cut

Faced with a projected $1-billion shortfall, a key committee of the Los Angeles City Council moved forward Thursday with a plan to reduce the number of police officers and cancel Mayor Karen Bass’ plan for creating a homelessness unit within the fire department.

The council’s five-member budget committee voiced initial support for a slowdown in hiring that would leave the Los Angeles Police Department with about 8,400 officers by June 30, 2026, down from more than 8,700 this year and about 10,000 in 2020.

The move, if approved by the full City Council later this month, would be part of a much larger effort to restore positions targeted for elimination in the mayor’s $14-billion proposed budget.

The slowdown in police hiring would leave the LAPD with its lowest level of sworn staffing since 1995. But it would help save the jobs of 133 specialized civilian employees whose work includes processing DNA rape kits, analyzing fingerprints and taking photos of crime scenes.

Councilmember Tim McOsker, who sits on the budget committee, called the decision difficult, painful and regrettable — but also necessary to preserve the investigative work done by the civilian staffers.

If the city can protect those 133 specialists, reducing the number of officers may be a “pill that is worth swallowing,” said Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, another budget committee member.

“These are people that do all this incredibly important work for public safety, but they’re not sworn officers,” Blumenfield said.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents more than 8,700 officers, quickly voiced alarm about a reduction in sworn staffing. The union accused City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo, whose office helps prepare the budget, of seeking to “defund the LAPD to a point where it will literally endanger officers and our residents.”

“It’s hard to take the City seriously when they are sitting on a nearly $15-billion investment portfolio that could reasonably be used to alleviate the current budget crisis,” the union’s board said in a statement. “City leaders need to sharpen their pencils and stop trying to gut staffing at the LAPD.”

Clara Karger, a Bass spokesperson, said the mayor will continue engaging with the budget committee as it finalizes its spending proposals. “The Mayor continues to support the increases in LAPD hiring and the LAFD budget,” Karger said in a statement, “and looks forward to seeing the final recommendations of the Committee as it advances to the full Council.”

Bass’ proposed budget, released last month, calls for laying off about 1,600 civilian workers, including more than 400 at the LAPD. The job cuts would affect an array of agencies, including those responsible for trash removal, transportation programs and street light maintenance.

Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, who heads the budget committee, warned at the beginning of Thursday’s daylong meeting that she and her colleagues won’t be able to save every job.

“The reality is there is not a way to restore every position proposed for layoff. There just isn’t,” she said. “Our job today is to make the very difficult trade-offs we believe are most critical — trade-offs that reflect this council’s values, strengthen the delivery of core services and set the city on a path toward fiscal solvency.”

The proposals taken up by the committee are by no means a done deal. Chief Legislative Analyst Sharon Tso, the council’s top policy advisor, will come back to the committee next week with a full menu of strategies for cutting costs while preserving as many services as possible.

From there, the committee will send its recommendations to the full council, which must approve the budget by the end of May.

The city is facing its most significant budget crisis in about 15 years, caused largely by rising personnel costs, soaring legal payouts and a slowdown in the local economy. While the committee has been searching for ways to shield basic services from cuts, city negotiators have been trying to secure concessions, such as postponing scheduled pay raises, from the unions that represent public workers.

The salary increases are expected to add about $250 million to this year’s budget, and so far, no deals have been struck.

On Thursday, two of the largest cost-saving measures taken up by the committee were related to public safety.

The committee proposed slashing the number of LAPD recruits planned for the coming fiscal year to 240 from 480. Because the department is expected to lose 530 officers through resignations and retirements, that would result in an overall decrease in sworn staffing.

The committee also took steps to kill Bass’ proposal for adding 67 positions to the fire department to address issues stemming from the homelessness crisis. She had called for the hiring of 50 new firefighters and the creation of new street medicine teams — a rare example of investment during an otherwise gloomy fiscal year.

Critics contend there are less expensive ways to deploy street medicine teams than assigning the work to firefighters. Although such an expansion might have made sense in a normal budget year, it is difficult to support when city leaders are contending with sweeping reductions, Yaroslavsky said.

“I’m personally not prepared to lay off existing city employees who provide core city services … so that we can start new programs,” she said.

