LIVING BEYOND OUR MEANS: A CITY AT RISK : BUDGETS BALLOON AS L.A. DECLINES.Byline: Beth Barrett Daily News Staff Writer c1997 Los Angeles Daily News The Daily News of Los Angeles, also known as the Los Angeles Daily News, is the second largest circulating daily newspaper of Los Angeles, California. It is published by the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, which owns eight other Southern California newspapers The city of Los Angeles
City spending soared from $1 billion to $4 billion in the last 20 years. The work force grew by 12 percent to nearly 33,000. And city worker wage, benefit and pension packages were greatly sweetened sweet·en v. sweet·ened, sweet·en·ing, sweet·ens v.tr. 1. To make sweet or sweeter by adding sugar, honey, saccharin, or another sweet substance. 2. To make more pleasant or agreeable. . All of this happened despite a San Fernando San Fernando, city, Argentina San Fernando (săn fərnăn`dō), city (1991 pop. 144,761), Buenos Aires prov., E Argentina. It is a district administrative center in the Greater Buenos Aires area. Valley-led voter tax revolt A tax revolt is a political struggle to repeal, limit, or roll back a government-imposed tax. In the United States, it is often used to refer to a series of anti-tax state initiative campaigns. The first significant wave of these campaigns was during the 1930s. to hold down increases in property taxes and, presumably pre·sum·a·ble adj. That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. , the size and cost of government. A Daily News investigation shows that the situation gets even worse. Since the wave of reform that swept the city in the 1970s, many public services Public services is a term usually used to mean services provided by government to its citizens, either directly (through the public sector) or by financing private provision of services. were slashed and the basic infrastructure, such as sewers and streets, was neglected so badly it will cost billions to fix, the Daily News analysis of two decades of budget data found. City government reinvented itself all right - with steep reductions in service employees in many key areas and steep increases in administrators, analysts and clerks, a bureaucracy needed to keep the city from strangling in red tape generated by new federal, state and local regulations. The city's total debt soared from $201,055 in 1977 to $3.6 billion today, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. city controller records. That does not include more than $4 billion in Water and Power, Harbor, and Airports departmental revenue bond debt. The fastest growing debt was $1.2 billion racked up on the equivalent of a municipal credit card that costs taxpayers more than $200 million a year in payments alone. ``We've met the enemy and it is us,'' said Bill McCarley, who retired last month as general manager of the Department of Water and Power after a 32-year career at the top of the city's bureaucracy. ``It's a wonder anything gets done. Inefficiency has been built into our system,'' he said. Mayor Richard Riordan Richard J. Riordan (born May 1, 1930) is a Republican politician from California, U.S. who served as the California Secretary of Education from 2003–2005 and as Mayor of Los Angeles from 1993–2001. Riordan ran for Governor of California unsuccessfully in 2002. acknowledged that the city faces serious problems and has a long way to go to fix its worn infrastructure, to increase some services and to reform benefit and pension plans. ``We've made a fair amount of headway, but we have a million miles to go,'' Riordan said. What happened The roots of this crisis - and the public disaffection with City Hall - stretch back to a series of political events in the 1970s. First, newly legalized public employee unions mounted a massive campaign and persuaded a majority of voters to reject sweeping charter reform in 1971 - radical changes that would have given the mayor far more power over the bureaucracy and created elected neighborhood councils Neighborhood councils are governmental or non-governmental bodies composed of local people who handle neighborhood problems. They can be found in many cities throughout the world. . Two years later, a liberal political coalition led by Tom Bradley and backed by the unions won control of City Hall for the first time, reflecting demographic changes occurring in Los Angeles after 100 years of rule by a narrow clique (mathematics) clique - A maximal totally connected subgraph. Given a graph with nodes N, a clique C is a subset of N where every node in C is directly connected to every other node in C (i.e. C is totally connected), and C contains all such nodes (C is maximal). of businessmen. Then, in 1978, the tax revolt that began in the Valley led to passage of Proposition 13, the watershed statewide initiative that limited government's ability to raise revenue from taxes on property. Today, property taxes generated by the city do little more than pay for the pensions of its own employees. The potential property tax dollars lost after Proposition 13 were made up largely by dozens of new fees on residents and businesses to keep government going - and growing. These are the roots of the public discontent with City Hall that reached critical mass last year, triggering a political movement aimed at rewriting the city's charter along the lines rejected in 1971. The disgruntlement dis·grun·tle tr.v. dis·grun·tled, dis·grun·tling, dis·grun·tles To make discontented. [dis- + gruntle, to grumble (from Middle English gruntelen; see crystallized crys·tal·lize also crys·tal·ize v. crys·tal·lized also crys·tal·ized, crys·tal·liz·ing also crys·tal·iz·ing, crys·tal·liz·es also crys·tal·iz·es v.tr. 1. in the Valley in a move to win the right to vote to secede by eliminating the City Council's veto power. Serious trouble Over the past several months, the Daily News reviewed thousands of city records, annual reports, internal departmental memos, and internal and outside audits generated between 1977 and this year. That review focused on the core of government. It didn't include Water and Power, Harbor, and Airports, three semiautonomous sem·i·au·ton·o·mous adj. 1. Partially self-governing. 2. Having the powers of self-government within a larger organization or structure. sem operations outside the $4 billion budget, employing some 11,700 workers. The documents show a city of 3.48 million people that's in serious trouble on many fronts. Since 1977, the city's municipal budget grew by about 300 percent, almost double Los Angeles' 169 percent increase in inflation during that period. The price tag for police, fire, street maintenance and other direct services climbed from $757 million to $2.3 billion annually - or about 16 percent higher than inflation, financial records show. The labor force increased by 12 percent, and in the process underwent a fundamental redefinition. The number of bureaucrats and paper processors rose steeply - more than 1,200 administrators, clerks and analysts were added since 1977 - while the number of service providers, such as firefighters, librarians and custodians, declined. More than 500 ``management analyst'' positions were created - a title that most managers agree is a catch-all office job. Recent efforts to overcome deep cuts to the Los Angeles Police Department "LAPD" and "L.A.P.D." redirect here. For other uses, see LAPD (disambiguation).  This article or section is written like an . partially succeeded at a cost of $1.1 billion a year, adding
about 1,500 officers to pre-Proposition 13 levels.
