KTLA News: "Tom Bradley's press conference on city budget during mayoral campaign" (1973)

[Tom Bradley] ...nor through the power of the mayor present his  budget, he can not only determine the direction of the city, to set priorities for the city, but he determines your tax rate as well. And when he presents an unbalanced budget as Sam Yorty has for six years out of the past seven, that means that your taxes are going to go up. Now if he says that he cannot cut these expenses, let me just tell you that that's nonsense because as the member of the Finance Committee of the City Council, our Finance Committee has in fact cut those deficits each year, and I think that the mayor ought to do it in the first instance. It shouldn't be the responsibility of the Council to begin cutting. Ladies and gentlemen, this will be the second in a series of alternative press conferences. As I reminded you last week, the mayor has said that he's going to talk about his record. We've been waiting and he doesn't seem inclined to talk about that record so I'm going to do it. And each of the succeeding weeks I will be talking about a different issue. I want to expose the Yorty years and that... ...and because it coincides with the presentation to the Council of the mayor's budget. I think today we ought to talk about taxes and the Yorty record with regard to those taxes. I want to show you how in the presentation of just this budget, he's engaged in what I call "budget gimmickry". Now we got a 23 million dollar item in this budget, which means that next year your taxes automatically have to go up because the money will not be there. It's simply a one-year windfall that he's using. ...nature of those deficits over the past seven years. It's... [Reporter] Are you going to be able to perform some miracle of budgetary [...] that he hasn't been able to do? [Bradley] If you want to call it a miracle I'll tell you now that we didn't walk on water but we performed the miracle of cutting that budget deficit. in each of the six years that I referred to. I'm not telling you some pipe dream, I'm telling you what we did. Now if the Council can do that, the mayor should have been able to do it even before he presented the budget. That's my point. [Reporter] You talk about 23 million dollars though and you haven't given us a list that adds up to anything like 23 million dollars in savings that you can make in the current budget. [Bradley] No. I haven't gotten into the budget because we just received it. Our committee is just now discussing that. I simply pointed to that as an example of the kind of gimmickry that he has been engaged in. But here - I point to you when you have 25 million deficit or 50 million, 30 million, 47 million, 70 million dollar, 35 million, and if we were able to cut- make cuts in those years to balance to get us within our spending limits, our revenue, I'm just saying to you that it can be done. [Reporter] But didn't you, but didn't you during the campaign talk about... [Bradley] ...to you. I'm going to bring in a budget cut substantially so that it will not be one which is out of balance such as this one is. [Reporter] You do pledge no increase in taxes if elected? [Bradley] No I - no mayor can promise no increase in taxes because there are some uncontrollable items in the budget. But I'm telling you under the controllable items which are in this budget, I'll bring in a balanced budget. [Reporter] What services are you going to cut in order...