Creative accounting and high-handed directives frustrate the market.
State and city officialdom continues to rule the waves in California's ports when it comes to public funds. And the motives behind the decisions appear to have little to do with serving the people.
At Long Beach, the city council is demanding what amounts to a double payment of the 10 percent annual levy on net earnings, which would contravene the city charter. The port is paying $12 million in October, which is all well and good. But the council also wants another 8 percent this year, based on the port's forecast of next year's revenue, plus the rest when the actual revenue is known.
On top of this, the council wants the port to exclude the 10 percent levy when totting up its revenues – which would inflate the revenues by 10 percent and mean even more going to the city.
The real reason is that the Tidelands Fund, into which the money goes, is perilously low and officials are resorting to creative accounting that in the private sector would get state prosecutors fired up over possible fraud.
Los Angeles, like other big cities, is overloaded with bureaucracy. Human resources, public relations, employment diversity …could all be trimmed. (As could huge wages paid to the ring-fenced unionized workers, but that is impossible in practice.)
The port is seen as a cash cow that is being well and truly milked. Programs such as the anti-pollution campaign and security will come under threat.
State officials are also doing their bit to trip up the ports, in the form of air pollution regulations for Long Beach and Los Angeles. They are calling for the two ports to be subject to tougher limits than those drawn up by the ports themselves and which, indirectly, have been accepted by the International Maritime Organization.
What's more, these limits are stricter than those at other ports, which will mean that the traffic will find cheaper places to berth. Why? Because shipping lines will have to spend more money to scrub funnel emissions even more carefully, leading to an obvious switch to cheaper ports.
Add the latest hassles with the office clerks' union at the two ports and it's easy to see why shipping lines and traders are constantly looking for other options to get the goods moving.
But that of course is probably of no concern to officialdom.