the point of the grants procurer is to bring money in.
You need to tie half your brain behind your back to think like a California City. Grant money does not go into the General Fund, and would certainly not come in the same Fiscal Year as the hire. The procurer's salary comes from the General Fund, which is already running a deficit which means layoffs. If you hire a non-Union employee while laying off Union Employees you're not gonna get the City Council of a California municipality to agree.
Until another City, like Philadelphia according to the article, works out all the kinks and demonstrates a track record, our City Council will view this as Pie-in-the-sky. They want short term solutions, and just don't understand how much revenue this will generate.
Unless you get a grant to hire the grant procurer...
We do have enough managers that write grant applications that we may still see this happen, it's just not quite as easy as snapping fingers.