Garcetti signs pandemic recovery-steeped LA city budget, following months of financial uncertainties

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Wednesday signed off on a $11.2 billion city budget that helps the city chart a recovery path out of the pandemic, following a rocky year of financial uncertainties for the city.

Garcetti, joined by the City Council’s budget chair Paul Krekorian and other council members at City Hall, said the budget included the highest amount of funding the city has ever allocated toward homelessness, in the form of $1 billion in spending on housing and services.

The spending plan also includes a so-called “justice” budget — $1 billion to go toward a variety of public benefit programs and initiatives to “reimagine” how the city promotes public safety, beyond law enforcement. Among the more unique initiatives include a pilot guaranteed basic-income program that will be rolled out to single parents and an unarmed 911 response team.

The budget also includes an “al fresco” program to help restaurants set up outdoor dining, and a homelessness crisis-response program.

The the budget for the fiscal year 2021-2022, which begins July 1, is boosted by more than $700 million in federal aid money from the American Rescue Plan. That amount represents the second half of the approximately $1.3 billion in aid that city is expected to receive. The first half was expected to be spent on repairing revenue shortfall in the current fiscal year that was brought on by the shutdown of major sectors of the economy during the pandemic.

Some city leaders and employee groups held out some hope during the first part of this fiscal year for federal aid to cover municipal budget woes that was not answered. By the time that aid had swooped in around February to help patch up the city’s coffers, city leaders had for the most part sorted through some of this past year’s financial uncertainties, which had prompted proposals of furloughs and layoffs.

Ultimately, those types of cost-cutting proposals affecting the city workforce were temporarily headed off following labor negotiations with city’s civilian employee and the police and firefighter unions, in which some planned pay raises were delayed.

This past year, city leaders had also implemented a hiring freeze, as well as a buyout incentive program, in an effort to save money, although those efforts often then led to a need to restore or fill positions in order to maintain service at the level that was being expected.

Councilman Paul Krekorian, chairman of the council’s Budget and Finance Committee  said following the council’s vote last month that the past pandemic year and the preparation of the budget has been “a time like no other for the city, this committee and this council.”

“The effort that goes into a budget even in good years, even in more normal times, is immense,” he said. “This has been like nothing I have seen in my time on the council.”

Council President Nury Martinez acknowledged the vocal calls for social justice programs that permeated the budget discussions, and even the continued opposition to a budget that critics insist funnels too much money to the LAPD.

“In Los Angeles we face a reality that as much as we are a world-class city, we also have to acknowledge that we have so much more work to do in each and every one of our neighborhoods and for each and every one of our residents,” she said. “For us to be a better city, to have a stronger future and for a real opportunity for our families and our kids and our neighborhoods across the city … we have got to do better by them. And today we are laying down a foundation brick by brick to be able to get there.

“Systemic change does not happen with one legislative motion or one city budget,” Martinez said. “It takes time. And today I am proud to say that we are going to start on that path forward.”

City News Service contributed to this report