Delgadillo Seeks $7-Million Boost in Funding

Despite a tightening city budget and a request from the mayor to cut back on costs, City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo has requested about $7 million in additional funding for his office this year, including a nearly $1-million proposal this week to add 20 people to his staff.

Delgadillo is asking the City Council and Mayor James K. Hahn to approve a range of projects, including an effort to reduce workers’ compensation claims and an initiative that would put 15 prosecutors in neighborhoods around Los Angeles.

The city attorney defended his proposals as ones that will eventually save the city money and hold back the rising crime rate.

“I don’t know if we can afford not to do this,” he said in an interview Friday. “What would be the cost if we let [crime] fester? How many more police officers do we then have to pay for? How many more jails do we then have to build?”

But his requests come as city officials are warning of a growing budget shortfall. Late last month, City Administrative Officer Bill Fujioka predicted a $180-million budget gap this year because of a drop in tax revenue and unanticipated costs such as increased security since the terrorist attacks. Even with the city’s reserve fund, Los Angeles faces a deficit of $20.7 million.

Fujioka has recommended that city agencies cut their spending by 10%. Hahn has asked all city departments to freeze hiring and find ways to save money.

Delgadillo’s funding request would allow him to pay for a handful of initiatives and hire several dozen more people in the last half of the fiscal year. He also asked for more money to extend the new programs in the next budget year.

“I think if anybody asked for anything right now, it’s a bad time,” said Bill Koenig, assistant city administrative officer. “We’re faced with some significant financial problems.”

Tim McOsker, the mayor’s chief of staff, said this week that the city attorney needs to do a better job finding ways to cut costs in his office.

Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski also voiced concern about the spending during a meeting of the council’s Personnel Committee this week, and asked Delgadillo to better explain why his programs couldn’t get done with the staff on hand.

“If we give the city attorney more money, it has to be cut from some other agency,” she said in an interview Friday.

Delgadillo said his proposals will save the city money down the road by preventing liability, collecting on delinquent bills and prosecuting misdemeanor crimes before they mushroom into more costly violence.

“While it may seem penny wise to not spend a few hundred thousand dollars here, it’s really pound foolish to not try to save on the $200-plus million we spend every year on liability,” he said. “We need to do the best we can to save real money for the city, and part of that often requires some investment.”

He said he needs more staff members because the current 900 employees--about half of them lawyers--are all juggling enormous workloads in the office, which is responsible for prosecuting misdemeanor crime and representing the city in legal proceedings.

Delgadillo said he has already redeployed his staff to better manage the caseload.

“Mayor Hahn and many of his top staff were in the city attorney’s office for over 16 years,” said Ben Austin, Delgadillo’s communications director. “If they know where there’s fat to cut or where attorneys should be reshuffled because they’re being underutilized, we’d certainly like to hear about it.”

Offering a Group of Proposals

On Thursday, Delgadillo released a sheaf of proposals designed to recoup money for the city, including a plan to create a unit dedicated to reducing the city’s growing liability problem.

He also wants to hire five deputy city attorneys to reduce the workload of the 13 lawyers handling workers’ compensation claims, which will total about $113 million this year.

Delgadillo said the cost of the claims has been rising because attorneys juggle about 400 cases at once--far more than the 250 cases considered the industry standard--and are unable to prepare well to defend the city.

Each additional lawyer could save the city about $400,000 a year in workers’ compensation claims, he estimated.

He also wants to bring in more investigators to go after delinquent bill payers, who may owe the city as much as $200 million.

Earlier in the fall, Delgadillo proposed a neighborhood prosecutor program that would place 15 attorneys in various areas around the city to work with local police divisions and help residents tackle quality-of-life issues. The program would cost $2 million for the rest of the year.

But in a report to the Budget Committee, the city’s chief administrative officer called the proposal “not prudent” because of the revenue shortfall and recommended a drastically smaller version.

On Friday, McOsker--who worked for Hahn when the mayor was city attorney--said the program could be accomplished by using staffers who already work on gang and neighborhood issues.

“When he was city attorney, Mayor Hahn addressed these kinds of issues many times,” he said. “It just takes some creative management.”

Delgadillo has also asked the city for $3.5 million to replace antiquated computers and telephones in the office, and another $1.5 million to hire lawyers to handle litigation related to the Democratic National Convention, instead of paying outside firms to deal with the cases.

The city attorney compared his proposals to the creation of a business team in former Mayor Richard Riordan’s office in 1994 to deal with the economic fallout of the recession. Delgadillo headed that team, which cost several million dollars.

“If you want to take the sole strategy of just cutting, at that point you wouldn’t have done that,” he said. “But in the long run, that was a money maker for the city of Los Angeles.”