Balancing Los Angeles City Budget

There are 39 separate categories (departments or commissions) listed in the Los Angeles city budget. However 28 of those categories have budgets in the current fiscal year that are higher than last year’s budget. Those budgets are anywhere from 8% higher to 100% higher. The city clerk department has a budget that is twice last year’s budget.

I obtained this information from the mayor’s city budget website, http://www.lacity.org/mayor/budget/. I downloaded the information into an Excel spreadsheet and proceeded to do a little analysis. I am not an accountant but the information was just easy to acquire, as it should be, and did a little reading and sorting of data.

Here is another bit of surprising information. This year’s actual spending is exceeding the budget in 14 of the 39 departments.

I questioned why many of the departments exist. The housing department caught my eye. The department costs over $38 million dollars in salaries and another $6 million in operating expenses this year. ”The Los Angeles Housing Department has four program areas, housing, rent, code enforcement and compliance” The department also manages the Displaced Tenant Relocation fund that is estimated to be $500,000 this year. The total budget for this department in 2005-06 year was $36 million. That is a 22% increase in just one year ($38 million dollars plus $6 million).

The city’s elected officials know that there is a budget issue but have done little to stem the unbudgeted spending. Many are taking their pay raises with claims that they will donate the money to charity but the money for those raises is not really available. Worse are recently negotiated pay raises for all city employees. The police department’s new headquarters has seen its cost double from approximately $200 million dollars to $400 million. Many millions of dollars is being allocated for a new children’s museum.

Now the mayor has declared an emergency that enables the city to ask city voters for a new phone tax that only requires a majority yes vote to pass। If it wasn’t an emergency passing the tax would require a vote of at least 66.6%.

The lack of responsibility among city council members and the mayor is the emergency.