What's your 2 cents on the city's budget?

In just a few months, the City of LA's budget process for the 2011-12 Fiscal Year will officially begin when Mayor Villaraigosa releases his budget proposal to the City Council.

Angelenos have the opportunity to make their voices heard by participating in the online Los Angeles Budget Survey. Visitors to the site can work with an interactive tool that allows them to review potential budget balancing measures and share their thoughts about the city's options. Responses will be collected and reviewed by the Mayor's Office.

Blueprint for Reform of City Collections Unveiled

On Monday, I received a “Blueprint for Reform of City Collections” from the Ad Hoc Commission on Revenue Efficiency (CORE). The detailed, 90 page report offers analysis and recommendations to help ensure money owed to the people of Los Angeles is collected and can be used to support police, fire, library, traffic and other key services.

It is unacceptable for bureaucracy and inefficiency to stand in the way of the people of Los Angeles collecting money that is owed to them. It is time to clear away the red tape.

I created CORE to evaluate and recommend improvements in revenue collections. In the course of four months, the Commission has assessed revenue, billing, and collections practices – with a focus on specific recommendations for reform.

Among the Blueprint’s Recommendations:

• Centralization: Create clearer and stronger authority for the Office of Finance; invest in the technology needed to centralize – not just collection – but billing as well.

• Accountability, Incentives & Budgeting: L.A.’s elected officials must hold departments and managers accountable for compliance with directives, guidelines, and Controller audits. Create incentives for departments to make revenue a priority.

• Inspector General: CORE recommends establishing an Inspector General for Revenue & Collections to independently report on, and aid in compliance and reform.

• Intensify consequences for delinquencies: Standardize and boost interest, penalties and fees; increase use of liens and public reporting.

• Ease of payment and collection: Expand and improve payment options.


Among the Blueprint’s Findings:

• 76.6% of the City’s $541.1 million in non-tax receivables are more than 120 days past due – with 42.5% more than 2 years past due.

• City departments are collecting just over half of what they bill.

• Less than half of City departments apply interest or penalties to past due accounts.

• Computer systems and software for accounts receivable are woefully outdated.

• The City has no real centralized billing and collection process

DWP REFORM MEASURE INTRODUCED

On Tuesday I introduced a City Council motion that would put a Charter Amendment on the March 2011 ballot to create a DWP customer advocate's office. This independent watchdog would make sure the utility's rates were fair to the people of Los Angeles -- and enforce accountability, transparency and integrity at the DWP.

Among other revelations, a recent audit showed that the DWP misled us about its call earlier this year for a power rate hike of up to 28%. The City Council beat that increase back, but the dispute led to a drop in the city's credit rating. While the rating has since gone up as a result of the way the Council balanced the budget, it is inexcusable for the DWP to be anything less than 100% open and forthright with the people of Los Angeles. And it is outrageous that in this instance the taxpayers of Los Angeles were put at risk for millions of dollars in unnecessary interest payments.

I've been working on this advocate's office since last year. Recently, the DWP offered to create a "ratepayer advocate" within its own bureaucracy. While this may seem like a good first step, true reform cannot occur without true independence. The customer advocate's office spurred by my motion would be located outside of any political office and certainly outside of the DWP. By being created through the City Charter, the office's role and resources would have iron clad protections -- only the voters could make changes.

The city is right now developing a schedule of public meetings citywide where the public, DWP customers, the business community, Neighborhood Councils, and experts - will be asked to provide us with input on how best to develop this office. I believe that increasing transparency at DWP starts with an open, public process, and ends with the vote by the people. (Incidentally, to expedite this process and to save money, this election would be held on the March ballot when a municipal election is already being held.)

Stay tuned for more updates. DWP reform has been a priority for me, and with the help of an independent advocate and watchdog, we can ensure that the Department's customers and the people of Los Angeles come first.

Budget 101

The City of Los Angeles's budget impacts everyone who lives or works in L.A., and the process for developing the budget for the next fiscal year (which begins in July) is now underway.

To help people understand what the budget means to them and how to get involved in shaping the tough decisions that will be made to balance it, I have been hosting community roundtable discussions. I met with community leaders last night in Hollywood and this morning in Glassell Park to explain how the process works and hear their suggestions and concerns.

