Cities Using Port Revenues

Using California’s ports as “cash cows” to prop up ailing municipal budgets at the risk of losing shipping business to Washington state may seem unwise as the column (Opinion, Jan. 3) by Ray Makela and James Fawcett suggests, but there’s much more to it than that!

The real issue is whether foreign shippers should receive favored treatment at the expense of local taxpayers and American workers.

From a tax standpoint, our Port of Long Beach hardly pays its way, since much of the port property remains off property tax rolls. Major port tenants doing scores of millions in business annually have avoided city gross receipts taxes, paying nominal business license fees based on the few company employees on their premises.

Many negative impacts resulting from port activity include hundreds of thousands of heavy trucks on our streets and freeways, long, slow freight trains blocking street intersections, contamination of our beaches and waterways and illegal smuggling of illicit drugs in sealed container shipments, to name but a few.

One might wonder how port tenants obtain such favored treatment from public officials who set the policies and approve the leases under which they operate. A look at Long Beach city political campaign contribution statements reveal that port tenants make about the largest volume of payments to politicians of any local business category.

Lavish junkets to Asia and other vacation sites are popular with local politicians, who receive chauffeured-limousine service compliments of the Port of Long Beach in its $54,000 vehicle.

Highlight of the Port of Long Beach 1991 social season was a lavish $90,000 banquet in Japan featuring $50 gifts at each place with nothing spared except local taxpayers.

It’s wrong for the Port of Long Beach to accumulate hundreds of millions of dollars in discretionary reserves while our city government struggles to provide adequate police and paramedic services and meet basic social service needs.

By failing to address the serious problems of California cities, we stand to lose a lot more than a few container shipments to Washington state.

WARREN HARWOOD, Councilman

City of Long Beach