MAYOR JIM HAHN ON JOBS AND THE ECONOMY

Mayor Hahn’s efforts to create jobs and bring investment to Los Angeles communities are helping to turn around neighborhoods across our city.

Mayor Hahn’s comprehensive approach to creating more Los Angeles jobs includes making our city’s neighborhoods safer for businesses, reducing and reforming the city’s business tax, and preparing our city’s workforce for quality jobs. To help Los Angeles be more attractive to businesses, Mayor Hahn has signed into law several reforms that simplify the city’s business tax, including an across the board cut. Working with business leaders, labor leaders, developers, housing advocates, and community leaders, Mayor Hahn has helped bring tens of thousands of jobs to Los Angeles.

America’s top business leaders have said that the availability of housing for their employees is a key factor when they are deciding where to locate their business. With this in mind, Mayor Hahn created a $100 million Housing Trust Fund and doubled the pace of housing production in Los Angeles. In just three years, Los Angeles went from having one of the worst records on housing to becoming home to the nation’s largest local housing trust fund.

Below are highlights of Mayor Hahn’s accomplishments and initiatives to create job opportunities and improve L.A.’s economy.

CREATING JOBS AND ATTRACTING INVESTMENT IN L.A. NEIGHBORHOODS

	Eliminated the city's business tax for Los Angeles businesses with less than $100,000 in annual gross receipts. Those small businesses represent more than 60 percent of all Los Angeles businesses.
	Extended the business tax exemption on small start-up businesses from one year to two years.
	Signed into law much-needed “bad debt” reform so that businesses are taxed only on bills actually paid, not invoices.
	Implemented “single category filing” and other measures to simplify Los Angeles’ tax system.
	Saved taxpayers $11 million and assisted local businesses through a program he created to take advantage of discounts that some of the city’s vendors offer to customers who pay their bills on time.
	Created the Industrial Development Policy Initiative (IDPI) to increase the number of manufacturing jobs and prevent existing jobs from being moved to other countries.
	Working to make Los Angeles neighborhoods attractive to investors by putting more police on our streets and restoring Los Angeles’ community policing program. After three years of increasing crime, these efforts have reversed that trend. Citywide violent crime is down nearly 20 percent compared with just two years ago.
	Strongly supported LAPD’s efforts to establish plans for protecting critical locations, such as office buildings, movie studios, the Port of Los Angeles, and Los Angeles International Airport. Known as Operation Archangel, the program has been designated as a national model.
	Helped create the Small and Local Business Advisory Committee (SLBAC), which brings together businesses to help the city streamline its contracting process to give more opportunities to small and local businesses.
	Secured an agreement with Gigante to bring hundreds of jobs and five new grocery stores to Los Angeles.
	Created the city’s first Business Improvement District (BID) resources guide and provides support to BIDs through Mayor Hahn’s Los Angeles Housing and Business Team.
	Established the Mayor’s Office of International Trade, which has assisted more than 1,400 local businesses with generating more than $100 million in exports.
	Hosted over 30 free workshops in neighborhoods for local businesses to network and learn more about opportunities for financing and contracting in Los Angeles.
	Launched a $225 million project to renovate LAX’s Tom Bradley International Terminal, which will improve services for international passengers and create jobs for local families.
	Created a Development Services Committee to bring together city departments involved in the development process to help stimulate economic development in Los Angeles neighborhoods.
	Issued an Executive Order to create the city’s first Economic Development Cabinet to develop a comprehensive and strategic approach to improving Los Angeles’ economy.
	Created streamlined policies and implemented a customer service approach at city departments, including a one-hour, money-back guarantee for Department of Building and Safety Express Permits. If permits are not reviewed and qualified applicants are not given their permit within one hour of their request, the permit is free.
	Implemented an e-Permit program, which allows customers to apply and receive certain building and safety permits on-line.
	Directed the Department of Building and Safety to create a fund that will protect the city’s ability to provide reliable and efficient service, especially during economic downturns.
	Created the Los Angeles Economic Impact Task force to develop a plan to help boost Los Angeles’ economy after the terrorist attacks of September 11. The plan included assistance to workers in the tourism industry, the “Dine LA” and “Shop LA” programs to stimulate the local economy, and promoting tourism to Los Angeles from Asian countries.
	Traveled to Asia to promote tourism to Los Angeles in November 2002. According to the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau, between 2003 and 2004, Los Angeles’ increase in visitors from Japan outpaced that of Japanese visitors to San Francisco, New York, and Chicago. Japanese tourists to Los Angeles generated spending of approximately $302 million in 2003 and are estimated to spend about $311 million in 2004.

