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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Interview: Hahn and His “Great City”

INTERVIEW: Hahn and His ‘Great City’ Mayor James Hahn is putting in overtime to see the San Fernando Valley remains part of a Los Angeles he’s worked a lifetime to lead. By JACQUELINE FOX Staff Reporter Since he was elected mayor of Los Angeles in June of 2001, James K. Hahn, 51, has repeatedly referred to Los Angeles as “this great city” and, for the most part, business owners and residents in the Valley tend to agree with the mantra. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of discord brewing here, vis- & #341;-vis a secession drive, disgruntled business owners seeking a fairer tax system, and commuters who battle some of the worst traffic in the country each day as they crawl from one end of the Valley to the other. As the push for secession started to heat up last summer, Hahn announced his own plans for keeping the city together. His strategy was highlighted in November with the formation of his political action committee, L.A. United, which has vowed to raise a $5 million war chest to stop secession. Hahn agrees voters should have the right to decide the issue this year but he recognizes the fact that, in order to convince them secession is a bad idea, he’s got to meet them face to face. So he’s begun to build a presence in the Valley, becoming a regular at many civic and social events, calling for city commissioners to hold meetings locally, and working to strengthen relationships with business owners and residents. But Hahn has also been criticized by members of the business community for dragging his feet on filling all 300 of his commission appointments and for keeping what they call a low profile in the stalemate over development of the Van Nuys Airport. Jacqueline Fox, political reporter for the Business Journal, met with the mayor recently to discuss the drive to break up Los Angeles, how it’s affected his administration, his blueprint for improving the level of services in the Valley and what else he intends to do to keep the city whole. Question: As a long-time city official you’ve seen the issue of Valley secession come up before, albeit not quite as vigorously. What makes this movement so different that it’s forced you to raise $5 million to kill it? Answer: It’s real this time because they’ve got petitions to start the LAFCO process and we know it’s headed for a vote in November and anytime there’s a vote on anything, there’s the possibility that the side that you want to win doesn’t win. So, I think that it’s a decision that needs to be made, made once and for all, and I want to be able to make the case while we’re stronger. Q: How much money has your PAC raised so far? A: Well, we just started raising money (and have) $30,000, but we expect to get more aggressive as we go past the March primaries. We’ll work very hard to raise the funds from people who feel that this is just the wrong time to break up this great city. Q: The city and your staff have clearly invested a lot of time and money coming up with the data to prove secession would be harmful. That’s time and money that could have been used to improve city services. How has this work on secession impacted your administration? A: I disagree that we were trying to prove secession would be harmful. We were trying to come up with the data so people can make the decision. This is a process that LAFCO requires the city to do. We had to come up with the financial analysis for how the new city would be able to function, how the old city would be able to continue services and what the cost differential is. This has been enormously expensive for the city. This special dispensation has been given to the folks who are promoting breaking up the city, because usually this kind of expense needs to be borne by proponents, and all along the burden has been on all of the city taxpayers to do this. But I think that since this is something that has been simmering for a long time, we need to get the facts out. Q: You’ve promised to improve the quality of services in the Valley, but many residents say they’ve heard this before. Now, with budget cuts and a call for a citywide hiring freeze there’s concern that city services everywhere will be compromised. What do you think you can do in the next 10 months to improve services that previous city administrations haven’t been able to do in the last 10 years? A: Well, obviously it’s not what I had planned. I planned on having the same kind of revenue growth the previous mayor experienced. He was getting almost 10-percent revenue growth per year and was able to do a lot of different things. So if I’d even gotten half of that, there would have been a lot of money to improve things like street paving and sidewalk repair and tree trimming and all the kinds of visible things that people want to see. We are facing a huge budget deficit now of $250 million next year. It’s going to be very difficult, but I’m going to ask the general managers and the city employee unions to figure out ways to deliver services more efficiently. Q: Clearly you’ve been increasing visibility in the Valley by having commissions hold meetings here, setting up a local office for your business team and being a part of civic organizations and events. Why shouldn’t Valley residents view your actions as nothing more than empty gestures designed to stop secession? A: Because it’s not only happening in the Valley. It’s not just about the Valley, it’s not just an empty gesture, it’s something we’re doing all over the city. We’re trying to bring government out to neighborhoods and out to people. Q: Not only do many say that it will be years before neighborhood councils in the Valley are fully up and running, they add that they will give residents little power to affect change. What’s holding up the process and how can residents be assured that, if they get involved, it will be worth their effort? A: What I’ve said was I want to give these neighborhood councils real involvement with city government. I want them to review budgets of departments, review the performance of general managers, get them involved, let them know that their voice is really going to be heard. The first year (neighborhood councils were introduced) I don’t think Mayor Riordan gave this department enough money to get it started. There’s a lot of work to get people organized around a totally new idea, there’s a lot of skepticism about it and getting people started has been very difficult. In a sense, I think we are a year behind where we wanted to be, but I think we’re moving very fast now. Q: The Valley Industry and Commerce Association has formally asked your staff to study alternatives to the gross receipts tax structure. Will you support the idea? A: Yes. I think we need to take a look at the whole revenue structure of the city to see if it’s fair to business, fair to homeowners, how the tax burden gets shared. Everybody thinks they pay more than their fair share, but I think everything ought to be on the table. We ought to really take a look at our revenue structure and see if it makes sense. Q: Operators at the Van Nuys Airport say LAWA’s inability to craft a master plan for land use is hampering their plans for expansion and refurbishments. They’d like to see you direct LAWA to come up with a plan by the year’s end. Will you do it? A: It really hasn’t been fair to the business owners that we haven’t been able to come up with that plan, so I’ll do my best. We should have had one by now but we keep having this battle with the city council that has kept us from moving forward. But we’ve got to bring more closure to that. Q: You’ve vowed to bring more buses to the Valley. Can you update our readers on the East-West Transit Corridor project? A: The bus way is going to move forward. It’s a very expensive project. I think for the same amount of money, you could do much more with expanding the rapid bus program. I think we’re going to do that anyway. It’s been very successful on Ventura Boulevard and they’ve had a huge increase in ridership. And you can do that without infrastructure improvements at all. But the MTA’s going forward with the East West Transit Corridor, and it doesn’t look like anything is going to slow that down and it will be beneficial. Will it be worth the amount of money we’re going to spend on it? I guess time will have to tell. Q: Some Valley business leaders say, with or without secession, the Valley should have an autonomous transit system. Meanwhile, the MTA is proposing a Valley-based extension of its own agency. Which would be more efficient and why? A: I like the outlines of (the MTA plan) of basically decentralizing MTA so that there would be different semi-autonomous regions. A Valley transit zone still would have to honor the contracts that the current bargaining units have with MTA, so I don’t know where the savings is necessarily going to come in.

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