Los Angeles County just bought the Gas Company Tower in downtown LA for $200 million dollars. It’s a 54-story, 1.3 million-square-foot building in the Bunker Hill area. The County also bought a nearby parking garage. The sale closed on December 5, 2024. The county plans to relocate employees from aging buildings, including the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, into the Gas Company Tower starting in summer 2025. This move aims to consolidate operations and avoid the high costs of renovating older facilities. Currently, the tower is about 53% occupied, with high-class tenants like Southern California Gas Company, the accounting firm Deloitte, and white-shoe law firm Latham & Watkins. The building was designed by the “legendary firm” of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the firm behind the Sears Tower in Chicago and the Lever House in New York.
The tower will cost even more to renovate. The County is doing “voluntary seismic upgrades” even though the Tower is already earthquake safe. These will cost $230 million: $30 million more than the cost of the building itself.
At the same time, the county has been telling everyone who will listen that they are broke. They point to the cost of fire recovery in Altadena, which is estimated at $2 billion, and the payout to sex abuse victims going back to the 1950s which is even larger at $4 billion. “At the same time, the county is facing slower property tax revenue growth due in part to declining home sales amid higher interest rates” officials said in a press release.
The county is recommending budget cuts of $88.9 million, which is about 3% of the budget for many departments their eliminating 310 vacancies, cutting supplies, delaying equipment, purchases, and reducing programming .
But a closer look at these problems reflects something very different. You might’ve noticed that the counties across the board budget cut amount to roughly half of what they just spent on their shiny new skyscraper. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. Although the county claims to be in budget trouble, its budget is actually balanced, which is certainly not an indication of budget distress. Moreover, the county recently received a cash infusion as the result of the passage of measure A which was designed to address homelessness.
Then there’s the fact that the County is spending almost $300 million, not law-enforcement, but on “Care First” investment, a loosely defined buzzword rather than a proven program. This a grab bag of programs designed to help felons avoid responsibility and provide them with benefits. For example, the largest single line item in this fund is money to provide free housing for criminals returning from jail and prison.
The Board of supervisors is bargaining now with striking union employees. They have told the employees that they cannot afford a cost-of-living raise. They cannot afford this race despite the obvious fact that everyone in the country knows: the cost of living has skyrocketed. The reason they claim they cannot afford this raise is that they are in a massive “budget hole.” It’s not clear what this phrase means to the board of supervisors since their budget is balanced, as noted above. Nor did they explain why they think it’s more important to provide free housing for criminals than cost-of-living raises for their own employees.
he county recently approved the largest settlement for sex abuse victims in the country. With a shared understanding that it’s better to be generous to sex abuse victims than criminals returning from prison, it’s still not clear why the county had to be this generous. Indeed, the amount that they gave out to these victims, who were victimized by criminals without the approval or consent of the county, would amount to roughly 20 times the amount they spent on the Gas Company Tower, and a good chunk of that money (perhaps most of it), is for pain and suffering, which is a laudable goal, but not something that can be measured in dollars and arguably not something that can be compensated for by writing a giant check.
All of this adds up to one escapable concept. The county is generous when it comes to housing criminals, paying out lawsuits and other nebulous areas, but not generous to its own employees. indeed, in an article in the LA Times, the Board specifically said that the reason their budget is balanced this year is they did not agree to employee raises. The Board seems to think that paying their employees is the one area where they have to be financially responsible.
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