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Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco speaks during a news conference about his department's investigation into alleged election fraud in the county on March 20, 2026.Emails obtained by CalMatters trace the development of a years-long case that ultimately led to Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco’s unprecedented seizure of 650,000 ballots in March.
They reveal that his sprawling investigation was based on the thinnest of evidence and raise alarms over how the November elections could be disrupted by the unproven claims of fringe groups and ideologically aligned officials.That scenario is particularly troubling in Riverside County, which is home to one of a few dozen congressional districts in the country that could determine control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the midterm elections.In the spring of 2022, a woman named Shelby Bunch began appearing at government hearings in Riverside County, demanding that officials there address what she believed was an epidemic of fraud in local elections. Bunch often introduced herself as a representative of New California, a secessionist movement that seeks to break away from what it describes as the tyranny of a Democratic-controlled state. She accused Riverside officials of colluding in criminal activity and warned that they would soon “be answering to law enforcement.” She once closed her comments by telling the Riverside County Board of Supervisors to “have a crappy day.” The supervisors didn’t seem to take Bunch seriously, but she found a powerful ally in Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco. Based on her various claims, including that the county’s electronic voting machines had been remotely manipulated, the sheriff put one of his senior investigators in charge of a criminal probe into the registrar of voters. The investigator, Christopher Poznanski, quickly came to the conclusion that there was no evidence of a crime. On July 20, 2022, he sent Bunch an email letting her know he was closing the case.But Poznanski was unmoved. “I respect your passion for this cause, but I will conduct no further investigation into the matter,” Bunch continued to write Bianco directly, urging him to reopen the case. Then, in early September, she got some help.A figure in the “constitutional sheriff” movement, which asserts that elected sheriffs are more powerful than anyone — including the president and the courts — sent Bianco an email. “I just heard this past week that a group of your constituents requested that you investigate election fraud in Riverside County and that your investigator was unable to find anything and you closed your investigation,” Steve Tuminello. “I know that as a Constitutional Sheriff you realize how extremely important Election Integrity is, and that you would welcome any assistance in these investigations.” Bianco, whose career has been guided by the movement, wrote back to say he had launched another, more ambitious investigation. Emails obtained by CalMatters trace the development of a years-long case that ultimately led to Bianco’s unprecedented seizure of 650,000 ballots in March. They reveal that his sprawling investigation was based on the thinnest of evidence and raise alarms over how the November elections could be disrupted by the unproven claims of fringe groups and ideologically aligned officials. That scenario is particularly troubling in Riverside County, which is home to one of a few dozen congressional districts in the country that could determine control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the midterm elections.In one exchange in 2023, Bunch suggested the county supervisors were complicit in election fraud and might have ties to drug cartels.In a 2024 podcast interview, Bunch said the sheriff had been hamstrung by the courts. She told her host that Bianco had “tried to get a search warrant on the machines … but the judge, he just laughed. He said, ‘I’m not giving you anything.’”“If we can get just one judge,” she said, “the whole dam will break.”‘Don’t have to ask permission from anybody’who was active in the 1970s and 1980s and argued that sheriffs were the country’s only legitimate law enforcement officials. Its members cite the 10th Amendment, which says that powers not specifically delegated to the federal government fall to the states. The amendment, however, makes no mention of sheriffs. The main organization behind the movement, the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, is led by a former sheriff named Richard Mack.Since 2020, Mack has held a series of events alongside prominent election conspiracy theorists, encouraging sheriffs to investigate voter fraud in their own counties. Sheriffs,, “don’t have to ask permission from anybody.” As a result, many conspiracy-minded local groups have flocked to their county sheriffs for support when other officials have rejected their theories of election fraud., these sheriffs have used their discretionary power to open investigations, many of them based on allegations that echo President