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AN ANGRY ANGELENO - This column is called “An Angry Angeleno.” Over the years, I have been angry about inadequate public safety, bus service cuts, overdevelopment...many issues really. But nothing gets me more angry than politicians that cause animals to suffer or be killed. So imagine my anger when I found out what LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia was up to on Friday Night.
On Friday Night, I spotted a KTLA article entitled “LA could be GOING BROKE after blowing past yearly liability budget in just 3 months, Controller says”. Yes, GOING BROKE was in ALL CAPS. It was also in quotes. This KTLA story ended up being propagated to Yahoo News and MSN. But where did it originate? Twitter (now called X, but I'll keep calling it Twitter) (on Thursday at 10:34 in the morning), Instagram, and Facebook (FB) posts by LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia. The FB post, similar to the others, has smiley emojis and reads:
CITY OF LA GOING BROKE ALERT.
The City has SURPASSED its annual $87 million liability claims budget in just the THIRD MONTH of the new fiscal year [the fiscal year starts in the middle of the year, so that would be the latter part of 2024], spending $97 MILLION so far!
TOP 2 LIABILITY SPENDING:
Police [with a cop car emoji] $59,391,312
Miscellaneous [with an emoji that looks like a Washington DC building, maybe an old school financial building, like a bank or the Federal Reserve, definitely not a dog or a cat] $21,745,201
Street Services [with a tools emoji] $6,110,000
FRIENDLY REMINDER [happy face emojis]
Liability claim payouts aren't taken out of the budgets of the individual City Department that gave rise to the liability – instead, they mostly come out of the General Fund which is mainly used to fund city services and resources for Angelenos. Then there's a bar graph/chart.
The KTLA article has additional information (not included in Mejia's social media posts) that was supplied by Mejia:
The “miscellaneous” category came in 2nd with $21.7 million, though Mejia noted the the vast majority of that amount was for two specific incidents.
“There are [approximately] 400 accounting transactions for misc. that make up the $21.7 million,” Mejia responded to a commenter [it seems he is interacting with public responses on his social media posts]. “Here are the 2 largest that make up $18M (83%).
$10.5M: A fixture at top of a street lamp fell on a person's head
$7.5M: Person lost arm after attack from an adopted animal shelter dog.” [one wonders why that is not included in a separate Animal Services Department bar]
As Mejia pointed out, the $10.5 million did not come out of the budget [for Street Lighting], nor did the [LA] Animal Services [department] pay $7.5 million....
“Liability claim payouts [are not] taken out of the budgets of the individual City Department that gave rise to the liability – instead, they mostly come out of the General Fund which is mainly used to fund city services and resources for Angelenos, “ Mejia said. [actually that line was part of his social media posts]
What Mejia seems to be suggesting is that the Animal Services Department should have its budget cut by $7.5M because of one incident. What is the Animal Services Department budget? A measly (roughly) $30.3M. Why is it so low? Because historically the LA City Council and the LA Mayor have given the Animal Services Department and the suffering animals in our city shelters VERY low budgeting priority. What is the Total Budget for the City of LA: $12,822,072,685. Yes, that's roughly 12.8 Billion (that's roughly 12,800 M). Mejia is suggesting a HUGE (roughly) 25% (or one fourth) cut in the department's tiny insufficient budget because of one incident.
Let's talk about other possibilities. For example, is the City Controller is in budgetary cahoots (kinda like a budgetary conspiracy) with the Mayor? Instead of the Mayor, becoming increasingly unpopular and facing an election in 2 years time, attacking the Animal Services Department (and controversially causing more animals to die), the City Controller could do it in a sneaky, shady way (change in policy across the board) and the Mayor could then endorse the City Controller, get him political allies, and help raise money for his reelection. Or...is this is a way to stop talk of the Animal Services Budget increasing in the future? Or, and this is the sneakiest possible scenario, a sorta shell game, where the Mayor could increase the department's budget by 7.5M and then take it away with a new city policy on liability expenditures. That way, she looks like the hero for dramatically increasing the department's budget, while the net effect is not increasing the net practical budget, nor increasing services/conditions, nor reducing deaths.
