City budget crisis: it's back

A day after saying things were looking better, City Hall is back to describing a $222.4 million budget deficit for the current fiscal year that ends June 30. Getting $73 million from the DWP would help some, but not enough to make the deficit go away. Then there's the next fiscal year, which also looks to begin with a deficit. Meanwhile, City Council President Eric Garcetti and others are saying they don't trust the DWP enough to give the agency a long-term rate hike. LAT, LA Daily, Lacter, New Geography

Tim Rutten: "The crux of the city's crisis is this: Los Angeles has suffered a catastrophic decline in tax and fee revenues...the city's public employee pension funds underwent an equally devastating collapse...city payrolls were allowed to grow heedlessly in recent years...The truth is that everyone knows the way out of this crisis -- and that involves reopening and renegotiating all the city's labor contracts, including those with unions representing police, firefighters and the Department of Water and Power's workers."

Ken Draper (CityWatch): "For a journalist following politics in Los Angeles it doesn’t get any better than this: Cirque du City Hall."