Los Angeles is “prepared to shoulder its fair share of the responsibility” for balancing the budget, said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. But, “any scenario that would completely eliminate the redevelopment zones and state enterprise zones is a non-starter.”

Similarly, George Runner, the newest member of the Board of Equalization, said that raising taxes and making it tough on business isn’t a solution.

“Californians are confronted with a huge budget crisis.  The fact is for too many years we’ve been spending more money than we should.  More money has been going out than revenues coming in.” Runner said. “We can solve our budget problem and the best way to do that is by getting Californians jobs.  I’m going to be looking at this budget through that lens. I applaud the Governor for proposing difficult spending cuts.  But I can’t support proposals to hurt private sector jobs through punitive tax hikes.”

“Californians have already spoken on the issue of taxes by resoundingly rejecting every proposed tax increase on recent ballots.  A special election to hike taxes is a waste of taxpayers’ time and money. Certainly we have to make some hard decision and cuts are necessary. But if we make it harder for the private sector to create employment than this is the wrong way to go,” he said.

Eliminating enterprise zones is a big mistake, according to Runner.

“Enterprise zones are California ‘s only remaining public policy measure aimed at keeping private sector jobs in our state.  Abolishing them would be irresponsible.  Instead we should make the whole state an enterprise zone,” he concluded.