More People, More Growth, But Less Clout

More People, More Growth, But Less Clout



Southern California’s Population Keeps Expanding; So Why Doesn’t Our Pull in the Legislature Keep Pace?

COMMENTARY



by Mark Lacter

It didn’t get much attention, so let’s review some of the highlights from the recently issued 2003 California population figures.






In the past year, fast-growing Riverside swept past Silicon Valley’s Santa Clara to become the fifth-most populated county.






Add Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and San Bernardino, and the state’s five southernmost urban counties also are its five most populated.






Handy round numbers: Los Angeles has 10 million people, and the rest of SoCal has another 10 million , OC and San Diego have 3 million each, San Bernardino and Riverside are approaching 2 million each. (Remote Imperial County rounds to zero in this exercise.) It all adds up to 20 million people.






The rest of the state, from Ventura up to the redwoods, has 16 million, for a state total of 36 million. Santa Clara, Contra Costa, San Francisco, Alameda and seven other counties that comprise the Bay area have 7 million people, only roughly a third as many as SoCal.






Where does the fabled City on the Bay finish? San Francisco, which is both a city and a county, has 762,000 people. That’s sizable for a California city but tiny when measured by county. Neighboring Alameda County is seventh on the list, at 1.5 million, behind Santa Clara and with Sacramento catching up. Orange County is twice as big as Alameda , yet you’d never know that’s how the state’s people are distributed from the political map.






Yes, Southern Californians have held the governorship since 1983 (though Gray Davis seemed more at home away from home). But northern politicians have enjoyed disproportionate clout in the Legislature. San Franciscan Willie Brown was for years the most powerful lawmaker, and San Franciscan John Burton is the current king. California’s two U.S. Senate seats have been held by the Bay area’s Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer for 12 years, with no end in sight.






OC and San Diego County also make an interesting comparison.






The neighbors are in a virtual population dead-heat, often trading off the No. 2 spot when the state does its annual recalibration. They grew at identical 1.4 percent rates in 2003, but the state reckons that OC added 41,900 people, or 800 more than San Diego. Thus OC is counted with 3,017,300 people , 100 more than San Diego. That’s a difference of three-thousandths of a percent. If Gore and Bush had been that close in Florida, we’d still be counting.






But there’s a huge difference in the quality and quantity of local TV news delivered to these two counties’ numerically identical populations.






San Diegans get local news from four network-affiliate stations, an independent station and a Spanish-language station. Orange County, hostage of the L.A. media market, has no network affiliates of its own, a low-budget independent that carries ancient reruns , and a single provider of nightly local news.






One serving 3 million. Sounds like a slogan.






Rick Reiff is executive editor of the Orange County Business Journal.












One Word to






Describe Our






Economy: Scared






Everything seems normal enough. Consumers keep buying stuff, which pushes companies into the black, leads to healthy increases in gross domestic product and encourages new jobs. All of which is the essence of economic growth, those two magical words that help make the world go around (and help elect presidents).






So if everything seems normal enough, why is everybody doing the stutter-step? Why are companies still holding back on hiring? Why is the Dow struggling to stay above 10,000?






To these basic questions, there are the basic answers (higher interest rates, record oil prices, insurance hikes, job losses, blah, blah, blah). But underlying all that is a factor far more basic: An economy that is beyond anyone’s control , more so than any time in memory.






For typical businesspeople, not being in control is scary. They’re the ones used to giving out orders. They’re also the ones charged with anticipating every opportunity as well as setback so that when the canvas changes they’ll be ready with PowerPoint presentations on how to adjust. But PowerPoints don’t much matter in this crazy world, where having the most popular widget or the most effective sales team or the deepest distribution channels, all noble pursuits, don’t ensure success.






No Relief






The dilemma is best illustrated by $40-a-barrel oil, which the experts say will trim at least a half-point of GDP growth. But never mind the experts: As any cab driver or factory owner can attest, there is almost nothing that can kill you more quickly than higher energy bills.






And for now, there’s no relief in sight. This is not just a matter of California’s stringent environmental regulations that limit refinery capacity and thus keep prices high (though that does aggravate things). It’s not even a case of putting pressure on OPEC to increase output; the 11-nation cartel is actually pumping far more oil than its current production quota of 23.5 million barrels a day.






This is about a market that has lost its footing. Oil prices have jumped 10 percent since late April, when suicide bombers made an unsuccessful attack on an Iraqi offshore oil terminal. Just last week, insurgents damaged a key pipeline carrying oil to the city of Basra. That, along with another pipeline shutdown, has kept 400,000 barrels a day from reaching market, according to The New York Times. Oil traders are now factoring a “risk premium” that runs anywhere from $4 to $8 a barrel.






Behind those numbers is the true culprit: emotion, real and imagined. Iraq has become a virtual powder keg that threatens to disrupt oil production throughout the Middle East. Just the threat of additional terrorist attacks, in the United States and elsewhere, has created a kind of global malaise that won’t show up in any balance sheet or government report, but is nonetheless hard to ignore. And if something awful really does happen, forget it, brother.






After all, businesspeople are people too, and it’s hard to take in these last few weeks of dreadful news without wondering where it all might lead and how it all might eventually affect us directly. It’s made worse because we’re discovering, slowly and painfully, how much of a mess Iraq has become.






So yes, it’s nice to see more Americans with jobs and increases in California exports and consumers still buying cars and houses. Yet this economy is far from robust. It is, in fact, running scared.






Mark Lacter is editor of the Los Angeles Business Journal.