URBAN PLANNING : Will Job Envy Threaten L.A.’s Fiscal Survival?

This month, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission will begin to debate the General Plan Framework, a compendium of land-use, transportation and economic policies that represents the city’s first big planning overhaul in 20 years. Although an impressive document, it has stirred up city rivalries over job development that are endemic to the region.

The framework calls for closer ties between new real-estate development and rail- and bus-transit lines to lessen an auto-oriented city’s dependence on cars. It calls for preserving many of the single-family neighborhoods that give Los Angeles its distinctive character and livability. But perhaps most important--and most overlooked--is the framework’s call for an aggressive approach to attracting and keeping jobs.

The focus on jobs is consistent with Mayor Richard Riordan’s goal of making Los Angeles “business-friendly,” an un- derstandable response to a disturbing trend. Los Angeles may still be the pulse of the Southern California economy, but it is rapidly losing its historic role as the region’s economic engine.

While the city’s population continues to grow rapidly, most new jobs are now created in the suburbs as businesses chase employees, Pac-Man style, into Riverside and San Bernardino counties and other areas rich in affordable starter homes. Acknowledging these trends, the Southern California Assn. of Governments, the regional planning agency, predicts that while Los Angeles will gain about 900,000 new residents by 2010 (an 23% increase), the city will probably add only 200,000 new jobs (an 11% increase).

This is not to say that Los Angeles is job impoverished. The city still has about a job and a half for every household, far above the regional figure of about 1.1 jobs per household. But, consistent with the city’s pro-business rhetoric, Los Angeles is determined to hold its lead. So the framework sets an ambitious target for job growth--some 400,000 jobs by 2010, double the figure that SCAG projects.

To achieve this goal, the framework calls for a wide range of policy changes, among them a more streamlined permit process, which was also pushed by Riordan’s Development Reform Commission. Accommodating all the new jobs would require construction of more than 50 million square feet of new commercial development by 2010--a high figure, but one that could be achieved through the city’s existing land-use policies.

Yet, the city’s ambitious new-job goal has revealed a startlingly raw set of regional jealousies. SCAG itself has called on Los Angeles to further analyze the impact of so many jobs on air quality and on the city’s infrastructure. Smaller cities throughout the Los Angeles Basin are nervous, apparently fearing that the region’s 800-pound gorilla could upset their own plans to court new businesses and attract more jobs--many of them from Los Angeles. City officials, in turn, have sought to ease this anxiety with the “rising tide carries all boats” argument. If Los Angeles can succeed in creating a better business environment, the entire region might benefit, because the end result might be even more jobs.

On its surface, the L.A. jobs debate appears to be about who will be in the driver’s seat in setting the region’s course. As such, it’s not so different from debates in other metropolises. Will the central city be the engine of the economy? Can the suburbs--and the region--thrive economically even if the central city is in decline?

In truth, however, the jobs debate is not about vision--it’s about money.

Los Angeles, to be sure, needs jobs to remain healthy and prosperous. But to the urban planners and economists working on the framework, each new job is a statistical metaphor for a certain amount of new commercial and industrial construction, which brings more fees and taxes to bolster the city’s fiscal future.

Economists estimate that if the city’s job growth and commercial development matches SCAG predictions, the city treasury will be $125 million in the red in 2010. If, on the other hand, the city’s own job and commercial development targets are achieved, the treasury will be $9 million in the black. As the city’s consultants point out in the framework: “The city’s fiscal structure has historically been dependent on a jobs-rich environment.” Translation: Preservation of city services and the city bureaucracy depends on high levels of commercial development.

Put in more practical terms, a rising tide may carry all boats, but bring your own life raft along just in case.

Los Angeles is not the only city that understands that it’s in its fiscal self-interest to spur economic development. Underlying the other cities’ anxiety about the L.A. plan is the fear of a great sucking sound in their own city treasuries.

All this would be OK if the basin’s political jurisdiction made geographical sense--if Los Angeles were truly an inner-city municipality that needed and deserved special help in attracting and keeping jobs. But it’s not. With its dozens of cities and boundaries defying logic, the basin is a geographical anomaly. The city’s 400-plus square miles encompass many of the region’s poorest neighborhoods. But they also include the Westside, one of the region’s most expensive and job-rich areas, and the San Fernando Valley, one of Southern California’s largest suburbs. At the same time, many of the region’s most troubled communities--Compton, Willowbrook, East L.A. and dozens of others--lie outside city limits.

Furthermore, the framework’s own economists acknowledge that bringing more jobs to Los Angeles won’t necessarily improve the fortunes of people who really need help, even when they live inside the city. In a backup report to the General Plan Framework, the Natelson Co., Inc. predicted that existing imbalances will continue no matter how many jobs are created. Most job growth--and most commercial development--will still go to Downtown, the Westside, the Valley, the Harbor and the Wilshire Corridor, rather than to needy areas to the south and east.

Job opportunities for blacks and Latinos will remain far below the levels available to whites and Asians. The best the report can say is: “The greater number of jobs under the policy scenario would create expanded (although disproportionate) employment opportunities for all residents.” All these conclusions reinforce the idea that L.A.’s jobs goal is, first and foremost, a fiscal goal.

There’s no question that some cooperation for business among neighboring jurisdictions is a good thing. But the General Plan Framework underscores problems embedded deeply into Los Angeles’ political structure. The region’s city managers, budget directors and municipal unions all want to use their general plans and other public-policy tools to build their own fiscal life rafts. But the goal of robust and equitable economic growth in Southern California cannot be sliced and diced by political jurisdiction.