The City has a proprietary interest in leveraging, to the greatest extent possible, the money it spends at the Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA) when contracting with businesses for goods, equipment and services to and for the benefit of the City and its residents. The City has a proprietary interest in leveling the playing field among those businesses competing for LAWA contracts, to decrease local unemployment and to increase LAWA revenues.
Significant benefits are associated with a Local Business and Local Small Business Enterprise Program. These include an increase in local jobs and expenditures in the local private sector. Preference programs are especially helpful in regions where unemployment tends to be higher than in other regions. Los Angeles County and City have been slow to recover from the 2008 economic recession and employment growth in the County and City has not been as robust as in other regions.
Historically, many of the larger cities within the County, especially the City of Los Angeles, experience labor costs that are among the highest in the nation. Los Angeles area labor costs are higher than the labor costs found in neighboring states. Business space in the Los Angeles metropolitan area is more costly than comparable space in other California counties and other states. On a national level, Los Angeles is one of the two most expensive metropolitan areas in the western United States in which to do business as a result of the local tax and fee structure. Corporations in California are subject to a corporate tax that is among the highest in the nation. These conditions create a very expensive climate in which local businesses must compete against businesses outside the County. This heightened cost of doing business in the County has an especially significant impact on local small businesses, which often operate with smaller profit margins and fewer financial resources to offset business costs. Local businesses and local small businesses confront cost structures that are weighted much heavier, in terms of labor and costs of doing business, than competing firms that are located in neighboring counties or states.
Disabled Veterans Business Enterprise Programs serve the purpose of rewarding veterans for their sacrifice of military service, encouraging patriotic service among civilians, helping to ease the transition from military service to civilian life, and attracting loyal and well-disciplined people to government contracting opportunities. Disabled Veterans Business Enterprise Programs are beneficial to veterans, the local community and the entities implementing these programs by encouraging the establishment of new businesses; providing new growth opportunities for existing businesses; developing new, local employment opportunities for disabled veterans; recognizing and utilizing skills unique to veterans to encourage business success; promoting job creation and income for local employees; and increasing business tax revenue.
This narrowly tailored Local Business, Local Small Business and Local-State Disabled Veterans Business Enterprise Program is fashioned to encourage businesses to compete for LAWA contracting opportunities, establish and maintain local operations, and to discourage existing local businesses from relocating to different, less expensive areas of California and the nation.
SECTION HISTORY
Added by Ord. No. 184,531, Eff. 11-16-16.
Amended by: Ord. No. 184,938, Eff. 7-11-17.