Everyone agrees the Port of Long Beach is key to the city’s budget problems. Now it’s just a question of who will get the credit

PHOTO by RUSS ROCA

It’s only a matter of time until the Long Beach City Council embraces an idea just presented by Fifth District representative Gerrie Schipske—a plan that would relieve Long Beach’s stressed budget by transferring more of Port of Long Beach’s profits to the city. Look for this to happen when council members can pretend the idea isn’t Schipske’s. Probably right after Mayor Bob Foster proposes pretty much the same thing.
For now, a 6-3 decision by the council has rejected the concept Schipske advanced on Jan. 22, refusing even to study her suggestions. In fact, nobody in the majority uttered so much as a word on the subject before jettisoning it.

But within an hour of that decision City Hall and port sources told The District that Foster has been working behind the scenes with Harbor Department commissioners on the same profit-sharing solution—and that ultimate approval of such a scheme is inevitable.

By the end of the week, Schipske had heard the same thing.

“What this is about is that I stepped on somebody’s toes,” the councilwoman concluded. “It’s about the person, not the idea.”

According to the internal culture of the City Council—dominated by fierce district territorialism and the higher-office aspirations of some members—an inland-district representative like Schipske is the wrong person to present an idea about the Port of Long Beach. Council etiquette reserves that privilege for Bonnie Lowenthal and Suja Lowenthal, whose First and Second districts abut the Port, or to Foster, because of his citywide constituency as mayor.

All three have signaled interest in elected office beyond Long Beach. Bonnie Lowenthal is ready to run for Assembly, so speculate with us on this possible deployment in 2010: Foster as California lieutenant governor, and Suja Lowenthal in the state Senate seat now occupied by her father-in-law, Alan Lowenthal, who will be termed out and back in Long Beach as mayor.

“What happened at that council meeting was not a surprise,” said Tonia Reyes Uranga, the Seventh District council member—herself readying to run for the Assembly against Bonnie Lowenthal—who voted to send Schipske’s proposal to committee. “It was classic.”
Foster didn’t attend the Jan. 22 City Council meeting; he was in Washington, D.C., at the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Perhaps that was coincidence, but it sure was convenient. Otherwise, he would have been sitting right next to Schipske throughout her long Power Point presentation.
Underlying all of Schipske’s proposals was the suggestion that the Port of Long Beach ought to help solve some of the problems it has played such a large part in creating: a ruined downtown waterfront, soiled waterways, clogged freeways, polluted air and an increased risk of terrorist attack.

“Name another California city that has given up its beach, given up so much for the sake of the national economy,” says John Morris, longtime city activist and owner of Smooth’s Sports Grille, the downtown restaurant.

Out of three fees—on terminals, containers and the ships themselves—the port pays 10 percent of its annual net profits to the city’s Tidelands Fund, where state law mandates it be spent on waterfront projects. This year the city’s take is $14 million. Schipske sought to raise that to 15 percent, and asked her colleagues to explore a change in state law so that still another five percent of port profits could be deposited in the general fund for citywide use. In the end, her motion was to simply study these matters.

Rejected!

Undoubtedly, it was more comfortable for Foster to follow all this from afar, and a source behind the council dais—where most of Schipske’s colleagues were chatting, talking on phones and tapping their computers as she addressed them—reported some of that outside communication was between Foster and Third District Council Member Gary DeLong.

DeLong did not answer an interview request The District left on his answering machine at City Hall. Contacted in Washington, Becki Ames, the mayor’s chief of staff, declined to make her boss available for an interview. Ames was cagey on the question of whether Foster is talking with Harbor Commissioners to get a greater percentage of port profits for the city’s Tidelands Fund.

“There is no plan,” said Ames. “There is no proposal.”

Has the mayor talked with Harbor Commissioners?

“We talk to the port on a daily basis,” Ames replied. “We have a good relationship on a lot of issues.”

What about this issue? Is the mayor having conversations with the port about it?

“I’m hesitant to call it a plan or even a conversation because I don’t think that’s the proper characterization. Look,” Ames said, sounding a smidge frustrated, “these issues are complicated. It’s not about getting our name in the paper. It’s about solving a long-term problem.”

Ames’ comment implied that Schipske sought headlines when she agendized her port-related issues, and the mayor’s aide wasn’t alone.
Amazingly, others making the allegation included the Press-Telegram’s editorial board. The P-T excoriated Schipske twice in a week—first damning her for daring to make her proposals, then dancing on her grave when the items were buried.
“Dumb idea?” the P-T editorial asked mockingly. “Dumb like a fox. The idea got her big headlines, didn’t it?” Of course, the almost-funny part about that is that it was the P-T that gave Schipske those headlines.

The definitely unfunny part is that the editorials consistently mischaracterized Schipske’s proposals and what the City Council actually voted upon. Depending on what you think of Long Beach’s once-great daily paper in these, its clearly diminished days, its accounts were either a pack of calculated lies or a pathetic inability to comprehend simple government proceedings.
Even Schipske’s supporters acknowledge her style often lacks nuance, and a couple of her City Council colleagues suggested that her port proposals might not have been given such a cold shoulder had she given everybody an advance look.
Schipske says that wasn’t possible. “The Brown Act precludes us from going around and getting consensus,” she says. “The purpose of putting things on the agenda is to discuss them. The idea isn’t to put them on the agenda after they’ve been discussed, as a formality.”

Of course, the items were never discussed at the council meeting, either. But just in case, a group of men in very fine suits—Port of Long Beach representatives, including executive director Richard D. Steinke and harbor commissioners Mario Cordero, Dr. Mike Walter and Nick Sramek—sat shoulder-to-shoulder in the third row of the council chambers, wordlessly monitoring the proceedings.

Just before the council voted, retired Long Beach assistant city attorney Jim McCabe—an expert on Tidelands issues—seemed to comment on their presence.

“We all know that influential people with perfectly understandable self-interests are associated with the port and shipping industry,” said McCabe. “Those people give lots of money to political campaigns. And I know that’s enticing and intoxicating stuff, but we as a city need to do what’s right.”

Moments later, the council killed Schipske’s proposal. Satisfied, the men in the fine suits smiled, rose, and filed out of the council chamber. The six council members who had satisfied them stayed in their seats to continue running the city—and some, eventually, to run for higher office. Before that, however, is sure to come a proposal from Mayor Foster or maybe one of the Lowenthals for a profit-sharing proposal with the port. It’s just a matter of time.

Tags: Gerrie Schipske, harbor commmision, Port of Long Beach, revenue sharing, Tidelands Fund