Let's talk about what I refer to as “Historical Budget Multipliers.” We'll compare the current budget for a department to the budget for that same department two decades (or roughly 20 years) ago. The Library Fund for the new budget year is roughly 256.5M. The Library Fund roughly 20 years ago was roughly 61.4M. That's a Historical Budget Multiplier of roughly 4.2. The Animal Services Department Budget 2 decades ago was roughly 18.1M (the Mayor 2 decades ago wanted 19.7M). So, the Library Budget is roughly 4.2 times its old budget, while the Animal Services Budget (roughly 30.3M) is roughly 1.7 times its old budget. Now I love libraries, but in the age of Google Search (as compared to going to the library to read Encyclopedia Britannica (if your family couldn't afford an expensive set), few magazines remaining, free news on the Net, Starbucks and many other locations to meet and study, and homeless druggies going to LA County Libraries to score their OD kits, is this comparative use of City Funds really appropriate? Does it represent the priorities of Angelenos, many of whom have multiple pets who are like family or their children? In fact, the Animal Services Department had a brand new shelter in the Mission Hills portion of the Valley that it could not staff because it's continuously starved of funding by City politicians. So Best Friends LA, an effort of Best Friends, took over the shelter. I believe that shelter is currently being used by another organization.
Los Angeles has a big dirty secret at LA City and LA County shelters (County is even worse than City). How it treats the dogs, cats, and kittens at its “shelters” and how many are euthanized. Why do I put shelter or shelters in quotes? Because it's a misnomer or a euphemism. If animals suffer and are killed there, then using the term “shelter” is quite misleading. By the way, the term “No Kill”, as in “No Kill” shelter, is PR for government. It actually allows for 10 percent of animals to be euthanized. I always hated the term “euthanized”, which is a euphemism for animals being killed, which helps politicians avoid negative publicity. So from now on, let's talk about animals being killed as opposed to being euthanized. By the way, LAist had an article (on Jan 26, 2022) entitled “LA City Animal Services Loses No Kill Shelter Status” that showed Animal Services losing its No Kill status in 2021. That status was held for one year in 2020, and I would attribute it to the efforts of Best Friends LA (a program of Best Friends, which swooped into LA with tons of money, advertising, and volunteers), the first year of Covid conditions, and Trap-Neuter-Return (known as TNR) of outside cats.
Why doesn't all of this get more play in the press? You'll get an occasional negative article about our shelters, usually about conditions, not animals killed. If the press, particularly the LA Times, assigned a reporter exclusively to that issue, like Dakota Smith, who would write at minimum weekly articles about our shelters, and threw a continuous huge spotlight on our shelters, then the politicians would almost immediately properly fund the department, and the poor conditions and killing would cease. Shame, investigation, and political pressure is what is needed. But politicians don't want the public to know how bad it is, so if you were Mayor, what would you do? Pick a General Manager for the Department who doesn't loudly protest how bad things are and make waves. Pick Animal Services Commissioners that don't loudly protest and make waves. The Mayor gets to pick the General Manager and the Commissioners, so at the end of the day, you can blame the Mayor for conditions and killings at City “shelters”. And let's remember that the LA Times likely doesn't want to continuously investigate the horrible conditions and killings at our “shelters”, making the Mayor look bad, especially if the Mayor was endorsed by the Times.
Since City Controller Mejia is focusing on a recent 3 month period, let's focus on a recent 3 month period at our City “shelters”. In August of this year, 226 dogs were killed, 250 kittens were killed, and 217 cats were killed. The previous month, July, the numbers are 166 dogs, 334 kittens, and 254 cats. In June of this year, it was 140 dogs, 346 kittens, and 223 cats. That's a total of 532 dogs, 930 kittens, and 694 cats in a 3 month period, or 2,156 animals killed by a department that is severely underfunded. So, you tell me how many more animals will be killed because of one incident that is hidden in a Miscellaneous bar on an accountant's chart, probably because having an Animal Services bar would be rather controversial.
Also, the City's six animal shelters are NOT open for adoptions on Mondays and are only open til 5 pm Tuesday through Friday and only open from 11 am til 5 pm on Saturdays and Sundays. They should be open on Mondays. They should be open earlier and later on the other weekdays. They should be open earlier on the weekend. If the department's meager budget was increased, that would be possible. Staffing expansions of existing shelters or being able to staff new shelters would also be possible.
Who is City Controller Kenneth Mejia? There is an April 12, 2023 LA Times article entitled “Young Activists Helped Elect Kenneth Mejia. Now Some Say He's A Toxic Boss”. Read it.
