As Karen Bass finalizes budget, problems pile up

For Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, the list of questions continues to pile up.

She began a year, facing attacks on criticism of the city’s handling of the Palisade fire – her initial absence, relocating the outspoken fire chief, an unpredictable approach to the restoration of the Tsar.

But even without a devastating emergency, there are other signs that the city has entered a period of instability.

Even as housing costs rise, the construction of new houses is steadily amplifying. Movies and TV shows have been fleeing the city, hurting the entertainment industry already in crisis. President Trump’s trade war and immigration crackdown threaten two other pillars of the economy: international trade and tourism.

On Monday, the bass will assess the city’s overall health in her city address. On the same day, she will release a budget for 2025-26 and develop plans to solve another huge problem: the city’s financial crisis.

Faced with a shortage of nearly $1 billion, Bass has been weighing whether to lay off more than 1,500 urban workers (nearly 5% of the workforce), while also eliminating some open positions. Those behind-the-scenes deliberations have left many at the City Hall concerned about the potential impact on street repairs, street lighting, animal shelters and public safety programs.

City Councilman Ysabel Jurado, who took office in December, represented part of the East Side, said she was surprised by the scale of the challenge.

“I know our city services have been destroyed. I know we don’t have the healthiest budget. But I didn’t expect to consider thousands of layoffs,” she said.

As far as she is concerned, the bass is seeking optimism. In an interview with The Times, she highlighted the decline in street homelessness last year, the recent double-digit decline in homicides and shootings, and the speed of fire recovery she said was faster than following other large wildfires.

“There is no doubt that the city is facing challenges. The city has not declined. In fact, the city will be ready to welcome the world in more than a year,” Bass said.

Bass said she still wants to avoid employee layoffs, partly due to financial relief from Gavin Newsom and the state legislature (state legislature).

The mayor and several council members traveled to Sacramento last month to highlight the city’s severe financial situation. The mayor also talked to Newsom over the phone on Thursday about the crisis and the city’s need for assistance.

“I didn’t hear that he had no hope. I hung up hope.”

La Mayor Karen Bass spoke during a discussion with local leaders and residents to mark the 100 days since the start of La Wildfires at Will Rogers State Beach on Thursday.

(Carlin Stiehl /Los Angeles Times)

Beth publicly promotes the idea of ​​state financial relief, but her labor negotiators are working behind the scenes to convince the city’s employee unions to make financial benefits, such as delaying pay increases in the upcoming fiscal year. The growth has been backed by Beth over the past two years, with the budget expected to increase by about $250 million next year, which will take effect on July 1.

So far, the negotiations have not produced any results.

Last month, the board of directors of the Los Angeles Police Protection Alliance, representing nearly 8,800 military officers, opposed the delay in pay raises.

“You deserve all the compensation you get,” the union board said in a message to members, and the city must seek other areas to tighten the belt. ”

The International Alliance of Service Employees Local 721, representing more than 10,000 civilian workers, also has similar combative messages.

David Green, president of the Service Employees International Alliance Local 721 Service Employees, vowed to stop “touching foreign bureaucrats” from balancing the budget “on the back of urban workers.”

(al seib/time)

“We won’t allow untimely bureaucrats … to balance the budget on the back of urban workers,” said David Green, president of SEIU Local 721.

The prospect of deep cuts to urban services could complicate the bass campaign for reelection. Although she doesn’t have a well-funded challenger yet, she remains a regular criticism of real estate developer Rick Caruso, who has not competed for her in 2022.

Caruso, who has not revealed whether he will run for the second time, recently posted a video on social media highlighting the results of a new poll by the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs that found La County residents deeply frustrated by the high cost of living in the area.

The quality of life survey, including residents outside Los Angeles’ inability to participate in the city elections, showed that 49% of respondents had a bad view of the bass, which is quite large than the previous year.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass gathered at Santa Moncia College in January with residents of Pacific Palisades to learn about the logistics of removing debris.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Mindy Romero, a political sociologist who runs the USC’s Center for Inclusive Democracy, said Palisades’ firefighting and subsequent incidents eroded some of the goodwill that the mayor enjoyed two years before his tenure. Monday’s speech could allow Bass to reset the narrative, she said.

