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This budget’s a labor of love

In some parts of the nation these days, public sector unions are battling a perception that they’re the bad guys—out only for themselves as government budgets dwindle and services wither. But in L.A. County, unions have another rep—as recession-savvy partners whose sacrifices are helping to save the day.

County unions, now going into their 3^rd year of working without raises, have emerged as some of the improbable heroes of a proposed $23.3 billion budget which—at least for now—includes no layoffs or furloughs. The county’s situation is particularly striking in comparison to the city of Los Angeles, where generous employee pay raises gave way to a dire economic picture including both layoffs and unpaid furlough days.

People on both sides of the bargaining table attribute the county’s situation to sound financial stewardship before the economic collapse and to long-running collaborative relationships between the unions and the county’s elected and executive leadership.

Not to mention the fact that union leaders—correctly, as it turns out—anticipated that the downturn would be long and ugly, not a short-term blip, and could jeopardize jobs.

“We saw what was coming, and it wasn’t looking good,” said Steve Remige, a director of the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs (ALADS) who was the organization’s president during the most recent rounds of contract negotiations. Doing without raises, under the circumstances, “was an easy sell to the membership.”

It was harder over at SEIU Local 721, where some members at least initially expected a shorter-lived recession. “Some thought it would be over in a year or two,” said Bob Schoonover, president of the local, which represents some 55,000 county workers “from custodians to nurses.” By toughing it out and agreeing to no raises, however, the members not only helped avoid layoffs in their ranks but also contributed to keeping public services afloat, he said.

“We agreed to a series of no-raise contracts…in order to keep services going at the level they need to be,” Schoonover said. “The county and SEIU have had a very good working relationship for the last few years. That’s to the benefit not only of the members but to the public.”

Because of the sheer size of the county workforce—salary and benefits for nearly 100,000 employees, most of them unionized, account for 40% of the budget—even a tiny cost-of-living adjustment carries a huge price-tag.

As it is, the proposed budget unveiled this week reveals a $220.9 million shortfall that the chief executive office says can be eliminated through, among other things, one-time funding, the elimination of vacant positions and department cutbacks—but without forcing anyone into unemployment.

And for that, Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and others give substantial credit to the unions and their leadership.  “They made a tough decision for themselves and for their members,” he said.

Labor and management both credit the long tenure of the board majority—and the trust that has flowed from it—with creating the climate for union concessions.

“Good labor relations demand a certain longevity,” said Blaine Meek, counsel for the California Association of Professional Employees, which represents some 2,700 county employees in departments such as Public Works, Treasurer-Tax Collector and Assessor.

So when the Board of Supervisors made it clear that without union cooperation, the county’s fiscal health would suffer and workers would lose their jobs, the unions decided to play ball.

“At the end of the day, they went along with us,” Yaroslavsky said. “I think they wanted to do something statesmanlike. And the proof of the pudding is three years later, we haven’t laid off anybody and we haven’t furloughed anybody.”

Jim Adams, chief of employee relations for the county, said the current season of labor-management harmony is no mere “kumbaya thing.” He acknowledged that labor agreements in recent years have asked county employees to do without raises at a time when workloads are increasing and vacancy and promotional freezes are in place.

“These sacrifices have strained our employees at times,” Adams said.

But those sacrifices looked more palatable when compared to what was happening in other places.

“People were seeing layoffs and furloughs all around us,” Adams said. “They were seeing worse things going on elsewhere than a salary freeze.”

The austerity contracts started in early 2009 with ALADS and the county’s other public safety unions. Setting the stage for the negotiations with other county unions that would follow, they accepted no raises and a 50% reduction in the amount the county pays in deferred compensation. But they won a larger county contribution to their rising health insurance premiums.

Now, with small signs of a recovery on the way, county union members are keeping one eye on the local economy and the other on their union brethren around the nation.

“They see that public employees have been made a target in a bad economy, even as the demand for government services is rising,” said Meek, of the California Association of Professional Employees. “Yes, our members are anxious. Even their voice in collective bargaining is under attack.”

But in their dealings with L.A. County, there is a sense that sacrifices in bad times will be rewarded when things get better.

“There is an expectation,” Meek said, “that when conditions improve that we will go forward and get back to pay raises and addressing other issues.”

Or, as the SEIU’s Schoonover puts it: “We’re all hoping we return to whatever normal is.”

Posted 4/21/11

An L.A. state of mind for Oscar?

Here in L.A., we feel a special bond with the Oscars. And who can blame us for imagining ourselves gliding down the red carpet when this season rolls around?

With the Academy Awards due on Sunday, we thought we’d take a look back at how Los Angeles County fared, show-biz wise, this season – and, just for fun, at how much of the spotlight we got.

So ten films have been nominated for Best Picture. Of those, can you guess how many were shot on location in L.A.?

Well, not counting scenes that were shot at studios here, there were four, says Philip Sokoloski, communications director of FilmL.A., the nonprofit that coordinates film permits throughout the city and county.

Best Los Angeles County Location in a Best Picture

“The Kids Are All Right,” the romantic comedy about a lesbian couple, their children, and the children’s biological father, had a lot of scenes shot in and around L.A. The father’s house is a real house in Echo Park. Scenes in which the daughter goes to college are shot in Eagle Rock on the Occidental College campus. Permits for other location shoots include the Huron Substation in Cypress Park and the Penmar Recreation Center in Venice.

