The new city budget year began July 1 with a $500 million hole in it and the promise that payroll cuts, parking structure sales and other measures would close the gap with temporary borrowing of a sum equal to the deficit.
A hundred days have passed since then and the city still has a $500 million budget gap, and it’s increasing by $1 million a day because spending exceeds revenue.
The early retirement deal with half the city work force will do little to solve the problem before the fiscal year ends June 30 because the costs come close to equal the savings which only will start to trickle in about Christmas.
I’m tired of invoking the fiddling and eating cake or naked emperor images but it’s hard to avoid them.
Call it arrogance, indifference or panic but the fact is City Hall is paralyzed, incapable of doing anything about anything.
Have you heard even one intelligible word from the mayor about the budget crisis that serious and informed people believe can only be solved through bankruptcy?
Far be it from me to suggest the nation’s highest paid municipal officials are wasting our time and money but they did spend almost the entire session Tuesday debating how many dogs a dog walker should walk at a dog park.
Oops, there’s goes another million bucks down the drain without any effort to stop the budget bleeding.
And Wednesday’s abbreviated session was entirely devoted to the umpteenth plan to subsidize Hollywood to stop runaway production as if studio executives will change their ways anymore than all the other business people who find LA less than desirable.
Oops, there goes another million bucks plus millions more in a headline grabbing stunt that will have little or no impact.
Today, the Council will undoubtedly find other distractions. I can’t tell you what they are since the City Hall website is down again, probably because the check bounced.
Bankruptcy is serious business.
A lot of people think it’s the only way out since it could lead to labor contracts being rewritten to affordable levels and elimination of wasteful programs and costly political gimmicks.
But if city workers are so spoiled that they are angry over paying 1 percent more for pensions and ready to strike over deferring raises for a year or two, what do you think will happen when they face actual reductions in pay of 10 percent or more?
What do you think will happen when grossly overpaid DWP workers turn off the lights and shut off the water or the cops take a few days off to show who’s boss?
Personally, I like chaotic situations for their creative possibilities but outright anarchy with murder and mayhem on the streets is not up my alley, common as they have been in LA’s history.
For my money, there’s only one solution and it should have been taken a year ago. It’s the same solution that will inevitably have to be taken because sooner or later the bills will have to be paid for all the city’s borrowing and deferrals.
The mayor — whose silence on the budget is the ultimate in irresponsible leadership — and the rest of the city’s elected leadership need to sit down with the unions and lay out a plan for salary and benefit cuts, elimination of non-basic services and a temporary two-year tax hike that truly brings city spending in line with revenue.
The real crime for which our officials should be thrown out of office isn’t their incompetence, which is well documented. It’s their cowardice, which is unforgivable.
Ron-
Let’s take Michael Moore’s lead:
Get a big roll of crime scene tape and let’s wrap LA City Hall with it to bring wider public attention to their incompetence.
quote:
But if city workers are so spoiled that they are angry over paying 1 percent more for pensions and ready to strike over deferring raises for a year or two, what do you think will happen when they face actual reductions in pay of 10 percent or more?(endquote)
Ron, I have even worse news for you-some City employees still think that the unions need to demand parity with DWP wages! Have you ever heard such fantasy? Have you ever heard of such greed? I’m continually appalled by the statements of some.
InsideOpinion, what city department do you work for?
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is the next Abe Beame, and that’s is if he is lucky.
How many people reading this will be at the Congress of Neighborhoods tomorrow to say exactly this to the mayor?
Since the city seems to have a great deal of difficulty identifying areas to save money (I am being kind), how about we compile a list that community activists can bring up over and over again like the broken record of public employee unions? Top of my list: using uniformed officers to perform office duties best suited to civilians is beyond stupid. How about lifting the freeze on civilian hiring of LAPD to put more officers on the street? The catch is that these are the officers that can replace the officers we are losing to attrition.
By the way, Ron, what is your prediction of the shortfall for the next budget year? Still 800 Million even with the early retirement of 2,600?
A temporary two year tax??? What about the telephone users’ tax? And trash fee increases? And never ending increases in DWP rates?
If you don’t have the revenues, then you cut costs and services to what you can afford. It’s pretty simple.
And somebody needs to wake up about DWP. If they paid prevailing wages a lot more people could be employed.
Where do you want to cut? And halving the salaries of top city officials might make good political theater, but it is not a serious answer to the problem.
And, maybe the saddest commentary is that it is only political theater that can turn out people in enough numbers to make a difference or send a message.
What about community redevelopment? I don’t understand how it is funded. Do you? Million trees initiative: how was it funded?
Lets stop aiming elephant guns at ants and treat the huge budget problem with the serious discussion that it merits..
