RIOT AFTERMATH: GETTING BACK TO BUSINESS : Executives Ask Congress’ Help to Rebuild L.A. : Business: A delegation from the local Chamber of Commerce finds its Washington trip has new urgency.

A delegation of leading Los Angeles business executives pressed California congressmen and Bush Administration officials Monday to coordinate federal, state and local government efforts to rebuild riot-torn Los Angeles so that the most can be gleaned from the limited resources available.

What was to have been a routine annual Washington trip for the executive committee and directors of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce took on new urgency in light of the upheaval at home.

With the riots almost certain to put urban issues at the top of this year’s presidential election agenda, the local business leaders said at a breakfast with The Times’ Washington Bureau that they see new opportunities to address the long-term problems that have sapped the city’s core of badly needed investment.

The group, which met with several California congressmen, said that a lack of cohesion among the state’s elected representatives remains a serious problem. “One message we’re going to try to deliver . . . is, ‘For God’s sake, pick an issue and get together,’ ” attorney John C. Argue said. “ ‘Instead of always fighting each other, go together in some direction.’ ”

“Los Angeles can become a model, rather than a disaster,” added Chamber President Ray Remy. What is needed, he said, is a “coordinated package” that would include Small Business Administration loans, Commerce Department grants to spur tourism, and housing aid from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Local government can help, Remy added, by waiving fees for contractors who are willing to undertake new construction to replace buildings damaged in the rioting.

The members of the group plan to meet today with White House Chief of Staff Samuel K. Skinner and hope that President Bush will talk with them as well.

If past experience is any guide, the task of rebuilding is a formidable one--especially in poor minority areas devastated during the violence. Even though far more federal resources were available for anti-poverty and community redevelopment programs at the time, the 1965 Watts riots triggered a flight of white businesses from which the area has never recovered.

In fact, it has been only a few weeks since the opening of the first major grocery store to be built in South Los Angeles since the Watts riots. During its first weekend of operation, lines at the new Lucky market at Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza were so long that many customers had to wait almost an hour to get in. The market was not damaged in last week’s violence.

Bank of America Vice Chairman James P. Miscoll said that banks and other financial institutions have the resources “to get these jobs done.”

“I would like to see the leadership in the financial community come forth,” Miscoll said. “Bankers are in the business of taking risks, and bankers should take a long-term risk.”

While Miscoll said that excessive federal regulation prevents banks from making badly needed loans for rebuilding devastated areas, activists in the minority community have long contended that the opposite is true--that government should become more active in prodding banks to do business in depressed urban areas.

In 1988, Bank of America drew harsh criticism for closing its Central-Jefferson branch in the heart of South-Central Los Angeles--an office that local residents said was the only bank within miles.

The American Bankers Assn. and other lobbying groups for banks have fought hard to prevent any expansion of the Community Reinvestment Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to force banks and other financial institutions to lend money in the inner city.

“I’m a black businessman. I’m in South-Central Los Angeles,” said Barry L. Baszile, a member of the chamber delegation and president of his own metals firm. “We can’t get loans. . . . We don’t have the resources to compete on an equal footing with our white competitors.”

In addition, Baszile contended, “the white small-business community in this country has put a stranglehold on some of the legislation at the federal level that’s been passed to assist black businesses.” Where the law specifies exact percentages of federal contracts that are to be awarded to minority firms, he said, bureaucrats--under pressure from lobbyists--often do not live up to the letter of the law.