Global Courant 2023-04-19 04:17:31
Los Angeles County officials this week unveiled their recommended budget of $43 billion for the upcoming fiscal year — a spending schedule they promised would keep the region’s social safety net intact even as the county prepares to face a hefty price tag. pay for how badly officials have treated the prisons and juvenile facilities in the past.
At a Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday, Chief Executive Officer Fesia Davenport warned that the county may need to spend as much as $3 billion resolving claims of sexual abuse at its facilities.
“Apart from the traumatic personal impact on abuse survivors, these cases could have a major impact on the county budget for decades to come,” Davenport said.
In a letter accompanying the budget, she said the claims represented one of the “most serious tax challenges in recent memory.”
At $43 billion, the county has one of the largest budgets in local government, larger than many states and three times the size of the City of Los Angeles. It’s just a little bit more than what experts estimate it will cost to repair all bridges in the US. It’s just a little bit fewer than what the US gave Ukraine in military aid in the first year of the war. It’s about what Elon Musk offered for Twitter.
The Supervisory Board weighed the spending plan on Tuesday. The budget, if approved by the board in its current form this summer, would funnel hundreds of millions to services aimed at getting people off the streets and out of jail.
The plan puts $692 million toward homeless services, most of it comes from money generated through Measure H, a voter-approved sales tax to fund homeless programs. And $288 million would go to “alternatives to incarceration.”
“I believe this budget puts the county on track for the next fiscal year to hold ourselves accountable to our public for the work we’ve all been elected to do and re-enforces that safety net that we know the county is responsible for,” he said. Chairman of the Board Janice Hahn.
Davenport told the board the budget was drafted in light of a “mixed” economic forecast and warned that the county may have to pull the purse strings — in part to cover the recent deluge of sexual abuse claims at county facilities.
To resolve an estimated 3,000 sexual assault claims, the county’s attorneys predict it could spend anywhere from $1.6 billion to $3 billion. That’s more than the province plans to spend next year on its probation, fire, and parks and recreation departments—combined.
Matt McGloin, a top budget official in the county’s Chief Executive Office, told reporters the lawsuits would have an “unprecedented effect.”
The flood of claims stems from a state law that gave victims of childhood sexual assault extra time to file lawsuits. Like many California institutions with checkered histories, the county has been awash with lawsuits, many from plaintiffs who were once at the now-infamous MacLaren Children’s Center, where physical and sexual abuse was rampant.
Davenport told reporters the county was still figuring out where the money to pay the victims would come from.
“Everything has to be on the table,” Davenport said, adding that they would consider cutting department budgets or diving into the county’s rainy day fund.
The financial ramifications of past crises come as the county faces a new wave of prison and juvenile detention problems. This year, ten people have died in county jails — a death toll proponents attribute in part to overcrowding in dilapidated facilities. Meanwhile, conditions in the youth halls have become so appalling that state regulators are considering closing them.
More than 50 members of the probation union came to the board meeting on Tuesday morning. Dwight Thompson, a vice president of the Deputy Probation Officers’ Union, said members were there to beg the board to fix working conditions at the facilities and negotiate contracts “in good faith.”
The supervisors then went into closed session, which the spokespersons said was to discuss the probation department. The decision left a strange vacuum in the room for nearly two hours; one man continued to yell and chant swear words in the boardroom as probation officers milled about outside.
According to budget documentsthe county anticipates an “overhaul” of the county’s probation system, which may require funding for “additional investment in personnel, programs and facilities.”
Such investments are not detailed in the recommended $1.059 billion budget for the department.
The recommended budget for the sheriff’s department rose to $3.99 billion, up from about $136 million, according to budget officials. The budget allocates $6.6 million to fund the new Office of Constitutional Policing, which Sheriff Robert Luna created to restore prison conditions and root out vicarious “gangs.” County leaders said about an additional $50 million would go to improve “unacceptable conditions” in the prisons.
The funding drew strong rebuke from progressive advocates, who argued that the county was failing to keep its promise to keep the county’s programs out of prison.
“It doesn’t really reflect what the community is asking for,” said Megan Castillo, a policy and advocacy advocate with La Defensa, a group pushing for prison alternatives. “It is a status quo budget. It’s a budget that we’ve seen time and time again where law enforcement gets more money.”
County officials insisted they kept their promises to waive incarceration, pointing out that $288 million went to programs and projects aimed at keeping people out of prison, such as vocational training, housing and reentry and mental health healthcare.
That portion of the spending plan stemmed from Measure J, a since-reversed ballot measure aimed at criminal justice reform that county voters passed in 2020 in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers.
The measure required the county to set aside 10% of its “locally generated unrestricted revenue” — money that the county directly controls, such as property and sales taxes, that is not already earmarked for another purpose – about programs that kept people out of prison.
Though a judge ultimately ruled the measure unconstitutional, district leaders pledged to follow in the spirit of what voters demanded and funnel one-tenth of these flexible dollars toward prison alternatives.
Bamby Salcedo, head of the TransLatin@ Coalition that helped pass the measure, said she originally expected more than $1 billion to be funneled into these programs this fiscal year. With $288 million allocated this year, she said she felt the board was “short-selling” the community.
Davenport told the board she believes the county has kept its promise.
“While some advocates remain dissatisfied, the move from zero to more than half a billion dollars in three years is unprecedented for just about any county initiative,” she said.
