Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Palmdale Economy Efforts Suffer Setbacks

Palmdale’s economic development efforts suffered a second setback late Monday when a state Assembly committee retooled legislation to create two new enterprise zones statewide but deleted provisions favorable to Palmdale’s bid for one of the zones.

“We took out the language that smelled like Palmdale,” said a top legislative aide. But the office of state Assemblyman W. J. (Pete) Knight (R-Palmdale) said it remained optimistic that Palmdale would still be a strong competitor for enterprise zone status under the amended bill.

The setback came only hours after Palmdale officials were stunned by news that Packard Bell, the Westlake Village-based computer maker, had ruled out their city as a possible site for its new headquarters.

Packard Bell’s disclosure that it would not go to Palmdale--in large part because of fears about earthquake risks in a city located near the San Andreas fault--ended a yearlong courtship of the manufacturer by the Antelope Valley city.

The second setback occurred when the state Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee, chaired by Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles), dropped language favorable to Palmdale from a bill to create two new enterprise zones statewide. Such zones are designed to lure business with a variety of tax incentives.

“That (deleted) language was written so Palmdale could have qualified,” said Tilford Patterson, chief consultant to the committee.

The language gave preference to a community applying for enterprise zone status if it had an aerospace industry infrastructure, was in another development zone and had experienced huge residential growth without a corresponding growth in jobs.

Knight’s office was convinced only Palmdale would be eligible under that language, said Matt Rexroad, Knight’s legislative aide.

With its removal, the job of qualifying for enterprise zone status would be tougher but “we still feel we can compete and make the case for Palmdale,” Rexroad said.

Under the amended bill, no community would be given a preference in qualifying to become one of the two new enterprise zones.

Patterson, staff member for the utilities committee, said the panel excised the language giving preference to Palmdale and to Watsonville (the author of the measure, Senate majority leader Henry Mello, is from that area) because of the fear that it would open up a flood of demands to create new enterprise zones.

“Every legislator wants to bring home an enterprise zone to their districts,” Patterson said.

At least one Democratic legislative aide, who asked for anonymity, speculated that the Palmdale preference language might have also fallen victim to partisanship. Part of the problem was “that it created an enterprise zone in a Republican district,” said the aide.