City Council Faces Tough Budget Choices

Fueled by chocolate and coffee, the Los Angeles City Council’s budget committee has spent the last two weeks analyzing Mayor James K. Hahn’s $5.3-billion spending plan and agonizing over proposed cuts.

But despite the rocky relations between the mayor and council in recent months, there has been little of the fiery acrimony that characterized last year’s budget process.

Then, the mayor and council engaged in a bitter and public four-week fight over whether the city could afford Hahn’s proposal to spend $30 million to hire 320 police officers. Ultimately, the council scrapped the mayor’s budget because members thought his financial projections were too rosy.

This year, the mayor and the council seem to share the same bleak assessment of the city’s finances: Expenses are running about $200 million more than revenue, and painful cuts are inevitable -- now and in years to come.

“Last year, the theme was, ‘Why is [the mayor] taking us down the road of living beyond our means?’ ” Councilman Jack Weiss said. “This year, the theme is, ‘The devil is in the details.’ ”

Though council members have not yet proposed wholesale changes to the mayor’s plan as they did last year, they are finding plenty of things to quibble about.

When the mayor unveiled his budget, he did so with a warning: Tough times call for tough choices. Hahn says his spending plan would maintain crucial city services such as street paving and affordable housing. He is also asking for a modest, 30-officer expansion of the Los Angeles Police Department.

His blueprint also calls for cutting $79 million out of the budget, which would include eliminating 300 positions and slashing such programs as park maintenance and the arts.

Several council members have expressed displeasure at some of the mayor’s proposals. Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa has questioned the $1.7 million in cuts to the Cultural Affairs Department and the steep reductions to several of the city’s commissions that deal with human services, including the Human Relations and Children, Youth and their Families commissions.

Councilman Eric Garcetti has led an effort to block Hahn’s plans to eliminate the city’s Environmental Affairs Department, which would have saved $1 million. Council members Tony Cardenas and Wendy Greuel have sharply questioned the mayor’s proposal to balance the budget by taking $5.8 million from a business tax trust fund.

And almost everyone has sighed heavily over the news that park bathrooms could get dirtier, and grassy fields could give way to weeds, because of proposed cuts to the city’s Parks and Recreation Department. If the local nude bar started breaking the rules, there might not be a code enforcement officer to crack down because the city’s Building and Safety Department could be forced to eliminate 93 positions.

Even criminals would feel the pinch: The mayor has proposed laying off the doctors who work in city jails and replacing them with nurses.

“All those who work for the city are going to work a little harder,” said Councilman Tom LaBonge.

Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski said she would like to find a way to preserve some things, such as park maintenance. But given the city’s tough finances, she said, it would be “very hard.”

“Last year, there were a lot of dramatic positions, but it was easier to find your way through,” she said. “This year, there are going to be very tough choices on money.”

The council has looked high and low to find places where the city may be spending money unwisely. Buried deep in the budget, for example, is a small but unusual expense: $230,000 for police officers to rent cars to tail cops accused of wrongdoing.

Normally, this would sail right under the radar. But this is not a normal year, and council members questioned whether it should be funded -- before ultimately concluding that if your average gang member can recognize an unmarked Crown Victoria, a renegade police officer intent on avoiding Internal Affairs officers probably can too.

Debate over Hahn’s third budget comes as the mayor prepares for what is shaping up to be a tough reelection campaign.

Councilman Bernard C. Parks, chairman of the council’s budget committee, recently launched an exploratory bid to unseat the mayor and has been traveling around the city saying Hahn is “not a leader.”

Emboldened by a contracting scandal that is swirling around Hahn’s commissioners, state Sen. Richard Alarcon and former Assembly Speaker Robert Hertzberg also are challenging the mayor for his job.

Some feared this would provide a tempting opportunity for Parks to make Hahn look bad by savaging his budget.

The councilman has questioned whether some of the mayor’s revenue projections were accurate and suggested that he might be counting on more than $20 million that may not materialize. And Parks and others have also worried that when the state finalized its budget, it might take more from Los Angeles than the $39 million currently planned for.

But on the whole, several council members said, Parks does not appear to be using his position to take potshots at the mayor.

“I think it is a credit to Bernard,” Councilman Greig Smith said. “He has looked at this from the point of view of the city.”

Others point out that, with so little money, there is little to fight about.

“These are minor issues,” said Smith. “There’s no big, huge fights like ... last year.”

Hahn said he was pleased with the tenor of the council’s discussions.

Last year, for example, council members grilled the mayor’s then-budget director, Crista Binder, after she refused to discuss financial projections that showed the city facing huge shortfalls in years to come if Hahn’s plans were adopted.

This year, council members have joked and laughed with the mayor’s new budget director, Doane Liu.

“I think the process has gone much more smoothly, obviously, than last year,” the mayor said. “I think that reflects the hard work we have done.”

Hahn made it a point to work closely with council members this year, meeting with them several times to discuss his ideas. He also has taken pains to include the city’s system of neighborhood councils in the budget process.

The mayor declined to comment on council members’ proposals to make changes to his plans.

“I’ll have to see what the council does,” he said. “I’m not going to comment on what-ifs.”

On Tuesday, the Budget Committee will get a report back from the city’s chief legislative analyst outlining some proposed changes to the mayor’s budget.

After the budget committee finishes debating the budget, it will go to the full council for a vote. The mayor then has five days to either sign off on their changes or veto them. If he vetoes, council members have five days to override him. The new fiscal year begins July 1.