TABLE 16.--MOODY'S RATINGS OF SELECTED COMMUNITIES AND SCHOOL DISTRICTS IN THE LOS ANGELES-LONG BEACH METROPOLITAN AREA, 1967

Assuming the word "regional" to mean in this case the whole territory of Southern California, one could cite only a couple of pieces of tangible evidence of there being something in the nature of (functional) regional government in this area, but one of them has been of the greatest importance. This is the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California created in 1927 for the purpose of bringing Colorado River water to the Los Angeles and San Diego areas once Hoover Dam had been completed. Without its vital service, the prodigious urban growth which has occurred in this region would have been literally impossible.

The only other significant instance of a "regional" governmental operation is that afforded by the Southern California Rapid Transit District. RTD, as it is commonly called, reflects the determination of the counties and cities of this region to develop an effective system of rapid rail mass transportation. Up to now its operations have been limited to running the bus service set up by its predecessor the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) referred to earlier. Its staff is hard at work, however, on plans for the rail network.

Planning

Two kinds of regional planning are under way in the Los Angeles-Long Beach SMSA today. One is the work of the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission. It is responsible for developing a master plan for the whole county, for working with other public agencies to insure the fulfillment of existing plans, and for handling matters of zoning in unincorporated areas. The other is the kind of work being launched in July 1967 by the newly formed Southern California Association of Governments.

SCAG, the counterpart of ABAG in the Bay area, is composed of 6 counties--Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura and Imperial--and 89 out of a possible 142 cities. It is strictly advisory in character. Whether any of the plans formulated by its staff are translated into action will depend on the response they evoke

from the governing bodies of the counties and cities to which they pertain. Its potential value lies initially in the merit of the work done by its staff, which is just now being recruited, and ultimately in the leverage it has by reason of the fact that many Federal grants depend on its approval, especially those within the jurisdiction of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Its biggest handicap, on the other hand, is the fact that many people are suspicious of it for fear that it might open the door to metropolitan supergovernment.

Recreation

Los Angeles County shows its concern for regional recreation facilities in several ways. Through its Parks and Recreation Department it plans and operates a number of county parks, playgrounds, golf courses and beaches and provides services to a number of special parkway districts. In addition, through its Department of Real Estate Management, it has developed and manages several small craft harbors along the Pacific Coast.

Public Safety

Two policies of Los Angeles County deserve special mention in connection with public safety. By setting up a county-wide Disaster and Civil Defense Commission including representatives of cities as well as its own agencies, the county has shown appreciation of the fact that physical trouble is no respecter of governmental boundaries. The other regional contribution to public safety stems from the Lakewood formula which the county perfected in the middle Fifties. By virtue of the police service the Sheriff's Office supplies to a great many of the contract cities, not to mention fire protection and several others, Los Angeles County provides the whole SMSA with at least the beginnings of a regional system of public safety.

Regional Special Districts

Here also there are two agencies created by Los Angeles County which are emblematic of regional concern. One is the county-wide Flood Control District dating from 1915. Its work is costly of the taxpayers' money but its service is essential to the security of life and property in many parts of the area. The other is the Air Pollution Control District of more recent vintage. Early in the postwar period Los Angeles County adopted a policy of unrelenting pressure against smog and it has never forgotten the pledge. Both districts are run by the Board of Supervisors; they relieve city governments of what would otherwise be some very heavy burdens.

Local Government Policies

Tax Competition for Business and Industry

Competition between cities for new business establishments and industrial plants is probably as keen in Southern California as it is anywhere in the country. Every city and its chamber of commerce does its best to alert the companies which are prime candidates for migration to the advantages it offers from the angles of transportation, zoning, water, power, and labor supply. But there is no resort to tax forgiveness whatever--nor indeed much disposition to emphasize differences in tax rates, for they are subject to change. Los Angeles, for example, might well lower its property tax rate to some extent by requiring its immensely profitable Department of Water and Power, one of the world's greatest utility enterprises, to make a larger annual contribution to the general fund of the city. But it hesitates to do so because one of its strongest "selling points" in persuading firms to locate within its boundaries

is that it can offer unlimited qualities of both water and power at rates lower than those prevailing in many if not most other communities in this area.

