Los Angeles council members tighten strings on mayor’s $1.3 billion budget request
Asher Notheis
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The Los Angeles city council is questioning Mayor Karen Bass’s request for $1.3 billion, seeking to be more frugal in how it grants money to the mayor going forward.
The move by the council comes after it gave $50 million to Bass shortly after she took office, with the intent of using the money to combat homelessness in the city. Four months later, however, Bass is asking for $250 million for programs related to homelessness, with council members wanting to exercise more oversight over how the city spends money, according to the Los Angeles Times.
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In the last two weeks, members of the council’s Budget, Finance, and Innovation Committee have checked Bass’s spending proposal, in which the mayor is asking for roughly $1.3 billion to combat the city’s homelessness crisis. As a result, council member Bob Blumenfield and several of his colleagues have called for some of the homelessness funding to be placed into a special account to comb through the mayor’s request more thoroughly.
If the council put Bass’s request into the unappropriated balance account, the mayor would have to return to members to get funding for programs. Blumenfield said the arrangement would keep council members better informed about how the money is being spent and how the programs work.
“The first $50 million we gave her for Inside Safe was kind of a no-strings-attached thing,” Blumenfield said. “It was, ‘We’re in a crisis, it’s your first 100 days, you want to start immediately, here’s $50 million. Go.’ But that’s not how government works. That’s not how checks and balances work. … For me and many others, it was never the way things would work moving forward.”
Blumenfield expects that Bass will still get the money she wants for her funding. However, the special account is intended to provide more oversight going forward.
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“This is our top priority as a city,” said Blumenfield. “We need to all be engaged.”
Inside Safe, one of the housing programs the mayor is seeking funding for, has moved roughly 1,200 people into either hotels or motels since its launch in December of last year. Going forward, Bass is seeking about $7 million for homelessness and “housing solutions” staff and supplies.