Rick Caruso, the shopping-center mogul and member of the Los Angeles Police Commission, said Tuesday he would personally finance a drive to place a half-cent sales tax on the May ballot if the City Council refuses to put it there.
Caruso's threat raises the stake in the debate between Mayor James K. Hahn and some members of the City Council over whether to ask voters to increase taxes to pay for more police officers.
Last month, Los Angeles County voters narrowly rejected a similar tax measure. But Caruso, who owns the Grove in Los Angeles and is developing shopping centers in Glendale and Arcadia, said he was prepared to spend hundreds of thousands of his own money to hire signature gatherers to get another citywide measure on the May ballot.
He also vowed to help finance the campaign.
"This would be the best investment I could make," Caruso said. "Being a Republican, I don't like taxes but sometimes you have to do it."
Earlier this month, council members roundly rejected a proposal from Hahn to put the measure before voters in March. The mayor and Police Chief William J. Bratton backed the measure, which would have added 1,200 officers to the Los Angeles Police Department, bringing the force to about 10,500.
But council members said March was too soon, and some expressed concern that boosting the sales tax in Los Angeles could send shoppers fleeing to outlying cities such as Glendale and Pasadena.
Caruso apparently did not consult Hahn before making his announcement Tuesday, but the mayor and several council members nevertheless praised the move.
Mayoral spokeswoman Elizabeth Kaltman said Hahn was "thrilled" at the surprise move from his police commissioner, a powerful developer who is courted by the city's political elite.
Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski also praised Caruso, but said that officials "need to do a post-mortem" of the losing Measure A campaign to avoid making the same mistakes.
"I think the measure can be better shaped," she said. "If we try and fail again, it will be a long time before we can ever think of revisiting it."
Caruso's stance marks the latest example in California of a wealthy person attempting to take an issue directly to voters, said Elizabeth Garrett, director of the USC-Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics.