Use of Service Charges and Fees

Because of increasing complaints about the burden of property taxes, many representative communities in the Los Angeles-Long Beach metropolitan area have begun to make considerable use of service charges and to hike their business license fees--or at least to consider taking such steps. Lacking any big shopping center of its own, Claremont, for example, benefits only to a limited extent from its one-cent sales and use tax, despite the fact that its per capita purchasing power is relatively high. Under the circumstances what it has done is to make two service charges which together amount for the average household to $34 per year: $30 for refuse collection and disposal and $4 for sewer service.

While the people of Claremont accepted the imposition of these charges without significant protest (probably because the city council made it clear that the only alternative was an increase in property taxes), the neighboring city of Pomona has had a different experience. Two years ago the council voted to impose a similar charge for sewer service except that it was called a sewer tax. One might have thought that this would be only a semantic difference, but it has proved to be otherwise. Both the winning candidate for mayor and one of the winning candidates for the council this spring ran on a platform promising to "repeal the sewer tax." Now they have the problem of redeeming this pledge without incurring ill will either by a reduction in city services or by a new hike in property taxes.

The central city has also been giving serious consideration to the device of the service charge as a means of balancing its budget. Faced with an $18,000,000 revenue gap, Mayor Samuel W. Yorty proposed as part of a five-point program a service charge for refuse collection as one way of coping with a large fraction of the deficit. In contrast, the chairman of the council's committee on revenue and taxation urged a package approach including a) a 2-percent utilities use tax on gas, electric and telephone bills, b) a 10-percent increase in the business license tax, which had already been raised once or twice in recent years, c) an increase in the dog license fee from $3 to $4, d) fees for excavation and trench resurfacing by private utilities, e) fees for police permits, f) continuation of the realty transfer tax which had been adopted on a trial basis a year ago, and g) a tax on office building rentals.

Other proposals included a 1-percent payroll tax, with a $4,000 exemption, on all wages earned within the city, a $5 monthly fee for parking in city-owned buildings and facilities, and a 2-cent increase in the cigarette tax. As for the Mayor's fivepoint proposal, it was designed to raise $50,000,000 and reduce the property tax rate by 49¢ for every $100 of assessed valuation. As of mid-July 1967, the nature of the final solution remained in doubt, the Council not being obliged to adopt specific revenue measures until late August.

Open Occupancy

Since the invalidation of Proposition 14 by the U.S. Supreme Court in May 1967, both proponents and opponents of the policy of open housing have been conferring for the purpose of achieving a compromise that will insure voluntary compliance with that standard. They are looking for a middle ground between the 4,500,000 Californians who in November 1964 voted for Proposition 14 and the 2,300,000 who opposed it in favor of sustaining the 1959 Rumford Housing Act.

The initiative in arranging for these discussions has been taken by the Housing Advisory Committee of the Fair Employment Practices Commission which is the state's enforcement agency for the Rumford Act. Having been beaten in both the California and

Federal courts, it is understandable why the opponents of open housing are interested in compromising. But why the proponents? The answer lies in two facts. On the one hand, the backers of the Rumford Act realize the enormous complexity of the task of making any such law truly effective. On the other, they are obliged to consider the possibility that the Rumford Act might actually be repealed by the more conservative Legislature elected along with Governor Reagan in November 1966.

What FEPC's Housing Advisory Committee has proposed to the California Real Estate Association, which was the prime sponsor of Proposition 14, is a massive publicity campaign designed to promote acceptance of the idea of voluntary recognition of every person's right to equal opportunity in the field of housing. If CREA responds sympathetically, which seems likely, and if FEPC itself approves the form and content of the advertising, the plan will be submitted to one or two of the major national foundations in the hope that they would underwrite the greater part of the $1,000,000 of expenses it would entail.

Meanwhile the first effort by FEPC to test its enforcement authority with regard to rentals in apartment houses of less than five units has just gotten under way in the city of Glendale. Up to now it has been limited to investigating complaints about discrimination with respect to apartments with five or more units and to sales and rentals of housing built with government financial assistance. But last April a decision by a Superior Court, granting FEPC a preliminary injunction prohibiting the owner of a duplex from evicting a Caucasian tenant and his Negro wife pending a hearing into the couple's insistence that they were being asked to move solely because of her race, has opened the door to an expansion of the Commission's power.

