LOS ANGELES BRIEFING January 2005

News this month

Money worries

December brought bad news for James Hahn, the mayor of Los Angeles. A report on the city’s financial state prompted the chief administrative officer, William Fujioka, and the acting chief legislative analyst, Gerry Miller, to recommend a freeze on any new city programmes. Cutbacks in existing services may also be necessary. All this comes as Mr Hahn is seeking re-election on March 8th, against powerful rivals such as Richard Alarcon, a state senator, Bernard Parks, a former police chief, and Antonio Villaraigosa, a councilman.

Mr Hahn can blame some of these drastic cuts on his predecessor, Richard Riordan, who used booming revenues in the late 1990s to hire hundreds of city employees. Voters, however, may not have such long memories. The reality for them is a predicted budget shortfall for Los Angeles of almost $300m and talk of big increases in city fees.

Crime report

Crimes motivated by race or sexual orientation are becoming less common in and around Los Angeles. But when they do occur, “hate crimes” are more violent, especially when committed by teenage girls. According to the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission, there were 692 hate crimes in 2003 (the latest year with complete figures), down from 803 in 2002. It was the lowest figure since 1991. Outbreaks of race-motivated crimes most frequently occurred between African-American and Latina girls in or near their schools. In one attack, a 12-year-old Latina was hospitalised after being assaulted by two black girls, aged 13 and 14. Crimes against Muslims have also fallen, despite the war in Iraq and continuing fears of terrorism.

Damning verdict

The American Tort Reform Association has identified Los Angeles as one of the nation’s top nine “judicial hellholes”. According to the American Insurance Association (AIA), a leading backer of tort reform, such hellholes are jurisdictions where the odds are stacked against business, providing “a dream come true for trial lawyers...through favourable rulings and verdicts that encourage frivolous lawsuits and unfair financial windfalls”. That, in turn, leads to higher insurance premiums and job-destroying pressure on business. California has nearly 200,000 lawyers.

The truth of the AIA’s argument may up for debate, but California’s voters seem convinced: in the November elections they passed Proposition 64, a ballot initiative supported by the AIA and designed to stop “shakedown lawsuits”.

Buckle up

The union of bus drivers in Los Angeles County is opposing a decision by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) requiring drivers to wear seat belts. The MTA says it will discipline those who refuse to buckle up and will fire them if other offences are committed. Since at least half of LA County's 5,000 bus drivers do not wear their belts, confrontation between the union and management seems likely.

The MTA's action was prompted by a review of its fleet’s accidents, which have cost it heavily in liability insurance and compensation. In one incident in 1996, the driver, knocked from his seat on the Hollywood Freeway, crashed his bus into oncoming traffic, killing two people, injuring seven and costing the MTA $2.3m in legal settlements. The drivers, however, complain that the belts are uncomfortable and make them vulnerable to assaults by passengers. The MTA claims that unbelted bus-drivers are 11.6 times more likely to be injured in a collision than in an assault.

Wal-Mart in Rosemead?

Activists in Rosemead, ten miles east of downtown Los Angeles, organised a petition against plans for Wal-Mart’s first “supercentre” in LA County. But while the campaigners gathered the 2,000 signatures needed to qualify for a referendum in 2005, their petition has actually worked in Wal-Mart’s favour.

The petition was drafted to repeal a city council resolution approving Wal-Mart’s development plan. Campaigners hoped the land for the 24-acre shopping centre would then revert to residential zoning, thereby stymieing Wal-Mart’s building plans. But, in fact, the land was never zoned as residential. The council has repealed the development agreement, with the support of Wal-Mart, perhaps paving the way for faster, less-measured development. In theory there are now fewer obstacles for building a new supercentre, but Wal-Mart may not have the last laugh. Though city councils enjoy a share of Wal-Mart’s sales revenues, there is plenty of evidence of popular opposition, as shown by the overwhelming rejection of a Wal-Mart superstore in 2003 by the voters of Inglewood, California.

Catch if you can

January 2005

Imagining the Orient
Until April 3rd 2005

Modern China is such an obsession of western economists (and politicians) that it is easy to forget that the west’s fascination for the “fabled orient” has a long history. The title of the latest exhibition at the Getty Centre is well-chosen: the 18th-century European phenomenon of chinoiserie—the fashion for paintings, furniture, textiles and ceramics that were evocative of China and Japan (and, at times, Ottoman Turkey)—was as much based on fable as fact. Nor was the phenomenon simply visual: a special musical evening on January 22nd (8pm, tickets $20) features works by Mozart, Telemann and others who were influenced by the mystic Orient.
The Getty Centre, 1200 Getty Centre Dr. Tel: +1 (310) 440-7300. Open: daily except Mon, 10am-6pm (Fri-Sat 9pm). Entry free. For more details, see the Getty's website.