WORLD GLOOM BEING OFFSET BY LOCAL OPTIMISM; ASIAN CRISIS HITS HOME, BUT PROJECTS IN TRANSPORTATION PAVE WAY FOR BOOM.

Byline: Richard Nemec Local View

IN the wake of this fall's elections and the continuing meandering of Los Angeles' charter reform movement, we can shift our focus off politics and back on more important games. That means keeping our eye on the proverbial bouncing ball, and I don't mean the NBA basketballs that are collecting dust as winter approaches. I mean the economy, stupid!

Even with the overwhelming passage of Los Angeles County ballot Proposition A, which bars additional subways from being built, there are several important transportation projects under way that promise economic boom times in the first decade of the next century. They are: the completion of the MTA subway; the start of the freight rail express line, the Alameda Corridor; and eventual expansion of the Los Angeles International Airport.

These massive public works projects, and the mayor's thousands of new buses and light rails to East Los Angeles, Mid-City and across the Valley, should keep the economists' tongues wagging for days and weeks at a time. These are major short-term job creators and long-term business boosters.

Nevertheless, we may still see some black clouds hovering over the local economists, such as Jack Kyser, the chief economy watcher for the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit creation of the county government as a means of promoting business health and economic development throughout sprawling Los Angeles County, which is divided into seven separate economic regions that individually rank among the largest (dollarwise) economies in the United States.

The San Fernando Valley would be one of the seven. The Harbor another.

While disavowing any connection to black clouds, Kyser earlier this fall recited a long list of troubling issues, events and circumstances clouding over most of the Pacific Rim, if not the world. In the late 1990s, these far-flung places are just as important as the old military-industrial complex once was to Los Angeles' economy in the post-World War II 1950s and '60s.

Kyser gave a glimpse at 1999 to the economic development group's members from throughout the county, just before the head of the Alameda Corridor gave an update on the $2.4 billion harbor-rail link project. The juxtaposition of the two pitches was interesting and a further reinforcement that the Southland increasingly is globally dependent for its economic health.

Japan, for example, is this region's largest trading partner, and the Japanese economy is in the dumps with major banking problems. But there is also China and what Kyser calls the ``wild cards'' of Indonesia and Malaysia on the Pacific Rim, fighting off economic storm clouds that threaten jobs and markets throughout the United States, but most particularly here in Southern California.

``The bottom line is that Asia is going to be a drag on the world economy for about another three years,'' said Kyser, still denying that any black clouds were clinging to his shoulder pads.

As if that isn't bad enough, Los Angeles County's chief economist sees problems in the developing economies, too. That includes places like Brazil, Mexico and Russia. When you combine these international developments with the prospects locally of a longshoremen's strike at Los Angeles Harbor this coming June that could turn into a West Coast dock strike, it gives us reason to pause.

To avoid a deep psychological depression from all of this foreboding news, Southern California does have healthy apparel, tourism and entertainment industries and some major transportation projects that should bolster our chances of continued economic good health. (We don't have a new professional football team, but Disney and Fox continue to thrive.)

Angelenos can take heart in a 20-mile trench, running just north of the 91 Freeway up to the railroad yards northeast of downtown. It will include double-mainline track to be used by transcontinental railroads with 16 grade separations, eliminating more than 200 present street crossings by trains bringing goods up from the harbor each day. With the projected steady trade growth through Los Angeles-Long Beach Harbors, this express route, paid for by the railroads who use it, promises to eliminate both gridlock and air pollution.

``I shutter to think what would happen if we didn't build this corridor,'' said James Hankla, former Long Beach city manager and current CEO of the Alameda Corridor Project. He says the federal transportation department is making this its poster child for similar projects around the nation.

By the time it opens in 2002, the corridor will have created more than 9,000 construction jobs, more than 1,000 local people from the cities along the corridor will be trained in both trades and professional and technical jobs. The economic multipliers and labor training aspects have the potential to be a model for the rest of the nation.

So, as we near the end of another year, the continuing international doom-and-gloom can be offset by some local slivers of optimism. We may not have the political answers to our local future, but our infrastructure will be strong nevertheless.

After all, as President Clinton's political strategists figured out six years ago, it is, indeed, the economy to which we need to pay close attention. If you doubt that, give Jack Kyser a call, but don't refer to any black clouds. Not yet.