The Los Angeles County Business Federation – commonly referred to in shorthand as BizFed – named longtime business advocate Stuart Waldman as its next president and chief executive.
Waldman will officially take the helm on July 13, formally succeeding BizFed’s founder Tracy Hernandez who left in March to join the New California Coalition. Since 2008, Waldman has led the Van Nuys-based Valley Industry & Commerce Association, which has been an advocating voice for the San Fernando Valley’s business community.
Before joining VICA, Waldman was a state Assembly staffer and was chief of staff to former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg. He continues to be involved with local initiatives, including the LA28’s board of directors.
Following the announcement last week, Waldman met with the Business Journal to discuss his nearly 19 years with VICA and how he envisions the next stage of his career with BizFed.
What about BizFed appealed to you?
I love VICA and love the Valley, but the idea of representing a bigger area, to be able to have the resources that I don’t currently have, with a larger organization, more staff and a larger budget to really fight for business in Los Angeles, I just couldn’t pass up that opportunity.
Can you reflect on your time with VICA, going back to the beginning?
I ran for state assembly in 2008; I was the moderate Democrat against a liberal Democrat, and I lost. Three weeks later, the president of VICA had resigned. I had a lot of supporters for my campaign who were members of VICA, and I ended up taking the job. I thought I might just be there for a couple of years and turned into almost 19. I had been chief of staff to a couple of state elected officials, but had never worked on city or county issues, so that took some learning. The (Los Angeles) City Council at the time was much different than it is now. County supervisors were much different. We’ve seen the City of L.A. get more and more progressive, and unions exerting more control, and BizFed was created to try and counter the unions, and I want to bring that back to its roots. I want to bring BizFed back to the roots of being able to counter labor, to be able to fight the fights and organize business to win on elections and ballot measures, and as well as ordinances and legislation.
When I was a staffer, VICA had been working on trying to keep filming in L.A. to the point where, in the ’90s, they made a DVD that they would hand out about runaway production. When I got to VICA, we were able to work with former Assembly member and former Council Member Paul Krekorian to get the state’s film credit and work to keep it and work to expand it, and while a lot of filming has left California, we’ve been instrumental in keeping a lot of it here.
I’ve always been a fan of the Olympics, and I serve on the LA28 board. On (former Mayor) Eric Garcetti’s first day in office, we sent a letter encouraging him to go for the Olympic bid. I was lucky enough to be part of the bid, and once we won that, my only pitch was that I wanted events in the Valley. In 1984, all the NIMBYs in the Valley didn’t want any events coming to the Valley, and I felt that actually hurt the Valley in terms of commerce and tourism, and so it was important to me to see Los Angeles not only get the bid and the Olympics, but to also ensure that the Valley had events. I actually asked for three events and was pretty clear I didn’t care what events they were, just as long as the Valley had three, and we ended up with seven. We’re getting close, two years away, and we’re going to be at that opening ceremonies, and I can’t wait for the first event at Lake Balboa.
VICA has always been a leader on transportation. Measure R, which was a sales tax, did not adequately take care of the Valley; the Valley has always been a donor to other areas in terms of taxes and not getting anything in return, so when the conversation began about Measure M, VICA decided to take the lead for the Valley. We organized all the elected officials, we organized all the community groups, business groups, neighborhood councils, and came up with a proposal for three projects in the Valley, which became four – (North Hollywood) to Pasadena BRT; the Sepulveda Transit Corridor; improving the Orange (now G) Line, which will eventually become a train; and putting a train down Van Nuys Boulevard, which we were instrumental in getting that done. We actually had to go to battle to make sure that all of this was in the proposal, and it took several years, but we got it. I’m happy to say that the Orange Line improvements are happening, the NoHo BRT has happened, and the Van Nuys Boulevard train is going to be opening in (2031).
We’ve also played quite a few roles on redistricting. Historically, the Valley has been carved apart for districts, so we would have people from outside the Valley – usually Westside politicians – representing us. In the past redistricting, whether it was at the city or the state level, we worked to ensure that there were more solely contained Valley districts. We had hoped to have a solely contained (Board of Supervisors) Valley district, but with five seats it really makes that hard to do. That was something that I had talked to Supervisor (Lindsey) Horvath about when she first got elected, growing the board of supervisors to a larger number. When we go to nine seats, one of those seats should be a wholly contained Valley seat.
Do you have any immediate goals in mind with BizFed?
(Working with VICA) has been pretty lucky. We reach out to elected officials outside the Valley and build relationships with folks. We do monthly Sacramento trips, and we’re always making sure that we’re meeting people that aren’t just Los Angeles or Valley, so I just need to expand upon that. I’ll be spending time in Long Beach and Pomona and Lancaster, and just furthering those relationships, which will be important. We do represent 88 cities, so I’ve got to start reaching out. I’ve had it pretty easy with the VICA service area with five cities, so there are a lot more cities and a lot of small cities that I’ve got to get to know.
Thinking long-term, big-picture, any goals come to mind?
We’re going to have new seats for county supervisors, so that’s going to be something that’s pretty important. Just in general, business has not done a great job of recruiting (political) candidates. We take the candidates that we are given, and they can’t always win. It’s definitely something that we’ve got to prepare for, to recruit good candidates that we have a chance of victory, because the elected officials we currently have just aren’t cutting it.
From the City Council to the Board of Supervisors, we have some open seats coming up, as well as the county CEO, that we’re going to play a big role in. The legislature has high turnover, so it’s going to be important to play in those races as well. (The Democratic Socialists of America) has been encroaching on the City of L.A., and they want to give away everything. They’ve just been running business out of Los Angeles, so we’ve got to counter that, and that requires us to find and run good candidates.
Is there anything percolating or looming that is going to become a big issue for businesses here that need to be addressed?
The cost of living in L.A. continues to go up, and that’s kind of a cycle – you raise people’s wages, and then everything costs more, and then they want to raise the wages again. Thirty dollars an hour for unskilled labor is requiring everyone else to pay more, so that in turn drives up the prices on everything. They want fast food workers to make $30 an hour. This is just making Los Angeles more expensive. No one wants to build. We’ve got the mansion tax in Los Angeles, which isn’t actually a mansion tax, but a tax on all multifamily housing, which has grinded to a halt. L.A. County has a deficit of affordable housing alone – not even talking about market rate housing – of close to 600,000 units, and no one’s building because people can’t make money building in Los Angeles. We’ve got a lot that we’ve got to do to fix this.