The committee also called for a reduction of up to $10 million to Bass’ Inside Safe program, which moves homeless residents into hotels, motels and other types of interim housing. As part of those cuts, council members are planning to require that some homeless people take on a roommate when they move into city-funded motels or other types of interim housing.

Yaroslavsky said she hoped the planned reduction to Inside Safe would save jobs in the planning, public works and police departments.

Council members are also hoping to transfer workers targeted for layoffs into vacant positions at agencies that are separate from the general fund, which pays for basic city services. Those agencies include the harbor, airports and the Department of Water and Power.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House could soon be closed to the public and lose its designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site if budget cuts proposed by Mayor Karen Bass are passed by the City Council.

The architectural landmark, perched atop Barnsdall Art Park in East Hollywood, is managed by the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, with two full-time staffers running tours on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays as well as handling the maintenance of the building, which is an early example of California Modernist architecture.

The mayor’s proposed budget, which attempts to close a nearly $1-billion shortfall in part by laying off more than 1,600 city employees, eliminates one of those two staff positions and also cuts two vacant positions at Hollyhock House.

The Cultural Affairs Department had been interviewing candidates for the vacant positions and had made an offer for the job of arts manager. But after the mayor released her proposed budget, the department had to rescind the offer and pause other job interviews.

“A single full-time staffer would not be able to manage both the tour program and preservation, necessitating the suspension of public tours until additional full-time staff could be restored,” said Juan Garcia, a spokesperson for the department.

Amid the massive budget shortfall caused in large part by rising personnel costs, soaring legal payouts and a slowdown in the local economy, department heads have been testifying before the City Council’s budget committee about how the mayor’s proposed cuts would affect city services.

The Cultural Affairs Department would face 14 layoffs and the elimination of 10 vacant positions, out of 91 total positions. The cuts also could lead to the closure of the Lincoln Heights Youth Arts Center, said Daniel Tarica, the department’s general manager.

Oil heiress Aline Barnsdall commissioned the Hollyhock House in 1918. She never lived in it, donating it to the city in 1927.

In 2019, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site — the only man-made World Heritage Site on the West Coast.

The house was closed for more than two years during the COVID-19 pandemic, reopening in August 2022 after undergoing major renovations.

The monumental fireplace, which brings together the four classical elements of earth, air, fire and water, was restored, as were the art-glass balcony doors in the master bedroom.

Two Wright-designed sofa tables, which the architect had said he considered “part of the house design itself,” were reinstalled.

The improvements also included a major restoration of the guest house.

The UNESCO designation required the house to have four full-time staffers, said Garcia, the spokesperson. The department has requested that the City Council restore the three positions in its final budget, which it must pass by June 1.

“The proposed staffing cuts will severely impact the management of Hollyhock House and subvert the baseline staffing commitments made by the City of Los Angeles as part of the site’s 2019 World Heritage List inscription,” Garcia said.

The proposed cuts shocked preservationists.

“UNESCO World Heritage status is a great honor that needs to be nurtured, not lost by taking public access away,” said Kim Cooper, one of two people behind Esotouric’s Secret Los Angeles, a tour company and preservationist blog. “Hollyhock House is the only one of Wright’s Los Angeles houses that people can tour, recently restored at great cost.”

Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, who represents the area, said it’s imperative to keep the house’s UNESCO status in light of the upcoming Olympic Games and World Cup.

“We’re exploring all options through the budget process to save our dedicated Hollyhock House staff and preserve its protected status,” he said in a statement.

Pentagon chief says cuts will maximise ‘strategic’ and ‘operational readiness’.

United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has announced steep cuts in the number of top-ranked officers in his latest move to streamline the world’s most powerful military.

In a memo on Monday, Hegseth ordered a 20 percent reduction in the number of four-star generals and admirals – currently the highest-ranked personnel in the US military – as well as a 10 percent reduction in the number of general and flag officers.

Hegseth’s memo also ordered a 20 percent cut in the number of general officers in the National Guard.

The US military had 38 four-star generals or admirals as of March 31, 2025, according to US Department of Defense data.

