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Comment by darth_avocado | Hacker News Reader

The problem with that though is that the overall budget includes big ticket items like pensions and overtime. And cuts often directly are from live services. So even though it’s 2% of the overall budget, the cut could still be significant to the availability of firefighters and crucial things like response times.

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I recommend to everyone to get out of cities and counties that have large pension liabilities. You will be less safe, your kids will be educated more poorly, and your quality of public services will be whittled away because the money is going to retirees and debt.

E.g. Retirement benefits and debt service took up 43% of Chicago’s budget in 2022: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/30/opinion/chicago-illinois-.... A decade ago my wife and I decided to abandon our efforts to move back to the city (where we went to law school) because we saw this coming.

Orleans Parish certainly used Katrina to dump pension liabilities but I don’t know if I feel any safer for it.

And go where exactly? To towns that don't even have the tax base to support themselves and lack jobs?

It's not like suburbs aren't sitting on financial bombs either.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/fiscal-stab...

I moved to unincorporated exurban Maryland. The state government is a mess, but it’s mostly preoccupied dealing with Baltimore. Our county is great. Good schools with modest per student spending, the friendliest police I’ve ever interacted with. Even our county landfill is one of the cleanest and most orderly facilities I’ve ever seen. Nicer than most of New York City for sure.

I'd imagine that a lot of the people reading this work in tech, where pretty much every company has instituted return-to-office mandates.

And of course, even if you were willing to spend several hours a day commuting, if you're in California exurban areas aren't exactly safer from wildfires.

That is unfortunate for them. But let me tell you how amazing our landfill is. To me, it exemplifies the best of America. It’s so clean and organized, run by orderly, polite, and helpful people. Every time I have to throw out some bulky items, the experience gives me confidence in our local government. My parents, who grew up in Bangladesh, are also amazed by it. Our local county clerk’s office is amazing too. I needed to get one of my kid’s birth certificates reprinted. I went down the street, to the basement of some sober and cost-effective building that was built in the 1980s, and had a new copy in 20 minutes.

I grew up in northern VA in the 1990s and I thought that the whole of America (besides NYC obviously) was like that. Super clean, orderly, and efficient. Then I lived in Wilmington Delaware, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and DC, and it reminded me too much of the third world.

Not every city is drowning in those kinds of liabilities.

Insert Homer Simpson meme “Not every city is drowning in those kinds of liabilities, yet”

> It's not like suburbs aren't sitting on financial bombs either.

Reminds me of a video (part of series), titled "Why American Cities Are Broke - The Growth Ponzi Scheme". Previous HN submission and discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32495647

TLDR: Suburban and certain commercial development is money-loser because tax-revenue is way under the long-term costs of the infrastructure to support it, and already denser areas (including the housing of poorer people) are subsidizing spread-out/richer zones.

This is just false, and a quick look at any municipal budget is enough to confirm it. Infrastructure costs are small fraction of spend of any municipality. It’s typically under 10%. Making infra spend twice aa efficient will only increase ability to spend by 5%, which is equivalent to two years of revenue growth. The growth Ponzi scheme people say that it’s all deferred maintenance and in long term it will collapse, but it simply has not happened anywhere, even in places where suburban development pattern has existed for three quarters of a century.

My impression has been that Strong Towns' analysis of the growth Ponzi scheme was correct, or at least not obviously incorrect, in its original context, which was watching small towns far away from large cities become hollowed out by people moving outside the city limits into unincorporated land. If you actually look at the examples on the original Strong Towns' site, you will see that they're largely not suburbs or even exurbs of major cities.

But both that site and its readers have tried to apply that conclusion to suburbs of major cities, which is ludicrously wrong to anyone that actually knows anything about the causes of municipal bankruptcy (almost always due to pension obligations , and often in a vicious cycle with high taxes raised to pay for pensions that drive away residents).

i dont think i want to live in a place that will abandon me when im old. doesnt seem ideal

Local governance in general is FUBAR. Here in CA, housing supply policies from the legislature have gotten a lot better in recent years, but construction still gets bogged down at the local level.

Most budgeting should be moved to the state level, IMO. It's crazy for Western Springs, Atherton and Beverly Hills to waste money while Chicago and Oakland fall behind. If some magnates decide to move to Texas as a result, good riddance. The dependence on property taxes is particularly perverse, as it incentivizes the housing pyramid scheme.

Why would you want more decisions to be moved up to the state level, where officials will be elected by a low-information statewide electorate, instead of a local level, where there’s at least hope of an informed electorate that’ll hold the government accountable? That’s certainly been my experience living in a well-run county in Maryland.

This guy is my county executive: https://www.aacounty.org/pittmanandfriends. I trust him to make sure our trash gets picked up on time and to keep the community safe. I certainly don’t trust the Maryland government to do that.

It's not so much an informed electorate as a rent-seeking one.[1] The regulatory capture [2] of obscure local boards is much easier than that of state agencies. Voters who are part of a special interest group are much more aware of what and who they're voting for. The prime example are landlords and homeowners. They have managed to strangle the supply of housing to inflate prices, creating the crisis we're in now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

The home ownership rate in my county is 75%, so “landlords and homeowners” is the vast majority of the population, not a “special interest group.”

