EXCLUSIVE: Mayor Villaraigosa Responds to Parks and Smith

For the first time in our nearly five year history Mayor Villaraigosa's office has "officially" contacted the Sister City to respond to a post on our site, that being Council Member's Greig Smith's and Bernard Parks' controversial stands on the City Budget.

Here Mayoral spokesman Matt Szabo very clearly dissects and refutes the Smith/Parks positions and offers the Mayor's rebuttal. Read and judge for yourself:

As you know, it has not been the regular practice of the mayor’s
office to respond to individual posts on your site. But I have to
take issue with the recent posting of Councilman Greig Smith and
Councilman Bernard Parks' respective statements on their decision to
balance the Fiscal Year 2009-10 city budget by gutting police and fire
services. I take no issue with your decision to post the statements.
But the statements themselves are riddled with errors and
inconsistencies, and I’d like an opportunity to correct the record.

Let’s start with Mr. Smith. He writes
(http://mayorsam.blogspot.com/2009/05/free-gift-for-michael-trujillo.html):

*****
“On Wednesday May 13, I voted with the majority of the City’s Budget
and Finance Committee to fix Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s proposed
budget which is balanced on $326 million of uncertain assumptions that
would have bankrupted the City by the end of this year.”

*****

It’s totally inaccurate to suggest that the mayor’s budget contains
$326 million in uncertain assumptions – unless Council volition is
inherently an uncertain assumption.

While it is true that the mayor intends to balance $231 million of the
$530 million budget deficit through “shared sacrifice” realized by
ongoing labor negotiations, those savings are far from uncertain. If
the mayor and the other executive employee relations committee members
(Garcetti, Greuel, Parks and Zine) are unable to reach consensus with
labor on adequate concessions, then the remainder of the savings will
be realized through mandatory furloughs and/or layoffs. But in the
mayor’s view, furloughs and layoffs should be the last resort – not
the first option – since these alternatives trigger service reduction
and job loss at a time when Angelenos can least afford it.

Setting aside the $231 million in “shared sacrifice,” the remaining
$90+ million in so-called “uncertain assumptions” comes in the form of
$10 million in slush fund money (AB 1290) which the committee refused
to give up, and $80 million in parking structure/meter revenue, which
is the minimum first-year revenue which would be realized if the
Council approves the mayor’s proposal to lease the city’s parking
structure and meter facilities to private operators.

Smith continues:

*****
“… the Mayor has engaged in scare tactics and fear mongering instead
of working to find solutions for the City’s financial problems.

Even worse, Police Chief William Bratton threatened to take away
Police Officers from the districts of Councilmembers who do not cave
to his agenda and the Mayor’s budget-breaking demands.”

*****

The trite “scare tactic” and “fear mongering” rhetoric doesn’t require
serious response, but the Bratton charge does.

Reacting to the Budget Committee’s vote to cut 520 cops this fiscal
year, Chief Bratton said that he would have to pull 25-30 officers
from each of the City’s 21 community police stations should the full
Council adopt the proposal.

Chief Bratton was not issuing a threat, he was simply using math. The
City currently has 21 community police stations. If you reduce the
police force by 520 officers, then, on average, you will have to
reduce sworn staffing at each station by 25 officers [520/21 = 25].

Staff reduction at the community police stations within Councilman
Rosendahl’s district would be a required consequence of the full
Council’s adoption of the Budget Committee’s recommended cut – pure
and simple. To dismiss the reality of officer reduction as a
retributive threat ignores the basic properties of third grade
arithmetic.

More Smith:

*****
“Mayor Villaraigosa’s plan to remove current rank-and-file Police
Officers from the streets with mandatory furlough days to pay for his
new Officers fails to make sense. Furthermore, the Mayor fails to
provide a viable revenue source for these new hires. His budget relies
on hundreds of millions of dollars in union concessions that he has
failed to obtain in 15 months of ongoing negotiations.”

*****

This is perhaps my favorite ‘graph because it is 100% inaccurate.

(1) The mayor has no plan to remove officers from the streets with
mandatory furloughs. Furloughing sworn personnel is an absolute last
resort, just as layoffs are a last resort for civilian personnel.

(2) The mayor HAS provided a viable revenue source for the new hires.
It’s commonly referred to as the trash fee - which the good Councilman
and every single one of his colleagues voted to raise from $12 to $38
per month while promising to expand the police force by 1,000
officers.

(3) The Councilman is not a member of the Executive Employee Relations
Committee and has no direct knowledge of the mayor’s efforts to
achieve “shared responsibility/sacrifice” savings from labor. The
truth is most major bargaining units are at the table and are working
in good faith to contribute to the budget balancing solution. Stay
tuned.

Councilman and Budget Committee Chairman Bernard Parks offered a much
more tempered and serious assessment
(http://mayorsam.blogspot.com/2009/05/sleepy-has-spoken-here-comes-dopey.html).
But the Chairman propagates two pieces of misinformation that must be
corrected.

*****
“As of today, if the City does not enact a hiring freeze, over 7,000
civilian employees will be laid off.”

*****

With all respect to the Chairman, this charge is simply not true. The
mayor has proposed several cost-saving and revenue-enhancing options
which would reduce the number of required layoffs. However, no
scenario – not even the “do absolutely nothing” scenario – would
require 7,000 layoffs. Again, using math, 7,000 layoffs equates to
approximately $630 million [using the Full Time Equivalent figure of
$90,000 per employee (including health care and benefits)]. The
current budget deficit is $530 million, so the absolute maximum number
of layoffs we would need to execute absent any other solutions would
be ~ 5,900.

Last issue with Parks’ statement:

*****
“A few years ago, members of the public were told that an increase in
trash fees would be used only to hire new officers. This, however, is
not the case and was never the case. The trash fee was increased to
help cover the cost of collecting trash from single family homes. The
City has fulfilled its commitment to fund a significant number of new
police, but it is important to clarify that the entire trash fee was
never committed or intended to be used solely for the hiring of police
officers.”

*****

Again, with all due respect to the Chairman, this seems to be
revisionist history. At the same time the City moved to enhance the
trash fees, it made the commitment to expand the police force by 1,000
officers. We have not yet fulfilled that commitment, and any hiring
freeze effectively reneges on that commitment.