L.A.’s Economic Locomotive in Need of an Engineer and a Map : Redevelopment: The CRA is at a critical juncture, but how it spends its money is not at the center of the mayoral debate. It needs a social conscience.

One of the more telling remarks made during the L.A. mayoral campaign came from Tom Houston. Asked to assess the Community Redevelop ment Agency’s performance, the former deputy mayor said: “The CRA did a good job. They just overdid it. There are a lot of empty buildings now.”

Regrettably, the CRA’s record, and the broader question of how to democratize economic government, are not significant issues in the mayoral runoff. For much of their existence, the CRA and the city’s other economic agencies successfully kept their business at the margins of public attention. But in the late 1970’s, their “semi-public” status increasingly pushed them toward the public spotlight, where their political vulnerability was exposed. This exposure has created an opportunity to redirect economic forces whose power is as tangible as the L.A. skyline--if only leadership were willing to propose a new agenda.

The sheer size of economic government--of which the CRA, the Los Angeles Port Authority and the Los Angeles International Airport are major components--began to rival other branches of municipal government after passage of Proposition 13. Agencies like the CRA could circumvent Proposition 13’s fiscal torments by issuing redevelopment bonds to attract public and private capital. This, among other factors, has produced a startling result. By 1992, the combined operating budgets of the CRA, the Port Authority and LAX totaled more than $1.27 billion, compared to the city’s discretionary budget of $1.97 billion.

No wonder the state Legislature, also struggling with the legacy of Proposition 13 and recession-spawned deficits, has turned on the agencies it had once protected. Legislators have made it easier for City Hall to tap the CRA’s and Port Authority’s ample reserves. Meanwhile, scandals within the CRA--its costly buyout of its previous administrative head--and scandals outside it--Tom Bradley’s fondness for charging trade junkets to the Port Authority--further weakened the political defenses of the city’s economic government.

Then, the riots hit. As a result, it is no longer possible to deny the social costs incurred by the CRA’s role in creating L.A.’s skyline. In spite of thousands of jobs generated by downtown redevelopment and of recent efforts to make the CRA a more socially responsible agency, one fact cannot be evaded. The downtown cathedrals of glass and steel were erected at the expense of precisely those neighborhoods charred by the riots. And the residents of Korea Town, South-Central and Pico-Union have begun to follow the trail of ashes to City Hall. To varying degrees, Bradley and a majority of past and present City Council members stood by while the city’s branches of economic government made public policy in non-public places.

It is thus understandable that Michael Woo and Richard Riordan would strive to distance themselves from the CRA when it is portrayed as an evil bureaucratic empire. For many CRA officials, however, the idea that their agency is a target of political convenience must seem an ironic betrayal. After all, Woo and Riordan have, at times, both promoted and benefited from its projects.

But don’t pity the CRA. It also knows something about expediency and the art of political survival.

While the city was going through the Rodney G. King-beating trauma, the CRA was quietly changing its direction. In the last two years, for example, more than $86 million, or 90% of the funds generated by the Bunker Hill redevelopment project, were invested in public-housing projects and social services. The agency also pushed through legislation in Sacramento that cut in half the time required to create redevelopment projects within the city’s riot-scarred neighborhoods. And it has used the new law to begin transforming these neighborhoods into redevelopment projects.

But all these changes must be put into proper perspective. According to one high-ranking CRA official, downtown redevelopment projects have already banked more than $854 million in property taxes, which will surpass the billion-dollar mark by next fiscal year even with the property-tax caps now in place. Moreover, the prospect of more than $900 million of redevelopment proposed for Hollywood threatens to create a new Bunker Hill, this time for the movie industry, a newcomer to the game.

The CRA’s administrator, Edward Avila, seems to understand that his agency must be rehabilitated. “Times have changed and (the) CRA must change, too,” he recently wrote. “Industries are shrinking and leaving, jobs are disappearing, capital is fleeing. If we continue to follow . . . the agenda of the past 30 years, our critics may be proved right; we would (become) irrelevant.”

To date, neither mayoral candidate has seriously taken up the issue of what the CRA’s new mission should be. Riordan seems wedded to the economic ideals valued by the city’s Anglo elite. His proposals to further privatize government services and to tap the reserves of the CRA and Port Authority to buoy the city budget for two years, coupled with his passionate support of RLA, augur more policy gridlock.

Woo’s position on economic government is much more difficult to pin down. For example, his proposal to appoint an economic czar is vague about what the official’s duties would be. Woo could use the official to carry out his proposals to make the CRA more socially responsible; he could use his new appointee to recoup economic powers whittled away by the City Council; or he simply may allow the post to serve ever-shifting political interests, be they in Hollywood or elsewhere.

This may seem discouraging to voters eager for economic change. But they must remember that whoever is elected will not, by himself, resolve the crisis of economic government. And as long as this crisis continues, the citizens of Los Angeles have an opportunity to reinvent an urban policy that generates regional economic growth and promotes democratic control of economic government.