The Brief

Most Los Angeles County departments would be required to reduce spending by 3% under an austere budget proposal unveiled Monday by the chief executive officer.

The $47.9 billion budget plan for the fiscal year that starts July 1 reflects “extraordinary budget pressures” facing the county, according to a statement from the CEO’s office. Under the plan, the cuts total $88.9 million and include more than $50 million in savings from cutting supplies, delaying equipment purchases and reducing the scope of some programs.

The proposal does not include any layoffs but calls for the elimination of 310 vacant positions.

“This is a different budget. It’s reflective of us being in tough times,” Supervisor Janice Hahn said in an interview.

Some county departments will be exempt from the 3% cuts, county authorities said. They are: the Sheriff's Department, Public Works, Regional Planning and Mental Health. The Correctional Health Services Department, which provides healthcare in the jails, is also exempt.

Various unions and community organizations attended the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday.

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Budget challenges

The proposed budget comes in response to mounting financial pressures — including from the recent $4 billion tentative settlement of thousands of childhood sexual assault claims against the county by people who were abused inside Probation Department-run juvenile halls and other county-run facilities over decades.

If approved by the Board of Supervisors, it would be the largest sex abuse settlement in U.S. history.

L.A. County is expected to pay hundreds of millions of dollars a year until 2030 to cover the settlement, then millions more each year until 2050-51. The Board of Supervisors is also expected to issue a bond and dip into its $1 billion rainy day fund to pay for the settlement.

In addition, the county is facing the potential loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding under the Trump administration.

Federal assistance makes up 13% of the county’s budget, and billions more flow into departments indirectly through the provision of health, mental health and substance abuse services to Medicaid beneficiaries and other programs, CEO Fesia Davenport said.

She noted the federal government already has notified the county Department of Public Health that more than $45 million in previously awarded COVD-19 grants intended to last through July of 2026 were being rescinded. The cuts are being challenged in court.

The January wildfires also are expected to cost the county at least $2 billion, mostly from cleanup and lost property tax revenues.

“We do expect FEMA reimbursement for some of the county’s losses. But those reimbursements can take years. So we will be on the hook to cover those expenses ourselves in the meantime,” Davenport said Tuesday.

She said a day earlier in a briefing to reporters that property tax revenues already were falling. Property sales tax revenue is forecast to drop to 233.9 million in 2025-26, from $450 million in 2022-23, because of a 41% decline in home sales in L.A. County since 2021.

“We are in uncharted territory with these simultaneous pressures on our budget,” Davenport said.

Firefighters and lifeguards rally outside of the Board of Supervisors meeting.

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Measure A funding

Despite the constraints, the budget is committed to sustaining the county’s essential safety net responsibilities, officials said.

The budget reflects the passage of Measure A — the voter-approved half-cent sales tax that replaced Measure H — which has already started to bring “an enhanced stream of funding” into the entire L.A. region to address homelessness, the CEO said in a news release.

The nearly $1.1 billion in projected Measure A revenues in this budget will be shared by the county's partners. It is expected to be distributed as follows:

• $382.8 million will go to the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency.
• $32.1 million will go to the Los Angeles County Development Authority.
• $96.3 million will go to local cities through the Local Solutions Fund. 
• And more than $500 million will go to the county’s own comprehensive homelessness services.

The budget also calls for spending $287.7 million for Care First and Community Investment, reflecting the board’s commitment to set aside 10% of locally generated unrestricted revenues annually to support social programs designed to keep at-risk people from going to jail.

The total Care First funding available for investment in communities and alternatives to incarceration is $571.6 million, including one-time unspent funds from previous years, according to the county.

Members of California Native Vote Project outside the supervisors meeting.

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In addition, the budget calls for adding six psychiatric mobile response teams to the 72 already in place. The teams provide non-law-enforcement-based mobile crisis response for people experiencing psychiatric emergencies.

“We’re still taking care of the safety net obligations that a county has,” Hahn said. “We’re still in good shape.”

Pressed about what services would be cut as a result of the 3% reduction in spending, the supervisor said she is confident departments would “get creative.”

“I think they’re going to do everything they can to not curtail services ... maybe they’ll just postpone certain things or defer certain things,” she said.

The proposed budget includes nearly $12 million to ramp up Measure G — the voter approved measure to expand the Board of Supervisors from five to nine members, create a countywide elected mayor position, and create a county Ethics Commission.

