Riordan Budget Plan Shifts Focus to Basic Services

Striking a conciliatory note for a City Council with which he tangled throughout his first term, newly reelected Los Angeles Mayor Richard J. Riordan on Friday proposed a $4-billion budget sprinkled with council members’ pet projects and dedicated to boosting basic services.

The spending blueprint is $50 million smaller than last year’s, and cuts 470 jobs, most of which are currently unfilled. It seeks no new taxes, though a $10-million gap remains because voters earlier this month rejected a citywide business surcharge.

After three years of funneling money into an unprecedented expansion of the Los Angeles Police Department, Riordan’s 1997-98 proposal shifts the focus to other quality-of-life services. He promises more trees trimmed, more streets swept and paved, three new shuttle bus lines, eight regional libraries open on Sundays, advisory boards for the city’s 127 parks and a $350,000 matching fund for neighborhood improvement projects.

“It’s a ho-hummer,” said Councilman Hal Bernson. “It’s a little of everything that everybody wants to hear. It’s schmaltzy.”

The budget also includes a bright outlook on the future that reflects Riordan’s attempts to rely less on one-time funds and thus shrink the structural deficit. Two years ago, Riordan’s five-year forecast projected a $400-million shortfall; now, the office predicts a small surplus in five years.

“It’s a tremendous change, because we’ve been able to reduce the expenditure base,” said mayoral budget director Chris O’Donnell.

The most ambitious programs the mayor suggests would be funded not by City Hall, but through two ballot measures he promises to support. One bond issue would provide up to $465 million for police and fire facilities, while another would raise about $150 million to build two new libraries and expand or renovate 28 existing branches.

Short-term investments by the general fund are much smaller: $1.3 million to revamp the LAPD’s much-criticized crime lab, $250,000 to train youth for multimedia jobs, $1.5 million for a new fire station near Panorama City, $500,000 to expand library hours.

In a move likely to help sell the document, Riordan has also included full funding for several items that council members proposed, including:

* $11.4 million for L.A. Bridges, a gang prevention program touted by Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas;

* $1.5 million for police communications, including establishing a nonemergency number as Mike Feuer has requested, and adding 44 operators for the beleaguered 911 system;

* $1 million for a team of 16 building inspectors to proactively inspect apartment buildings, something Laura Chick has lobbied for;

* $200,000 for four animal control officers to target packs of roaming dogs in Rita Walters’ downtown district;

* Funds to sweep an additional 600 miles of streets, as proposed last year by Richard Alarcon.

“I know we will continue working together to achieve these goals,” Riordan told council members after presenting a five-minute glimpse of his proposal Friday morning. “We will continue working together on a city that works for everyone.”

Many council members embraced the proposal warmly, noting that it appeared to respond to concerns they had raised during budget debates a year ago.

*

Facing a far smaller deficit--$101 million this year, compared to $240 million last time--the mayor’s office was able to balance the budget without tapping controversial sources, such as the airport, which made some lawmakers leery.

Instead, the shortfall was made up mainly through $30 million in savings from the pension system, $18 million in other operational efficiencies, $20 million transferred from special funds to general purposes, and $15 million from the city waste-water system to reimburse the general fund for past investments. Riordan also has added auditors to help boost the city’s business-tax collection.

A remaining question is how to make up for the $10 million lost when voters eliminated a business tax in April. Riordan suggests taxing utility companies that tear up streets, but that proposal was rejected by the council in last year’s budget deliberations.

“While there are issues regarding funding sources that we need to be [concerned about], there’s a lot in here that we can agree upon and I’d like to build upon that agreement,” said Feuer, vice chairman of the Budget Committee. “Today, it’s important to focus on the consensus of an agenda for the city.”

