to tears as he promised a “strict and independent” investigation, warning that “relevant political authorities” would be held accountable.

Switzerland’s president Guy Parmelin said he expected justice “without delay and without leniency”.

The owner of the bar is now in custody, subject to a criminal investigation, but the role of the local government is sure to be examined, too. There are already calls for fire-safety inspection in Valais canton to be taken away from local town councils and given to the cantonal authorities.

Romain Jourdan, a lawyer acting for some of the families, has announced plans to file a case against Crans-Montana’s town council. The families, he said, “are demanding that all local officials be questioned, so that such a tragedy never happens again”.

There is a deeper, nationwide soul-searching going on as well. The Swiss want to know why their beloved devolved system, which many, perhaps complacently, believed to be near perfect, went so catastrophically wrong.

In the first hours after the fire, many people, along with their shock and grief, felt a certain quiet pride that their emergency services had responded so quickly.

Firefighters, ambulances crews, and even helicopters were at the scene within minutes. The emergency services were present at the memorial service. Many openly wept.

The shock and grief still sits deep, but the pride has evaporated.

What good are top-of-the-range, highly professional emergency services, the Swiss are asking themselves, if basic fire safety checks are neglected?

Switzerland’s government says finding answers is a moral responsibility – to the families above all, but also to its own voters.

California joined 21 other states and the District of Columbia Monday in a lawsuit that seeks to prevent the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from being defunded and closed by the Trump administration.

The legal action filed in U.S. District Court in Eugene, Ore. accuses Acting Director Russell Vought of trying to illegally withhold funds from the agency by unlawfully interpreting its funding statute. Also named as defendants are the agency itself and the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.

“For California, the CFPB has been an invaluable enforcement partner, working hand-in-hand with our office to protect pocketbooks and stop unfair business practices. But once again, the Trump administration is trying to weaken and ultimately dismantle the CFPB,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said, in a press conference to announce the 41-page legal action.

The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Established by Congress in 2010 after the subprime mortgage abuses that gave rise to the financial crisis, the agency is funded by the Federal Reserve as a method of insulating it from political pressure.

The Dodd-Frank Act statute requires the agency’s director to petition for a reasonable amount of funding to carry out the CFPB’s duties from the “combined earnings” of the Federal Reserve System.

Prior to this year that was interpreted to mean the Federal Reserve’s gross revenue. But an opinion from the Department of Justice claims that should be interpreted to mean the Federal Reserve’s profits, of which it has none since it has been operating at a loss since 2022. The lawsuit alleges the interpretation is bogus.

“Defendant Russell T. Vought has worked tirelessly to terminate the CFPB’s operations by any means necessary — denying Plaintiffs access to CFPB resources to which they are statutorily entitled. In this action, Plaintiffs challenge Defendant Vought’s most recent effort to do so,” the federal lawsuit states.

The complaint alleges the agency will run out of cash by next month if the policy is not reversed. Bonta said he and other attorney generals have not decided whether they will seek a restraining order or temporary injunction to change the new funding policy.

Prior to the second Trump administraition, the CPFB boasted of returning nearly $21 billion to consumers nationwide through enforcement actions, including against Wells Fargo in San Francisco over a scandal involving the creation of accounts never sought by customers.

Other big cases have been brought against student loan servicer Navient for mishandling payments and other issues, as well as Toyota Motor Credit for charging higher interest rates to Black and Asian customers.

However, this year the agency has dropped notable cases. It terminated early a consent order reached with Citibank over allegations it discriminated against customers with Armenian surnames in Los Angeles County.

It also dropped a lawsuit against Zelle that accused Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and other banks of rushing the payments app into service, leading to $870 million in fraud-related losses by users. The app denied the allegations.

Monday’s lawsuit also notes that the agency is critical for states to carry out their own consumer protection mission and its closure would deprive them of their statutorily guaranteed access to a database run by the CFPB that tracks millions of consumer complaints, as well as to other data.

Vought was a chief architect of Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation blueprint to reduce the size and power of the federal bureaucracy during a second Trump admistration. In February, he ordered the agency to stop nearly all its work and has been seeking to drastically downsize it since.

The lawsuit filed Monday is the latest legal effort to keep the agency in business.

A lawsuit filed in February by National Treasury Employees Union and consumer groups accuses the Trump administration and Vought of attempting to unconstitutionally abolish the agency, created by an act of Congress.

“It is deflating, and it is unfortunate that Congress is not defending the power of the purse,” said Colorado Attorney General Philip Weiser, during Monday’s press conference.

“At other times, Congress vigilantly safeguarded its authority, but because of political polarization and fear of criticizing this President, the Congress is not doing it,” he said.