(The Center Square) – The City of Los Angeles faces a nearly billion dollar deficit for the coming year, with the city’s budget crisis predating the recent Palisades Fire.

According to city officials, thousands of city employees could be fired, and entire departments could be eliminated in next year’s budget set to be unveiled next month.

In September 2024, City Controller Kevin Mejia warned the city was “going broke” after spending half of its reserves in one year. 

Now, it is broke and will require “thousands” of layoffs and vast restructuring to make ends meet.

“We are not looking at dozens or even hundreds of layoffs, but thousands,” said City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo at a Los Angeles City Council meeting. “We may need to look at eliminating some departments.” 

Szabo’s presentation noted that the city is “facing serious financial headwinds” that were “exacerbated by the recent wildfires” and “financial uncertainties due to federal actions.” 

“Immediate spending reductions are required, and we must prepare for further reductions,” said Szabo’s presentation.

“Property, sales, [hotel and occupancy] tax, sales tax, together combined for a $50 million shortfall in these receipts to date,” said Szabo, whose report was on the first half of the fiscal year. 

The city had spent $300 million more than budgeted, meaning the city faces a growing fiscal gap.

“The economic conditions contributing to this revenue loss are persisting and in most cases are weakening further,” continued Szabo.

Szabo also said that next year, the city will be subsidizing its solid waste collection program with $200 million, an increase of $80 million from the year prior, if changes are not made. 

The city also must make a required $275 million restoration payment to its reserves to reach the 5% coverage minimum.

The combined $931 million gap also includes a $61 million “starting gap,” $315 million “revenue gap,” $100 million liability increase and $100 million increase in pension spending.

Mayor Karen Bass, who is facing a recall effort for her wildfire planning and response, shared her readiness to make severe cuts in a letter she wrote to Szabo.

“We must consider no program or department too precious to consider for reductions or reorganization. In this time of economic uncertainty, our north star must be whether a City program or department is operating as efficiently and effectively as possible,” wrote Bass in a letter her office shared with The Center Square. “If they can operate better, or if they should not operate at all, we must make those changes, and make them now.”

The City of Los Angeles has “more than 50,000” employees and adopted a $12.9 billion budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year.

Layoffs could further slow the Palisades Fire rebuilding, with victims already facing permitting delays.

(The Center Square) – Tom Homan, designated border czar by President Donald Trump, said decisions judges trying to stop the immigration enforcement efforts of the administration “aren’t going to stop us from making this country safe again.”

He also said that “a secure border saves lives” and that data backs up that assertion. He spoke on Thursday during an immigration roundtable hosted in Sarasota, Fla., by Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

The veteran law enforcement official and former Border Patrol agent said also that members of Congress that don’t “wake up” to the realities of enforcing the nation’s immigration laws need to leave office via the ballot box and that voters need to find replacements that will support border enforcement. 

“The rule of law is what this country is about,” Homan said. “We’re the most welcoming country in the world. We take in more refugees than any country, but we’ve got to have the rule of law because people are dying. That’s why I fight as hard as I fight.

“Well, I found it remarkable that any district judge has the authority to overrule the president’s executive orders and what he basically wanted us to do is turn the planes around in mid-air full of terrorists and bring them back into the United States, which is ridiculous and we didn’t do it. Now we turn to litigation.”

Homan was discussing a class action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union earlier this week trying to overturn Trump’s executive order that uses the Enemy Aliens Act to find, arrest and deport violent Venezuelan prison gang members from the transnational criminal organization Tren de Aragua. 

The border czar was also joined by former acting Homeland Security director and America First Policy Institute Center for Homeland Security & Immigration Vice President Chad Wolf and New College of Florida President Richard Corcoran. 

“The bottom line is we’re not going to stop doing what we’re doing,” Homan said. “We’re going to arrest aliens today. We’re going to arrest TDA today. We’re going to deport TDA today. We’re going to deport criminals every single day.”

