Riordan’s Budget Expands Services, Adds 450 Police : Spending: Taxes would not be raised, and harbor, airport and DWP would be tapped for revenue. Sweeping reorganization would consolidate departments.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan presented a budget Wednesday that would substantially expand policing and other services without raising taxes, while launching the most striking reorganization of the city’s bureaucracy in recent memory.

Nearly 10 months after he was swept into office by an electorate wearied by crime and recession, Riordan’s first annual financial plan uncovers enough new sources of money to continue building toward his central campaign pledge of adding 3,000 officers to the Police Department.

The $4.3-billion municipal budget, presented in a formal address to the City Council, proposes the first substantial increases in municipal services since Los Angeles skidded into economic hard times in 1990.

“Together, we will create a safer Los Angeles and make Los Angeles friendly for business,” Riordan said at the conclusion of a 14-minute speech. “Together, we will create a leaner, more efficient government and get our own house in order.”

In the fiscal year beginning July 1, the mayor said he would like to:

* Increase the number of police on duty by about 20%. About 450 officers would be added to the Los Angeles Police Department, which will number about 7,737 by the time the budget is enacted. The equivalent of 1,072 more officers would hit the streets by expanding overtime payments and moving desk officers into patrols.

* Double the repaving of the city’s streets, from 100 miles a year to 200 miles. More substantial road repairs would also increase significantly.

* Eliminate the full-time board that oversees the city’s public works projects in favor of a single administrator and consolidate nine different departments into two new super-agencies.

* Remove a 7.5% surcharge on business taxes that was imposed two years ago.

* Halt three years of staff reductions at parks and libraries so that service can be maintained at current levels for at least another year.

* More than double the city’s modest expenditures to wipe out graffiti and provide seed money for a public relations campaign to polish the city’s image.

The alluring prospect of more police and other programs without tax increases won the mayor’s plan immediate praise from most of the City Council, which will begin hearings on the plan next month and must approve or reject its recommendations by June 1.

“He has pulled off something I didn’t think he could pull off,” said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, chair of the council’s Budget and Finance Committee. “The guts of this thing are sound and compelling, although there may be some questions around the periphery.”

Councilman Richard Alarcon called the budget very innovative, but said he will press the mayor on, among other things, the need to eliminate the full-time Board of Public Works. Councilman Nate Holden also said he will back most of the package, but will ask that the Department of Aging not be consolidated with other social service agencies.

But Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg questioned the underlying assumption that the police force should be expanded at the expense of other city programs. “I don’t think we should be putting everything in one basket,” she said. “We should be doing things to find jobs and provide programs for young people.”

Many in the city privately had doubted that the businessman-turned-mayor could finance such an ambitious agenda. To pay for the initiatives, Riordan proposes an array of measures.

He expects to raise $75 million from the Department of Water and Power by selling some of its assets, such as fuel and land. He would reduce by $17 million contributions to a pension system that serves half of the city’s 44,000 employees. He plans to continue a freeze on hiring in most city departments. In an accounting maneuver, he would take $20 million from the harbor and $13 million from the airport by shuffling expenses into their accounts. And he would raise another $28 million by using debt instead of cash to maintain landfills and to pay the city’s share of the Metro Rail subway construction.

Set aside, for the time being, are more dramatic and potentially divisive plans to turn trash collection and many other municipal operations over to private firms and to sell or lease Los Angeles International Airport.

But Riordan said he will go ahead with a more modest plan to test privatization--by asking for bids from firms to issue parking tickets on the city’s Westside. A private firm will be able to generate an additional $9 million a year by issuing more tickets than city workers, who are often redirected into traffic enforcement and other duties, said one Administration official.

With privatization largely on the back burner, the budget debate is likely to focus on three areas: Are the efficiencies gained in consolidating city departments worth the potential loss of identity and effectiveness of those departments? Can the expanded police force and other new programs be sustained, once one-time budget fixes, like the sale of DWP assets, have been exhausted? And will airlines object, or even go to court, to block the use of airport revenues to pay for city programs?

Women’s groups are expected to mobilize in opposition to a plan that lumps the Commission on the Status of Women into a new Community Services Department, along with all or part of what are now five discrete departments. An industry representative has said airlines will “pursue all avenues available” to prevent Riordan from charging city expenses to airport accounts. Environmental groups, including Heal the Bay, have already written City Council members to protest the proposed disbandment of the Board of Public Works, which they said is responsible for reducing sewage pollutants dumped into the ocean. And, just four years after the creation of a city Housing Department was hailed as the solution to the city’s affordable-housing crunch, a coalition of nonprofit organizations will be fighting to preserve the agency’s independence.

Riordan’s Administration has prepared responses for each interest group that might raise objections, but the central defense of his plan will be the need to improve public safety.

“A safer city is the best welcome mat we can put out for new jobs and a stronger economy,” Riordan said in his council address.

In drawing the new budget, Riordan had to contend with a $228-million deficit caused mainly by reduced tax revenues, and find $83.4 million to continue his police expansion known as “Project Safety Los Angeles.”

Riordan said the combination of new hiring, overtime payments and reorganization outlined in his budget will take the Police Department one-third of the way through the expansion he promised last fall.

