Maybe now the local business community will get more respect, you think?
The Los Angeles Unified School District pretty much dissed the business community in the runup to the June 4 election. The district pushed a tax-raising question onto the ballot, ignoring the offer by businesses to work with the school district to come up with a tax proposal all could get behind so long as the district postponed the election.
Largely as a result, influential business groups came out against the measure, including the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, Los Angeles County Business Federation and the Building Owners and Managers Association of Greater Los Angeles.
The question, as you probably know, needed two-thirds approval to pass. It only got 45 percent.
Supporters of the measure – the school board, the school unions, elected city officials, among others – apparently assumed that voters would approve the proposed 16 cents-a-foot parcel tax for indoor space because it would fall heaviest on businesses and wealthier people, or at least those with big homes. And after all, the money would be used for the kids.
But business groups, who were a bit riled about being left out of the process, made some compelling counter arguments and made them publicly. There was no guarantee that the new money would be used for the kids, especially since the district needs ever-larger volumes of cash to pay for big pensions, they pointed out. And the district doesn’t exactly have a sterling record of sound stewardship, financial or otherwise.
Said BOMA’s official statement: “District bureaucrats and defenders of the failed status quo want taxpayers to bail out a school district with a history of red ink, appalling education results, declining enrollment, runaway administrative hiring and exploding retirement and health care costs.”
Just think. Harsh statements like that may not have been made if the district had worked with businesses. In fact, businesses may have supported a different tax measure had they not been snubbed. Instead, well, here we are.
So, do you think the business community will get more respect next time? Maybe, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, if I had one. Dissing the business community is too ingrained.