VICA Raises Volume on Business Advocacy By BRAD SMITH Staff Reporter Stem cell research? The Valley Industry and Commerce Association is for it. A statewide standard for development in oak woodlands? The association, known as VICA, is against that. Reductions in state funding for in-home assistance for the mentally ill, the elderly and disabled children? Against it. Reducing the city of Los Angeles’ tax on businesses? Most definitely for it. The 55-year-old business advocacy organization, after decades of laboring in the background of politics in the San Fernando Valley, has taken on a much higher profile in recent years. In the first half of 2004, the association’s 90-member board has voted to take official positions on 52 separate issues, ranging from ballot measures to legislative proposals By the same time in 2003, the organization had only taken 39 such votes. The almost 30 percent increase has garnered attention from elected officials and the media, which is exactly what the group’s current leaders led by Board Chairman Martin Cooper, who took the chair in January want. “My officers and I have been driving the organization to be (more) ambitious and more aggressive,” said Cooper, 62, of Encino. That effort has paid off, at least in one respect: media coverage of VICA is up almost 50 percent from 2003 to 2004, according to the organization. “That’s a big jump,” said Cooper, chairman of the Woodland Hills-based Cooper Beavers public relations firm, whose clients range from major corporations to the Girl Scouts of America. “Part of it is that it is an election year, part of it is this effort.” The organization’s influence and that of its blizzard of e-mailed and faxed opinions is open to debate, but elected officials say VICA plays a significant role in increasingly politicized decisions about growth and development. “They can do strong advocacy work,” said Ventura County Supervisor Linda Parks, who found VICA arrayed against her in the fight to prevent a 3,000-home development on Ahmanson Ranch in 2003. The development died when the state bought the ranch as parkland. “It can have an impact because they provide a source of education, but it is rather one-sided,” Parks said. “They are kind of manufacturing a type of opinion base.” Republican lawmakers say they listen to VICA, but the group gets short shrift from across the aisle. “People pay attention to what VICA says, both locally and in Sacramento,” said Assemblyman Keith Richman, whose district includes the northwest Valley. “But despite VICA’s good efforts in advocating on issues of importance to business, it has had relatively little impact on the votes of the Democratic legislators from the San Fernando Valley.” VICA members, however, differ with both assessments. “It is true our constituents are the businesses, not the residents or the voters,” said former Democratic Assemblyman Richard Katz, a VICA board member. “But issues like workers compensation reform and access to health care cut across party lines.” Given the organization’s history it was founded in 1949 VICA officials say their current efforts are not substantially different than the sort of business advocacy the group has practiced for the past half-century. No political endorsements VICA cannot endorse candidates, but it did come out in favor of San Fernando Valley secession. The secession vote, which carried in the San Fernando Valley in 2002 but failed citywide, was a major issue for the organization. “Secession was a turning point for VICA,” Cooper said. “There was great ferment within the organization over whether or not to take a position (but) a lot of the post-secession events have shown VICA can make a difference.” VICA’s offices, on a stretch of Van Nuys Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, are decorated in what could be called Chamber of Commerce Moderne. A mix of framed wall-sized maps and newspaper front pages VICA BACKS CITYHOOD in the Daily News; VICA ENDORSES VALLEY SECESSION in the Times the office is quiet on a Monday morning. Katz, in a short-sleeve shirt and casual slacks, jokes about the dress code being far different than under the Capitol dome, but discusses at length the realities facing an organization made up of business owners in a state that skews increasingly Democratic. “We joined recently with the Service Employees International Union on the in-home assistance measure, unlike some other business organizations; that’s not a slam on them, but we’re very cognizant we can’t succeed without relationships,” Katz said. “And we know we have to be very sensitive to the changing (political) demographics as well; it is something that comes of understanding the mistakes other business groups have made in the past it is critical that we are not just standing still.” The history When VICA was founded, the San Fernando Valley was poised to become the industrial heart of Los Angeles County. General Motors, Lockheed, North American Aviation’s Rocketdyne Division, and RCA all located in the Valley in the 1940s and 1950s, and employment at those factories fueled the suburban housing boom; by 2000, only the Rocketdyne plant, now owned by Boeing, remained, and the last major development Porter Ranch, above Highway 118 was being built. Recognizing those changes is the key to the organization’s continued relevance, VICA officials say. As evidence, they point to VICA’s vote to support Prop. 71, the November ballot measure that would direct $3.5 billion to stem cell research. The measure is expected to be politically divisive, both in the general electorate and within the Republican Party. “We see it from the standpoint of growing the next Silicon Valley,” Katz said. “We already have a lot of biomed and health care here in the Valley and the investment in the colleges and universities, so we see it as a business decision.” But Katz, a veteran of decades in California politics, understands why VICA may find itself apart from many traditional GOP allies on the issue. “The Republican centrists have an internal problem with the religious right,” Katz said. “We hope they can come to the realization that this is the next great hope for California’s economy.” That kind of evolution away from its conservative, small business-oriented roots says as much about VICA than its support for secession, observers said. “They lost the secession battle and you might suspect they would become even more disaffected from the city, but instead VICA has realized that it does have influence,” said Tom Hogen-Esch, a political science professor at California State University Northridge. “It’s fair to say that VICA has filled a power vacuum over the years in the Valley (because) it is a sort of geographically cohesive group,” he said. “But I think the jury is still out on some of the major issues that VICA has been out in front of.” They include the drive to reduce Los Angeles’ business taxes in an effort to make the city more economically competitive and the passage of legislation requiring state agencies to break out statistics involving the Valley from those of the rest of Los Angeles. At the same time, those efforts, whatever their ultimate impact, may help unify what is today an often fractious part of the city, observers said. “What I see emerging in the Valley is a political consensus, between the business community and residents, to protect the Valley as kind of a livable suburbia,” Hogen-Esch said. “When you have that kind of political consensus among stakeholders you have the potential for some powerful political movements.”
