KTLA News: "Mayor Tom Bradley discusses additional revenue sources for Los Angeles" (1978)

[Room noise]. [Mayor Tom Bradley] Morning. [Room noise]. [Silence]. We had a preferable plan, however, and that is  that we be given a long-term uh...access to money that is generated in the cities. The sales tax of 6% is generated in each of the communities in California and yet we get only one cent  of that money and so we were suggesting that there be a redistribution, not an increase in  the sales tax, but a redistribution of that existing six cents so that the cities would get an additional cent and that would of course be shared with the counties.. So essentially we  would get 80% of of that increase. [Room noise]. [Bradley] I consider that the remaining one cent as uh... [Unidentified Reporter asking a question. Unintelligible]. [Silence]. [Room noise]. I'll be glad to answer questions. I understand you  want some brief statement what happened yesterday so I'll do that and then... [Microphone technical problems. Yesterday in Sacramento the Board of Directors of the... [Silence]. [Microphone technical problems. ...request for the Legislature and the Governor... and then as uh... Vice- Chairman of the League of California Cities  and Vice-Chairman of our task force which has been working for the past two years on property tax relief with the legislature. I and Rex Clark, the chairman of that committee, spoke first with  Governor Brown, laid out our proposals which were, essentially, that we believe the cities of  California are entitled to their pro rata share of the remaining property tax money that was  made available by the passage of Proposition 13. Secondly, that we believe the cities of California  ought to share in the surplus. We believe that in order to maintain the level of services in any  reasonable level we must have some additional help and we told them that our police services,  fire services, recreation, parks, libraries... every department of city government would be affected  and in order to minimize that impact we thought we should get some of that surplus in order to  generate greater equity. And finally we urged that there be a loan fund, as suggested by Governor Brown, that would make it possible for some cities in the state which have cash flow problems to meet  their emergency needs. The reaction of the Governor was that he had essentially proposed those very things. He believes that we ought to share in the property tax that is available. Secondly, that we ought to share in the surplus and he has proposed that we get $400 million of that money. He did not react  one way or the other to the sales tax idea and very frankly was so newly proposed that we didn't  expect any immediate response- negative or positive. We simply wanted him to consider that in the  whole range of things that they would have to look at. We then met with the President Pro Tempore  of the Senate, Jim Mills, and with the Chairman of the Local Government Committee, Milton Marks of San Francisco. We laid out the same agenda to them. They were receptive to the idea but of course  did not make any commitments to us in one way or the other. I met separately with the Democratic  Caucus of the Assembly to express some concern about words that had come to us to the effect that... that body had indicated that...they did not believe that the cities should get any part of the  property tax that remains and they quickly said that they wanted to put those fears to rest. That  there had been some preliminary discussion about that matter but everything was so fluid at this  point that we should not be overly concerned about any statement that had been made a week ago or two  weeks ago on that issue. [Bradley] ...Which has responsibility for reviewing all of these recommendations and then reporting to both houses of the legislature. [Unidentified Reporter] Do you feel somewhat relieved that.... I...I know your upset about... [Bradley] my right and I can tell you that every... [Bradley]...had counted on and what we were saying in very strong terms is that we believe we are entitled to it and we simply want  to suggest that... [Bradley]... the file that is before it. When the act comes to me, I will then review that file and take action as quickly as possible. [Unidentified Reporter] Mayor Bradley, back to the one sentence.. [Unidentified Reporter, cont.]...dollars and that would be, maybe, about half of your budget shortfall and would certainly allow you, for example, not to lay off many police officers among other things. Uh...that much money...is that...is that... [Bradley]...mailing to their membership and we are awaiting the return of those cards. So until they get an answer it would not be productive for us to meet again. I'm sure that we'll have further discussions after that. [Unidentified Reporter] Do, do you have any feeling about how uh... how other city unions feel about uh...uh...