Candidates Offer Tonics to Heal City : Politics: The mayoral hopefuls prescribe similar proposals for curing the L.A. economy.

It’s still the economy, stupid.

The mantra of Bill Clinton’s campaign is being intoned by mayoral candidates across Los Angeles, as the rivals for Tom Bradley’s job blame the recession for aggravating racial tensions and offer surprisingly similar prescriptions for curing the city’s ailing economy.

City Councilman Michael Woo, who has devoted much of his early campaign for mayor courting elements of Bradley’s liberal coalition, Tuesday made his most detailed pitch to the business community with a 10-point proposal that includes an “I Love L.A.” publicity drive.

“I will launch an aggressive campaign to promote L.A.,” Woo told a group of lawyers and business people at a downtown lunch meeting. “Under the theme of ‘L.A. Works,’ I will draw upon the best minds in the advertising and entertainment industries right here in our city to present L.A.’s best face to the world.”

Across town, another candidate, lawyer Tom Houston, was linking the lame economy with crime. Striking the chord that has come to distinguish his campaign, Houston said that the city won’t effectively deal with crime until officials are willing to take action against illegal immigrants who are gang members.

“Everywhere I’ve gone throughout the city campaigning, the No. 1 issue to business is crime,” Houston said in an address to the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn.

He said the problem is an official city directive that “in effect tells our Police Department, ‘Do not assist immigration officials in arresting and deporting gang members and other illegal aliens.’ We have got to change that policy.”

Woo’s 10-point plan to improve the local economy does not address crime, although he is a sponsor of a ballot measure that would raise property taxes to pay for hiring 1,000 more police officers.

But in many respects, Woo’s economic agenda echoes the ideas of several of his rivals. As the official filing period for the race begins today, these candidates agree that small business is the future hope of an economy that once relied on huge industries such as aerospace.

The similarities underscore the challenge that the candidates face--communicating a message and an image that set each apart from a field that numbers 26. For Woo, Houston and other critics of business as usual at City Hall, part of the task will be persuading voters that they are not part of the problem. Woo has been a councilman since 1985. Houston was Bradley’s top aide from 1984 to 1987.

Woo’s call for reforming the city’s “outlaw bureaucracy” is also a popular theme. During the last week alone, candidates Richard Riordan, Linda Griego and Richard Katz all have made recommendations for making City Hall friendlier to business.

“If you want to plant a tree in front of City Hall,” Riordan told an audience of African-American entrepreneurs on Monday, “it takes eight different permits.” Riordan, a lawyer and businessman, then unveiled his own six-point plan for making the bureaucracy more responsive to business.

Assemblyman Katz, in a speech declaring his candidacy for mayor last week, flayed the city bureaucracy for “waving goodby to our jobs and looking for ways to raise taxes.” And Griego, a former deputy mayor and restaurant owner, entered the race with a speech reaching out to small-business owners. “I know the problems because I’ve been on the other side of the counter, struggling with the bureaucracy,” she said.

Both Woo and Riordan have now presented plans for streamlining the bureaucracy.

Riordan’s proposals include a requirement that the city process all environmental impact reviews within one year, speeding the process by which the City Council enacts zoning changes and setting up a task force to help entrepreneurs obtain permits.

Woo’s plan calls for creating an “economic czar” with the authority to create a “one-stop” permit office.

“When I am mayor,” Woo said, “the City Planning Department, the Building and Safety Department and every other agency will be read the riot act. Their managers will answer to the mayor and to the people.”

In addition, Woo said he would open a unit in the city attorney’s office to investigate workers’ compensation fraud, a type of crime that is proving so costly to local companies that it is one of the main reasons businesses say they are leaving the state.

Woo said he would create a “job creation co-op,” backed by $5 million in current city funds, to guarantee private bank loans to small businesses that do not qualify for conventional financing. And he said he would create an office of business forecasting to help Los Angeles become more competitive in identifying industries that the city can attract.

Along with Katz and candidate Nick Patsaouras, a businessman and member of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, Woo recommends using the $180 billion in transit funds that Los Angeles will receive over the next 30 years to create a home-grown transportation industry.

That idea is at the heart of Katz’s campaign theme to make Los Angeles the “Silicon Valley of transportation.”

Echoing a proposal first made by Griego, Woo said he would undertake a survey of the city’s up-and-coming industries, identifying the companies and their needs, helping form trade associations and reorienting government efforts “away from dying industries toward growth industries.”

Absent from Woo’s pro-business agenda Tuesday were any of the recommendations he has made in numerous speeches to groups in South-Central Los Angeles about what he would do to improve economic opportunities in the inner city.

In those speeches, Woo has contended that a redistribution of economic power must occur for the city to eradicate the conditions that led to last spring’s riots.

He said Tuesday that he will elaborate on that theme later.

Meanwhile, Houston, true to his reputation as the campaign’s emerging contrarian, spoke out against the increasingly popular proposal to help solve the city’s budget deficit by shifting $44 million from the Harbor Department to the general fund. He said the diversion could lead to “economic disaster in the harbor area. . . . That move may kill the harbor.”

Houston also broke new ground by pledging, if elected, to set up a mayor’s office to help businesses go after more than $200 million in untapped federal and state training funds.

Times staff writer Richard Simon contributed to this story.