Kotkin on Los Angeles Business Fees

Re Joel Kotkin’s Opinion piece, “The High Price of L.A.’s Addiction to Business Fees,” June 2:

Kotkin says “Mayor Riordan . . . must educate and lead the City Council to . . . wean the city off its dependency on business fees and revenue-generating regulations.”

Kotkin might suggest a better educator for this particular lesson. In his new budget, Mayor Richard Riordan himself has proposed a fee on businesses for trenching in city streets. The California Taxpayers Assn. (Cal-Tax) suspects that the mayor has disguised a tax as a fee to evade the voter-approval requirements of Props. 13 and 62.

Cal-Tax believes that general taxes, not fees, should finance services with broad benefit to the community, such as law enforcement, fire services and street maintenance.

We understand the city’s need to protect and maintain its streets. We would not object to strict trench-repair standards and a legitimate fee, imposed on utility companies and others that dig in the streets, that defrays only the cost of administering trenching permits and inspections. Cal-Tax will oppose vigorously a tax disguised as a fee that is used for street maintenance or any other function of general government.

REED L. ROYALTY

So. California Director, Cal-Tax

* Kotkin looks to simplistic answers for a budget crisis that has no easy solutions. He conveniently blames the workers and a City Council that values the efforts of employees striving to provide quality services in an efficient manner. Kotkin would have the residents of Los Angeles believe that the simple solution to the city’s budget crisis is to contract out the work of city employees and thus turn decent-paying jobs into poverty-wage jobs with no benefits.

Kotkin goes on to imply that Los Angeles city employees don’t get it. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that city employees and the unions that represent them do get it. That is why they have developed successful joint labor-management efforts that are recognized nationwide for their innovation. So successful are these efforts that many of the mayor’s proposed cost savings are a result of solutions jointly developed by workers and management.

We take exception to the assertion that stakeholders are not part of the process. City employees live and work in this community. They are your friends and your neighbors. Their taxes support this city and as such they have a stake in what happens.

JULIE BUTCHER

Staff Director, Service Employees

International Union, Local 347

Los Angeles