Utilization of Federal Funds for Urban Development

The principal contribution made by the Federal government toward urban development in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area has undoubtedly come as a by-product of its expenditures in the key "spill-over" areas--for highways, public welfare, education, health and hospitals. This is so because these all comprise part of the foundation, the infrastructure, for civilized life. However, beyond the range of such programs, Federal funding has also made more direct and specific contributions to the strengthening or improvement of many urban communities.

Most of these have to do with urban renewal. Despite the fact that only bits and pieces of the vision originally stimulated by this phrase have been realized, a number of important things have been happening. Cities like Los Angeles (in the Bunker Hill, Hoover and Watts districts), Pasadena, Torrance, Redondo Beach and Santa Fe Springs all have projects in various stages of planning or execution. In every case, what has made the difference between talk and action has been the availability of "money from Washington" to pay for part of the planning and then, a plan having been approved and a local renewal agency having been established, to acquire and clear the land so that the actual work of rebuilding could begin.

Finally, mention should be made of the fact that, with all its faults, the War on Poverty program and also the beautification and open space programs adopted by Congress in 1965, are helping to make a number of communities in this area better places in which to live.

Federal Government Policies

Federal Financial Involvement in Key "Spill-Over" Areas

Highways.--Supplementing what has just been noted in the preceding section, some comment should probably be made regarding the impact of Federal activity in at

least three of the major "spill-over" areas. Los Angeles is the first of the great metropolitan regions to have been built up since the automobile came into common use. It has no comprehensive system of public transportation and even the proposed RTD system of mass rapid transit will leave hundreds of thousands of people in scores of areas dependent on their motor cars for getting from place to place efficiently. Under these circumstances--and especially in view of the tremendous size of the Los Angeles-Long Beach region--Federal aid for U.S. highways and the new interstate highways has been indispensable. Without them the people of Los Angeles County would find it almost impossible to develop any sense of community.

Education.--Special aid for school districts in "Federally-impacted" areas around defense installations has been important to a number of communities in recent years, but Federal aid to education generally started only a year or two ago. It has, however, been significant for the poorer communities both inside the central city and outside. Consider the Los Angeles Unified School District. According to an article by Curtis J. Sitomer (Christian Science Monitor, Western Edition, May 6, 1967), every eighth child in the system requires some kind of special attention, the total cost amounting to $32 a year. Not quite all of this is paid by the Federal government, but much of it is. Consequently there was something approaching consternation in many parts of the district this spring (1967) when the Office of Economic Opportunity warned the superintendent that Los Angeles might lose $4,000,000 from its antipoverty allotment, and California's state compensatory education office notified him that, on top of this, the district would probably suffer a severe cutback in the $21,000,000 it was currently receiving under the Federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Among the children getting special help through these funds have been the following: a) the 15 percent of the city's junior and senior high school students who are classed as "underachievers," b) the thousands of Mexican-American youngsters who need special language instruction because they have trouble speaking, reading, and writing English, c) the juvenile delinquents with police records who are required to attend special adjustment schools costing $1,052 per pupil per year, twice the average for ordinary students. Los Angeles may have to curtail some of these programs but is most reluctant to do so, in part because they help to relieve the social tensions in areas like Watts and East Los Angeles.

Public welfare.--Southern California is prosperous as few places on earth have been, but her economy is also marked by great inequality in the distribution of income. As already indicated, there are heavy OAS and AFDC case loads in many sections of Los Angeles County, and these entail heavy expenditures on the part of the Federal, state and county governments. Though these are called "categorical aids"--meaning that such assistance must be meted out to any applicant who fits the stipulations--it has been possible up to now for a state to insist on a residence requirement in connection with them. Recently, however, a three-judge Federal court in Connecticut declared any such requirement unconstitutional on the ground that to enforce it would interfere with a person's "right of interstate travel."

Should this ruling be upheld, it could "alter the basic welfare structure of the entire nation," as the Los Angeles Times argued editorially shortly afterward (July 7, 1967). No one can be sure to what extent such case loads would grow but welfare officials in this huge SMSA are understandably apprehensive for Los Angeles normally rejects from 150 to 200 applicants every month on the ground of their not meeting the residence requirement. State and local governments now bear approximately 60 percent of all such welfare costs; they would have no option but to demand that the Federal government pay a substantially larger share.

Federal Financial Involvement in Urban Development

Already by 1964 there were 43 separate Federal urban development programs on the statute books and several others have been adopted during the past three years.