“The Fighter,” David O. Russell’s New England boxing movie, is set in Massachusetts and was largely shot there. But the permits indicate that several scenes were shot locally. One cites the Pan Pacific Warehouse in L.A.’s Downtown loft district; another gives the address of BASF Corp., an industrial building downtown that’s often used as a stand-in for boxing gyms.

“The Social Network”—which shot at such L.A. landmarks as the Hancock Memorial Museum on the USC campus, the Wilshire Ebell Theatre and the old Los Angeles Stock Exchange building for its story of the founding of Facebook—also filmed some of its Silicon Valley scenes at a private home in Altadena on Mendocino Street, records show.

And then there’s “Inception,” which was all over L.A., from Berth 200H of the Port of Los Angeles to a beach in Palos Verdes. But we like to think the star was the county’s own Music Center, where, on a day in mid-October, the backdrop for the futuristic dream movie was the Ahmanson Theatre.

Best Performance in an Economic Indicator

Meanwhile, the good news, according to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, is that the entertainment industry rebounded last year from a wrenching 2009 throughout Los Angeles County, with about 16,500 more Hollywood jobs and “more motion pictures, television pilots and shows and commercials being filmed.”

More on-location filming, too. FilmL.A. recorded a 15% increase in film permits last year. The bad news, as Southern California grapples with a struggling economy and runaway production, is that feature production was less than half of what it was in the mid-1990s. But new state tax credits made a big difference – in fact, FilmL.A. found, they were responsible in 2010 for more than a quarter of L.A.’s local feature film production. And the fourth quarter was especially good.

Posted 2/24/11

Brown’s budget painful but “real”

Crunching the numbers in Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed budget, Los Angeles County officials are bracing for deep cuts in services and potentially many millions of dollars in less visible costs.

An executive summary of the potential impacts shows that a $1.5 billion statewide cut in the CalWorks welfare program could trim the program by $450 million in Los Angeles County, spelling the loss of benefits for some 37,000 families here. That, in turn, could create new demands on the county’s general relief program, leading to additional costs in an already strained county budget.

Meanwhile, the county Department of Health Services stands to lose some $20 million if a proposed $1.7 billion in cuts, including reductions in payments to providers, are made to the state’s Medi-Cal program. Those cuts would pose challenges for the county’s perennially deficit-plagued health department budget and contribute to “some serious problems in our provision of health care here in L.A. County,” Chief Executive Officer William T Fujioka told supervisors on Tuesday.

The executive summary of potential budget impacts also outlined what’s coming the county’s way under “realignment,” in which responsibility for many programs would shift from the state to the local level.

For one thing, the county’s Probation Department would assume responsibility for 30,000 or more “violent and serious” state parolees, including sexual predators, at an additional cost of $185.3 million—excluding the cost of hiring new staff and related expenses, Fujioka said. County jails also would absorb 13,550 convicted felons now in state custody—nonviolent offenders without sex crimes convictions—at a potential cost of more than $450 million. Other passed-along expenses would come in areas ranging from child welfare and foster care ($557 million) to court security ($132.5 million.)

“What is of serious concern…is whether or not we have sufficient funding to maintain the current level of services that will be sent from the state,” Fujioka told supervisors. “If these services come to us without the necessary revenue, it puts a burden on our already… severely challenged programs and services.”

His remarks echoed comments by Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Gloria Molina, whose Op-Ed piece this week in the Los Angeles Times argued for a “financially sustainable” proposal that would allow local governments to help the state through its crisis.

Yaroslavsky was attending a funeral Tuesday morning and did not attend the board meeting. Molina used the occasion to forcefully call on county officials to enter into a true partnership with the state and find constructive ways to achieve the inevitable cuts.

“If you aren’t part of the solution then get the hell out of the way,” Molina said. “Nobody’s going to listen to a bunch of moaners and whiners and we in L.A. County shouldn’t do that.”

“Crying crocodile tears,” she said, “is not going to impress them [in Sacramento].”

The governor’s budget hinges on voter approval of a proposed June ballot initiative that would extend a 1% sales tax and a .5% vehicle license fee for five years in order to fund the programs that would become county responsibilities under realignment. At the end of five years, the state would pick up the funding responsibility, according to the county’s budget impact report.

But Fujioka told supervisors that passage of the ballot initiatives is far from assured. “Extending the taxes and fees is not a given…That is going to be a very difficult request to get through the state Legislature and also through the electorate.”

Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich criticized the governor, arguing that the proposed budget dodged the necessity of reforming state spending patterns.

“There are dollars that are being generated but they’re not being allocated to appropriate areas,” he said. “And then to get rid of their irresponsibilities by shifting it to the cities and counties without any stable source of long term funding makes no sense.”

“I was expecting the governor to be bold in addressing these issues,” Antonovich said, “instead of basically doing what Arnold Schwarzenegger had done.”

But Molina praised the governor for getting the budget out early and for letting the county—along with all Californians—know how much pain is in store as the state seeks to climb out of a profound economic “ditch.”

“The governor has put it squarely in front of us,” Molina said. “Here’s the numbers. Like ‘em or not, they’re real.”

Posted 1/11/11

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