That plan would add 2,855 officers to the department over five years, which is slightly less ambitious than his campaign pledge of 3,000 new officers over four years.

Even reaching the lower goal will be problematic because of the high number of officers retiring or quitting and the difficulty in training masses of new recruits. Riordan’s plan had anticipated, for example, that the force would be at 7,951 officers by July 1, but it will actually be 214 officers short of that.

The mayor’s call for reasonable pay raises for police and firefighters drew his first applause from the crowd in the council chambers. He has set aside $25 million for employee raises, which would be enough to give public safety employees about 2.5% more in the coming year.

The streets the police are patrolling should also be smoother under Riordan’s plan.

By shifting $30 million in funds usually reserved for shuttle buses and other transit programs to street repairs, Riordan proposes doubling resurfacing to the 200 miles a year recommended by the city’s Bureau of Street Maintenance. Riordan said the transfer of the money to street repairs will not harm any existing transit programs.

Much of the city’s 6,500-mile street system has become badly rutted because of deferred maintenance. An aide said the mayor wants to spend so much on road repairs because “it’s a part of improving the quality of life in the city” and money was available in the transit fund.

In other program initiatives, Riordan would:

* Double to $2 million the funding for Operation Clean Sweep, an anti-graffiti program that hires community organizations to paint and scrub out urban scrawl. A related program would increase the number of welfare recipients cleaning graffiti, sweeping alleys and pulling weeds.

* Double to $250,000 the funding for the Human Relations Commission, to increase classes and mediation sessions to help reduce religious, racial and cultural disputes.

* Give $2 million in seed money to the New Los Angeles Marketing Partnership, a fledgling coalition of government, business and tourism organizations that hopes to improve the region’s image. Another $2 million would be spent on business retention and promotions.

Riordan’s most controversial proposals are likely to be his initiatives that streamline city operations.

He would form a new Citywide Development Agency--combining the current Community Redevelopment Agency, Housing Department and parts of the Community Development Department. The move will allow for a more focused, comprehensive strategy to promote development and business retention, Riordan argued.

The second consolidation would lump together a half dozen small operations into a Community Services Department. The Department would combine the Commission on the Status of Women, the Human Relations Commission, the Department of Aging, the Department of Social Services, the city’s Child Care Coordinator and the remainder of the Community Development Department.

Finally, Riordan would eliminate the five-member Board of Public Works that oversees the operation of sewers, streets and refuse collection. The mayor said a single department head can be held more accountable than five appointees.

Although he spent much of his first 10 months in office searching for money to pay for such improvements, Riordan made only passing reference to how he found the money to fill the budget deficit and pay for new programs.

More than a quarter of the money will come from the semi-independent harbor, airport and water and power departments. For the first time, for instance, the mayor proposes charging the cost of operating an LAPD substation at LAX to the airport fund. And a host of road repairs in the harbor area that normally would have come out of general tax revenues will now be charged to the Harbor Department, which is supported by rents and fees paid by shipping firms.

In the corporate-speak that now imbues the mayor’s office, staffers refer to the departments as “profit centers” that should return adequate dividends to “the shareholders.”

Airlines have objected to such budgeting maneuvers, saying that fees they pay should be used strictly for aviation-related expenses at LAX. And harbor-area Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr. said Wednesday that he will be checking closely to see that his district gets service improvements equivalent to the funds being removed from port activities. “If we are going to send $20 million Downtown, we want to see those better roads and increase in police,” Svorinich said.

* POTENTIAL OBSTACLES: Attempts to revamp bureaucracy will face opposition. B1

Financial Plan for Los Angeles

Mayor Richard Riordan presented his proposed 1994-95 budget to the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday. Key proposals in the $4.3-billion plan include:

POLICE: $83.4 million to hire new officers and provide supplemental overtime for existing officers. A net increase of 450 new officers is expected.

STREETS: $30 million to double the number of streets resurfaced and increase street reconstruction projects.

REORGANIZATION: $13.8 million to be saved by eliminating 196 jobs already vacant and another 175 jobs through attrition. An additional $2.3 million will be saved by consolidating several departments into a new Community Services Department and disbanding the Board of Public Works.

Source: Mayor’s office

Dividing the Dollar

Here is a look at how each dollar in Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan’s proposed $4.3-billion budget for 1994-95 would be spent:

34.9 cents: Community safety (police, fire and public assistance)

30.4 cents: Home and community environment (includes collection and disposal of sewage and solid waste, planning and building code enforcement)

11.7 cents: Transportation (streets and highways, traffic control)

10.9 cents: Human resources, economic assistance and development

7.5 cents: General administration and support

4.6 cents: Culture, education and recreation

Increasing the Force

How the $83.4 million proposed for police breaks down:

$53.9 million for supplemental overtime and “buying back” days off. Will provide the annual equivalent of 832 officers.

$22.1 million to hire 780 officers. After attrition, a net increase of 450 officers is expected.

$6.8 million to hire 240 civilians for technical, administrative and clerical jobs. This will allow a similar number of officers to return to field duty.

$ 0.6 million in additional overtime for civilian employees.

Source: Mayor’s office