Eric's Blog

I recently joined with other state leaders, including the Governor and Assembly Speaker Bass, in calling for $4.7 billion in federal stimulus money to build a high-speed rail project that would connect Los Angeles and San Francisco.

We gathered at Union Station downtown, where Amtrak inter-city rail lines, Metrolink commuter rail, MTA subway and light rail and bus lines all converge. It’s a natural location for one end of a high-speed line as well.

But why push for high-speed rail? Most Americans haven’t quite known what to do with railroads in 75 years. We’re so spread out, and so dependent on our cars, the thinking goes, that many people west of New York have never even ridden a train, no matter what speed it is.  So why spend large sums of money on a high-speed line? Who needs it?

Well, we do.

High-speed rail already is an important part of transportation networks in Japan, France and other parts of Asia and Europe, moving millions of people quickly and affordably every year, with technology promising to increase top speeds of new rail lines to airplane-like levels. And high-speed rail lines can move a lot of people out of cars and planes, reducing demand on highways and airports already stretched to their capacities.

A high-speed line makes particular sense now, promising to create an estimated 100,000 badly needed jobs. And work on the line may stimulate research and development in an important new technology industry with worldwide growth opportunities.

I’m hopeful the Administration will agree with me and other state leaders and support this worthy project at a crucial time in the state. It’s time for high-speed rail in California.

Community service has many benefits for those who give back; a better city, new skills, new friendships, the warm knowledge you’ve made a difference.

Now, there’s another benefit: a free visit at Disneyland (or Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, if you don’t mind the plane flight).

The Los Angeles Times detailed the new offer in a recent piece (go to http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2009/09/disney-offers-free-park-admission-to-those-who-volunteer.html for the story), but here are the basics:

Beginning Jan. 1, go to http://www.DisneyParks.com to sign up and browse through opportunities for volunteer work. Disney is working with the HandsOn Network, a part of the Points of Light Institute, which operates 250 centers nationwide and connects volunteers to more than 70,000 volunteer agencies.

Up to 1 million volunteers who’ve signed up beginning Jan. 1 will get a free one-day admission ticket for a day’s worth of volunteering at one of the two parks. This is a terrific opportunity, and yet another reminder that doing good can be rewarding in so many different ways.

With Congress back in session, and the President having articulated a sensible and responsible package of proposals, I’m hopeful we’ll see significant and rapid progress toward a bill that can be signed into law.  At the same time, I couldn’t help noticing an article this week in the New York Times by science writer Michael Pollan, author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” The article suggests that getting America to eat better, in ways that reduce obesity and such chronic, preventable and expensive illnesses as Type 2 diabetes, can have a radical impact on what we’re spending for health care.

President Obama’s health-care package could create a powerful new constituency, health insurance companies, for improvements in the way we eat, Pollan wrote. The companies would have financial incentives to reduce their costs in ways other than capping and cancelling coverage or refusing to cover pre-existing conditions. It’s an intriguing concept. Regardless, we can do more to support healthier local eating. I sponsored a motion, also in July, to explore changing a city law that prevents people in R-1 zoning from growing fruit, nuts, flowers or seedlings for off-site sale (home-grown vegetables have been legal for sale for decades).  Supporters have dubbed the bill the Food and Flowers Freedom Act. If approved, it could boost small business creation and reduce our dependence on food raised thousands of miles away.

Meanwhile, other people are working in innovative ways to make available the backyard fruit and other food that grows throughout the city.  A Los Angeles Times article last week (at http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-gleaners9-2009sep09,0,6033018,full.story) describes two different approaches.

Hynden Walch of Glassell Park Hills has created Hillside Produce Cooperative (hillsideproducecooperative.org), which organizes volunteers to jointly gather and share backyard fruit from their respective homes.

Valley Glen resident Rick Nahmias created Food Forward (foodforward.org), an ambitious and admirable volunteer cooperative that has donated nearly 30,000 lbs. of backyard citrus fruit to food pantries this year.

