CommentsGUEST WORDS-Los Angeles is facing a deficit of $700 million and growing.
An estimated $600 million of this is due to receipts falling below projections and $120 million is because of spending more than what was budgeted.
The City has known since March that revenues would plummet because of the pandemic – a significant portion of its income comes from the hotel and other taxes generated by the tourist industry.
And over half of the additional expense is because the Mayor included furlough days for City staff that had not been agreed to by the unions.
Once the full extent of the pandemic’s impact was understood – yes, we still won’t have any real numbers for the months and years to come but the trending fiscal damage is very clear, and certainly was by June when the current budget was passed – there should have been immediate retrenchment to address the costs for 2019/20 which would have to be carried forward, and the projected divergence between expenses and income for 2020/21.
Nothing material has happened.
Los Angeles has a history of pushing costs down the road.
The City’s current economic crisis did not start with the pandemic, it started with the costs of raises not being included in the previous budget because they hoped (wished?) that income would continue to grow.
This is a failure by City Hall, both in planning and in execution.
Now everyone – all Angelenos, Neighborhood Councils and other community organizations as well as the Mayor and City Council – need to start focusing on fixing the problem.
Our elected officials need to stop dreaming that a fairy godmother called a Biden win or Prop 15 will wave a magic wand and make the red ink go away. Stakeholders have to stop ignoring the failure at City Hall as if it is not their problem. It is.
As we have all learned in the last seven months, there are times we just want to bury ourselves under the covers and hope our problems – isolation, loss of work, deaths, and bills – will miraculously disappear.
Well, they won’t.
And neither will the City’s.
And if our elected officials won’t take action, it’s up to the rest of us to kick their collective ass and put them to work on solving this fiscal disaster.
In this time of disruption and confusion across the country and around the world, where you and I can have the greatest effect is advocating on issues here at home.
Look at the priorities for your family and your neighborhood.
People across the City need to focus on constructive recommendations and solutions. Call your Councilmembers, push your Neighborhood Councils to submit a CIS on each and every issue you can think of because, without money, it’s your services that will be slashed – not only tree trimming and street striping but also garbage collection and public safety.
The Budget and Finance Committee wants to cut the Emergency Management Department’s budget by half. Next time there’s an earthquake, flood or wildfire or rioting or terrorist attack, they will not be able to staff their own response center.
Is this the Los Angeles in which you want to live?
(Liz Amsden is an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She also writes on behalf of the Budget Advocates’ mission regarding the City’s budget and services. In her real life she works on budgets, for film and television, where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today’s world.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
