04/01/04

LC040401

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

A look at what's wrong with California's workers' compensation
system through the eyes of the people who feel its affects.

Bob Elyea>> I think that it's put a lot of small businesses
under. I think there's a lot of people now that, if they were
starting out like we did, they'd have a hard time doing it.

Val>> And then, pictures from Orange County's past and present.
A look at the good, the bad and the ugly south of the Orange
Curtain.

These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Workers' compensation is one of those things most of us
would rather not think about until we get hurt on the job, and
all of us are being hurt by the high rates that employers have
to pay for workers' compensation coverage. And what is it like
to be stuck in the system? Toni Guinyard got an eyeful when she
visited some small business owners who say they're going broke
just trying to stay open.

Toni Guinyard>> On any given day, millions of people arrive for
work with the understanding that, if they are injured while on
the job, they're covered by workers' compensation. Employers
are required to secure the insurance. It's an issue few
employees think about until they get hurt. It's an issue many
employers think about all of the time because of the rising cost
of insurance.

Pam Elyea>> The biggest problem that workers' compensation
creates for us is the amount of time that it takes as an
employer that I'm dealing with workers' compensation insurance
versus actually doing my business.

Toni Guinyard>> Elyea is not alone in her demands that the
system be reformed. Leading the charge is California Governor,
Arnold Schwarzenegger. But with deadlines for lawmakers to
hammer out a reform plan set, missed, and set again, a workers'
compensation initiative could appear on the November ballot.

Pam Elyea>> Things need to happen fast. They need to happen a
lot faster than they are. So often there are changes made and
they'll be enacted in 2005, 2006. I have problems today. I
need to pay people today. I need to pay my insurance today.

Wendy Greuel>> It's impacting businesses who are going to close
down. When you have only, let's say, five employees and you
have an increase in the workers' compensation that is, let's
say, $100,000, that can make or break whether your businesses
exist.

Toni Guinyard>> The pressure to reorganize workers'
compensation is also being felt by elected city officials. Los
Angeles City Council member, Wendy Greuel.

Wendy Greuel>> We in the city of Los Angeles have gone from
$142 million dollars per year in workers' compensation to this
year over $160 million dollars. What's happening in the state
of California is that we're paying the highest premiums and
having the lowest benefits.

Toni Guinyard>> Sixty-five percent of small business owners
surveyed by Union Bank of California said the rising cost of
workers' compensation insurance is a top challenge of owning a
business in this state. It's what Pam Elyea has been
complaining about for years.

Pam Elyea>> I compete in an international market. I compete
against countries that don't pay workers' compensation
insurance, that don't pay healthcare for their people. Maybe
because it's a nationalized healthcare.

Toni Guinyard>> She is co-owner of History for Hire. The
company supplies props for the entertainment industry. Movies,
TV, music videos, and print ads.

Pam Elyea>> "These turned out nice, didn't they? We had to
make some extras of these too, didn't we?"

>> "We sure did."

Pam Elyea>> "And then this is the rest of the order over here.
Is there still a lot that needs to be pulled on it?"

>> "No, no. The stuff's in the shop coming out."

Pam Elyea>> "Oh, good."

Toni Guinyard>> The company operates out of a 33,000 square
foot warehouse where rows and rows of every prop imaginable are
stacked high and where, on occasion, accidents do happen.

Pam Elyea>> Our workers' compensation claims would range from,
oh, somebody was carrying a table and they dropped a table on
their foot and it hurt them. My mother had a workers'
compensation claim when she was our bookkeeper. A file cabinet
fell on her because she forgot to push in both drawers. My
brother-in-law who works with us had something fall and hit him
on the head. It happens to everybody. There's no stigma
attached to hurting yourself in the workplace.

Toni Guinyard>> When History for Hire opened for business in
1984, it all started out with two brothers working in their
living room. The company now employs fifteen full-time staff
members and the workers' compensation rates are now triple what
they used to be just nine years ago.