Donald Trump's false claims about the 2020 election. Bianco, who could not be reached for comment for this story, describes himself as a constitutional sheriff and agrees with the movement’s core tenets. He has maintained power in Riverside even as the county’s shifting demographics have altered its historically conservative political landscape. Today there are more registered Democrats in Riverside than there are Republicans. But that shift to the left has coincided with a religiously fueled radicalization on the right. One of the key figures of that movement is Tim Thompson, the pastor of a powerful Riverside church and Bianco’s political ally. Thompson has led an effort to stack local school boards with members who have rolled back transgender student rights and rejected textbooks that mention Harvey Milk, one of the nation’s first openly gay elected officials. He recentlywho was pardoned by Trump after being convicted for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Thompson has also taken an interest in the local judiciary. In 2022, he supported a former prosecutor named Jay Kiel, who was running to fill a seat on Riverside’s Superior Court. When Kiel joined Thompson on his popular podcast, he promised to “bring a little balance back to the bench” to counteract the state’s liberal Legislature. Kiel also praised Bianco and said Riverside needed “judges that are willing to stand up and say, this is the law, and I’m going to follow it.”By late 2024, a new group had taken control of the effort to prove voter fraud in Riverside County. The Riverside Election Integrity Team included many of the same people who had been working closely with Bunch, but they had very different tactics. The group’s leader, Greg Langworthy, had testified alongside Bunch for years. While he was part of the same Christian conservative circles, he rejected her antagonistic approach. Langworthy is soft-spoken and polite. At board hearings, he wears button-down shirts and the occasional pocket protector. If Bunch was the movement’s firebrand, Langworthy is its genial middle school math teacher. He focused his group’s efforts on ballot counting, conducting audits of past elections to prove to local officials that the county’s voting system is rife with error. Greg Langworthy gives public testimony on election oversight during a Riverside County Board of Supervisors meeting on April 2, 2024.Langworthy’s group asked the county registrar for records from the November 2025 election for California’s redistricting measure, Proposition 50, which passed with overwhelming support across the state and by a wide margin in Riverside. The measure redrew California’s congressional maps and gave Democrats a chance to pick up several House seats in the midterms. Langworthy said he reviewed the data and found that the registrar’s office had counted 45,896 more ballots than it had received. His group demanded meetings with individual supervisors and asked the district attorney and the sheriff to look into the matter. The alleged discrepancy wasn’t enough to change the election results in Riverside, and Langworthy said he was not interested in overturning the measure. “Prop. 50 just happened to be the next election,” he said. On Feb. 10, the Riverside supervisors held a special hearing on the issue. Langworthy’s group had met with several officials but wanted to present its findings to the full board. Hoping to lay the matter to rest, the board asked the Riverside registrar, Art Tinoco, to show the group that it had misread the data his office had provided. Tinoco said Langworthy and others had relied on raw data that did not include provisional and other ballots. The actual discrepancy between ballots cast and ballots counted, he said, was 103 — a figure independently Tinoco spoke for more than an hour, but members of the Riverside Election Integrity Team were not convinced. One by one they approached the podium with prepared statements, laying out their audit. The supervisors struggled to hide their frustration. But Langworthy didn’t need the board; he had Bianco. Just one day before that hearing, an investigator from the sheriff’s office had appeared in court asking for a warrant to take hundreds of thousands of ballots from Tinoco’s office.The investigator’s sworn statement, intended to justify the warrant, focused almost entirely on Langworthy’s audit and Bunch’s claims. In three years of investigating the matter, the sheriff’s office had failed to produce any of its own evidence to support a case. Kiel signed off on the warrant and sealed it, preventing the public from seeing the justification for Bianco’s seizure of the ballots. Over the next few weeks, Bianco's office removed 1,500 boxes of election materials from the registrar’s office. If stacked, they would rise as high as the Empire State Building.The California attorney general, Rob Bonta, appears to have been caught off guard. A day after Bianco seized the first batch of ballots, Bonta sent him a letter asking him to “pause” his investigation. Bonta wrote that he was “concerned” that Bianco had taken the boxes without probable cause