Economist.com Cities Guide: Los Angeles Briefing - November 2005

News this month

An unholy row

Politics and the church should not mix—at least in the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which is threatening to revoke the tax-exempt status of Pasadena’s All Saints Episcopal Church. The church’s apparent sin was a sermon preached by the Reverend George Regas just before last year’s presidential election. In his address to the congregation, the minister was careful not to advise a vote for or against President Bush, but he criticised both the war in Iraq and the president’s tax cuts. Under IRS rules, non-profit organisations are forbidden to endorse candidates or campaign in an election.

The church’s tax attorney has told the IRS that it is “ludicrous to suggest that a pastor cannot preach about the value of promoting peace simply because the nation happens to be at war during an election season.” Other churches, including some whose pastors support the Iraq war, are rallying to All Saints’ defence, noting that there are many subjects of theological importance—the Roman Catholic view on abortion, for instance—that are political issues, too.

School fees

Good news for LA’s embattled Unified School District, which with some 727,000 students is the second biggest in the country. In the California special election called by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on November 8th, LA voters approved by 66% to 34% a $3.9 billion bond to repair LA schools and construct new ones. Naysayers had argued that the bond was unnecessary, not least because three similar bonds since 1997 had already raised $9.5 billion. The contrary view was expressed by an assistant to Roy Romer, the school superintendent: “The previous bonds have gotten us a step closer to our goals. They are all pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. This is the final piece.”

To gain approval, the ballot proposal needed 55% approval—a level easily hurdled by voters underwhelmed by the poor performance of California’s children in national tests. Mr Romer, a former governor of Colorado, was delighted by the result: “This is a truly historic vote. Los Angeles is making a massive statement that we want to educate our children right. It makes up for 35 years of neglect.”

Ameriquestion marks

Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles, has impressed just about everyone with his energy, charm and charisma, but suddenly finds that he is not above criticism. It seems the mayor should not have accepted the offer of a private jet from Ameriquest, a mortgage firm, to fly to Detroit for the funeral of Rosa Parks, a civil-rights pioneer, according to the Los Angeles branch of the non-partisan Center for Governmental Studies. A spokeswoman for the mayor said he had no choice but to use a private jet: his invitation to speak at the funeral (where he was, as ever, eloquent and moving) had come at the last minute.

Nonetheless, eyebrows are bound to rise: Ameriquest, which writes “sub-prime” mortgages for borrowers with less than stellar credit ratings, has been a generous supporter of Mr Villaraigosa, hiring him in 2001 and 2002 as a consultant (the mayor says he did not advise Ameriquest on lobbying but on strategic thinking and problem-solving). The Greenlining Institute, which pleads for fair treatment for minorities, agrees that Mr Villaraigosa should not have taken the flight—but reckons he will not be influenced by it. That is important: the mayor is lobbying hard for more affordable housing in a city where house prices are increasingly beyond the reach of the poor and middle class.

Worry lines

Los Angeles Airport—LAX to everyone in the business—is the world’s fifth busiest, and has the passenger queues to prove it. The trouble is that as passengers wait for their security inspection, the lines very often snake out of the terminals and onto the pavement. Those lines are not just an annoyance for impatient travellers; they also provide allegedly tempting targets for terrorists (plots against LAX have been detected in the past). The question is what to do about them.

One answer, made with the unanimous vote of the city's Airport Commission on November 7th, is to hand the problem—with a nine-month contract worth $900,000—to Santa Monica’s Rand Corporation, a non-profit research organisation. Rand will try to implement recommendations it made a year earlier, especially the moving of passengers from the pavements into more secure areas. One particular challenge will be to find ways of screening private cars before they enter the airport without causing congestion.

Tricky Times

Bad news for LA’s journal of record, the Los Angeles Times: it has just reported that its average circulation for the six months to the end of September was 869,819 copies, a 3.6% decline from the same period last year—which compares with a 2.6% decline for America’s newspapers overall. The paper's publisher, however, is determined to put a gloss on the results, noting that the decline in sales had slowed, and adding that daily sales for the third quarter rose by half a percentage point.

The big question is how well such an argument will go down with the Times’s Chicago-based owner, Tribune Publishing, which has long been pressing the paper to cut costs and increase profits. (One reason the former editor, John Carroll, quit in July was that he refused to implement more job cuts demanded by the owners.) In the meantime, the paper can at least boast that it remains the largest metropolitan daily in the country, with an average readership of almost 2.3m on weekdays and nearly 3.4m on Sundays.

Catch if you can

November 2005

Durga: Avenging Goddess, Nurturing Mother

Until March 27th 2006

The Hindu pantheon is fascinating, so kudos to Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum for devoting an exhibition to the various incarnations of the Great Goddess, particularly Durga. The embodiment of all natural and cosmic energy, she is worshiped by Hindus in late September or October. The exhibition consists of some 70 artworks from India, Tibet, Nepal and South-East Asia, including rare works on paper, a festival altar and some exceptional bronze and stone sculptures. The idea is to illustrate the dual nature of the Goddess—a fierce warrior, bearing a variety of weapons in her many hands as she battles a host of demons, and simultaneously a loving mother, a symbol of fertility as she caresses her child.

The Norton Simon Museum of Art, 411 West Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91105. Tel: +1 (626) 449-6840. Open: daily except Tues, noon-6pm (till 9pm Fri). Entry: $8. See the website.

More from the Los Angeles cultural calendar