Riordan to Propose Elimination of 58 Jobs in City Budget

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan today will propose eliminating 58 jobs, mostly technical positions in the Department of Building and Safety that he considers superfluous, Riordan’s top fiscal policy aide said.

The plan to abolish the services, which include certifying new building materials, testing electrical products and inspecting elevators, is contained in the mayor’s 1996-97 budget proposal, which he will turn over to the City Council this morning. Michael Keeley, the mayor’s chief operating officer, said this is what Riordan referred to earlier this week when, during his annual State of the City address, the mayor said he wanted the city to stop providing “services it has no business being involved in.”

The statement caused a stir at City Hall, where speculation has been mounting for weeks about how the business-oriented mayor, who is up for reelection next spring, will seek to erase a large deficit while expanding the Police Department and adding other services without raising taxes. And it strengthened a growing feeling that this year’s budget deliberations could get nasty and protracted.

Abolishing the 58 positions would save only about $3 million in the coming fiscal year, Keeley acknowledged. That amount is a tiny fraction of this year’s $3.9-billion city budget.

“This is a drop in the bucket,” Keeley said, but added that it represented a “very important first step” in getting the city out of nonessential services that can be obtained elsewhere with no loss of quality or increase in costs.

“We should be looking for more of these services,” Keeley said.

The services targeted for elimination are already provided by private agencies or the state, Keeley said.

Targeted for elimination are the Material Control and Materials Testing units (six jobs), the Electrical Test Laboratory (12 jobs), the New Product Division (five jobs) and the sections that inspect elevators and pressure vessels throughout the city (23). These inspections would be taken over by the state, which performs the services for every other municipality in California, Keeley said. Negotiations are under way to have the state hire inspectors whose city jobs would be lost, he said.

Other jobs--six clerical positions--would be lost with the transfer of the Water Conservation Unit to the Department of Water and Power. Additionally, the General Services Department would lose six slots if the city stops providing helicopters and pilots for DWP use.

Most of the jobs pay $40,000 to $70,000 a year, Building and Safety officials said.

As with last year’s job cuts, the city would try to avoid layoffs, either by transferring workers to other, vacant slots on the city payroll or by offering voluntary buyout packages, Keeley said.

Officials said the proposed cuts will not come as much of a surprise, given the discussions between the mayor’s office and the Building and Safety Department.

“If it is necessary to make cuts, on a priority basis, these are the ones that should go first” because there are others providing the same services, said Art Devine, the department’s executive officer.

That is not to say he would rule out a fight over the cuts. “Anything can happen,” he said. “At this point, it’s anybody’s guess” whether the jobs will be eliminated.

Already, however, there are signs that the coming year’s budget--which must pass muster with the City Council--may encounter some choppy waters.

City Councilman Richard Alatorre, head of the important Budget and Finance Committee and the mayor’s closest council ally, said this week that he is concerned about the tone of the budget proposal and feels it throws at the council’s feet the responsibility for the tough choices Riordan alluded to in his address.

“I realize it’s a difficult budget year. . . . I know there will have to be hard choices, but they have to be shared,” Alatorre said. “It should not have to be the council [alone] that makes the tough decisions.”

Alatorre would not elaborate. But sources close to the councilman said he believes some of the budget’s proposals have a take-it-or-leave-it tenor that could exacerbate Riordan’s already rocky relations with the council. That could not only make it harder for Alatorre to build consensus and muster the needed votes but could also expose the mayor to a harmful and unnecessary fight.

While Keeley and the mayor’s budget director, Christopher O’Donnell, have met with each council member at least once during the last few weeks, most said they have not seen the entire budget proposal.

“We’ve had general conversations. Sometimes they brought in papers but did not leave them with us,” said Councilman Mike Feuer, a member of the budget committee.

“I’m very interested in working with the mayor in a collaborative way,” he said, but the mayor’s budget has been shared “in dribs and drabs, so we don’t know where the process has led so far.”

The mayor’s office has kept most of its budget proposal under tight wraps but has released some parts of it to reporters, including particulars about the $57 million Riordan wants to add to the Police Department’s current $1.134-billion spending package. Aside from the 58 positions he proposes to cut, Riordan’s office would not divulge how the mayor plans to come up with the infusion of money for the LAPD.

On Thursday, Keeley and O’Donnell also said the budget would include a five-year general fund forecast aimed at helping the city address an ongoing deficit projected to reach $400 million by the turn of the century.