L.A. grapples with its fiscal future

Los Angeles began February with revenues falling drastically short of projections, a $212-million budget gap that must be closed by June 30 and the prospect of a budget hole in the coming fiscal year of $484 million. It begins March the same way. But as this page noted a month ago, the City Council’s appearance of inaction can be deceiving. The council voted to put off job cuts while it began a 30-day period of its own unique and frequently irritating brand of political theater, speechifying and group therapy, allowing the 15 members to at last confront fiscal reality and take necessary steps to prevent immediate insolvency. The monstrous gaps remain, but the council has begun paring the payroll by 4,000 positions and the city budget by more than $300 million.

Members were spurred a bit by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who acknowledged his own past failings in fiscal stewardship but made clear that the city has little choice but to cut its workforce costs. The mayor was perhaps more polite than he needed to be when he called on council members to lend -- lend, mind you -- the city the cash they hold in special accounts that fund projects in their districts, in order to shore up a reserve that they will come perilously close to depleting by the end of the budget year, less than four months from now. Council members so far have agreed to turn over only $12 million, although they have, and the city needs, millions more.

But while the mayor and council focus on filling the city’s budget holes, they have done little to demonstrate that their short-term steps are also the right ones for the city’s long-term needs. Neither the mayor nor the council has articulated a new vision of a retooled city government. Without such a vision, how can they rationally choose which positions, programs and departments to cut? It’s as though they are waiting to see which workers and resources they will have left before deciding what kind of city government to provide. That’s a backward, shortsighted approach that sends the city into a downward spiral.

Will there be enough city planners and building inspectors on hand during the recovery, or will developers skip over Los Angeles for cities that have their permitting acts together? Will there be recreation personnel to staff parks, or will city parkland be turned over to gangs and the homeless? Will streets go unrepaired and trash uncollected? City leaders owe Los Angeles a rational statement about what the city government should be expected to do, how it plans to do it -- and whether the proposed layoffs are in line with that plan.