PROPOSITION 1 : Defeat Forces Officials to Look Elsewhere for Police Funds

With the failure of the second police tax measure in less than a year, city officials were faced Wednesday with where to find the money to hire additional officers they believe are needed to clamp down on crime.

Some city officials say they will continue the fight for a property tax increase to hire more police while others say hiring additional officers should be accomplished without burdening taxpayers.

Proposition 1, which would have raised property taxes to hire an additional 1,000 officers for the 7,690-officer Los Angeles Police Department, received a 59% majority in Tuesday’s election, short of the two-thirds majority required for adoption.

An identical measure on the November, 1992, ballot did slightly better, collecting 63%, but it came on the heels of last spring’s riots.

Supporters and opponents of the police tax surmised that it failed Tuesday partly because there was no organized campaign for it and because it was overshadowed by a crowded and noisy mayor’s race.

A solid majority of voters in nearly every area of the city backed the measure, but it did not get the 66% majority required under state law to adopt a property tax increase.

Proposition 1 had the strongest support--at least two-thirds--from African-American, Jewish, white-liberal and gay voters, as well as among so-called baby boomers and renters, according to a Times exit poll Tuesday of 2,816 voters across the city.

Those voters opposed to the measure included conservatives and independents, while Republicans, San Fernando Valley residents and homeowners were just about evenly split, according to the exit poll.

Seventy-one percent of the voters who backed mayoral candidate Michael Woo voted for the measure, while 57% of rival candidate Richard Riordan’s supporters voted against it, the exit poll showed. The measure’s poor showing among Riordan voters was no surprise because he has pledged to hire additional officers without raising taxes.

Indeed, City Councilman Marvin Braude, who led the effort to put the measure on the ballot, said the proposition may have failed because Riordan and other mayoral candidates, and even some council members, put forward plans to increase police staffing with no new taxes.

“They were out there bad-mouthing Prop. 1, saying there were other alternatives to supplying more police officers, and it was false, it was blatantly false,” he said.

Braude noted that crime took a dramatic drop during the massive police deployment at the end of the Rodney G. King federal civil rights trial. “It’s clear that more officers can reduce crime,” he said.

But Braude said he will not give up on a police tax. He said he will work to get the state law amended so that future police tax measures will not require a two-thirds majority.

“We simply have to change the state law,” he said. “If that means going against Prop. 13, so be it.”

City Council President John Ferraro, who signed an impassioned ballot argument for the measure, said the city must “be innovative and creative” in finding the money to hire the additional officers.

Ferraro said a proposal to lease Los Angeles International Airport to a private operator could generate funds to hire more police. A recently released city analysis scaled back the amount an LAX leasing plan would generate, from $130 million for the first year to $15 million.

Ferraro said he would like the city to put the airport lease out for bids to see how much private operators are willing to pay.