LA county's proposed budget adds public defender hiring and election funding, maintains CalFresh amid federal cuts, and more. Here’s what caught The LA Reporter’s eye in the county’s newly released budget recommendations.
The Los Angeles County Chief Executive Office officially released their recommended budget today. This is the first of three steps in the county’s budgeting process. The budget is set to be taken up next by the County Board of Supervisors, which will be hearing a presentation on it at its 9:39 a.m. meeting today. It’s Item 70 on their agenda. Public hearings for LA County budget begin on May 6.
While there isn’t a round of across-the-board cuts being recommended this time, as in the last year, the county’s budget is still extremely lean. Whatever funding that’s available for services are mainly going toward maintaining them at the current level, especially after major federal and state funding cuts have seriously affected programs such as CalFresh food benefits, county officials said.
In a briefing with reporters on Monday, Acting CEO Joe Nicchitta, pointed to recommended funding in the budget that’s just to maintain services such as their CalFresh food benefits, which have been affected by federal funding cuts and new rules under H.R. 1, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill.
Nicchitta said $40.1 million in LA County funding will go toward matching federal and state dollars, not only in order to continue providing $194 million in CalFresh food benefits, but also to pay for staff to cover the added workload resulting from the federal bill, which included “new work requirements and more frequent eligibility assessments” for the food benefits program.
Nicchitta explained that H.R. 1 changed the “participation share” on the amount of funding the different levels of government provide. In this case, the federal government will be putting in less funding, while the county puts in more local dollars to pay for CalFresh.
Other fallout from federal and state revenue changes seen in the plan: The Department of Health Services would pull from the reserves due to a $662.2 million reduction in revenue. And $22.3 million would go toward the administration of general relief, to align with CalFresh.
Recently, cuts to federal, state and local funding have already precipitated LA County’s public health department closing 7 clinics, leaving just six remaining clinics running.
Here are a few of the line items that caught The LA Reporter’s attention during Monday’s media briefing:
The recommended budget calls for $47.7 million of one-time funding for the Voting Solutions for All People (VSAP) system, which is the program that rolled out the vote centers, for the November 2026 gubernatorial general election. Nicchitta told reporters at the briefing that the county’s elections programming operates at a structural deficit and such one-time funding is used each year to pay for elections. Nicchitta responded to a question from The LA Reporter about whether there would be enough funding to provide vote centers in enough communities, saying that he thinks “we've made the right investment in our voting system this year.” Nicchitta said their executive office has met with the County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk to talk over their election division’s needs in November. “We want to make sure that he's [referring to County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan] adequately resourced to run an election that is accessible to all people who are looking to vote in that election,” Nicchitta said.
There is also $12 million of ongoing funding in the spending plan to hire public defenders and alternate public defenders. Nicchitta pointed to the recently approved Proposition 36 measure in Los Angeles County, “which has generated a lot more filings.” (The LA Reporter’s note: The measure increased penalties for minor drug and theft crimes, making the approach for such crimes similar to what they had been during the “tough-on-crime” era that then led to a mass incarceration problem that is still affecting many people in the community). There is a public defender workload study being done, Nicchitta also said. He explained that “we want to set aside some resources to be able to implement the recommendations of the study.” The additional funding was also needed because of the growing use of body worn cameras, with public defenders increasingly reviewing camera footage to defend their clients’ cases, Nicchitta said.
The spending plan also maintains funding for so-called “safety-net services,” including $277.5 million for support at 6,164 “temporary housing beds,” and $235.1 million for wrap-around services at 32,517 permanent supportive housing units. There is also $383.4 million recommended for 5,300 beds in the Office of Diversion and Reentry that are aimed at making sure people with serious mental illness and substance use disorders aren’t being placed into jails. And the budget also recommends $554.8 million to make sure people who are in county jails get medical and mental health care. Nicchitta said they’re “not proposing” to decrease beds, but they’re also not proposing to expand beds either, “which is an issue, because at some point you're going to reach capacity and need to grow the number of beds to have the same level of effect in the jails.”
