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Politics & Government

City Council to Vote on Budget

The $7.2 billion proposal will delay layoffs until January, but still makes major cuts to services.

 The Los Angeles City Council is scheduled to vote today on a $7.2 billion budget proposal that delays layoffs but makes close to $70 million in cuts to city services and shrinks the city's workforce by more than 400 positions.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's proposed budget called for the elimination of 669 positions, including 269 layoffs. The budget seeks to close an estimated 
$238 million budget deficit.

The mayor's draft was amended last week by the City Council Budget and Finance Committee, which approved a plan to delay the layoffs until January 1 after budget officials scraped together around an extra $16 million in revenues and found additional cuts to make in city departments.

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The budget makes cuts across a wide swath of city departments but mainly
relies on new revenues to close the deficit. They include $10 million from increases in parking fines, $48.6 million in residual money from the now-
defunct Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles, and $28.5 million in reimbursements from the state for medical services provided by the Fire Department.

The budget calls for some one-time fund transfers from special dedicated funds to the city's general fund, which pays for basic city services. The budget would transfer $32.6 million from a special parking fund that is supposed to pay for improvements to parking infrastructure.

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Councilman Paul Krekorian, who chairs the Budget and Finance Committee and shepherded Villaraigosa's proposed spending plan through more than 40 hours
of committee hearings, characterized the budget as imperfect but "a step in
the right direction."

He said tough budget cuts in recent years have diminished city services dramatically and reduced the size of the city's workforce to Tom Bradley-era levels, leaving the council with few good options to close future deficits.

"There are simply no easy, good solutions to get us to where we need to
go," Krekorian said.

The money to delay the layoffs came from a variety of sources, including about $6.6 million in one-time revenues, $2.4 million from an increase in parking fines and $5 million in unused funds across a wide variety of city departments. An additional $5.8 million became available after the Los Angeles County Auditor-Controller revised upward the amount of property tax revenue that will go to the city.

The budget would also cut about $1.5 million from the mayor's Gang Reduction and Youth Development Office.

The committee's approved budget restored about $40 million to the embattled Los Angeles Fire Department, which has been the subject of intense scrutiny in recent months over its inaccurate and improperly reported emergency and fire response times.

The recommended budget gutted funding from a proposal by Villaraigosa to
provide seed money for a new nonprofit economic development entity to replace
the defunct Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles. 

The City Attorney's Office also took a large hit. Deputy city attorneys would have to take 34 furlough days starting July 1 in order to save $9.4 million.

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