Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the city's top financial experts were stunned last fall when a steep drop in tax revenue punched a hole in the city budget -- forcing them to propose an array of fee hikes and cuts in public services.
But the city's $406-million budget shortfall is also a product of two pivotal policy choices made by Villaraigosa since taking office in 2005: adding 1,000 officers to the Los Angeles Police Department and hiking the pay of unionized city workers.
On paper, paying for the new officers looks easy. If the City Council approves the mayor's budget, annual trash fees will have been raised by more than $140 million since 2006. But hiring so many new officers is much trickier when home sales are flat, sales taxes are down and city employee pay raises have cost nearly $90 million extra with each successive year.
To continue the LAPD expansion in the midst of an economic downturn, Villaraigosa has called for reductions in library hours and supplies, animal shelter hours, park rangers and maintenance, summer recreation workers and arts programs.
With another grim year expected in 2009-10, the budget woes pose a major question for the mayor: Even if he reaches his goal of 1,000 new officers, can that rapid buildup -- his No. 1 priority -- be sustained?
As they review the mayor's budget, some council members aren't sure. Villaraigosa will have few options for big increases in fees next year. And Councilman Greig Smith, a Republican who is a reserve police officer, warned that the mayor is trying to hire too many officers too quickly -- a strategy that threatens to create a bigger budget mess by 2011, the year that all the new officers will be on the job.
"We're digging ourselves a hole," said Smith, who sits on the council's Budget and Finance Committee. "And the question is, is the hole so deep that we can't dig ourselves out?"
Three years into his term, Villaraigosa has his hard-fought goal of 1,000 new officers squarely within his sights. The LAPD will have added more than 800 by next year, just as the mayor asks voters to reelect him. And the number will reach 1,000 during the start of a second term, assuming he is reelected.
That initiative is coming at an increasingly steep price. In Villaraigosa's proposed 2008-09 budget, the cost of the police expansion is about $73 million, equal to nearly one-fifth of the city's budget shortfall. The next year, the cost of the LAPD buildup is expected to reach $114 million -- equivalent to nearly 40% of the budget shortfall projected for that year, $293 million.