Nahmias calls the program not just a win-win but a “win to the fourth degree.” Homeowners get a tax deduction and care for their trees, food bank clients get fresh and healthy fruit, while the food banks can spend their limited resources on other things.

Not least, volunteers get the satisfaction of making our city a bit better, and yes, healthier too. That’s the kind of reform we can all embrace.

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People seeking a fun and worthwhile opportunity for community service this weekend may want to join in the Coastal Cleanup Day on Sept. 19. Heal the Bay is sponsoring the local portion of this international effort.  For more information and to sign up, go to http://healthebay.org/volunteer/ccd/2009/participate.asp

If some time this Friday, Sept. 18, you see a park bench and some grass where a parking space once was, don’t panic. There’s a reason for the transformation.

Such a pocket park means someone is taking part in PARK(ing) Day 2009, a suddenly international art happening originally started in San Francisco by a group called Rebar. PARK(ing) Day participants transform a metered parking spot into an unmetered park for a few hours, providing a brief excuse to get out of our cars and into, say, a street-side wading pool or park bench.

I’m all for it. I have long supported efforts to encourage more bicycle and public-transit use in Los Angeles, and regularly ride my own bike to City Hall or my district offices from my Echo Park home. And I’ve encouraged city planners and parks officials to look at ways we can create permanent mini parks and green spaces on small parcels of underused land around the city.

PARK(ing) Day is another important opportunity to think a bit about our relationship to our cars and to the city. Despite the presence of such treasures as Griffith Park and nearby national forests, wilderness and recreation areas, the Los Angeles metropolitan area has far less neighborhood park space per capita than most major U.S. cities.

For a few hours on Friday, we can slightly improve on those numbers. There are several PARKs planned in the Los Angeles area, in downtown and South Park, on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice as well as in Santa Monica and West Hollywood

There’s also one in the heart of my district, at 1525 W. Sunset Blvd. in Echo Park. Sponsors include the Echo Park Time Bank, Echo Curio and Nuvia’s, which are providing “plants, a mini pool and comfortable seating,” along with music and free horchata. Now that’s a park, even if only from 10 am to 2 pm for just one fun day.

For more information about PARK(ing) Day, PARK locations, or even to create your own, go to http://www.parkingday.org/

Ted Kennedy’s Real Legacy

The death this week of U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy spawned a wonderful outpouring of tributes to the achievements of one of the longest-serving and most effective senators in United States history.

I’ve had my own visceral reactions to his passing, in part because I met the senator in 2006, when he spoke at the ceremony where I received the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award, named after his brother, from the John F. Kennedy Library and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

That day, the senator mostly talked about John Kennedy’s vision for a New Frontier in society, saying, “President Kennedy believed very strongly… that each of us can make a difference and all of us should try.”

Well, Ted Kennedy tried, working tirelessly to make a difference. Observers rightly pointed to his tireless championing of the needs and interests of the poor, despite his own privileged upbringing. His legislative achievements in areas such as higher minimum wages, worker protections, health care and more have helped shape the country as it is today. He saw public office as a particular form of community service, giving back to the rest of society by trying to make it better.

Even more, I think one of the most important aspects of Ted Kennedy’s approach to public service was the way he conducted himself, with a pragmatic and personable approach that has influenced my own efforts as  Los Angeles City Council president.

Yes, Sen. Kennedy certainly had strong partisan instincts, which he ably and regularly voiced. But importantly, he also could reach across the aisle to political opposites such as Utah’s Orrin Hatch, perhaps  the Senate’s most conservative member. The result, Sen. Hatch told National Public Radio this week, was that the two became unlikely but close friends and effective legislative collaborators.

Sen. Hatch spoke fondly and movingly of his personal and professional time with Sen. Kennedy. Often, he said, they would argue vociferously about political issues, but never stopped being friends or colleagues who could work together to create, and pass into law, legislation that made the country better.

