L.A. City Hall, Facing Historic Deficit, is Headed For $32 Million in Salary Overspending: Wendy Greuel Threatens to Stop Payment

This is actually financial trickery and the departments are NOT spending over their budgets unless you realize that the word "budget" has been redefined. A couple of years ago, the Mayor and City Council asked the employees of the City to "voluntarily agree" to a furlough plan and and early retirement package. The early retirement package was supposed to save the city money because the salaries of retired employees could get eliminated. BUT, to give employees and incentive to retire, the City gave huge "golden handshakes" of up to $50 thousand dollars per employee to get them to leave. In addition, employees who stayed agreed to increase our contributions to our pensions and take a 10% across the board pay cut (26 furlough days).

Ok, the workers agreed (in some departments by a margin of 1 vote) and it appeared workers had sacrificed a little to save the budget. THEN, earlier this year the Mayor said, "Oh, by the way, the cost of paying out those Golden Handshakes - each department has to pay the cost of the golden handshakes taken by its employees. And if the department can't afford it then it needs to lay people off to balance its books." Huh?? You mean to tell me that workers, in an attempt to avoid layoffs have now put themselves in a position that requires even more layoffs than before the vote? Are you saying if 50 people left our department and took those salaries off the city's books, you're now going to punish us by making us pay the 5 or 6 million dollars that the city paid for those handshakes out of OUR pockets? Yes. Exactly. No one would have approved the early retirement plan under those terms. So the "budget deficits" didn't exist until the Mayor decided that the cost of the early retirement program designed to avoid layoffs would be borne by the departments themselves, which will result in layoffs. But hey at least the Mayor got a lot of suckers to buy that deal; he got a bunch of salaries off the books, thousands of workers off of the payroll and managed for the departments to be in worse shape than when he started.

Was these overspendings before or after the latest budget cuts

Oh wait, now Wendy Greusome who thinks she should be Mayor and has been a failure as Controller is threatening not to pay up. She's such a clown herself she has yet to collect over $543 MILLION in over due business taxes. Is she out of her mind. Wendy has over a year to come up with solutions but has become more of a media hound then the Mayor she's too busy in front of the camera. LAPD is over budget because of all those illegal immigrant marches that cost over $1 million. Then last year's craziness in Westlake area when LAPD was on tactical deployment with the idiots acting up in Rampart area cost over $1 million. But the goons onc council continue to approve all of their spending. Read the Rand Reporthttp://www.rand.org/content/da...

and then ask if LAPD isn't saving this CITY MILLIONS in crime reduction. You figure a homicide cost about $1 million and an assault, rape, robberies etc. all money saved because of Officers kicking butt out on the streets. Wendy, Failure of a Mayor who has increased his staff by over 100 totallying 220 more then President Obama White House Staff are the last ones to be speaking out on spending.