Mejia seems to like the expression “LA is going broke” or some variation of it. I found an earlier article from The Center Square from roughly two weeks ago, September 27, entitled “City Controller: “LA is going broke” after spending half of reserves this year”. Mejia notes that [quoting the article, not Mejia] “the City has spent half its reserves in the past year. In April, the City faced a 476M deficit...Last month, the City of LA agreed to pay a 38M settlement to the federal government for not making enough federally funded affordable apartments accessible for people with mobility, visual, and auditory impairments.” Is that 38M part of Mejia's new liability graph/chart for the 3 month period?
I've had a chance to peruse the City Controller's website, which is littered with dog pictures on its front page, including one with a pipe and a detective hat, like Sherlock Holmes. By the way, the pictures and logos are similar or the same to ones used in his campaign, which is kinda blurring the line between campaigning and official. But I digress. And Mejia seems to like using dogs at the top of his social media and his City Controller pages. The top or banner of the official City Controller page has a Corgi waving at you. I believe it's an image of Mejia's corgi Killa which he also used in his campaign. You see, Mejia has or had corgis (2 or 3 of them) and he uses dogs to advance his political career, basically as mascots. What he's projecting is that he is an animal lover and he ran for office on Animal Services issues during an Animal Services scandal. He was running against the overhyped but horrible “animal lover” Paul Koretz...if only Koretz cared more about Animal Services funding. I even voted for Mejia because of animal issues, despite the fact that he had corgis. I generally don't trust politicians (or General Managers and Commissioners) with “breed” animals (or a breeder background) to take good care of the Animal Services Department, and I wonder if Mejia's corgis were bought or adopted.
Let's go back to the bar chart (at the top of this column) that Mejia recently posted. I'll ignore the LAPD bar, because Mejia, like a few City Council members, is seemingly obsessed with LAPD and constantly going after them. Policing levels are a high priority to the public (because crime is high in the George Gascon Era), inadequate (2 hour response times in my hood and a recent change in policy aka not responding to calls regarding enforcement of No Camping Zones, at least in my hood), not what the Mayor promised, and the standards for hiring have even been lowered to get new cops...which will lead to higher liability payouts, by the way.
The Miscellaneous bar is the 2 nd tallest bar. As we know, the Miscellaneous bar is largely composed of one incident at Animal Services, but looks like it's over one third of LAPD. Street Services, which has a huge budget, looks like it's one third of Miscellaneous, which is kinda a hidden way to (partially refer to Animal Services). Similarly, Transportation has a small bar. Fire, which has a MASSIVE budget has a TINY bar. Even tinier are the bars for Sanitation and Rec and Parks,which both have HUGE budgets. You almost can't see the bar for Recreation and Parks. This bar chart is misleading because it leads the general public to believe that Animal Services is causing the City's budget problems, while Massively budgeted departments like Fire and Rec and Parks are not causing the City's budget problems.
The City of Los Angeles is in horrible financial shape. Yet, despite this, the Mayor and the City Council in April of this year handed out several years of huge raises to City workers (and I'm not talking about cops). The LA Times has an April 13 article entitled “Pay Hikes for City Workers Will Add $1 Billion [with a B] to LA's Yearly Budget by 2028...” by David Zahniser. I believe that doesn't include Police and Fire workers. That's a 1,000M, by the way. Why isn't Mejia loudly attacking that? Because that would upset big spending and very powerful City Employee Unions and lose him endorsements, ensuring the end of his political career.
The LA Times has another article by Zahniser from February of this year entitled “LA Bus and Bike Lane Measure Will Cost $3.1 Billion...” That's 3,100M dollars, by the way. The title is referring to Measure HLA (which the Times Editorial Board endorsed), put forward by a small group of bicyclists and developers (possibly because new bus lanes will allow for more development in the future), which the Mayor refused to oppose. It will also make Traffic much worse. By the way, Katy Yaroslavsky supported that Measure. The Measure FORCES the City to build bike lanes and bus lanes (which take away driving or parking lanes and can also be used by bicyclists) when the City does major work on a roadway. It creates LIABILITY for the City in at least two ways. If the City doesn't build the required non-car lanes, members of the public (most likely a few bicyclists) can SUE the City. That is actually IN Measure HLA...it CREATES a right to sue. Additionally, all those miles of new bus lanes will have to be maintained. No known obstacles (like trash) either. You can imagine some bicyclist not wearing a helmet crashing and suing the City because the bike lane was not in perfect condition. So imagine the cost of constantly maintaining those bike lanes and keeping all obstacles, including homeless people and their belongings, off of them. Where was Mejia's huge public outrage? That would lose him progressive support and endorsements, including that of the Times. The bicyclists could also run a well-funded candidate against him next time.