He said since Trump took office in January, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have arrested 40,000 people illegally in the country’s interior, with most of them being public safety and national security threats.

Homan also said that 400 people on the terrorist watch list crossed the southern border during President Joe Biden’s term, with only 16 coming across during Trump’s first term.

DeSantis signed on Feb. 13 what he terms the nation’s strongest state immigration enforcement law that created a State Board of Immigration Enforcement and made it a state crime for people to illegally enter Florida.

“Where were these District Court judges when all of these folks were coming into the United States, right?” DeSantis said. “The U.S. Supreme Court had a chance to nip all this in the bud about a month ago and they could have just been aggressive and put these district judges in their place. 

“But the principle is, are we ruled by the consent of the governed under elections and under a written constitution or are we ruled by a district judge in D.C., Hawaii, wherever the hell they can shop for a judge to find somebody and then that trumps everything that is in the Constitution in terms of executive powers, because that’s what they’ll keep doing if you let that happen.”

DeSantis was also critical of the visa program that allows companies to import cheaper workers to replace native employees.

“It’s a way to just have dirt cheap labor and then export all the associated costs with that to the general public, rather than hire people legally,” DeSantis said of the H-1B visa program and “diversity lottery” for these cards.

Wolf said that in addition to enforcing the nation’s immigration laws on the border, reforms need to be made for the nation’s legal immigration system. 

“The word I’d like to use with what the Trump administration has done in this first 50 days is velocity,” Wolf said. “The amount of action the Trump administration has done in these 50 or 60 days has been unprecedented. I hope that continues for the next three and a half years.

“I hope we don’t slow down because there is so much change that can be done, not only at the border, with removing individuals, but also on that legal side and really fix that because it is being abused as the governor said. There’s a lot to continue to be done on border security and immigration.”

(The Center Square) — As conversations continue in meetings surrounding the speed cameras in the parish, the Caddo Parish School Board addressed funding received from the program. 

Back in 2024, the Shreveport City Council passed a resolution that would give the Caddo Parish School Board 20% of the proceeds from speed camera citations in monitored school zone areas.

Board member Steve Umling brought up the Blue Line Solutions red light cameras, noting some people have raised concerns over the legality of them. 

“I didn’t like the idea of getting that money. It was like extorting the taxpayer, for lack of words,” Umling said. 

The speed camera program has received mixed feedback, as some reports say the cameras are not reading speeds properly.

“I believe we’re getting $60,000 basically a year. I’m not sure how correct I am on that figure, but I would sure like for that money to be dedicated towards some sort of activity with the schools,” Umling said in a recent Caddo Parish School Board meeting.

It is not clear how much the school board receives from these proceeds as of now. Recent reports from February say the Caddo Parish School Board received $400,000 of the $2 million the speed cameras brought in during the prior year. 

Superintendent Keith Burton clarified where the citation proceeds go each year from the speed camera programs.

“Those funds are dedicated to Early Childhood Education. Those [funds] are coming from Blue Line Solutions via the city, and that is for school zone cameras only,” said Burton.

In a recent Shreveport City Council meeting, a vote was passed to include speed cameras in non-school zone areas.

According to Burton, there has been no conversation with the city or parish regarding the additional cameras recently voted on to be when it comes to proceeds. As of now, the Caddo Parish School Board only receives funding from speed camera citations in school-zone areas. 

The new non-school zone cameras are expected to be installed in areas with a high rate of speeding drivers. Possible locations include Mayfair Drive, Pines Road, Russell Road, and others.

Emilee Ruth Calametti serves as staff reporter for The Center Square covering the Northwestern Louisiana region. She holds her M.A. in English from Georgia State University and soon, an additional M.A. in Journalism from New York University. Emilee has bylines in DIG Magazine, Houstonia Magazine, Bookstr, inRegister, The Click News, and the Virginia Woolf Miscellany. She is a Louisiana native with over seven years of journalism experience.