Wanted: Ideas to Save $220 Million; Reward: Lunch With the Mayor
Friends, Angelenos, bureaucrats: Send me your ideas.
Thus came the clarion call from Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan on Thursday. Faced with a looming deficit of $220 million next year, Riordan’s budget team plastered City Hall with sunshine-yellow posters begging city employees to put on their thinking caps and turn over their most innovative, money-saving thoughts.
“Think outside the box,” the poster encourages, repeating the businessman-mayor’s mantra for creativity in government. “Take nothing as a given.”
With 48,000 city employees, Riordan’s staff needs either a couple of biggies--or for every single employee to come up with something that would save $4,583.33.
People who submit one of the top 25 ideas by March 8 will get to meet with the mayor by month’s end.
The city already has a suggestion rewards program, through which employees whose innovations are adopted earn 25% of the cost savings in the first year (up to $50,000). California state government has a similar program that pays employees 10% of the savings (one man recently received $109,000).
In the new contest, people who submit the top 25 money-savers get to meet with Riordan, and the No. 1 idea-maker gets to have lunch with him.
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