LA WATCHDOG-The LA 2020 Commission will announce its recommendations regarding the City’s finances and economy at a press conference on Wednesday morning at 9 a.m. at the California Endowment, located at 1000 North Alameda Street in Downtown Los Angeles, just north of Union Station.
These recommendations are a follow up to its January 8 report, A Time for Truth, a well-researched, hard hitting report that the Los Angeles Times called a “stark reality check” that outlined the afflictions impacting our City: “weak job growth; high poverty; bad traffic; underperforming schools; weak, inactive government; red tape that stifles economic development; crumbling infrastructure; unfunded pensions; budget gimmicks; and a dissatisfied electorate.”
But will the LA 2020 Commission’s recommendation be as forceful as its initial report?
For example, will the LA 2020 Commission embrace meaningful pension reform which addresses the unsustainable retirement benefits of existing City employees?
Will the Commission recommend that the City be required to maintain its infrastructure in good condition, including its streets, sidewalks, curbs, parks, street lights, buildings and facilities, and management information systems?
Will the LA 2020 Commission call for a Live Within Its Means charter amendment which requires the City to develop and adhere to a Five Year Financial Plan, to pass two year balanced budgets based on Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, and, over the next twenty years, to fully fund the City’s two pension plans and to repair our streets, sidewalks, and the rest of our failing infrastructure?
According to sources at our Department of Water and Power, the LA 2020 Commission will recommend a new governing structure for the Department, where the Board of Commissioners would be more like the California Public Utilities Commission, paid and appointed to staggered four or five year terms, and granted more authority to speed up increases in our water and power rates.
But the real question is whether any of these recommendations will be implemented by a City Council that has been unwilling to embrace real reform despite unprecedented budget woes of their own making?
Stay tuned.
(Jack Humphreville writes LA Watchdog for CityWatch. He is the President of the DWP Advocacy Committee, The Ratepayer Advocate for the Greater Wilshire Neighborhood Council, and a Neighborhood Council Budget Advocate. Humphreville is the publisher of the Recycler Classifieds -- www.recycler.com. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Hear Jack every Tuesday morning at 6:20 on McIntyre in the Morning, KABC Radio 790.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 29
Pub: Apr 8, 2014