Boom Area’s Missing Link--Jobs : Lack of Local Employment a Major Problem for ‘Inland Empire’

The “Inland Empire”--the valley portions of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, where the latest Southern California boom is happening--faces problems, including overcrowded schools, increasingly congested roads and marginally adequate sewer and flood control facilities. But no problem is more important than the shortage of jobs.

Despite important advantages--good location, affordable land and wage rates that are generally lower than those in Los Angeles and Orange counties--the region has not attracted as many jobs as expected.

A forecast by the Southern California Assn. of Governments that the Inland Empire would offer 1 million jobs by the year 2000 is “probably too optimistic,” former SCAG economist Keith Julian said. “The way it looks, a figure of 750,000 to 800,000 would be more likely.”

One study found only 30 jobs for every 100 people in the two Inland Empire counties, while in Los Angeles and Orange counties there are 50 jobs per 100 population.

When the 1980 census information was gathered, about 92,400 people--26% of the county work force--lived in San Bernardino County but worked outside the county. Of these, 68,000, or 19%, worked in Los Angeles or Orange counties. In Riverside County, 55,300 residents--21% of county employment--held jobs outside the county. Of these, 33,800, or 13%, worked in Los Angeles or Orange counties. By comparison, only 4% of Los Angeles County workers were employed outside the county.

Area business and political leaders know that these numbers contain bad news and that the future cannot be based on residential growth alone but must be supported by commercial and industrial development.

Tax revenue from retail and industrial activity is needed to maintain local government services, especially since the 1978 passage of Proposition 13, the state constitutional amendment that limits local property taxes.

“We also have to worry about the social costs of having the jobs and the living so divided,” said Riverside County Supervisor Kay Ceniceros. “It hurts air quality, puts a strain on the transportation system and weakens the family.”

Social Problems

Ceniceros noted, “There are problems with ‘latch-key’ children, and social workers are finding that people have very little sense of community.”

Many of the new businesses that have moved into the Inland Empire in recent years have been warehouse and distribution centers--Southland Corp. (7-Eleven stores) to San Bernardino, K mart and Mervyn’s to Ontario, Frito Lay and Pic ‘n’ Save to Rancho Cucamonga and many others--but these tend to occupy a lot of space without producing either much tax revenue or many new jobs.

For instance, K mart occupies a 1-million-square-foot warehouse in Ontario but employs only about 300 people. Brent Hunter, manager of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, said the distribution centers must be followed by new manufacturing plants.

“It’s nice to have the ‘big boxes’ (the warehouses),” Hunter said, “but now our concern is to create jobs so we can cut down on the flow of commuters.”

Figures are inexact but officials of several communities said that many of their residents drive long distances to jobs in Los Angeles or Orange County. Interviews with residents suggested that one-way commutes of 90 minutes to two hours are not uncommon. Several Inland Empire communities hope to become sites of large regional shopping centers, which are valuable because they generate both jobs and sales-tax revenue.

But financial observers doubt that more than two of these new centers will be built. And they say that all of them probably were set back in their timetables when Montclair Plaza, on Interstate 10 just across the San Bernardino County line, decided to double in size and to add Nordstrom, the region’s first upscale department store.

Many small manufacturing operations have begun in the Inland Empire in recent years. But there are only a few large industrial employers--Lockheed in Ontario, General Dynamics in Rancho Cucamonga, Rohr Industries in Riverside.

Only One Big Firm

Of California’s 100 largest companies, only one--Fleetwood Enterprises Inc. of Riverside, a manufacturer of recreational vehicles--has its headquarters in the Inland Empire, according to a recent Los Angeles Times survey.

The area’s largest industrial employer--Kaiser Steel in Fontana, which employed 8,000 people as late as 1977--closed its mill in December, 1983.

Several ambitious efforts to promote new industry in the two counties have been undertaken.

Riverside-area businessmen have raised $1.6 million to found “Keep Riverside Ahead,” an organization that hopes to encourage industrial growth. A similar effort by San Bernardino County businessmen is in the beginning stages.

Development Staff Replaced

The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors replaced the county’s economic development staff and hired Joe White, an energetic Texan whose previous efforts are said to have been responsible for bringing 20,000 new jobs to the Wichita Falls, Tex., area.

White recently reported that 17 companies employing more than 2,500 people have announced plans in the last seven months to locate in San Bernardino County.

But so far, the attempt to generate new jobs for the Inland Empire’s exploding population has been disappointing.

