It has also subsidized larger events such as the Academy Awards at the Kodak Theatre, which got a $410,000 waiver from the City Council in January, or the Grammy Awards at Staples Center, which was granted a $124,163 waiver earlier this year.
City Councilman Dennis Zine has been the most outspoken advocate of billing the promoters of Tuesday's memorial.
"This was a private memorial for a celebrity singer, Michael Jackson," he said. "And no disrespect to him, his family or his fans, but why should the people of Los Angeles be obligated to pay for what they decided to do? They could have had a service at Forest Lawn, they could have had a service at a local church. They decided to have a memorial of this magnitude and have a worldwide event."
Others argued that the city's costs, mostly for police, were the sorts of expenses that cities routinely incur when there are large public events. "Part of being a big city is that big events happen," said Council President Eric Garcetti.
Garcetti said he supports an inquiry launched by Trutanich to determine the expenses incurred by the city and unravel who authorized the city's response.
There were those who argued that the Jackson memorial might have brought more money into the local economy than it cost.
Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., said his group estimated that the memorial brought about $4 million to local businesses in the form of food sales, parking, miscellaneous shopping and hotel stays.
"We're a center of celebrity," he said. "You have to be able to deal with it. You have to look at the positives and the negatives. Yes, you have some expenses, but if you handle the whole thing in a smooth fashion, which they did, you get a real positive."
Carol Schatz, president and chief executive of the Central City Assn., said the memorial was actually a mixed bag, economically.
"All the downtown hotels were close to being full as a result of the service," she said. "However, it did not spill over to the restaurants, especially on the day of the service, because so many businesses fearing these enormous multitudes had their employees stay home."
Still, she said the memorial was "worth its weight in gold" for the attention it brought to "the new downtown that we've created in the last 10 years."
Taking that argument a step further, Joel Kotkin, presidential fellow at Chapman University in Orange, said that Jackson's death and memorial helped "brand" the city and would have lasting economic value.
"If there is a positive," he said, "it's that it sort of reconfirmed L.A.'s status as a capital of pop music, celebrity, and lunacy. . . . That's infinitely more important than a one-day event."
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maeve.reston@latimes.com
ari.bloomekatz@latimes.com
Times staff writers Mitchell Landsberg and Phil Willon contributed to this report.
