You can fight city hall but more importantly, you can work with city hall. At least it appears that way. But before you think this will be largely a pro-L.A. City Hall column (it won’t), I just want to commend the Valley Industry and Commerce Association for the work it has done in getting our city council members to look at establishing a position within the city bureaucracy to collect on unpaid city bills which amount to $500 million. As Mark Madler reports on page 1 of this issue of the Business Journal, L.A. Councilwoman Wendy Greuel and Councilman Eric Garcetti introduced this motion on Aug. 8 and asked for a report in 30 days on its feasibility. Thank you to these officials for moving on VICA’s request. It’s not too soon by any means. VICA officials have appeared before the council’s Audit and Government Efficiency Committee and the City Council concerning the issue over the past several months. Our Business Journal story on city collections had been planned for weeks but up until the councilmembers’ motion last week the content of the story would have been very different it would have focused on the fact that VICA had been hammering away at city officials for months on the issue and nothing had been done. VICA has a feather in its cap in getting the council to move on the issue. It shows its strength as a business organization lobbying our officials for constructive change. A more functional city hall which can do such basic things as collect on the money it is owed is obviously good for business and for everybody else. Thanks to L.A. City Controller Laura Chick for bringing this collections issue to everyone’s attention more than a year ago. Unfortunately, like many of her reports from city hall it was shelved. Unfortunately, her office doesn’t have the power to fix the wrongs that it notices in the way our local government functions. The amount of money the city is owed and has not been able to collect on is huge. And it’s “low-hanging fruit” that the city can use to fix its budget woes, says VICA Audit Subcommittee Chair Mel Kohn who has been monitoring what happens to Chick’s reports on the functioning of L.A. government. Some observers say that the reason the city hasn’t got its act together on collections especially when it really needs the money could be due to the fact that those involved felt the money was probably long gone. Maybe so, but isn’t it certainly worth it to at least try to collect on it? Collecting something is better than collecting nothing. I guess we’ll let our city officials figure out how to implement the idea of a “Collections Sheriff.” But I hope not too much money is spent on the implementation. Hopefully we won’t see the hiring of additional personnel for $200,000 or something like that when we could get the same result by restructuring from within. As I said, we’ll trust that the powers at city hall do the right thing. And we’ll trust that VICA continues to watch out for us. Business Journal Editor Jason Schaff can be reached at (818) 316-3125 or at [email protected] .