“One of the big mysteries is why western San Bernardino and Riverside counties haven’t had the economic boom that has been predicted for years,” said Julian, the former SCAG economist.

Several reasons have been offered, among them the recession of the early 1980s; the volatility of military contracts, on which the area has been importantly dependent, and problems with air pollution and lack of industrial sewage capacity.

According to White, the “greatest obstacle to economic growth” in the region is California’s “unitary tax,” which taxes corporations on profits made everywhere, not just in California.

This is true, White said, even though some companies pay less under the unitary tax approach than they would with a standard corporate income tax.

But the main problem may be nothing as tangible as tax policy but rather the vaguely negative image of the Inland Empire that is carried in the heads of corporate executives and their wives.

An Image Problem

“A lot of it has to do with image,” Julian said. “A lot of people still see it as hot, smoggy, Okie and prune-picker country, and they don’t want to move their operations out there. That’s an incorrect impression, but I think it still carries a lot of weight with executives and their wives.”

“Some companies are concerned about finding good residential areas for their executives,” said William A. Wren, senior project manager for Ontario Center, a large residential and commercial development on the site of the former Ontario Motor Speedway. “That’s because they don’t understand we have some lovely residential areas out here, above the smog line.”

But Wren, like a number of Inland Empire executives, lives at the beach in Orange County and commutes to his job.

The job shortage is not the only problem in the Inland Empire.

Flood Facilities Needed

At least $3.3 billion in local and regional flood control facilities are needed in San Bernardino County alone, according to Charles L. Laird, assistant director of the county Flood Control District. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has reduced its spending in the area, and local voters have repeatedly turned down bond issues that would pay for new flood control projects.

“Everybody’s moving onto dirt roads to get low-cost housing,” Laird said. “They still want city services, like police, sewers, flood control. But they don’t want to pay more taxes. They can’t have it both ways.”

Inland Empire sewer capacity was called “marginally adequate” by William C. Lawrence, a Los Angeles economic consultant who has many public and private clients in the region.

And traffic congestion is increasing.

The California Department of Transportation reports that 160,000 vehicles a day now cross the Los Angeles--San Bernardino County line on Interstate 10, a figure that approaches traffic volume on some Los Angeles and Orange County freeways.

Traffic Congestion

Barry Beck, executive director of the Riverside County Transportation Commission, said traffic congestion “has got to have an impact on growth” because some people will no longer put up with long commutes. New roads and freeways are needed but Caltrans lacks the money to keep up with the Inland Empire’s rapid growth, said William F. Edmonds, the agency’s regional director.

“We see no politically feasible way of keeping transportation in this area from growing worse,” Edmonds said.

Race relations have been turbulent in some Inland Empire communities.

Last fall a 20-year-old black man was left paralyzed from the chest down after a fight with three white teen-agers on the main street of Fontana.

Firemen carried shotguns to answer calls on the west side of San Bernardino in the late 1960s and early ‘70s.

Police, Latinos Clash

In Riverside there have been clashes between Latinos and police in the “Casa Blanca” barrio and in other parts of the city.

Mike Espinosa, who left his family’s real estate business in Rancho Cucamonga 18 months ago to found the Alliance of Latino Business Associates, said he has been unable to persuade many Inland Empire employers to hire qualified Latino businessmen and contractors.

Latinos make up a substantial part of the population in Chino, Ontario, Riverside, San Bernardino and other Inland Empire communities but seldom get anything but menial jobs, Espinosa said. “These large corporations are doing business out here but, frankly, we are excluded,” he said. “I would like to see these corporations give us a small share of some of these contracts. But so far they’re not doing anything.”

Although White euphemistically describes the Inland Empire climate as “moderate Mediterranean,” in fact heat, wind and smog are problems that limit the region’s appeal.

Heat and Wind

“Heat and wind are things you’re not going to do much about,” said Bill Wood, manager of the San Bernardino Chamber of Commerce. “It gets hot here and the wind blows--that’s part of what you accept if you’re going to live in this part of Southern California.”

But something can be done about smog and has been.

Records of the South Coast Air Quality Management District show that air quality in the Inland Empire has improved markedly in recent years, as it has in the South Coast basin as a whole.

There has been a steady decline in the number of first- and second-stage alerts, and ozone counts have been dropping.

