Bradley Returns Budget, Backs Extra Officers

The hiring of 250 more Los Angeles police officers was virtually assured Friday when Mayor Tom Bradley returned the City Council’s $2.46-billion budget with few changes in the spending package and with his “firm support” for the increase in the police force.

In returning the budget with only a few line-item vetoes that would restore $346,778 in some city salaries and expenses, Bradley concurred with a major portion of the council-approved spending package, even though it differed sharply from his original proposal.

When he first proposed his “hold-the-line” budget for fiscal 1987-88, Bradley provided no funds for additional police officers and had recommended cuts in such basic services as street paving and tree trimming.

But in a statement released Friday, Bradley went along with the council’s unanimous decision to pay for the additional police and said that “higher than anticipated city revenues” and money from a narcotics trust fund account had allowed him to revise his estimates.

“On the day that I submitted the budget to the City Council, the acting treasurer indicated an additional $3 million in interest income would be available,” he said in his statement. “I approve of the way the Council has allocated these monies and return the budget with few vetoes.”

The council had made about $20 million in changes in the budget originally proposed by the mayor, and Bradley disagreed with several cuts made by the council. He restored five city employee positions at a cost of $151,603. The positions include accounting jobs and others that Bradley considers essential.

He also vetoed a proposed cut of $77,045 in programs from the Department of Personnel and Bureau of Engineering.

But his most controversial veto decisions restored $98,120 to fund the Task Force for Africa/Los Angeles Relations and $20,000 to aid the Council for International Visitors.

The task force is a nonprofit group that promotes economic development between Southern California and “free African states,” while the council promotes international trade.

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who chairs the Finance and Revenue Committee, criticized the mayor’s decision to restore funding for those two organizations, arguing that it gives Los Angeles the appearance of a city pursuing a foreign policy at the expense of other goals.

“The city doesn’t have a foreign policy,” Yaroslavsky said. “It doesn’t have an Africa policy or a Middle East policy. The city should be cleaning streets, trimming trees and putting crooks in jail.”

Yaroslavsky, who is considered a likely challenger to Bradley in the 1989 mayoral election, also claimed that the mayor is fighting to save city funding for the African task force because he has a friendship and business relationship with its executive director, Juanita St. John.

Ali Webb, Bradley’s press secretary, confirmed that St. John is a friend of the mayor and that the mayor is involved, along with half a dozen others, as a limited partner in a real estate partnership with St. John. But Webb called Yaroslavsky’s suggestion that the mayor was acting to protect a friend or business partner “patently false.”

“The mayor’s goal has been to promote economic development and job creation in Los Angeles,” Webb said. “To suggest anything else is either politically motivated or doesn’t accurately portray what is the real reason for having these kinds of organizations,” she added.

Despite his opposition to the task force, Yaroslavsky said he expects that the mayor has enough votes to prevent any override of his vetoes when the council takes up the budget document again next week. He also said he is pleased with the general reaction from the mayor after anticipating a “knock-down, drag-out fight” over the budget and the police issue.

“The overall picture is that the mayor has endorsed the council’s budget with the exception of a few minor items,” he said. “None of those things is going to break the bank.”