The newest member of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors, Mark Ridley-Thomas has already jump-started a number of economic development policy initiatives for his district, projects like the Expo Line, the Martin Luther King-Harbor Medical Center, and the Crenshaw Corridor. His rationale: careful strategic planning could help the Second District yield multiple benefits to the region and local communities in the years to come. To detail his agenda and accomplishments in his first 100 days in office, TPR is pleased to share the following exclusive interview with L.A. County Supervisor Ridley-Thomas.
You now have been in office more than 100 days, longer than President Obama. What goals did you set at the beginning of your term, and what have you already accomplished?
The first 100 days were built on the theme of empowering communities and delivering hope. The centerpiece of the first 100 days in office was to give complete assurance that the Martin Luther King Medical Center would be a strong component of the county's safety net. We have accomplished that with the announcement of the conceptual framework for the University of California, the state of California, and the county to build a new complex for the community. We have also launched an agenda for constituent service centers to be strategically located in the Second District for the purpose of enhancing the quality of services that constituents receive. We are putting in place the appropriate departments, not the least of which is to make the environmental agenda more prominent in terms of services delivered. We are also moving forward with revitalization of centers in key areas such as Culver City, Lennox, Firestone, Ladera Heights, and Exposition Park. A lot of what is going on in terms of how we are moving forward centers around economic revitalization-things that I know well and that I know can make a difference to those who voted for me.
You mentioned the high priority and focus you have given to the Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor hospital. Tie that together with your bringing in Dan Rosenfeld, founder of Urban Partners, as your land use deputy. How will your land use and economic development team combine the need for that hospital with the need to develop that community?
The Martin Luther King Medical Center should be looked at in a very different way than what it has been for many years. It ought to be viewed as a 38-acre parcel of real estate that has catalytic potential for the community in which it is located. Therefore, the Urban Land Institute will convene to focus on what the highest and best uses are given the fact that we are re-engineering and redesigning that medical campus. What can and will happen there is very exciting. In my experience serving on the City Council of Los Angeles, I had the opportunity to work with the Urban Land Institute when they were doing work along the Vermont Avenue Corridor. This has been another opportunity for us to work together on something even more significant.
Dan Rosenfeld and I worked together when I chaired the Information and Technology General Services Committee of the City Council. He was assigned to the Real Estate Division in the Department of General Services. We have been collaborating on a variety of things over the past ten years and this is an opportunity to work together more closely and directly on the other end. We are already having an impact, and I am very, very glad about it.
The County Board of Supervisors is also the local government for the unincorporated areas. You have Hawthorne, Compton, and Carson in the southeast parts of your districts that also have development opportunities. Can you elaborate on some of the objectives and goals you have for those communities?
The incorporated communities and municipalities of the district have their own economic development teams with their own agenda. The unincorporated areas, such as Ladera Heights or Lennox, as well as incorporated areas in the central part of the city of Los Angeles-about 25 or so-are where the county and community government commission partnership should work. Private sector investors can, should, and will make a difference. We are already laying out plans for how that should take off so that in those unincorporated areas the County Board of Supervisors is the equivalent of a city council or a mayor. These are great communities in the Second District, and we are already off to a good start doing some wonderful things.
Let's turn to transportation and the twin problems of congestion and the need for infrastructure and jobs. Let's start with the Crenshaw Corridor Transit Study. What's your vision for the opportunities that can flow from that study?
The first thing that people need to appreciate is that the Crenshaw Corridor work will not be scuttled. There may be a notion in the minds of some that it will be given low priority. I am here to advise them to rethink that. There is no way under the sun that I would have been an advocate and supporter of Measure R, encouraging the constituents that I represent to support that measure, only to find that we're at the short end of the stick as it relates to those resources. We have caused Metro to know that, and we are prepared to advocate with intensity around that issue. Crenshaw has been a candidate corridor for transit development for at least a quarter of a century. It seems to me that it is high time that we make good on all of those false starts. The first thing is to make it clear that there will be no placing it on the back burner.
What opportunities flow from the ongoing construction of the Expo Line?
There are huge opportunities, but the first opportunity has to be grounded in working with the communities that will be directly affected so as not to have the project endlessly delayed. The opportunities, while not limitless, are very extensive, but the matter of community outreach and involvement to facilitate the embrace of all stakeholders, including those who live close to the work that is being done with respect to the Expo Line, is important. They are paying very close attention to the opportunities for small businesses, the opportunities related to local hiring-which have been lagging-and the opportunities to have long-term economic development along that corridor. These are very important considerations, and I am pleased to have an opportunity to weigh in and push for a favorable outcome.
As a state senator, you helped secure $210 million from the Federal Transportation Administration to explore tolling on the 110 and 10 freeways. How is this demonstration project progressing?
I authored the legislation-$210 million dollars for a tolling demonstration project for a three-year inlay-to see if it can do, essentially, three things. One is to relieve traffic congestion on the 110 Freeway as well as a segment of the 10 Freeway. Two is to have the ancillary impact of improving air quality. Three is to have economic development spin-off along the corridor, particularly the 110. The work is underway, and it will be very interesting to see if this demonstration project holds the kind of long-term promise that we hope.
Another feature is the extent to which technology will allow those who are of low income to pay less, so that the project would not have economically discriminatory features. It would put to rest those who would refer to HOT Lanes as "Luxury Lanes"-lanes for those who were economically advantaged and have the capacity to pay.
The good news is that on the southern end we are already beginning to think through a mixed-use economic development project that will breathe life into the southern end of the 110.
We do this interview during the week that President Obama is in Los Angeles. Talk a little bit about the hopes that the county and you have for leveraging the stimulus and other resources from the federal government that are available to the county of Los Angeles.
With respect to the Second District and county's proposal, I requested approximately $500 million for the Martin Luther King Medical Center and the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, both of which are shovel-ready projects in the Second District that would bring significance to the infrastructure of the respective communities in which they exist as well as advancing the quality of patient care.
In my exchange with the president, I took the opportunity to suggest to him that this was the moment in time when the stimulus package could go a long way to help Los Angeles with respect to its safety net. It's not just simply a matter of one community. The new Martin Luther King Medical Center is of benefit to the entirety of Los Angeles and it needs to be viewed as such.
You left the Legislature to serve on the County Board of Supervisors. Your good friend Karen Bass is speaker of the California Assembly. From your point of view now in local government, what is the impact of the legislature's and the governor's budget and programs to date? What do they need to do to better assist you and the county to do the jobs that the public expects?
The fundamental problem with Sacramento is the extent to which partisanship blocks out the good sense, the common sense, and the results-orientation that improves the quality of life in the county of Los Angeles and all the other counties in the state. There is no other explanation for the circumstances that we experienced with this protracted budget process-none, other than the fact that you have a feud around the issue of taxes.
I can tell you, having been in that environment for six years: it is ugly, it is dysfunctional, and it is completely avoidable. It is the same nonsense that ensued around the stimulus package-rather than critics of the president finding find constructive ways to resolve these issues, they are reduced to partisan bickering while the nation's economy goes to hell in a hand basket. The only thing they know how to do is to enhance partisan rhetoric; it is absolutely disgusting. Thank God the same issues haven't developed in local government.
When we interview you again at the end of 2009, what will we be talking about?
The only thing I know that is worth talking about is results. I would hope that we will have a report that will name specific constituent service centers that will be under development; that we will be able to give a specific reference to the economic development projects that have already come forward; that we will have put stimulus dollars to work for local communities; that we will give a shot in the arm to small businesses; that the cultural arts agenda will be robust; and that we will have a report that will show the progress we will have made on the Martin Luther King Medical Center.
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