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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Committee Will Tackle Business Issues

Making Los Angeles more business friendly will be the focus of a new permanent City Council committee that includes strong representation from the San Fernando Valley. Councilman Greig Smith has been named chair of the Jobs, Business Growth and Tax Reform Committee which also includes Councilwoman Wendy Greuel and Councilman Herb Wesson, Jr. The new entity brings into one group all of the business-related issues that had previously been scattered among multiple committees or had been on the agendas of ad hoc committees that met infrequently. This consolidation is what separates this effort from the previous council structure that lacked the needed focus on economic development and job creation, city officials said. “Our businesses and our workforce deserve more than just an ad hoc approach,” said Council President Eric Garcetti, who created the committee that will get to work after the start of the new year. Smith and colleagues will undertake a “listening tour” to hear directly from business leaders and organizations in the Valley, the LAX/Harbor area, and Downtown. That input will be used to create a mission statement and plan of action. “In all three of those instances I think we just want to listen,” Smith said. “We are going to create a dialogue and ask the question, ‘What do we need to be doing to make the city more competitive and more business friendly.'” Areas of the new committee’s purview are business growth, workforce training, business improvement districts, and business tax reform. Greuel served for three years as chairman on the ad hoc committee on business tax reform. Wesson previously chaired the committee overseeing workforce training. In addition, both Greuel and Smith are former business people Greuel through her family’s Valley building-supply company and Smith through the formalwear store he operated before seeking public office. “It gives us a perspective on how difficult it is as a small business to survive within a bureaucracy,” Greuel said. The city deserves in part its reputation as unfriendly to business, said Bruce Ackerman. President and CEO of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley. But it is no easy task to deal with such a huge bureaucracy whether as a business owner or a homeowner, Ackerman said. The Alliance often hears from developers and builders who go to the city to get permits and get through plan check and then have to start from square one with another city department, Ackerman said. “It’s good to have the ability to look at things like that to make sure when businesses comes in that the process is spelled out clearly and not hindered by roadblocks,” Ackerman said. Through roundtables and working groups with the industry sector from the northwest Valley, Smith gained a better understanding of what employers need in terms of training for their workers. The city’s workforce investment program needs to be tied to real world economic concerns of what businesses need now and not just put training dollars toward service sector jobs, Smith said. “We need to bridge the gap,” Smith said. The success of this new committee will depend on its leadership, said Brendan Huffman, president and CEO of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association. He is confident Smith will do a good job and the committee will become a home for business tax reform and economic development proposals. The formation of the committee comes several months before the release of studies from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s economic advisors and a business retention task force for which Huffman serves as vice chairman. “The recommendations from these task forces should give them plenty to talk about come January,” Huffman said.

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