Wildfires. Sex abuse lawsuits. Trump. L.A. County budget is under ‘enormous’ pressure

The L.A. County government is considering a hiring freeze as its $45-billion budget faces “enormous pressures” from devastating wildfires, a flood of sex abuse lawsuits and a White House threatening to slash funding.

Without a hiring freeze, Chief Executive Fesia Davenport warned county supervisors in a March 4 letter that “the situation could devolve into a fiscal crisis.”

Davenport appeared in front of the supervisors Tuesday to get permission to start implementing the freeze. The supervisors told her they wanted her first to return with more details on which positions would be exempt.

“I’m concerned that if we’re flipping a switch today without really understanding ... there will be impacts beyond what this board is aware of today,” said Supervisor Lindsey Horvath.

The county has roughly 117,000 budgeted positions. About 13,000 of those positions are unfilled, according to the chief executive’s office.

Under the hiring freeze, Davenport said, departments could still bring on new employees, but they would need permission from her office. The Sheriff’s Department would be exempt, as would positions that are grant-funded or related to recovery from the January fires, she said.

Even before the Palisades and Eaton fires scorched thousands of businesses and homes, the county’s financial outlook was unusually grim.

County officials were not clear if the federal funds they relied on during the Biden administration would continue under Trump. They had exhausted the roughly $2 billion they received during the pandemic through the American Rescue Plan Act. And the county’s liability from a flood of sex abuse lawsuits kept growing.

Since the state changed the statute of limitations for victims of childhood sexual abuse in 2019, thousands have sued over abuse in the county’s juvenile facilities and foster care system. The county has said the liability for these lawsuits could be in the billions, which officials warn would be catastrophic to the region’s social safety net.

The unprecedented fires added to the strain. Sales tax revenues will be down due to shuttered businesses. Property taxes will be too, with so many homes destroyed. Then there are the cleanup costs.

“These will be multiyear costs, reverberating well beyond the 2024-25 budget year,” Davenport wrote in a Feb. 10 letter to the board detailing the county’s financial woes.

Labor could be another big cost. Davenport said in the letter that county unions are hungry for a raise following a significant pay hike for L.A. city workers last year.

“As we enter this bargaining cycle, labor expectations are at an all-time high,” Davenport wrote, citing “significant gaps between labor expectations and fiscal realities.”

SEIU 721 head David Green, who represents 55,000 county workers, said an additional 12,000 unfilled positions fall under his union — many of them frontline workers for the Department of Mental Health and the Department of Children and Family Services.

“We’re desperately in need of filling those vacancies,” he said. “This is the worst possible time to have a hiring freeze in L.A. County.”

Rather than halt new hires, Green said he would like the county to pull back on expensive outside contracts and real estate purchases, such as the $215 million it recently paid for the Gas Company Tower, a prominent skyscraper downtown that may become the new county government headquarters.

“The last I checked, it was an uninhabitable building,” Green said.

The county countered in a statement that the tower was “fully habitable,” and officials believe moving there will save more than $1 billion by avoiding seismic upgrades at the Hall of Administration, the county’s current headquarters.

The county most recently froze hiring during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before that, the last freeze was during the Great Recession in 2008.

Aside from the potential pause on new hires, union-represented county employees could go without a cost-of-living adjustment.

Green said all of the county unions were called into a meeting Wednesday with Davenport. Green said he was told there would be no pay increase when SEIU 721’s contract expires at the end of March.

“I’ve never been part of negotiations where they open with zero,” said Green. “Our members are furious.”

The county said in a statement that no “formal proposals” have been presented yet to the county unions, 14 of which are actively negotiating contracts.

“We are working to build awareness among our labor partners of the significant budgetary pressures the County is facing,” the county said.

The possibility of no raises sparked concern among sheriff’s deputies as well. The nation’s largest Sheriff’s Department has been struggling with staffing woes for some time, and deputies have complained of being forced to work excessive overtime.

“We are experiencing a serious staffing crisis and without competitive pay and adequate benefits, including an annual cost of living adjustment, the department’s retention of employees and recruitment efforts will be severely impacted, which ultimately affects public safety,” Sheriff Robert Luna said Wednesday in an emailed statement. “Department employees are overworked, and we can’t sustain the mandatory overtime without the necessary personnel.”

As of last month, department data showed that 1,408 of the county’s 10,213 deputy positions were vacant, with another 898 filled by people on leave or who were relieved of duty.

Citing those figures, the union representing deputies — the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs — said the prospect of no cost-of-living increases made it “hard to feel after today that the county truly values its public safety professionals or is appropriately prioritizing the safety of our communities.”

Steve Johnson, president of the Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Assn. — which represents higher-ranking department officials — had a similar take.

“Morale is at a historic low for our hardworking members because of massive overtime and critical staffing issues,” he said. “Our members must be provided with pay and benefits that at a minimum respect and appreciate their dignity, sacrifices and commitments.”