Financial Times columnist Clive Crook wrote that Sen. Kennedy “was neither cynic nor soggy centrist. He was passionate, a liberal’s liberal. Yet he was pragmatic, and was capable of liking and respecting people who disagreed with him. Firm principles married to a friendly tolerance of other views…”

Too often in recent years partisan maneuvering for short-term political gain has complicated the work our country needs done at nearly every level of government. Scoring political points sometimes has been more important than effective policy-making.

Ted Kennedy suggested there is a better way, to be a true political leader rather than a mere political combatant. Problem solving over partisanship means addressing the issues with courage, candor, honor and humor. Of all his legacies, this perhaps was Ted Kennedy’s most important one.

I share President Obama’s call for community service. Government can’t by itself fix the many challenges we face, nor can the private sector. Rather, it requires contributions from all of us, working together through a variety of organizations and initiatives, to help this city and this country achieve its ideals and create, as someone once wrote, a more perfect union.

To that end, in coming weeks, we will unveil here an initiative encouraging and highlighting community service throughout Los Angeles. I’ll discuss more on that in subsequent posts. In the meantime, I plan to occasionally talk about people who already are working to make Los Angeles a better place.

One of those people is Raul Macias. Twelve years ago, the Guadalajara native founded Anahuak Youth Sports Association to give youths on the northeast side of Los Angeles access to soccer leagues.

Today, more than 2,000 boys and girls between the ages of 5 and 17 from the communities along the Los Angeles River are taking part in Anahuak’s programs, which also include education, health and environmental work. Together, they promote positive change in their own backyards.

Taking a different approach is Raegan Payne, a writer and actress in Los Angeles’ Westchester neighborhood whose website, TheGoodMuse.com, details her efforts to volunteer for 50 different non-profit projects by the end of this year.

Her Volunteer Journal details project by project her progress so far, working for groups such as the American Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, Heal the Bay, Project Angel Food, Operation Shanti, The Miracle Project and Tree People.

“Anyone can find an activity that fits their talents and lifestyle, or they might even learn something new,” Raegan told the Culver City News recently. “I’ve learned how to correctly plant a tree, nurse a kitten back to health, teach a group of children to write, test water quality, use a power saw, and so much more. I’m pretty handy to have around now.”

You don’t have to be as ambitious as Raul or Raegan, nor do you have to write about it, to make a difference in Los Angeles. Any community service or volunteer work you can do will help the city and all who live here. And soon, we’ll make it even easier for you to pitch in, helping create a greater Los Angeles.

Note: To learn more about Raul Macias, go to a recent Los Angeles Times article at http://articles.latimes.com/2008/oct/17/local/me-soccerguy17 To learn more about Raegan Payne’s Mission 50 and read her Volunteer Journal postings, go to http://www.thegoodmuse.com.

California’s latest budget squabbles and eventual precariously balanced deal once again painfully highlight something that’s been apparent for years: the basic structure of our state and local government funding and budgetary decision-making is torturously complex and fundamentally broken.

I won’t dwell here on how to fix the state budget process; plenty of people have already voiced their opinions about that, and will continue to do so. But the current state funding system has repeatedly caused collateral damage to local government operations in ways too few people understand.

As chairman of the Democratic National Committee’s 100,000-strong caucus of local elected officials, I have to say that cities, counties, school districts and other local government agencies deserve better than they have gotten from the state in recent years, and so do their constituents. However we fix the state, it can’t be at the expense of cities, counties, special districts and schools and the vital local services they provide every day to our shared constituents.

When people think of what government does to make their lives better, they tend to think of the things local governments do, such as police and fire, K-12 education, ambulances, health clinics, traffic lights, street repairs, parks, beaches and pools, water, sewers and trash pickup. These are the vital direct services that affect every town’s and every person’s quality of life, and affect it every day.

