Mayor Bass said her office’s budget will be cut. The numbers tell a different story

When Mayor Karen Bass spoke about budget cuts during her State of the City address — before she even mentioned laying off city employees — she made clear that her own office would not be spared.

It seemed like a solidarity-building pledge — like a captain going down with the ship.

“We reduced funding for the mayor’s office,” she said in the April 21 speech.

This is my third week covering City Hall for The Times. It’s my first budget season (my colleague David Zahniser has been covering L.A. city budgets since I was 6), and it’s a doozy. The city is facing a $1-billion shortfall caused in large part by rising personnel costs, soaring legal payouts and a slowdown in the local economy.

When I heard the mayor’s words, I made a reasonable assumption — that the operating budget for her office would decrease from the year before.

I was incorrect.

When the mayor released her proposed budget later that day, I turned to the section for her office, only to find, to my confusion, that it had grown — from $10.1 million in fiscal year 2024-2025 to $10.7 million in 2025-2026. The office was also spared from having to lay off a single member of its 94-person team, even while Bass was proposing 1,650 layoffs elsewhere in city government.

So by what logic could the mayor’s office still have reduced its funding?

Zach Seidl, deputy mayor of communications, said the city administrative officer’s recalculation of the coming fiscal year’s budget actually showed a $1.2-million decrease. Employees in the mayor’s office are not getting regularly scheduled cost-of-living raises. The first, coming in June, would have been a 4% increase. The next, in December, would have been another 2% increase. And the final one in June 2026 would have been another 4%.

Seidl said that while the proposed budget for the mayor’s office is higher than last year, it is reduced from where it could have been if the raises had gone into effect. He called this a 10% cut to the office.

Some outside of the mayor’s office were less convinced by the what-goes-up-has-gone-down explanation.

Roy Samaan, an L.A. city planner and president of the Board of Governors of the Engineers and Architects Assn., said that when he heard the mayor say she would reduce funding for her own office, he thought it was only fair. The City Planning Department where he works saw its proposed operating budget slashed from nearly $72 million this fiscal year to just under $56.5 million next year.

“I thought in the spirit of shared sacrifice that [cutting the mayor’s office] made sense,” he said.

But he was frustrated when he looked at the numbers.

“I’m sure in the long run, through their budget calculations, they can show that an increase is actually a decrease. … But I know our members in the Planning Department and throughout the city that are slated to be eliminated have noticed the increase in the mayor’s office budget, and it strikes them as hypocritical, frankly.”

In the mayor’s proposed budget, the City Council’s operating budget went up, from $37.2 million to $39.3 million, while the council took a $4.7-million “one-time salary reduction.”

“The manner in which the elected offices manage their funding reductions is at their discretion,” said Matt Szabo, the city administrative officer.

Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said the council is exploring options to achieve budget reductions.

“All options are on the table. The whole city is being asked to sacrifice, this includes the council as well,” he said in a statement to The Times.

The City Council’s budget committee is holding several weeks of hearings, with the full council voting on the final budget by June 1.

Bass has said she would take a pay cut herself, answering “absolutely” when a constituent asked if she would do so.

“The mayor is also taking a personal cut to her paycheck,” Seidl confirmed to The Times. He did not specify the amount.

State of play

— DEBRIS-BE-GONE: The mayor said Friday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has now cleared more than 1,000 properties of the debris left from the Palisades fire. “Our recovery effort is on track to be the fastest in modern California history,” she said. Nearly 650,000 tons of debris have been removed from the Palisades fire zone, and about 55 properties are being cleared per day, according to her office.

ANEMIC RECALL FUNDRAISING: The latest fundraising numbers are in, and the campaign to recall the mayor had a little less than $500,000 in hand at the end of March, after expenses. Nicole Shanahan put in $500,000 and conservative gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton contributed $25,000. Meanwhile, Bass’ anti-recall committee collected $250,000 from the Bass-affiliated Sea Change PAC and $200,000 from former Assembly Speaker and Actum managing partner Fabian Núñez’s leftover campaign cash.

— STRIKE FORCE: Tens of thousands of Los Angeles County workers represented by Service Employees International Union Local 721 walked off the job this week at libraries, parks, health clinics and other government facilities. Union members want the county to fill vacant positions and say they’ve been insulted by the pay proposals offered by county negotiators. The 48-hour strike ended Wednesday.

— GIMME SHELTER: Animal rescue advocates have been up in arms over the mayor’s proposed budget for the Animal Services Department, voicing alarm at the potential for layoffs and shelter closures. As it turns out, the money to avoid those cuts was in the budget all along.

— POLICE PLANNING: Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell is contemplating an organizational overhaul of his department — and relying on the think tank RAND for guidance. But his efforts may be complicated by the mayor’s proposal to lay off 400 civilian staffers at the department, a move that could force police officers to take on desk jobs and other non-patrol duties.

— WORKING OVERTIME: The head of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City Local 112 earned about $540,000 in 2022, in part by racking up serious overtime hours at fire stations, according to a Times investigation. Union President Freddy Escobar collected $198,155 in overtime pay that year. Escobar did not respond to inquiries about his pay.

— YOUTH HOSTILE?: The mayor’s proposed budget calls for the elimination of the city’s Youth Development Department, with some of its duties folded into another agency. Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who worked to create the agency and is also a frequent Bass critic, has been speaking out against the move.

— GONDOLA LEFT HANGING: A state appeals court threw a roadblock in front of the proposed Dodger Stadium gondola this week, overturning the project’s environmental impact report. The court said the document failed to properly address construction noise and the effects on nearby parkland. Backers of the project called those issues “minor, technical matters.”

— HALTING HATE SPEECH: The City Council held off on approving a prohibition on two epithets — one targeting Black people, the other disparaging women — after a closed-door meeting on the legal issues. The council then referred the proposal back to the rules committee for more deliberations. “This thing is very much alive. It’s getting stronger by the day,” said Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, who authored the proposed ban.

— LOSING CONTROL: State Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta is considering placing L.A. County’s juvenile halls in receivership, effectively removing them from the county’s control. The move comes after years of chaos inside those facilities, including a spate of overdoses inside the newly reopened Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall.

— RUNNING SMOOTHLY: Bass announced Friday that she had helped mediate a deadlock between the L.A. Marathon and the Oscars, which were slated to take place on the same day in 2026. The result would have been chaos and “logistical conflicts such as overlapping routes,” the mayor’s office said. The agreement allows both events to take place in March next year. The Oscars will take place March 15. The marathon has not announced its date yet.

— (UN)HIDDEN GUNS: City Controller Kenneth Mejia’s latest one-minute budget update got some extra attention on Instagram for his wardrobe choice: a sleeveless vest embroidered with the city seal and his name. Several commenters joked that Mejia’s “sleeves budget” had been cut, with the controller responding, “This budget deficit cutting everything” with a sobbing emoji. Another commenter wrote, “You are amazing and this is extremely helpful but wearing the city vest raw is wild.” Mejia clarified that he was not, in fact, wearing the vest “raw” but had “a muscle shirt (sleeveless) underneath.”

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to address homelessness went to the area around 69th Street and Avalon Boulevard in South Los Angeles, which is represented by Councilmember Curren Price.
• On the docket for next week: The council’s budget committee continues drilling down on the mayor’s proposed budget on Monday, looking at the Animal Services Department, the Cultural Affairs Department and the Los Angeles Zoo, among others.

Stay in touch

That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.