TR2: “Why We’ll Leave…”

Interesting op-ed from the president of Creators Syndicate on why his firm is considering leaving Los Angeles:

This city is fast becoming a job-killing machine. It’s no accident the unemployment rate is a frightening 11.4% and climbing.

I never could have imagined that, after living here for more than three decades, I would be filing a lawsuit against my beloved Los Angeles and making plans for my company, Creators Syndicate, to move elsewhere.

But we have no choice. The city’s bureaucrats rival Stalin’s apparatchiks in issuing decrees, rescinding them, and then punishing citizens for having followed them in the first place…

From the beginning, we’ve been headquartered in Los Angeles. But 15 years ago we had a dispute with the city over our business tax classification…You can imagine how relieved we were on July 1, 1994, when the ruling was issued. We won, and firmly planted our roots in the City of Angels and proceeded to build our business.

Everything was fine until the city started running out of money in 2007. Suddenly, the city announced that it was going to ignore its own ruling and reclassify us in the higher tax category…

…I suspect many companies like ours already have quietly left town in the face of the city’s taxes and regulations. This would help explain the erosion of jobs.Regardless of the outcome of our case, the arbitrary and capricious behavior of some bureaucrats is creating a lose-lose situation for everyone involved. If we win in court, the taxpayers of Los Angeles will have lost because all those tax dollars will have been wasted on needless litigation.

If we lose in court, the remaining taxpayers in Los Angeles will have lost because their burden will continue to swell as yet another business moves its jobs — and taxpayers — to another city.

As long as City Hall operates like a banana republic, why is anyone surprised that jobs have left the city in droves and Los Angeles is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy?

URLs:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124718265362620253.html