L.A. trash fee increase isn't all spent on hiring police officers, controller says
The city of Los Angeles collected nearly three times as much money from new trash fees as it spent on the first two years of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's plan for hiring more police officers, according to a report issued Tuesday by City Controller Laura Chick.
The trash fee increase, levied to add 1,000 officers to the Los Angeles Police Department, has generated $137 million since 2006, according to the five-page report.
The 366 officers hired so far cost $47.2 million over the same period, with the rest of the new money going toward other increases to the LAPD budget, Chick said.
The figures quickly drew fire from a representative of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., who said he always suspected that the new trash fee revenue would go primarily to expenses other than new officers, such as overtime and a three-year package of escalating LAPD raises.
"Often what happens to tax increases in this city is, instead of getting more employees, we just get better-paid employees," said Kris Vosburgh, executive director of the taxpayer group.
Villaraigosa spokesman Matt Szabo criticized efforts to separate the cost of new officers from other increased expenses. Overtime pay, raises, new squad cars and new equipment for members of the existing force were pivotal to the expansion of the Police Department and therefore should also be considered part of the buildup's total cost, Szabo said.
"It isn't practical, nor would it be responsible, to attempt to expand the department on the cheap," he said. "That's one of the reasons the prior two [mayoral] administrations failed to expand the department as they promised."
Szabo produced a different set of numbers, showing the LAPD buildup costing $84 million more last year than the city collected from new trash fees.
Villaraigosa initiated the higher trash fees in 2006, standing with Chick and City Council members as he vowed to fulfill his campaign promise of adding 1,000 officers to the department, which Police Chief William J. Bratton often characterized as the smallest big-city force in the nation. A booklet about the plan prepared at that time said the extra trash fees would pay for "additional public safety services."
A news release written for the launch of the LAPD expansion went even further. "Every new dollar residents pay for trash pickup will be used to put more officers on the streets," the mayor said in the release, dated April 12, 2006.
