Los Angeles city, county wrestle over federal grant money earmarked for LA-RICS P25 system

The Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System (LA-RICS) has an “unplanned funding gap” in its budget after the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) Approval Authority retroactively pulled $11 million in UASI 2011 grant funds from LA-RICS—allegedly on a recommendation from the office of Los Angeles City Mayor Eric Garcetti, according to a letter from the Los Angeles County board of supervisor to Garcetti’s office.

Last week, members of the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to end the city’s membership in LA-RICS, which has built the first phase of a public-safety LTE network and planned to deploy a P25 land-mobile-radio (LMR) network in the region during the next few years. Without the city as a member of LA-RICS, the county is by far the biggest member of LA-RICS and financially responsible for much of the organization’s budget.

Los Angeles County first responders—notably the sheriff’s department and the county fire department—plan to use the P25 network for their day-to-day mission-critical voice communications and use the LTE network for data communications and non-mission-critical voice. But efforts to build the P25 system have been undermined by the city’s actions, according to the letter from the county’s board of supervisors to Garcetti’s office.

“As you may know, the UASI Approval Authority retroactively took back $11 million in UASI [2011] grant funds previously awarded to LA-RICS to build out its LMR system without prior advance notice to the authority or the county, and seemingly on your office’s recommendation,” the letter states. “You have also expressed your intention to reduce additional funds from the authority from UASI [2012] and [2013] allocations.

“It is our view that the mayor’s office should be working collaboratively with the authority and the county to address any questions the mayor’s office has with the authority’s ability to spend UASI [2011] grant funds in a timely fashion. The UASI [2011] grant funds have been expended, encumbered, allocated and/or obligated for work related to designing and constructing the LMR system, and most of those funds have already been allocated for third-party project-management staffing, design and environmental work.”