ECONOMY WATCH : Green Light for Fox?

Los Angeles badly needs more jobs and more tax revenues. That should be reason enough for the City Council to give the go-ahead to a Fox Studios expansion. With recent changes in the plan, surely the city has run out of excuses not to do so.

For more than three years Fox has been blocked by a blizzard of regulations and a frozen city bureaucracy in its effort to build administrative office space and refurbish old studios at its 53-acre movie and television production facility in Century City.

Under a plan approved last week in City Council committee, the studio agrees to pay for more than $5 million in traffic mitigation; increase production space at the sacrifice of 50,000 square feet of office space; reduce the height of new buildings to five stories from seven, and complete development in three phases.

Given the traffic congestion on the Westside, the city was correct to press for assurances from Fox. But city officials should have also pressed for fast-track approval for the project, which would create 1,600 jobs. Instead, movement was glacial, with Fox being forced to satisfy more than 700 separate regulatory conditions.

Not every business in Los Angeles is blessed with the considerable resources of the studio. Too many businesses, both large and small, have faltered in the face of municipal red tape and indifference.

The City Council is expected to take up the Fox plan soon. The only sensible action would be to flash a green light. And to eventually reform a system that often stymies job-creating business developments.