Expenditure

This letter is in reference to your article "CSUN Forced to Re-Evaluate Its Mission in Face of Cuts" (June 15). Your article brought out a subtle point that I think needs amplification. After telling us about all the educational cuts at the university it was noted that there is a question regarding the expenditure of $2 million for expansion of the athletic department into "Division I athletics." If education is the mission of the college, why is the expenditure of $2 million on the sports program even a consideration in these economic times?

A Los Angeles County judge signaled Tuesday that Department of Water and Power union chief Brian D'Arcy will have to turn over records showing how two nonprofit trusts he co-directs used $40 million in ratepayer money. D'Arcy has been locked in a political and legal struggle over control of the financial information since September, following a Times report that managers at the utility had only scant information on how the money was spent. In January, City Controller Ron Galperin issued a subpoena to D'Arcy and the nonprofits demanding that they turn over internal ledgers and bank records covering the last five years.

Gov. Deukmejian's proposal to finance highway improvements by revenue bonds is designed to avoid the state expenditure limitation imposed by the 1979 initiative. Interest paid from the general fund to bond holders does not count as an expenditure under the Gann limitation. I have an alternative suggestion. The state could return the excess revenues to school districts--most are spending way below their limitation. We have never had enough money to get close to the limit. The irony of a so-called fiscal conservative advocating going into debt to pay for roads, while telling schools to tighten their belts shows what a mess Californians have created for themselves.

Los Angeles' new controller moved Wednesday to open city finances to quick and easy public scrutiny online, unveiling a website with extensive detail on how City Hall collects and spends billions of dollars. The website, Control Panel L.A. , gives users access to a huge volume of data on taxpayer expenditures for police, sanitation, street repairs and other services - information that previously would have taken weeks or months to get through formal requests for records. With user-friendly icons and drop-down menus, the site enables visitors to download, sort and analyze data on city employee salaries and more than 100,000 payments to contractors.

I have read with great interest the recent articles debating the salary, benefits and overtime compensation paid to employees and managers by the County of Ventura. As a 13-year employee and a peace officer in a supervisory position with the county, I feel compelled to offer my opinion. The April 21 article focused on the cost of employee overtime and the cost of perks and benefits of managers. The focus should be on the value received as a result of the expenditure, rather than the amount of the expenditure itself.

Congratulations to Schwarz. Those in control of our government think little about the welfare of our people. Warfare has never solved problems of mankind. War is wasteful, devastating and shifts power over areas of land, air and sea without any constructive results. It's high time to look at other means of solving problems without undue expenditure of billions of dollars, a waste of lives and contriving leaders who seek to gain power. JIM BENFER Redondo Beach

As I read "For Ex-President Clinton, Talk Isn't Cheap" (June 15), which revealed the $9.2 million Bill Clinton has received while gallivanting about the world giving speeches, I wondered momentarily who is paying for the substantial expenditure incurred by the retinue of Secret Service agents that accompanies him. Later, when I glanced into the mirror, the answer occurred to me. Eugene F. Burns La Habra

Reichl's companion asked, "Doesn't spending $12 for ice cream cake make them (Michael's customers) feel bad?" My question is, doesn't spending thousands of dollars for Reichl to gorge at and write about restaurants the majority of your readers can't afford make The Times feel bad? I think this kind of let-'em-eat-cake expenditure is obscene. Dump Reichl and have someone cover restaurants with affordable prices. TERRY FISHER West Los Angeles

The City Council and the Redevelopment Agency approved a $235,000 expenditure to renovate portions of the Robert Frost Auditorium and the Middle School Gymnasium. Additional funds for the projects will come from state lottery money, the council staff reported. The tax funds approved by the city and the agency were taken from those collected within Redevelopment Agency Project Area 3 in the northeastern section of the city, where both buildings are located.

Patrick Lee's article, "The Potholes in Public Works Programs" (Nov. 15), brought up many issues that are not only tremendous challenges for the new Clinton Administration, but which are hard-hitting issues with possible negative effects for many Southern Californians. There is no doubt that the United States cannot ignore its aging infrastructure. However, our large national debt has left the country without an economic cushion, thus making it more difficult to further increase the deficit in order to pull the country out of an economic decline.