Bob Elyea>> I think that it's put a lot of small businesses
under. I think there's a lot of people now that, if they were
starting out like we did, they'd have a hard time doing it. It
was tough enough then and now it's probably near to impossible.

Toni Guinyard>> Pam Elyea says the problem is the cost
associated with workers' compensation premiums. She points to
one claim filed by a former employee who said he was hurt making
a prop, a bag for a movie.

Pam Elyea>> The bag I sold to the production company for
$3,500, but my costs were well over $50,000 for the workers'
compensation claim, plus my rates went up because I did have
this claim. The payout to the plaintiff was not so great, but
this person had eighty-nine doctors' appointments. If you
average out and say the average doctor appointment is a hundred
dollars, that's $8,900.

Toni Guinyard>> The finger of blame is being pointed at and by
everyone impacted by the current system, employers, employees,
insurers, attorneys and even lawmakers. Each faction came
together in the same room at the same time for a workers'
compensation forum hosted by the State Assembly Select Committee
on Small Business. This is where we first met Pam Elyea.

Pam Elyea>> I had to go. I had to speak out. I felt I was
going to go and I wasn't going to say anything new, but what was
positive about going to this was realizing that John Garamendi
and the California Insurance Department was aware of these
problems and that they were working on ways to try to solve
them.

Toni Guinyard>> Just days after this forum, State Insurance
Commissioner John Garamendi unveiled what's being called The
Garamendi Plan, the Insurance Commissioner's own roadmap to
reforming workers' compensation. Among the changes he calls
for? Making uninsured employers subject to felony charges and
addressing the penalty structure for refused or delayed
benefits.

Wendy Greuel>> In Los Angeles and in the city of Los Angeles,
if for whatever reason there's a bureaucrat snafu and we are one
day late in paying a workers' compensation claim, we are
penalized not only on that particular payment, but all of the
previous payments that we've made to that individual and all of
the future payments that we make to that individual. In some
instances, the penalties are greater than the actual workers'
compensation claim originally.

Toni Guinyard>> Greuel says this system must be fixed.

Wendy Greuel>> We have got to do something dramatic and drastic
to address those increasing workers' compensation costs. If we
save, for example, $50 million dollars, that's eight hundred
police officers. You would get over, I think, three hundred
streets that we could repave. The numbers are staggering.

Toni Guinyard>> The numbers related to workers' compensation
insurance are equally, if not more, staggering. The situation
is forcing some businesses out of business while pushing other
business owners to fight for change.

Pam Elyea>> We've thought about relocating. We've thought
about moving. But we've been together such a long time. My
staff all has children here and they have their homes here.
It's not a case of I just one day decide, you know, I've had
enough of this and I'm out of here.

Toni Guinyard>> Elyea says she isn't going anywhere. She's
staying right here with the employees who have become part of
her extended family doing business as usual while talking about
reforming workers' compensation to anyone willing to listen.

Pam Elyea>> "Okay, kiddo. Thanks for the call. Okay. Bye-
Bye."

Val>> As you know, Governor Schwarzenegger has vowed to reform
workers' compensation, but this week he said that workers'
compensation attorneys and labor unions are trying to derail his
efforts. His team has been locked in secret negotiations with
those groups trying to hammer out a compromise. Despite the
difficulties, the governor says he's optimistic they'll come to
an agreement.

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Val>> Imagine spending millions of dollars to tunnel beneath a
city in order to extend a freeway. Well, that's the plan on the
drawing board for the 710 Freeway. It calls for tunneling
beneath the city of South Pasadena in order to avoid destroying
any neighborhoods. We talked with Norman Mineta, the
President's Secretary of Transportation, about the plan. We
caught up with Mr. Mineta at Town Hall Los Angeles where he was
a featured speaker before a downtown audience.

