How To Participate In LA’s City Budget Process

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass released her proposal Monday for the city’s budget over the next fiscal year. But that budget is by no means final. Big negotiations over that plan will happen over the next few weeks before the budget goes into effect in July.

This is your tax money being spent, and you get to have a say about these spending plans. Here’s how to participate in the process and let elected officials know your thoughts.

A note before we get started: This budget guide refers specifically to the city of L.A., but many cities follow a similar process. For information on budgets in other Southern California cities check out your city’s government website for a rundown of their budget process, or this general guide on how to understand your local budget.

The budget timeline

First, it helps to know what happens in the budget approval process:

• September to March: The mayor outlines budget goals and priorities and shares them with city departments. Departments then work on making budget requests for the upcoming year and submit them for the mayor’s consideration. 
• April: The mayor releases the official budget proposal. This is supposed to happen by April 20, but if that falls on a weekend (like it did this year) it can get pushed back to the next business day.
• April to May: The City Council’s Budget, Finance and Innovation Committee holds a series of public hearings to discuss the budget. City council members sit on the committee. Currently in L.A., members include committee chair Bob Blumenfield (District 3), Katy Yaroslavsky (District 5), Monica Rodriguez (District 7), Marqueece Harris Dawson (District 8) and Tim McOsker (District 15). The city administrative officer, city department heads and staff are also part of these hearings, and the public can weigh in as well. The committee comes up with a series of recommendations, and then the budget moves on for the full city council to vote on. 
• June: June 1 is the deadline for the full city council to adopt or modify the mayor’s proposed budget. If they vote to modify it, the mayor has five business days to review the changes and approve or veto them. If she vetoes anything, the council can either let it stand or override her with a two-thirds vote. 
• July: The new adopted budget goes into effect from July 1, 2024, until June 30, 2025. 

When and how you can participate

Here are some ways you can make your voice heard during this process:

Give public comment at a budget hearing. Budget hearings are public meetings, and community members have designated time to give comment.

• You can keep tabs on upcoming budget hearings from the Budget, Finance and Innovation Committee at the city clerk’s website. 
• Tip: If you subscribe to meeting agendas via the link at the top of the page, you can get details of upcoming budget meetings in your inbox without having to keep checking the city clerk’s calendar.
• You can send in a written comment or speak in person at the meeting. (Committees don’t allow the public to give comment via teleconference; that’s only an option at full city council meetings.) The meeting agenda will detail the rules for when you can speak and for how long. 

Contact your city council member’s office. Can’t attend a public meeting? You can still tell your city council member how you feel before they have to cast their vote.

• Input your address here to find out who represents you on the city council, and visit their website to get in touch with their office.

Fill out a survey: Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, chair of the Budget, Finance and Innovation Committee, releases an annual survey asking about Angelenos’ budget priorities.

• You can fill it out here. 

What can you do after the budget gets approved?

Plenty! There are people all over L.A. who keep a close eye on how we’re spending our money, how we can better plan for the future and how to involve community members more deeply in budgeting decisions. Here are a few options you can consider:

Get in touch with the city controller’s office. The L.A. city controller’s job is to be the people’s voice when it comes to how the city spends money. This office, led by City Controller Kenneth Mejia, audits city departments, releases reports on their findings, and pushes city leaders to cut down on wasteful spending. You can get familiar with the controller’s reports and contact their office if you think they should be examining the numbers more closely on anything we’re spending.

Learn more from the Budget Advocates: This is a volunteer-run advisory group that aims to make the city budget more transparent to Angelenos. They also have a more direct line of communication to city officials than an average resident might have. They work closely with L.A.’s neighborhood councils, but often have town hall discussions that anybody can participate in. The next town hall meeting to discuss reactions to the mayor’s budget proposal is scheduled for Saturday. They’ll also host a Budget Day in June for people to learn more about how the budget works and to elevate any neighborhood concerns.

Explore participatory budgeting: Hey, what if all of us got to decide how to allocate the city’s money, and we didn’t just leave that up to elected officials? Enter participatory budgeting. So far this experiment has only been happening on a small scale — the city of L.A. launched a pilot program in 2022 that allowed nine different communities to allocate funds to a local project of their choice. The unincorporated communities of Ladera Heights and Florence-Firestone are also undergoing a pilot program to allocate $1 million to community projects that residents vote on.

If this is something that appeals to you, you can dive deeper into L.A.’s current and past efforts with participatory budgeting and encourage the officials in charge to expand these initiatives.