Focusing on five Los Angeles environmental policy debates between
1920 and 1950, Sarah Elkind investigates how practices in American
municipal government gave business groups political legitimacy at
the local level as well as unanticipated influence over federal
politics.
Los Angeles's struggles with oil drilling, air pollution, flooding,
and water and power supplies expose the clout business has had over
government. Revealing the huge disparities between big business
groups and individual community members in power, influence, and
the ability to participate in policy debates, Elkind shows that
business groups secured their political power by providing Los
Angeles authorities with much-needed services, including studying
emerging problems and framing public debates. As a result,
government officials came to view business interests as the public
interest. When federal agencies looked to local powerbrokers for
project ideas and political support, local business interests
influenced federal policy, too. Los Angeles, with its many
environmental problems and its dependence upon the federal
government, provides a distillation of national urban trends,
Elkind argues, and is thus an ideal jumping-off point for
understanding environmental politics and the power of business in
the middle of the twentieth century.