Council Rebuffs Mayor, Approves Environmental Affairs Unit in Budget

The Los Angeles City Council on Monday voted to set aside $1 million for a new environmental affairs department strongly opposed by Mayor Tom Bradley as council members began their first day of debate on the city’s fiscal 1989-90 budget.

In a special meeting, council members began plodding through the city’s proposed $3.25-billion budget, eliminating about $25 million of the mayor’s proposals and adding more than $9 million in new spending for narcotics detectives, library books, access ramps for the handicapped and new stop signs among other initiatives, great and small.

Bradley opposes creation of a department of environmental affairs for fear that it could touch off turf wars among top city staff members who now have some responsibility for what the new department would do. Bradley, instead, has proposed a new air quality management office with more limited authority to coordinate environmental programs.

Trash Fee Rejected

The council also voted to pay for the mayor’s proposed citywide recycling program with general city revenues, rather than through a new trash fee as had been announced. The mayor was leaning toward having a new trash collection fee to pay for the $25-million program, but council members showed that they prefer to cut other programs.

The 13 council members present were able to agree on hundreds of individual programs with little debate, completing work on half the requests forwarded to them by the Finance and Revenue Committee before adjourning for the day. The debate will resume today and the entire process could be completed by Thursday, said Council President John Ferraro.

But even as council members voted to approve item after item, usually unanimously, members and their staffs were producing new spending requests at a feverish pace.

By noon, upwards of 120 requests had been prepared for council members by the chief legislative analyst’s staff working at temporary desks set up in the hallways to handle the crush of business.

Eight harried staff members shuttled between the council chambers and the hallway, where they sat hunched over adding machines, thumbed through stacks of records and typed on computers that spit out motion after motion. Electrical wires fueling the legislative frenzy zigzagged across the marble floor.

By the time the council reconvenes at 10 a.m., Chief Legislative Analyst William R. McCarley predicted that as many as 200 new spending requests could be filed.

“It’s a free-for-all,” McCarley said.

The committee report being considered by the council is what remains of the mayor’s proposal after it had been amended during a series of hearings held by the Finance and Revenue Committee. Acceptance of the committee report would show a basic agreement and understanding among council members on continuing priorities and new initiatives.

But even then, council members have scores of pet projects and pork-barrel programs for their districts and constituents that they will try to splice into the process.

“Some years, it can come close to $100 million--it’s an orgy,” said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who as chairman of the Finance and Revenue Committee is the council’s quarterback on the budget.

Most of these motions will seek increased or new spending for various cultural programs, such as a few thousand dollars for concerts, commencements and civic acts.

But others will seek money for city departments whose representatives were unable to persuade the mayor of their need for more staffing, equipment or travel budgets.

“Different departments want this or that, that the mayor cut out,” Ferraro said. “So then they go to their favorite councilman.” In the last budget, for instance, Ferraro sought and received an additional $25,000 for new equipment at the Griffith Observatory.

Placating Constituents

Many of the anticipated requests will be duplicative and combined, council members predicted. Others will be never be signed. Some, one council member said, will be introduced just to placate constituents, and be allowed to die quietly.

“You can always say, ‘Well, I introduced it,’ ” when fielding a complaint from a voter, the council member said.

Still, millions of dollars will be appropriated before the process is completed later this week and an equal number of dollars will have to be cut to balance the budget.

None of the cuts ordered Monday will reduce current levels of city staffing or services because they were simply reductions in new money that Bradley had proposed spending. Because of a robust economy, the city is anticipating about $308 million in increased revenues in the coming fiscal year.

Most of the changes in the budget proposed by Bradley had to do with staffing of city agencies. The mayor recommended adding about 1,000 civilian employees to the payroll, but just about every department--from Animal Control to the Human Relations Commission--suffered the budget knife on Monday.