California Needs a Jobs Czar : Economy: Only a one-stop, red-tape-cutting office can reverse the employment slump.

Gov. Pete Wilson and Speaker Willie Brown will convene an economic summit next month to perform triage on state job losses that are now approaching 1 million.

Many of the prescriptions needed to help our business climate have already been proposed by the Peter Ueberroth-chaired Competitiveness Council and ADEPT, the State Assembly Democratic Economic Prosperity Team. What’s lacking now is the political will to make them a reality. A cooperative rather than threatening and confrontational approach by the governor and the Legislature will stem the tide of business flight, but reversing it calls for a frontal assault.

California needs a jobs czar--a person whose only responsibility is the creation of new jobs for Californians.

Dramatic, yes, bold, yes, and is there a precedent? Yes. Last year, New Jersey, where unemployment has risen sharply and a Democratic governor and a Republican Legislature have constantly feuded, created its own jobs czar. California is innovative and entrepreneurial enough to steal a good plan from New Jersey.

Our jobs czar would report directly to the governor, have a limited term and have the specific goal of making hundreds of thousands of new California jobs a reality. Bipartisan support, the trust of the environmental community and a mandate that puts state agencies on notice that if it’s a jobs czar priority, it’s their priority would let the jobs czar travel lightly and carry a big stick. A very sharp scissors to cut through red tape and end interminable political bickering would also be a useful tool.

Unlike the secretary of commerce or the head of the Economic Advisory Council or special economic assistant to the governor, a jobs czar would have direct authority to ensure that large public and private projects totaling billions of dollars that are “stuck in the pipeline” become unstuck, especially transportation, infrastructure, housing and economic-development initiatives. The job description is simple: Do what can be done now --financing, job training, streamlining the permit process, simple attention to a stalled project, whatever it takes to create jobs in a hurry.

At California’s first economic summit conference next month there will be many, many suggestions for solving our state’s unemployment crisis offered by a cacophony of competing voices. What’s really needed are a few simple, strong, workable ideas. Let’s set aside our egos and the “not invented here” syndrome and borrow a good idea from another state. Let’s create a state jobs czar and back him or her to the hilt.