that a crime had occurred.A few days later Bonta sent another letter. “I learned that you intend to ignore my directives and plan to start counting the seized ballots tomorrow,” Bonta wrote. “Let me be clear: this is unacceptable.” Bianco called a press conference to tell reporters he would continue counting ballots and that the attorney general did not have the authority to stop him. What had been a behind-the-scenes battle immediately became national news. “I will carry out my constitutional duty to pursue justice,” Bianco said. He called the attorney general “an embarrassment to law enforcement.”, the attorney general has “direct supervision over every district attorney and sheriff ... in all matters pertaining to the duties of their respective offices.” There is no California case law directly addressing this provision. Bianco believes he is the final authority on everything that happens in his county. In flouting Bonta’s orders, he has sparked a high-stakes legal showdown testing the constitutional separation of powers. The case is currently in front of the state Supreme Court. Attorney General Rob Bonta speaks at a press conference at the California Department of Justice in Sacramento on Feb. 4, 2025.Bonta didn’t file a lawsuit to try to stop Bianco until almost a month after he first learned about the ballot seizure, and only after the story exploded in the national press. At that point, according to sworn statements by investigators, Bianco’s office had already begun counting the ballots, opening about 22 boxes. During that same period, Bonta filed at least a dozen lawsuits on other issues, many of them against the Trump administration. A spokesperson for Bonta said the attorney general was trying to “work cooperatively with the sheriff’s office in order to better understand the basis for its investigation,” and that Bonta believed Bianco was complying with his directives. The state’s initially tepid response, and its inability, thus far, to get Bianco to return the ballots raise concerns about how officials here will be able to protect future elections.And there’s another critical election that Bianco could throw into flux: In the November midterms, the Riverside registrar will be responsible for counting a significant percentage of the ballots in California’s 48th Congressional District. Last year’s redistricting effort made the district competitive for Democrats. Of the 435 House seats nationwide, it’s one of fewer than three dozen that analysts consider too close to call. These races will ultimately determine which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives.In the months before Bianco’s ballot seizure, the FBI seized reams of paper ballots cast in Fulton County, Georgia, based on debunked claims from citizen election-deniers, and sought electronic voter data from Maricopa County, Arizona,that have turned up no evidence of fraud. The Justice Department has demanded voter information in dozens of states, leaving many attorneys general to fight those demands in court. In speeches and on social media, Trump has escalated his voter fraud claims. He has said Republicans should “nationalize the voting.” Some of the administration officials pushing these efforts are associated with the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank that has consistently supported unverified election conspiracy theories. The founding director of the institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, John Eastman, waslast week for being one of the legal masterminds behind the attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election. Several years ago, the Claremont Institute set its sights on sheriffs and began hosting week-long education sessions to provide them with a roadmap for promoting Trump’s brand of conservatism in their counties. Bianco attended the training, and the institute later gave him its “Sheriff of the Year” award — a bust of John Wayne — at a fundraiser in Huntington Beach. Other sheriffs who were trained at the institute have since dedicated the resources of their offices to investigate baseless allegations of election fraud, but all of those efforts have failed. In 2022, when it seemed as though Bianco’s investigation into Bunch’s claims had also reached a dead end, Mack’s constitutional sheriff’s organization offered the services of “an expert in cyber crimes” who could “provide Sheriffs with immutable evidence of election fraud” to help them push their investigations forward.of profiting from unfounded allegations of voter fraud, asking donors to fund his pursuit of concrete evidence and pocketing much of the money.A new lawsuit alleges Uber is violating California’s rideshare law and should not be allowed to assert its drivers are independent contractors., a ballot initiative that exempted Uber and other app platforms from labor law and allowed them to keep classifying their workers as contractors instead of employees. The measure included a promise that drivers would have an appeals process.Rideshare Drivers United, a drivers group that says it has about 20,000 members in California, said Monday that because