In a video explaining the “Less Generals More GIs Policy”, Hegseth said the US military currently has one general for every 1,400 troops, compared with one for every 6,000 during World War II.

“More generals and admirals does not equal more success,” Hegseth said in the video posted on X.

“Now this is not a slash-and-burn exercise meant to punish high-ranking officers. Nothing could be further from the truth. This has been a deliberated process, working with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with one goal: maximising strategic readiness and operational readiness by making prudent reductions in the general and flag officer ranks.”

Hegseth did not specify which positions would be cut.

The nearly 40 active four-star generals in the US military include the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the chief of staff of the army, the chief of naval operations, and the chief of staff of the Air Force, as well as the heads of US Africa Command, US European Command and US Forces Korea.

The cuts come as part of a broader drive by President Donald Trump’s administration to reduce the size of the federal government and purge perceived political enemies.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump or his underlings have fired several top military leaders, including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Charles Q Brown and Navy chief Admiral Lisa Franchetti.

NEW YORK — U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s motto is “Make America Healthy Again,” but government cuts could make it harder to know if that’s happening.

More than a dozen data-gathering programs that track deaths and disease appear to have been eliminated in the tornado of layoffs and proposed budget cuts rolled out in the Trump administration’s first 100 days.

The Associated Press examined draft and final budget proposals and spoke to more than a dozen current and former federal employees to determine the scope of the cuts to programs tracking basic facts about Americans’ health.

Among those terminated at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were experts tracking abortions, pregnancies, job-related injuries, lead poisonings, sexual violence and youth smoking, the AP found.

“If you don’t have staff, the program is gone,” said Patrick Breysse, who used to oversee the CDC’s environmental health programs.

Federal officials have not given a public accounting of specific surveillance programs that are being eliminated.

Instead, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman pointed the AP to a Trump administration budget proposal released Friday. It lacked specifics, but proposes to cut the CDC’s core budget by more than half and vows to focus CDC surveillance only on emerging and infectious diseases.

Kennedy has said some of the CDC’s other work will be moved to a yet-to-be-created agency, the Administration for a Healthy America. He also has said that the cuts are designed to get rid of waste at a department that has seen its budget grow in recent years.

“Unfortunately, this extra spending and staff has not improved our nation’s health as a country,” Kennedy wrote last month in the New York Post. “Instead, it has only created more waste, administrative bloat and duplication.”

Some health experts say the eliminated programs are not duplicative, and erasing them will leave Americans in the dark.

“If the U.S. is interested in making itself healthier again, how is it going to know, if it cancels the programs that helps us understand these diseases?” said Graham Mooney, a Johns Hopkins University public health historian.

The core of the nation’s health surveillance is done by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. Relying on birth and death certificates, it generates information on birth rates, death trends and life expectancy. It also operates long-standing health surveys that provide basic data on obesity, asthma and other health issues.

The center has been barely touched in layoffs, and seems intact under current budget plans.

But many other efforts were targeted by the cuts, the AP found. Some examples:

Pregnancies and abortion

The Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, which surveys women across the country, lost its entire staff — about 20 people.

It’s the most comprehensive collection of data on the health behaviors and outcomes before, during and after childbirth. Researchers have been using its data to investigate the nation’s maternal mortality problem.

Recent layoffs also wiped out the staffs collecting data on in vitro fertilizations and abortions.

Those cuts come despite President Trump’s assertions he wants to expand IVF access and that the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook for his administration called for more abortion surveillance.

Lead poisoning

The CDC eliminated its program on lead poisoning in children, which helped local health departments — through funding and expertise — investigate lead poisoning clusters and find where risk is greatest.

Lead poisoning in kids typically stems from exposure to bits of old paint, contaminated dust or drinking water that passes through lead pipes. But the program’s staff also played an important role in the investigation of lead-tainted applesauce that affected 500 kids.

Last year, Milwaukee health officials became aware that peeling paint in aging local elementary schools was endangering kids. The city health department began working with the CDC to test tens of thousands of students. That assistance stopped last month when the CDC’s lead program staff was terminated.

City officials are particularly concerned about losing expertise to help them track the long-term effects.

