A key committee on Los Angeles City Council moved forward on Thursday with plans to cut down the number of police officers and cancel Mayor Karen Bus’ plans to create homeless units within the fire department, facing an expected $100 million shortfall.
The Council’s five-member budget committee, together with around 8,400 officers, expressed its first support for a slowdown in employment that employs around 10,000 people in 2020, starting from more than 8,700 this year.
The move would be part of a much bigger effort to restore the mayor’s position aimed at eliminating the $14 billion proposed budget if approved by the council-wide council later this month.
Due to a slower police employment, LAPD leaves behind the lowest level of oath staff since 1995. But it helps save the work of 133 professional private employees, including handling DNA rape kits, analyzing fingerprints and taking photos of crime scenes.
Councillor Tim Makosker, who is on the Budget Committee, called the decision a difficult, painful and unfortunate thing, but it is also necessary to maintain the investigation work carried out by civilian staff.
If the city can protect these 133 experts, reducing the number of executives could be a “drug worth swallowing,” said Councillor Bob Blumenfield, another budget committee member.
“These are people who do all this very important work for public safety, but they are not sworn officers,” Blumenfield said.
The Los Angeles Police Protection League, representing more than 8,700 officers, has quickly expressed vigilance over a decline in staffing of oaths. The union has denounced city administrator Matt Sabo, whose office is helping to prepare the budget and asking “until LAPD literally puts police officers and our residents at risk.”
“It’s hard to take the city seriously when you’re sitting in a nearly $15 billion investment portfolio that can be reasonably used to alleviate the current budget crisis,” the union’s board said in a statement. “City leaders need to sharpen their pencils and stop preventing staffing in LAPD.”
Base spokesman Clara Kerger said the mayor will continue to engage with the Budget Committee to complete the spending proposal. “The mayor continues to support LAPD employment and increasing LAFD budgets,” Karger said in a statement.
Released last month, the Bass’ Proped Subferred budget calls for the firing of around 1,600 civilian workers, including more than 400 at LAPD. The reduction in work will affect a variety of agencies, including agents responsible for garbage removal, transportation programs and street light maintenance.
Councillor Katy Yaroslavsky, who heads the Budget Committee, warned at the beginning of a one-day meeting on Thursday that she and her colleagues could not save all their jobs.
“The reality is that there is no way to recover all the positions proposed for the layoffs. That’s not the case,” she said. “Our job today is to create extremely difficult trade-offs that we believe are of paramount importance. It is a trade-off that reflects the values of this council, strengthens our core services delivery and sets the city on a path towards financial solutions.”
The proposals raised by the committee are by no means a completed transaction. Sharon Tso, the council’s top policy advisor, will return to the committee next week with a full menu of strategies to reduce costs while maintaining as much service as possible.
From there, the committee must send recommendations to the full council and approve the budget by the end of May.
The city is facing its most important budget crisis in nearly 15 years, mainly caused by rising labor costs, rising legal payments and slowing down the local economy. The committee is looking for ways to protect basic services from cuts, but city negotiators are trying to secure concessions from unions representing public workers, such as postponed, deferred pay raises.
The pay increase is expected to add about $250 million to this year’s budget, and so far no transactions have occurred.
Two of the biggest cost-saving measures the committee addressed on Thursday were related to public safety.
The committee proposed a significant reduction in the number of LAPD recruits planned for next year from 480 to 240. The department is expected to lose 530 officers due to resignation and retirement, which will reduce the overall staffing of oaths.
The committee also took steps to kill Bass’ proposal to add 67 positions to the fire department to address issues stemming from the homeless crisis. She was seeking to hire 50 new firefighters and create a new street medicine team. This is a rare example of investment during an otherwise pessimistic fiscal year.
Critics argue that there is a cheaper way to deploy street medicine teams than assigning work to firefighters. Such expansions may make sense in normal budget years, but it is difficult to support when city leaders are fighting for drastic cuts, Yaroslavsky said.
“I am not prepared to fire existing city employees who provide core city services so that they can launch new programs,” she said.
The committee also called for the reduction of the Bass ‘Inside Safe program, which is up to $10 million, to move homeless residents to hotels, motels and other types of interim homes. As part of these cuts, council members plan to require that some homeless people take their roommates when they move to city-funded motels and other types of interim homes.
Yaroslavsky said it hopes that planned cuts to internal SAFEs will save plans, public works and police department employment.
Council members also hope to transfer workers eligible for layoffs to vacant positions at an agency other than the general fund that pays for basic urban services. These agencies include the ports, airports and the Ministry of Water and Power.
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