The budget also allocates funding for the Governance Reform Task Force that will guide Measure G efforts.

Home-care workers protested proposed cuts at Tuesday's meeting.

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Maria Diaz, a home-care provider, attended the supervisors meeting with her union SEIU 2015.

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What’s next?

On Tuesday, the county Board of Supervisors heard public testimony from more than four dozen people, including members of the home-care workers union. They warned supervisors against balancing the budget on the backs of the county’s low-wage workers.

Criminal justice advocates urged the supervisors to shift money away from law enforcement and into more social programs.

Further public hearings on the budget will be scheduled for next month.

A pair of brown leather shoes worn by Oscar-winning actor Ingrid Bergman in the 1948 film, Joan of Arc. A couple red togas with gold leaf embroidery thespian Laurence Olivier likely donned in the 1960 epic Spartacus. A leather briefcase used by the great Cecil B. DeMille between 1920 and 1940. A pair of Levi's from 1952 worn by Gary Cooper.

Those are just a handful of clothing and accessories — hats, shoes, scarfs, gowns and more — from old Hollywood the city of Los Angeles calls its own.

The 300-some pieces have been in the care of ASU FIDM Museum in downtown for more than three decades. The collection is open to the public, and the museum displays and lends pieces out for exhibition.

Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman tries the armor that she will wear for her role of Joan of Arc, a movie directed by Victor Fleming in 1947. A pair of shoes worn by Bergman is part of a collection of memorabilia owned by the city of Los Angeles.

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Next fall, some of the garments will be on display at an exhibition at ASU FIDM Museum on legendary costume and fashion designer Gilbert Adrian.

Los Angeles and Hollywood are oftentimes synonymous, but how did the city of L.A. come to possess these silver screen artifacts?

The Hollywood Museum?

We go back to the 1960s and the broken dream to build a museum of American film and television history.

At the center of the proposed Hollywood Museum (not to be confused with one on Highland Avenue since 2003) was the collection of artifacts and costumes culled from studios, production companies and actors themselves that numbered in the thousands.

The exhibition space never came to pass, according to city documents, because the funding never caught up to the vision.

The empty jail in Lincoln Heights once held a collection of Hollywood memorabilia owned by the city of L.A.

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In 1968, L.A.'s recreation and parks department took over the collection. When private storage was price prohibitive, the garments and accessories were stocked away at the empty jail in Lincoln Heights for two decades — until the deal with the fashion institute in 1988.

Dietrich, Astaire, Valentino...

As part of a loan agreement with the city that has just been recently extended, ASU FIDM Museum provides services to store, conserve and restore these 300 fashion and costume objects (for an inventory, go to pg. 19) that span the 1920s to about 1970.

There are tons of prized items in the mix — including more than a dozen pairs of dance shoes owned by Fred Astaire.

One name you'll keep seeing is screen diva Marlene Dietrich. About 100 pieces were donated to the Hollywood Museum from a storage unit she kept in L.A., said Christina Johnson, senior curator at ASU FIDM Museum.

 "It includes pieces that she wore on film, pieces in her personal life," Johnson said.

And sometimes, both. Like a paisley lamé evening gown created by a costume and fashion designer known by the mononym Irene.

"There's photos I found of [Dietrich] wearing it at Ciros nightclub with her then lover Jean Gabin," Johnson said. "Then she wore it when she was part of the USO entertaining the troops during World War II."

Dietrich purposely wore that same gown in A Foreign Affair — the 1948 Billy Wilder dark comedy set in post-war Germany.

" It's been so many places and I think that's one reason that fashion and costume history are so important because it makes history come alive for people," Johnson said. " When I'm handling something, it really makes me reflect on, what did this person experience while wearing this?"

Unlit Lucky Strikes

The collection contains ribbons, sash, ties, an entire costume ensemble worn by Rudolph Valentino (leggings and all) from the 1920s, and even a torso metal armor believed to be used in both the 1925 and 1959 versions of Ben Hur.

But probably none are more curious than the four unsmoked Lucky Strike cigarettes in their midst.

They belonged to silent movie star Mabel Normand, who worked with Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.

" Her wardrobe items came in a Louis Vuitton trunk," Johnson said. "Those Lucky Strike cigarettes were in a pocket."

Normand was a heavy smoker and eventually died from tuberculosis. Still part of the collection, the possibly century-old cigarettes are stored separately so as not to stain the garment.

" But that's the thing, these belonged to real people who did real things," Johnson said. "And some of her unused cigarettes came with the collection."

