A 3% reduction to multiple departments is being recommended as Los Angeles County grapples with less revenue than anticipated. Conan Nolan reports for the NBC4 News at 5 p.m. on Monday, April 14, 2025.
Budget cuts would affect all Los Angeles County government departments in a spending plan unveiled Monday that accounts for "extraordinary" pressures, the county's CEO said.
Under the plan for the nation's largest county government, multiple departments would face 3% budget cuts in the coming fiscal year. The proposal would eliminate 310 vacant positions and other cuts in a $47.9 billion plan that CEO Fesia Davenport called necessary to "offset extraordinary budget pressures."
Those pressures include more than $1 billion in costs related to the deadly January wildfires, including the Eaton Fire in Altadena. The county also recently reached a tentative $4 billion settlement for nearly 7,000 claims involving sexual abuse allegations against county workers, mainly at at Los Angeles County Probation Department centers.
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Davenport also warned of the possibility of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.
"We are in uncharted territory with these simultaneous pressures on our budget," Davenport said in a statement. "Any of these alone would be daunting, but taken together these challenges -- the wildfires, the AB 218 (sex abuse) settlement, the threat of deep cuts in federal funding -- are cause for great concern."
The proposed budget, scheduled for presentation to the county board on Tuesday, includes $50 million in cuts to supplies, delaying equipment purchases and reducing the scope of some county programs. The budget includes roughly $88.9 million in targeted cutbacks.
"Despite the constraints, the balanced budget is committed to sustaining the County's essential safety net responsibilities and to funding key priorities set by the Board of Supervisors," the county CEO's office said in its statement.
The spending plan includes funding provided by voter-approved Measure A, a 1/2-cent sales tax that replaced Measure H to support programs and services to combat homelessness. Nearly $1.1 billion in Measure A money will be shared by the county and its partners in the region.
