MEASURE A: TAX FOR MORE POLICE FAILING.Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer A sales tax sales tax, levy on the sale of goods or services, generally calculated as a percentage of the selling price, and sometimes called a purchase tax. It is usually collected in the form of an extra charge by the retailer, who remits the tax to the government. increase to hire more police, sheriff and law enforcement agencies A law enforcement agency (LEA) is a term used to describe any agency which enforces the law. This may be a local or state police, federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) or the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). throughout Los Angeles Los Angeles (lôs ăn`jələs, lŏs, ăn`jəlēz'), city (1990 pop. 3,485,398), seat of Los Angeles co., S Calif.; inc. 1850. County trailed Tuesday and appeared to be falling short of the two-thirds majority needed to pass. Measure A, championed by Sheriff Lee Baca and Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton to raise an estimated $560 million a year, was to pay for more police and deputies, upgrade their equipment and improve emergency services emergency services Emergency care '…services …necessary to prevent death or serious impairment of health and, because of the danger to life or health, require the use of the most accessible hospital available and equipped to furnish those services' to deal with terrorist threats. Baca said he was disappointed with the measure's apparent failure. ``If it doesn't pass, the problem of needing more cops in the county is not going to go away,'' Baca said. ``Public safety is job 1 of local government. The best crime prevention is to see many officers on the streets.'' Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich Michael Dennis Antonovich (born 1939 in Los Angeles, California) is a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors representing the Fifth District, which covers northern Los Angeles County, the Antelope, Santa Clarita, Pasadena, and parts of the San Fernando and San , who campaigned against the tax increase, said he planned to introduce a motion today at the Board of Supervisors meeting to direct the chief administrative officer A chief administrative officer (CAO) is responsible for administrative management of private, public or governmental corporations. The CAO is one of the highest ranking members of an organization, managing daily operations and usually reporting directly to the chief executive to report in two weeks with a plan to boost the sheriff's budget to hire more deputies. ``The county has the money. We just need a third vote (on the five-member Board of Supervisors) to accomplish that,'' Antonovich said. ``The good news is that (state) Proposition 1A is passing, and that will provide a stable source of funding for the sheriff to meet his needs,'' Antonovich added, referring to a state measure to prevent the state from raiding county and city governments' revenues. Measure A revenue would be shared equally between the city of Los Angeles
Baca spearheaded the $3 million campaign for Measure A, the Public Safety and Homeland Security Initiative, which was backed also by Los Angeles city officials including Mayor James Hahn and Bratton. The LAPD 1. LAPD - Link Access Procedure on the D channel. 2. LAPD - Los Angeles Police Department. said it would be able to hire 1,260 officers with the new revenue. The tax increase was opposed by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association helped sponsor Proposition 13, the property tax-cutting initiative in California in 1978 which slashed property taxes by fifty-seven percent and initiated a national tax revolt. It was founded by California republican Howard Jarvis. , former Democratic state Sen. Tom Hayden and Republican Antonovich, who said voters already have raised sales taxes for more police but government failed to make public safety a spending priority. The ballot initiative would boost the sales tax rate in the county from 8.25 percent to 8.75 percent - tying Alameda County for the highest in the state. Most counties charge 7.25 percent. For consumers, Measure A would boost the sales tax on a $200 purchase by $1, increasing it from $16.50 to $17.50. Baca said the additional cost to a typical consumer would be $6 a month. Although Baca, Bratton and other leaders of law enforcement agencies throughout the county pledged to use the funds to hire 5,000 more officers over the next few years, the language of the ballot measure itself does not require agencies to hire a specific number of cops. Baca promised to use $50.4 million a year to keep criminals behind bars and open several jails closed due to county budget shortfalls, bringing about the end of an early release program that since July 2002 has freed more than 63,000 inmates. The measure would provide up to $19.6 million annually for the district attorney and public defender public defender, governmental official who represents indigent persons accused of crime. U.S. Supreme Court decisions expanding the right to counsel to pretrial proceedings and holding that a person cannot be sentenced to even one day in jail unless a lawyer was offices to hire more lawyers to handle the expected increase in arrests and prosecutions. Troy Anderson, (213) 974-8985 troy.anderson(at)dailynews.com CAPTION(S): photo Photo: (color) BACA |
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