Wanted: Ideas to Save $220 Million; Reward: Lunch With the Mayor

Friends, Angelenos, bureaucrats: Send me your ideas.

Thus came the clarion call from Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan on Thursday. Faced with a looming deficit of $220 million next year, Riordan’s budget team plastered City Hall with sunshine-yellow posters begging city employees to put on their thinking caps and turn over their most innovative, money-saving thoughts.

“Think outside the box,” the poster encourages, repeating the businessman-mayor’s mantra for creativity in government. “Take nothing as a given.”

With 48,000 city employees, Riordan’s staff needs either a couple of biggies--or for every single employee to come up with something that would save $4,583.33.

People who submit one of the top 25 ideas by March 8 will get to meet with the mayor by month’s end.

The city already has a suggestion rewards program, through which employees whose innovations are adopted earn 25% of the cost savings in the first year (up to $50,000). California state government has a similar program that pays employees 10% of the savings (one man recently received $109,000).

In the new contest, people who submit the top 25 money-savers get to meet with Riordan, and the No. 1 idea-maker gets to have lunch with him.