The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors selected a new chief of the Los Angeles County Fire Department yesterday, voting to promote 27-year veteran Chief Deputy Daryl Osby to the position. Osby was in charge of the department’s Business Operations which contains the following bureaus: Prevention (which also includes the Department’s Forestry Division), Administrative, Special Services, Employee Relations, and Professional Performance.
Here is an excerpt from the LA Times:
…He was selected from a group of department insiders and inherits an agency long considered among the leaders in firefighting tactics and strategy. In addition to traditional structure and water-rescue units, the department has a large Air and Wildland Division that includes camp crews, bulldozer units and water-dropping helicopters. It has an annual budget of $923-million.
The department’s current chief, P. Michael Freeman, 65, is one of the county’s most respected officials and has held the post for more than two decades. County supervisors have been reluctant to let Freeman go and successfully lobbied Sacramento to pass a law in 2005 allowing him to keep the job past the mandatory retirement age of 60.
In 2009, Freeman announced his retirement, but the supervisors talked him into staying for more than a year longer.
Freeman will step down next month after salary negotiations with Osby are complete.
Thanks Dick
