In a Special Report on OurLA, LA Councilman Bernard Parks portrayed the city’s financial condition in dire terms Saturday, warniing of “severe pain” that is coming.
Speaking for more than two hours to the LA Neigbhorhood Council
Coalition at a meeting in West LA, Parks reported the city is spending
$1 million a day more than it has and the $350 million in savings
projected by the mayor doesn’t exist because the sweetened early retirement plan for 2,400 workers isn’t financially feasible.
Parks’ Budget Committee will hold a public hearing at 1 p.m. Sept. 14 on the state of the city’s finances and the drastic measures, including layoffs of up to 4,000 workers that must be taken. The full Council will meet the following day on the budget crisis.
Watch Videos of the Councilman at OurLA.org
What Parks says sounds right. The mayor’s budget is counting on a lot of contingencies happening, like the union cooperating but it’s very unlikely that they will. The early retirement still is costly and takes the most experienced people out of service early- and who replaces those dept. heads and managers? (with no salary bump for replacements/promotees?).
What I want to know is WHEN are the other CMs going to get on board with reality and get off Tony’s magic carpet ride that’s so comfortable for them?
It’s certain that going against the Mayor, even when it’s simply the truth (why does that sound odd here?), can make their lives difficult, I suppose, and to the extent that when it comes to making choices between actions for the good of L.A. residents and businesses and choosing what’s good for personal power and positions, the public will lose again.
Where do we sign for getting those top city officials’ pay cuts on the ballot, and a change to a part-time council, too?
Hope most of those general managers leave. They are there for their own huge salaries and could care less about the city. That’s why they are on the Mayor’s carpet.
Running out of money — and yet he and his buddies keep squandering millions each week.
This morning I documented over a million dollars’ worth of dubious expenditures they made JUST THIS PAST WEEK. Check it out at my blog, http://WalterMooreSays.com.
Examples including fixing up people’s homes. Why the hell are you and I paying to fix someone else’s house? I’d rather spend my money on my house. If they can’t afford a house, maybe they should rent.
We’re also paying tens of thousand of dollars to people to “curate” art exhibits at the airport. Excuse me, but I’m guessing there are plenty of people who would PAY for the publicity of displaying their art there.
Plus, we’ve now paid nearly $20 million for software for the police department. Twenty million? Come on!
Parks and Zine need to stop pretending they’re outsiders with no culpability in the spending orgy. Revenues are at the second-highest level in the City’s history. The problem isn’t insufficient taxes and fees, it’s cronyism and spineless spending. These do-nothings pretend they’re on our side by spouting off the spending all over town. But in the Council Chambers, they’re part and parcel of the problem. Parks is as much to blame as the other career politicians downtown.
I hope Parks invites the mayor and all the council members to attend the public forum on the 14th. It sure seems to me that as critical as this is, they would WANT to be there.
I typically don’t like Bitter Bernie but what he is saying is correct and should scare the hell out of all of us. Why didn’t anyone ask him why city council is allowing the Mayor to continue to hire new Deputy Mayors with a salary of over $140,000 during this time? Where is the leadership in council from at least one who has the guts to speak out? I liked what he said about the unions being very political now. Look at the Political Union =PPL. They don’t care about their officers but are more involved in city council businesses then what they should be. They have bought off more city council members and has it done anything for the rank and file? NO
Parks is telling it like he sees it here, and as this may be his last office having lost for Supe (never know, though), he isn’t mincing words. Plus like him or hate him, he never tried to be Mr. Popular. However, things are a little more nuanced than just the balance sheet of 5 vs. 15 years, e.g. the potential cost of disruptions if unions go on strike and disrupt services.
Interesting and true too how Parks blasts the PPL and its head Weber for getting too involved in playing politics (badly!) over what’s good for the rank and file. Thanks to the “advice”/ co-ercion of Dennis Zine, Cooley, Baca (who’s beholden to the Prison Guards’ union, whose exhorbitant demands are a big part of our state prison budget fiasco, and who control Baca – and whose recent head Don Lovey (sp?) was hired some months ago to do the same to our city and LAPD, acting as active opposition not only to Chief Bratton and officers but also to fiscal responsibility AND public safety. E.g. they oppose hiring more cops in favor of increasing or at least maintaining benefits and pensions for the existing ones – but in such a partisan way, e.g. doing Zine/Cooley’s bidding to throw tons of money to elect a CityAtty they control and own now. While blasting the Chief for “playing politics” for fighting back.)
People have to understand that the PPL AND the LAFD Union with their personable head McOster are playing politics, NOT acting in the best interests of us the taxpayers and citizens or even, when they push for divisive people with no juice to get what they need, even in the best interests of their rank and file. We need to stop falling for their strategy that this is a zero-sum game between “the city and that mayor” and everyone else. That leads to Armageddon.
If LA is going to get out of this crisis then it’s time for some hard facts to be accepted by the city council. They have to fire at least 10% of their staff, and they have to do it without the unions demands. The fact is the longer you work for the city, they less you work and the more you get. New employees are the ones that work the hardest and cost the least. Fire the older highly paid slackers and the problem is solved fiscally and effectively.
None of the current councilmembers have the guts to do this, and that is why LA needs a new leader, like Tamar Galatzan, who is not afraid to make the hard choices for what is best for all the residents of LA.
