Proposed LA Budget Reduces Spending On Homelessness Program, Eliminates Vacant Jobs

Faced with shrinking revenue and growing labor costs in Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass presented a stark budget Monday that lowers funding for her signature homelessness initiative and reduces the authorized strength of the police force — in part because of recruiting problems.

Bass also proposed eliminating more than 2,100 city jobs, most of them already vacant, including hundreds in the city’s Park and Recreation Department.

The mayor’s $12.8 billion spending plan is for the fiscal year that begins July 1, and represents a 2.3% reduction from the current fiscal year’s budget of $13.1 billion.

The City Council, which must approve it, will consider her proposal in the coming weeks.

Bass said her plan addresses the needs of Angelenos, and she said her budget comes “amidst national, state and local economic uncertainty driven by broad economic trends and the coming national election.”

“This budget continues our momentum toward change by prioritizing core city services,” the mayor said.

L.A.'s Chief Administrative Officer Matt Szabo said sales, hotel and property taxes were projected to grow at a paltry 1% in the coming year largely because of higher interest rates and rising inflation.

Szabo called eliminating vacant jobs “the essential component” to balancing the budget, saving approximately $180 million.

“The mayor’s proposed budget provides a path to absorb sluggish revenue and rising costs and it puts the city on a path to a structurally balanced budget with surpluses in the out years,” Szabo said.

In a statement late Monday, the city Controller's Office said it agreed with the mayor that it was time for a budget "reset" and commended Bass for committing to a strategic approach to tackling four more years of projected deficits.

But the office disagreed with any notion that the cuts in the proposed budget would not affect city services.

"Unfortunately, virtually every department will be hit with reductions in their ability to deliver current (and future) services," read the emailed statement from Chief Deputy Controller Rick Cole. "Today, departments are coping with the record high level of vacancies with unsustainable levels of overtime by existing staff, temporary work-arounds and deferral of lower-priority work that cannot be indefinitely postponed."

The statement continued: "Eliminating needed positions just because they are currently vacant will create an ongoing hole in the ability of virtually every department to maintain today’s level of services."

The Controller's Office also warned city authorities against continuing to defer maintenance to existing infrastructure, adding that doing so would cost the city more in the future, including in liability claims.

Bass's proposal includes pay raises for city workers that add $316 million to the budget — an amount that will grow to more than $1 billion annually by 2028.

The City Council approved pay raises for police officers last year and approved raises for tens of thousands of civilian workers last week.

“To retain the city workforce and maintain critical services, we must pay fair wages for those that keep us safe and those that improve our city each and every day,” Bass said.

The mayor also said her plan cuts her own office’s budget by 10%.

Homelessness

Bass is proposing $185 million for her administration’s flagship homelessness program, Inside Safe, which aims to get Angelenos into temporary housing — largely motel rooms. The proposal represents a significant decrease from Inside Safe’s previous budget of $250 million.

Gary Blasi, a UCLA School of Law professor emeritus who studies homelessness, said the declining budget means the city will be able to temporarily house an even smaller fraction of the city’s population of 46,000 unhoused people.

“It's kind of disappointing, seeing that the plan is to continue to do more of the same,” Blasi said. “We've gotten a lot of people into motels. And some of them have stayed there for a period of time. We've not done a good job of getting people into a more sustainable situation.”

The budget proposal allocates $28 million to programs designed to move Inside Safe participants into permanent housing, up from $21 million in the previous budget.

The city has faced criticism over its failure to track key outcomes from billions of dollars in homelessness spending, such as how much it costs to shelter people unable to find permanent housing.

A federal judge recently ordered an audit of the city’s homelessness spending.

While some programs receive major cuts, the mayor’s budget also proposes increases for efforts to stabilize families at risk of falling into homelessness. In the next fiscal year, the city is proposing giving $17 million to Family Source centers, which focus on signing up eligible applicants for social services and support programs.

In the current fiscal year, the budget for the program was $3.2 million.

Police department staffing

The mayor’s plan includes authorization for 9,084 police officers, down from this year’s 9,500. The decline is, in part, a recognition of the recruiting crisis facing the department — and policing in general.

The Los Angeles Police Department graduated an average of 31 recruits in the past 10 academy classes, according to the Los Angeles Times — far below what’s needed to even keep up with attrition.

The department currently has 8,832 officers.

“I will tell you we are doing everything we can to recruit officers,” Bass said.

Other initiatives

At the news conference, the mayor touted an array of smaller initiatives.

Last year, Bass established an Office of Community Safety to prevent crime through community-led approaches to increase safety. The city will continue that work by allocating $50 million to community-based organizations for violence prevention and intervention, civilian crisis response and anti-recidivism services, according to a budget summary.

The budget also allocates funding for transportation electrification, including over $24.5 million in fleet vehicle replacements.

“The fleet will expand to include an increasing number of electric medium and heavy duty work trucks,” according to the summary. The budget also puts forward $14 million to help purchase new buses for the city’s Community Express service.

The budget also allocates $12.9 million to invest in electric vehicle charging stations for the public and city fleets.