Uber has violated Prop. 22 by not delivering on all its promises, it should not be allowed to continue to assert that its drivers are independent contractors.Uber has failed to create an appeals system to give drivers due process when they’re kicked off the app, violating the California law it carved out that declared app-based drivers independent contractors, a lawsuit filed Monday alleges., a ballot initiative that exempted Uber and other app platforms from labor law and allowed them to keep classifying their workers as contractors instead of employees. The measure included a promise that drivers would have an appeals process. Rideshare Drivers United, a drivers group that says it has about 20,000 members in California, said Monday that because Uber has violated Prop. 22 by not delivering on all its promises, it should not be allowed to continue to assert that its drivers are independent contractors. “Uber has not met the conditions to take advantage of Prop. 22,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, a Massachusetts-based lawyer who has challenged Uber and other gig companies for years and is representing the California group, told CalMatters. Many deactivated drivers report that they struggle to appeal their cases. They say they are initially sent to sites where they appear to be talking with bots, then eventually reach agents who are working from a script and appear to be in another country. Rarely do they reach people who are empowered to truly help them, they say. Liss-Riordan said at a news conference in San Francisco that she is seeking a declaration from the court saying that the company is violating the law it wrote, which she said should help drivers who are pursuing individual arbitration of their cases. “We're going to seek back pay and other damages for them if they were unfairly deactivated, and we're also going to be seeking their rights under the labor code,” she said. Among the promises of Prop. 22: guaranteed minimum earnings of 120% of minimum wage for active ride or delivery time; health care stipends for those who qualify; occupational accident insurance and accidental death insurance; and “mandatory contractual rights and appeal processes,” according to the initiative’s text. The text does not specify what the requirements for an appeals process should be. Devins Baker said he has driven for Uber and Lyft in the Bay Area for eight years and was deactivated by Uber right before Christmas in 2024. He told CalMatters that he thinks Uber deactivated him after he had to brake hard to avoid hitting a person who darted across the freeway, causing his passenger — who was not wearing a seatbelt — to fall out of his seat. “I don’t know because we never find out which passenger complained,” Baker said, adding that he thinks some people report drivers to try to get a free ride from Uber. Baker got emotional during the news conference, saying he is trying to “keep it together” and is scrambling to find other ways to make money so he will not become homeless. Uber spokesperson Ramona Prieto called Liss-Riordan an “opportunistic trial lawyer” in an email to CalMatters and said the company will “fight this publicity stunt in court.” Prieto said the company provides drivers with a clear appeals process, and pointed to a company blog post from last week that explains what drivers can expect when they challenge deactivations.Another deactivated driver from the Bay Area, Mirwais Noory, said Uber kicked him off the app in November 2024 over what the company said were safety concerns. He said he tried to show Uber dashcam video to plead his case, to no avail. Getting deactivated caused financial hardship as he tries to support four children, he said. He has found work as a security guard since then, and now occasionally drives for Lyft.Jason Munderloh, chair of the Bay Area chapter of Rideshare Drivers United, said at the news conference: “Once they’re deactivated, there is no unemployment insurance . This leads to poverty and desperation.” “The minute someone joins RDU, their first concern is pay and the second is deactivations,” Nicole Moore, president of Rideshare Drivers United, told CalMatters ahead of the news conference. Uber, a multibillion-dollar company based in San Francisco, was the lead backer of the $205 million Prop. 22 campaign that was also funded by DoorDash, Lyft, Instacart and Postmates. Ubera total of $59.5 million in cash and in-kind contributions, and Postmates — which Uber bought in a deal that was completed in 2020 — spent $13.3 million. The lawsuit filed Monday in San Francisco Superior Court is the latest of many legal challenges against Prop. 22, which CalMatters has found The plaintiffs also allege Uber deactivates drivers based on grounds not specified in its “Platform Access Agreement,” and that the company does not provide drivers with enough information about their earnings to determine that they are receiving 120% of minimum wage.by the state Justice Department and the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego over thousands of wage-theft claims that predate Prop. 22. A trial-clock deadline for