Hahn Budget Would Boost LAPD Slightly

Mayor James K. Hahn said Friday that he hopes to expand the Los Angeles Police Department by 30 officers next year as part of the proposed budget he will unveil next week.

But to pay for that modest growth and other priorities in a bleak fiscal year, the mayor will urge elimination of 300 positions in other departments, which would include some layoffs.

Other bitter medicine in the mayor’s proposal includes increasing fees, consolidating departments and virtually eliminating some services, such as bookmobiles and the popular DARE anti-drug program.

All that belt-tightening and penny-pinching would boost the police force to 9,241 officers, well below the goal Hahn set last year for expansion and 600 officers short of the peak strength of the LAPD six years ago.

“In this difficult budget year, we lack the resources to hire hundreds more police officers, but we are looking for creative ways to put additional officers into our communities,” Hahn said in front of the Hollenbeck Police Station in Boyle Heights.

A recent decision by the state to take a bigger portion of property taxes, along with rising salary and overtime costs, has helped create a hole in next year’s budget that was estimated recently at $250 million. Hahn said Friday that a combination of cuts, fee increases and the transfer of $130 million in reserve funds built up this year through a hiring freeze could help stem the tide of red ink.

In total, the mayor’s budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 will be $5.3 billion, up 3.8% from this year’s spending plan.

The mayor won’t release the budget until Tuesday, but to build support in advance he has been crisscrossing the city this week, making announcements about services that would improve or expand under his plan.

On Monday, Hahn was at a South Los Angeles elementary school, touting expanded after-school programs. Tuesday found him in Hollywood, trumpeting an $11-million increase in allocations for the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

On Wednesday he visited the site of a future library in the Fairfax district, where he promised to keep libraries operating at current hours while using bond money to open three more branches. Then Thursday he drove to West Los Angeles and vowed to double street repairs.

The week of previews emphasizes that the mayor’s office is taking a different approach to the city’s budget this year -- and hoping to avoid the drubbing Hahn took last year when the council rejected his plan to expand the LAPD by 320 officers.

To build consensus for his spending proposal, Hahn’s budget team met with neighborhood council representatives and City Council members early and often, seeking their input on essential services.

Officials also took what Deputy Mayor Doane Liu called a revolutionary approach to handing out money. “We don’t fund departments anymore,” Liu said. “We’re funding services. The services that matter to people are getting funding.”

But that means the mayor is also proposing cuts, and in some cases has talked of consolidating or eliminating departments.

On Friday, Hahn gave a preview of some cuts, including a reduction in services provided by the Cultural Affairs Department. And some fees would go up. It would cost more to get a building permit or to go to the zoo.

“Some areas will have bigger cuts, so we can focus on our priorities,” Hahn said. “I believe that adding more police officers is essential to reaching our goal of making Los Angeles the safest big city in America.”

To show that he is sharing the pain, Hahn plans to cut his own office budget and that of the city attorney by 10%. City Controller Laura Chick would take a 9% cut in her budget.

Although Hahn refused to provide more details of cuts Friday, council members and other city officials who have been briefed said other cost-saving measures could include eliminating the 14-year-old Environmental Affairs Department, with many of its services absorbed by the city Bureau of Sanitation.

That plan has drawn fire from environmental advocates, who vow to pressure the council to reinstate the department.

“You risk losing environmental priorities,” said Martin Schlageter, Coalition for Clean Air energy program director.

Some council members say they expect a vigorous budget debate. After the mayor presents his plan, the council will hold weeks of hearings on it and can make changes before approving a final package in late May.

“With last year’s experience, I’m going to reserve any judgment until Tuesday, when we actually see the budget,” said council President Alex Padilla. “I’d love to be optimistic that it will go much better and smoother than it did last year, but ... we’ll wait and see.”

Several observers predict some tension this year because the chairman of the council’s Budget and Finance Committee is Councilman Bernard C. Parks, who recently announced that he was exploring a bid to unseat the mayor in the election next year.

Hahn is “going to have a hard time,” said Larry Berg, retired director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC. “It’s going to be mayoral politics right into the budget process.”

Parks, police chief until Hahn refused to back him for a second term two years ago, has said he does not intend to politicize the budget process.

But the former chief has also suggested that he is expecting some differences of opinion between the mayor and the council over how many city services must be sacrificed to fund more police officers. “Nobody disagrees with having the safest big city in America,” Parks said. “But at what costs?”

Union officials are also vowing to fight any proposal that would furlough people from their jobs. “There’s not enough people doing the work now,” said Julie Butcher, president of the city’s largest employee union.

Still, several council members said they hoped to avoid the fireworks of last year’s battle, which included Police Chief William J. Bratton and the mayor taking to the airwaves to accuse the council of not caring about public safety because they had shelved Hahn’s plan to expand the police force by 320 officers.

This year, in a show of unity, three council members appeared Friday with Hahn to say that despite misgivings about some cuts, they supported his decision to make police services the top priority, especially given this year’s surge in violent crime.

“I know it’s going to be controversial,” Councilman Dennis Zine said of the budget. But “clearly we need more officers on the streets of Los Angeles.”

Speaking of the limited resources provided in the new budget, Bratton said: “It’s challenging and frustrating both at the same time. Fortunately, though, we have a department whose whole history is about doing more with less. And once again we are asking it to do even more with even less.”

Hahn said a reorganization of the LAPD would put even more officers on the street.

By merging some units and transferring officers from administrative jobs, Bratton would be able to assign 52 additional officers, including four detectives, to crime-fighting work.

Those being shifted would include most of the 14 in the DARE program, which means officers would no longer be assigned to go to classrooms to talk to schoolchildren about resisting the lures of drugs, officials said.

In addition, other officers working desk jobs would be asked to spend one day a month on the street, adding the equivalent of 25 officers on patrol on days when there is traditionally a higher crime rate.