A new report identified about $80.4 million in special funds that remained idle in the last fiscal year, Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia announced Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The report, titled \u201cLeveraging Idle Special Funds 2026,\u201d reviewed the city\u2019s 612 special accounts and found that 177 of them had a combined $80.4 million in unused dollars. The report analyzed special funds as of June 30, 2025.<\/p>\n
Special funds are dollars that can only be used for specific purposes, unlike the city\u2019s General Fund which can be used for anything. The City Controller\u2019s Office says these idle funds means there were specific projects or services that could have been supported but weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to put these underutilized funds to work for the people of Los Angeles especially since the city is facing another tough budget year,\u201d Mejia said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith current General Fund challenges, and upcoming budget discussions in full swing, this is an opportune time to increase efforts to evaluate whether these idle special funds could be leveraged as a one-time funding source to help address budget gaps or other pressing needs in the community,\u201d Mejia added.<\/p>\n
The report found the $80.4 million could be spent on the following:<\/p>\n
\u2014 $11.9 million for community safety;<\/p>\n
\u2014 $10.9 million for economic development;<\/p>\n
\u2014 $9.7 million for parks;<\/p>\n
\u2014 $9.5 million for arts, culture or tourism;<\/p>\n
\u2014 $7.8 million for housing and homelessness;<\/p>\n
\u2014 $7.1 million for streets;<\/p>\n
\u2014 $6.6 million for sanitation and environment;<\/p>\n
\u2014 $5.7 million for social services;<\/p>\n
\u2014 $4.3 million for transportation;<\/p>\n
\u2014 $1.5 million for public works; and lastly,<\/p>\n
\u2014 $5.4 million for an \u201cother\u201d category.<\/p>\n
In response to the report\u2019s findings, Mayor Karen Bass agreed that officials can\u2019t leave any funds on the table as they address \u201clongstanding City Hall inefficiencies while continuing our momentum to reduce street homelessness, lower crime and clean our city streets.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI thank Controller Mejia for his diligence in evaluating how these idle funds \u2014 some that have sat untouched for years and years \u2014 could be used to address budget gaps and further accelerate our priorities,\u201d Bass said in a statement.<\/p>\n
As part of the report, the City Controller\u2019s Office provided short-term and long-term recommendations to better account for special funds. In the short term, Mejia recommended that Bass and the City Council use funds or transfer them to the reserve fund as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
He further suggested spending these dollars as a one-time payment to address the city\u2019s anticipated $200 million-plus deficit for fiscal year 2026-27, or to use it as a repayment for previously approved reserve fund loans.<\/p>\n
In the long-term, Mejia encouraged his colleagues to reduce the number of idle special funds through policy changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new report identified about $80.4 million in special funds that remained idle in the last fiscal year,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[114061,1409,35459,3124,48,52,51,47,50,49,30360,114062,106712,40409],"class_list":["post-258205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-80m","tag-city","tag-controller","tag-funds","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-reports","tag-special","tag-unspent","tag-went"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}