that lawsuit as well as a similar one against Lyft is set for December 2027.Kevin Warsh, President Donald Trump's nominee to serve as the next chair of the Federal Reserve, may face a tough fight for confirmation today — partly over events for which he has no control.The Senate Banking Committee is holding a confirmation hearing for Warsh today — but already one GOP senator has said he will block a vote on the nominee until the Department of Justice drops an investigation into the Fed.Warsh will likely face questions about inflation and borrowing costs and whether he can maintain his independence as Trump makes it clear he expects his next Fed chair to lead the charge to lower interest rates.of the Federal Reserve, may face a tough fight for confirmation — partly over events for which he has no control. The Senate Banking Committee holds a confirmation hearing for Warsh on Tuesday — but already one GOP senator has said he will block a vote on the nominee until the Department of Justice drops an investigation into the Fed. Warsh will also likely face questions about inflation and borrowing costs and whether he can maintain his independence as Trump makes it clear he expects his next Fed chair to lead the charge to lower interest rates.Most of the drama has nothing to do with Warsh himself A key member of the banking committee, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has promised to hold up confirmation of the nominee, but not because of any objection to Warsh himself. Tillis wants the Justice Department to drop its criminal investigation of the central bank and its current chairman, Jerome Powell. That probe is ostensibly aboutThe DOJ has promised to appeal the judge's decision. By dropping its probe, the administration could win Tillis' vote and clear the way for Warsh's confirmation. But that hasn't happened yet.Kevin Warsh previously served on the Fed's board of governors and had a reputation as"hawkish," meaning he was cautious about cutting interest rates for fear inflation might get out of control. But recently, he's argued that productivity gains from artificial intelligence could allow the central bank to lower interest rates while still keeping prices in check. Critics like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the ranking Democrat on the banking committee, see that flip-flop as a sign that Warsh will take direction on rates from President Trump, even though the Fed is supposed to operate free from political pressure. "Warsh has really gone out of his way to demonstrate that he will be the sock puppet in chief," Warren told NPR. While past presidents have given the Fed wide latitude, at least publicly, in setting interest rates, Trump has been outspoken in demanding lower rates, raising concern that he could jeopardize the Fed's independence. Even if Warsh wants to lower interest rates, he may not be able to. Interest rates are set by a 12-member committee at the Fed, and many committee members are reluctant to cut rates until inflation is closer to the central bank's 2% target. The war with Iran and the resulting spike in gasoline prices have made that a more challenging goal.If confirmed, Warsh could also seek to narrow the Fed's footprint in the economy. Warsh has criticized the Fed for straying beyond its statutory role of promoting stable prices and maximum employment. He's argued that the central bank should play a smaller role and that Fed leaders should talk less and stay in their lane. While he agrees that political leaders should keep hands off the Fed in setting interest rates, he argues the Fed should be equally cautious about stepping into muddy political waters aroundIf you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.The failures surround poor bookkeeping and accounting of taxpayer money at the agency — which spent over $800 million in public funds last fiscal year. The issues emerged despiteserious oversight problems in prior years. The latest audit was conducted by an outside firm hired by the agency to meet federal requirements.“Amounts initially included in the financial statements were not accurate, and adjustments were required,” auditors found in their review of LAHSA’s last fiscal year that ended in June 2025. The audit found that it stemmed from a"significant deficiency” in LAHSA’s “internal controls,” which are supposed to safeguard against financial inaccuracies and fraud.LAHSA officials have blown the March 31 federal deadline to turn in the audit after management missed multiple extensions in January and February to turn over financial documents to auditors for the fiscal year that ended last June. Missing the March 31 deadline can put future federal funding at risk. LAHSA officials said they hope to submit the final audit report this coming Friday, about 3 ½ weeks after the deadline.L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who is the only elected official on LAHSA’s governing commission, did not respond to a request for comment through a spokesperson. At a public meeting Monday, LAHSA CEO Gita O’Neill told LAHSA’s audit committee that her team was working to implement a lot of