The city of Los Angeles has surpassed its annual $87 million liability claims budget in just the third month of the new fiscal year, City Controller Kenneth Mejia reported October 3.
In a social media post titled “City of L.A. Going Broke Alert,” Mejia reported that liability claim payouts totaled $97 million during the first quarter of the new fiscal year, with $59.4 million involving the Los Angeles Police Department, $6 million relating to “street services,” and $21.7 million in miscellaneous claims.
In response to a taxpayer’s comment about the size of the miscellaneous category, Mejia wrote that there are approximately 400 transactions in that category, and the two largest claims represent 83 percent of the $21.7 million total: a $10.5 million payment agreed upon after “a fixture at the top of a street lamp fell on a person’s head” and a $7.5 million payment to a person who lost an arm after being attacked by a dog adopted from the city shelter.
“Liability claim payouts aren’t taken out of the budgets of the individual City Department that gave rise to the liability – instead, they mostly come out of the General Fund which is mainly used to fund city services and resources for Angelenos,” Mejia added in a subsequent post.