The changing nature of the work force in many instances meant more and higher professional salaries, but the rank-and-file also received annual increases averaging about 4.4 percent (factoring in two years of wage freezes), which has kept all employees nearly even with inflation. The average civilian now makes $43,781 a year, according to City Administrative Office records. The average police and fire salary is $54,887. Benefits and pensions for many city employees outstripped inflation as unions increasingly became a powerful force with benefits, and job and pension security virtually unmatched in the private sector. For example, the city agreed in the early 1980s to tie employee medical benefits to the Kaiser HMO HMO health maintenance organization. HMO n. A corporation that is financed by insurance premiums and has member physicians and professional staff who provide curative and preventive medicine within certain financial, plan after unions complained the public insurance levels weren't high enough. Most city workers now get a maximum $472 per month health subsidy - police and firefighters get more. ``It represented a social breakthrough for the unions,'' said City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie. ``It was basically blue-collar workers who argued they shouldn't have to take their kids to county hospital. It was considered a significant social reform.'' Political changes The transformation of city government came amid historical political change with the passage in 1973 from a conservative model under Mayor Sam Yorty, where real power was held tightly in the hands of influential civic leaders, to a more liberal Mayor Tom Bradley. Bradley's coalition extended beyond downtown and Westside interests to minorities and others traditionally disenfranchised. But it failed to embrace the Valley to the degree Yorty's had, said Xandra Kayden, political scientist with the University of California The University of California has a combined student body of more than 191,000 students, over 1,340,000 living alumni, and a combined systemwide and campus endowment of just over $7.3 billion (8th largest in the United States). , Los Angeles' School of Public Policy and Social Research. At the same time, L.A. was faced with its most significant wave of immigration immigration, entrance of a person (an alien) into a new country for the purpose of establishing permanent residence. Motives for immigration, like those for migration generally, are often economic, although religious or political factors may be very important. in decades, a swelling constituency of poor people, plus the pollution of Santa Monica Bay Santa Monica Bay is an arm of the Pacific Ocean in southern California, United States. Its boundaries are slightly ambiguous, but it is generally considered to be the part of the Pacific within an imaginary line drawn between Point Dume , and the rapid expansion of the suburbs into and beyond the Valley. The city would spend more than a $1 billion to expand the Hyperion treatment plant in West Los Angeles
And it went $600 million into debt to expand the L.A. Convention Center, said Gerry Miller, chief of debt administration in the City Administrative Office. The city went another $600 million in debt to purchase police cars, firetrucks, computers and other equipment. But all of this wasn't enough. The city needed more money so it turned to the voters - hitting them with higher fees and service charges far more often than asking for higher taxes. CAPTION(S): 4 Photos, 2 Charts Photo: (1--color) no caption (Downtown Los Angeles Downtown Los Angeles is the central business district of Los Angeles, California, located close to the geographic center of the metropolitan area. The sprawling, multi-centered megacity is such that its downtown core is often considered just another district like Hollywood or Edna Trunnell/Daily News (2--color) Services don't match spending The number of firefighters has decreased by six, from 1,653 to 1,647 since 1977. (3--color) The number of librarians has decreased by six, from 351 to 345, since 1977. (4--color) The number of recreation directors has decreased by 37, from 271 to 254, since 1977. Chart: (1) CITY BUDGET Photo Illustration by Gregg Miller/Daily News (2) AUTHORIZED CITY STAFFING SINCE 1980 |
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