Author: Maeve Reston

The Los Angeles City Council could vote this week on whether to proceed with the elimination of 1,000 positions to address this year’s $208-million deficit and the city’s dwindling reserve fund.

But the city’s top budget analyst, Miguel Santana, is also urging council members to focus on even more bracing financial challenges in the years ahead. By the 2013 fiscal year, the city could face a $952-million shortfall.

Santana accompanied his midyear financial status report last week with a “three-year plan to fiscal sustainability” to address the city’s structural deficit. The proposed changes would restructure a number of city departments and could significantly pare back the services handled by the city, which is already scrambling to patch holes left by the early-retirement program offered last fall to 2,400 workers.

Santana urged city officials to immediately begin seeking private operators for the convention center, municipal golf courses, city parking garages and the zoo. Other proposals, which would require the council’s approval, could shift responsibilities from city workers to private firms.

For example, a proposed pilot program in the parks department would contract out 20% of its landscaping duties. The General Services Department, which may lose 15% of its mechanics this year to early retirement, may have to outsource maintenance work on the city’s fleet of vehicles.

And L.A. residents could soon see some unpleasant changes. Santana’s three-year plan notes the city will need to rethink its street sweeping routes, which cover 13,000 curb miles, after 15% of its sweeper operators retire. 

Even tree trimming may no longer be a service that Angelenos can count on. Because of prior budget cuts, very few of the city’s palm trees will be trimmed this year, according to the report. In the future, the city’s top budget analyst is asking City Council members to consider reducing the costs of street tree trimming “to the bare minimum” and returning “responsibility for street tree maintenance to the abutting property owner,” as was the case before a change to city law in 1931.

Members of the City Council’s Budget and Finance Committee will discuss the proposals at their Monday afternoon meeting.

— Maeve Reston at Los Angeles City Hall

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As Los Angeles city officials weigh the possibility of 1,000 layoffs to close a nearly $200-million budget gap, one of the more eye-popping proposals put forward on a preliminary list this week was the elimination of 100 positions from the office of Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich.

A number of other city departments could be eliminated or severely reduced, including human services and neighborhood empowerment, but it appears that Trutanich is not planning to accept a cut of that magnitude without a fight.

In a letter obtained by The Times, Trutanich argued to the city’s top budget analyst that his office serves a core mission by defending the city in costly lawsuits. He called the proposed cuts to his department disproportionate and “draconian,” and said they did not recognize the money that his office has saved for the city.

During his first six months in office, Trutanich has tackled some of the city’s most vexatious issues,  including the expansion of medical marijuana collectives and proliferation of billboards. But along the way, the San Pedro attorney has tangled with several City Council members — including Jan Perry, who said he threatened to arrest her — city commissioners and AEG Chief Executive Tim Leiweke, a powerful backer of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

The city’s budget is proposed by the mayor and approved by the council, so one had to wonder if this year’s budget process might serve to remind the city attorney who controls L.A.’s purse strings.

Chief Deputy City Atty. Bill Carter wouldn’t comment on whether he believed there were politics behind the layoff targets — and the preliminary numbers could change by the end of the day when the city budget analysts are due to release a key report detailing the city’s options.

Trutanich has supported Villaraigosa’s efforts to hire more police, but Carter warned that the elimination of 100 positions would force the office to shift attorneys from prosecuting criminal cases to the civil department, which defends the city from lawsuits.

“It doesn’t matter how many police officers are in the field,” Carter said. “There won’t be a sufficient number of prosecutors to file or handle those cases at a time when the governor is contemplating releasing thousands of inmates in the general population who have a recidivism rate of 70%.”

Carter said that since July 1 the department has won 20 victories in 20 civil trials in which the city would have been liable for nearly $77 million in damages (the office bases that calculation on the last settlement amount offered by the plaintiffs before trial). He added that city lawyers have helped collect $1.6 million in debts owed to the city and the department has spent $700,000 less on outside counsel fees over six months compared with the same period in the previous fiscal year, when Rocky Delgadillo was city attorney.

To expand the resources of the office at a time of budget cuts, Trutanich has also set up a program for young lawyers who want trial experience. Applicants who have passed the bar can apply to serve as volunteer “reserve deputy city attorneys” and try criminal cases for the city after four weeks of training. Fifty attorneys are serving in the program so far. Carter said they won 23 guilty verdicts in 32 trials.

“We’ve been saving money by cutting outside counsel costs, by cutting litigation costs, by trying very difficult cases — trying them and winning them,” Carter said.

— Maeve Reston at Los Angeles City Hall

Photo: Spencer Weiner, Los Angeles Times