�������t¶��

Chief among them is a gaping budget deficit nearing $1 billion, a number that will almost certainly require sweeping cuts and tough negotiations with the Board of Supervisors and the city’s public labor unions.

Faced with a nearly $1-billion budget shortfall, the Los Angeles City Council met behind closed doors to take a fresh look at its salary agreements with labor unions.

The “Kill the Cuts” gatherings, organized by a coalition of labor unions, unfolded at 37 sites across the country.

Marisol Garcia, the president of the Arizona Education Association, the state’s labor union for public school teachers, told Salon in an interview that the state had become known as the “chemistry lab of terrible ideas.”

The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal government labor union, condemned the move and promised to fight the administration’s “threat to unions and working people” in a Thursday statement.