And, while I am on my soap box, I am not sure that going after medical marijuana stores is a good use of public money at a time when funding is so scarce.
Maybe I am missing something, but seriously are medical marijuana stores a really huge problem facing the city attorney and DA that demands immediate resources and action? Once again, it feels like political theater and a way of chalking up an accomplishment full of “sound and fury” but ultimately signifying nothing, particularly since it could be a revenue stream.
Lets get real: most potheads aren’t really hurting anyone but themselves. The real patients need easy access. Lets figure out a sensible answer, rather than make it a law and order issue.
Anonymous at 8:13 am, I’m not going to tell you what department I work for, but I do work for the City and have for over 10 years. I have close friends in other City departments, and they tell me that there are both EAA and Coalition represented employees who do not believe the City is being truthful about the financial situation and who want negotiations to include resolving the parity issue with DWP.
KK is on a roll today, and we should all try to engage the mayor tomorrow with some common sense, but let’s not forget our power ties, so we don’t come off as underdressed…
But as for the pot clubs, the problem is that the City Council punted on the Planning and Zoning ramifications of unregulated proliferation, and its impacts of certain neighborhoods.
The spirit of compassionate use is certainly being “posessed” by the grey-green marketers out there, so while it’s true that enforcement shouldn’t become a purge like that of massage parlors yorty years ago, clearly some mitigation is called for.
As for political theatre, the goal should be not so much staging a spectacle for the eyes already jaded, and shaded by the minds at City Hall already as closed as their back room negotiations. The key is to steadily build an audience, with as much well-crafted content as creative conflict resolution. Let’s make sure the recipients of our subscription series of reforms have the incentive to get off their seats and out from in front of their screens to become players in their own community. Even if it just means drawing the curtain themselves at the voting booth.
And that can be done not only by unmasking the villains and giving them the hoow, but by engaging our groundlings’ visions to collaborate on happy endings.
Anonymous 09:19 said in part of what I was going to say.
They don’t need a two-year tax! The phone tax alone, which they have in perpetuity that is more than the 9% illegal tax that the courts took away from them, and now applies to more than just phone bills so it’s well over 10%, is more than enough for them.
And if it isn’t, they can FREAKIN’ damn well stop spending and start laying off people and closing down unnecessary departments.
It just pisses me off that the mayor, council & city employees act as if they don’t put their pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us.
Soc. Sec. recipients aren’t getting a cost of living increase and many in the private sector are lucky to have jobs and aren’t getting raises.
So what makes them think they’re so damn special?
The problem with the pot shops isn’t that “the City council punted,” but that Delgadillo wrote the Hardship Exemption in a way that allowed for unintended loopholes. Ironically, the medical cannabis community found his interpretation too harsh and came out in force to support Trtuanich who promised to uphold state not federal law. Contrary to what he and Cooley are saying now.
I just read in another blog a reference to some pothead advocacy journal “about medical marijuana” which wrote on May 20th, “The election of Trutanich is good news for medical cannabis supporters…Patients and advocates feared Weiss would carry on outgoing City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo’s policy… Trutanich told GLACA (Greater L A Caregivers Alliance) members he would uphold state la at a neighborhood meeting before the election.”
It’s Trutanich aping Cooley’s views, with Zine as their toadie on Council, who are responsible, while PLUM has otherwise been seeking to weed out the problem clinics (essentially denying all the last year’s “hardship extensions”) and per the Weekly, there’s a split between these three Republicans and Koretz (also supported by this GLACA group), and long-time members Reyes and Huizar, known to be more favorable to the medical pot community.
Ha-ha to them and to us the taxpayers as massive class action lawsuits are being filed over this, while the statewide movement is moving in the other direction, away from driving pot back into the hands of the dangerous criminal underground. Now the Noochies will pop forth to attack me as “vermin” like they do anyone who dares exposes his callous manipulation and blatant lies to get endorsements and support.
Anonymous at 12:30PM writes: “Ironically, the medical cannabis community found his interpretation too harsh and came out in force to support Trtuanich who promised to uphold state not federal law. Contrary to what he and Cooley are saying now.”
I hope you don’t take this as a personal attack, but if you read the report in the LA Times or the LA Weekly, you will see that “Cooley and … Trutanich recently concluded that state law bars sales of medical marijuana“.
So Trutanich appears to be keeping his word after all, “to uphold state and not federal law“.
I would also suggest that your views would have more impact if you refrained from using inflammatory language like “It’s Trutanich aping Cooley’s views, with Zine as their toadie on Council, who are responsible“. That’s a suggestion, feel free to take it or not.
“janet,” you have no idea what you’re talking about – these two are misinterpreting state law and relying on a last year’s federal court decision as an over-riding factor. You need to read the Times and other more informed sources, NONE of which agree with their partisan skew. The extent to which you people can try to twist black into white to try to deny his being “a liar and demagogue” is beyond absurd. And I certainly do NOT regret the accurate characterizations of him and Zine relative to their role in this Troika.
