It’s not often I get to feel glad that I’m not a (reported) billionaire, but I’m glad I am not 49-year-old private equity investor and newly fledged Deputy Mayor Austin Beutner.
Beutner was last week appointed the mayor’s new deputy and chief executive for economic and business policy. The media title is “Job Czar.” He will also have, quoting the Times, “a new line of direct authority over the Department of Water and Power, the Port of Los Angeles and the economic and business policies at Los Angeles World Airports.”
Columnists at the Times and the Daily News acclaimed the appointment of Mr B, of whom almost no one had ever heard. Local unemployment stands at over 12 percent. It’s much higher in the neighborhoods where the major current career opportunities are with the Crips and Salvator Maratrucha. Clearly, jobs are a huge priority. Said the mayor, “Austin has a real vision for economic development and job creation.”
First and foremost, Beutner said he’d try to make LA (the Times said) “a friendlier place for the sort of businesses that create well-paying jobs.” Excuse me, but this is where I came in. For 30 years and four mayoral administrations, mayors and deputy mayors have promised exactly the same thing. As a result, tax structures have been gently shuffled, regulatory bureaucracies have received many a mild tweak and national campaigns have been launched to sell the world on LA’s commerce-friendly attractions.
No one has claimed these measures turned LA into a business paradise. But during this period, two utterly contradictory business developments did take place…
Continue reading New LA “Job Czar” Hired: Well, That’s One New Job Created