Does Cutting 2,100 Vacant City Jobs Mean Losing Services? Depends On Who You Ask

When Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass unveiled her proposed city budget for the next fiscal year, the most dramatic part was that it would eliminate more than 2,100 vacant city jobs.

If approved by the City Council, it would be the largest reduction of city positions since the Great Recession.

Cutting those vacant positions — many of which would come from the ranks of people who maintain city streets and parks — is necessary to deal with shrinking revenue and growing labor costs, Bass said.

And it would save an estimated $180 million.

“We are not reducing any services,” the mayor said last week during an appearance on LAist’s Airtalk program.

But not everybody agrees.

"Unfortunately, virtually every department will be hit with reductions in their ability to deliver current (and future) services," Deputy City Controller Rick Cole said in a statement released last week on the day Bass announced her $12.8 billion budget.

He continued: "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.”

It's unclear to what extent city services would be affected by the mayor’s budget proposal, but at minimum the spending plan would remove some of the financial flexibility now enjoyed by general managers.

A 'cushion' for other budget priorities

In introducing her spending plan, Bass said it comes “amidst national, state and local economic uncertainty driven by broad economic trends and the coming national election.”

Under the proposal, 417 positions in the Bureau of Street Services would be axed — the most of any city agency. The bureau fills potholes and fixes sidewalks, among other things.

The Recreation and Parks Department would lose 307 positions, the Sanitation Department would lose 250 jobs and the Transportation Department would lose 137 posts.

It isn’t just about city authorities choosing not to fill a vacant job. Eliminating those positions means department managers would lose part of their respective budgets — and possibly lowering the chances of getting that money back in the future. In the case of the Bureau of Street Services, the agency would lose about $34 million in the fiscal year that starts July 1.

The way it works now, department heads sometimes use the money earmarked for vacant positions for other needs, like paying employees overtime. The Los Angeles Police Department, for example, regularly uses money allocated for vacant positions to cover for officer overtime. (None of the department’s vacant positions would be eliminated under the mayor’s proposed budget.)

It’s a “cushion to fund other priorities,” according to Miguel Santana, who served as the city’s chief administrative officer from 2009 to 2017. He explained that money that doesn’t get used in one budget cycle gets “swept” into the following fiscal year.

Sometimes those other priorities are important and sometimes they are on the “nice-to-have list,” he said.

But carrying that money over from one year to the next is not good budgeting, Santana said.

“Having huge vacancies is not generally a smart practice — especially if you know you can’t fill those vacancies,” he said. “It doesn’t show a true reflection of what it costs to run the city operations.”

He also said carrying so many vacancies on the books doesn’t give department managers any incentive to become more efficient.

Why the jobs are going away

The city has been unable to fill thousands of vacant positions for a variety of reasons, including a tight labor market, lower interest in government public service and slow hiring processes.

Vacancies in the city also grew during the pandemic.

A decade ago, the vacancy rate for city jobs was 10%, excluding the Department of Water and Power, L.A. World Airports, and the Harbor Department. Just before the pandemic, it was 11%.

Today, there is a 17.4% vacancy rate citywide, or 9,786 unfilled positions, according to a September report by L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia.

Cole said each of these positions is important to a well-functioning L.A.

"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," he said in the statement.

But managers can always ask the mayor and City Council to put jobs back on the books, Santana said, adding eliminating vacant positions is not unusual.

“It is not uncommon — particularly during periods of financial constraints,” he said.

Former City Controller Wendy Greuel praised the mayor’s move to wipe out vacant positions.

“I have been impressed that the mayor has shown that she is fiscally responsible,” Greuel said. “It allows her to look specifically at positions and those that are not important.”

The City Council plans to conduct a series of hearings on the mayor’s budget in the coming weeks. The first of those hearings, in front of the council’s Budget, Finance and Innovation Committee, is scheduled for Tuesday.