And your point doesn’t contradict mine. The homeowners in my county are highly informed and conscientious voters, and their decisions are good for most of the people who already live in the county.

I agree in certain circumstances, including land use, you want to make decisions at the state level. But for most government services, like education, policing, local roads, etc., I want Kim who runs our HOA to be voting on who makes those decisions and hassling those officials to keep them accountable.

It's still a special interest group, even if it happens to be a large one. It's orchestrating decisions that effectively siphon money from non-members (e.g. renters and young families), and in proportion to the number of properties each member owns no less.

In any case, we don't seem to disagree all that much. My original point was more legislative than executive in nature. Local executive accountability is desirable, provided that the budgeting and rulemaking were made uniform state-wide. Education already works that way.

Not just cities or counties.

The entire state of New Jersey exists to pay pensions. The 2025 general budget is $55 billion, $7 billion went to funding the pension for one year, again.

It appears we agree that the details of the cuts matters.

More information since my last comment, at least half the budget cuts indeed impacted large scale disaster response capabilities.

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/california-wildfires/la-w...

> The budget reduction, approved last year by Mayor Karen Bass, was mostly absorbed by leaving many administrative jobs unfilled, but that left about $7 million that was cut from its overtime budget that was used for training, fire prevention, and other key functions.

> The variable overtime hours, called "V-Hours" within the LAFD, were used to pay for FAA-mandated pilot training and helicopter coordination staffing for wildfire suppression, the memo said.

"Without this funding, pilot compliance and readiness are jeopardized, and aerial firefighting capabilities are diminished," it said. "Changes to the Air Operations Section impact the Department's ability to adhere to current automatic and mutual aid agreements, provide air ambulance service, and quickly respond to woodland fires with water dropping helicopters."

> The memo also highlighted other programs that would suffer under the cuts, including the Disaster Response Section, which funds the bulldozer teams that cut breaks and control lines around wildfires, and the Critical Incident Planning and Training Section, which develops plans for major emergencies.

I have a serious interest in emergency service budgets (in Western Australia, although personnel from here do travel to California to assist in our off season).

So.. cheers for the update and context, that does highlight a 'loss' of $7 million in training alocation from an over 800 million budget.

Do 'we' hold the state of California responsible here for allocating less overall, or the LA Fire Chief for perhaps not making the best use of what was allocated to them.

I'm an outsider and I'm avoiding throwing shade, just highlighting the complexity of budget issues.

If the blame goes to the state then attention should be paid to the page 6 water flow from revenue to expenditures - if Fire needs more then Police(?) must get less .. etc.

Cali Budget: https://cao.lacity.gov/budget/summary/2024-25%20Budget%20Sum...

(page 11) $774 million went to salaries, $46 million to expenses.

The blame starts with the mayor and top brass of the city government. The literal job description involves running the city based on money they have, including prioritizing what’s important. Fire departments and emergency services are the last departments that need budget cuts. Obviously some blame does also fall on the fire chief, but fire departments are usually well run and from the looks of it, there seems to have been an effort to absorb most of the cost cutting in vacant admin positions. Whether there was an opportunity to make cuts elsewhere from the FD’s pov, we’d need to look at the data more closely.

> The literal job description involves running the city based on money they have, including prioritizing what’s important.

Sure, and to that end the Police and Fire together make up in excess of 60% of the entire budget.

Should all income go to the Fire Dept? (Obviously not) .. again, I'm an outsider, but from a helicopter perspective there already a good sized portion of the budget going towards Fire as a priority already. Should some of the Police budget be cut and redirected?

One a portion of total available has been allocated it does rather fall to the Fire Chief to make the most of what has been granted.

The challenge appears to be how to make what's available go the furtherest.

Here, not California, we make considerable use of volunteers .. well equiped and large well trained volunteers with solid liability insurance should they toast themselves and backed by a professional full time core.

I dare say similar things happen in California, I note the use of the prison population in fire fighting.

It's a tough problem domain, not helped by all the outside hot takes on twitter and elsewhere that casually claim budgets are being gutted, etc.

>Should some of the Police budget be cut and redirected?

I'm as far from this situation as you can be, but yes, absolutely, it's ridiculous how much money is set on fire on ineffective budget items, while at the same time AFAIU the police force is not really held responsible to do its job.

> Sure, and to that end the Police and Fire together make up in excess of 60% of the entire budget.

Of the LA City Fiscal Year 2025 (July 1, 2024 - June 30, 2025) of $12.90 billion, $1.98 billion (15.36%) is Police and $820 million (6.36%) is Fire. Combined, this is less than 22%, not in excess of 60%.

https://openbudget.lacity.org/#!/year/2025/operating/0/depar...

Agree with everything you have said in this thread, just want to also draw attention to the fact that there are 2400 fewer firefighters in California because California has rightfully reduced the amount of inmate firefighters. I don't know whether they were counted on for these emergency situations.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-07-09/californ...

I seriously hope the rural WA fire season this year doesn't match California or we're going to be for lack of a better word fucked.

We just had a record dry year followed by a warm and wet start to summer which has caused a bunch of new growth, thats going to die and dry come Feb and i'll be keeping a go bag in my car.

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