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LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia
@controller.lacity.gov

Re: LAFD Budget Seeing City officials in the press ignore the severe impacts of these budget cuts, especially the ones covering for their poor budget decisions to cut a majority of departments' budgets & even AFTER Chief Crowley told them about the impacts these cuts have had, is DISGRACEFUL.

338 reposts988 likes

Kim
@kimbytes.bsky.social

What's also interesting is that when folks talk about the crime in LA it's because leadership defunded the police which is also an incorrect perception.

Kim
@kimbytes.bsky.social

This looks to be a 2% decrease from 2024 to 2025 - seems a lot more reasonable than saying a $17M budget cut. 2% isn't a drastic cut in any organization public or private.

Pavel
@spavel.bsky.social

Apparently you are a "far left activist"

Ali Vitali@alivitali.bsky.social

Most succinct fact-check I've read of how LA Fire Dept's budget wasn't recently cut -- in fact, the opposite -- from @politico.com. But that misinformation spread anyway. www.politico.com/news/2025/01...

LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia
@controller.lacity.gov

They keep saying "BUT LAFD GOT A RAISE IN NOVEMBER!" If these fires happened in August or October, would these same City officials then admit that LAFD's budget got cut in July where 61 civilian support positions were eliminated and sworn payroll and expenses were reduced?

sunfolk.bsky.social
@sunfolk.bsky.social

Wait, the city *did* set aside $50 million and appropriate it to the fire department after negotiations completed in November? So wouldn't that put the FD $30 million ahead? Also, if this was about pension funds, why would it affect the department's ability to fight wildfires?

LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia
@controller.lacity.gov

Btw the money that they keep saying is being held for LAFD's raises are in this "separate account" HASN'T even been transferred to the LAFD's operating budget as of this date! How do we know all this? Because we're the City's Accountant! We know the City's budget and finances.

LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia
@controller.lacity.gov

We didn't want to get into the City's budget and finances during these times, but to see City officials come out and ignore the Fire Chief's warnings/impacts of the department's budget cuts made us jump in. We can explain how all this works and how we got here, just scroll down.

LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia
@controller.lacity.gov

BTW, what's not being talked about is that Chief Crowley requested $914,975,620 for this current fiscal year's budget which started last July. INSTEAD, the Fire Department got $819,637,423, a budget cut of $17,553,814 from their prior year's adopted budget of $837,191,237.

lolaswann.bsky.social
@lolaswann.bsky.social

Then you should have gone with that. What’s disgraceful is you getting into he said-she said while people are suffering and the town is traumatized. Do you think this is helping or causing more stress? Investigation, reflection and commentary should come but to do it now is the real disgrace.

NotMe
@princessjemmy.bsky.social

Hey, I don’t doubt mistakes were made, but it’s good to have questions other than “whose fault was it?” Why were the budgets slashed? Was it to plug other budget holes or an overall revenue shortage for the city? If the latter, who has a plan to address that, and what is the plan?