A 1958 photo of one of the city’s asphalt plants. (Photo by USC Libraries/Corbis via Getty Images)
ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN years ago, Los Angeles voters passed a law that would later prove to be a massive headache for city officials.
Buried deep in the city’s charter, the “business enterprises restriction” amounts to a simple rule: The city can’t engage in any new “purely commercial” business activity unless voters approve it.
Want to sell snacks at the Greek Theatre? Pass an amendment. Run a public bank? Nice try. Start a downtown hotel? Try devising a complicated workaround then fighting it out in court.
After more than a century of periodic clashes over this restriction, policymakers finally want to nuke it. One of the primary reasons: The city wants to start selling asphalt.
"We make our own asphalt. We make the best asphalt,” declared Councilmember Heather Hutt at a meeting of the Charter Reform Commission last year.
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