Most of the old highly paid city workers do not live in the city, and don’t vote there either, so they are not a factor in the CD2 election. By firing 1,000 old lazy city workers, the city will save 3,000 jobs for the newer people who have come to LA to work hard and feed their families back home.
The solution to this budget crisis will only happen if LA voters start realizing that there’s only one candidate with the experience and financial savvy so break the news for once and for all; get the old lazy workers out, and get the new hard working cheaper workers in. Tamar knows that and isn’t afraid to say it.
1:33 is part of some opponent’s tactic to go around on various blogs pretending to be a Tamar supporter, as though a sharp lawyer like her would condone let alone advocate firing only “the old lazy workers” and keeping “the new hard working cheaper workers” instead. Now that she’s been co-endorsed by the Daily News expect to see more of this.
Let’s also not forget the City Council’s love of nepotism. Watching channel 35 on Friday, the 4th of September, the Council appointed Councilman Alarcon’s daughter to the Board of Public Works as a Commissioner. The position pays $100,000 a year.
I am not saying on paper she is not qualified. She has a great education and appears to have other commission experience, however, does this mean there were no other possible qualified candidates? Did the Councilman blackmail the rest of the CM’s: “a NO vote for her, is a vote against me”…? Doesn’t the Mayor have a child that is holding down a $60,000 a year job? Who else has children that need a good paying job? I don’t know the family make up of all the CM’s, but the gentleman from CD 5 has a daughter over 21…..who else?
I don’t know about the Daily News, but the LA Times did not report this occurrence.
The Council should stay as far away from nepotism as possible.
Isn’t this douche making nearly half a million dollars per year, paid for by our taxes?
1:33, just how do you know that older employees are lazy and new ones work the hardest? Which category do you fit in.
Not only does Parks make over $265,000 in pension, having putting in only 2% of his pay into the retiremenet system, but his son, who is his Chief of Staff makes a fortune on the city payroll. Talk of nepotism.
5:24, 6:36, 6:40- You may not like the messenger but the message is no less real.
The money calculation is reflective of “the system” that was there and that needs to be changed.
The financially secure postion of Parks was not the result of any criminal or unethical action on his part- the CM salary, as excessive as it stands all by itself, is the same as that for the other CMs. And the pension is what came from the job as chief of the LAPD with whatever number of years of service he’s put in.
Clearly pretty high numbers, but it’s not like he voted on making any of it so as a city expenditure- which IS what council members constantly do as they fund programs of dubious value or take steps to remedy conditions that were ignored for too long and should have been attended to earlier (like most of their actions on a collective basis).
The CMs can hire the staff they want as a common political practice, and I suppose that some nepotism enters the picture here. But outside of the personal staffing, qualifications might not stand closer scrutiny. The appointments to commissions, for example, go to prove the point that it’s not WHAT you know, it’s WHO you know. (Another angle on this from years back by another person repeated that conclusion but with a more cynical twist, “It’s not who you KNOW, it’s who you BLOW.”) …. would saying that in public comment get me banned for the maximum? Would establishing any truth to the matter operate to mitigate the punishment?
So there’s reasons stated and there’s just reasons.
The Tyranny of Los Angeles Councilmember Richard Alarcon
Here’s Alarcon’s ANTI-DEMOCRACY motion to move Public Comment toward the end of the Council meetings.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_18wS9ipD9yM/SqR1YDiFoTI/AAAAAAAAAPI/EUn11UFoPGI/s1600-h/CF09-2171.JPG
Thanks to Mayor Sam and Mr. Jennerjahn for reporting on issues which are IMPORTANT to Democracy.
http://mayorsam.blogspot.com/
The layoffs should have started last year. Instead, the General Managers were allowed to continue hiring new staff that were not needed. The bigger the department, the greater the justification for a GM’s high pay.
no one checks or cares about nepotism.
Check out kids that get “Part time” jobs starting at $14 per hour – try the Moks, flaunting ethics codes by hiring their kids at Parks and Recreation – under mom’s direct chain of command she pulls in 170K per year and Dad pulls in about 100K and we have to hire their kids too. These people make over $1,000 per day and want us to take care of their children too.
How about Carey’s daughter and Martinez’s daughter – both ex city clerks. Check the exempt positions, those can be fired NOW to save taxpayers some money.
Part time jobs and exempt jobs for relatives and friends of executive city managers. No civil service exams for the chosen – and those exams don’t mean much anymore as the majority are now subjective scoring. No wonder the city is going broke.
Parks as head of Budget & Finance Committee has yet to ask a tough question of any General Manager who came in front of him. Not only does he seem to have total ignorance of the city he administrates, but the man has done nothing for the community he represents. No wonder he wanted to run to the Board of Supervisors, that lawless body, where no one in the County knows what they do. So he loses the election because of union money spent on the victor, and now he is Mr. Right warning the people of the power of unions.
I hate unions too. This is to point to the readers to look at the problems facing the city of which Parks is a problem, not a solution. Don’t turn this man into an undeserved hero.
I lived in LA up until I was 20. At that time there were certainly fiscal problems… but nothing like what is taking place currently. Unions… illegals… entitlements… gangs… stupid legislation, liberal policies, debauchery, failure schools… 50 billion languages, loss of culture, selling off of resources (like San Pedro Harbor to the Chinese), all destroying LA and CA. What is even more scary than a fiscal and moral bankrupt CA, is that CA is the prerverbial parkette in the mine. As goes CA… goes the rest of the US.