The L.A. Times’ recent editorial questioning the effect to residents of the looming operational cuts and employee layoffs the city must make to close a $212 million budget deficit, is the best thing it has published since the Chicagoans took it over and got rid of the newspaper’s good writers. I agree, and I got one better.

While the mayor and the City Council are feverishly working to close the budget gap any way they can, their eyes are on the numbers with nary a glance at what those numbers mean in terms of reduced and eradicated services to the taxpayers. If they have calculated such concrete losses, they haven’t shared that information with us. Whatever the outcome, we know our taxes will not go down (but will probably rise), and we will be paying more for less. As the budget cutting and employee laying-off process continues, we, the people, need to know in advance exactly what we can expect from the city.

Will cuts to the Fire Department budget mean that homeowners must be prepared to put out fires in their homes themselves? Will layoffs in the Bureau of Sanitation mean trash collection will occur twice a month instead of every week? If we call 911, will somebody come? Are we to expect that, because of worker shortages, our already badly deteriorating streets and sidewalks will be allowed to revert to the dirt roads that Father Junipero Serra walked along El Camino Real? The loss of virtually everything educational, spiritual and life-affirming will probably be a fait accompli, but what about public safety? If we call a cop, will we get a cop?

I know that what the mayor and City Council are doing has to be the worst thing they have ever gone through and I’m sure this is not what they had in mind when they ran for public office. But they need to be up front with us about everything they do about our money and the services we pay for. When they cut department’s budgets and issue layoff notices, they need to let us know, with detailed specificity, what those cuts and layoffs mean to us. Heck, if we knew, we might be able to help. We might be willing to give up some city attorney jobs if it meant keeping a library, a museum or a park open.

The other side of this coin has to do with exactly which city employees are targeted for layoff. According to the rules, layoffs are supposed to occur on a seniority basis in which employees with the least tenure on the job are expected to be laid off first and those with the longest tenure would be the last to go. Well, the city Planning Department’s general manager has hit upon the notion of laying off employees by job classification and not by seniority. As we all know, the Planning Department is notoriously racist and has systematically relegated its Black and Latino employees to the lowest possible classifications and implemented discriminatory promotional practices that have kept them in those classifications for anywhere from 10 to 30 years. Now the woman who heads that department wants to layoff by classification?! I think not. Given the pervasive racism in city employment, I daresay the Planning Department is not the only one of that notion. This process bares watching citywide.

DWINDLING NUMBERS — The Los Angeles Airport Assistant Chief Erroll Southers has announced his resignation effective March 27, creating a drop in Black law enforcement chiefs in the Southland. A former FBI special agent, Southers was nominated by President Barack Obama to head the Transportation Security Administration, but Southers withdrew himself from consideration for the post after Republicans in Congress prepared to make hay out of his confirmation process. Southers indicated no reason when he tendered his LAX resignation last week, but his co-workers said he’s been walking about happy and smiling, signaling that he may be leaving in pursuit of better opportunities made available by his high-profile nomination by the president.

Congratulations and Godspeed to Southers, whose departure follows that of Black top cops Jim Butts, former Inglewood and Santa Monica police chief and head of LAX security; Tony Batts, Long Beach police chief, and Willie Miller, who was the chief of detectives for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The last ones standing seem to be LAPD Assistant Chief Earl Paysinger, L.A. County Sheriff Deputy Chief Cecil Rhambo and Inglewood Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks.

CRIME BLOTTER — The Rev. Eugene Joshua Sims, former pastor of Compton’s Double Rock Baptist Church, is scheduled to be sentenced to one year in county jail and five years probation on March 19. At that time he will be told to repay more than $800,000 he embezzled from the church during the eight years he served as pastor. He will also be ordered to stay away from Double Rock while he is on probation, but he will be permitted to preach in any other church that would have him. Sims pled no contest to charges that he diverted offerings the members gave to the church into his own private bank account. My question is this: Where do churches get this kind of money?

Lajetta Yvette Wright, former treasurer of the Black Women Lawyers Association, was recently sentenced to one year of probation on misdemeanor charges stemming from accusations that she misused BWLA funds during the period she served as the organization’s unpaid, volunteer treasurer for five months in 2004. Wright was originally charged with felony grand theft, to which she pled guilty last July. But between then and now, she performed 246 hours of community service, paid a $3,000 fine and $26,000 in restitution to the Black women lawyers. In return, Judge David Horwitz reduced her felony conviction to a misdemeanor and gave her a year’s probation rather than the dreaded prison time. My opinion is this: She was probably innocent.

NAH, COOLEY’S THE ONE — Some local lawyers and district attorney insiders keep telling me that my attacks on D.A. Steve Cooley are misplaced. They say the real devil in the District Attorney’s Office is David Dermejian, head of the D.A.’s Public Integrity Division. They say he’s responsible for the office’s selective prosecution of elected officials, in general, and the railroading of Inglewood Mayor Roosevelt Dorn, in particular. They say I should go after him. I say stuff and nonsense. Cooley was elected by the people to head that office and he is, therefore, responsible to me. Dermejian is just a worker who answers to Cooley and if he lets his worker run roughshod over Black and Latino office holders and turn a blind eye to the sins of White ones, then it’s on him.

AND THERE THEY GO!! -— They’re off and running for the 47th Assembly District seat! Candidate Holly J. Mitchell is accusing candidate Reggie Jones-Sawyer of stealing endorsements! It seems that Jones-Sawyer has listed himself as having been endorsed by AFSCME Local 685 on his Web site, in campaign literature and in press releases. But Ralph Miller, president of AFSCME Local 685, has written Jones-Sawyer demanding that he remove the endorsement from his Web site, retract all press announcements and cease and desist from circulating literature containing the erroneous endorsement. Miller said his union local has not endorsed any candidate for that race yet. Mitchell’s people posit that if this one endorsement of Jones-Sawyer is phony, then the others must be too. Oh, this is going to be so messy and so exciting!