The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday requested that Los Angeles County CEO Fesia Davenport and the County Counsel’s Office provide a more detailed plan on a hiring and spending freeze.
The thousands of buildings destroyed in the January wildfires have impacted property tax revenues, and recovery efforts have led to higher spending that is expected to also impact the 2025-26 budget.
The County Counsel’s Office offered recommendations to the board on Tuesday — a hiring freeze that excludes only critical health, safety and other necessary positions and a moratorium for non-essential purchases of services, supplies and equipment.
County officials used a similar spending halt during the Great Recession in 2008 and COVID-19 pandemic.
Davenport was tasked with administering the hiring freeze and essential-only spending.
Supervisor Lindsey Horvath questioned the hiring freeze and how it would affect those seeking employment in the county.
“In the past contract cities have raised concerns with our office, among some of our community members and some organizations, about hiring freezes —how they’ve landed in the community, their perceptions around them, how we’ve communicated about them,” Horvath said.
In a lengthy response, Davenport said that the hiring freeze would only affect new contracts and controlling spending was necessary because of the large amount of uncertainty in the county budget.
Davenport said her office was taking a systematic, “thoughtful process” on implementing the hiring freeze compared with prior efforts when nonsworn county employees were impacted.
She reassured Horvath her office would develop a plan over the coming months to identify the jobs that were being affected.
Supervisor Janice Hahn said the plan needed more specifics and noted that ongoing fire recovery efforts were experiencing staffing shortages.
“There’s too much in the (proposed spending freeze) that we don’t know,” Hahn said.
Davenport said the freeze would not affect the first responders and others working directly toward fire recovery but it could impact workers such as administrative support staff.
No date was set for supervisors to hear a update on the possible hiring and spending moratorium.
