Saturday, March 26, 2011

Private Equity Player May Run for Mayor of Los Angeles

Austin Beutner, co-founder of New York-based investment bank Evercore Partners and former partner at Blackstone Group, is considering running for Mayor of Los Angeles.

Beutner currently serve as current-Mayor Villaraigosa's deputy mayor of economic development, oversees the Port of Los Angeles and the Department of Water and Power and oversees the economic development initiatives at Los Angeles World Airports. Three very powerful positions within the Los Angeles bureaucracy.

Villaraigosa can’t run again due to term limits.

Despite the fact, that the next mayoral election is not until mayor 2013, Los Angels Controller Wendy Greuel and Councilwoman Jan Perry, have already announced their candidacies.

Beutner helped persuade Los Angeles to halve the time required to approve new bars or restaurants and to introduce a three-year tax holiday for companies moving to the city.

4 comments:

  1. What has Beutner been doing to end the city's involvement in "economic development initiatives at Los Angeles World Airports" and to let businesspeople solve their own problem? When did he start doing so?

    In fact, who owns LAWA? If any government (or government agency) does so, then LAWA should be sold at auction to the highest bidder. If no bidder can be found, the city should abandon the property to homesteaders.

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  2. Robert, you "forgot" to add this part that went right after the three year tax holiday sentence. (from the article)"He is leading talks for a new downtown football stadium and convention center." Hmm, and we can only wonder how this downtown football stadium will be funded and built...Most likely it will be with lots of taxpayer money handed out to corporate welfare king developers and a lot of cases of eminent domain.

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  3. Eh, I'm not impressed. Anyone who opposes abolishing the revelopment agencies in CA and thinks private businesses should only be attracted so the city can use them as revenue sources is not someone libertarians should welcome.

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  4. Just to make clear, I was in no way attempting to endorse Beutner in this post. My reference to him in the headline as a "private equity player" was really to suggest the opposite. That he was likely another in favor of the awful "private-government partnerships". And it was the case of another elitist moving in to a greater government role.

    Further, I did point out that he is already running three powerful Los Angeles government agencies. Not a plus in my book by any stretch.

    Since, this is about LA, where, for all we know, he could be running against Barbra Streusand, I did attempt to be "fair and balanced" by pointing out there is at least one group of taxes, he was interested in cutting (Who really knows why though?)

    But the overall impression I was attempting to leave was not a positive one.

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