L.A. CHAMBER ENTERS ERA OF ADVOCACY : Group’s Goal Shifts From Promoting Area to Economic Issues

At the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce sponsored one of the most popular exhibits: a life-size wire elephant covered with 850 pounds of large California walnuts and adorned with a belt of lemons and a basket of corn, wheat, barley and moss.

Publicity for California was the goal of its sponsor. Millions saw the exhibit, which advertised the agricultural plenty of the West.

“If you go back to the early days of the chamber, what the chamber did was to attract people to California,” explains Charles D. Miller, chairman of the Los Angeles chamber and chief executive of Avery in Pasadena.

“The difference today is that our primary role is not in attracting people but in creating an environment that promotes economic activity. We want business to come to the Los Angeles area, so we have to concentrate on the infrastructure . . . to take positions on such issues” as taxes, air quality and growth.

As the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce prepares to celebrate its 100th anniversary, it moves into a new era of advocacy, a national trend. From Modesto to Milwaukee to Houston, chambers are moving to the front lines at local city councils, state capitals and Washington to voice their stand on major legislative issues that affect business.

Traditionally, chambers were grass-roots organizations composed of small businesses. They tackled problems like the lack of enough downtown parking. Many of the smallest of the 5,000 chambers that dot the United States still focus on such local agendas, but the bigger ones are changing to meet the new needs of members. Chambers have taken stands on government proposals for mandated parental leave and a higher national minimum wage.

An organized political approach has become more necessary given the changing power structure. “No one segment--whether business, labor or any other community group--can dominate the scene anymore,” said Donald Kroes, vice president for field operations at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a Washington-based federation of local and state chambers of commerce.

“Chambers more and more represent business in public debates. Advocacy is now a major, major function of most chambers,” he said. “With emerging power groups, no one group can get something to happen. But each has enough power to keep something from happening. Nowadays everything is done through coalitions. We have to build a critical mass for something we want to get accomplished.”

For example, several big city chambers, including the Los Angeles group, have been vocal on the controversial Clean Air Act, the federal statute requiring certain air quality standards. Under the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency can penalize areas that fail to attain the law’s health standards on pollutants. Sanctions include cutting off federal aid for highways and sewers and banning construction of facilities that would add to air pollution. Such actions to force compliance could have profound effects on the economic development of a region.

Supported the EPA

In 1987, the Los Angeles Area Chamber took the unusual action of hiring an attorney at a cost of $100,000 for a case involving the EPA. Mark Abramovitz, a Santa Monica activist, had challenged the state plan to implement federal air quality standards for Southern California.

He maintained that the plan was inadequate to meet the Dec. 31, 1987, deadline for satisfying standards for ozone and carbon monoxide. The EPA initially gave tentative approval to the state plan, recognizing that while the basin had no hope of meeting the air quality standards for at least 20 years, it was making significant progress in cleaning up the air.

However, just before the case was argued in court, the EPA said it would disapprove the plan and impose a construction ban. The chamber filed a petition in support of the EPA even though it would mean the agency could invoke its own clean-up plan and might use its most severe sanctions in order to get air quality compliance.

The court invalidated the state plan. But Congress subsequently extended the deadline for compliance until Aug. 31, 1989, the EPA invoked only a limited ban on certain types of construction in the Southern California area and state and local authorities are working on new air pollution control proposals.

“We were concerned that the court might legislate what we had to do,” Los Angeles Chamber President Ray Remy said. “We believe that we should achieve the Clean Air Act objectives. But we should be given a good 20 years to do it and show progress on a year or two- to three-year basis, and do things that show the greatest health benefits in the most cost effective way.”

Lobbied Congress

Toward that end Remy and chamber staff and members are meeting with local, state and federal officials. Remy recently testified at a hearing in Carson before state Sen. Ralph C. Dills (D-Los Angeles) on the air quality issue.

Remy also took a contingent of 20 Los Angeles-area business representatives to Washington to urge Congress to override President Reagan’s veto of the transportation bill that would provide funds to Southern California’s harbors, airports and highways. The veto ultimately was overridden.

Chambers are not only joining forces with one another, but also with other groups. “Labor unions, environmentalists and a lot of other interest groups, which have organized, had a lot of clout in the 1960s and 1970s,” said David Kilby, executive vice president at the Modesto Chamber of Commerce. “They helped to pass a lot of legislation that affected the business community. The business community now has finally awakened, and now is fighting back. It is now forming coalitions with some of those other groups on issues like smoking ordinances.”

Some organized business efforts take novel approaches. The Milwaukee Assn. of Commerce, the area’s chamber, produced a 16 1/2-minute videotape called “Choices,” which focused on Wisconsin’s rising state spending--financed by higher taxes.

The chamber dispatched 600 copies of the videotape to small businesses and other chambers in the Milwaukee area. They, in turn, showed the video to employees and members who were encouraged to ask their state representatives about their state spending positions.

Continued Campaign

Many local groups subsequently took vocal positions against increased state spending. Hilda Heglund, executive director of the Milwaukee Assn.’s Council of Small Business Executives, said many have credited the tape as a help to ousting those state legislators who supported higher state spending in their 1986 election platforms.

“It was a new way to get to taxpayers, where they worked,” said Heglund. “It was so effective, we did ‘Choices 2’ . . . which focused on how public workers were earning much higher pay and benefits than private sector workers.” She said the videotape campaign helped pressure the Wisconsin legislature, which voted for the first time against pension increases for state and municipal workers.

“We have a great deal more respect in Madison,” she says. “They know the kind of resources we have now. We have access to thousands of workers in the workplace. They have to pay more attention to what business is saying because typically those who have gotten their ways have been the most active--like the teachers organization. The business community is finally getting smart and legislators recognize that. It is no longer just business talking big, they are now flexing their muscle.”

At the heart of most chamber advocacy efforts is continued economic development. To keep their communities growing, chambers are often competing with each another when it comes to attracting new business.

“For so long in Texas, we made all our money from things we either put into the ground or took out of the ground--either in agriculture or petroleum,” said Charles Henderson, a spokesman for the Greater Houston Chamber of Commerce.

Studied Trade Bill

“Petroleum is still a mainstay, but there are a number of areas of business like high technology and international business that we are interested in,” Henderson said. “Chambers and other groups are selling themselves to every audience . . . to try to make money. Advocacy is critical to whole game plan.”

The Houston chamber recently formed a trade task force to study the omnibus trade bill now before Congress and its impact on the area’s port and 1,300 companies involved in international business.

The committee came out with a recommendation to oppose the Gephardt amendment, which mandates stiff retaliation against countries with high trade surpluses with the United States and whose markets are not fully open to American goods. That recommendation was opposite the position taken by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Ultimately, chamber members are looking at what they get for their money. As Kroes of the U.S. Chamber puts it: “You don’t get too many situations where a chamber is way out of the mainstream, because business people won’t pay for it. Business people don’t look at chambers as charities. It is a business investment for them and they expect to get something either in the form of business advocacy or economic development which helps their business.”

“Forty years ago, chambers primarily promoted local beauty pageants, bragged about the weather or put on dollar days,” explains Wesley D. Bush, who retired after 37 years as an executive with chambers, most recently with the El Segundo Chamber of Commerce.

“But as we got more sophisticated and oriented toward serving members, we were doing for them what they couldn’t do for themselves and advocacy emerged. Members couldn’t go to the (political) leadership themselves, they needed an organized force.”