The L.A. 2020 Commission diagnoses problems its members helped cause.
The Los Angeles 2020 Commission (LA2020) was established “to study and report on fiscal stability and growth in Los Angeles.” Its 43-page report, “A Time for Truth,” is notable for how its strident content clashes with the distinguished backgrounds of its authors. Despite boasting a long list of high-powered signatories—including former Clinton administration Commerce secretary Mickey Kantor, former L.A. “jobs czar” and sometime mayoral hopeful Austin Beutner, and former Obama administration Labor secretary Hilda Solis—the report reads like a jeremiad.
“Los Angeles is barely treading water while the rest of the world is moving forward,” the report begins. “We risk falling further behind in adapting to the realities of the 21st century and becoming a City in decline.” The prolix document then details the city’s descent in 17 bullet points—three more than Woodrow Wilson needed to describe U.S. aims after World War I. It’s even more than Cicero thought to include in his series of orations against Antony. The list is padded out with non-problems—underinvestment in projects of interest to the report’s authors, “community plans” that are “decades old and hopelessly out of date.” At least one of its putative discoveries hardly needed all the research LA2020 claims to have done—traffic is often irritating!
“A Time for Truth” does offer some striking perspectives on L.A.’s troubles, however. Businesses are fleeing Los Angeles, which now hosts only four Fortune 500 companies (down from 12 in the 1980s). Poverty and unemployment rates are far above the average for both California and the United States. The city’s “barbell” economy—with jobs only at the top and bottom ends of the income scale—is “more typical of developing world cities, like São Paulo, than a major American urban area.” (The comparison brings to mind a scene in Robert Aldrich’s 1975 film Hustle, where Burt Reynolds describes L.A. as “Guatemala with color television.” Some of the city’s problems are older than even the commission may realize.)
The troubles go on. The city’s revenues have been flat since 2009—mostly because the local economy is moribund, though the report hints at a possible new revenue stream. “L.A. has no income tax,” the commissioners note. “Other taxes, including sales, hotel, parking and residential development, do not offer a solution to the City’s current budget gap. They have narrow bases and grow slowly.” Are LA2020’s members proposing a new city income tax? The report-by-committee doesn’t say.
The report also highlights employment stagnation, noting that Los Angeles is “the only one of the seven largest U.S. cities where the number of jobs has actually declined since 1990.” Though it goes unmentioned, L.A. County’s sleepy economy has made it less desirable for newcomers. The place Americans once thought of as a paradise has seen essentially flat population growth over the past decade, growing less than 2 percent since 2004, according to the Census Bureau. For a considerable period during the administration of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, L.A. actually lost population.
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