Smog Alert Forecast

But even with strict enforcement of air pollution regulations and the use of the best available technology by industry, the AQMD predicts that there will between 15 and 55 first-stage alerts a year in the region by the year 2000.

The chief culprit is ozone, which builds up in Riverside and San Bernardino counties late in the day as hydrocarbon and nitrogen dioxide emissions from automobiles and industrial sources in Los Angeles and Orange counties drift eastward and are cooked by the sun.

Particulate matter is another special air pollution problem in the Inland Empire. Among the sources of these particulates are blowing dust, eroding soil, crop spraying and off-road vehicles. Air chemists say these materials merge with smaller particles drifting out from Los Angeles and Orange counties, scattering the light, reducing visibility and possibly causing lung damage.

The Kaiser Steel mill closing in 1983 reduced, but did not eliminate, the problem.

San Bernardino County Supervisors Cal McElwain and Robert Townsend both contended, in interviews, that after the Kaiser Steel mill closed, partly as a result of air pollution problems, the air around the plant was no cleaner.

Particulate Matter Down

However, South Coast district records show a sharp drop in particulate matter after the mill closed.

“To say that Kaiser leaving the area did not improve the situation is the grossest kind of mistake,” said Arthur Davidson, who supervises air quality evaluation for the district.

Davidson agreed that “much of the problem in the inland valleys is not of their making. We are sympathetic to that but, at the same time, we can’t permit them to take actions that will lead to worse problems for the entire basin.”

Not satisfied with that attitude, Inland Empire business and political leaders are seeking to have the region declared an “attainment area” for two pollutants--carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide. That would exempt the Inland Empire from possible federal sanctions if the South Coast Air Basin as a whole is not able to contain nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide. Levels of these two pollutants are below federal standards in Riverside and San Bernardino counties but not in the Air Basin as a whole.

Would Attract Industry

Pro-growth interests argue that “attainment area” status for these two pollutants would enable the Inland Empire to attract new industry, because potential manufacturers would not have to worry about the threat of federal penalties.

But environmental groups, and many environmental scientists, are opposed.

“From a chemistry point of view, that doesn’t make a lot of sense,” said James N. Pitts, director of the statewide Air Pollution Research Center at the University of California, Riverside. “Nitrogen dioxide is a key player in creating acid fog, and it will also create more ozone downwind” of new industrial sources.

Arthur M. Winer, assistant director of the UC Riverside research center, said the change would be “a serious step toward eroding the idea of treating this as one air shed.”

EPA Yet to Rule

So far, those seeking the change have won their case before the AQMD and the state Air Resources Board, but the federal Environmental Protection Agency has yet to rule.

If the change is not approved, some Inland Empire leaders threaten to seek state legislation that would separate Riverside and San Bernardino counties from the rest of the South Coast district.

Others believe that pulling out of the district would be a mistake because the two counties would lose their influence over regional air quality planning.

Some observers, especially in San Bernardino County, think not enough attention is being paid to air pollution.

Smog ‘Biggest Problem’

“Our biggest problem in this area is air quality,” said James M. Roddy, executive director of the Local Agency Formation Commission in San Bernardino County. “But I haven’t seen any organized effort in the inland valleys along environmental lines.”

Said another San Bernardino County official, who requested anonymity: “Air quality is a definite constraint on future growth here, but there is virtually no voicing of that point of view in the county. Almost everyone is pro-growth and wants to sweep the air quality issue under the rug.”

Leaders in both counties agree that balancing the need for more jobs with the necessity of preserving the environment is the most serious challenge facing the Inland Empire.

BB EMPLOYMENT OUTLOOK

Jobs vs. Population

JOBS

RIVERSIDE COUNTY SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY 1980 1984 214,600 284,600 223,700 297,100 4.4% increase 4.4% increase

POPULATION

RIVERSIDE COUNTY SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY 1980 1984 663,000 894,000 757,500 1,014,500 14.3% increase 13.5% increase

Source: Southern California Association of Governments

San Bernardino County Where They Work

74%: 266,300 work in San Bernardino Co. 19%: 55,275 work in Los Angeles Co. 12,725 work in Orange Co. 7%: 24,344 work in other counties

Total San Bernardino County work force: 358,700

Riverside County Where They Work

78%: 197,110 work in Riverside Co. 13%: 21,100 work in Los Angeles Co. 12,700 work in Orange Co. 9%: 21,435 work in other counties

Total Riverside County work force: 252,400

Source: 1980 U.S. Census