Yet it is exactly those services that will be hit and hurt yet again as the state takes money from local governments to balance its own budget needs. The latest raids on local funding sources include:

· $2 billion from city, county and special district budgets that now will be “loaned” to the state for the next three years. Local governments that already had made painful cuts, in a timely manner, to balance their budgets now must go back and cut again.

· $1.7 billion in redevelopment funds. Redevelopment revenues are used to stimulate investment and job growth in our most economically challenged neighborhoods. These funds are important to our recovery efforts.

· $4.3 billion from local schools, and the deferral of another $1.7 billion.

If California’s budget process eventually does undergo much-needed reform, we must protect cities, counties, schools and special districts from further state raids that undercut their ability to provide the basic, everyday services that every resident of the state depends on. Local governments need more control over and protection for their funding sources. Let us be able to make vital decisions on how best to provide everyday local services without fear that headaches at another level of government will suddenly land in our laps.

This year’s economic-stimulus package contained a huge range of ideas and programs in its many hundreds of pages and hundreds of billions of dollars of appropriations. Few of those ideas and programs have been as immediate a hit as the so-called “Cash for Clunkers” plan, which gives car-buyers vouchers worth up to $4,500 for trading in their low-mileage vehicle for one that’s significantly more fuel-efficient.

It’s been so big a hit, in fact, that in just one week, it exhausted the $1 billion Congress initially set aside, while depleting the supplies of available vehicles on at least some dealers’ lots here in California. Buyers loved it, the auto companies loved it, dealers loved it and the environment will love it.

I love it, too. It’s the sort of smart, pragmatic, market-aware approach to a set of thorny problems that leverages a modest amount of government money as a catalyst that achieves several important goals at once:

· Need to get the economy going? The government incentives were big enough to encourage a wide swathe of people to open their wallets in the still-stumbling economy and buy a new car.

· Need to stabilize a shaky domestic car industry? Nothing helps like a huge sale that doesn’t hurt your profit margins and clears out inventory. July was the best month of the year so far for carmakers, so good they may need to get those factories building more of the highly efficient vehicles that we need to have an internationally competitive auto industry.

· Need to improve the air? The eligibility requirements, tiered to provide some consumer choice and flexibility, required that older, high-emission cars would be exchanged for vehicles with significantly better fuel efficiency. In fact, U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Susan Collins said federal data showed the 250,000 people who’ve already used the program bought cars with mileage improvements that averaged nearly 10 miles more per gallon, much higher than initially projected.

· Need to restart global conversations about controlling greenhouse gases? The Cash for Clunkers program will not only reduce the amount of vehicle-created greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, it sets a strong example for other countries as the Obama Administration lobbies for renewed talks on this complex but vital issue.

· Need to reduce dependence on overseas oil? Less fuel use equates to less need to import oil, and less need to incidentally finance the operations of so many problematic oil-rich but repressive governments.

· Need to help reeling local governments save jobs and provide vital services? The taxes generated by increased vehicle sales will boost the coffers of cities, counties, states and other local government entities.

So, with the lever of a comparatively modest amount of incentive money, the Cash for Clunkers program has been a huge hit, helping move the country a bit closer to achieving an array of important goals. I hope that Congress will quickly re-up the program to ensure continuity and certainty for consumers and dealers, to the benefit of the country.

Just as importantly, I hope we continue to look for other smart solutions. We need more programs that pragmatically achieve important goals by leveraging market forces with intelligent leadership and catalyzing investments. We have a lot to get done and need to be smart, and quick, about it.

Los Angelenos face a lot of challenges these days, from a troubled economy to a stubborn drought. But few issues as consistently top the list of concerns among voters I talk with as fixing our broken national health care system.

The problems the system creates can be heartbreaking: There’s the family whose breadwinner is panicked over her lost job, and the paid insurance it provided. There’s the person with a chronic “pre-existing condition” who now can’t get coverage, no matter what he can pay. There’s the couple facing bankruptcy, struggling, even with coverage, to pay off the costs of treating a single serious illness. There are even the would-be entrepreneurs who don’t dare quit their day job to pursue their dream because they can’t risk going without coverage for themselves or their family.