Philip Bruce>> In looking at some of the projects that may be
coming down the line, one of the ones locally at least that's
bound to spark a lot of interest is this plan for the Long Beach
Freeway and some study at least on whether or not it's possible
to tunnel under South Pasadena and extend that freeway. That
freeway has been a bone of contention since your days in
Congress.

Norman Mineta>> Absolutely, and even longer before than that.

Philip Bruce>> Is it possible that we may be looking at a
solution to this now that's going to make everybody happy?

Norman Mineta>> Well, it seems like Highway 710 has been there
forever and ever, but now Pasadena, South Pasadena and Alhambra
are all coming together. I've met with the mayors of those
communities and it's progressing. I don't know if they've got
the final solution yet, but it seems to me the ball is advancing
down the field.

Philip Bruce>> Of course, South Pasadena has opposed any effort
to extend that freeway through their city limits forever and it
would have wrecked a lot of those historic homes there. But
this plan to tunnel under the city, is that feasible? I mean,
that sounds like Boston.

Norman Mineta>> Well, no one has really eyeballed the total
amount of costs that are involved in this tunneling project, but
at least in looking at it as a solution, whether it really is
going to be dependent on how much is it going to cost, how long
will it take, how does the property get impacted, and it is like
the Boston project. You know, it brings back a lot of memories
about the process that went through.

Philip Bruce>> Why go through that expense and that time? I
know that politically it's tough to tell the folks in South
Pasadena that we're going to plow through there. But, I mean,
when you're looking at dollars and cents, that would be the
cheapest way to deal with this, wouldn't it?

Norman Mineta>> It would be, but there is a residence that's
right in the pathway that's a designated historic landmark.
We've made offers to move it, to relocate it to other locations
within South Pasadena, but all of those have been rebuffed
because part of that is the National Historic Preservation
designation that property has.

Philip Bruce>> Mr. Secretary, you're in a unique position to
know how bad the freeways are in Southern California, being a
native of California. What things are in the highway bill that
may make life better for all of us here trying to get around?

Norman Mineta>> Well, one of the things is, first of all, the
increased amount of funding that President Bush submitted in his
proposal to Congress last May. It's a twenty-one percent
increase in funding over the last adopted surface transportation
legislation in 1998. So not only increased funding, but it also
gives states and local government more flexibility to be able to
use their funds in, I guess you might say, block amounts rather
than specific programmatic areas. So it gives them more
flexibility to move the funds around.

Philip Bruce>> California gets the lion's share of all the
federal highway dollars and that's especially true this year, is
that right?

Norman Mineta>> It is true.

Philip Bruce>> Can we build our way out of these problems? I
mean, have we gotten to a point where we're at the max? We're
at the absolute peak of what we can do with freeways here?

Norman Mineta>> Well, that's why the Bush administration is
taking a new look at the whole issue of transportation and also,
not only as it deals with passenger traffic, but also in terms
of freight movement. So we have this new transportation agenda
for America where we're looking at rail, air, highways, transit,
and trying to figure out what are the alternatives to just more
freeway lanes. Because we know that that's not an unending
resource, you might say, so we've got to find other ways to
accommodate, especially when we know that freight traffic is
going to increase some fifty percent in the next twenty years.

When we try to accommodate all of these, because transportation
is the foundation of keeping our economy moving and being able
to keep a person to get to work and get back to their families,
we're looking at the whole picture of transportation and how do
we carve out different answers for different regions. Transit
and public transportation has to be a vital part of that.

Philip Bruce>> From your days as a congressman from up in
Silicon Valley, you were on the transportation committee and had
a lot of involvement with these kinds of issues. Has it gotten
tougher to deal with those things now and, from your vantage
point as Secretary, is it tougher to have to look at the whole
picture versus the districts that you used to represent?

