Los Angeles set a new precedent last week. For the first time ever, the L.A. City Council unwisely voted ,unanimously , to overturn a permit issued by the city’s Building & Safety Dept. and reaffirmed by the North Valley Area Planning Commission. While the news reports have simplified the issue into a struggle between Sunland neighborhood activists and Home Depot, the business perspective and long term impacts to economic growth have largely been ignored. To be fair, Sunland residents have opposed a Home Depot store since the company purchased a boarded up K-Mart on Foothill Blvd. several years ago. They contend that such a store is not consistent with the community’s specific plan adopted in 1995, nor does Home Depot fill the void of a general store with the departure of K-Mart. They would prefer to have a Target or a Wal-Mart. The only problem is that Home Depot owns the Sunland property. Other arguments are based on the usual,and legitimate,concerns about traffic and delivery trucks. (I have to guess that K-Mart also generated traffic and had delivery trucks, too). Based on my conversations with some Sunland neighbors, I suspect that much of the opposition is fueled by something else: day laborers. It’s a legitimate concern and one that the city has been unable to adequately resolve with lasting results. In the Valley, day laborers have grown aggressive in their job solicitation methods, resulting in fistfights and even a stabbing or two in the parking lots. Some not lucky enough to find work congregate with others and kill time by smoking or drinking. Then they have to relieve themselves, and they don’t always use the bathrooms,often there aren’t any. The city has tried to resolve the day laborer issue by requiring some stores to designate private property for sites where they can be solicited without disturbing customers. Some sites are operated well and provide services to attract the day laborers to them, such as refreshments, English classes and citizenship assistance. Others don’t work so well and are ignored by many day laborers who return to the parking lots. In many respects, L.A. is having a debate on national immigration reform without really addressing the problem directly. Since Congress cannot agree on immigration reform and the city cannot agree on how to address immigrant labor issues, the Home Depot opponents (with a little help from a competitor) have exposed a loophole in the city planning law that allows one agency to overturn another’s decision to issue a permit. In this case, the issue is whether the proposed remodel of a K-Mart store is defined as a “project” or not. I don’t know the answer, and apparently neither do several experienced city planners, who have been overruled by zoning administrators, commissioners and now the full city council. What concerns business leaders most is how common this strategy will be utilized when a community decides it doesn’t want a certain commercial establishment. The strategy is to keep appealing a building permit until an agreeable bureaucrat is found in another department to reject the original finding. This is dangerous for many reasons. For starters, a competitor can make life difficult by appealing the building permit and adding to the costs and time of construction. Second, residents who don’t want any development at all can continue to appeal until the “right store” comes along. And don’t forget the negative signal this sends to large employers comparing Los Angeles to neighboring cities like Burbank and Santa Clarita. Not only can they save millions of dollars in lower business taxes in other cities, there is also much more certainty in their planning processes. Would you consider investing a few million dollars in a city with as much of an unclear and tumultuous planning process as this? Following the city council’s unanimous vote last week, we should be concerned that L.A.’s perceived business climate is a little worse. And we should expect to see more anti-development forces use the city’s lengthy and complicated permit process as a tactic to scare off employers. L.A.’s business welcome mat just got a little muddier. Let’s hope the city makes more of an effort to clean up its anti-business image. Brendan Huffman is President & CEO of the Valley Industry & Commerce Assn. (VICA).