Just after Steve Hagerty launched his emergency management consulting firm outside Chicago in 2001, his Hagerty Consulting was called after 9/11 to run a $7.4 billion public assistance fund.
Now, the Evanston, Illinois-based company has been tapped by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass to manage the city’s response to the wildfire that burned more than 6,800 homes and businesses in the Pacific Palisades last month.
Its task: to oversee infrastructure restoration and environmental mitigation for parts of the nearly 37 square miles destroyed in the fire.
The cost and duration of its contract, made after a selection mostly shrouded in secrecy, according to the Los Angeles Times, was not disclosed. A spokesperson for Hagerty Consulting didn’t immediately respond to an interview request from The Real Deal.
Hagerty has helped local governments prepare for and recover from disasters including Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Irma, Hurricane Michael and the Camp Fire, which in 2018 killed 85 people and burned 18,000 structures in Northern California, according to its website.
The private firm was also hired to conduct major preparedness initiatives for the federal government and 45 response and recovery missions during the pandemic.
For the past quarter century, Hagerty has deployed more than 1,000 planning, policy, logistics and other experts to support response missions nationwide, according to its website. Its professionals live in all 10 Federal Emergency Management Agency regions.
Aside from federal, state and local governments, the firm works closely with housing authorities, hospitals, utilities, public health authorities and public transportation networks like shipping ports, subways, rail systems and highways.
It’s also been hired to do disaster planning and response for unspecified public and private K-12 schools, universities and commercial businesses, per its website. It posts an ongoing “disaster discourse” blog. The cost of its services are not disclosed.
Three weeks ago, the city of Richmond, Virginia, agreed to pay Hagerty and another consulting firm to crank out a report on why the city went without drinking water for days, and why social media seemed to know about the problem before officials told the public, according to Axios.
Steve Hagerty, a native of Massachusetts, had never dreamed of a career in emergency consulting, according to the Daily Northwestern, in Evanston.
With a new masters in public administration, the former farmboy wanted to work in city management, or government accountability. But when he applied to 75 public sector jobs after graduate school, none asked him back.
So he settled for a post at then-Pricewaterhouse, where he consulted for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In 1999, he moved to Evanston so his wife could attend graduate school. A couple of years later, he founded Hagerty Consulting.
In 2016, Steve Hagarty ran for mayor of Evanston, heavily outspending his opponents in his first foray into public office. He eked out a victory by just 115 votes in a runoff election, the local Patch reported.
Then he hit enough political turbulence to warrant a disaster response. Within a couple months of taking office, Hagerty violated the Illinois Open Meetings Act by improperly calling an emergency meeting to reconsider raising the minimum wage, according to the office of Illinois Attorney General.
The Illinois mayor also became embroiled in controversy over plans, supported by Haggerty, to bulldoze a historic landmark near his house, an aborted investigation into government leaks and the cost of a library, projected to cost $30 million, but which grew to more than $53 million.
Hagerty had also sought to bypass the city’s executive search process for a city manager, but was rebuffed. In October 2020, Hagerty said he would not seek re-election, becoming the Chicago suburb’s first one-term mayor since World War II, according to Patch.
With additional reporting by Lauren Elkies Schram.
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