David Fleming, a prominent land use attorney and longtime San Fernando Valley powerhouse, has now taken on a larger role as this year’s chairman of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. Within days after taking over as chair from AT & T; Corp. executive Dave Nichols, Fleming was thrust into the spotlight. He became the lead negotiator for the business community in the fight over the L.A. City Council’s attempt to make hotels near the airport pay workers more by extending the city’s living wage law to those hotels. Fleming is no stranger to controversy, having been a major supporter of the effort by San Fernando Valley to secede from Los Angeles. Fleming, 72, first came to the Valley more than 50 years ago to pursue a career in broadcast journalism. But after enrolling at UCLA Law School, he found the practice of law more appealing and took up with a small firm in the San Fernando Valley. He ended up owning the firm for nearly 30 years and became a fixture in the Valley business community, heading up the Valley Industry and Commerce Association in the late 1980s. Later, he accepted an offer from powerful downtown L.A. law firm Latham & Watkins LLP to head up its newly-established outpost office in the Valley to service nearby studios. With Latham’s blessing, Fleming became increasingly active and visible in local public policy circles, serving on numerous commissions and instigating with then-Mayor Richard Riordan the city’s charter reform effort, among other initiatives.
Question: What is your take on last month’s deal between the city, labor representatives and the Chamber leaders to extend the living wage to airport area hotels?
Answer:
The business community has to feel pleased that the ordinance originally passed was rescinded by the Council. We’ll have to see how the new ordinance comes out. This is a work in progress. If the new ordinance is essentially the same, hotels will probably go to court and challenge it on grounds that it’s too similar to the old ordinance and therefore must go to the voters. The only way it can be different is to put in protections for the rest of the business community, namely that the criteria for expanding the ordinance will be very restrictive. Also, there will be studies so that there’s no rush to judgment on extending the living wage. All these restrictions would protect other businesses in the city.
Q: Was the business community asleep at the switch in responding to this living wage issue?
A:
Certainly the hotels were. They chose to ignore it for a long period of time until it suddenly surfaced. Then it took the business community by surprise. My suggestion to the mayor and to the council when we first started to talk about this thing was that any change in the living wage law should be subject to a vote of the people. That was not favored by labor and the City Council.
Q: Were the hotels sacrificial lambs?
A:
What else could we have done once the ordinance passed? We did what we could to undo it by helping gather those signatures for the referendum vote. It’s really up to the City Council.
Q: What’s the larger impact of all this on L.A.’s business climate?
A:
I understand that (L.A. County Federation of Labor leader) Maria Elena Durazo said in Spanish that she wants to see the living wage implemented throughout the city. If that’s the case, that would be very destructive for the business climate in this city. You might as well come out and invite every business to leave. Businesses would be in a very uncompetitive situation and could go to any one of the other 87 cities in the county and not be bothered with this.
Q: During your inauguration speech as L.A. Chamber chairman last month, you said your major goal was to get the county’s business organizations to speak with one voice. Many predecessors promised to do the same, but failed.
A:
Look, this is something I’m very passionate about. A few years ago, we had the late labor leader Miguel Contreras speak to the chamber board. He said the power of labor in this city is not in the money it raises or contributes, but in numbers. All the labor groups in the county all speak on the same page, with one voice representing hundreds of thousands of workers. We in the business community haven’t done this. But we do have numbers if only they can be mobilized. We’ve got a half-million businesses in L.A. County.
Q: How do you plan to do this?
A:
We’re going to start this month. I’m inviting every business group in the county to a meeting where we will come up with workable program to unite all business groups on key points for the region. We’re going to call it something like “The Alliance of Job Providers,” because that’s what we do. This effort won’t be led by the L.A. Chamber, since that would get us in all sorts of turf battles. We’re going to find some third party to assemble the names and addresses and e-mails of all the half-million businesses in the city and then we’re going to use that list to mobilize on key issues. A lot of this will be done using the power of the Internet.
Q: What other goals do you have as this year’s chamber chairman?
A:
Of course, we’re going to focus on the things that the chamber has always focused on: economic growth, education, and most urgently, traffic. What’s going on in this town when it comes to traffic is horrible. The Westside is a parking lot it’s so bad it’s becoming a joke. People are actually turning in their tickets to Disney Hall because they can’t make the commute from the Westside.
Q: So what are you going to do about this?
A:
First off, I’m Mayor Villaraigosa’s appointee to the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, so I do have some say in regional traffic policy. One of the things we really need to do is improve our east-west corridors, so that people from the Westside can get downtown and vice-versa. We need to create a mini-freeway on one of these east-west streets maybe it’s Beverly Boulevard, maybe it’s Sixth Street or Olympic Boulevard. Whatever the street, the key is to turn it into a mini-freeway where people get on at certain points and then have to travel five or six miles before they get off again. No short trips, no left turns or right turns just through traffic. And the lights would all be synchronized.
Q: Whatever street you choose, you can bet the nearby residents and businesses won’t like it one bit.
A:
Well, to them I say, tough. Look, because of the complaints of a few dozen homeowners, we can’t expand the 101 Freeway and that is hurting hundreds of thousands of people each and every day. And that’s just one example. It’s time for the needs of the masses to outweigh the needs of a few. We’re going to have to break a few eggs to make this omelet. Something has to be done or this region will choke on its own traffic.
Q: You wear so many hats and head so many organizations. How do you do all this and still carry on your case work?
A:
Actually, I only spend about 15 percent or 20 percent of my time doing case work. All of these thousands of hours I’ve spent doing volunteer and community work, I have done with the encouragement and approval of the senior partners at Latham & Watkins. My role is to basically show the flag for the firm, to be the interface between our major clients and government. It’s a unique role, one that you don’t find at very many law firms. I’m not really a rain-maker, nor is it strictly government relations.
