Labor Day Irony: Villaraigosa's Port Plan Cost Hundreds Their Jobs

Yesterday, I explained how Villaraigosa and the City Council, by imposing $1.6 billion in fees to fund the "clean trucks" program at the Port of Los Angeles, had diverted shipping away from the port, thereby reducing the Port's market share and revenues, and triggering yet another local a debt crisis.

Today, Labor Day, there's more "good news."

The Los Angeles Business Journal reports, in an article entitled, "Port Drivers Will Keep On Truckin'," by Daniel Miller, that Villaraigosa's "clean truck" program has also cost hundreds of independent drivers and small trucking companies their jobs:

Even aside from the employee-driver rule, small truck companies have been hit hard by the program, which has required them to buy expensive new trucks to meet the emission standards. Hundreds of independent truckers and small trucking companies have already left the business. The Port of Long Beach also adopted the clean truck program, but without the employee-driver provision.

This is exactly the kind of mismanagement, by local government, that has pushed unemployment in the City of Los Angeles above the national, state and county averages.  Local government matters.  Local government can cost you your job, drive down the value of your property, deny your children a good public education, and so on.

But with decent people in office, local government could do just the opposite.  It could attract employers, increase your property value, deliver a good education to your children without your having to send them to private school, and so on.

Unfortunately, we live in a city full of people who pay no attention to local politics, which is why the City of Los Angeles is rapidly becoming "Detroit on the Pacific."