Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has reached an agreement with City Council President Markey Harris Dawson to find funds to overturn police employment cuts that the council made last month.
On Friday, Bass was approved by the council. The Council is to close the $100 million shortfall. Among the council changes to the mayor’s spending plan, the number of police officers hired next year has fallen from 480 to 240.
The next day, as part of her announcement of her signature, the mayor highlighted a separate contract with Harris Dawson, ensuring that “council leadership will identify funds for the additional 240 recruits within 90 days.” The budget year begins on July 1st.
Bass spokesman Zach Seidl said funds for additional executives will be allocated to a 90-day deadline.
“No one got everything they wanted,” Harris Dawson said in a statement. “In particular, our commitment to working with the mayor to identify funding for the additional 240 recruits within 90 days has more work going forward.”
To recover the 240 police recruits, the council will need to release another $13.3 million next year. City estimates that between 2026 and 2027, executives working for the first year will grow to around $60 million.
April Bass called for a quarter of civilian city workers to be laid off in the LAPD. The council voted last month to reduce the number of layoffs to about 700 by reducing the mayor’s employment plans at the LAPD and Los Angeles Fire Department.
During deliberations, council members said slowing down police employment would protect the work of other LAPD workers, including private experts working with DNA rape kits, fingerprint analysis and other investigative tasks.
In her statement, Bass thanked the council, “We worked together to make Los Angeles safer for everyone and help us with this agreement.” She said the budget would invest in emergency response, homeless services, street repairs, parks, libraries and other programs.
“This budget is being delivered under extremely difficult conditions: uncertainty from Washington, explosion of liability payments, unexpected rises in costs, lower than expected revenue,” she said.
During budget deliberations, Bass was disappointed to delay recruitment at LAPD. Recently, she was weighing whether to reject all of the budget, which could lead to a troubling showdown with the council.
The council voted 12-3 last month to approve the reworked budget proposal. Since only 10 votes are needed to override the veto, Bass would have had to secure at least three additional votes to support her position on police employment.
Whether Harris-Dawson has the support of his colleagues is unclear whether he finds the money and spends it on police hiring. Unless the city’s union makes financial concessions, the council will need to tap on the city’s reserve fund or withdraw money from other spending obligations, such as legal payments and existing city programs.
The budget will fund six classes next year, including up to 40 recruits at the Police Academy, each. Bass originally offered 480 recruits to the division, seeking double the number.
Councillor Katy Yaroslavsky, who chairs the council’s budget committee, said she shares the mayor’s goal of restoring the LAPD recruiting class, saying, “We look forward to working with her to make that happen.”
“The problem was how to always do that in a financially responsible way and in a sustainable way,” Jaroslavski said.
To increase police employment and eliminate the remaining 700 layoffs, councils will need to rely on city unions for additional savings, Yaroslavsky said.
The Council’s budget provided sufficient funding to ensure LAPD had 8,399 officers by June 30, 2026, the end of the next fiscal year. The $13.3 million Bass seeks would bring the executives to over 8,600.
Faculty figures show that LAPD had 8,746 executives in mid-May.
