The Wright Vision : Relief: Small Business Administration official comes home to South-Central to unveil post-riot package. Critics say that despite his enthusiasm and credentials, he lacks influence in Washington.

As a boy growing up in Los Angeles 30 years ago, Oscar Wright was deeply affected by the changing nature of his South-Central neighborhood.

Once a thriving community that supported small, family-owned businesses, the area began to decline as poverty, crime and drugs gained a foothold.

Today, many of the stores that Wright and his family patronized are boarded up, defaced with graffiti and the unsubtle artwork of gang members. Across the street from his old junior high, the burned hulk of a corner mini-mall stands as a testament to the frustration and rage that erupted in three days of civil strife last spring.

But as the San Francisco-based regional director of the Small Business Administration, the brash young boy who impressed everyone with his maturity and vision may now be in a position to make far-reaching changes in his old neighborhood.

“I lived next door to one of the lead singers with the Platters. Miles Davis used to live down the street,” Wright said, recalling some of the luminaries who shared his stomping grounds around 58th Street and Vermont Avenue. “There were a lot of role models back then. We only had to take advantage of it all.”

This week, Wright, 43, was back in Los Angeles, outlining a package of post-riot measures aimed at stimulating the kind of modest entrepreneurship he believes is crucial for recovery. The measures include:

* Inauguration in Los Angeles of a new Small Business Administration program offering prospective small-business owners a revolving line of credit. The program also will relax loan requirements, allowing the use of equipment and machinery as collateral, for example.

* A pilot program establishing business information centers in the city’s low-income communities. The centers will be staffed with loan specialists and will provide access to computerized electronic bulletin boards offering a variety of how-to catalogues, industry trends and complete business plans.

* A 16% increase in the amount of money available for small-business loans, which will be offered next year in Los Angeles.

* A 200% increase nationwide in funding next year for the SBA’s micro-loan program, which provides loans of up to $25,000. Los Angeles’ share of the $45 million pot has not yet been determined, Wright said.

In addition, Wright is organizing an “economic summit” in Los Angeles next month that he hopes will bring together federal, state and local officials with business leaders and citizens to discuss long-term recovery strategies. Wright sees the summit evolving into monthly community forums, sponsored by churches or the local ethnic press, at which government agencies will have a visible role.

Wright says the “new vision” emerging in the wake of the riots is one that not only will energize the community, but will demand changes in how government responds. Los Angeles, he believes, can be a testing ground for all types of economic experiments.

“Organizations like the SBA will now have to take government to the people,” he says with characteristic fervor. “We have to be a government that is more aggressive, more outreach-oriented, but only in response to the people saying this is what they want.”

While many in Los Angeles applaud Wright’s enthusiasm, they are not so sure in this political year that he has the ear of an Administration that, its critics believe, would just as soon write off Los Angeles and its urban needs. Nor are they convinced that Wright’s unrelenting focus on small-business development is the right approach.

“It’s great they want to relax criteria and make more loans available, but to believe it’s going to contribute a huge number of jobs or revitalize the community is simply flawed,” said Mary Ochs, a Los Angeles legal aid attorney who specializes in economic issues. “The fact is most small businesses don’t succeed. . . . People in the community are saying they need more funding for community centers and youth programs and other kinds of things.”

Others complain that while Wright is proposing programs, he has failed to pursue changes in existing regulations that would make it easier for riot victims to obtain loans. For example, business owners say that what they need most is an increase in the loan limit from $500,000 to $1 million and a relaxation of credit qualifications.

To these pleas, Wright has answered that such modifications require congressional action, saying victims must take their case to Washington.

But he has failed to mollify many critics of SBA procedures.

“We don’t need more programs,” said Joseph Kung, a spokesman for a group of Korean-American business owners who suffered riot losses. “We need access to the ones that already exist and could help us.”

City officials who have dealt with Wright describe him as well-meaning but question his influence.

“I think he is genuinely concerned and interested, but the SBA is not an agency that has typically taken the lead in provoking change,” said Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Linda Griego. “I think his role is one to take the messages back to Washington. And he does a good job. But I don’t think he’s always listened to.”

Wright has no patience for such criticism, insisting that he and the Bush Administration are on the same wavelength.

“I’ve sat down with the President a number of times, and I believe we share the same philosophy of empowerment and local entrepreneurship . . .,” he said. “I see the President giving us the resources, but it is people like myself and local citizenry who will define how those resources are used.”

Wright, however, is careful to couch his “new vision” philosophy in nonpartisan terms, insisting it is not a question of Democrats versus Republicans. He says Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton has a few good ideas, but slyly suggests that the Arkansas governor would be best positioned to implement them in his home state.

Wright has an unlikely ally in state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), who crushed him when he competed for her 28th District Senate seat in 1982. The two eventually became friends.

“I think what has evolved is a learning situation and a sharing situation,” said Watson of her relationship with Wright. “We’ve had very little entree into the Republican Party and Oscar has been one to listen.”

The conservative Republican’s attempted conquest of her heavily minority district was doomed to fail, says Watson. Among other controversial stands, Wright opposed affirmative action, busing to achieve school integration and other social programs.

But the run gave Wright the exposure he needed to make a rapid ascent in GOP circles.

During the campaign, Wright, who switched parties in the late 1970s, won political and financial backing from some of President Ronald Reagan’s top advisers. In 1983, he was appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian as director of the state Office of Small Business and then became California’s first small-business advocate. In 1990, Bush named him SBA regional administrator for four Western states and Pacific Island territories.

Although Wright will not say it, he doesn’t seem surprised at his success.

Like many other African-Americans, Wright’s parents migrated to Southern California from the South--in their case, Spartanburg, S.C.--in the late 1950s looking for a better life. He says he was instilled with a sense of pride and purposefulness by his father, one of his heroes.

After graduating with good grades from John Muir Junior High, Wright refused to enter nearby Manual Arts High School, instead tangling with the school board until he was allowed to transfer to Dorsey High, where he considered the educational opportunities to be better.

“From an early point it’s been clear there is no ceiling for Oscar Wright,” said Celes King III, a local bail bondsman and another notable black Republican, who has helped Wright during key points in his career. “He grew up out here in an unprotected world. And because of that has an understanding of the realities of being out here.”

During a recent stroll near his old junior high, Wright said he wants to change some of those realities by reawakening an entrepreneurial spirit in low-income communities.

“How many other young Americans are inside this school,” he asked, “who might one day be great business leaders or potential Presidents but who, when they walk out, see only urban blight and no hope?”

Profile: Oscar Wright Wright, the regional director of the U.S. Small Business Administration, is hoping to use his post to encourage economic renewal in the South Los Angeles neighborhoods where he grew up. Born: Oct. 31, 1948

Residence: Sacramento.

Education: Bachelor’s degree in political science from Cal State Los Angeles.

Career highlights: In 1983, appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian as executive director of the state Office of Small Business. In 1990, appointed by President Bush as administrator of Region IX of the Small Business Administration, covering California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa and the Marshall Islands.

Interests/Hobbies: Golf, reading, writing.

Family: Married, with three children.

Quote: “I can’t wait until after the November election because I don’t want politics to be a part of this. I think the next four years promises to be an era of resurgence. It’s not a question of the recovery of Los Angeles; redefining Los Angeles is more the issue.”