Looking Ahead

An airline passenger flying into the Los Angeles basin on a clear fall night sees only the lights of one vast urban area stretching from horizon to horizon. The traveler may struggle to define Los Angeles, but it is impossible to discern the city’s boundaries with a score of adjoining cities or even to determine where Los Angeles County stops and a neighboring county begins.

The 150-member Los Angeles 2000 Committee studied its city for the past two years with the goal of taking control of Los Angeles’ destiny by the year 2000. The committee decided that it must view the basin from the vantage point of the airliner. Very little that occurs within Los Angeles itself does not have an impact on its neighbors. Very little that happens in the surrounding megalopolis does not affect Los Angeles. And neither Los Angeles, nor its sister cities and neighboring counties, have the authority or resources to solve their problems on their own.

So it is that LA 2000, commissioned by Mayor Tom Bradley in December, 1985, has concluded that regional cooperation is the only practical way to cope with the area’s growing problems of governance, transportation and pollution control. This revelation will not come as a surprise to those who have watched local governments in the five-county basin lose the struggle with growth while trying to preserve the quality of life.

LA 2000’s conclusion is, however, a milestone, coming from a broad-based committee that included corporate leaders, developers, preservationists, clerics, educators and representatives of Los Angeles’ cultural and ethnic communities. LA 2000 found that the whole is much bigger than the sum of its parts, noting: “This remarkable area, with the city of Los Angeles at its core, has reached a kind of critical mass. It has become self-energized by its bigness, drawing to itself more people, energy and wealth to become even bigger and more powerful. And it will keep on growing, even if we neglect to plan effectively for the future.”

The specific proposals that will attract the most attention concern the structure and finance of government. The committee proposed that the state Legislature create a regional growth-management agency to deal with transportation and coordination of local land-use planning and a regional environmental-quality agency to combine functions of present agencies such as the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the Southern California Hazardous Waste Authority. It also proposed an easing of fiscal controls so that local government can raise the money it needs.

LA 2000 President Jane Pisano said it is important, though, not to overlook sections of the report that outline improved education and literacy of area residents. “That’s the central issue,” she said. “If that’s not working, none of this will work.” The report also emphasizes the importance of local public input and cooperation of the public and private sectors.

Critics are certain to attack the concept of regional government. But the fact is the area already has a variety of regional governments, including an air district with extremely broad powers, the Coastal Commission, the Regional Airport Authority, the waste management agency, the state Transportation Department and others. The problem is that they pursue their special interests separately without coordination or common goals, sometimes working at cross-purposes.

LA 2000 is correct to conclude that a consolidation of these functions is essential if the area is to grow in a manageable fashion. Otherwise “the region becomes a Balkanized landscape of political fortresses, each guarding its own resources in the midst of divisiveness, overcrowded freeways, antiquated sewers, ineffective schools, inadequate human services and a polluted environment.”

Tuesday’s release of the LA 2000 report should mark the start of a constructive and forward-looking debate that could salvage not just the destiny of Los Angeles, but of the entire region.