Looming raises for L.A. County employees could cost $2 billion, CEO says
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Los Angeles County’s looming agreement with its biggest labor union is expected to cost a little more than $2 billion over three years — the latest hit to a budget besieged by financial woes.
The cost estimate, provided to The Times on Monday by the county chief executive office, will necessitate more belt-tightening for a government that’s running out of notches.
The deadly January wildfires are expected to cost the county $2 billion. The Trump administration has threatened cuts that would ravage the county’s public health budget. The L.A. County supervisors agreed this year to a historic $4 billion sex abuse settlement — the largest of its kind in U.S. history — and required most departments to make 3% cuts to help pay for it.
The cuts aren’t done, Chief Executive Fesia Davenport warned the supervisors Monday as she walked them through the latest version of the county’s sprawling $49-billion budget.
To pay for salary bumps and bonuses for county workers in the tentative labor agreement, the updated budget slashes $50.5 million, cutting funding for parks, swimming pools and violence prevention, among other programs. Soon, each department will need to make an additional 5.5% cut, said Davenport, whose office drafts the budget and leads labor negotiations.
“We are taking this extraordinary step because we simply have no alternative,” she said.
The settlement includes nearly 7,000 claims, most of which involve alleged abuse from the 1980s through the 2000s.
The supervisors unanimously approved the recommended budget Monday, which included an initial round of cuts to pay for some of the expected labor costs and the multibillion-dollar sex abuse settlement.
Despite their unanimous vote, the supervisors had little nice to say Monday about the plan.
“While the budget may look like it’s healthy, it’s a sick patient,” said Supervisor Hilda Solis.
As a result of the cuts, two probation offices are expected to shutter. County swimming pools will shut down earlier. Regional parks will now close two days a week.
“Like every other Angeleno, I’m mad too,” said Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who noted a petition she had seen on Nextdoor that morning protesting the two-day-a-week closure of Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area in her district.
The county announced last week that it had reached a tentative agreement with SEIU 721, which represents 55,000 county workers. The agreement, which still needs to be ratified by the union membership and the supervisors, includes a $5,000 bonus in the first year, followed by a 2% cost of living adjustment and $2,000 bonus in the second year and a 5% salary increase the third year.
The county is in negotiations with 16 smaller unions. The $2.1-billion price tag assumes that those unions will adopt similar salary increases and bonuses as SEIU 721.
To pay for the new labor costs, the chief executive office said the county will dip into its general fund for $778 million. The remaining $1.2 billion or so will come from federal and state funds meant for staffing costs.
David Green, the head of SEIU 721, said his members were “thrilled” with the tentative contract — the fruit of months of negotiations and a two-day strike this spring.
Last year, the city of Los Angeles agreed to contracts covering 33,000 union workers, many of whom would receive a pay increase of 24% over the next five years. The contracts, which the city estimated would add $3.5 billion in costs over five years, were a contributing factor in a massive budget shortfall that the City Council closed with layoffs and other spending cuts.
Bass, after signing the city budget, said Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson made a commitment to find the funds to add another 240 LAPD officers over the next year.
Green, who negotiated with both the city and county, said comparing the two was like “apples and oranges.”
“The economic climate has gotten worse in a lot of ways,” he said. “I think you felt a little bit of that in L.A. county bargaining.”
County supervisors appeared supportive of the agreement in Monday’s meeting, though quick to pan the overall financial picture.
“This is a budget I don’t like — I don’t think anyone does,” said Hahn.
But it could be worse, she noted.
“I know this is a budget ... that won’t put us in the hole,” she said.
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