L.A. County’s budget is taking hit after hit. Trump could make things worse

Good morning, and welcome to L.A. on the Record — our City Hall newsletter. It’s Rebecca Ellis, with an assist from my colleague David Zahniser, giving you the latest on local budget woes.

It’s belt-tightening time.

Los Angeles County government is facing some staggering costs, both from January’s historic wildfires and from a flood of sex abuse lawsuits.

Now, there’s yet another reason for the Board of Supervisors to be alarmed: Big chunks of the county budget may be on the chopping block in D.C.

Chief Executive Officer Fesia Davenport said she anticipates a hit to the Department of Mental Health somewhere between $200 and $475 million. The Department of Public Social Services could lose about $261 million, she said.

The grim forecasts came as part of budget presentations required from department heads under Measure G, the county government reform measure passed in November.

The lengthy sessions — 25 hours total by one supervisor’s count — underscored just how much of the county’s social safety net could soon be slashed.

“We have a large amount of uncertainty in the budget,” Davenport told the board Tuesday.

Jackie Contreras, whose agency provides cash, food and healthcare assistance to the county’s poorest residents, said more than a third of the Department of Public Social Services funding comes from the federal government.

She said she’s braced for big cuts to food stamps and cash assistance programs. Funds for resettled Ukrainians will disappear. More cuts loom, with the federal government saying it will penalize states for offering Medicaid to undocumented immigrants, she said.

It’s not just vulnerable residents who will feel the changes. Roughly 1,100 jobs at the agency could be at risk, according to Davenport.

That’s on top of a potential hiring freeze that county leaders are mulling as they enter a new period of financial tumult. Davenport told the board this week that the county needs to cut back on new hires to avoid a “fiscal crisis.”

The White House did not immediately respond to an inquiry about local cuts. The Trump administration has said it wants to reduce “wasteful spending” and redirect federal money toward its own policy priorities — many of which clash with those of the left-leaning Board of Supervisors.

Brandon Nichols, head of the Department of Children and Family Services, said he worries his staff could soon be overwhelmed by the number of youths they’re helping to avoid deportation.

“Immigration is something that causes me to worry, honestly, quite a bit right now,” he said, adding his staff was “sensing fear.”

Two fathers of children in the child welfare system were recently arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he said. Immigration officials showed up at a school to question another child, he said. The school didn’t let them in.

Supervisor Janice Hahn said she watched a commercial where Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem stared into the camera and told everyone in the country illegally to leave.

“I just keep thinking about how real this is,” she said. “I really feel for the departments that specifically are having to address that fear and anxiety.”

The county has a $49 billion budget — about 13% of which comes from the federal government. But some agencies are heavily reliant on federal money. For example, the Department of Public Health gets roughly two-thirds of its budget from federal grants. That’s about a billion dollars funneled toward everything from avian flu prevention to tuberculosis protection.

Public Health head Barbara Ferrer told the board last week that her department was already feeling squeezed and had stopped filling many vacancies to help its money stretch further.

“I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out how to maintain my own blood pressure levels,” said Supervisor Holly Mitchell after the presentation wrapped up.

“We have to close the gap, so people aren’t — I don’t want to say fall through cracks,” she said. “So people aren’t thrown over the cliff.”

State of play

— CHECK YOUR EMAIL: One day before Mayor Karen Bass flew to Ghana, more than a dozen staffers in her office received an email warning of a “high confidence in damaging winds and elevated fire conditions” on Jan. 7, the day the Palisades fire ultimately broke out, according to records obtained by The Times. Bass spokesperson Zach Seidl said the information in that email — which included a red-flame graphic warning of “critical fire conditions” — was not relayed to the mayor before she left town.

— CROWLEY OUT: The City Council voted 13-2 to uphold Bass’ decision to oust Fire Chief Kristin Crowley. Firefighters praised the former chief for publicly demanding more resources for her department. But critics called the proceedings part of a larger attack on Bass’ authority as a Black female mayor. “This would not be done if she was a white male of privilege,” one supporter said.

— A NEW GIG: The council’s decision leaves Crowley in a lower-level position within the fire department. She’s now an assistant chief assigned to the Operations Valley Bureau, according to her spokesperson.

— TURNING ON THE TAP: The city lifted its “do not drink” order in the Pacific Palisades on Friday, after officials at the L.A. Department of Water and Power confirmed the absence of contaminants in the water supply. Bass credited crews with working seven days a week to flush out toxic substances from the water supply and drew a comparison to the November 2018 wildfire that ravaged the city of Paradise. In that community, the “do not drink” advisory lasted for a year and a half, the mayor said.

— COMING UP SHORT: City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo warned council members this week that the budget shortfall for 2025-26 is approaching $400 million, due in part to higher wages for city workers, increased legal payouts and weak tax revenues. City Controller Kenneth Mejia, in his own revenue projection report, offered a similarly gloomy outlook.

— A GRIM TALLY: About 2,500 homeless people died in Los Angeles County in 2023, perishing at an average of nearly seven people per day, health officials reported this week. Drug or alcohol overdoses were the cause of 45% of those deaths. Of those, 70% involved fentanyl.

— AUDIT IN THE COURT: The city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority lack the financial controls to ensure that contractors are properly delivering homeless services, according to a new court-ordered audit. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said the audit is effectively an endorsement of her proposal to create a new county department that would take over LAHSA’s contracting duties.

— UNION PROBE: A former top officer with the L.A. firefighters’ union has been removed from his post and is facing an internal investigation over allegations that he engaged in financial improprieties involving the union’s charity for injured firefighters. Adam Walker, the former union officer, told The Times the allegations are false.

— RECALL REDUX: Foes of L.A.’s mayor have formed a fundraising committee to begin a campaign to remove her from office. The committee’s primary funder is Nicole Shanahan, who poured millions from her personal fortune into Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent presidential bid. (After Kennedy dropped out of the race, Shanahan backed Trump.) Recalls have been launched repeatedly in L.A. over the past decade, but none have qualified for the ballot.

—FIGHT CLUB: Thirty L.A. County probation officers have been criminally charged following allegations that they allowed fights between teens inside the county’s juvenile halls. California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta referred to the brawls as “gladiator fights.”

—HUMAN ERROR: The company that provides L.A. County with emergency alert software says the failure to send evacuation alerts to west Altadena in the early hours of the Eaton fire was not the result of a software glitch. The statement by the company president leaves human error as the most likely cause of the failure.

— HEADING OUT: Staffers in Bass’ office said farewell this week to Deputy Mayor Joey Freeman, who handled intergovernmental affairs between the city and county, state and federal agencies. Freeman, who had been in the mayor’s office for about two years, will join LA28, the organizing committee for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

— APPLY NOW! Bass, a week after being dinged over the slow pace of work on updating the City Charter, opened the application process for Angelenos looking to serve on the city’s Charter Reform Commission.

QUICK HITS

• Where is Inside Safe? The mayor’s signature program to combat homelessness went to Councilmember Curren Price’s district, focusing on the area around 33rd and Hope streets, according to a Bass aide.
• On the docket for next week: On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors takes up Gov. Gavin Newsom’s request for $39 billion in federal wildfire relief. The motion, which would require the board to send a letter to Congress, thanked Trump for his “steadfast” commitment to ongoing recovery efforts, including his push to remove debris ahead of schedule.