Los Angeles is experiencing a full -fledged budgetary crisis. A month ago, the financial gap was estimated at just under 1 billion dollars, offering another headache for the mayor Karen Bass – as well as the public, who relies on the city government for repaining the streets, repairing sidewalks, maintaining parks, collecting garbage and paying police and firefighters, among many services.
On Monday, Bass will publish its expenditure plan proposed for 2025-26, speaking its strategy to erase the budget deficit-which will force it to reduce the size of the workforce and to sculpt city services.
In that spirit, here are some things to watch:
How many workers in the city will be targeted for layoffs?
The city’s administrative officer Matt Szabo, the best municipal budgetary analyst, warned a few weeks ago that the layoffs would be “almost inevitable”. But how many will really appear in the proposed budget of the mayor?
A few weeks ago, the Szabo office sent a list of positions envisaged for layoffs to the city’s departments. In total, these positions exceeded 3,500 on Saturday, Bass told Times that his team at a low budget had shaved the number within 2,000.
The bass would not become more precise, apart from that it hovered over 1,500 a few days earlier.
On several occasions, Bass said that she was looking for alternatives to layoffs – the most important, state financial aid.
“I will have to offer layoffs,” said Bass on Friday during an event organized by Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles. “But I don’t think it happens, ok?” I don’t do it. I don’t do it. But I must propose it, because by law, the budget must be released on Monday April 21, under the charter of the city.
“I believe that there are solutions, like the state, which will help us so that we do not have to make dismissals in the end,” she added.
The municipal council has until the end of May to make changes to the mayor’s budget, then approve it. Until then, city officials should have a clearer idea to know if Governor Gavin Newsom will come to the rescue.
Where will the bass do its cuts?
One thing we know with certainty: Bass will not seek discounts in the fire service. She said it last week during the visit of the Pacific Palisades, which was ravaged by fire at the start of the year.
The city’s firefighters’ union has long argued that the department is terribly underfunded. This message became stronger after the January disaster.
So where could the bass do cuts? The police service is a probable target, due to its enormous size compared to most other city agencies.
The mayor’s budgetary team could slow down the hiring of new police officers, allowing sworn staff to fall below the 8,733 budgeted for the current financial year, against around 10,000 years ago. Such a decision could be politically easier at the moment, because homicides and shots are both down to two figures.
The bass could also reduce the number of employees not enslaved to the LAPD, such as office staff.
Meanwhile, some at the Town Hall heard rumbles on the major discounts of the planning service, which deals with development applications and updates zoning plans, as well as the department of animal services in difficulty. Many other agencies could also face deep cuts.
What will happen inside his safety?
As she took office, Bass made the fight against homelessness an absolute priority. A large part of this effort is inside Safe, which brings people out of the street and in temporary and permanent housing.
The program cost dearly, requiring leases with dozens of hotels and motels. Two years, some members of the municipal council have expressed concerns about its cost.
“We cannot afford to do everything via hotels and motels. We must have other options,” said the board of the Bob Blumenfield council, who sits on the board budget committee.
Bass told The Times last week that she did not intend to reduce her signature initiative. It seeks to exploit new sources of financing, such as measurement A, the sales tax of semi-Cent approved by voters last year to finance the without shelter services.
“I will continue to house people. I don’t care what is needed,” said Bass at the Black Lives Matter event on Friday. “I will continue to do it because I know that four people tomorrow morning will not wake up. They will die on the street, and more than probably they look like you. ”
And Kenneth Mejia?
Since his entry into office in 2022, the municipal controller Kenneth Mejia has been among the most frank criticisms of spending decisions at the Town Hall. Last year, he repeatedly expressed the alarm in the face of Bass’s decision to eliminate more than 1,700 vacant posts, saying that this would harm the city services.
Will Mejia’s megaphone become even stronger now than real layoffs are on the table? And will his office be targeted with a new series of cuts?
Bass pushed last year for the elimination of 27 vacant posts in the office of Mejia. In the end, nine of these posts were kept in the books but without money to pay for them, according to the spokesperson for Mejia, Diana Chang.
“Without funding for them, we cannot hire or fill them,” said Chang in an email. “It is unlikely that these positions will be provided this exercise.”
Some supporters of Mejia spoke of him about the potential challenger of the bass in June 2026. Mejia said that he was not interested at the moment and collect funds instead for his own re -election.
One thing is certain: if the mayor offers new discounts at the controller office, Mejia will make sure that the public knows him.
Will the mayor arrest the departments?
Whenever the city faces budgetary disorders, the small departments are placed on the blocking, the mayor or the members of the council who seek to merge them with larger agencies.
This time, agencies that oversee young youth development programs, vocational training and the most vulnerable elderly services. The mayor could seek to combine one of them with a larger department.
Bass could also take a page of its predecessors and seek to consolidate certain larger agencies.
In 2013, his last year in power, the mayor Antonio Villaraigosa put pressure for a merger of the Ministry of Construction and Security and the Ministry of Town Planning, which he considered as a means of cutting administrative formalities for real estate promoters.
This effort was opposed by Eric Garcetti, who replaced Villaraigosa a few months later. The merger has also become a major plot in the federal racketeering and the continuation of the corruption of Raymond Chan, the head of the Ministry of Construction and Security.
Chan, whose work was endangered by the merger, was accused of having organized a bridge pot of $ 600,000 at Jose Huizar then in exchange for the work of Huizar in opposition to the merger. In October, Chan was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Chan, 68, is detained at the federal correctional establishment of the Terminal Island, according to the prisons council, with its release planned for 2035.
See? Budgets can be interesting!
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