It's tough to drum up reasons for keeping the ineffectual, conniving and ethically challenged Jim Hahn in office for another four years. But it's getting easier by the day to justify kicking him out:
While the ongoing Fleishman-Hillard scandal keeps threatening to swamp his administration, Hahn's out staging <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-potholes17jan17,1,5082020.story?coll=la-headlines-california"">pandering publicity stunts: You can't get much more transparent than a mayor running around in a hardhat three days after a wicked winter storm (and seven weeks before an election) filling potholes, fer Chrissakes. What's next, breaking ground on a new police station, or judging a jovenes bonitas contest on Olvera Street?
... [M]y staff and I have spent a considerable amount of time studying city finances. And after analyzing budget data from the past three years, it's clear that the City of Los Angeles has more than enough money to provide Chief Bratton with the additional officers he needs to effectively police the city.
In fact, the city’s general fund has nearly $500 million more than it did four years ago. Yet the city has dedicated only 3% of that NEW revenue to hiring additional police officers. The vast majority of the new revenue – more than $335 million – went to pay hikes for existing city staff.
Jim Hahn in 2001 promised to add 1,000 police officers to the LAPD. As of the beginning of the fiscal year 2004-05, he had added only 172. The mayor had more than enough money to keep his promise, but instead he gave away the store.
If Hertzberg's analysis is correct - and not merely a self-servingly loose interpretation of numbers like his last attempt at statistical triumph, then the Hahn administration does owe us an explanation. Granted, the city's budget is a Byzantine collection of ever-changing priorities, but at some point if you're even attempting to paint yourself as a sound fiscal custodian who needs to raise taxes to improve services, you had better be able to defend your math.
Posted by: mack_reed on Tuesday, January 18, 2005 - 11:27 PM