Q: How did this come about?
A:
Back in the early 1990s, I had been practicing law for 30 years, most of that owning and running a law firm in the San Fernando Valley. I was ready to get out of the business altogether, but then I was approached by Latham & Watkins senior partner Randy Stokes, who presented me with an unusual proposition. They would make me “Of Counsel” to the firm a title usually reserved for retired partners and give me the freedom to pursue my community involvement activities in the San Fernando Valley. They were looking to establish an outpost in the Valley, while I was beginning to realize I didn’t want to spend the next 20 years just playing golf. So naturally, I accepted.
Q: Why was Latham & Watkins looking to set up a San Fernando Valley office?
A:
To be closer to major studio clients. We represent the Walt Disney Co., Warner Brothers and NBC-Universal. In fact, right now, we’re representing NBC-Universal as it pursues its $3 billion Universal City expansion project. With our office in Universal City, we can serve as an impromptu meeting place when key developments arise with our entertainment clients.
Q: With your law practice and so many other obligations, how do you find time to spend with your family?
A:
Our kids are grown, so that’s a big help. I basically work very hard from Sunday through Thursday each week, 12 or even 14-hour days. Then my wife and I often head out of town on Thursday nights to our home in Indian Wells and we spend a couple days there to decompress and to play golf. The key is going late Thursday night and coming back early Sunday morning when it’s only a two-hour trip each way.
Q: Judging from the memorabilia you have in your office, including a souvenir from the Master’s tournament, that you really love golf.
A:
Yes, I do. Whenever I get the chance, I go golfing. I belong to four different country clubs. That’s another reason why I try to go every weekend to our home in Indian Wells, so I can spend Fridays and Saturdays on the golf course.
Q: You started your professional career as a radio announcer. How did you end up being a lawyer?
A:
Actually, my interest in radio went a lot further back. When I was in high school, I was offered a job as a radio announcer at the same station where Ronald Reagan did his sports broadcasts. After I graduated from college, I became a radio announcer at the CBS affiliate in Chicago. I decided to come to Los Angeles because I wanted to be near CBS’s West Coast operations. I actually met Ed Murrow out here. While I was at CBS, people told me that if I wanted to move up into the management track, I needed to have a law degree. So I enrolled at UCLA Law School.
Q: Why a law degree?
A:
Well, CBS was a very litigious place in those days. That was the period when Ed Murrow went up against Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Anyway, once I got to UCLA, I found that I liked the law so much that I ditched my plans to return to the radio industry and decided to go into law. I clerked for a small law firm in Van Nuys and wound up owning the place. We specialized in the banking and savings and loan sectors.
Q: You’ve emerged as one of the key spokesmen for the San Fernando Valley business community and the San Fernando Valley as a whole. How did that come about?
A:
It really wasn’t anything I had planned, it just happened that way. I had been living in the Valley for most of my adult life and I have watched this Valley change. When I first came here in 1956, the 101 Freeway stopped at Lankershim Boulevard and most of the land west of the 405 was still ranch and farmland. With the exception of plants for Lockheed, General Motors and Anheuser-Busch, there was virtually no industry here. I joined up with the Valley Industry and Commerce Association way back in the 1960s as it was attempting to bring more jobs to the area.
Q: You were the single biggest monetary backer for the Valley secession movement. What convinced you that the Valley needed to secede?
A:
For years, I realized that the Valley was separate and apart from the rest of the city. There were times when I felt like we were a separate country and I was its Secretary of State. Just look at it geographically: this is the only major city in the world split by a mountain range with only two or three routes in and those routes are so congested people will do anything to avoid them.
Q: How did this translate on the political stage?
A:
For many elected officials, the Valley was simply an afterthought, a cash cow to fund services for the rest of the city. And for local residents, there is absolutely nothing local when it takes you two hours to drive from where you live to where you are governed. But even with all this, outright secession was not my first choice.
Q: Why not?
A:
I felt that this could be solved through charter reform where we could create a borough system of government like they have in New York or London. Back in the mid-1990s, I was one of the first leaders to come out for charter reform. Then-Mayor (Richard) Riordan agreed with me on the need to reform the charter to strengthen the role of the mayor, but not on this point of decentralizing power. While charter reform passed, it did little to change the relationship between the Valley and the city.
Q: Yet the secession drive ultimately failed. Was there anything you think could have been done differently?
A:
I knew the vote would fail the moment the state Legislature said that the vote would have to be citywide. We would never capture a majority in a citywide vote because there was little advantage to the rest of the city to let the Valley go. Yet I still think it’s miraculous that we got majority support within the Valley even though we were outspent 30 to 1. That represented a primal scream by nearly half the geographic area of the city seeking its fair share. And the effort definitely wasn’t a failure: I like to say we lost the battle but won the war.
Q: Do you find it ironic that you are now leading the same business organization that fought you tooth and nail five years ago during the secession battle?
A:
Not really. Attitudes have really changed towards the Valley since then. Also, I’m not the only Valley person heading a major regional business organization. I helped convince Bill Allen to take the job as chief executive officer of the LAEDC (Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.).
David Fleming
Titles:
Of Counsel, Latham & Watkins LLP; Chairman, Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley and Valley Presbyterian Hospital
Born:
Davenport, Iowa; 1934
Education:
B.A., political science, Augustana College, Rock Island, Ill.; J.D., UCLA School of Law
Career Turning Points:
While a young radio announcer,
deciding to go to law school to pursue management track; decades later, being approached by Latham & Watkins senior partner to join firm on “of counsel” basis
Most Influential Person:
Mother, who “instilled in me the idea of excellence.”
Personal:
Lives in Studio City, with wife, Jean, a film producer, writer and former Miss Illinois; the couple has two adult children from previous marriages
Hobby:
Golf