While Riordan has centered his political career on expanding the police force, this budget replaces his aggressive hiring plan with a broader vision of public safety that includes the fire, building and safety, and animal regulation departments. The budget adds $100 million to the LAPD, but two-thirds of that goes to a swelling payroll from previous commitments. The remainder will pay for 165 new officers, including 61 detectives and 44 sergeants; $2.7 million in facilities improvements; $3.1 million in technology improvements; and $10 million for civilian employees of the department and overtime, among other things.

The proposal also reflects a change in the mayor’s attitude, placing gang intervention programs and positive outlets for children such as parks and libraries more on par with crime suppression.

“This is a reaffirmation of what some of us have been saying public safety is all about: It’s not just more police officers,” said Richard Alatorre, head of the powerful Budget Committee. “It’s a good document. We’ll do the work to improve upon it. It’s a good beginning.”

*

Alatorre’s committee will have two weeks of daily public hearings to review the budget beginning April 28. The full council will then debate the proposal at meetings starting May 19, and must vote on it by June. The mayor then has five days to review it and veto items; a two-thirds majority of the council can override his veto.

The committee hearings and council meetings will be televised on the city’s public access channel. Officials said they would also put the budget documents online at https://cityweb.ci.la.ca.us/bgonline by next Friday. While some lawmakers were optimistic, others said it is too soon to tell what the budget really says.

The mayor’s office had kept the proposal a strict secret until the April 8 election. Lawmakers said that at briefings in recent days, their staffs received vague, general summary sheets devoid of numbers. Riordan himself spent only about five minutes presenting the plan to the City Council on Friday morning, offering broad themes rather than concrete details.

“He didn’t say anything about the budget,” said Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who sits on Alatorre’s committee. “So I don’t know what I think.”

Goldberg and Alarcon both said they plan to take a careful look at the 470 positions Riordan wants to eliminate. Only about 60 of those are currently filled, and the mayor vowed Friday the downsizing would come through attrition and transfers, not layoffs.

Since Riordan took office in 1993, the ranks of the city’s police and fire departments have swelled nearly 17%, from 14,139 employees to 16,506 in the proposal for next year. Meanwhile, the rest of the city’s work force has shrunk about 8%, from 18,118 employees in 1993-94 to a projected 16,630 in fiscal 1997-98.

Hardest-hit in the current proposal is the Department of Public Works, which would lose 145 engineering jobs and 73 positions in the sanitation bureau.

“The mayor’s committing to not lay off anybody, so that’s a good start. We’ll have to take a closer look,” said Alarcon, who heads the Public Works Committee. “How we move forward with expanded street sweeping and resurfacing with fewer people, I don’t know.”

With several of the mayor’s initiatives--including a new fire station, a new police station and several of the library renovations--focused in the San Fernando Valley, the budget also portends some cross-town battles among council members.

“I’m surprised that we continue to focus the projects where the children are not,” complained Councilman Mike Hernandez. “The mayor continues to cater to that population he believes votes. It’s not in the best interests of the entire city.”

Hernandez, who represents the poor, crowded neighborhoods east and northeast of downtown, said facilities such as fire stations and libraries should be allocated based on population, not geography.

Mayoral budget director O’Donnell said Panorama City would get the new fire station because it currently has the highest concentration of simultaneous emergencies. The library improvements, he said, are concentrated in the outlying areas of the Eastside, Westside and the San Fernando Valley because a bond measure in the late 1980s focused on the Central City facilities.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Budget Highlights

* Funds to trim 90,000 of the city’s 650,000 trees, compared to 20,000 in 1994.

* Funds to sweep 600 additional miles of streets.

* $500,000 to open eight branch libraries on Sundays, bringing seven-day service for the first time.

* $1.3 million for the LAPD crime lab, with the goal of having the facility accredited.

* $350,000 in matching funds for neighborhood improvement projects launched by local residents.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Staffing Levels

Since Mayor Richard Riordan took office in 1993, the city’s police and fire departments have grown nearly 17%, while the rest of the city’s work force has shrunk about 8%.

Source: Mayor’s office