The budget also calls for $7.5 million to pay for 41 positions in the Department of Mental Health programs that offer pre-release services to young people who have been or are incarcerated. Sixteen of those positions are specifically for the county’s Justice Involved Re-entry Initiative program, according to information CEO officials later supplemented to The LA Reporter. Nicchitta explained at the briefing that these are “increased resources we're putting on the ground to make sure that when folks are prepared to leave our juvenile justice system, that they can exit to a supportive environment and not face untreated mental illness or other issues that would cause them to come back into our system.”
The LA Times story from this briefing provides a birds-eye view of the other major and familiar issues affecting LA County’s Budget — such as fire recovery and the sexual abuse settlements. Here’s a pretty straightforward presentation from the county that provides the skinny on their recommendation, as well as a primer on how the county’s budget works. There is also this chart of the budgeted positions in Los Angeles County, which can quickly give you a sense of what LA County’s budget actually focuses on, as opposed to other budgets you might see getting discussed very soon. For example, Los Angeles County’s workforce and services are concentrated in health services and social safety net programs. But the county also juggles those with municipal style services such as public works and infrastructure, firefighting, as well as a significantly sized Sheriff’s department. The county offers such municipal services mostly in the unincorporated parts of the county.
Speaking of municipal budgeting, the Los Angeles city budget discussions are beginning soon too, with Mayor Karen Bass set to release her office’s proposal in less than a week, on Monday, April 20. The mayor’s office posts up each department’s budget proposals that get factored into her own proposal. Those individual proposals give an in-depth look into the types of services that are provided and proposed by the city of Los Angeles.
A looming LAUSD worker strike has been averted, with deal reached with union for cafeteria workers, janitors, bus drivers and other education workers
After the teacher’s union, UTLA, and the administrator’s union, the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA), reached deals with the school district in recent days, the education workers union, SEIU Local 99, which represents cafeteria workers, bus drivers, janitors, special education aides and others, have also reached a deal in the wee hours of Tuesday, just as workers were prepared, if needed, to go on strike just a few short hours later at 6 a.m. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who took part in the negotiations, announced the deal here with a video featuring union leaders and Bass speaking.
According to the press release from SEIU Local 99, the agreement includes a 24% wage increase; expanded work hours for many of the workers that would let them qualify for health care benefits; the rescinding of IT technician layoffs; the expansion of healthcare for teacher assistants, after school workers, community representatives and others; and an agreement to prohibit subcontractor work and to create a way for workers to be hired directly by the district. The union’s members still need to take a look at the agreement before deciding whether to ratify the agreement.
Max Arias, executive director of SEIU Local 99, said in a statement that “this agreement was won through the bold action and courage of thousands of workers who were willing to sacrifice to improve conditions in their schools and their lives.” Arias also said a strike “was always the last resort, and we are proud that we could work with the school district and Mayor Karen Bass to reach an agreement that recognizes the contributions of front line workers in our schools.”
A few more things …
Mike Bonin, former LA City Council member and now executive director of the Pat Brown Institute, weighs in on, and breaks down ,the Neighbors First ads that have proliferated in LA city’s elections, and that have been described as being funded by “dark money” due to the lack of information available about the group, and campaign finance rule that don’t require such groups to disclose information. This was also a major topic on the latest LA Podcast episode that Bonin helps host.
The Ad Hoc Committee on the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games began meeting early today, at 8 a.m., and on the agenda was a report from LA28 on their strategy for address human rights issues during the Games. This report touches on human trafficking, labor rights, accessibility, unhoused communities, civil rights, public safety, athlete and LA28 staff safety. The council file, where updates on this item and written public comment are posted, for that report can be found here. The meeting is live-streamed (and archived) here.
After a presentation by immigrant right advocates was pulled unexpectedly, and without explanation, last week, the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners is meeting again at 9:30 a.m. this morning, on April 14, and on the agenda is a three-page report about federal immigration activity in Los Angeles, as well as a verbal report from the Office of the Inspector General on “the department’s response to federal immigration enforcement actions.” The meeting video usually gets posted up a day or two after the meeting. To view the meeting live, use this Zoom link: https://www.zoomgov.com/j/1603411155. To get some background on that earlier canceled presentation, by the LA Sanctuary Coalition, you can read The LA Reporter’s story, which was just reposted on Mar Vista Voice.
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