Yes, the system provides some of the world’s best quality of care for those positioned to take advantage of it. But some 46 million Americans, about one in eight of us, have no insurance at all. They delay care until a crisis hits, then jam our overwhelmed emergency rooms seeking last-minute help.

Even among the insured, many have less coverage than they would need to get through even a moderately serious situation without financial devastation. Those who file claims often face daunting paperwork, and the possibility their coverage could be revoked. And worse yet, the system rewards the wrong things, with few incentives for preventive care, and too many for excessive tests and expensive procedures.

President Obama has pledged to fix the system, laying out a series of first principles but letting Congress hash through the details of a major reform bill. There is some substantial movement toward a landmark bill, as most of the major players have committed to negotiating a workable compromise.

That’s good news. But we can’t afford to delay serious reform. It’s too important to the long-term health of the nation’s economy, its business competitiveness, its entrepreneurial spirit and most importantly, its human spirit. We can’t leave millions of our people to be needlessly ground down by the vagaries and costs of a badly broken system.

That’s why I introduced a resolution before the Los Angeles City Council last week that would put the council and mayor on record as supporting President Obama’s health-care reform principles, and to direct our representatives to push for those principles as part of the city’s federal legislative program.

Few cities would benefit more than Los Angeles from a reformed system that covers as many Americans as possible, and frees us to deal with the many other challenges this nation must fix.

As many of you know, L.A. is facing fiscal problems of unprecedented magnitudes and in planning our budget we faced a shortfall of $530 million. Several weeks ago in this space, I set out some principles that I intended to use in my work to build a balanced budget. They included sharing sacrifices without compromising our values, protecting our gains in public safety, and treating our employees humanely. I also noted that, because the majority of our budget is spent on payroll, the hard reality is that this cost must come down one way or another.

We have been making progress in this area through the Mayor’s negotiations with the leaders of the Coalition of City Unions (representing about 22,000 of the city’s 40,000 workers). In the spirit of shared sacrifice, Coalition Union members would defer any cost of living adjustment increases (COLA’s) to their salaries for the next 2 years. They would also be increasing their payroll contribution to the City pension fund, which will allow us to implement an early retirement incentive plan without increasing our pension fund liabilities. If approved by the members, these measures will save approximately $200 million and allow the City to avoid the vast majority of furloughs and layoffs at a time when the regional unemployment rate threatens to top 12%.

This agreement doesn’t quite get us over the finish line in terms of getting our budget deficit to zero, but combined with other cuts that have already been approved, our budget shortfall has shrunk from $530 million to $130 million. We are still in negotiations with other city unions, and I’m hopeful that they will follow the example set by the Coalition Union members to help us eliminate this remaining shortfall.

You may have heard that the early retirement program will put a greater strain on an already overburdened pension fund. I too am concerned about additional liabilities in our pension fund, and that’s why we are taking a data-driven approach. This agreement was based on two previous actuarial studies in addition to hundreds of hours of research and discussion. Further, we are awaiting a third actuarial report that we expect to receive in the next three weeks. This agreement will not take effect unless the third report supports the previous conclusions.

As I’ve said before, transparency in our governing process is important to me. This agreement has not received final approval, and will not receive final approval until the study been presented to the public and until 30 days for public comment has elapsed. The study will by posted on LACity.org when it is complete, and I encourage everyone to take a look.

Everyone should also be aware that there is currently a $600 million long-term shortfall in the city’s pension fund, which is largely a result of the significant stock market losses that have occurred in the past year. While this shortfall has no impact on this year’s budget, it will rapidly become a problem if we do nothing. However, we are actively working to address this issue with the implementation of tiered benefits for future employees. Stay tuned, as it will continue to be discussed in the coming months.