Do L.A. furloughs work? Yes, but...

The city did save almost more than $32 million in the first six months of the fiscal year, with most of that coming from police ($8.6 million); the City Attorney ($4.1 million), General Services ($3.4 million), and the Bureau of Street Services ($3.2 million). But in a memo to the mayor and City Council, Controller Wendy Greuel says that the furloughs do not address long-term structural problems that got the city into its current fiscal mess (they also eat into productivity to the tune of 3.42 million hours). Even with the cuts, L.A. officials must still figure out how to trim more than $60 million from the current budget.