LA doesn’t have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem. We have seen the city budget increase from $4 billion to $11.5 billion, yet so many vital services have been cut. We pay more taxes, yet we have the same number of city employees as we did 20 years ago. Our Mayor and council members continue to approve overly generous labor agreements good for the few but not for the many, a practice that leaves less dollars to fix sidewalks or hire park rangers. As a result, they continue to approve annual Budgets that have structural deficits, resulting in cuts to city services. As Controller, I would help change this by serving as a genuinely independent fiscal watchdog looking out for Angelenos instead of special interests with deep pockets.
- Improve fiscal decision making by our politicians by taking a more proactive role during the city’s budget process
- Educate our politicians and the public to better understand the true fiscal consequences of their actions to avoid ongoing structural budget deficits in the future
- Provide nonpolitical independent fiscal analysis to our Council and Mayor to better assist them with evaluating potential fiscal consequences of significant expenditure hikes in salary and pension costs from generous labor agreements
- Improve transparency of budget data and fiscal decisions to help Angelenos ‘follow the money’ and better understand where their taxes are going
- Enhance the use of data analytics to improve accountability
