L.A. Overspends by $27,378 an Hour

I'm a City employee as well. It is demoralizing to read stories like this, knowing that our so-called leaders will not do anything to fix the problems.

Term limits are one big reason for this situation. Politicians are naturally short-term thinkers, but term limits have made the situation much worse. Dealing with big-long-term problems now just gets kicked down the road to the next group of folks. The employee unions share some of the blame here, though pay and benefit increases have to be approved by elected officials; if they had stiffer spines, perhaps we would have better balance.

The pension issue is huge. Like almost all companies, the Federal Government got rid of its pension program over 25 years ago because it was completely unaffordable. The City and state face the same issues, but are far too late in making the needed changes.

I will disagree with some of the other comments regarding City employees generally. While there are certainly those who abuse the public trust or do as little as possible, a LOT of us believe in public service and care about making the City work. If you've enjoyed a park or Griffith Observatory, been helped by a police or fire officer, or had a pothole filled on your street, those are City workers. We don't like seeing the waste and abuse either, but the people setting the policies are the ones chosen by the voters. If this story makes you mad, DO something about it!

lol, hey its only money right? No worries.Privacy-Planet.tk

I'm a city employee & there are so many people that work for the city & at LAPDwho do absolutely nothing, all day long, nothing but talk & talk & talk then complain that they have to work. If tax players know what their money was paying for they would riot & demand their money back. the city of LA is corrupt.

Who can get us out of this mess?

Can't someone like Riordan or some other rich dude put something like Wisconsin's law on our ballot? Oh wait: we drove out the rich manufacturing dudes.

Rich entertainment dudes don't live in LA, and they don't do heavy lifting: only benefits for soft causes.

Our roads, schools, pools, etc deteriorate so we can pay LADWP garage attendants 73k a year, etc., etc. Pensions everywhere. We can never lay anyone off. Bernard Parks was the ONLY one that seemed to get it, and he was marginalized.

LA is collapsing but it has time to agonize over plastic grocery bags.

But Villagarosia will be gone when the SHTF. He'll still have his pension though.

Los Angeles, the Detroit of the west Coast.

my neighbor's mom makes $75 an hour on the laptop. She has been fired from work for 10 months but last month her paycheck was $19924 just working on the laptop for a few hours. Here's the site to read more lazycash42.c()m

As an actual city employee, I can say things are much worse than the article states. I see waste on a scale You would not believe every day. Millions of tax payer money wasted with zero accountability. I have seen people receive awards for wasting millions on useless or abandoned projects. It sickens many of my fellow employees but we are powerless against the management and politicians.

so when are we going to see your write up on Los Angeles County Dept. of Public Works, these aren't even elected officials, they get a great salary, benefits, and retirement, and the taxpayer foots the bill for them to drive leased vehicles of their choice from their home to work and back. They get gas for FREE, get their car serviced (including HAND WASHING of their vehicle) by County staff, during work hours....and these vehicles are EXEMPT. There are department heads that are driving almost 80-100 miles a day round trip from home to work. Why should the taxpayer foot the bill for people to drive to work?

my classmate's sister makes $88/hr on the internet. She has been fired from work for 8 months but last month her paycheck was $21668 just working on the internet for a few hours. Read more on this site lazycash42.c()m

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And yet, the residents re-elect the same people over and over and over and over and over and....

City Hall is the Versailles of LA. The only difference is that the French did something about it.

It took me over a year to get the Bureau of Sanitation to stop charging my building for trash services we don't receive. A YEAR. And it was only resolved after a lawyer got involved. The private trash service our building uses costs less than 1/2 of what the city charges, btw. Angelinos need to start asking some serious questions about transparency and accountability, and specifically WHY we are subsidizing these outrageous salaries and perks.

The Current elected officials are not qualified to be the next Mayor of Los Angeles! Rev1 A good argument against current administration officials running for mayor is that Wendy Greuel who has been in the city council since 2012 and is "all of a sudden" finding problems as controller and as a now mayoral candidate that she didn't seem to notice as a council member for over 9 years. That Eric Garcetti has been "at the helm of city council for over a decade of decline and deterioration." That Jan Perry is much like the others she has been in office since 2001. That Austin Beutner can't possibly escape blame after having run 13 city departments, with the position of First Deputy Mayor and Chief Executive for Economic and Business Policy, as well as General Manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power 1994-1996. None of them have objected or put up an argument while in office against the policies that have brought Los Angeles to the verge of bankruptcy and total economic disaster, the worst in 8 decades. And that LA’s outgoing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa makes a strong argument for letting a complete outsider give it a go. An outsider has no allegiance to the political machine. Los Angeles must start with a clean slate at City Hall. From the current list of candidates, I can see only two outsiders that are qualified; YJ Draiman & Kevin James. We have an opportunity to elect and put in Los Angeles City Hall a new Mayor and 8 out of the 15 Councilmen that are up for election. This could change the face of the administration drastically and bring about a change of operation, where sound decisions and transparency will be the new mandate for LA City Hall. The mayor of the city of Los Angeles must be a leader like no other leader, he must be an exceptional administrator and trustworthy. He must have top notch advisers to advice him in bringing LA to economic health. A city of Los Angeles with about 4 million people and spans an area of 465 square miles that has an economic engine that by far surpasses many countries; it is an enormous responsibility and must be managed properly.

If LA keeps taxing its people to death there will be nobody left in the city to collect taxes from. Many people and businesses are leaving the city in droves.

Have the jail trustees take care of the plants and eliminate ALL taxpayer funded automobiles and wasteful maintenance and fuel costs, duh.

People seen to think that private contractors are the answer. If you check the records for private contracted work done for the city I'm sure you'll find that while the contractors bid very low, the constantly went over budget by large percentages. And another thing. The type of back end paperwork required to keep every penny accounted for is redundant, tedious and time consuming. No contractor will provide that kind of support. I know. I work for the city and have seen it time and time again. LA weekly has run stories in the past about contractor abuse. The get in to the system and rack up huge bills for the city. Then ultimately the city employees end up cleaning up the mess and finishing the jobs properly that the contractors jacked up and or never finished. We employees see the waste first hand and could clean up quite a bit but no one listens to us. They'll hire consultants to talk to us and pay millions for them to tell city hall what they could have gotten from the work force for free. Don't be pissed at the civil servants. We want to do a good job. We want to help save money. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that your elected officials not only don't listen to you, they don't listen to us either.