Community Forum on the City's Budget Crisis

On Saturday, March 6, the Glassell Park Neighborhood Council will hold a Community discussion on the City's budget with Councilmember Bernard Parks, who chairs the Council's Budget and Finance Committee. The event will be held from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. at the Glassell Park Community Center (3750 N. Verdugo Rd.). The meeting is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be served.

Immediately following the forum, the Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Coalition will meet.

Statement on the budget from the Council floor

Here is what I said yesterday on the Council floor regarding the city budget and layoffs.

Budget on the Road coming to neighborhoods around Los Angeles

UPDATE: The West LA address on the original flyer was incorrect. The flyer at right has been updated.

The City Council's Budget and Finance Committee, chaired by my colleague Councilmember Bernard Parks, is traveling to neighborhoods around the city to hear directly from constituents about their priorities for the Fiscal Year 2010-11 budget.

Budget on the Road is a four-part series that will begin on Monday, January 25, with a meeting at Van Nuys City Hall. For more information, click on the flyer at right.

Come hear about the city's financial picture and voice your opinion about the services most important to you!

Budget passed

Tonight the Los Angeles City Council voted to approve a $7.1 billion budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1.

Even in this economy, we are demonstrating our commitment to safe neighborhoods with a budget that allows for the hiring of 480 police officers, enough to fill the number of vacancies expected this year due to attrition.

This was a very tough budget year and we had to make some very tough decisions about how to prioritize our spending. We still have a lot of work to do to ensure that our budget stays on track throughout the year, but we are committed to working together to make fiscally responsible decisions for the city.

A message about our tough budget times

Our city is facing a budget crisis and we know that we need to make sacrifices to keep our city fiscally sound. The City Council is deeply committed to the responsibility we have to the people of Los Angeles to protect core city services, such as public safety and trash pick-up.

Today, my colleagues and I announced that City Councilmembers and our Chief Legislative Analyst have committed to collectively returning $1.2 million from our office funds to help balance the city’s budget. This amount is in addition to the $600,000 of Council office discretionary funds that we gave up to close a mid-year budget gap earlier this fiscal year.

We have faced tough budget times in previous years and have met the challenge of closing the gap. Working together with the mayor, city employees unions, general managers, and others, I am confident we will balance our budget.

2007-2008 City Budget

On a unanimous vote (following many weeks of hard work by the Budget and Finance Committee and countless revisions and amendments), the 2007-2008 Fiscal Year budget passed the City Council.

The budget, which is now being sent to the mayor for his signature, achieves the three main goals of the City Council in this year's budget:

1) To strengthen the city's fiscal health even further (our fiscal strength is already the strongest of any big city in America, according to Wall Street).

2) To boost basic city services like sidewalk repair, tree trimming, and street paving in the budget, the heart of our work as City Councilmembers.

3) To fund core priorities of the City Council including but not limited to public safety programs to boost our police strength and provide job and educational development alternatives for our youth; increased funding to end homelessness in Los Angeles; funding our work to revitalize the Los Angeles River; and funding traffic and transportation improvements throughout our city.

For copies of the documents leading up to today's vote (including the mayor's proposed budget and the committee report), visit the Los Angeles City Council Budget and Finance Budget-Related Documents Page.

Budget and Finance Chairman Bernard Parks, as well as Vice-Chair Wendy Greuel and members Greig Smith, Bill Rosendahl, and Jose Huizar helped prepare an excellent budget that built on the strength of the mayor's proposed budget. The council was able to boost infrastructure spending by more than 40 percent, add $1 million in funding to acquire more books in Los Angeles libraries, fund a program to crack down on illegal signs, and boosted our reserve fund for a rainy day to an historic high of more than $200 million, all in a very tough fiscal environment. We also empowered Los Angeles residents to be closer to their government by funding three positions to work with neighborhood councils, a new system to help the public track council motions, and funding to complete updates for eight community plans for our neighborhoods. Finally, we approved funds to help restore Griffith Park following this month's fires and to continue our Heli-Tanker lease to help fight brushfires throughout the city.

$6.79 billion moves forward to the mayor for his signature. All in a good day's work at City Hall. Don't forget, if you would like to see any of the proceedings of the budget deliberations, you can watch them from the video on-demand feature now available at the council on-demand home page.