The Brief

This week, Los Angeles city council members will kick off a series of public hearings about the city’s $12.8 billion budget proposal.

The budget is essential for city operations and decisions made over the next few weeks will have a big impact on L.A.

Public budget hearings begin Tuesday at City Hall in Downtown L.A. The documents and discussions, which give you a peek into how the city’s planning for the future, are incredibly dense.

To make sense of it all — and to explain what the budget means for you — we’ve compiled this guide to understanding the budget.

What the budget covers

The overall budget is the way city leaders know what they can spend for the next year, which is mostly determined by the projected health of our funds. As my colleague Brianna Lee recently explained, the mayor proposes the budget and then a series of hearings take place to discuss the details and issue recommendations. Then the budget will go on to the full City Council for a vote.

The budget is made of multiple funds. Here are the main categories:

• The General Fund: This is the primary bank account that L.A. works out of. Unrestricted money is put into it, and it’s used to pay for a wide variety of services.
• The Reserve Fund: This is where unrestricted cash is set aside for unexpected needs and emergencies, like a savings account.
• The Budget Stabilization Fund: This is where cash from prosperous years is set aside to help offset lean financial years.
• Special funds: These are funds created for a special purpose and the money in them is restricted to that. An example is the special gas tax fund, which can only be used for our streets system. L.A. has more than 600 special purpose funds.

Former city controller Ron Galperin said to think of these funds like a trip to the grocery store where you have to pay separately for most of what’s in your basket.

“You can only use one account to buy tomatoes, and you can only use another account to buy cucumbers, and yet another account to buy your milk,” Galperin said. “Imagine how complicated that would be to just get out of the checkout line.”

Beyond these categories, things get a bit more complicated.

There are three entities that you’ll see listed on the city’s budget as an FYI, but their budgets are independent and get approved by a commission. Those are the department of water and power, the harbor, and L.A. World Airports (which includes LAX).

Chief deputy controller Rick Cole said certain other department budgets, like the library, are sheltered under the city’s charter from overall budget cuts. They’re still subject to City Council approval as more of a formality.

These financials are included in the mayor’s budget but in a different chapter than the rest of the proposed department budgets.

How the budget is calculated

Where your tax dollars go (and don’t go) each year can tell you where city leaders’ priorities are, but money is also a finite resource that has to be balanced against competing needs.

The city of L.A. uses a “modified program budget” system to make calculations. In simple terms, this means factoring in service needs for different departments, historical reviews of their past budgets, and performance metrics.

If you want to know how a department is measuring up to its goals, the budget documents include metrics that can help you compare programs and evaluate progress.

Where to begin exploring the budget

Jacky Guerrero is the director of equity in community investments for the nonprofit Catalyst California in L.A. She works to make the city’s budget process and documents easy to understand for community organizations.

The mayor’s proposed budget is comprised of these documents:

• Mayor’s budget summary
• Proposed budget
• Detail of department programs in two volumes (also known as the Blue Book)
• Revenue Outlook
• Supporting Information

You probably don’t have time to sift through hundreds of pages of financial reports, but that’s OK. The first document may be right up your alley.

“The mayor’s budget summary is … their way of trying to produce a more digestible sense of what is in these very dense documents,” Guerrero said. “It’s more focused on issues that resonate with people, not departments.”

The budget documents are a bit like nesting dolls. The proposed budget is a longer version of the summary. And the Blue Book is a longer version of that and it gets much more technical. Then out of the supporting documents, Guerrero said the revenue outlook is important to look over.

“It is giving you a sense of projections of sales tax revenues [and] how that money is generated,” Guerrero said. “These are actually important details because these are things that we pay into.”

Guerrero said she trains her staff to first look over the table of contents of the budget documents. To understand where to look, it’s a good idea to get comfortable with knowing what’s in there. The Mayor’s Message in the first section can help you get a sense of the city’s priorities. In this case, the 2024-2025 budget focuses a lot on housing.

Then once you have an overview, look at the departments that interest you.

How much can the budget change year to year?

One thing to understand is that city budgets typically don't change quickly. While there have been movements to realign the city’s financial priorities overall, such as investing more into community programs and less into police, you won’t see a big difference year over year.

