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LA Total Cost of Programs
A free dataset from The Basin  ·  basin.la/data/index.html#la-total-cost-of-programs
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The full method, the column definitions and the known limits are written up and
available on request: data@basin.la

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ABOUT THIS DATASET
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LA TOTAL COST OF PROGRAMS
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Every Los Angeles city department at two numbers: the Total Departmental Budget, which is the figure
quoted in news stories and council debates, and the Total Cost of Program, which is what the city's
own accounts say the department costs once centrally appropriated costs are allocated back to it.

The source is the Distribution of Total Cost of Programs exhibit printed in the supporting data for
each department in the 2025-26 Adopted Budget. The city publishes it every year, on the same lines,
for all 39 departments. It is not widely read across departments.


WHY IT MATTERS
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The gap is not a constant. It runs from +23.7 percent for Community Investment for Families to
+186.7 percent for the Controller, across departments over $40 million of total cost. Police is
+67.8 percent ($1.99B to $3.33B) and the Bureau of Sanitation is +166.1 percent ($422M to $1.12B).
No rule of thumb converts a departmental appropriation into a cost; it has to be looked up.


THREE DEPARTMENTS AT ZERO
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General Services, the Information Technology Agency and Personnel report a Total Cost of Program of
zero. That is correct rather than missing: they are internal service departments whose entire cost is
allocated out to the departments they serve, so their costs already sit inside everyone else's rows.
allocates_everything_out flags them.

This column is therefore not additive. Summing Total Cost of Program does not give the city
budget, because central account money appears inside many department rows. Build a citywide total
from the departmental lines and the central accounts, not from this column.

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TERMS: SOURCES AND RIGHTS
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LICENSING TERMS
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The underlying records are public: Los Angeles city and county adopted budgets and Board of
Supervisors filings are public records. None of that is ours and none of it is licensed here.

What is licensed here is the assembled product: the extraction, the joins, the derived measures and
the documented method. Attribution to The Basin is required in
any published use.

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LICENCE
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Free to use, including commercially, with attribution.

    Data processing: The Basin (basin.la)

The records underneath this release are public. Federal figures are US government
works and municipal filings are public records; none of that is ours and none of
it is licensed here. What The Basin built is the assembly: the extraction, the
joins, the derived measures and the documentation. That work is given away with
this release rather than licensed, and you may redistribute it, including as part
of a commercial product, provided the attribution above travels with it.

If a source carries its own attribution requirement, that requirement survives
this grant. The source table is under "Terms" above.

No warranty. The full method and the known limits are available on request:
data@basin.la

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The Basin  ·  basin.la  ·  data@basin.la
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