Anonymous at 1:19PM. You did not address the issue I raised in my 1:03PM post. Instead you try to disqualify me. This ads no value to any discussion. I don’t need you to tell me how ignorant I am – my teenage children do that daily.
Janet, I totally addressed the issue – and made ait clear in the initial post, which you chose to misread along with the quoted passages; I suggest you do some research of your own starting with the referenced journal. And I add that if Trutanich had been keeping his word to the med cannabis community, on upholding state law, they wouldn’t be furious at being betrayed. And suing him and Cooley. Your teenaged kids are right about you, I’m afraid to say.
I have to agree with Janet on this one.
Beware, it takes a well trained fool to foil with trolls, such as our no-good-nuch…
It is dangerous to take them seriously, as they do not follow any rules of logic or courtesy.
Elsewise, one might be interested in hearing directly from those who stayed post munchies for last Saturday’s NC Action Summit. Apparently, those in dialog realized more nuance was needed beyond Trutanich campaign promise, Jane Usher’s affirmation, and the resulting LANCC vote to uphold state law. That could be believed to be live and let spliff, or crack down on any but the real pooled caregivers…
Let’s pass this one around:
http://ncactionsummit.wetpaint.com/page/MEDICAL+MARIJUANA
Sorry Ron, I disagree on the temporary tax. First, you know that any tax in this town is never temporary. Second, they will use the tax for more pay raises and deferred furloughs or lay offs, thereby not addressing the deficit. Third, we are already being “temporarily” taxed with our increased water rates and tier two billing. Imagine how much more the city is making off of that. Have they spent it right? No!!! Their 1 percent deal with the unions is proof of that.
Third, keeping filming and other businesses in LA plus a temp tax increase is oxymoronic and it would be unfair if such a tax was only placed on the homeowners.
There’s probably a fourth, fifth or sixth to add.
They really must take what revenue exists and make it work. Stop selling off our city owned structures for quick fixes that will only serve to deplete us later. Since much of this is entrenched in union contracts (not just pay and pensions) bankruptcy might be our only solution. The problem there is if bankruptcy occurs, there would be a need to draft new contracts. With this group that might mean drafting the same ones as the old ones. Oh wait, maybe after months of theatrics, they’ll cut off a whooping .0004 % of pay and redefine job duties and divisions of those duties to include five more people to do what three do now and what one can do.
At what point is cowardice criminal?
12:30, you will always be a vermin for your continuous, relentless attack against Trutanich, regardless of the subject matter on hand.
I’m a city employee for 21 years and none of us trust the city to live up to their deals. We will all be glad to forget about cola raises for a while. I do not want to pay, for the next 15 years, some lifetime employee to retire! Get out! Why should i ( really it’s the taxpayers) give these bums $1000 per year of service to retire now? They are eligible to go as a normal retirement, with no penalty! At least $33,000 up to as many years as you have, 40,45, . You do the math. Bottom line, if we don’t have the $$$ now, what makes you think we’ll have it next july? 9 months from now. That’s when the first installment of this erip thing is due. On top of everything else.
To KK on October 9, 2009 10:36 AM:
“What about community redevelopment? I don’t understand how it is funded. Do you?”
Tax Increment funding from Property taxes taking away from schools and other essential services to fund non-voter approved bonds and the interest on those bonds to fund both private for-profit development and other projects.
http://www.redevelopment.com/
I didn’t know that S David Freeman is so hard up that he needs $6,300 a week. Is Freeman collecting pensions from all the other government jobs he took on in the past: TVA, SMUD, “CA Energy Zar”?
Anonymous 10:36:
Would you explain this in more simple terms? I am sure I will agree with you but try and explain simpler pleae..some of us aren’t as bright as you.
Okay, I just did some quick research into Community Redevelopment for the the City and I find that there are 32 communities in 7 different regions of the city that incorporates over 23,000 acres. None on the Westside, mind you.
Do I understand correctly that all revenue generated by this redevelopment goes back to the RDA and never goes to the city? While the city provides services for these areas for NO REVENUE? So, all the building going on downtown–Bunker Hill, Janpanese part of town, etc– will NOT bring the city more revenue?
CRA has been used as a private bank by the politcos for giveaways to their friends like AEG. Rarely are these moneys used for the purpose they were intended, to revitalize blighted areas. Read the story where through eminent domain, CRA bought land around the Staple Center and gave it to AEG, who turned around and sold those parcels for a huge profit. You won’t find it in the local fishwrap, but it was covered by some blog last week.