“We don’t know what we don’t know,” said Mike Totoraitis, the city’s health commissioner.

Environmental investigations

Also gone is the staff for the 23-year-old Environmental Public Health Tracking Program, which had information on concerns including possible cancer clusters and weather-related illnesses.

“The loss of that program is going to greatly diminish the ability to make linkages between what might be in the environment and what health might be affected by that,” Breysse said.

Transgender data

In some cases, it’s not a matter of staffers leaving, but rather the end of specific types of data collection.

Transgender status is no longer being recorded in health-tracking systems, including ones focused on violent deaths and on risky behaviors by kids.

Experts know transgender people are more likely to be victims of violence, but now “it’s going to be much more challenging to quantify the extent to which they are at higher risk,” said Thomas Simon, the recently retired senior director for scientific programs at the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention.

Violence

The staff and funding seem to have remained intact for a CDC data collection that provides insights into homicides, suicides and accidental deaths involving weapons.

But CDC violence-prevention programs that acted on that information were halted. So, too, was work on a system that collects hospital data on nonfatal injuries from causes such as shootings, crashes and drownings.

Also going away, apparently, is the CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey. The system is designed to pick up information that’s not found in law enforcement statistics. Health officials see that work as important, because not all sexual violence victims go to police.

Work injuries

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which tracks job-related illnesses and deaths and makes recommendations on how to prevent them, was gutted by the cuts.

Kennedy has said that 20% of the people laid off might be reinstated as the agency tries to correct mistakes.

That appeared to happen last month, when the American Federation of Government Employees said that NIOSH workers involved in a black lung disease program for coal miners had been temporarily called back.

But Health and Human Services Department officials did not answer questions about the reinstatement. The American Federation of Government Employees’ Micah Niemeier-Walsh later said the workers continued to have June termination dates and “we are concerned this is to give the appearance that the programs are still functioning, when effectively they are not.”

There’s been no talk of salvaging some other NIOSH programs, including one focused on workplace deaths in the oil and gas industries or a research project into how common hearing loss is in that industry.

Smoking and drugs

The Health and Human Services cuts eliminated the 17-member team responsible for the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, one of the main ways the government measures drug use.

Also axed were the CDC staff working on the National Youth Tobacco Survey.

There are other surveys that look at youth smoking and drug use, including the University of Michigan’s federally funded “Monitoring the Future” survey of schoolkids.

But the federal studies looked at both adults and adolescents, and provided insights into drug use by high school dropouts. The CDC also delved into specific vaping and tobacco products in the ways that other surveys don’t, and was a driver in the federal push to better regulate electronic cigarettes.

“There was overlap among the surveys, but each one had its own specific focus that the other ones didn’t cover,“ said Richard Miech, who leads the Michigan study.

Data modernization and predictions

Work to modernize data collection has been derailed. That includes an upgrade to a 22-year-old system that helps local public health departments track diseases and allows CDC to put together a national picture.

Another casualty was the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, which tries to predict disease trends.

The center, created during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, was working on forecasting the current multistate measles outbreak. That forecast hasn’t been published partly because of the layoffs, according to two CDC officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss it and fear retribution for speaking to the press.

Trump hasn’t always supported widespread testing of health problems.

In the spring of 2020, when COVID-19 diagnoses were exploding, the president groused that the nation’s ability to do more testing was making the U.S. look like it had a worse problem than other countries. He called testing “a double-edged sword.”

Mooney, the Johns Hopkins historian, wonders how interested the new administration is in reporting on health problems.

“You could think it’s deliberate,” he said. “If you keep people from knowing, they’re less likely to be concerned.”

Stobbe writes for the Associated Press.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — After Hurricane Helene devastated Asheville, N.C., the sound coming from open car windows as residents gathered on a street at the top of a ridge trying to get cell service last fall was Blue Ridge Public Radio.

And as they stood in line for water or food, the latest news they’d heard on the station was a frequent topic of conversation.

“The public radio station was alerting people what was going on,” said Lisa Savage, who volunteered at an area church after the hurricane.

Now public radio stations are being targeted for cuts by President Trump. Last week, he signed an executive order aimed at slashing public subsidies to NPR and PBS, alleging bias in the broadcasters’ reporting.

