The key findings:
- Year by year, our City—which once was a beacon of innovation and opportunity to the world—is becoming less livable. Consider the following:
- As the result of two decades of slow job growth and stagnant wages, 28% of working Angelenos earn poverty pay. If you add those out of work, almost 40% of our community lives in what only can be called misery. The poverty rate in Los Angeles is higher than any other major American city. Median income in Los Angeles is lower than it was in 2007.
- When it comes to job creation, Los Angeles has not kept pace with the nation or other cities. Our unemployment rate is among the highest for any major city. This is not just a consequence of the Great Recession. We have lagged behind in each of the three business cycles since 1990. Los Angeles is the only one of the seven major metropolitan areas in the country to show a net decline in non-farm job employment over the last decade.
- Activity in most of our key economic sectors is flat or in decline. We have repeatedly ignored or fumbled opportunities in one of this era’s major growth industries, the intersection of science and engineering — a field where our university-based intellectual capital ought to make us a leader. With the closure of Boeing’s plant in Long Beach, there is no longer a large-scale aircraft, space vehicle fabrication or assembly facility left in the area.
- Three decades ago, LA was home to 12 Fortune 500 headquarters. Today, there are 4. In New York, in contrast, has 43 and has continued to add major employers in the last decade.
- We have developed a “barbell” economy more typical of developing world cities, like São Paulo, rather than a major American urban area. We are experiencing growth at the top of the income ladder and at the bottom, while the middle class shrinks year after year.
- Los Angeles has the capacity to be one of the main centers of philanthropy in this country and impact our local community, but has not met its potential.
- We are strangled by traffic—the most congested urban community in America and fourth worst in the world. Even if all the ambitious and expensive mass transit projects now underway are successfully completed, they will simply keep things from getting any worse. In the meantime, the economic and human costs of unchecked congestion compound on a daily basis.
- Our public school system is failing our children and betraying the hopes of their hardworking parents. This year, the Los Angeles Unified School District will spend $7.1 billion to educate close to 640,000 of our young people, but a recent survey found less than 60% of LAUSD students graduated from high school. For every 100 LAUSD students who enter 9th grade, just 32 will complete the course requirements to enter the UC or Cal State systems. How will they compete in a globalized economy in which education and income are inextricably linked?
- LA City revenues have been essentially flat since 2009 and, although City Hall forecasts revenue will grow about 1% next year, the only thing certain is expenses will grow by more than 5% in the same forecast. The implications of that gap are obvious.
- Budget constraints imposed by these realities are inhibiting the City’s ability to maintain existing services and infrastructure, let alone invest in new technology or enhanced services. Sometimes imperceptible day to day, this death of a thousand cuts has led to severe declines in service levels over the last decade.
- While serious crime continues to decline, as it has across most of urban America, our police and fire departments are under increasing strain. Response times for both are climbing and, because of budget constraints and band-aid measures, effective levels of police deployment are down, leaving staffing levels similar to those a decade ago. Despite its challenges, Los Angeles has all the ingredients of a great 21st century city. National standards for emergency response times require a response within five minutes or less at least 90% of the time; in Los Angeles that occurs less than 60% of the time.
- Wishful thinking and avoidance of hard choices have endangered the secure retirements promised our public employees. Today’s workers are paying into a system whose benefits they’re increasingly unlikely to see. The City’s retirement system has seen the amount of money saved to fund the retirement of active City workers drop from 50% of the money needed to pay for their retirement to less than 10%.
- The cost of benefits—mainly workers’ retirement and healthcare costs—have been rising rapidly and cannot be sustained at current revenue levels. Pension costs accounted for 3% of the City’s budget a decade ago, and 18% this year. The cost of covering further increases will continue to cut into the City’s ability to supply services.
- We are dramatically under investing in the competitive modernization of three of our greatest assets—the Port of Los Angeles, Los Angeles International Airport and the Department of Water and Power.
- Our Community Plans are many decades old and hopelessly out of date.
- Local involvement in City government is critical, but nimbyism and special interests stand in the way of major projects at the expense of the greater good.
- We lack a coherent or coordinated approach to economic development and soliciting investment in Los Angeles. In fact, we do an abysmal job of identifying and servicing the legitimate needs of the employers already located here. According to a recent survey, 9% of businesses in LA are planning to leave, citing stifling regulations and an unresponsive bureaucracy.
http://www.la2020reports.org/reports...-For-Truth.pdf
