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The LA County government is considering a job freeze as its $45 billion budget faces catastrophic wildfires, flooding sexual abuse lawsuits and “huge pressure” from the White House threatening to cut funds.
Without a job freeze, CEO Fecia Davenport warned the county supervisor in a March 4 letter that “the situation could be in a financial crisis.”
Davenport appeared before the supervisor on Tuesday and got permission to begin implementing the freeze. The supervisor said he wanted them to go back to the beginning, recording details about which positions will be exempt.
“If we’re turning the switch over today without understanding it today… I’m worried that there will be more impacts than what this committee knows today,” said director Lindsey Horvas.
The county has approximately 117,000 budget registration positions. According to the CEO, roughly 13,000 of these positions have not been filled.
Davenport said the department could still attract new employees under the employment freeze, but they would need permission from her office. The sheriff’s department will be exempt as grant funded or related positions to recover from the January fire, she said.
Even before Pallisard and Eaton fired in January, even before thousands of businesses and homes burned, the county’s financial outlook was extraordinarily harsh.
County officials were not clear whether the federal funds they relied on during the Biden administration would continue under Trump. They have used up about the $2 billion they received during the pandemic through the American Rescue Plan Act. And the county’s liability for the flood of sexual abuse cases continued to increase.
Since the state changed its law on limiting childhood sexual abuse victims in 2019, thousands have been complaining of abuse in the county’s juvenile facilities and foster care systems. The county says the liability for these cases could be billions, and officials warn that it is devastating to the local social safety net.
An unprecedented fire has been added to the tension. Sales tax revenues will decrease for businesses that have been closed. Property taxes also destroy so many homes. Then there is a cleanup cost.
“These are multi-year costs and reverberate well beyond the 2024-25 budget year,” Davenport wrote to the board detailing the county’s financial difficulties on February 10th.
Labor can be another big cost. Davenport said it said county unions were hunger for pay increases last year following a massive wage hike for LA workers.
“When we enter this negotiation cycle, workers’ expectations are the highest ever,” Davenport wrote.
David Green, of SEIU 721 Head, representing 55,000 county workers, is an additional 12,000 unskilled positions falling into his union. Many of them are frontline workers in the Ministry of Mental Health and the Department of Child and Family Services.
“We really need to fill these vacant seats,” he said. “This is the worst time to do a job freeze in LA County.”
Rather than stopping new hires, Green said he wanted to bring back expensive external contracts and property purchases, like the $215 million the county recently paid to Gas Company Tower, a downtown high-rise building that could become the new county government headquarters.
“The last thing I checked was that it was an inaccessible building,” Green said.
The county recently frozen jobs during the pandemic. Before that, the last freeze was during the Great Recession in 2008.
Aside from a potential suspension of new hires, county employees, represented by the union, could go without adjustments to the cost of living.
Green said all county unions were called to a meeting with Davenport on Wednesday. Green said he was told there would be no wage increases if his SEIU 721 contract expired at the end of March.
“I wasn’t part of the negotiations they held at zero,” Green said. “Our members are furious.”
In a statement, the county said no “formal proposal” has been presented to the county union yet, of which 14 are actively negotiating contracts.
“We are working to build awareness among the labor partners of the key budgetary pressures the county faces,” the county said.
The possibility of a pay raise has also raised concerns among sheriff’s deputies. The nation’s largest sheriff’s office has been struggling to staff for a while, and deputies have complained of being forced to work excessively overtime.
“We have experienced a serious staffing crisis, lacking competitive salaries and proper benefits, and no appropriate benefits including adjustments to the cost of living. Retention and recruitment efforts for departmental employees are severely affected. “Departmental employees are overworked and we cannot maintain the mandatory overtime without the required personnel.”
As of last month, department data showed that 1,408 of the county’s 10,213 secondary positions were vacant, with another 898 being fulfilled by those on leave or released from obligation.
Quoting those numbers, the union representing lawmakers – assn. For Los Angeles deputy sheriffs, the prospect of increasing living costs has said “it’s difficult from today onwards that it’s difficult for the county to feel that they really value public safety professionals or that they’re putting a proper priority on community safety.”
Steve Johnson, president of Los Angeles County’s professional peace officer assn. -This represents a top department staff, but there was a similar take.
“Morale is historic low for our hardworking members due to massive overtime and significant staffing issues,” he said. “Our members must be provided with salaries and benefits that value dignity, sacrifice and commitment with minimal respect.”
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