The interesting thing about the new Los Angeles County Business Federation is the way it’s structured.
Since it’s a federation made up of existing business groups, it will have vast numbers of individual businesses as members. Already, 44 business groups representing 70,000 businesses are in the new BizFed far greater than the number of members in any single business group or chamber. If it can amass a couple hundred thousand businesses on its roster that employ millions locally then most any elected official would have to take a meeting with BizFed. And listen.
Also, BizFed is fairly cheap to join and has a simple, tightly defined mission sticking up for the interests of L.A. County businesses before elected officials.
As with any group, its big challenge is whether it will be effective. It’s tricky to get businesses to agree on much of anything. Beyond that, it is difficult to rally harried business executives to action. And those executives occasionally must convince their employees to get involved or vote a certain way, which can be even tougher.
But since they’re routinely roughed up and run over by the well-organized labor interests, businesses here seem ready to rumble.
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Do you know about the Washington Monument trick? It works like this: Crusading congressmen propose trimming the federal budget. Bureaucrats respond by saying they’d be forced to close the Washington Monument. Camera crews rush to the monument to get footage of children sniffling that they don’t want their cherished monument closed. The chastened congressmen drop their proposal to cut the budget.
In other words, when they face a budget crunch, civil servants and many political types rarely propose sensible cuts but shock the voters by threatening to cut something vital or something everyone wants. In the current election cycle, the trick has been played heavily on Angelenos.
Most notably, city officials have warned vaguely that police budgets could be roughed up if voters don’t approve the telephone tax on Feb. 5.
“If the city were to lose that approximately $250 million, all bets are off as to what’s going to happen to this city,” Police Chief William Bratton said last month. He’s appeared on TV commercials with similar warnings.
The state government’s been playing the same trick on voters.
For example, the state is proposing closing some beaches and parks, including Topanga State Park and Will Rogers State Historic Park. (The latter would revert to the Rogers heirs if the park is not maintained by the state.) And the governor has been talking about releasing some prisoners.
“Instead of making 100-percent cuts in utterly indefensible expenditures like tuition subsidies for illegal aliens and a vast array of duplicative or obsolete state programs, the governor proposes throwing the prison doors open,” an exasperated State Sen. Tom McClintock wrote recently in an essay about the governor’s ample use of the Washington Monument trick.
Note to elected officials and bureaucrats: When it comes to taxes and budget cuts, please make intellectually sound arguments against budget cuts or for tax increases. Stop insulting taxpayers with the cheap Washington Monument trick.
Charles Crumpley is editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].