Public radio stations have been a lifeline for residents during natural disasters that take out power, the internet and cell towers. And in many remote and rural areas across the U.S., they can be a lone source of local news.

About a week after she’d volunteered in the Asheville area, Savage recalled driving through another hard-hit community and hearing updates on Blue Ridge Public Radio about where residents could pick up water.

“So that was crucial,” Savage said.

In the west Texas desert, Marfa Public Radio provides listeners a mix of local and national news and music. It’s based in Marfa, a city of about 2,000 that draws tourists to its art scene.

“Marfa Public Radio is the only radio service in a lot of the geographic area that we cover,” said Tom Livingston, the station’s interim executive director. “So it’s really essential in terms of if there’s news events, if there’s safety things that happen in the community.”

Corp. for Public Broadcasting funding

Trump’s order instructs the Corp. for Public Broadcasting and other federal agencies “to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS” and further requires that they work to root out indirect sources of public financing for the news organizations. The broadcasters get roughly half a billion dollars in public money through the private CPB, which has contended that it is not a federal executive agency subject to Trump’s orders.

The heads of PBS, NPR and CPB all suggested Friday that the order was illegal, and a court fight seems inevitable.

The White House has also said it will be asking Congress to rescind funding for the CPB as part of a $9.1-billion package of cuts. Local stations operate on a combination of government funding, donations and philanthropic grants, and stations in smaller markets are particularly dependent on the public money.

WMMT, based in the eastern Kentucky community of Whitesburg, can be heard in parts of five Appalachian states. The station’s general manager, Teddy Wimer, said listeners “want to hear people that sound like folks that they know from Appalachia,” and the station, which operates from a renovated Winnebago called the Possum Den, relies on CPB funding.

“We’re in an economically disadvantaged area of the country,” Wimer said. “Most of our listeners who really rely upon our programming don’t have the funds to ramp up their support.”

Livingston said about 30% of the station’s funding comes from the CPB. Right now, he says, it’s too early to know whether the cuts will actually happen or what their effect might be.

‘Local flavor and impact’

Along the West Virginia-Virginia border, more than three hours from Washington, D.C., residents can pick up signals from radio stations far away. But those “aren’t going have the local flavor and impact that we do,” said Scott Smith, general manager of Allegheny Mountain Radio. “This is the only game in town for that sort of thing.”

In his home base of Monterey, Va., Smith said there’s about a 4-square-mile area of cell coverage with one cell tower. The station has proved to be a vital source of information during natural disasters. In 2012, residents relied on it after a derecho knocked out power to 680,000 customers across West Virginia and it took nearly two weeks for some areas to get their service restored.

“Yeah, we play music. Yeah, we get on the air and joke around,” he said. “But we’re here providing basic level services of information, emergency information, that sort of thing, to our communities. And as part of that, we’re a pretty critical link in this area for the emergency alert system.”

Smith, who has a staff of 10 people, said 68% of Allegheny Mountain Radio’s annual budget comes from CPB.

“What CPB does fund the most is small rural radio,” Smith said. “When you take 60% of our income away, that’s not readily or easily replaceable.”

Smith calls it a “wait-and-see game” on whether Congress will act on the CPB funding.

“The answer to how we move forward is vague,” Smith said. “We will still continue to be here as long as we can be.”

Raby and Stengle write for the Associated Press and reported from Charleston and Dallas, respectively. AP writer Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.

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 [email protected]. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.

Cuts will reportedly take place over several years and be accomplished through reduced hiring as opposed to layoffs.

United States President Donald Trump’s administration is planning significant personnel cuts at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other major US spy units, according to The Washington Post, in a move seen as part of his bid to downsize key government agencies.

The CIA plans to cut 1,200 positions, along with thousands more from other parts of the US intelligence community, the newspaper reported on Friday.

Members of Congress have reportedly been told about the planned cuts, which will take place over several years and be accomplished in part through reduced hiring as opposed to layoffs, the report added.

Asked about the report, a spokesperson for the agency did not confirm the specifics, but said that the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, “is moving swiftly to ensure the CIA workforce is responsive to the administration’s national security priorities”.

