Despite record revenues that are expected to exceed $5 billion, the City Council is considering a $4.5 billion tax increase over the next 30 years to fund the repair of our lunar cratered streets because of its inability to control ever escalating salaries, benefits, and pension contributions. But the failure of the City Council to […]

On October 15, San Jose’s Democratic Mayor Chuck Reed and four other mayors* submitted a statewide ballot initiative, The Pension Reform Act of 2014, to California Attorney General Kamala Harris for her review in anticipation of the collection of over 800,000 signatures needed to place this measure on the November 2014 ballot. If the Pension […]

The Port of Los Angeles is a major economic component of the Southern California economy, responsible, along with Port of Long Beach, for economic activity that supports over 900,000 jobs.  However, the Port has run into strong headwinds as the volume of imported containers has slipped 6% over the last twelve months. Even exports of […]

The Alameda Corridor is a well-managed public private partnership between the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and the Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroads that has resulted in massive transportation efficiencies and savings.  At the same time, countless backups at surface street railroad crossings have been eliminated and truck traffic on […]

With lots of hoopla and cameras, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Operation Neighborhood Blitz, a program designed to attack the epidemic of potholes plaguing our City.  However, this is just beginning of a concerted effort to convince the voters of Los Angeles to approve the Street Repair Tax that was proposed in January by Council Members […]

The City of Los Angeles intends to offer $1.325 billion of Tax and Revenue Anticipation Notes.  The proceeds from these notes will be used to prepay the City’s $945 million contribution (almost a $100 million increase) to the City’s two seriously underfunded pension plans and to finance its day to day operations for the next […]

As a result of an increasingly nasty dispute with the County of Los Angeles Department of Public Health, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation has collected a sufficient number of signatures to qualify its “City of Los Angeles Public Health Protection Act” (the “Initiative”) for the ballot in June of 2014. If passed by a majority of […]

The City’s finances will receive an additional boost of $30 million because of a higher than expected increase in the assessed value of the City’s real estate. According to the County Assessor, property values surged 4.25% (versus a projected 1.7%) as a result of a higher than anticipated home sales and rising prices, resulting in […]

Even the most casual observer knows the City is cooking the books. We are all familiar with the angst associated with the annual budget.  But this year is a cake walk as General Fund revenues are projected to increase by $325 million, accompanied by unanticipated pension savings of over $50 million. But the Mayor’s budget […]

Less than a week after 55% of the voters flushed City Council President Herb Wesson’s proposed permanent half cent increase in our sales tax to 9½%, a well-placed City Hall operative quipped, “Proposition A is just the beginning of the discussion on increasing taxes.”  True to form, on April 3, only four weeks after the […]