“The state of the city, the state of the country, the state of ITU – all these reports to the public are always to be informed, but they are also intended to set the tone.”

Democratic strategist Darry Sragow said the dissatisfaction among Los Angeles voters exceeded the recovery of wildfires.

Dissatisfaction stems from not only big problems, such as the loss of jobs in the entertainment industry, but also from daily work such as broken sidewalks, street streets and long 911 waiting times.

“In a sense, things are out of control,” he said.

Sragow believes that the city’s financial problems are largely self-caused. He expressed strong doubts about the unexpected gains he had arrived from Sacramento.

“I didn’t know that I would be sympathetic to saving a lot of state money in Los Angeles,” he said.

As her city speech progresses, Beth has begun to give up tips about her upcoming budget. She said she appeared in Pacific Palisades this week to mark the 100th day since the fire broke out, and she said she would not cut the fire department’s budget.

She told The Times that she also had no plans to cut any internal security, her signature initiative. “We still have to solve the problem of the city,” she said.

Some council members have begun to show concern about internal security costs, which relies heavily on hotel and motel rentals to temporarily move people out of the streets.

Mayor Karen Bass signed her first city budget in 2023, which provides $1.3 billion to address the homeless crisis. Now, some people are concerned about the cost of the city’s homeless plan.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

By early March, Inside Safe had moved over 4,000 homeless people, according to the public dashboard. Of this total, about 1,350 people eventually returned to the streets, while another 70 died.

As part of efforts to reduce homelessness, bass cuts the traditional tape festival for certain types of affordable housing projects. But housing construction is still on a downward trajectory.

Last year, the city’s Department of Building and Safety issued construction permits for 8,706 homes, a 43% drop from 2022, a year after Beth took office, according to a report by research firm Hilgard Analytics.

Chairman Mott Smith, chairman of the advocacy group focused on development issues, said the city failed to make meaningful progress to approve policies that would make homes easier. As a result, major investors and lenders fled the Los Angeles market, he said.

“Even the most stubborn boosters are questioning whether it makes sense to do business here,” Smith said.

Smith said the slowdown in housing development is depriving the city of property tax growth, which in turn reduces its ability to provide services.

Advocates in the entertainment industry have argued a similar case, saying the losses from local film and television shootings have had a ripple effect on the economy and weakened the city’s tax base.

Monica Levinson, a producer wing member, said entertainment workers in Los Angeles have less local productions and spend less in supermarkets, restaurants, dry cleaners and other businesses.

“People don’t put money into the economy,” Levinson said.

Last month, city administration official Matt Szabo told the city council that tax revenue is expected to be $315 million lower than previous forecasts due to slowing local economic activity.

Bass said she will continue to pay tax credits for the entertainment industry’s growth, while also looking for ways to cut costs for shooting locally. She said she wanted a faster licensing system when it comes to housing, but also believed that the problem was largely caused by market forces, such as higher interest rates.

Some at the City Hall are concerned that the budget crisis could lead to reduced repairs to urban infrastructure such as streets and sidewalks.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Meanwhile, the city is facing another financial problem: the increasing cost of paying, due to police misconduct, broken sidewalks and other types of lawsuits against the city.

Szabo recently told the council that the city will need an additional $100 million for legal spending (including settlements and jury prizes).

Bass has soared the downturn in economic activity and legal spending costs as the biggest drivers of urban budget dilemma. She regretted her decision to raise wages for police and other city employees, who said the move needs to be taken to prevent workers from leaving.

By City Council Member Bernard C.

Parks, a former LAPD chief who served on the council from 2003 to 2015, said he adopted a strategy early in his political career to spend taxpayer funds: “Never put anything in the budget.”

Now, every job cut approved by the city will reduce some type of city service, Parks said.

Times worker Noah Goldberg contributed to the report.