Panelists included Wendy Greuel, Los Angeles City Controller; Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Community Coalition; J. Eugene Grigsby III, National Health Foundation and former Los Angeles Times columnist on economic issues; and Fran Inman, Majestic Realty Company and past-Chair of the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce.
Here are some excerpts from Tanner’s remarks:
Local government leaders must start with the goal of keeping public services as intact as possible and, with that, the jobs of the workers that provide the services. Like the Hippocratic Oath, first do no harm.
Elected officials must recognize a crisis quickly and respond quickly. They must lead and act with urgency because when you’re in an economic depression, every day you fail to implement solutions, the economic hole gets deeper. They must move quickly and collaboratively. Managers and workers need to get on the same side of the table and problem solve. The financial figures must be established, reliable and shared. The expertise of the workforce must be respected and solicited.
The Los Angeles County example:
Los Angeles County CEO Bill Fujioka and the County Board of Supervisors understood the urgency. In late 2008 they implemented a hiring freeze. Our union supported that. In May 2009 Fujioka established the “CEO Efficiencies Initiative” that required every department to establish a senior team responsible for soliciting cost-saving ideas from front-line workers, supervisors and managers and report results monthly. All suggestions, as well as cost-savings projections and costs to implement, are posted on an intranet site accessible by all county workers.
This program was well-established and created cost savings last year. When county revenues declined again last year, as it did with many local governments, the county mandated a 9 percent across-the-board budget reduction for every department. But any cost savings created by the efficiencies program are credited towards the departmental budget reduction requirement. So departments are incentivized to reach broader and deeper for more ways to save money. So far, no furloughs and no layoffs.
In the City of Los Angeles we had a different experience. Management proposed layoffs or furloughs. Keeping the Obama promise of preserving jobs, the Coalition of LA City Unions, which our union is a part of, proposed an early retirement program as an alternative. That way, instead of putting people on unemployment, long-term workers could retire with some purchasing power intact. The city was very slow to embrace our proposal. Valuable months were lost during which the fiscal hold got deeper.
Even after the agreement was reached, the city reneged and said furloughs would also be necessary. More time lost.
Before the early retirement program was implemented early this year, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa started, as Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez said yesterday, “throwing numbers around.” Lopez said: “It has looked, at times, like they’re throwing darts.”
Needless to say, union members cannot and will not engage in such a process. Instead we insist that the City do what LA County did last year and act on the 67 cost-saving and revenue-producing proposals we submitted to them. This year the current deficit is $400 million and growing.
Key proposals of ours include:
• Prioritize collecting more than $123 million owed to the city by the top 50 debtors.
• Extend the Mayor’s call for shared sacrifice from the city workforce to the city’s vendors, contractors, consultants and lenders, like banks.
• Cancel toxic loans and save taxpayers. At our suggestion, the City held a hearing last week on the interest rate swap agreements that are costing taxpayers up to $19 million annually.
Working together, we can avoid massive service cuts and get through these tough economic times, but it’s going to take leadership.