Tony V, aka Antonio Villaraigosa, as Mayor of Los Angeles, in a press conference called late Thursday afternoon, ordered several things, including the "immediate" layoff of 1,000 city workers. The City Council handled this matter Wednesday in their regular council meeting and agreed to hold off any decision on layoffs for 30 days. The mayor obviously disagreed.
One of the targets of the layoff was the City Attorneys office, with a 100 person cut planned. The idea of going in this directioni is odd since that is the office that handles city prosecution of misdemeanors and represents the city in civil actions. The cut to the staff with more than half to be lawyers, would seriously hurt the ability of this office to do the job.
Carmen Trutanich was elected to replace the old City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and took office at the beginning last July. Under Delgadillo, a lot of money was spent on outside law firms because they had "the expertise" needed. That cost the city a lot to pay outside attorneys for such work. Trutanich began immediately to have city lawyers have training so as to be able to handle cases in-house and to cut out a lot of this spending for outside lawyers. It also would affec the ability to prosecute criminal cases and you have to wonder what they were thinking to come up with this idea.
Trutanich gave the Council much grief by his challenges to legality of the paths that the council tried to take in drafting an ordinance on the Medical Marijuana issue. The idea of cutting the C.A.'s office looked like it was some sort of payback. That was denied at hearings this week, all being just based on non-personal reasons, they said.
So now Friday, the latest news from the L.A. Times, is that there's not going to be cuts to the City Attorneys office. "Showdown brewing between L.A. mayor and city attorney over layoffs [Updated] " February 5, 2010 4:24 pm, by Maeve Reston at Los Angeles City Hall http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/government/
For now, the Mayor seems to have backed off on cuts at the C.A.'s office because, he says, of their work in debt collections and reductions of the judgments against the city. Under Delgadillo, there were several prominent cases with large settlements made when facts seemed not to justify the sums.
Remember firefighter Tennie Pierce and his Million Plus settlement for being tricked by fellow station members into eating some dog food in his spaghetti? Racial Discrimination was alleged, even though he had worked for years with the same people and was a prankster himself with them. So Delgadillo's departure was overdue in my opinion and he should have resigned when it was shown he filed reports of damage to city vehicles that happened while his wife was driving but that fact did not appear. So you see a big change happened and it was not "Business as Usual" anymore with the new City Attorney. And it was about time.
One good thing from Villaraigosa's Thursday announcement was the mention that he wanted the council to turn back to the city certain assorted funds in the sum of $40 million dollars that they had as for use as a slush fund. And noobdy on the Council ever spilled the beans on this fund before this. That fund was reminiscent of the county's $3-million fund given each year to each Supervisor. Here it was over $2-million average for each CM.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From the L.A. Weekly, "Show Us The Money: L.A. Council Slush Funds Revealed," By Dennis Romero in City News, community, economy, politics Thu., Feb. 4 2010 @ 7:09AM http://blogs.laweekly.com/ladaily/city-news/council-slush-fund/
Who can you trust? The mayor's timing for the press conference could be the product of his own need to be on the news- if you follow his habits- which often seems a stronger motivation that the actual content of his press conferences.
Posts
