Calabasas Debates Proposed Police Funding Amendment

CALABASAS, CA — Should voters decide whether the county redistributes 10 percent of its law enforcement budget? On Wednesday, the Calabasas City Council will consider taking a formal stance on this fraught proposal.

On July 28, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to hold a special election on Nov. 3 to ask voters if they’d be willing to add an amendment to the County Charter to allocate no less than 10 percent of the county’s locally generated unrestricted revenues in the general fund to address the “disproportionate impact of racial injustice through community investment and alternatives to incarceration.” If passed, these funds would not be allowed to go to carceral systems and law enforcement agencies.

The proposed amendment comes after widespread calls around the country, especially in the wake of the George Floyd protests, to reexamine whether the large amount of money spent on law enforcement can be put to more effective use. The money would instead be used for initiatives thought to prevent crime, like job training and jobs for low-income residents, access to capital for minority-owned businesses, rent assistance, funding for affordable and transitional housing, according to A letter to the County Board of Supervisors from County Counsel Mary C. Wickham. It would also be used to find incarceration alternatives, like restorative justice programs and community-based health services and counseling.

Currently, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has a $3.3 billion budget, while the Los Angeles Police Department has a $1.86 billion budget, which is just over 10 percent of the city’s total budget. In June, the county proposed trimming $162 million from the Sheriff’s Department budget, and in July, the Los Angeles City Council trimmed $150 million from the LAPD budget.

On July 27, Calabasas Mayor Pro Tem James Bozajian wrote a letter to the Board of Supervisors urging them not to place the amendment on the ballot. Bozajian said that the proposal was rushed, noting that it appeared as a supplemental item on the agenda just a week prior to his letter.

“You offered no way for the public to properly consider and comment upon a highly significant and consequential matter,” he wrote. “Absent an emergency, treating important legislation like this lacks transparency.”

Bozajian also wrote that budgeting by voter initiative sets a “dangerous precedent” that would mean the Board would “forever surrender the flexibility to modify future budgets to accommodate changing priorities or circumstances.”

Finally, Bozajian wrote that he opposes the proposal on its merits, claiming that cuts would “substantially imperil public safety in Los Angeles County,” and accused the Board of acting for “solely political” reasons.

Mayor Alicia Weintraub told Patch that she and Bozaijian asked for the item on the agenda because they were concerned that it was introduced without much public notice. She also said that she felt that there's a way to fund the alternative programs mentioned by the County Counsel without taking money away from the Sheriff's Department.

"I think the money's already there," she said.

A July 27 letter from Juan Garza, president of the Los Angeles County Division of the League of California Cities also urged the Board to suspend consideration of the ordinance. While Garza called the Board’s intent to address social justice and equity “laudable,” he also called the proposed “rushed, lack[ing in] transparency and stakeholder engagement.” He also wrote that the Board of Supervisors can already spend its discretionary funds through an annual budget process with a majority vote, so it would be unnecessary to permanently restrict future budget spending. He also said that the amendment’s fiscal implications have not been fully vetted.