State Office to Cut Red Tape Has Been a Lonely Place : Riots: Center was meant to help firms reopen. Its lack of use raises doubts about state’s ability to diagnose problems.

While politicos, economists and well-connected executives held forth Tuesday at the Biltmore Hotel on how to overhaul California’s economy, one of the state’s efforts on behalf of business was crawling along in low gear at an office on Wilshire Boulevard.

Gov. Pete Wilson’s One Stop Permit & Licensing Center was opened in October as a red-tape-cutter for business owners trying to return to operation after the Los Angeles riots.

Four months later, no clients of that description have asked for or received help, and representatives of business victims of the riots say they have never heard of the place.

Apparently, the obsession with easing the governmental licensing process--the city and county of Los Angeles have implemented their own “one-stop licensing centers” too--bears little relevance to the real-world needs of business. And the seeming irrelevance of such centers raises questions about the state’s ability to diagnose--and fix--problems with the economy.

The state center occupies second-floor space rented by the Department of Corporations at the end of a long, carpeted hallway at 3700 Wilshire Blvd. The sign on the door identifies it as the governor’s office for Revitalize L.A. and says nothing about licenses or permits.

Project manager Sayareh Amir was alone in the suite of offices Tuesday morning.

“I’m glad you’re here. We need to get out the word,” Amir said when a reporter dropped in. “We thought that when we opened this office, people were going to walk in and ask for permits. But the reality is people have not been walking into our center.”

Amir said she is on loan from the state Department of Toxic Substances Control. Two secretaries and another staff member are also on loan from other state agencies, she said, adding:

“We don’t have a budget. It would be nice to have a budget.”

Despite the state’s emphasis on clearing away red tape to make it easier to do business--reiterated Tuesday by Wilson and others at the California economic summit--others dismiss such woes as minor. That appears to be the case with riot victims, who need financing and other critical aid and seem to already know how to get a license.

Jay Lee, a Korean-American businessman whose toy and gift shop at 7th Street and Union Avenue was destroyed by fire, finally got back in operation two weeks ago at 1st Street and Vermont Avenue. Lee, and sundries-shop owner Alfonso Castro at Union and Pico, report that they got up and running without any grease from the one-stop licensing center--which they have never heard of.

“The problem is money, not licenses,” Lee said Tuesday at his new shop, Lucky Discount. “You just get the same licenses you had before.”

The state’s one-stop center has taken on nine cases--all involving small businesses or nonprofit groups from other cities or states that want to open up here. Most are recycling businesses and were referred by other state offices. The center has access to state experts to help with any nettlesome licensing problems.

But in fact, several of them need licenses or permits from city and county offices, not the state. Yet that--and the fact that the city of Los Angeles has its own “one-stop permit and licensing center”--hasn’t deterred the state.

“They could go to City Hall,” Amir conceded, “but we are using our office to help get things done faster. It might be duplicating (what the city does), but we try to double-expedite it.”

For that matter, most victims of the spring riots don’t have the kind of license and permit requirements handled at the state level, either. Los Angeles County, for example, handles health and building permits in many cases.

“If you want to rebuild a market, I don’t know what permits you need from the state,” said Raymond P. Ristic of the county’s Planning Department.

The county tried its own license and permit center for riot victims last year, but it closed after two months for lack of business.

Though Amir agrees that riot victims don’t seem to need help on the licensing front, the state is going to move from its digs on Wilshire Boulevard to Inglewood on March 1 in search of burned-out business owners.

So far, none of the nine proposed projects handled by the center has completed the licensing process, she said. Thus, on the center’s procedural flow chart, none has reached the sixth and final step, when the bureaucrats are supposed to call a news conference and tout their “Success Story.”

To Jorge Mancillas, a UCLA professor who has worked closely with Latino business owners in their rebuilding efforts, this confirms the suspicion that the state’s one-stop licensing center is an exercise in public relations.

“Financing, insurance help or training in management practices,” he said, “are a lot more crucial to success for these businesses than these PR exercises in permitting.”