Despite his claims, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa does not want to shrink the city government. Instead, he wants to dupe taxpayers into letting him sell valuable public assets to private interests. L.A.'s citizens must not let Villaraigosa and the investment bankers get away with it. Here are the facts Villaraigosa omits to tell the public:
1. Villaraigosa supersized spending by 32 percent.
When Villaraigosa became mayor in 2005, the city's annual budget was $5.3 billion. Somehow, the city survived on that. Villaraigosa's latest budget, by contrast, called for spending more than $7 billion per year - $1.7 billion more per year than when he took office. That is a 32 percent increase, borne by you and me, the taxpayers.
Does anyone seriously believe we have received 32 percent more services since he became mayor? Or that the costs rose by 32 percent? Of course not.
Villaraigosa increased spending year after year, despite written warnings from the city administrative officer every year since 2005 that he was spending hundreds of millions of dollars more than the city was taking in. Up until recently, skyrocketing property tax revenues masked the overspending.
So where does all that money go? Much of it provides "welfare for the rich." Villaraigosa's budget calls for $680 million per year to go through the Community Redevelopment Agency to billionaire developers and other business owners with political connections. You and I are subsidizing their private companies, but we aren't receiving any stock or notes for doing so.
Villaraigosa has also supersized his entourage: He used to have a staff of 70 deputy mayors, typists, etc. Now he has 93 - and by some accounts, closer to 200.
Villaraigosa increased his travel budget, too. His predecessor got by on $20,000 per year. Villaraigosa increased his travel budget to $200,000 per year, but now he has reduced it to $146,000. But that figure is misleading, because he uses funds from the Department of Water and Power, the port and airport to "sponsor" his global travels.
Nor is Villaraigosa alone in squandering taxpayers' money on unnecessary trips: City Councilman Greig Smith and his fellow travelers blew $250,000 of our hard-earned tax money on a month-long, round-the-world trip to Canada, Spain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.
Villaraigosa gives millions of dollars of our money each year to unregulated "anti-gang" programs run by "ex" gang members who have a nasty habit of getting arrested for additional crimes while on the city gravy train, like Alex Sanchez, Mario "Bow Wow" Jones and Mario Corona.
The poster child of this particular phenomenon is Hector "Big Weasel" Marroquin, who got caught arming his "former" gang with machine guns and silencers. The name of his "anti-gang" program was NOGUNS. (I guess he appreciated irony.)
2. The so-called layoffs aren't layoffs at all.
"The 1,000 layoffs I have already ordered are the minimum we will need," Villaraigosa said. "More will be needed," he adds, and "the City Council is proposing an additional 3,000 job cuts."
Scary stuff, huh? Except the supposed "layoffs" aren't layoffs at all. Rather, Villaraigosa merely plans to move employees from one position to another, one department to another, and then call the newly vacated positions "layoffs." That kind of shell game won't shrink government, and it won't save you and me a dime. At most, it will shift some employees' salaries from our property tax bill to our DWP bill.
The city, the DWP, the airport and the port employ more than 50,000 people. If they suffered the same 13.2 percent unemployment rate as L.A.'s private sector - a rate far above the national average - then 6,600 of them would already be without jobs.
Why, then, is Villaraigosa claiming to have laid off employees? To give you the impression of urgency and crisis. In short, to scare you into making a really bad decision.
3. Revenues are down just 2.6 percent.
Villaraigosa omits to mention, when discussing his self-inflicted budget deficit, that the city's revenues are down just a paltry 2.6 percent: his budget assumed revenues of $7.048 billion, and the CAO reports they are off by just $183.6 million.
And this is supposedly what requires us to rethink the services our taxes should cover? We're supposed to sell off parks, golf courses and the streets themselves because revenues are down just 2.63 percent?
4. Villaraigosa and the investment bankers want to rip off taxpayers' parking cash cows.
Villaraigosa claims the city's multistory parking structures and parking meters are "money losers."
And yet, investment bankers signed a contract with Villaraigosa in May 2009 to try to sell these "money losers" to their clients. Have you ever read a prospectus that touts an investment opportunity as a "money loser?" Me neither.
In fact, as Villaraigosa's own budget documents show, the city's parking meters and structures are cash cows: They generate hundreds of millions of dollars every single year. Indeed, they generate so much money that, per Villaraigosa's own budget documents, more than $146 million per year is transferred from the parking fund into the general fund.
And since when is providing street parking not a "core function" of local government? Employers throughout the city rely on that parking. If we let Villaraigosa and the investment bankers have it, they will jack up the parking rates to try to earn an even higher return on their investment.
The result? Government won't shrink, but the number of people with private sector jobs will.
Bottom line: Do not let Villaraigosa con you into thinking he wants smaller government. He does not. Rather, he wants to scare you into letting him sell our valuable public property - parking, golf courses, the zoo, etc. - to special interests to advance his political career. It's a con job.
Walter Moore finished second in the March 2009 L.A. mayoral race.
