When Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass unveiled her proposed city budget for the next fiscal year, the most dramatic part was that it would eliminate more than 2,100 vacant city jobs.
If approved by the City Council, it would be the largest reduction of city positions since the Great Recession.
Cutting those vacant positions — many of which would come from the ranks of people who maintain city streets and parks — is necessary to deal with shrinking revenue and growing labor costs, Bass said.
And it would save an estimated $180 million.
“We are not reducing any services,” the mayor said last week during an appearance on LAist’s Airtalk program.
But not everybody agrees.
“Unfortunately, virtually every department will be hit with reductions in their ability to deliver current (and future) services,” Deputy City Controller Rick Cole said in a statement released last week on the day Bass announced her $12.8 billion budget.
He continued: “Today, departments are coping with the record high level of vacancies with unsustainable levels of overtime by existing staff, temporary work-arounds and deferral of lower-priority work that cannot be indefinitely postponed.”
Does Cutting 2,100 Vacant City Jobs Mean Losing Services? Depends On Who You Ask
It’s unclear to what extent city services would be affected by the mayor’s budget proposal, but at minimum the spending plan would remove some of the financial flexibility now enjoyed by general managers.
A ‘cushion’ for other budget priorities
In introducing her spending…
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