Riordan Releases $4-Billion Budget

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan on Friday proposed a 1996-97 city budget that strongly reflects his own priorities by adding to police and other high-profile services while wiping out nearly 1,100 jobs he says won’t be missed.

But the $4-billion spending proposal, which counts on disputed money from the harbor and airport to help avoid a deficit, seems certain to put the fiscally conservative mayor on a collision course with the liberal City Council, especially over the job cuts.

Employee groups and opponents of the administration’s efforts to tap harbor and airport funds already are mounting campaigns against the proposals. But the mayor, up for reelection next year, said he is following a clear mandate from voters.

“It reflects community priorities and my priorities as mayor . . . investments in public safety, basic neighborhood services and no tax increases,” Riordan said in formally delivering his budget to the City Council. The City Charter gives the council, scheduled to begin a detailed review of the document later this month, most of the final say on the annual spending plans devised by the chief executive.

And if early council reaction is any indication, Riordan is in for a nasty fight, partly because of ideological differences and partly because of a widespread feeling among lawmakers that the mayor has left the dirty work to them.

Budget Committee Chairman Richard Alatorre, Riordan’s strongest council ally, called the budget “interesting” and “ambitious” but chided the mayor for not laying out a specific enough plan on how the expenditures and revenue numbers should match.

Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg said the mayor set himself up as Santa Claus, bestowing gifts of new police officers, and is trying to force council members to be the ones to holler “Bah, humbug” should they decide the city is unlikely to be able to pay for those gifts. A council member who asked not to be named called it “a ‘screw-you’ budget” that will appeal to voters but that is unrealistic and potentially harmful.

Council President John Ferraro was more guarded in his preliminary assessment, noting that the mayor had chosen to emphasize services the public cares about and limit his proposed cuts to ones “the public would not really notice.”

“It’s the council’s job now to subject the mayor’s proposal to a careful, critical review. . . . We have to take a close look at the revenue items. . . . We’ll have to see how it all plays out,” Ferraro said.

The added services--such as tree trimming, street repairs, libraries--are the kinds of things readily seen and appreciated by residents. The jobs on the chopping block--like testers of electrical equipment, elevator inspectors and managers in the vast bureaucracy of the Department of Public Works--are less likely to stir concerns from constituents. Nonetheless, critics of the Riordan budget say most of these jobs are important and that their elimination ultimately will be felt in countless subtle ways.

Despite lopping off the 1,000-plus jobs, the budget actually adds to the work force, bringing it to just over 33,000. It proposes hiring an additional 1,200 police officers (which budget writers estimate will amount to a net gain of 700 officers because of attrition) and some new positions in other areas.

Here are the key features:

* Adding $57 million to the Police Department, including some one-time federal grants to hire more officers, make improvements to the poorly equipped crime lab, provide training and trouble-shooting for time-saving computers and other technology and increase the number of training officers and those who supervise rookies in the field.

Critics have said that in Riordan’s rush to expand the LAPD by nearly 3,000 officers, training and other quality controls have been shortchanged.

In addition, the budget calls for new police cars, improvements in the troubled 911 emergency communications system and other equipment, bringing the total “added investment” in the LAPD to $83 million, according to Riordan’s budget director, Christopher O’Donnell.

* Adding $5.5 million to the Fire Department and giving the fire chief “added flexibility” by allowing him to keep his staff assistants, highly experienced firefighters whom Riordan last year dismissed as “high-paid chauffeurs.” In return, department brass will be expected to save $11 million in productivity improvements, some of which already have been identified, O’Donnell said.

* Expanding “neighborhood services,” including fixing potholes within 24 hours; trimming more trees--80,000 in the coming year, a 72% increase; repaving more than 300 miles of city streets; and adding five new or renovated branch libraries while expanding 11 others. Additionally, the budget calls for expansion of the recently formed Commission for Children, Youth and Families and more money to clean up graffiti, scour alleys plagued with illegal dumping and demolish abandoned buildings. Parks and recreation services also would be added.

* Eliminating services the mayor considers outside the city’s main role, including closing electrical and other test laboratories, turning elevator inspections over to the state and getting rid of six helicopters used by the Department of Water and Power. About 57 jobs in this area, mostly engineering or technical positions, would be eliminated altogether. Riordan said the services can be obtained elsewhere.

* Cutting 117 management positions, with the largest number coming from the Bureau of Engineering, part of a proposed overhaul of the sprawling Department of Public Works. Other management cuts would affect the library system and Department of Building and Safety. The rest of the hundreds of positions suggested for elimination were scattered across various departments.

* Implementing several measures to improve efficiency, including risk management procedures, further workers’ compensation reforms and “charging back” to individual departments’ budgets the cost incurred from liability claim payouts.

* Adding revenues by increasing fines for parking tickets (from $20 to $25), charging waste water systems a franchise fee and writing more parking tickets and collecting more delinquent building permit fees.

The budget plan closes a $240-million deficit without raising taxes and begins addressing a longtime imbalance between costs and revenues, in part by hoping the federal government will pick up more of the tab for the Public Safety Plan to bolster the Police Department.

Of the 1,070 jobs on the chopping block, most are vacant but 360 are filled. Riordan said he hopes layoffs can be avoided through transfers and voluntary buyouts.

“This budget offers the best solutions to our city’s fiscal shortcomings and provides the best programs and initiatives to ensure continued growth in our business community and improved services for our taxpayers,” Riordan said.

But others said it is unrealistic. “Another case of smoke and mirrors” is how another budget committee member, Councilwoman Rita Walters, put it.

“If they can increase the fees or traffic tickets, if they can get this money off the airport they’ve been after for years,” Walters said with a sigh. “Gosh, give me a break. You can’t pay salaries with that kind of system.”

The mayor’s office said its revenue estimates are generally conservative but acknowledged they have included sources of money from the Harbor and Airport departments that are anything but certain. The airline industry is campaigning hard to thwart city plans to help itself to a share of Los Angeles International Airport profits--$30-million worth in the coming year--while the state has sued over city efforts to increase its bills for services to the Harbor Department.

Riordan nonetheless insisted the city taxpayers are entitled to “some return on their multibillion-dollar investments” and for providing airport and harbor facilities for the rest of the world to use. He said that if those sources of funds fall through, increases in other areas, including business growth, will cover the difference.

Employee groups, which have worked with the administration to identify ways to make government more efficient, were furious.

Julie Butcher, representing the Coalition of City Unions of 20,000 workers, said the administration had not been above-board in discussing how many job cuts were on the table.

“The decisions were made behind closed doors, and that is not how things are done in a democracy,” Butcher said.

* POWER STRUGGLE

L.A. city attorney demands that Mayor Riordan fire a top aide over leak of confidential documents. B1