Politics & Government

Neighborhood Council Advocates Recommend Budget Balancing Tips to City Council

A projected budget deficit of $400 million must be tackled by improving revenue, management, pension programs and tax-collection mechanisms, elected representatives of local neighborhood councils tell City Council members.

There’s no dearth of signs that the 2011-12 budget of the City of Los Angeles is an exercise in disaster management, but no warning of an impending catastrophe has been as stark as this figure presented to the City Council today: The office of City Controller Wendy Gruel estimates that the City Council has been slow to act on as many as 38 completed audits that found the city had failed to collect at least $300 million in outstanding revenue from sources ranging from delinquent parking tickets to unpaid ambulance bills.  

Making good on that outstanding debt was one of seven “efficiency recommendations” made to the City by the Los Angeles-wide Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates (NCBA), which consists of 93 local neighborhood councils directly empowered by the City Council and dedicated to improving the quality of life in their respective communities.

Five representatives of the NCBA spent about an hour at City Hall this morning presenting a list of wide-ranging recommendations that they spent the past six months preparing. The NCBA presented a version of those recommendations to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on March 21.

Find out what's happening in Eagle Rockwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Titled “Saving Jobs—Saving Services: A White Paper with Recommendations to Decrease the L.A. City Budget Deficit in a Time of Economic Crisis,” the six-page document outlined strategies to improve government efficiency, generate increased revenues, implement structural changes in government, and reduce expenditure.

While councilmembers listened—many with rapt attention—the budget advocates emphasized that Los Angeles cannot expect to bridge a projected budget deficit of more than $400 million without streamlining its sources of revenue, management, pension programs and tax-collection mechanisms.

Find out what's happening in Eagle Rockwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Here is a list of the NCBA’s key recommendations:

  • Authorize relevant government agencies to monitor businesses and ensure that they pay for business permits in a timely manner or face suspension and/or revocation of their permits.
  • Create a central billings and collections department that focuses on increasing government’s efficiency and accountability.
  • Conduct an inventory of all unoccupied city-owned property, with the aim of relocating city offices and departments housed in private rental properties.
  • To reduce revenue wastage resulting from poor planning, ensure that all citywide purchases of equipment and software include all the necessary components for maintenance and upgrades.
  • Hire appropriately qualified commercial parking lot operators to run the city’s parking facilities.
  • Encourage the occupancy of distressed or vacant commercial property for large and small business owners.
  • Support the City Attorney’s efforts to study specific business branding opportunities in Los Angeles.
  • Consolidate the city’s five separate police department into a single department under the LAPD’s leadership, with a single chief.
  • Create a program whereby LAPD supervisors and/or managers can settle potential lawsuits in the field, similar to the program currently underway in the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department.
  • Consolidate departments that can be easily merged, such as the Office of Finance and the Treasury, thereby reducing operating costs and increasing efficiencies.
  • Create a Citizen’s Commission to come up with creative ways to run the Public Employee Pension and Benefit Review so that the city’s pension obligations, the largest expense after payroll, can be discharged with greater efficiency. Tap academic experts, leading entrepreneurs and labor leaders, as well as informed citizens and Neighborhood Council members for the Commission.
  • Increase all employee pension contributions to 11 percent.
  • Raise the healthcare co-pay of city employees from $10 to the below-market rate of $20—just $5 above the $15 co-pay that the City Administrator’s Office has already negotiated with the Coalition of City Unions—thereby saving the city a total of $3.5 million.
  • Implement tiered salary cuts for sworn and civilian personnel to create an overall $200 million reduction in payroll, excluding pension and benefits.
  • Eliminate furloughs, which reduce city services.
  • Support, encourage and promote the use of the City Controller’s “Whistle-Blower Hotline” and consider introducing a “Whistle-Blower Protection Ordinance” that provides economic incentives and reward to employees whose reports of fraud, waste or abuse result in demonstrable economic savings to the city.

“These budget recommendations are absolutely essential and they were made essential because of the budget crisis,” Daniel Wiseman, a physician and NCBA secretary who was one of the major speakers at today’s presentation, told the City Council. “This is the beginning of our discussion and I hope it goes on until we can provide the best solution possible.”

A number of councilmembers, including Eric Garcetti, Ed Reyes, Janice Hahn and Bill Rosendahl responded to the presentation, largely by expressing their gratitude to the budget advocates for their suggestions and hard work. There was, however, a somewhat testy moment toward the end of the presentation, when Councilmember Tony Cardenas expressed his skepticism not only about the accuracy of the $300-million outstanding public debt to the city but also about the feasibility of collecting the dues.

"I felt Councilman Cardenas was being extremely defensive," said Jay Handal, budget advocate for the West L.A. Neighborhood Council. "The fact is that had the city collected all the outstanding money in the past and made the structural changes recommended by the City Controller, the city would not be in the critical fiscal shape it is in today."

Handel said that while he concedes that as much as 50 percent of the public debt is probably a write-off, even collecting half of the remaining 50 percent would generate $75 million, which would pay for more than 85 jobs in the city. Handel added that about 15 percent of the roughly 420,000 businesses in L.A. "don't report their revenues because there's no enforcement."

On April 27,the NCBA will find out from the City Administrator’s Office and the Chief Legislature Office about the response to their budget recommendations. “We know the CAO and CLA will tear into our recommendations but we hope this is something the City Council will embrace and that not everything will be watered down,” said Heinrich Keifer, the budget representative for the , who has also represented the Highland Park Neighborhood Council in the past.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

More from Eagle Rock