{"id":164411,"date":"2026-02-05T00:59:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T00:59:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/164411\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T00:59:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T00:59:07","slug":"in-palisades-visit-trump-officials-vow-to-speed-up-permits-for-fire-rebuilding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/164411\/","title":{"rendered":"In Palisades visit, Trump officials vow to speed up permits for fire rebuilding"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In a visit to Pacific Palisades on Wednesday, top White House officials vowed to take over and speed up building permitting<\/a>, a core state and local function, for rebuilding after the Los Angeles wildfires.<\/p>\n

Administrators for the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, and Small Business Administration, Kelly Loeffler, also held a discussion with Palisades fire victims and met with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger in a closed-door meeting about how to hasten rebuilding and address issues such as insurance payouts and wildfire prevention.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur conversations with Mayor Bass and Supervisor Barger about accelerating the rebuilding process in Los Angeles were productive,\u201d Zeldin said. \u201cAdministrator Loeffler and I, on behalf of President Trump, asked these local elected officials to join us in this urgent effort, and I am hopeful great progress will be made in the days and weeks ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

The visit followed a Jan. 27 executive order<\/a> signed by President Trump to allow victims of the Eaton and Palisades fires to go around \u201cunnecessary, duplicative, or obstructive\u201d state and local permitting processes. <\/p>\n

Instead of going through building departments, such as the City of Los Angeles for the Palisades, or the county for Altadena, builders can instead \u201cself-certify\u201d that they have complied with state and local health and safety standards, if they are using federal emergency funds to rebuild, the order says. <\/p>\n

The Small Business Administration has already launched a self-certification tool online<\/a>, available to applicants who have been waiting more than 60 days for a building permit. <\/p>\n

Loeffler said the \u201ccheck and balance\u201d will come from city and county inspections that must happen before a property is certified for occupancy. <\/p>\n

Neither official could immediately recall another instance of the federal government preempting state and local permitting processes for disaster recovery, with Zeldin noting that \u201cnothing like [these wildfires] has ever happened before.\u201d<\/p>\n

The visit underscored diverging narratives about the rebuilding process in L.A. While Trump described it as a \u201cnightmare of delay, uncertainty, and bureaucratic malaise\u201d in his executive order, state and local officials said construction is underway and permitting is not the issue. <\/p>\n

\u201cBoth administrators were engaged \u2014 sharing the President\u2019s concerns while also listening to what I am seeing on the ground in Altadena,\u201d Barger said in a statement to The Times. \u201cI emphasized that 53% of impacted residents have taken no action to rebuild, not because of permitting delays, but because they lack the capital to move forward \u2014 an issue exacerbated by delayed insurance payouts. Many families have not submitted plans or entered the County\u2019s rebuilding pipeline and are now facing a serious financial crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added that the county\u2019s current timeline for completing permit reviews<\/a> is 31 business days.<\/p>\n

Bass, who is facing renewed scrutiny<\/a> after an analysis of the Palisades fire was watered down, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Wednesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n

Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a post on X<\/a> following the executive order, that hundreds of homes are under construction, and that permitting timelines are at least twice as fast as before the fires. He said the president continues to withhold a federal aid package that would help families rebuild. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Feds need to release funding, not take over local permit approval speed \u2014 the main obstacle is COMMUNITIES NOT HAVING THE MONEY TO REBUILD,\u201d the governor said. <\/p>\n

Last month, on the anniversary of the fires, a bipartisan delegation of California legislators also penned a letter<\/a> to Trump calling for additional federal support.<\/p>\n

A December analysis by The Times found that permitting has gained momentum after a slow start<\/a>, with the pace slower than after some disasters in the state, and faster than others. <\/p>\n

As of Wednesday, more than 3,170 rebuilding permits have been issued in the fire areas, according to city and county dashboards. <\/p>\n

But Zeldin used the opportunity to take jabs at Newsom, describing his approach to federal funding requests as \u201cflawed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole ask has been completely stepped on by the governor\u2019s effort to campaign for president \u2014 to try to lob 11 insults a day and somehow fit in an ask for tens of billions of dollars in the middle of it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s just not a good strategy.\u201d<\/p>\n

He declined to say whether additional funding will come from Congress, or how much. <\/p>\n

Some Palisades residents said they would welcome whatever support they can get. Among them was Abby Waldorf, whose parents both lost their homes in the Tahitian Terrace mobile home park<\/a> during the Palisades fire. <\/p>\n

Waldorf said mobile homes don\u2019t qualify for many city and state recovery programs, such as mortgage relief and disaster recovery aid, so they are \u201cmost at risk of not coming back.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cOur community is very supportive of anyone that will help us move back quickly,\u201d she said, \u201cand at this point we haven\u2019t seen that happen at the city, county or state level yet, and so anyone who can come in and do the job is welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a visit to Pacific Palisades on Wednesday, top White House officials vowed to take over and speed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[79505,5759,1409,79503,166,217,4755,1073,48,52,51,74872,47,50,49,63,3335,26921,79504,3020,316],"class_list":["post-164411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-address-issue","tag-altadena","tag-city","tag-core-state","tag-county","tag-day","tag-executive-order","tag-home","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lee-zeldin","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-official","tag-palisades-fire-victim","tag-palisades-visit","tag-president-trump","tag-wednesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}