We need a new Sheriff in L.A., and it’s not because we have problems with gangs, drugs, graffiti and other crime. We need a new Sheriff to keep law and order down at City Hall, to keep our politicians honest and to keep our taxes from breaking the bank, and we need our Sheriff now. City Council members Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti passed a motion last month to create a “Collections Sheriff”; a position or department that will hold department heads accountable and make them do their jobs.
Why do we need the “Collections Sheriff”, you ask? Let’s start with the $500 million in aging debt, some as much as two decades old, that the City of L.A. has on its balance sheets that it hasn’t done anything with since it found out about these accounts in June 2007. Then let’s look at the fact that in 2007 L.A. had over $1 billion in “uncollectables” on its books, meaning that it intended to write off all of this revenue it is supposed to collect. Finally, we need a Collections Sheriff because the city has known about these and other problems for years and has failed to take any serious action to rectify the situation.
If the sheer fact that the City of L.A. would walk away from hundreds of millions of dollars is not appalling enough for you, perhaps I can refresh your memory on the real results of failed collection policies. In February, our elected officials told us that we “needed” to vote for Prop. S, the telecommunications tax hike, in order to pay for more public services. We heard from City Hall that they “had” to have the $270 million per year that they anticipated Prop. S would generate, otherwise there might not be enough police and fire fighters on the streets.
And while the state budget debacle has received a lot more press than L.A.’s, we often forget that the City was running nearly $400 million in the red until it made $96 million in cuts to balance the budget. Wait a second, what about the other $300 million in deficit? Funny, because a lot like the state legislature, the budgetarians at City Hall played with the numbers and passed the buck down the line until next year, hoping that things would be different next time around.
Amazing, isn’t it that in times when the city is so strapped for cash it wouldn’t look down at its feet and pick up what it has already earned? The issue of collections, a seemingly unglamorous issue that may not get a lot of press, is one of the most important issues before L.A.’s City Council.
Just because collections isn’t a sexy issue doesn’t mean that our leaders shouldn’t be fiscally responsible with taxpayer money. Let’s get that Collections Sheriff in City Hall now, so that he, or she, or a new collections office can lay down the law on all the department heads and their deputies who year after year fail to collect their revenues at an acceptable rate, and then go to the City Council and the General Fund, with their hands outstretched, saying “more please!”