Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass returned to Sacramento on Wednesday to lobby the city’s leaders and make money to help close the city’s roughly $1 billion budget hole.
This was the second visit to the State Capitol and a kind of homecoming for the former Congress president who helped navigation the state’s 2009 budget crisis. She is undoubtedly well aware that the nation faces its own economic headwinds.
“It’s very important to solidify these relationships,” Bass said Wednesday, stating the importance of keeping urban issues at the forefront and center, even while state legislators avoid their own budget crisis.
The visit was particularly important, Bass said. This is because the city was in a rare situation where it had no representatives from Southern California on the council’s house.
Two days ago, Bass presented the proposed budget. This has reduced positions in over 2,700 cities. Bass wants to avoid these layoffs through state funding or by renegotiating a promised pay raise that adds a substantial amount to labor costs for the upcoming fiscal year.
These rise in personnel costs are one of several factors that have exacerbated the city’s budget crisis, including the financial sacrifices of the January wildfire and subsequent recovery efforts, spiral legal payments and weakening the national economy.
Bass has repeatedly lobbyed Newsom and other state leaders for relief packages that can avoid some or all of the employment cuts. During her March trip to Sacramento, she and four members of the city council met with leaders from both Newsom and Council rooms.
After that trip, Councilman Tina McKinner (D-Hawthorne), who chairs the Los Angeles County legislative delegation, sent a letter to the Council’s Budget Committee asking for city funding, signed by 22 other members of the state legislature.
Before Bass’ arrival, Congressional Democrats were confused about the need to return to Sacramento shortly after their visit last month, meeting with lawmakers. Her appearance was seen as more about style than style, giving her the opportunity to stand in front of the camera and show that she was trying to deal with the disaster of the city’s budget.
The city’s situation is further complicated by the fact that its budget process is taking place simultaneously with the state’s. This means that city councils must proceed with budget deliberations before they know if the state’s money will arrive.
The governor’s revision to the state budget will be announced in mid-May, so at that point the city has some idea as to whether a significant amount of resources are coming from the state. However, the revision is merely the starting point for final budget negotiations between the governor and the council, and the state budget will not be completed until at least mid-June, just weeks after the city council’s deadline for approval of its own budget.
Bass met with legislative leaders on Wednesday, but was not sitting with Newsom, who was in the middle of preparing for the budget revision.
Bass told reporters he couldn’t reach Newsom’s schedule. She stopped by his office a few hours later for an unplanned meeting with two of his top aides.
Her demand for financial relief from the state could be a tough question for California in a challenging budget year.
The state faces higher than expected costs to provide healthcare coverage to low-income residents, with potential losses of billions of dollars as a result of federal funding cuts from President Trump’s tariff policies and lower state revenues. Tariffs on foreign imports and retaliation from other countries are expected to hit the tourism, agriculture and technology sectors particularly hard.
The state’s financial outlook is disastrous enough to be able to turn from previous forecasts of a relatively neutral budget into a staggering deficit going forward.
Bass was joined by city attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto on Wednesday. He was pushing for the introduction of laws that would reduce the damages plaintiffs in the suit could seek from public authorities. According to Feldstein Soto, 38 states will cap those damages and she wants to see a similar cap in California.
“We’re trying to bring California into the more mainstream and not paying taxpayer dollars in unnecessary or disproportionate amounts,” Feldstein Soto said.
Times staff writer David Zanizer contributed to this report.
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