BUREAUCRACY WATCH : How to Cut Red Tape

The Los Angeles economy badly needs a jump-start. City Hall found a way to help. This is supposed to be the way it works. Too bad that it’s news when it actually does work out that way.

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday, at the urging first of City Controller Rick Tuttle and then by Mayor Tom Bradley, approved a public-works program that will create up to 3,600 jobs over the next two years. The public works program means constructing or refurbishing dozens of bridges, libraries, police stations and sewers.

How can the city afford this at a time of fiscal belt-tightening? Believe it or not, the $4 billion in bonds to pay for the construction has been sitting around for as long as six years, unspent. Bureaucratic delays are blamed; city architects and engineers must approve plans and bids for each project, and several departments must sign off before construction can start. And all that red tape got even more entangled by a long city hiring freeze, which caused projects to come on line even more slowly.

Tuttle came up with the idea of accelerating the process, securing Bradley’s support. With the council action, 18 engineers, accountants and inspectors will be hired to move the projects more quickly through the City Hall maze.

Now there will be needed construction and repairs for the city’s deteriorating sewer system; for 110 bridges; for 13 libraries; for eight police facilities, and for 14 city buildings.

Finally, an L.A. City Council action that everyone can applaud. The only sore point arises from asking why it took so long.