LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti warned Sunday that the economic downturn facing the city will be more painful than the 2008 recession, requiring cuts to government programs and the furlough of thousands of city employees.
In a remarkable State of the City address, one that comes five weeks into the shutdown of many businesses, government buildings and other facilities, Garcetti declared that the city is “under attack” from the coronavirus and the economic fallout that has come with it.
“I’ve never before hesitated to assure you that our city is strong,” he said. “But I won’t say those words tonight. Our city is under attack. Our daily life is unrecognizable.
“We are bowed and we are worn down. We are grieving our dead,” the mayor continued, choking up and fighting back tears. “But we are not broken, nor will we ever be.”
Garcetti said hotel reservations have collapsed and passenger air travel has dropped 95%. The city has already borrowed $70 million from its special funds in its effort to respond to the crisis. And in the coming months, civilian city workers will need to take 26 unpaid days off — the equivalent of a 10% reduction in pay, he said.
“From a fiscal perspective, this is the worst it’s ever been,” the mayor said.
So far, the city’s political leaders sounded open to the types of reductions described by Garcetti. Councilman Mike Bonin said that in light of the economic calamity facing the region, he “breathed a bit of a sigh of relief” that the mayor was not announcing employee layoffs.
Councilman Gil Cedillo, who represents parts of Los Angeles’ Eastside, called furloughs the best in a series of bad choices, but worried that residents and city employees would ultimately suffer.
“City services are in greater need during a crisis,” he said.
How acutely the public would feel those cuts is far from clear. Furlough days will not be demanded of police officers, firefighters or workers at the Department of Water and Power, among others.
Garcetti has already closed a number of city facilities to the public, including cultural centers, the Los Angeles Zoo and scores of branch libraries. Some city employees have been reassigned to work in recreation centers operating as makeshift homeless shelters.
Sunday’s address comes at an extraordinary time for Garcetti and the city. Over the last five weeks, he has issued emergency orders to close businesses, halt evictions, require face masks, waive parking tickets and generally keep Angelenos away from each other on beaches, hiking trails and in other locations.
With much of the city staying indoors, Sunday’s speech bore little resemblance to previous State of the City addresses in L.A. Gone was the color guard and the other ceremonial flourishes that typically accompany Garcetti’s yearly address to the city.
In normal years, Garcetti has delivered the address before hundreds of people in packed venues such as the California Science Center and the Valley Performing Arts Center at California State University, Northridge. On Sunday, he spoke inside a mostly empty City Council chamber, with even council members staying at home.
As a result, the event felt closer to one of the many evening coronavirus briefings given by Garcetti since mid-March. However, the overall message was more grim, with Garcetti saying the city would need major help from the federal government to weather the crisis.
“Don’t bail out banks but leave cities with cuts and collapse,” he said.
Garcetti said Congress should pass a national infrastructure bill to put people back to work. And he called on the federal government to loosen restrictions on emergency funds that prevent the city from using them to replace lost revenue.
The coronavirus outbreak and accompanying economic downturn pose by far the biggest challenge to Garcetti and other city leaders since the 2008 recession. During that crisis, the city’s elected officials responded by imposing furloughs, laying off hundreds of workers and eliminating thousands of jobs.
Revenue for the coming budget year could be as much as $598 million below projections, depending on how long Angelenos continue staying indoors, according to figures released last week by City Controller Ron Galperin.
Much of the reductions have been caused by the steep drop-off in tourism activity, including a major decline in projected hotel bed taxes, Galperin said. Since stay-at-home orders were issued across the state, unemployment claims have skyrocketed, with workers in the entertainment, hospitality and travel industries hit particularly hard.
Garcetti is scheduled to release his proposed budget Monday. The document, which covers spending for the fiscal year that starts July 1, must be approved by the City Council before it can go into effect.
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