Reality is that CRA has outlived its utility and should be disbanded. All their deals enrich developers, friends of you know who.
While the city is losing millions per day, the council is debating how many dogs a dog walker should walk, or whatever. I’ve worked in City Hall for 25 years, and I was not aware of this stupidty. Ron, start taking notes of all your council mtgs. It is a goldmine. You can sell the rights for a movie that will gross millions in LA for sure.
Dear KK on October 10, 2009 1:41 PM,
You may want to start with the MORR/CURE group. Here is a link to Redevelopment, the Unknown Govt which is not copyrighted (feel free to print, distribute, use, etc): http://www.redevelopment.com/norby/index.html
Here are some of the things that I know:
1. Tax Increment Financing: After a project area is formed, any increase in property values and therefore property taxes goes to the Redevelopment Agency. That is the incremental increase. Even if the economy is responsible for the real estate values improving.
2. Bond Financing: Redevelopment agencies can borrow without voter approval. They issue bonds, and go into debt. Then they siphon the property tax increment to repay them.
3. All properties within a redevelopment area are designated as “blighted.”
4. Eminent Domain for Private Uses: Most Redevelopment Agencies are granted the vast power of Eminent Domain for PRIVATE (not public) uses. Sometimes exceptions are made such as residences.
I hope this helps, KK.
Good luck if you are in a Redevelopment Area (God Speed).
KK-
I don’t think anyone said anything to the Mayor yesterday. If they did, I missed that.
Were you there?
I don’t know how he will turn out to be down the road, but with a real leadership vacuum in the City of LA, Carmen “Nuch” Trutanich is really steping up to the plate as a nonsense City Attorney, an all around good guy and straight shooter.
His interaction with attendees at the Congress of Neighborhood Councils on October 10th reinforced his image as one of LA’s stand out elected officials.
No matter what your opinion of him, that is hard to deny.
Correction: I meant to say “No nonsense” about Nuch. He is our John Wayne (for now). He could easily run for Mayor or Governor.
No, I wasn’t there on Saturday, Submeter Maid, much to my chagrin. I didn’t get to bed until 5:00 am Friday night (and, unfortunately, it wasn’t fun, but not awful, either)., so I missed my opportunity. LOVE to hear your take…..
Yah right, we’re in the hole a million dollars a day. What other cartoon characters or screenplays rare you selling? Ah yes, anything to plug your yellow journalism blog. Call me naive but I don’t believe what you’re selling. You’ve finally jumped over to the dark side (took you long enough).
Sell it to KK, the Union hack, Nuch-hater, Villaraigosa suck-up. She’ll eat anything. You say, “Call it arrogance, indifference or panic but the fact is City Hall is paralyzed, incapable of doing anything about anything.” Tell it to kk. She nods her head vigorously. Yes, yes, yes… a crisis.
You make up a crisis and you can sell the citizens anything. Sell it, sell it. What is it that you’re selling? A load of crock.
The Democratic party has bankrupted the City of L.A. and the State of California, and Obama has destroyed the dollar and made Bush’s mess even worse.
Cutting salaries and benefits in the long term leads to the City not being able to attract the best and the brightest.
If the city doesn’t declare bankruptcy in six or seven months, I’ll eat my hat and yours too. The city council and the unions procrastinated on resolving the budget issue earlier this year. They should have met day and night prior to April to come to a decision. Instead, the early retirement was put back on the table in late June. Yet, the LACERS study, that should have happened before talks started, was only begun in June.
The report was issued and it was back to the talks. And yet, there still isn’t a decision in October. And every day, another million is lost. It seems to be deliberate to me. The councilmembers are acting like they care about the city, the union coalition acts like they care about the workers (which obviously they don’t).
Money is still being spent hand over fist. And Greuel gets ‘tude from the council about auditing the use of outside counsel in the attorney’s office. Let’s see, maybe some of their buds are working for the law firms that are getting this business. The city attorneys are being told to sit on cases that should have been resolved (which is workers comp fraud on the part of the city) so that expensive law firms can take over these cases.
If I was owed money by the city, I would be very concerned right now.
I’m a City employee and have been taking 2 furlough days per month since July (thank you very much). This idea of early retirement came up around March or April of 2008! They’ve had plenty of time to assess whether it would work. But, no study was done until a couple of months ago, which said it was basically not feasible. Then on top of that, the Clowncil takes their 30 day vacation! It’s ridiculous, we’re almost at the end 2009 and STILL no solutions. That’s why a lot of employees don’t quite trust what’s going on. These people (Mayor, council) can’t be that stupid to delay this thing for so long, can they? Who’s zooming who?
The conversation was relaxed and she was laughing it off. ,
The conversation was relaxed and she was laughing it off. ,
The conversation was relaxed and she was laughing it off. ,
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