Dan Walters: Trade offices were a joke, but politicians now want new ones (CA)

Sacramento Bee ^ | April 19, 2006 | Dan Walters

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Creating overseas offices supposedly devoted to improving California's international trade was a popular political exercise in the 1980s and 1990s.

There was no objective rationale for the program, nor any rhyme nor reason to where the offices were located. Governors and legislators acted on political whim, driven more by local factors or Capitol politics than a hard-nosed investment-vs.-return equation.

Finally, the entire program collapsed of its own absurd weight. Journalistic investigations and official audits established that the trade offices were less than useless, with their directors - political appointees all - spending most of their time dreaming up phantom accomplishments.

At one point, the Legislature's budget analyst reported that the state's Trade and Commerce Agency was claiming credit for any export or investment that included a contact with a trade office, but could not document a single specific transaction that could be tied to any trade office activity. The Orange County Register, in an extensive examination of the program, declared that the reports submitted by the trade offices were "often false or distorted." In many cases, the newspaper contacted business executives that the offices claimed to have helped and found that most shunned any benefits.

With the state budget oozing red ink in 2003, the Legislature voted to shut down the Trade and Commerce Agency and the overseas trade offices - almost. While financing was eliminated for a dozen offices in London, Tokyo and other major foreign cities, a paragraph buried in one of the budget "trailer bills" required the state to maintain an office in tiny, landlocked Armenia.

Why Armenia? Democratic politicians had been cultivating political support in Southern California's large and growing Armenian American community and wanted to butter up voters by paying official homage to their homeland.

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But that would change if an array of bills now pending in the Legislature - one with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's blessing - is enacted. The state would open a new set of trade offices in Asia, Latin America, Europe and Africa on the questionable assertion that they would benefit the state's international dealings.