About Tally LA

Purpose

Sales tax in the City of Los Angeles is 10.25%. Residents also pay property taxes, utility taxes, fees and a gas tax that rises every July. Voters are asked to approve new taxes most years, and the same questions come up each time: where the last increase went, and whether it did what was promised.

The answers are public, but they are spread across thousands of PDFs, three governments' websites and hours of meeting video.

Tally LA collects this material in one place and links each number to the official record it came from, so readers can check it.

Independence

Tally LA is apolitical, which here means independent. It is for Democrats, Republicans, independents and people who have never registered with a party. We do not endorse candidates or ballot measures. For each measure on the ballot, we describe what it would do and what supporters and opponents say.

Where public money is spent differently from what the public was told, we report it with the record attached, regardless of who is in office.

Where the numbers come from

Most figures on this site come from the governments themselves: the City Controller's payment records, the County Auditor-Controller's books, adopted budgets, Board letters and meeting records. The agencies that spend the money are also the ones that report it.

Official figures can be late, revised after the fact, or recorded in ways that make it hard to follow a dollar from tax to program. Where two official sources disagree, or a figure is later revised, we show both and say which one we use. Every number links to its source so you can check it yourself.

What's missing

• Sales tax by city. The state's tax agency (CDTFA) reports how much each district tax, such as Measure A or the Metro taxes, collects countywide. It doesn't report how much came from purchases inside the City of LA, so the tax receipt uses rates, not collections.
• City votes before 2025. The City Clerk's new system shows roll calls from 2025 on. Earlier votes are in thousands of separate PDFs.
• Contract amounts. County contract amounts are in Board letters, not in a dataset, and Measure A contracts aren't listed in one place. We enter them by hand.
• City meeting transcripts. The City captions meetings live but doesn't post the captions as text.
• Results. Few programs publish what they achieved per dollar, such as people housed or placements kept.

We are requesting these records under the California Public Records Act, the state's version of the federal Freedom of Information Act. Requests can take weeks or months, and answers often arrive as scanned PDFs that have to be read and entered by hand.