earlier replies
Replying to @rahulkartgupta
Here's a link to LA's proposed 2020-2021 budget: cao.lacity.org/budget20-21/2… I am not a budget expert, but I'm having trouble figuring out which numerator and denominator the People's Budget LA team used when saying 54% of the city budget goes to the Police. peoplesbudgetla.com/referenc…
3
I'm not sure if this is right since it's still off by 1%, but if you divide the general fund component of their budget ($1.796 billion) by the departmental general fund budget ($3.406 billion), you end up just shy of 53%.
1
And I'm not sure the revenue hit from coronavirus is fully accounted for in these city documents, so that would lower the denominator too.
1
1
I used these numbers.
1
1
I think that's why. Those numbers include both general fund and special fund sources, and the People's Budget numbers are limited to general fund revenues.
1
2
It looks like they're dividing the general fund police expenditures by the 'Budgetary Departments" line within the general fund. "$3,405,890,159" only appears once in the 510 page document, so I'm surprised it's a meaningful number for the general fund.
1
Tbh it's confusing as hell how they structure these budgets so I feel like one could quibble with their choices no matter which numbers they used. 🤷🏼‍♂️
1
3
I'm also not pretending to be a budget expert. I legitimately don't know what the most reasonable numbers are!
1
2
always annoys me when I try to look up the simple question "how large is City X's budget" & am met with a 20 page technical document in which the answer, if it is tabulated at all, is buried within a mass of poorly designed tables
1
2
City budgets are hard to make sense of because they tend to include things that are like businesses fully within the budget (e.g. SF hospitals or airport, Palo Alto utilities) rather than accounting for them as a separate business and counting just the subsidy or profit.
1
1
Replying to @davidbaron @aceckhouse @hanlonbt @ShaneDPhillips @rahulkartgupta
Maybe it even makes sense to look at the planning department that way, though it requires deciding which of planning fees are for planning's operations and which are for running city services.

Jun 1, 2020 · 7:56 AM UTC

1
Replying to @davidbaron @aceckhouse @hanlonbt @ShaneDPhillips @rahulkartgupta
They're also hard to compare because the governmental entities (state, city, county, school district, port authority, etc.) that handle a particular function vary from place to place.
1
Also, I don't think "general fund" is a useful unit of analysis for understanding breakdown of spending or revenue. Some proposition dedicating a particular sizeable tax to a particular function shouldn't make either that function or that tax disappear from budget analysis.
1
2
more replies