Sizable increases in base pay - which is how overtime pay is determined -Greig Smith, Council Member and an LAPD Reserve officer, offered an explantion,
are also part of the reason LAPD's annual overtime bill surged from about $32
million in fiscal year 1997-98 to nearly $79 million in 2007-08, according to
LAPD figures.
It's cheaper than hiring more police officers," said Los Angeles City
Councilman Greig Smith, a member of the city's Budget and Finance Committee.
"For a long time that was our reasoning. It was acceptable because it is
actually cheaper."It kind of spun out of control."
Regardless of what Smith says, and often it's in the form of a poor analysis or inappropriate analogy, the overtime is an increasing expense to be dealt with directly.
The city council is trying to get the budget balanced and some have asked that the mayor's plan to arrive at a 10,000 officer force by continued hiring be held off temporarily to help financially. Mayor Tony is intent on this goal, as he's in urgent need of more feathers in his cap to use in his bid for California's next Governor- as if he hasn't done enough for us at the city level already. The union, of course, would like to have more members and says that would ease the OT, which is often due to time spent in waiting in court to testify on cases.
The LAFD overtime as the city's other financial concern, will keep council busy for the near future, and satisfactory "solutions" rarely can be expected by the Council.
If you have any views of this council having some special skill or lofty ideals applied, you can forget that. Just tune in online live or on-demand to the meetings and after a few of those sessions you will either be thoroughly frustrated and disillusioned, wondering why no one runs against them, or you will be like many others who have no time to see that and become an "admirer" of these noble folks who are able to work so intently on the city's problems.
Let me tell you now, a lot of the problems were created BY them and their "lofty" ideals and ideas. Remember, each Council Member makes almost $180,000.00 cash salary a year and all have another $100,000.00 or so of benefits to help them get their job done. 15 Council Members with a staff of 20 and they've had up to 8 city cars apiece assigned full time to them and they still waste time with personal agendas for Resolutions and other items, all out of their jurisdiction, to send to D.C. or to Sacramento for those elected representative to ignore or to acknowledge courteously and then ignore, but to sound as if they are taking in such offerings.
The budget crisis comes, in part, from spending for programs without enough checking into worthiness of the programs they fund. A good deal of cronyism is showing in this area. Sometimes it's just throwing money at a problem on some "snake-oil salesman's" pitch for a cure that they are to lazy or ignorant to work on. This tradition is not new, but the dollar values increased and the assumption of continued tax money rolling in was a bad one to adopt.
So now, taxpayers get more taxes and "fees" imposed to cover the past council shortcomings in judgment and there's plans for MORE- (May 19th brings a lot of them for you to hang yourself with.)
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