Historically, huge pension costs for past city employees have been a huge drain on the city, even causing the city to consider bankruptcy. I remember hearing Billions, not Millions. Why not loudly complain about Pensions for non-police employees? That wouldn't be too popular with Major City Employee Unions. How about loudly complaining about TWO YEARS of Free DASH rides offered by LA Department of Transportation and the huge raises given to Teamsters who do NOT work for the City? That would not endear him to the Mayor. Has Mejia even loudly complained about HUGE taxpayer subsidies for developers? An example of that would be a hotel developer complaining that he needs to keep the large nightly occupancy tax (that would otherwise be used for city services) for many years, or his project won't pencil out financially. I also remember that happening for a large mall project in the Valley. In that case, I believe it was keeping the City's portion of Sales Tax for many years into the future. Well, the Mayor signs off on those deals, so you know where this is going.
By the way, the argument could be made that having an underfunded department CAUSES or CREATES liability events. Rushed activity, staff are overworked or not present, insufficient funds for proper equipment, etc, etc. I don't know the details of this ONE incident (which occurred under the Karen Bass Administration), but I'm sure there are lessons to be learned to prevent it in the future, potentially including proper training, proper notice, not adopting out dangerous dogs to the general public, agreed upon damages caps and mediation by adopters, and improved settlements by the City Attorney's office. It would be nice if the City Controller would focus on advising the department on how to reduce the likelihood of such a liability event (and we're only talking about one) in the future rather than suggesting the department's budget be slashed, which will likely lead to many more liability events in the future. It would be nice if the City Controller's office privately talked to the volunteers that staff the shelters, because they are the best source of unvarnished truth about what is really going on at the shelters, they really care about the animals, and whistleblowers have been punished or fired in the past.
Getting back to Mejia's website, I've had a chance to peruse it. The liability claims for fiscal year 2023 were over 160M. Actually, the 2023 amount is roughly double the 2021 and 2022 amounts, so the Bass Administration should answer for that. The Estimated Fiscal Year 2024 City of LA Liability Payouts Total is 247.4M dollars. So, my question is, why does Mejia mention an annual 87M dollar liability claims budget as a goal, when the recent past and the estimated future FAR EXCEED that total. Seems kinda misleading. As if 87M is normal and expected, which it is not.
Also on Mejia's website, he has a bar chart showing “City of LA Liability Claim Payouts FY2020-FY2023” for various departments. I'm gonna assume that means total liability claim payouts for each department for a four year period.
All of a sudden, Animal Services DOES have its own bar and it's tiny.
There's also pie charts (for that four year period) !
For example, here's Street Services (below). Sanitation and Transportation also have big slices of the pie. Interestingly, Sanitation's slice is almost as big as LAPD's slice.
And here's Animal Services. The sliver of pie is so thin that you have to zoom in on it in order to see it.
This is all cumulative over a four year period. Not a one time event in a blip in time. If you severely slash the Animal Services budget, that money ain't coming back. New department budgets are decided by the previous year's budget. That's probably why my street got repaved recently when it didn't need it.
The following is part of a bar chart of department budgets. Yellow is 2024 and aqua is Proposed 2025. You have to scroll way down to find the Animal Services Department Budget (the bar chart goes from biggest department budget to smallest). Here's the relevant part of the bar chart.
As you can see, the Mayor's Office has a far bigger budget than Animal Services. Why not give some of that to Animal Services and save lives of helpless animals. The Controller's bar is almost the same size as the Animal Services bar. Perhaps instead of (seemingly) attacking the Animal Services Budget, Mejia can offer part of his department's budget to save some dog lives.
Finally, I'll leave City Controller Mejia, who holds himself out as loving dogs, in particular (I prefer older cats), with this graphic that you run into when you visit the Animal Services Department website. It's the “Dog Occupancy Meter” (I'm wondering why they don't give equal treatment to kittens and cats), which shows that the City's Animal “shelters” are severely Over Capacity when it comes to dogs. Something for Mejia to think long and hard about.
(“The Angry Angeleno” is the nom de plume of Yuval Kremer. Yuval is a Registered Democrat; a Cali-Camp, Harvard-Westlake (pre-merger), USC, and Loyola Law School Alum; and a former ballot candidate for Mayor of LA (failing to prevent Mayor Garcetti's reelection) and LA County Supervisor (ran against Sheila Kuehl, Katy Yaroslavsky's former boss). The opinions expressed by Yuval are his and his alone (not those of CityWatchLA), but will likely be yours soon!)
