A day after Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa ordered the elimination of 1,000 jobs to address the city\u2019s budget crisis, Chief Deputy City Atty. Bill Carter wrote a memo stating the mayor does not have authority under the City Charter \u201con his own to order layoffs.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the Friday memo, Carter advised employees in the office of City Atty. Carmen Trutanich that Villaraigosa lacks the power to compel city department heads to lay off employees, an opinion that puts the city’s top lawyer at odds with the mayor. Trutanich has strenuously opposed City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana’s proposal to eliminate 100 positions in the city attorney’s office as part of the plan to cut 1,000 jobs from the city’s rolls. City attorney officials say to do so would limit their ability to prosecute criminal cases. <\/p>\n
Carter opined in his memo that the mayor\u2019s \u201curgent directive\u201d Thursday is \u201cnot binding on department heads," who the mayor can hire and fire as he sees fit. He also said the office has "no intention" of laying off any staff until the City Council directs them to do so. <\/p>\n
Because Trutanich is an elected official, Carter wrote, \u201cthe mayor\u2019s limited authority under the Charter does not extend to this office or other elected offices.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThe mayor\u2019s authority extends only to ‘departments, agencies and appointed offices’,\u201d Carter wrote. \u201cAlthough department heads and elected offices have the power independently to manage their personnel and budgets, including laying off personnel as they deem necessary, the mayor cannot compel such action. He certainly cannot compel it in this office.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n
In an interview, Carter confirmed that he wrote the memo, obtained by The Times, but said he could not discuss whether his office had given legal advice to general managers of other city departments about their options Friday.\u00a0\u201cThis email went to our employees in order to alleviate any anxiety they may have based on the reporting of the mayor\u2019s action,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Aides to the mayor said they would not comment until they have reviewed the memo. <\/p>\n
[Updated at 4:51 p.m.: <\/strong>Brian Currey, counsel to the Mayor, praised Trutanich\u2019s efforts to alleviate the city\u2019s budget problems through debt collections and by reducing lawsuit judgments and settlements. He added that Villaraigosa doesn\u2019t \u201chave any intention of trying to force the city attorney to lay off or transfer any of his employees.\u201d — Maeve Reston at Los Angeles City Hall <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A day after Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa ordered the elimination of 1,000 jobs to address the city\u2019s budget crisis, Chief Deputy City Atty. Bill Carter wrote a memo stating the mayor does not have authority under the City Charter \u201con his own to order layoffs.\u201d In the Friday memo, Carter advised employees in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4917,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-285422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4917"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/br>But Currey also noted that Villaraigosa is the city\u2019s chief executive officer and that general managers answer to him. \u201cHe has said he is going to work through his department heads to effectuate transfers and layoffs, and we fully expect those managers to comply with the mayor\u2019s wishes,\u201d Currey said. So far, all of the city\u2019s general managers have been cooperative, he said.] <\/strong>
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