BUILDING MORE HOUSING

	Created a $100 million Housing Trust Fund -- the largest in the nation – to help finance new affordable housing. The Fund has invested nearly $80 million to finance over 2,750 new housing units. It has also helped the city win an additional $374 million in county, state and federal funds and double the pace of housing production since Mayor Hahn took office.
	Expanded the adaptive reuse ordinance, which is helping to adapt vacant buildings into thousands of quality housing units citywide. Examples of adaptive reuse projects include the Historic Gas Company Lofts project in Downtown and the Wilshire at Western project at the site of the former Getty Oil Headquarters.
	Created the Maximizing Our Real Estate (MORE) program, which is helping the city to identify its unused properties that could be used for housing.
	Providing financial and technical assistance to help working families buy homes through a partnership with Countrywide Home Loans, Fannie Mae, and the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust “HIT HOME.”
	Helping low- and moderate-income first-time homebuyers through a partnership with the California Housing Finance Agency and the Southern California Home Financing Authority.

PREPARING L.A.’S WORKFORCE

	Established the L.A. Economy Project, which is working to ensure that Los Angeles workers have the skills they need to meet the needs of Los Angeles businesses. Conducted by the Milken Institute, the first phase of this project is the city’s first-ever study of local businesses’ workforce needs and a skills assessment of Los Angeles’ workforce.
	Partnering with the Workforce Investment Board, Mayor Hahn created the Jobs Growth Fund to help fund job training and placement services for Los Angeles residents.
	Created Literacy@Work: The Los Angeles Workforce Literacy Project to provide services to under-educated adults. Mayor Hahn’s efforts were recognized by the Literacy Network of Greater Los Angeles, which awarded him the 2003 Outstanding Literacy Champion Award, and the National Alliance of Urban Literacy Coalitions, which presented him an award his dedication, support and commitment to increasing literacy in Los Angeles.
	Created the award-winning Cash For College program, which has helped over 22,000 Los Angeles students and their families gain access to financial aid and cash grant opportunities. The program trains thousands of volunteers to assist families with filling out complicated financial aid forms. In 2003, Mayor Hahn received the Distinguished Service Award from the California Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators in recognition of his commitment to helping students go to college.
	Established a School Facilities Division in the Mayor’s Office to work with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) on building new schools to help relieve overcrowding.
	Expanded the city’s nationally-recognized LA’s BEST after school program to serve over 5,500 additional students at over 45 additional schools. The program now provides free of charge a safe, educational, and fun place for more than 20,000 Los Angeles students at over 120 elementary schools. Mayor Hahn has pledged to expand LA’s BEST to every public school where students are not currently served by a quality after school program.
	Worked with the Los Angeles Public Library to open or renovate over 25 branch libraries, which are equipped with computers to provide access to the Internet, adult literacy services, and activities to encourage children to read. The library construction program was managed so successfully that two additional libraries are being built with the savings.

SUPPORTING THE WORLD’S ENTERTAINMENT CAPITAL

	Working to keep production in Los Angeles through an Executive Order he issued directing city departments to designate a film liaison, develop consistent permit guidelines, and ensure that permit fees do not exceed the cost of providing service.
	Signed into law a package of business tax reforms to help attract and keep production in Los Angeles. These reforms include eliminating the business tax for certain industry professionals, including some writers, producers, and independent filmmakers, and nearly eliminating the business tax on productions less than $2.5 million.
	Proposed eliminating business taxes for over 60% of Los Angeles’ businesses by exempting from the tax businesses with less than $100,000 in annual gross receipts, including nearly 4,000 local entertainment-related businesses.
	Worked with City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and the LAPD to launch a targeted effort to fight film piracy. These efforts have led to over 260 arrests since the program was launched in January 2004, doubling the number of piracy-related arrests made in the previous two years combined.
	Established a Film Industry Advisory Committee that works with Mayor Hahn and City Councilmembers on efforts to promote and retain production in Los Angeles.
	Facilitated more than $1 billion in development in Hollywood to restore tourism to the world’s entertainment capital, including the major development at Hollywood and Highland that serves as the permanent home of the Academy Awards and residential-retail projects at the landmark intersections of Hollywood and Vine and Sunset and Vine.