Norman Mineta>> It is because, from a national perspective, the
financial resources that are available are shrinking. The
gasoline tax revenues that's always been going into the highway
trust fund are going down because you have more fuel-efficient
cars, you've got hybrid engines, you've got hydrogen coming in
the future. So that means the revenue from the gasoline tax is
going to be going down in the future and yet the needs are not
going to lessen.

Philip Bruce>> And that's an amazing irony. As we try to clean
up the air and boost the mileage, we're actually cutting into
the taxes that will generate money to build these freeways.

Norman Mineta>> Yes, that's correct. So we've got to look to
other innovative financing methods, get more players to the
table so that we can still support all the infrastructure needs
we have to accommodate people and the movement as well as
keeping the movement of our economy strong.

Philip Bruce>> When you come back home and you look at the
situation we're faced with here on these freeways getting more
crowded and the projects that we're going to nearly double our
population in the next decade or so, are you optimistic in any
way that we're going to be able to deal with this stuff?

Norman Mineta>> Well, by nature, I'm an optimistic person, so
I'd like to think that, no matter what the problems are, all of
us working together will be able to bring out collective minds
and innovative thinking to be able to bring solutions to these
programs and problems.

Philip Bruce>> Mr. Secretary, thanks for talking with us.
Enjoy your trip back to California.

Norman Mineta>> Thank you. Great to be with you, Phil.

Philip Bruce>> Nice to see you.

Val>> Secretary Mineta was a guest at Town Hall Los Angeles.
If you'd like to learn more about future speakers, you can go to
their website or give Town Hall Los Angeles a call.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
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Val>> There's a say that not all motion is forward and not all
change is progress, and nothing shows change more clearly than
putting a photograph of the past right next to a photograph of
the present. That's what one photographer has done to document
change in Orange County. George Jezek took sixty-three
photographs from decades past and went to the exact same
location to capture the scene today. The result is a pictorial
history of Orange County that speaks volumes. First of all,
when people think of Orange County, they think of Newport Beach
and Laguna Beach, but you've done everything. You've done Santa
Ana, Costa Mesa, some of the less glamorous spots as well.

George Jezek>> You know, I really tried to include everything.
I think the town or Orange County really has a lot of life
beyond the beaches. You know, you really maybe even go to, you
know, Yorba Linda and you look at the most famous guy that
really came out of Southern California that everybody forgets
about.

Val>> Richard Nixon.

George Jezek>> Richard Nixon, the farm town kid.

Val>> You did a before and after of the Nixon Library.

George Jezek>> His house where he actually grew up with all his
kids. It's just a tiny little house.

Val>> Some of the most dramatic changes can be seen from the
air.

George Jezek>> From the air. That would be the most, yes.

Val>> And there's one in particular that has amazing
development that occurred. It was where?

George Jezek>> It's in the Newport Beach Peninsula. This is
what I've heard. They couldn't give the land away, so if you
bought a house in Pasadena, you got a piece of land on Newport
Beach Island.

Val>> (Laughter) This is back in the turn of the century?

George Jezek>> I would say, you know, probably the early teens,
1914, 1920.

Val>> Now a lot of places, surprisingly, haven't changed that
much. It's amazing to see the hotels that are still there.

George Jezek>> Yeah. I tried to find stuff where I know the
exact spot is, so you have to go with what exists. So I tried
to look for some other stuff which would show a little bit more
change, but then I couldn't really honestly say that that was
the right spot.
Val>> You actually are very careful about this being
historically correct. You want to match up shot for shot.

George Jezek>> As close as I can get.

Val>> Now you have some that are really memorable. You say
Dana Point was really fun to do. Why was that?

George Jezek>> You know, Dana Point was kind of a place that
was an open ocean beach area. In the early twenties, they tried
to get everybody to come down and buy land there. I think they
used to bring booze in there and unidentified drinks to try to
get people to buy land. Then in the early sixties, the Army
Corps of Engineers came out and built a huge seawall and now I
think there's probably 150 boats there, so it's gone from really
a fishing village to now these, you know, million dollar yachts
in this area.

