Los Angeles County officials this week unveiled their recommended budget of $43 billion for the upcoming fiscal year, a blueprint they pledged to keep the region’s social safety net intact even as the county prepares to pay a hefty price tag. to pay for how badly officials have treated the prisons and juvenile facilities in the past.

At a Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday, Chief Executive Officer Fesia Davenport warned that the county may need to spend as much as $3 billion resolving claims of sexual abuse at its facilities.

“Apart from the traumatic personal impact on abuse survivors, these cases could have a major impact on the county budget for decades to come,” Davenport said.

In a letter accompanying the budget, she said the claims represented one of the most serious tax challenges in recent history.

At $43 billion, the county has one of the largest budgets

in local government, larger than many states and three times the size of the city of Los Angeles. It’s just a little more than what experts estimate it will cost to repair all the bridges in the US It’s just a little less than what the US gave Ukraine in military aid in its first year

or something

from the war. It’s about what Elon Musk offered for Twitter.

The Supervisory Board weighed the spending plan on Tuesday. The budget, if approved by the board in its current form this summer

,

would funnel hundreds of millions to services that aim to get people off the streets and out of prison.

The plan puts $692 million toward homeless services, most of which comes from money generated through Measure H, a voter-approved sales tax to fund homeless programs. And $288 million would go to “alternatives to incarceration.”

projects and programs designed to keep voters out of jail.

“I believe this budget puts the county on track for the next fiscal year to hold ourselves accountable to our public for the work we’ve all been elected to do and re-enforces that safety net that we know the county is responsible for,” he said. Chairman of the Board Janice Hahn.

Davenport told the board that the budget was put together in light of a “mixed” economic forecast and warned that the county may have to partially tighten the purse strings later in order to

covers

the recent deluge of claims of sexual abuse at district facilities.

To resolve an estimated 3,000 sexual assault claims, the county’s attorneys predict

It

could be forced to spend anywhere from $1.6

trillion

and $3 billion. That’s more than the county plans to spend next year on its combined pilot, fire, and park and recreation departments.

Matt McGloin, a top budget official at the

provinces

Chief Executive Office, told reporters

the consequences

the lawsuits

were going to do

to have

had an effect on the budget

unprecedented in size.

The flood of claims stems from a state law that gave victims of childhood sexual assault extra time to report

a

lawsuits. Like many California institutions with audited histories, the county has been swamped with lawsuits, many

theirs

from prosecutors who were once at the now infamous MacLaren Children’s Center, where physical and sexual abuse was rampant.

Davenport told reporters the county was still figuring out where to pay the money

the

victims

would go

Comes from

Everything needs to be on the table, Davenport said, adding that they would consider cutting department budgets or diving into the county’s Rainy Day fund.

The financial ramifications of past crises come as the county faces a new wave of prison and juvenile detention problems. This year, ten people have died in county jails, a death toll advocates say is due in part to overcrowding in dilapidated facilities. Meanwhile, the conditions in the youth halls have changed

got to be

so deplorable that state regulators are considering shutting them down.

More than 50 members of the probation union came to the board meeting on Tuesday morning. Dwight Thompson, a vice president of the Deputy Probation Officers’ Union, said members were there to beg the board to fix working conditions at the facilities and negotiate contracts “in good faith.”

The supervisors then went into closed session, which the spokespersons said was to discuss the probation department. the decision left a strange vacuum inside

the room for the better part of two hours; a man remained in the boardroom during his probation, yelling profanities and singing

department

members walked out.

According to budget documents, the county expects an overhaul of the county’s probation system, which may require funding for additional investments in personnel, programs and facilities.

Such investments are not detailed in the recommended $1.059 billion budget for the department.

and funding for the department is about unchanged from the previous year. According to budget officials within the CEO’s office, the total recommended budget for probation is $1,059 billion, an increase of $4 million from the current fiscal year.

The recommended budget for the sheriff’s department increased to $3.99 billion, an increase of approx

$136 million

budget officials said. The budget allocates $6.6 million to fund the new Office of Constitutional Policing, which Sheriff Robert Luna created to create conditions

in

to eradicate prisons and gangs. County leaders said about $50 million more would go to improve “unacceptable conditions in the region”

district

prisons

The funding drew strong rebuke from progressive advocates, who argued that the county was failing to keep its promise to keep the county’s programs out of prison.

“It’s not really a reflection of what the community has been asking for,” said Megan Castillo, the policy and advocacy manager at La Defensa, a

an advocacy

group pushing for prison alternatives. “It’s a status quo budget. It’s a budget that we’ve seen time and time again where law enforcement gets more money.”

County officials insisted they kept their promises to get out of jail, pointing to $288 million

in the budget

go to programs and projects that aim to preserve people

away

from prison, such as vocational training, housing, re-entry and mental health care.

That part of the spending plan stemmed from Measure J, a since-reversed ballot measure aimed at criminal justice reform that county voters passed in 2020 in the wake of the killing of George Floyd

by police officers in Minneapolis.

The measure required the province to set aside 10%

per cent

of the locally generated unrestricted revenue that the county directly manages, such as property and sales taxes, that is not already allocated for another purpose on programs that kept people out of prison.

Though a judge ultimately ruled the measure unconstitutional, district leaders pledged to follow in the spirit of what voters demanded and funnel one-tenth of these flexible dollars toward prison alternatives.

Baby Salcedo,

the

head of the TransLatin@ Coalition that helped pass the measure said she originally expected more than $1 billion to be funneled into these programs by this fiscal year. With $288 million pledged this year, she said she felt the board was “short-selling” the community.

Davenport told the board she believes the county has kept its promise.

While some advocates remain dissatisfied, the move from zero to more than half a billion dollars in a three-year span is unprecedented for just about any county initiative, she said.