How To Get More Good Jobs in L.A.

Los Angeles County's 5.8 percent unemployment rate is nothing to sneer at. It's down to almost half the 1994 recession peak of 10.2 percent.

But it remains stubbornly above both the national (4.1 percent) and California (4.8 percent) unemployment rates.

A percentage point or two may not seem like much, but with L.A.'s huge population base, it actually represents tens of thousands of unemployed people.

And there's the quality of jobs being created -- many in sectors like apparel and retail services that pay minimum wage, hardly enough to live on in Los Angeles.

So what's needed to bring L.A. unemployment in line with the state and national levels? And what can be done to ensure that the jobs being created pay higher wages?

Surprisingly, there is strong consensus among public officials, economic researchers and business leaders about what needs to be done:

* Unify the city's disparate economic development functions under one roof.

* Develop a strategic approach to growth, limiting city subsidies to those companies that pay high wages.

* Orient city staff to develop industry-specific expertise rather than geographic-area expertise.

* Identify, assemble and clean up large urban tracts, and help high-wage companies to relocate and expand on those sites.

On paper, many local economic development entities -- including the Community Redevelopment Agency and L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan's Business Team -- either advocate such an approach or concede that it makes sense. Yet several experts doubt it will ever happen because of the balkanized nature of the city's political systems.

"The fragmented economic development structure, in terms of the various agencies and power of the City Council, means that a comprehensive strategic approach to economic development is very difficult to implement," said Paul More, research coordinator with the L.A. Alliance for a New Economy. "There needs to be critical evaluation of the economic development agencies in the city overall."

A partial evaluation was released last week in a study by LAANE and the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education. The study faults the Mayor's Business Team for paying "lip service" to a comprehensive development strategy while continuing to practice an ad hoc, deal-by-deal approach. It also criticizes the Business Team for deploying its staffers to specific council districts, rather than to specific industries.

But the Business Team is just one of a multitude of economic development groups. Among the others are the Community Redevelopment Agency, Community Development Department and Housing Department.

Few, if any, public officials or economic experts contend that the existing system is efficient or effective. But any restructuring would involve certain public officials losing power, and others gaining it. In true L.A. tradition, that has led to political infighting.

The City Council initially made a play to assume control of the CRA and merge that agency's functions with other city departments. But business leaders balked at that and Riordan vetoed the move. In response, the council appointed a task force to work with business leaders on crafting a solution.

UCLA economist David Runsten, a co-author of the LAANE/UCLA study and member of the task force, said there is a new sense of urgency to resolve the economic development mess. That urgency is being fed, according to Runsten, by the fact that both Riordan and Councilman Mike Hernandez (chair of the council's community and economic development committee) will be termed out of office next year.

Nonetheless, some experts remain unconvinced that a resolution is possible.

"It seems hopeless to think that there will ever be a unified approach to economic development in Los Angeles," said Gregory Rodriguez, a research fellow at the School of Public Policy at Pepperdine University. "We are essentially not a unified city and we resist any attempts toward more centralization. We can't even decide whether we want to have a downtown or not."

Rodriguez is among a number of L.A. watchers who believe that the geographic, ethnic, and economic diversity of the city lends itself better to a decentralized approach to economic development.

Others say the nature of L.A.'s economic development problem is petty and personal.

"It's a power play between the City Council and the mayor," said Ilse Metchek, executive director of the California Fashion Association, a trade group representing one of L.A.'s major growth industries. "No one wants to give in to the other, and they won't allow things to proceed because of personal animosity."

Indeed, a sticking point between the City Council and Mayor's Office seems to be who will ultimately oversee economic development. "The stumbling is over who should govern this (unified economic development) department," said Rocky Delgadillo, L.A. deputy mayor for economic development. "We think that business interests are better looked after by the executive branch, because the Mayor's Office can move more quickly and be more responsive to business needs than the legislators can."

A further question is whether consolidating the economic development function would result in significant growth, because public incentives are but a minor factor in most companies' decision about where to locate.

"What the public sector is doing is very marginal," said UCLA's Runsten. "But if the money we're spending is so marginal, we should spend it in the best possible way. We should have a real strategy for it, and we should be trying to do something that is really going to address what we think is the most serious problem in the city."