Val>> Another place we're all familiar with is Knott's Berry
Farm and apparently it started literally from a little store or
something?

George Jezek>> It's a pretty interesting story where they had
so many acres and then they had to get more acres and nobody
would loan them any money and then they opened this store up and
saved enough money to buy the land without the bankers. Then a
sister of the mom wanted to cook pies, so they went into a
restaurant. The amusement park started from so many people
waiting in line to get into the restaurant, so they had to
entertain them and that's how that started.

Val>> This is Brea. A lot of people think, well, Orange County
had orange fields, but it also had oil fields.

George Jezek>> It had oil fields. I really think that actually
oil fields probably brought in more money than the oranges did
at the beginning. They really don't have a lot of oil there
anymore, but it's still enough to keep it rolling, I guess.

Val>> So when you find the original archival photograph, where
do you look? How do you find it? How do you choose?

George Jezek>> It's really -- with this Orange County book, I
was lucky enough that there's this one place, First American
Title. I don't know if you've heard of them. They're a title
company, one of the biggest in the country now. They started in
Orange County.

Val>> And they have a photo archive?

George Jezek>> Somebody back in the day said we'd better keep
an archive and they have an archive of over 10,000 photos that's
privately held.

Val>> What a goldmine.

George Jezek>> It was really a goldmine.

Val>> Then the question is how do you choose which one because
you have so many choices. You must have a criteria.

George Jezek>> Yeah. Well, most of it is making sure that you
can get those photos.

Val>> In the present day.

George Jezek>> Yeah, in the present day. The first book I did,
San Diego, I would get all excited and say, oh, man, that's a
great shot and then I would run around and couldn't get them.
So over time, I've kind of --

Val>> -- now why wouldn't you be able to get them?

George Jezek>> Mostly trees. Growth. You've got to think this
was a desert years ago and then now the trees have just all
grown up. So sometimes you can kind of slide in between the
trees and get the shot, but most of the time, it's just too
much, so you really can't do it from the ground shots.

Val>> You know, we see so much development and sprawl that a
lot of change like this can be really depressing. Did you get
the sense that things are not as beautiful as they used to be or
were you encouraged? What was your emotional view of your
story?

George Jezek>> You know, in Orange County, I was a little
depressed. You come from San Diego where they kind of preserved
what they had downtown. In Orange County in the seventies or
so, they leveled stuff and they didn't really try to save it. I
don't know if it was economical reasons at the time, but they
just leveled it. So a lot of the stuff is gone and it's gone
forever, except for the coast. The coast, they did preserve, so
you go to Laguna Beach and you go to those other places, they
did preserve that stuff, but anything inland was just leveled
really.

There was one that really stood out to me and that was the Santa
Ana Courthouse. It had a cupola on top which was one of the
tallest buildings and they took a bunch of granite or stone out
of Temecula and it cost, I think, over $100,000 to build.

Val>> A lot of money back then.

George Jezek>> A lot of money, probably in 1905. But it's an
amazing piece of architecture and history too. Kind of like Los
Angeles was a boomtown. Orange County, in some areas, was
really just a boomtown.

Val>> This is actually from the book you're working on now,
which is Los Angeles, and this is how it starts. You make a
Xerox.

George Jezek>> Make a Xerox.

Val>> So you have to find the exact shot.

George Jezek>> And there it is today.

Val>> Wow. George Jezek, thank you for preserving a little
history through your camera. We really appreciate it.

George Jezek>> Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Val>> And by the way, George Jezek uses a film camera, not a
digital camera, and he doesn't believe in touching things up
with PhotoShop. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For
everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you
next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times, a new way to find secondhand
treasures without leaving home and it helps some of Southern
California's neediest people.

>> And they don't know if they live in Louisiana that they're
shopping from a Goodwill in Orange County, California. You
know, they don't know where they're shopping, so that's kind of
a great thing of the internet.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.