The vast majority of the budget proposed by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass last week, will not be changed during the budget hearing review process.

Some of that is by design. The city’s process has a very short turnover. Almost as soon as the budget is put into action, leaders begin planning for the following year. Cole, from the city controller’s office, said this is why they’re advocating for L.A. to move to a two-year budget term.

“The budget process takes 11 months,” Cole said. “So just cranking through the process eats up an enormous amount of time, energy, paper, and angst, which leaves actually very little time to think deeply about how we're spending the money.”

It’s an economic thing too. Making sharp changes to the budget, Cole said, could create tough layoff issues for city staff, which is why changes happen incrementally. The city of L.A. is among the largest employers in L.A. County.

Another thing to consider is that while the budget documents were only made public in April, the likelihood of them changing much at this stage is rather low. That means public input, and the incoming back-and-forth between the mayor and City Council on finances likely won’t lead to drastic differences in what gets adopted.

But it may not be small peanuts either.

“It’s what insiders at City Hall call budget dust,” Cole said. “For the average person, $750,000 is a lot of money, but it’s less than one hundredth of a percent of the budget. The budget hearings do have an impact — probably the most in the 1% range, but 99% of the budget that the mayor proposes will be adopted.”

The city’s first budget hearing begins on Tuesday at 1 p.m. If you’re interested in participating, note that there’s only one official opportunity listed for in-person public comment during the May 1 hearing.

Public health officials are urging people to be wary of flea-borne typhus after a recent outbreak of the illness.

The outbreak in late July was centered in the Pico-Union neighborhood of Los Angeles. The L.A. County Department of Public Health said five people were hospitalized; all recovered.

The outbreak comes as typhus cases continue to tick up in L.A. County.

Cases have been increasing fairly steadily for more than a decade, but they nearly doubled over the last three years. The Public Health Department logged a record 220 cases in 2025, and officials say this year is on track to exceed that.

Public health officials say the increase is likely because human-animal interactions are also increasing. That could be due to human population expansions into areas with more animals, available food sources for wildlife in populated areas or more people owning pets.

The bacteria that causes typhus is transmitted from animals to humans through fleas.

Typhus can’t be passed from one human to another, and public health experts say the illness is completely treatable, especially if it’s caught early.

Outbreaks and how to prevent them

Most of the time, typhus cases are spread out across L.A. County. But sometimes, there’s a localized spread over a short period of time that turns into an outbreak.

Public health officials respond to a few of them in L.A. County each year.

Generally, outbreaks are triggered by high concentrations of host animals.

“Wherever these animals may be present or wherever they may be congregating, in those areas we can see an increase in the number of human infections,” said Dr. Aiman Halai with the L.A. County Department of Public Health.

The most common hosts for typhus are rats, opossums and free-roaming cats. When people or pets come in contact with host animals, they can pick up the infected fleas and bring them into homes, spreading them to other people and animals in the process.

Halai says a variety of factors can attract animals and lead to an outbreak, including overflowing dumpsters, overgrown vegetation or a well-meaning neighbor feeding local critters.

You can help prevent outbreaks by securing trash in bins, making sure food isn’t left outside, and ensuring pets are on up-to-date flea control medication. Cutting back overgrown vegetation and blocking off crawl spaces can eliminate places where animals can shelter in and around homes.

Halai also says it’s important not to feed wildlife.

Should you be worried?

Although public health experts are wary of the typhus uptick in L.A. County, the 220 cases recorded in 2025 in L.A. County are not overly concerning.

"That’s a very  low rate at the population level,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of infectious diseases at USC’s Keck School of Medicine.

Typhus is an acute infection caused by bacteria known as Rickettsia typhi. Variations of the bacteria also cause other illnesses transmitted by fleas, ticks, lice and mites, including tick-borne Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

Doctors can test for typhus fairly easily, and it is treatable with antibiotics. Symptoms are similar to the flu, and can include fever, headaches, muscle aches and nausea. It can also cause rashes in some cases.

Most infections are mild, but they can cause hospitalization and, in rare cases, can be fatal.

