California cannot afford to save LA budget deficit from $ 1 billion

From And WaltersCalmness

This comment was originally published by CalmattersS Register about their ballots.

Since fate would have it, many destructive and deadly fires that went through the Los Angeles neighborhoods this year broke out as its city officials competed to activate a big gap in their budget.

At that time, the city’s deficit was estimated at $ 600 million, but this month was Updated to nearly $ 1 billion.

It would be tempting to attribute the greater shortage of fires and they are undoubtedly a factor. But the city controller Kenneth Mejja has repeatedly warned Mayor Karen Bass and the members of the City Council that the city is reviewing revenue, creating a growing structural deficit.

From his first warnings in 2023, Mejja has consistently warned city officials and the public about “financial problems, including less than expected revenue, increased pay payments and increased salaries and effects on the budget, departments and services of the city,” his office in a news message last week.

In a Letter to bass and other employeesMejja noted that the years of revenue review have drained a large part of the city’s reserves, leaving in bad faith to deal with such variable factors as fire -related effects on revenue and expenses and “radical policies of President Donald Trump on tariffs, federal costs and immigration.

“Given the current structural deficit of the city and the new challenges, there will be a temptation to make more optimistic assumptions in the upcoming budget,” Mejja says in her letter. “We certainly hope that the actual presentation will be more than our estimates. Given all the uncertainties in our city, it will be more reasonable not to rely on positive potential, with overcoming adverse realities.”

Los Angeles’ prehistory of fiscal unreasonableness has a remarkable resemblance to the chronic deficits of the state budget – too optimistic revenue forecasts leading to unstable levels of cost – and should be taken into account as LA politicians are trying to get rescue from the state.

This week, the legislative delegation of the city has officially asked the legislature of the legislature to assign $ 1.89 billion, “to turn to emergency efforts to recover in disasters in the city of Los Angeles after devastating fires in January, which have displaced thousands, destroyed business and damaged the critical infrastructure.

It is clear that the request-which must have arisen in the mayor’s office-uses fires as a smoke to rationalize rescue for a deficit that underlies the result of long-standing fiscal abuses.

Governor Gavin News and legislators will feel a huge pressure to give Los Angeles what he wants, but that would be a step towards the proverbial slippery slope.

Unfortunately, Los Angeles is not the only city or local authority that feels the fiscal pinch for approximately the same reasons. During and after the pandemic costs of Covid-19, they increased to a large extent, using many billions of dollars in federal disaster help.

And when Uncle Sam closed his wallet, the local authorities were stuck with higher salaries and other increases in the costs that were placed in their budgets. San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento and many other cities are faced with severe deficitsalong with many school districts.

If Newsom et al deficit At least the rest of the Newsom Government and probably longer.

“Our short -term focus on the balance of the year neglects the need for a multi -year transition to service models that allow the city to live within its resources,” Mejja told other city officials in the letter of this month. “We constantly recommend specific budget reforms that are even more successful against the background of numerous challenges facing us.”

This is a good advice and is similar in tone of the warnings that Newsom and legislators have received from their budget advisers – and are often ignored.

This article was Originally Published on CalMatters and was reissued under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives License.