Making a Short Into an Epic

Every day Los Angeles loses valuable film and television production jobs, and dollars, to competitors in other states and abroad because of over-regulation of the entertainment industry. But you would never know it by watching the Los Angeles City Council.

For the better part of a year Mayor Richard Riordan has pressed council members to create a friendlier regulatory environment by consolidating duplicative city and county film permit offices into a nonprofit agency that the city and county would jointly oversee. However, unlike the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, which quickly approved the merger proposal in May, the City Council has been intolerably slow.

About 250 film commissions elsewhere in California and outside the state eagerly pick off as many film projects as they can. These so-called “runaway” productions cost Southern California as much as $2 billion annually. Red tape is a big reason for the exodus, and two different film approval offices in Los Angeles is a prescription for red tape.

However, a report issued last month by the city’s chief legislative analyst conspicuously gave short shrift to the mayor’s consolidation plan, instead recommending temporarily housing the city’s film permit activities in the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The mayor’s merger proposal strikes us as quite reasonable and the council’s apparent reluctance to discuss it perplexing. Consolidation of film and television permitting works to the best interest of both the county and the city. Let’s move forward on this project . . . quickly. Roll ‘em.