With three years of economic stagnation, perennial budget crises, double-digit unemployment, entrenched partisanship and little substantive change coming from Sacramento lawmakers, the Los Angeles County Business Federation (BizFed) launched a campaign yesterday that urges the state’s elected leaders to work together to implement a unified economic agenda.

BizFed is a grassroots alliance of more than 95 existing business organizations with more than 165,000 businesses whose goal is to effectively mobilize the collective voice of the Los Angeles County business community. It started its campaign with a series of full-page newspaper ads aimed at igniting public discussion and spurring statewide cooperation behind a reform framework to re-establish economic growth and job creation in the Golden State.

The ads are a first for the 4-year-old alliance and follow on the heels of a BizFed member survey that found economic confidence had soured even further and a dwindling number of employers are expecting to hire new workers in the next few months.

BizFed believes such action can start with the jobs-first framework contained in “The Economic Growth & Competitiveness Agenda,” which has received widespread support from elected and business leaders around the state. The agenda calls for gearing up exports, driving innovation, reinvigorating manufacturing and a host of other initiatives aimed at creating a production economy focused on global trade.

While the Agenda doesn’t have all of the solutions, BizFed believes it’s a starting framework for every elected official, business and labor leader in this state to work collaboratively to move us forward – now.

BizFed’s ads call for no more “blah, blah” in the state Capitol and urge lawmakers to “stop arguing” and “start acting.” The ads will continue through Jan. 30.

In the coming months, BizFed also will take steps to unite with local and state officials around key elements of the Agenda including: aligning infrastructure decisions with regional strategies, changing the California Environmental Quality Act, rooting state policies and programs in sustainable regional strategies, and creating a statewide export strategy.

Please join us in this campaign to get our state’s elected leaders to work together to develop significant and sustainable solutions for California’s economy. Businesses throughout the state and the more than 2 million unemployed Californians can’t afford six more months of bickering in the State Capitol. The time to move forward is now. For more information, please visit: www.bizfed.org