Klausner said the concern is that testing for typhus is not always routine.

“The most important thing is that when patients come in to their doctor — and they have fever, they may have a rash, they may have headache, may have muscle or joint aches — that the doctor's thinking about potentially flea-borne infectious diseases because the treatment can be different,” Klausner said.

The best treatment for typhus is the antibiotic doxycycline. If a patient with typhus gets another type of antibiotic like penicillin or amoxicillin, the treatment may not be as successful.

According to Klausner, when presented with flu-like symptoms, it’s also a good idea for patients to tell their doctors if they’ve been around animals, spent time in an encampment or even just gone on a hike.

Topline:

Why it matters: The small amphibian is found in the grasslands of Southern California and the Central Valley. But habitat loss, urban sprawl and longer droughts have been threatening the species’ population in recent decades.

What the protections do: Now that the Western spadefoot is a candidate for permanent protections, any development project planned for Western spadefoot habitats will have to take the amphibians into account.

Some exceptions may apply: The commission did carve out exceptions for solar projects in the Central Valley. To take advantage of federal tax credit deadlines, some projects can continue to be built, as long as they protect breeding pools and curtail construction during the season when spadefoots are most active.

What conservationists say: Brendan Cummings, conservation director with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in Southern California the biggest threat to the Western spadefoot is not solar development: “It’s warehouses or data centers and road widenings and all manner of construction activities.”

What happens next: The California Department of Fish and Wildlife will conduct a year-long review to determine if the Western spadefoot should be permanently protected.

More than two dozen California Assembly Democrats and one state senator sent a letter Wednesday to legislative leaders asking them to delay fees under SB 54, the state’s landmark plastic reduction law, for two years — an eleventh-hour push as the Legislature hurtles toward the end of session.

The letter, addressed to Senate President Pro Tempore Monique Limón and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, was signed by 23 Assemblymembers and Sen. Melissa Hurtado. It asks lawmakers to pause fee assessment and collection this year and next, commit to a “reform package” next session, and increase legislative oversight of the program going forward.

The request lands amid a broader fight over how the plastics law is rolling out. Little by little California is demanding that the packages you pick up at your doorstep or at the store contain less plastic. A law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed four years ago aims to phase out 25% of non-recyclable, non-compostable plastic by 2032.

To get there, the state tasked a nonprofit, the Circular Action Alliance, with drafting a plan to meet the state goals. The group estimated the work would cost $17.2 billion over five years – and is asking for a three-year exemption from the source-reduction deadline.

But as the state moves to implement the law, questions are mounting over how the organization calculates the fees producers — and eventually consumers — will pay, and how much oversight the group actually faces.

Industry groups say the price tag for complying with the law could be tens of billions of dollars higher than California originally estimated. An industry-commissioned study found the law could cost consumers three times what the state projected — between $683 and $948 a year, rather than $190.

That means groceries, shampoo bottles and other consumer goods packed in plastic could cost a little more as the law takes effect.

The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, which oversees implementation, declined an interview but said in a written statement that the law puts consumers first and pushes producers to design packaging with recycling in mind.

“Californians are facing rising costs and pollution from increasingly complex packaging that wasn’t designed for the recycling systems local governments, ratepayers, and the state developed and funded over the past four decades,” said CalRecycle director Zoe Heller. “The law’s rollout is a dial, not a switch, giving producers flexibility to redesign packaging, invest in recycling systems, reduce single-use plastics, and make adjustments along the way,” she added.

Watching the watchers

The Circular Action Alliance published its fee schedule in June, spelling out what each producer owes into the system. The fees could add up to more than $10 million for some businesses, according to the Dairy Institute of California. The Dairy Institute is a trade association that represents milk processors and dairy product manufacturers.

But unlike a state agency, the Circular Action Alliance answers to almost no one, said Katie Davey, executive director of the Dairy Institute.

“[The alliance] does not have to go through an audit by the state auditor. They’re not subject to the (California open government law) Brown Act. They’re not subject to public records requests. The Legislature does not approve their budget and does not approve how many employees they need, or how many fees they can charge,” Davey said.