“These moves are part of a holistic strategy to infuse the agency with renewed energy, provide opportunities for rising leaders to emerge, and better position CIA to deliver on its mission,” the spokesperson also said.

Trump appointee Ratcliffe, who was sworn in as CIA director in January, previously told lawmakers that, under his leadership, the agency would “produce insightful, objective, all-source analysis, never allowing political or personal biases to cloud our judgement or infect our products”.

“We will collect intelligence, especially human intelligence, in every corner of the globe, no matter how dark or difficult,” as well as “conduct covert action at the direction of the president, going places no one else can go and doing things no one else can do”, he said.

Addressing CIA officers, he said: “If all of this sounds like what you signed up for, then buckle up and get ready to make a difference. If it doesn’t, then it’s time to find a new line of work.”

In March, the CIA also announced that it would fire an undetermined number of junior officers as part of Trump’s government downsizing policy.

An agency spokesperson said those officers with behavioural issues or who are deemed a poor fit for intelligence work will be laid off, noting that not everyone proves to be able to handle the pressures of the job.

In February, the CIA also offered buyouts to some employees. It was not clear how many employees accepted the offer.

May 2 (UPI) — President Donald Trump revealed the White House budget request for Fiscal Year 2026 Friday, which requests cuts to foreign aid, education and health care but boosts to the military and border control.

Trump sent a letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, the Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, presenting his budget, which would cut spending levels by $163 billion and shrink base nondefense discretionary budget authority by 22.6%.

Agencies like the Department of Housing and Urban Development and National Institutes of Health stand to lose billions of dollars each compared to fiscal 2025 levels. The budget also proposes a nearly $25 billion reduction for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, with State Rental Assistance Block Grants on the chopping block.

The Department of Homeland Security, on the other hand, would get “a historic $175 billion investment to,” as Vought wrote, “at long last, fully secure our border.”

The Trump administration also seeks to increase defense spending by 13%, bringing that expenditure up to $1.01 trillion.

Vought wrote that the “recommended funding levels result from a rigorous, line-by-line review of [Fiscal Year] 2025 spending,” which he claimed “was found to be laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans” and instead aimed at “funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.”

Vought also wrote that they considered whether a governmental service provided could “be provided better by state or local governments, if provided at all.”

A total of $325 billion of the proposed increases would be assumed in the budget resolution recently agreed upon by Congress would be achieved through reconciliation, an accelerated process used to consider bills that would put policies represented in a Congressional budget resolution into motion.

Presidential budget requests are not guaranteed to be fulfilled, as congressional appropriators construct the ultimate appropriations bills that become law.

The increases and cuts are a definitive way to view the priorities of an administration, and with both houses under Republican control it would appear that the Trump administration is prepared to exploit that advantage, as Vought posted to X Friday that this budget ensures that “only Republican votes are needed by using reconciliation to secure those increases,” without the impositions of Democrats.

Nathan Kehn has rescued cats and kittens from some tough spots — dumpsters, an abandoned police car and, in one case, a cramped space behind a water heater.

The Sherman Oaks resident swung into action yet again last week after hearing that the Los Angeles Animal Services department was threatened with $4.8 million in reductions, part of a larger list of cuts in Mayor Karen Bass’ latest budget.

Kehn and scores of other animal rescue advocates turned out at two packed budget hearings to demand that the City Council reject employee layoffs, keep animal shelters open and preserve spay-and-neuter programs.

“If you stop fixing cats,” Kehn said, “the problem is going to be out of control in a matter of months.”

Bass and her budget team say the concerns are rooted in a misunderstanding.

The mayor’s spending plan spells out a $4.8-million cut to Animal Services. But it also sets aside an extra $5 million for that agency’s operations in a little-known section of the budget known as the “unappropriated balance,” which serves as a holding tank for funds that have not yet been finalized.

That $5 million is enough to keep all six of the city’s animal shelters open, Bass said in a social media post Monday, halfway into a five-hour budget hearing where the fate of those facilities was repeatedly discussed.

“We understand the need to continue operating all City shelters, and will work with the City Council to assure that the priority for animal care and their well being is reflected in the final budget,” she said.

