The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, returned to Sacramento on Wednesday to put pressure on the heads of state to help close the budget hole of nearly $ 1 billion in the city.
This is the second visit of Bass to the State Capitol in as many months – a kind of return for a former lecturer of the Assembly who helped to navigate the state budget crisis in 2009. It is undoubtedly well aware that the State is confronted with its own wind contrary winds, which could hinder its capacity – or appetite – to have helped the
“It is very, very important that we solidified these relationships,” said Bass on Wednesday, respecting the importance of maintaining the city’s problems in the foreground, even if state legislators postpone their own budgetary crises.
The visit was particularly important, said Bass, because the city was in the rare situation of not having a representation of southern California at the top of one or the other in the Chamber of the Legislative Assembly: Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) is from the north of California and President Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) of California.
Two days ago, Bass presented its proposed budget, which would reduce more than 2,700 city positions – around 1,650 of them through layoffs. Bass hopes to avoid these layoffs, either by financing the State, or by renegotiating promised increases that have added considerable personnel costs for the next fiscal year.
The costs of the rise in staff are one of the many factors aggravating the city’s budgetary crisis, including the financial report of the forest fires in January and subsequent recovery efforts, a spiral of legal payments and a weakening of the national economy.
Bass has repeatedly pressure Newsom and other heads of state for a rescue package which could avoid part or all of the job cuts. During her trip in March in Sacramento, she and four members of the municipal council met Newsom as well as managers of the two chambers of the Legislative Assembly.
After this trip, the member of the Assembly Tina McKinnor (D-Hawthorne), who chairs the legislative delegation of the County of Los Angeles, sent a letter signed by 22 other members of the State legislature to the budget committee of the Assembly requesting funding for the City.
Before the arrival of Bass, the Capitol Democrats were confused about his need to return to Sacramento and meet legislators so shortly after his visit last month. His appearance was considered more on style than on the substance, giving it the opportunity to stand in front of the cameras and to show that it is trying to address the budgetary problems of the city.
The city’s situation is still complicated by the fact that its budgetary process occurs simultaneously with the State, which means that the municipal council will have to go ahead with its budgetary deliberations before knowing if state money arrives.
The governor’s revision to the state budget will be published in mid-May, so at this stage, the city will have an idea of whether substantial resources can come from the state. But the revision is only a starting point for final budgetary negotiations between the governor and the legislative assembly, and the state budget will only be completed at least in mid-June, weeks after the deadline for the municipal council to approve its own budget.
Bass met the legislative leaders on Wednesday but did not sit with Newsom, who is preparing for his budget review.
Bass told journalists that she was unable to get into the Newsom calendar. She stopped at her office a few hours later for an unforeseen meeting with two of her best employees.
His request for financial relief of the State could be a difficult demand during a difficult budgetary year for California.
The state is faced with higher costs than expected to provide health care coverage to low -income residents as well as the potential loss of billions of dollars due to federal funding reductions and drop in income from President Trump’s tariff policies. Prices on foreign imports and reprisals from other countries should strike tourism, agriculture and the particularly hard technological sector.
The financial prospects of the State are sufficiently disastrous so that it can pass previous projections of a relatively neutral budget to an astonishing deficit in the coming year.
Bass was joined Wednesday by the city’s prosecutor, Hydee Feldstein Soto, who was pressure for the legislation to be introduced, which would limit the damage that complainants can request against public entities. According to Feldstein Soto, 38 states compensate for these damage, and she would like to see a similar ceiling in California.
“We are trying to bring California more in the dominant current and to make sure that we do not pay the dollars of taxpayers unnecessarily or in disproportionate amounts,” said Feldstein Soto.
The staff editor David Zahnis has contributed to this report.
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