There’s a reason L.A. has so many art masterpieces in various museums: the region had a lot of industrialists and bankers in the 20th century who used some of their wealth to build large art collections.

The Norton Simon is a prime example.

“The quality of the collection is unmatched, and I think we feel really proud of the really serene, spacious environment that we provide for looking at art,” said  Emily Talbot, vice president of collections and chief curator at the museum.

In 1975, industrialist Norton Simon took over the critically acclaimed but financially troubled Pasadena Art Museum. Simon spent decades building a food production empire, starting with a small juice processing plant in Fullerton to running the Hunt-Wesson Foods conglomerate.

The Thinker by Auguste Rodin, at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. It was moved to this new location on the museum property in 2025.

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He was fascinated by art and artists and used the drive that made him successful in business to buy and collect art. You’ll see paintings by Rembrandt, key works by Auguste Rodin on the museum’s grounds (including the Thinker), as well as paintings by abstract expressionist Helen Frankenthaler, and centuries-old sculptures from India and Cambodia.

The Norton Simon Museum's art collection includes sculptures from Cambodia and other south Asian countries.

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The museum currently displays about 1,000 pieces from the blended Pasadena Art Museum and Simon collections. In total it has 12,000 objects, ranging from masters like Rembrandt and Picasso to contemporary art by Ed Ruscha and Sam Francis.

For its 50th anniversary this year, the museum spent $15 million to rebuild and renovate its gardens and its signature façade, which faces Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena and puts it in the middle of worldwide TV coverage of the Rose Parade each year.

For those who get slightly overwhelmed at grander museums like the Getty or LACMA, the more people-scaled Norton Simon is a great option. If you're heading there, here are some highlights recommended by the museum staff you shouldn't miss:

The long-lost Degas

Start with the newest acquisition by the museum, a roughly 1-foot-tall bronze sculpture by Edgar Degas titled "Arabesque over the right leg, left arm in front."

The bronze sculpture is the most recent acquisition by the Norton Simon Museum.

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Simon loved and collected Edgar Degas’ late 19th century sculptures of dancers. But as much as he tried, and as much money as he had, his collection was incomplete.

“In 1977, Norton Simon bought an almost complete set of sculptures by Edgar Degas,” Talbot said. “It was missing just two, and we have been looking for those two sculptures ever since.”

Last year, the staff finally found one of them. It’s the first work of art the museum has purchased in 18 years.

It’s a sort of sculptural sketch, Talbot said, created by Degas to understand a dancer’s poses before making the final work. It has the rough surfaces of the original clay and wax the artist used ahead of casting the bronze.

“These sculptures really give you a sense of the artist's mind, how he thought about process, what he thought was interesting about the body and movement, and that's really captured in these casts,” Talbot said.

Degas painted, made prints and sculpted. His pastel drawings are sublime. And this sculpture makes the Norton Simon one of the top places in the world to see Degas’ dancer sculptures.

The two faces of Picasso

A visit to the museum will put you face to face with a master work by Pablo Picasso. It’s a 4 foot by 3 foot painting called "Woman with a Book."

Woman with a Book by Pablo Picasso on display at the Norton Simon Museum.

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It’s thought to be inspired, Talbot said, by a 19th century painting, "Madame Moitessier," by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

Madame Moitessier by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

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“Picasso used that composition, which also depicted a woman seated in an armchair. But he sort of updated it for the modern moment, using these very bright colors and also kind of drawing your attention to a somewhat more sensual representation of the subject,” Talbot said.

A few years ago, the Norton Simon borrowed that Ingres painting from the National Gallery in London and displayed the two paintings side by side.

Woman with a Book by Pablo Picasso at the Norton Simon Museum.

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This Picasso, she said, is a good illustration of one of the artist’s most repeated quotes: that “good artists copy, great artists steal.” He not only used another painter's composition; he also embraced another artist's color choices.

“In this particular painting, we have a palette that was really inspired by his friend Henri Matisse,” Talbot said, referring to the strong red and blue, and soft pastel shades.

An epic chess match. Your move!

When you walk into the museum entrance, you'll see a chess set under plexiglass. It’s an 1850 chess set made of wood and ivory that Simon bought in India during his honeymoon with actor Jennifer Jones.

Chess Set made circa 1850 in India with ivory pieces, and wood board inlaid with ivory. It's the first piece of south Asian art purchased by industrialist Norton Simon.

