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THE BOTTOM LINE - Los Angeles loves to boast about transparency and equity. Yet when it comes to funding the very people who keep City Hall honest — the Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates — the Mayor’s Office is silent, the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment is missing, and civic accountability is gasping for air.
For more than two decades, the Budget Advocates (BAs) have done what City Hall refuses to do: pore over thousands of pages of financial data, question bloated departments and expose inefficiency. These are ordinary Angelenos — volunteers — who take their civic duty more seriously than many salaried bureaucrats. They do it not for pay or power, but for principle and public service.
And yet, this year’s budget sends a clear and chilling message: Mayor Karen Bass has chosen to defund civic oversight while protecting bureaucracy. It’s a choice that undermines trust — and the very foundation of participatory democracy in Los Angeles.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
According to the Budget Advocates’ 2025 White Paper, the City’s 2024-25 budget dropped from $13.1 billion to $12.9 billion — a 1.9 percent reduction — even as Los Angeles faces a nearly $1 billion projected deficit heading into 2025-26. These aren’t minor fluctuations; they reveal a growing structural deficit that threatens public services and civic confidence. Yet City Hall seems content to face this storm without the watchdog’s taxpayers rely on.
Despite this crisis, the Mayor’s Proposed Budget offers only $25,000 per Neighborhood Council — the same amount slashed during the pandemic and half of what councils received when the system began more than twenty years ago. That meager sum must now cover outreach, communications, events, translations — and even the city’s only independent budget watchdogs.
Meanwhile, the City’s own budget documents show a token $10,000 allocation for “Budget Advocacy” — the smallest line item in DONE’s entire portfolio. Think about that: in a city that spends $13 billion a year, the administration could spare only $10,000 for the volunteers who monitor waste, study inefficiency, and publish an annual White Paper that guides fiscal reform.
Worse still, none of those funds are earmarked directly for the Budget Advocates themselves. The group that represents 99 Neighborhood Councils — and millions of residents — has been left with zero dedicated support. The message couldn’t be clearer: City Hall values photo ops over public oversight.
Five Years of Decline
Just five years ago, the Budget Advocates received $10,000 annually to host Budget Day — one of the city’s few public forums where residents could learn how Los Angeles spends their tax dollars and voice real priorities. That ended when Karen Bass took office.
In a city now facing a billion-dollar deficit, the fact that the Mayor can’t find even $10,000 to educate and engage residents exposes a profound failure of leadership. It’s not an oversight — it’s evidence of deliberate neglect, a lack of transparency, and fiscal mismanagement.
Five years ago, every Neighborhood Council also received $50,000 annually — about $4,000 a month — to operate offices, pay utilities, and conduct outreach in compliance with Section 900 of the Los Angeles City Charter, which mandates councils “to promote citizen participation and bridge the gap between stakeholders and city officials.”
Today, that figure has been slashed to $25,000 per council, even as inflation and operating costs have doubled. With half the funding and twice the expenses, most councils are barely functional. What began as a visionary experiment in civic empowerment has been reduced to a bureaucratic afterthought.
This isn’t reform — it’s erosion. City Hall treats Neighborhood Councils as low-hanging fruit — stripping their budgets to silence their voices. By depriving them of resources, the administration has dismantled the very infrastructure meant to connect government with its people.
Fiscal mismanagement doesn’t just cripple democracy — it directly undermines city services. Budgets equal services. Every dollar stripped from community programs translates into fewer cleanups, fewer safety initiatives, and fewer neighborhood improvements.
And remember: the City’s $1 billion deficit doesn’t even include deferred infrastructure repairs — roughly $10 billion more in neglected streets, sidewalks, streetlights, and public facilities. The numbers are staggering. The priorities are indefensible.
Section 900: A Broken Promise
When voters adopted Section 900 of the City Charter, they envisioned a system of Neighborhood Councils that were fully funded, independent, and empowered to hold government accountable. That Charter guarantee has now been hollowed out and ignored.
Under Mayor Bass, the promise of empowerment has been replaced by the politics of control. The structure remains, but the spirit of inclusion has been extinguished. A system once designed to amplify the people’s voice has been quietly defunded into irrelevance.
The Bottom Line
If the Mayor truly believes in “a new era of collaboration,” she must restore — and expand — funding for the Budget Advocates and the Neighborhood Council system. Democracy cannot run on rhetoric; it runs on resources.
When the Mayor can find millions for consultants, political advisors, and public-relations campaigns but only $10,000 for civic watchdogs, that’s not fiscal prudence — that’s political hypocrisy. It’s a betrayal of the Charter’s founding intent and a direct attack on community participation.
Los Angeles deserves an honest budget process — one that empowers the public, not silences it. Until that happens, Angelenos should see this budget for what it truly is: not a plan for progress, but a blueprint for bureaucratic control and civic silence.
(Mihran Kalaydjian is a seasoned public affairs and government relations professional with more than twenty years of experience in legislative affairs, public policy, community relations, and strategic communications. A respected civic leader and education advocate, he has spearheaded numerous academic and community initiatives, shaping dialogue and driving reform in local and regional political forums. His career reflects a steadfast commitment to transparency, accountability, and public service across Los Angeles and beyond.)
