Mayor Bass has unveiled a $14.9 billion pre-election budget that avoids layoffs, boosts police hiring and trims her signature homelessness program, but leaves the Los Angeles Fire Department with little new funding. The plan for Fiscal Year 2026-27, released Monday, hikes spending by roughly $745 million while keeping much of the city’s homelessness system intact, even as critics warn it is “more of the same” after last year’s near-$1 billion deficit crisis. It lands in the heat of a tightening