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“ This is depicting the Indian version of the game, so one thing that visitors might notice is that there are camels and elephants instead of rooks and bishops,” Talbot said.

Aspiring and current chess masters will have fun with how the board is set up. It’s arranged in move No. 12 in an epic chess game played in 1855 by a Bengali player and a Scottish chess master.

This was Simon’s first South Asian art purchase. The floodgates opened after this. His collection went on to include sculptures and paintings from Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Burma, Laos and other countries.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development cannot impose dramatically different conditions for homelessness programs for now, according to an oral ruling Friday by U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy in Rhode Island.

McElroy granted a preliminary injunction to a group of states, cities and nonprofits who said a last minute overhaul of how to spend $4 billion on homelessness programs was unlawful. She also agreed with their argument that it likely would push many people back onto the streets in the middle of winter, causing irreparable harm.

"Continuity of housing and stability for vulnerable populations is clearly in the public interest," said McElroy, ordering HUD to maintain its previous funding formula.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement the order "means that more than 170,000 people – families, seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities — have respite from the government's assault."

HUD has sought to dramatically slash funding for permanent housing and encourage more transitional housing that mandates work and treatment for addiction or mental illness. The overhaul — announced last month — also would allow the agency to deny money to local groups that don't comply with the Trump administration's agenda on things like DEI, the restriction of transgender rights and immigration enforcement.

"HUD will continue working to provide homelessness assistance funding to grantees nationwide," said HUD spokeswoman Kasey Lovett in a statement to NPR. "The Department remains committed to program reforms intended to assist our nation's most vulnerable citizens and will continue to do so in accordance with the law."

'Chaos seems to be the point'

McElroy expressed frustration with a series of HUD actions in recent weeks. Just hours before a Dec. 8 hearing, the agency withdrew its new funding notice, saying it would make changes to address critics' concerns. But on Friday, HUD's attorney said the new version would not be ready until the end of the day.

"The timing seems to be strategic," McElroy said, asserting there was no reason the document could not have been ready before the hearing. "The constant churn and chaos seems to be the point."

In defending the agency, attorney John Bailey said HUD was simply trying to change its policies to reflect President Donald Trump's executive orders, which he called "legal directives." The judge interjected repeatedly to explain that he was conflating things, noting Congress — not the president — makes laws.

'It's kind of shocking'

HUD's changes were announced in November with little notice and only weeks before local homeless service providers must apply for new funding.

"Our agencies are just scrambling right now to try to respond," said Pam Johnson with Minnesota Community Action Partnership, whose members provide housing and other services for homeless people. "It also just reverses 40 years of bipartisan work on proven solutions to homelessness. So it's really, it's kind of shocking."

For decades, U.S. policy favored permanent housing with optional treatment for addiction or mental illness Years of research has found the strategy is effective at keeping people off the streets.

But many conservatives argue it's failed to stop record rates of homelessness.

"What is the root cause of homelessness? Mental illness, drug addiction, drug abuse," HUD Secretary Scottt Turner said recently on Fox Business Network. "During the Biden administration, it was just warehousing. It was a homeless industrial complex."

Turner and others who support the changes say the goal is to push people towards self-sufficiency.

But local advocates say mental health and substance abuse are not the main factors driving homelessness.

"It's poverty. Poverty, low income and significant lack of affordable housing," says Julie Embree, who heads the Toledo Lucas County Homelessness Board in Ohio.

Many in permanent housing have disabilities that make it hard to work full time, she said. Embree agrees with Trump administration goals like efficiency and saving money, but says pushing people back into homelessness, where they're more likely to land in jail, the courts or a hospital, is not cost-effective.

"One emergency room visit is just as expensive as a month of sustaining this [permanent housing] program," she said.

In Los Angeles, Stephanie Klasky-Gamer with LA Family Housing said there is a need for more transitional housing, but not at the expense of long-term housing. And the idea that programs could simply switch from one to the other is not only unrealistic, it's illegal.

"You cannot take a building that has a 75-year deed restriction and just — ding! — call it interim housing," she said.

Those challenging HUD say providers who own such properties – or states who've invested millions of dollars in permanent housing projects — face "significant financial jeopardy" if their funding is not renewed.

In addition to the legal challenges, members of Congress from both parties have questioned HUD's sudden shift on homelessness. Advocates have lobbied lawmakers to step in and, at the least, push for more time to prepare for such a massive overhaul.