Los Angeles elected officials ramped up pressure Tuesday on the city-owned Department of Water and Power to account for more than $40 million in ratepayer money paid to two nonprofits created to improve relations between agency managers and the largest employees' union. City Controller Ron Galperin offered new details on an audit he's launching, saying it will examine the nonprofits' travel expenditures, salaries and the "rather significant and un-detailed outlays" listed on the groups' federal tax forms.

Spending in the hotly contested two-year race for Los Angeles mayor exceeded $33 million on Saturday, breaking previous records as unlimited outside money continued to play a dominant role in Tuesday's contest. Candidate super PACs and so-called "independent expenditure" donors, which do not have to abide by the city's campaign contribution limits, provided 41% of the $25.6-million total raised just for candidates Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti since the contest began in March 2011, according to campaign reports.

EMILY's List, a political organization dedicated to electing pro-choice Democratic women, has created an independent expenditure committee and seeded it with $400,000 to buoy Wendy Greuel's bid for Los Angeles mayor, according to documents filed with the City Ethics Commission on Tuesday. As long as it doesn't coordinate with a candidate, such an independent committee can receive unlimited donations, whereas candidate organizations are limited to accepting $1,300 per person or group.

Impoverished and isolated North Korea has long invested heavily in its defense programs, even as its people suffer hunger and deprivation. North Korea's rocket launch Wednesday cost about $480 million, South Korean officials estimated before the launch. Although North Korea said it was sending up a satellite for peaceful purposes, the United States and South Korea suspect that it was actually testing its ballistic missile technology. In either case, the money is a staggering sum in light of some of the nation's other needs.

In the Obama campaign's attack on the Romney-Ryan proposal to "voucherize" Medicare, one accusation is that the plan would force seniors to pay more of their healthcare costs: about $6,400 more per beneficiary, according to a recent TV ad known as "Facts. " Regardless of the "facts" in the ad, this attack takes as a given that any such outcome is undesirable. Yet asking seniors to pay substantially more is precisely the way to improve Medicare. Here's why. The purpose of insurance is to protect against large, unforeseeable expenses.

Susan Strong Davis, an 87-year-old widow, spends the day inside her Palos Verdes Estates home, tended round-the-clock by nurse's aides. For company, relatives say, she has her dog, the television and, on increasingly rare occasions, memories of the glamorous socialite's life she once lived. "She definitely has some sort of dementia," said Viki Brushwood, a niece who visited from Texas in December. "I don't know if it's Alzheimer's or what. She is somebody who is not making decisions anymore.

In your Jan. 9 editorial re a new school superintendent (whom I agree will be tough to find), you state that the LAUSD budgets $7 billion a year for an enrollment of 700,000 students. That comes to $10,000 per student a year. Do the arithmetic! This does not include the cost of the schools themselves. Why are we always told that the expenditure for each student in California is very low, between $5,000 and $6,000? Lots of money is being wasted somewhere. GENE BERGER Encino

"90% of Dioceses Meet New Rules" (Jan. 6) needs to add "according to them." I am a facilitator at the Long Beach SNAP chapter [Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests], and I was not surveyed, nor was any member of my group. This audit was meant to "give an unmerited positive impression" of the church, and there, unfortunately, it reached its goal. It was a $1.8-million expenditure in the church's public relations budget, and nothing more. Mary Ferrell Lakewood

Consumers had more money in their pockets in December, but instead of spending it all they tucked away some of it in their savings. Personal incomes rose $61.3 billion, or 0.5%, to $13.1 trillion in December from November, the highest month-to-month jump in nearly a year, according to the Commerce Department. The increase was fueled in part by rising wages and salaries. But personal consumption expenditures last month dipped $2 billion, or 0.1%, to nearly $10.9 trillion in an about-face from November.

California may be the home of Silicon Valley, but for most of the last two weeks state officials have been unable to handle an elementary task of the digital age: putting information online about who is giving money and gifts to politicians. The database is older than Facebook, and it's the only easy way for the public to track special-interest influence in the Capitol and beyond. It lists donations and lobbying expenditures by unions, oil companies and billionaires, for example.