The confusion over the city’s troubled animal shelters, which have been plagued by overcrowding and rising euthanasia rates, began with the rollout of the mayor’s proposed 2025-26 budget.

Bass’ $14-billion spending plan, released last week, proposed deep cuts to the city workforce to close a nearly $1-billion shortfall. About 2,700 positions would be eliminated — more than half through layoffs — across a wide range of agencies.

While preparing those budget documents, the mayor’s team initially did not think there would be enough money to prevent layoffs at Animal Services, Deputy Mayor Matt Hale said. By the time they found the $5 million, it was too late to incorporate the money into the part of the budget that lists the department’s salaries and expenses, he said.

The $5 million was then set aside in the unappropriated balance, also known as the UB, which appears on Page 1,013 of one of the mayor’s budget books, under the category “animal services operations.”

On the day the budget was released, city officials issued a one-page explainer on the proposed job cuts, which showed that 111 positions would be eliminated at Animal Services, 62 of them through layoffs. That document did not reference the $5 million.

A day later, officials at Animal Services issued their own memo warning that a $4.8-million cut would result in the closure of three animal shelters — Harbor, West Los Angeles and West Valley. Residents who live nearby would need to be rerouted to the city’s other three animal shelters, wrote Annette Ramirez, the agency’s interim general manager.

That, in turn, would result in overcrowding and a dramatic increase in the euthanasia of dogs and cats to free up space, Ramirez said.

Ramirez’s memo also acknowledged the $5 million set aside for her agency. Nevertheless, the prospect of increased euthanasia alarmed the city’s animal rescue volunteers — and one of their champions, City Controller Kenneth Mejia, who featured his corgis prominently in his campaign literature when he ran for office in 2022.

On Sunday, Mejia posted about the potential cuts on X, making no mention of the $5 million listed in the budget’s unappropriated balance. The following day, animal rescue activists rallied outside City Hall, then packed the budget committee’s five-hour public hearing to voice their frustrations.

Meri Kopushyan, while attending the hearing, said the $4.8 million in cuts would mean a “death sentence” for animals inside the city’s shelters.

“These animals are already scared, abandoned, living in horrible conditions, and they have no family to love them,” Kopushyan told the committee, fighting back tears.

Another speaker vowed to send her fellow activists — “cat and dog warriors,” as she described them — to Petco stores across the city to publicize the name of any council member who votes for cuts to Animal Services.

Yet another speaker, Mid-City resident Devin Bennett, warned council members that they would be remembered for having “the blood of thousands of puppies and kittens” on their hands unless they stopped the cuts.

“This will end your political careers,” said Bennett, founder of a nonprofit group called Here, Have a Kitten!

To prevent the layoffs and closures, the City Council still must vote to move the $5 million out of the unappropriated balance and into Animal Services.

On Tuesday, Councilmembers Traci Park and John Lee — whose districts include two of the three shelters that were at risk of closure — sent a letter to Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, the chair of the budget committee, calling for the money to be transferred. That same day, Yaroslavsky and Tim McOsker, another budget committee member, voiced support for the move.

“I do want to speak to the acting general manager of Animal Services and talk about some of the structural issues within their organization,” McOsker said. “But I do absolutely want to move the $5 million … to restore those positions.”

Council members must approve a budget by the end of May. Some advocates say they should go beyond the $5 million and give an infusion of new funds to a department they view as seriously underfunded.

Jennifer Naitaki, a vice president at the Michelson Center for Public Policy, which is affiliated with the Michelson Found Animals Foundation, acknowledged that saving animals’ lives is expensive. Still, additional funding would pay off in dividends by reducing births of unwanted animals and easing the strain on the city’s shelters, she said.

Naitaki said city leaders could have avoided a political headache by providing clear information from the start about the funding set aside for the department. That would have also brought relief to worried animal advocates, she said.

“It just wasn’t communicated as well as it as it could have been,” she said. “Obviously, that caused a huge uproar and a lot of anger and a lot of advocacy. And I also think maybe that’s not bad, right? It’s always good to get in front of our City Council members and the budget committee, and have them hear from the folks that care.”