Council Passes $2-Billion City Budget, Keeps Boost in Police

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday challenged Mayor Tom Bradley by approving a $2.13-billion budget boosting the Police Department by 200 officers--double the increase the mayor wants.

By an 11-2 vote, the council gave preliminary passage to the spending program for the fiscal year beginning July 1. A second, usually perfunctory, vote on a final budget resolution is needed before the measure goes to the mayor.

Expected final approval would force Bradley to make the final decision on an issue of major importance in a city where law-and-order issues are important. A Times Poll last month showed that Los Angeles residents consider crime the city’s biggest problem by far.

Bradley can veto the increase and send the budget back to the council in the form he wants. It would take the votes of 10 of the 15 member council to override his veto.

Mayor Wants 100 More

The Police Department has an authorized strength of 6,900 officers. In submitting his budget, Bradley proposed increasing that to 7,000. The council, however, raised it to 7,100 officers.

Bradley quickly launched a counterattack, first Tuesday night in a speech to Times management personnel and again Wednesday in an interview.

“The proposal which has been made with regard to adding an additional 100 officers on top of the 100 I proposed is filled with inconsistencies,” he said in the interview. “The way they are proposing to finance that is to take away a couple of million dollars that was allocated in my budget for automobiles (including police cars) to replace some which are 90,000 miles or more. . . . If you add a couple of hundred officers and you’re not able to put them into automobiles to do the job, what have you accomplished?”

Bradley also said that the council plan provides no permanent financing for the 200 new officers.

An aide, Anton Calleia, chief budget adviser on Bradley’s staff, said the council action will hurt the campaign to persuade voters to approve a property tax increase to add 1,000 more officers to the force. That issue, requiring a two-thirds vote for passage, is on the June 4 ballot.

“It is a disincentive to vote for the measure,” he said.

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, chairman of the council’s Revenue and Finance Committee, said there is enough money to hire 200 more officers at a cost of $2.6 million. “I think we can find $2.6 million in a $2.3-billion budget,” he said. “If you want to have 100 more police officers (than Bradley proposes) you can find a way to do it.”

The dispute reflects a political division between the mayor and council members--and the political realities that each side faces.

Bradley, who retired as a police lieutenant after 21 years, has taken a skeptical view of budget requests submitted by the police chief and his deputies. During his unsuccessful race against Bradley in the last mayoral election, Councilman John Ferraro charged that Bradley was hostile to the department and opposed to strengthening it. But Bradley won in a landslide, indicating that he was unscathed by Ferraro’s attack.

Sensitive to Complaints

The council has been more sensitive to police requests. Its members hear complaints from constituent-crime victims about slow police response time. At community meetings, dinners and church and synagogue functions that are part of a council member’s routine, they are often hit by demands for more police officers.

Ferraro submitted his own plan Wednesday for a 200-officer increase, but it was turned down.

As he did during the campaign, Ferraro proposed elimination of the Board of Public Works, the full-time body appointed by the mayor that supervises city maintenance activities, ranging from garbage collection to street repairs. Ferraro also called for a $5-million cut in the fund set aside for payment of liability claims against the city and elimination of a city task force promoting trade with South Africa. Only elimination of the task force was approved.

Hoping the avoid a mayoral veto, the council reduced the budget overall by $1 million. That was done by eliminating a cash payment for police overtime. The payment had been proposed as a way of reducing compensatory time off, which many personnel experts consider disruptive to efficient scheduling.

Asked if that would ease the threat of a Bradley veto, Calleia said: “I’d rather not comment.”

Times staff writer Rich Connell contributed to this story.