Bureaucracy, Structural Deficits, Job Creation: Notes from Glendale Meeting and Beutner Interview


From Glendale to Los Angeles: politicians at the Northwest Glendale Homeowners Association meeting Wednesday, and at the Drucker Business Forum Thursday, struck the same humble tone when asked about political gridlock, structural deficits, and the government’s role in reviving the economy.

43rd Assembly District candidates Mike Gatto and Sunder Ramani both emphasized at the homeowners’ meeting that there is no quick fix for decades of poor decisions in Sacramento. Association president Peter Fuad had likened past interactions with Glendale’s Planning Department to “peeling an onion.” Ramani expanded the analogy to California’s legislative and budgeting mess, calling them layers of peeling paint that can’t be covered and are difficult to remove.

Ramani’s business approach to the California budget problem: identify priorities and decide how much the state can actually afford. Gatto’s collegial approach: re-establish bipartisan cooperation to tackle problems such as education funding. Both candidates stressed that their sympathies are with local governments, whose redevelopment coffers are being raided by the state.

LA DWP Interim General Manager and Los Angeles’ First Deputy Mayor Austin Beutner, interviewed Thursday, called the DWP’s governance arrangement “odd” and discussed the challenge of changing LA’s bureaucracy, where “people work very hard but the culture is focused on how to say NO.” Beutner said DWP has been around for 108 years, and won’t dramatically change direction in 108 weeks or 108 days. He also stressed local difficulties with state policies, such as $10 billion in potential costs in Southern California as a result of state environmental legislation: “As a city, we have little ability to fight for ourselves.”

With respect to the DWP, Beutner said that the agency must do a better job of communicating what new infrastructure investments will be and how they will impact rates. The data is all there, but “I’ve never before seen a 500-page budget summary!”