As a private nonprofit, Circular Action Alliance indeed is not subject to the Brown Act or public-records law — but records it submits to CalRecycle or other government entities may be.

CalRecycle must approve its fee schedule and implementation plan, and has the authority to audit the organization’s performance, said CalRecycle spokesperson Lance Klug, who added that the plastics law includes provisions to ensure the group’s budget and fees are appropriate.

The alliance’s role “is not to set California policy,” said its spokesperson, Larine Urbina. “Our role is to implement the framework established by SB 54 under CalRecycle’s oversight.”

Davey said the gap extends to enforcement. Businesses that fall short will face so-called malus fees, which fund bonuses for those that comply. But the Circular Action Alliance hasn’t said what those fees will be.

Shane Gusman, a lobbyist for the Teamsters, which represents hundreds of thousands of California workers, raised similar concerns. “They’re a wholly independent nonprofit organization that has no oversight. That’s part of the problem.” The union backed the plastics law hoping it would boost jobs; Guzman now says the fees could affect workers too.

Shortly after the alliance published its fee schedule, Davey and a coalition of industry leaders — including the California Restaurant Association, the California League of Food Producers, the American Forest and Paper Association and the Print Creative Alliance — commissioned a study disputing CalRecycle’s numbers.

It found CalRecycle’s 2025 estimate of $21 billion in implementation costs, or $190 a year per California household, rests on “idealized assumptions that fail to capture real-world costs and complications the regulations will create.”

The study puts the number somewhere between $35 and $58 billion, rising after the implementation period.

Klug of CalRecycle said the agency’s earlier reports were just estimates. “The actual costs will be determined by producer choices,” he said. “These costs, for example, will reflect the infrastructure needed to recycle materials that producers are choosing to use.”

Agriculture groups push back 

The biggest hurdle for producers is cutting plastic use 25% by 2032 — which state regulators say will require redesigning packaging and shifting toward reusable products, such as dishes at restaurants and paper-based packaging for produce.

Business groups say they support the state’s goals but call the timeline unworkable.

Food safety is one sticking point: alternatives like paper-based containers for berries are less breathable and spoil faster, while heavier glass or cardboard adds transportation costs, said Casey Creamer, president of the California Fresh Fruit Association.

“We just don’t want to force something out and not be able to deliver a fresh, healthy commodity, or create a situation that has more significant or adverse environmental concerns just because we look at plastics and packaging in a silo,” Creamer said.

Environmental groups oppose any pause.

“All of us pay for plastic pollution through higher garbage bills and clean-ups of polluted beaches and waterways, not to mention the damage to our environment and our health,”said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for Californians Against Waste.

Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat representing coastal Los Angeles County who authored the law, said it’s time plastic producers are held accountable for the waste they produce.

“This 11th-hour Hail Mary is only trying to maintain status quo and avoid due responsibility, throwing years of good-faith negotiations, and affordability and sustainability improvements out the window,” he said in a statement about producers’ efforts to pause implementation of the law.

Businesses pass costs to consumers

Whether the plastics law is actually driving up grocery prices yet is hard to pin down. Creamer said businesses may already be factoring the organization’s planned fees into their prices.

Federal data show grocery prices dipped slightly in July from June, though prices have climbed year over year and that rate is accelerating, said Richard Volpe, a consumer-price expert at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Neither the USDA nor the Bureau of Labor Statistics has released August figures, and no data yet isolates the state plastics law’s effect from broader inflation.

Volpe said retailers, who run on thin margins, will eventually pass costs on to consumers — but probably not right away.

“It will not happen overnight,” he said. “And it will still be relatively small, mostly on the order of pennies on the dollar.”

Industry groups warn it will add up.

“If someone’s even on the cusp of food insecurity and they’re looking at $1,000 more a year, that’s pushing them over the food cliff,” said Nate Rose, a spokesperson for the California Grocers Association.

The Teamsters, which backed the plastics law hoping it would boost jobs, now worry the fees could affect workers too.

The law “has been morphed into something that is going to cost California consumers a substantial amount of money at a time when I don’t know if we need to spend thousands more on groceries,” said Gusman, the Teamsters lobbyist. “That also has an impact on the workforce.”