Spending · Deep dives
Where are the City's biggest costs?
In the adopted FY2026-27 budget of $14.9B, the Police department's General Fund line is $2.11B, the City's pension contributions (the “Pension Notes & Debt Service” line) $1.52B, Human Resources benefits $1.00B and liability claims $205.4M; the sections below follow these and other large spending areas through the City's payment, payroll and budget records.
Payments the City makes to settle claims and lawsuits, by department, payee and individual payment. Source: LA Controller Checkbook (General Fund).
Contractual-services payments — IT systems, police technology, transit operations, consulting, and cleanup services. Who is paid and how much. Source: LA Controller Checkbook.
City homelessness spending recorded in the Controller's Homelessness Expense Tracker, by fund, department, program, and vendor. Spending outside that tracker (for example County or LAHSA-administered funds) is not included.
Payments to the City's health, dental, life and disability providers (Controller Checkbook), plus payroll-reported benefits per full-time employee. Excludes pension contributions.
LA's largest department: budget appropriation, payroll, vendor contracts, and liability payouts. Current-year adopted figures are on the FY2026-27 budget page.
Budget appropriation, payroll and overtime, fleet replacement, contractual services, and vendor payments. Current-year adopted figures are on the FY2026-27 budget page.
LAPD and LAFD pay most citywide overtime. The rules behind the numbers — call-out minimums, court time, holiday premium, FLSA 7(k), and LAFD constant manning — sourced from MOUs 22, 23, and 24, plus a sparse-but-cited timeline of the LAPD overtime bank.
The transfer tax on property sales over $5.4M that voters passed in 2022 for housing and homelessness programs: what it has collected, and the debate over it.
LACERS (civilian) and LAFPP (police and fire) retirement systems: funded status, contributions and benefits paid. The City's contributions are budgeted in a separate non-departmental pension account, not in department budgets.
Sources
- Liability payouts, contractual services, health-benefit providers, LAPD, Fire and pension vendors: the LA Controller's checkbook (payments by fiscal year, July to June).
- Pay, overtime and payroll-reported benefits: the Controller's City payroll data, by calendar pay year.
- Department appropriations: the City's open budget data. Current-year adopted figures are on the FY2026-27 budget page.
- Homelessness spending: the Controller's Homelessness Expense Tracker.
- Pensions: LACERS figures from the City's open data. LAFPP does not publish its figures there.
- Overtime rules: the LAPPL, UFLAC and Fire Chief memoranda of understanding (MOUs 24, 23 and 22) published by the City Administrative Officer.
- Measure ULA: the Controller's revenue ledger for tax collected, and the Housing Department's Measure ULA revenue dataset for per-sale detail.