the auditors’ suggestions.Auditors are flagging major problems with the handling of tax dollars by the L.A. Homeless Services Authority. The failures surround poor bookkeeping and accounting of taxpayer money at the agency — which spent over $800 million in public funds last fiscal year. The issues emerged despiteserious oversight problems in prior years. The latest audit was conducted by an outside firm hired by the agency to meet federal requirements. The agency’s financial statements initially included “significant” inaccurate amounts that needed to be adjusted late in the audit process,was presented to LAHSA’s audit committee on Monday. It found the inaccuracies stemmed from a"significant deficiency” in LAHSA’s “internal controls,” which are supposed to safeguard against financial inaccuracies and fraud. The accounting failures contributed to delays in completing the audit — which was due to the federal government on March 31 — according to the draft report. Missing that deadline can put future federal funding at risk. LAHSA officials said at the committee meeting that they hope to submit the final audit report this coming Friday, more than three weeks after the deadline. At a public meeting Monday, LAHSA CEO Gita O’Neill told LAHSA’s audit committee that her team was working to implement many of the auditors’ recommendations, which she called “great suggestions.” The draft audit report now goes to the LAHSA Commission for approval on Friday. The audit committee was asked to approve it Monday but didn’t have majority support to move forward. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who oversees the agency and is the only elected official on LAHSA’s governing commission, did not respond to a request for comment through a spokesperson.all of the county’s $300 million-plus in annual funding of services through LAHSA and instead have the county directly manage it starting on July 1. Problems identified in the latest audit reiterate why the county pulled its funding, Supervisor Kathryn Barger said in a statement Monday.In a statement, Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said the “significant financial problems” found in the audit give “further confirmation” why the county decided to shift its funds out of LAHSA. “Accountability isn’t optional; it is required to end this emergency. Anything less is unacceptable,” Horvath said. The city is considering moving in a similar direction as the county. A key City Council panel — its homelessness committee —the full council start shifting city homelessness funding out of LAHSA over the course of the next fiscal year. Bass has urged caution, saying moving too quickly to shift funding could disrupt services for unhoused people. LAHSA has long functioned as the L.A.’s homeless services department, with over $300 million in city money expected to flow through LAHSA this fiscal year. As of last summer, LAHSA had $380.5 million in assets and $381 million in liabilities, and received a total of $810 million in operating revenues during the last fiscal year,During Monday’s discussion, lead auditor Justin Measley said LAHSA did not disclose millions of dollars in payments to a service provider whose executive was married to LAHSA’s CEO at the time, Va Lecia Adams Kellum. The audit is required to list “related party” transactions, Measley said, which involve an organization with immediate family ties to LAHSA’s leadership. He said auditors only learned about it later through reviewing news media coverage.on a $2.1 million contract and two other contract amendments with Upward Bound House, the Santa Monica-based nonprofit where her husband Edward Kellum works in senior leadership. The contract named Adams Kellum as the LAHSA official authorized to administer it. Va Lecia Adams Kellum, former CEO of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, at a news briefing at L.A. City Hall in June 2023.A LAHSA-commissioned investigation cleared Adams Kellum of wrongdoing in part because “her signature was unintentionally applied by her staff, not by herself,” according to a summary released by LAHSA. LAHSA spokesperson Paul Rubensteinfrom Adams Kellum’s official account to a colleague about one of the contracts with her husband’s employer, which stated “Please delete the document that I signed accidentally.” Last year, state investigators at the Fair Political Practices Commission launched a conflict of interest investigation into the matter, which is ongoing. Monday’s audit committee meeting also included discussion of the auditors’ findings that LAHSA is locked into paying $75 million for long-term leases over the coming years that cannot be canceled. Those leases are largely through its master leasing program that started over the last couple of years, which leases 14 apartment buildings, totaling 772 units, to provide housing for unhoused people. LAHSA management says the master leasing program is currently significantly underwater financially.A presentation last week by LAHSA management said the master leases are causing an annual budget hit of $10 million to LAHSA, which is prompting the agency to pull from other grants to pay for the leases. LAHSA’s lease accounting was at the center of a"significant” correction to the agency’s financial statements late in the audit process, the audit states in its findings. The auditors also found that LAHSA failed to comply with requirements for payroll costs that it charged to the federal government. The agency’s management failed to ensure timesheets for its employees were approved for three of the 40 timesheets the auditors reviewed, despite the law requiring federally-funded salaries to be based on accurate records of work, auditors found.Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Monday unveiled a $14.9 billion budget that is significantly rosier than last year’s spending plan, when she suggested massive layoffs and service cuts to accommodate a billion-dollar deficit.This year, because of a projected increase in revenues, the mayor is proposing no layoffs and a modest expansion of street services. The budget also calls for hiring police officers to keep up with retirements and resignations, maintaining Fire Department spending and holding steady funding for homelessness programs.In Bass’ proposal, the reserve fund is 5.7% of the general fund, or $490 million. The budget does not dip into the reserves, in contrast to last year’s plan.Bass is seeking re-election this year, and several of her challengers criticized the budget. “The budget the Mayor released today tells us the plan is to largely keep doing what we're doing — but what we're doing is not working,” Councilmember Nithya Raman said in a statement.Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Monday unveiled a $14.9 billion budget that is significantly rosier than last year’s spending plan, when she suggested massive layoffs and service cuts to accommodate a billion-dollar deficit. This year, because of a projected increase in revenues, the mayor is proposing no layoffs and a modest expansion of street services. Bass' budget also calls for hiring police officers to keep up with retirements and resignations, maintaining Fire Department spending and holding steady funding for homelessness programs. “This budget is about protecting the progress we have made and making clear that Los Angeles is moving forward and will not go backward,” Bass said at a news conference. In the proposal, the reserve fund is 5.7% of the general fund, or $490 million. The budget does not dip into the reserves, in contrast to last year’s plan.Some of her challengers in the upcoming election, including Councilmember Nithya Raman, criticized Bass’ proposal as doing little more than maintaining the status quo. “The budget the Mayor released today tells us the plan is to largely keep doing what we're doing — but what we're doing is not working,” Raman said in a statement. Next, the proposal will go to the City Council for consideration. Budget hearings will be conducted in the coming weeks.Among the reasons city officials say revenue will go up is the expected influx of thousands of visitors to World Cup soccer matches this summer. More travelers mean more people staying in hotels and paying hotel taxes, as well as more sales tax revenue. The budget projects a $412 million increase in general tax revenue, including $71 in business taxes, $34 million in sales taxes and $67 million in utility taxes. The budget would add 170 new positions in the department that handles street repairs and increase funding for street and sidewalk fixes, curb-ramp installation, street sweeping, bulky item pickup and dedicated illegal dumping enforcement throughout the city. The budget also proposes hiring 510 police officers, representing a target of 8,555 for the Police Department and enough to keep up with attrition, according to budget officials. Bass has set a goal of 9,500 officers.That proposal is likely to see opposition from some council members who want to see the department shrink and funding for unarmed response teams increase.The budget sustains citywide coverage for civilian unarmed crisis response, maintaining deployment of 500 crossing guards and expanding a program that aims to help children get to and from school safely and protect them from gang violence. Under the budget, funding for Inside Safe, the mayor’s signature program to address homelessness, would remain about the same — $104 million.The budget maintains funding for the city Fire Department. In November, voters are expected to decide whether to increase the sales tax by half a percent to pay for more firefighters and equipment.“This budget maintains a status quo of reduced services and higher fees, the direct result of fiscally irresponsible decisions made by this Mayor in prior years,” Raman said in her statement.Adam Miller, a tech entrepreneur and another Bass challenger, said keeping the budget flat “implies that the status quo is working.” “That is tone-deaf to the city of Los Angeles as Angelenos overwhelmingly feel we need change," he said. The budget needs to be approved by the City Council and signed by the mayor by July 1, the start of the fiscal year.
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