CRA Tells City to Expect Little Help With Budget Deficit

Los Angeles city officials, looking to the Community Redevelopment Agency for assistance in bridging a projected $550-million budget deficit, were told Monday not to expect much help.

Agency officials said that even a total dissolution of their operations would free up only $15.1 million for the city next year--a drop in an ocean-sized deficit.

However, Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, chairman of the Ad Hoc Budget Crisis Committee, said he does not accept the CRA figures. “There has been a lot of obfuscation in this debate,” Yaroslavsky said. “The redevelopment agency is in a desperate attempt to save itself.”

The CRA report was a surprise to committee members, who had hoped that the agency, with its $518-million annual budget, would help make up money the city is losing because of declining tax revenues and less support from the state.

The CRA reported, however, that nearly all of its budget is already earmarked to repay bonds, build low-cost housing or provide services such as day care. Other money is restricted by ordinance. For instance, special funds are used to build parking lots in Chinatown and to sponsor downtown cultural events, the report says.

Even the phaseout of all of the agency’s 17 projects around the city would free just $7.3 million to $15.1 million annually over the next five years, the report says. “Placing these funds in the city’s general fund would help the general fund a little but leave undone all the projects we do--community shopping centers, housing, child care,” said Diana Webb, chief deputy administrator of the CRA.

City Council members have discussed discontinuing some of the agency’s largest projects, including the Downtown Business District and Bunker Hill projects, when they reach previously determined spending ceilings.

The debate on how much money is available from the CRA is expected to continue next Monday before the committee.

The committee also heard that impediments still may exist to taking money from Los Angeles International Airport because of federal laws that prevent money generated at airports from being spent elsewhere.

Representatives of two companies interested in leasing LAX argued that the path for the city to take airport money was cleared by an executive order signed last year by President George Bush. But an official from the city attorney’s office said legislation probably is still required to permit spending of airport money for police, firefighting and other functions not linked to LAX.