LAPD Overtime a City Council Topic last week. Can they handle it?

The LAPD has it's own overtime considerations on overtime that the City Council is examining as part of the city budget items. "City grapples with LAPD's overtime pay," By Jason Kandel, Staff Writer http://www.dailynews.com/ci_10707094 is a story that appeared in the DAILY NEWS on April 17, 2009, a little earlier than the Fire Department's overtime story. The LAPD has it's overtime cost rising over the last 10 years but the workforce has been relatively stable, and that's caused concern.

Sizable increases in base pay - which is how overtime pay is determined -
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.

Greig Smith, Council Member and an LAPD Reserve officer, offered an explantion,

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.)

Public Comment at Today's Council Meeting and Student's Demand for action

There was a young woman, “Maritza,” 16 years of age, speaking very well today during "Public Comment" at City Hall for her 2-minute allotment, with a request- no, I believe it was part of a mentioned group “demand”- for providing activities to give young people something to do, since that will keep them out of trouble. She said there is nothing now there for the young people coming out of juvenile hall. She spoke of the problems in the streets that appeared to mean the violence and wanted the Council to work to address that. The needs of this segment of youth was the indicated concern, as I interpretted it.

She spoke of the spending done by the state and of the police budget "that was not cut," and the high level of incarceration in the State on a comparative basis. There was a request was for addressing the social needs. Following this presentation, a couple of other young persons spoke to have the Council change things, one man complaining of the LAPD actions on the part of some officers, and another woman asking for serious consideration in budget matters of the city.

The presentation by Maritza was well made, but in the overall picture, there were a couple of things shown by the comment. The budget issues at this time are already at crisis levels, and the Council is responsible for that, as is the Mayor. The Council had approved urgency measures, hurting businesses and citizens in seemingly small but important ways, like the parking meter rate-raising rampage conducted in the past few months citywide. The trash fee gradual increase over years was scrapped for in instant, full amount increase last fall. There realistically is no change to be expected for more programs that are not already in progress by the city due to funding.

One big consideration, although only mentioned in a few words, was that there were no programs for young people when they get out of juvenile hall. She did not mention anything about how they came to get INTO juvenile hall and what it is that makes others in the same neighborhoods and conditions not get into juvenile hall.

Commission of a crime is usually the reason for being incarcerated, and reducing that would clearly reduce the number of persons incarcerated. The speaker apparently adopted the assumption that the government generally and the City specifically is responsible to “fix” things for such persons after their errant behavior. That assumption is a big one, and a lot of different and opposing views on that exist.

This is part of the persistent problems of education and crime that we have today. A sarcastic comment might be “If they behaved, they wouldn’t go to juvenile hall, and would not have that need.” But let’s be generous here and say, something SHOULD be done for youth. Then what is that needed, and how much action is to be taken on it, and finally, what if any part of that is the proper area for spending taxpayer dollars, especially now as such money is in short supply?

Another big part of this picture is "What personal responsibility is expected of anyone for doing anything 'right' and that is in a moral sense, so what is within their own control?" I think a lot, but there probably some education missing to cause people to act right. Is that on a family level where your first learning happens? I think so, and I think if you speak to many teachers, you will find many shortcomings on that point, leaving the teachers at all grade levels having to fill in that idea on doing what we expected people to already know. Knowledge of proper manners, courtesy and consideration of others happens to typically be among these.

There is a lot of alienation and anger in young people coming from being ignored and not given the care and guidance early on that would have made a lot of the difficulties they encounter avoidable. Briefly, and still expecting that there is much need for further discussion, the idea that what is happening NOW is a result of lots of accumulated assumptions that somebody was taking care of things. The other idea of the government to be the caretaker of everything can be a dangerous thought. There is an idea that the NEED for government to take care of people perpetuates the predicament of people not working to improve or try to get out of that “rut.” I don’t agree that such is clearly the case, but there are not enough of public resources available to shore up all the needs there are, and the amount of resources diminish as the population grows

Young people have problems but the problem that also is there that is overlooked it that of thinking it’s “not my fault, so YOU have to help me.” The students and other young people who try to do the right thing and try not to get into trouble with the law have problems but there usually is not groups organizing to say, “We behave and don’t cause problems, so help us a little for change instead of the trouble makers.”

Well, there was also mentioned by Maritza the high numbers of person incarcerated in California and saying it should not be so. But did she mean that they were unfairly incarcerated? Or did she mean that there was a serious matter of criminal behavior being done that should not be the path followed? It might be another thing altogether, as maybe the State should not spend money on incarceration all that needed it, but only spend some other level and then the rest handled out-of-custody? I think maybe it was simply that such money spent should be re-allocated, without any impact on the corrections system, clearly not a workable outcome.

All the interaction of current life, education, family patterns, crime, employment, all of the things, have to be considered together for solutions and not simply as isolated and distinct matters. Solutions to some parts will help reach solutions in other parts, but hastily made changes could worsen other parts very quickly and fixing that would leave us worse off than now.

The forum today, the City Council, is a not one where real solutions are generated, given the current views and agendas. A lot of platitudes and posturing happens there at City Hall by the usual suspects in office, but solutions will have to happen on multiple levels by coordination of several agencies, public and private. That will be the problem for us if things will improve What we do have is a lot of people ready to take the credit for any successes. The blame for things usually sends them heading for cover, so the safe path has been what you usually see- no change.