On Being Your Own Worst Enemy : In a bad economy, the region has to make sure it’s doing everything it can to succeed

It looks now as if almost nothing or nobody is going to come in on a white horse to save Southern California.

Current trends suggest that California continues to lag behind the rest of the nation in economic recovery; the Clinton Administration’s first budget offers but a few pocketfuls of pennies. The help that will come our way will probably result from actions the region itself takes. Thus the region will need to reach deep inside itself and work hard to get its own economic house in order.

That means making sure that local government works to advance economic development, not just to preserve and protect its own bureaucratic ways.

If more people come to accept this unsentimental perspective--that we Southern Californians must rely on ourselves--then the immediate challenge is to begin to change in ways that make our communities more law-abiding, our personal and group relationships more civil and our region more economically productive, more competitive and more job-creating.

Last year, the Council on Economic Competitiveness, created by Gov. Pete Wilson and chaired by Peter Ueberroth, issued a cleareyed report that called on California to cut out the governmental monkey-business and start cutting all the self-defeating red tape.

Everyone agreed that the idea was right on.

Almost nothing was done in Sacramento.

A similar critique of Los Angeles’ economic environment is often offered. Little was done. But if there was one point on which both Richard Riordan and Mike Woo agreed during their otherwise rancorous mayoral campaign, it was on the city’s need to get its economic-development house in order. Riordan was relentless, and often persuasive, on the issue of red tape; Woo, while also mentioning that, frequently trumpeted his proposal to create an “economic czar” to get all city agencies involved in economic development to work together.

Both ideas have now resurfaced in the new Riordan Administration--and they’re both worth pursuing. Riordan is being urged to create a business czar--and, in a new report, the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce draws up a list of ways to reduce the city’s hellish bureaucratic obstacle course. The recommendations are sensible, do not appear to involve the shortcutting of environmental safeguards and should be implemented soon. No doubt Mayor Riordan will find them much to his liking.

How much will things like this help? Let’s put it this way. If we don’t help ourselves, no one else will. Even if red-tape reductions and an economic czar help only a little, in the current environment a little can go a long way toward making the city feel that it is regaining some control over its own destiny. So let’s do it.