The Business Perspective

Last Thursday, the L.A. Area Chamber Board of Directors welcomed Mayor Eric Garcetti at its final board meeting of 2013. Mayor Garcetti toasted the Chamber's 125 years of leadership and outlined how his administration, working together with the Chamber, plans to move our economy forward. He asked the Chamber to partner with him in his four part strategy to convene, build, train and market Los Angeles. The Chamber Board gave a standing ovation to this strategy, which is right on target and closely matches the leadership role that the Chamber has played for 125 years.

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In 1910, D.W. Griffith shot the first silent movie, "In Old California," in Hollywood. It was the beginning of a quintessential California industry. The pioneers of the movie industry came to California because the State is tailor-made for film with great weather and every natural backdrop a director could want. For a century, a network of communities and businesses have grown up to support these productions and place a unique California stamp on world culture.

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Today we celebrate the birthday of the L.A. Aqueduct. Even before the water began flowing a century ago, the aqueduct was a longheld vision of the founding members of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. The road was not easy, but the visionaries stayed on course, knowing that with the birth of the aqueduct, a modern Los Angeles was born.

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A warrior for our kids is how Dr. Robert Ross described Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy a month ago when the California Endowment announced a $50 million investment in students of color attending LAUSD.

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Recent events have made it clear that, whether you supported or opposed it, the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land and is being implemented today. Business people everywhere owe it to their employees and stockholders to explore the options in the Affordable Care Act and determine if those options can have a positive impact on their employees and their company's bottom line.  

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It doesn’t get any better than last night’s 3-0 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals.  The temperature at game time was 79 degrees and the sky was Dodger blue.  The historic stadium was filled with more than 53,000 loyal fans who knew they had a crucial role to play in energizing a team that was down 0-2 in the series.  

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Since its release in 1982, the Missing Person’s song "Walking in L.A.,” with its refrain "Nobody walks in L.A.," perfectly captured the City of Los Angeles’ affection for the automobile. Today, the song has become an anachronism rather than an anthem as L.A. moves towards a multimodal future. That future was on full display this past week with another successful CicLAvia event and plans to connect the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and The Grove with a street trolley.

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Yesterday, 251 business organizations from every corner of the United States co-signed a letter to Congress stating, “With the U.S. economy continuing to underperform, the federal government needs to maintain its normal operations pending a successful outcome of broader budgetary reforms. It is not in the best interest of the employers, employees or the American people to risk a government shutdown that will be economically disruptive and create even more uncertainties for the U.S. economy. We respectfully urge the Congress to raise the debt ceiling in a timely manner and remove any threat to the full faith and credit of the United States Government.”

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Our political leaders are often pulled in many directions. The exception is during a crisis. During the great recession and glacially moving recovery, we heard many elected officials declare a jobs crisis and the creation of jobs as the top priority. 

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This past Wednesday was another critical step on the long march to a modern Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) as the front door to the largest county in the United States and gateway to South America and Asia. The Los Angeles County Airport Land Use Commission (ALUC) denied an appeal by the cities of Ontario and Culver City and the County of San Bernardino to delay the LAX modernization plan approved by the L.A. City Council last spring.

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