Two things you got wrong, Ron: SEIU does not support higher green fees, and the golf system does not lose money. First, SEIU supports a Golf Enterprise fund because it will give the golf system the flexibility it needs to market its courses, hold more tournaments more often, and will reinvest profits in a golf system which has a projected capital improvment need of about $25 million or so over the next decade. Some of the profits can also go to helping support many other badly-needed recreation services like childcare and sports programs. The golfers' organizations in the city support this idea, and we've worked in coalition with them over the past several years to make this happen. This is our moment Through crisis comes opportunity. Secondly, contrary to the Mayor's insinuation, the golf system doesn't lose money (in his LA Times Op-ed, he lumped it with the Convention Center and the Zoo, which both have debt) but actually turns gross profit of $16-18 million a year. No wonder why private industry wants it, or why Antonio is thinking it'll be a profitable item to sell. The system actually turns $8 million in net profits after salary costs and the absurd excessive tack-on of overhead charges called the Cost Allocation Plan or CAP rate. The LA City Golf system is a good one and needs the freedom of an enterprise fund to succeed. The Mayor has adopted Reason Foundation rhetoric that municipal golf is "the most non-essential of non-essential services." I look forward to helping prove that golf is a much essential recreation service the City provides to thousands of, if not a million, customers a year. Golfers and golf workers are constituents and stakeholders in LA, and we want what's best for the City. We invite the public to demand openness and inclusion as the Mayor's office and the CAO consider inclusion of this in the budget, to be released in April. Jason Elias Lead Worksite Organizer SEIU Local 721 www.SEIU721.org

The only hazard here is to golfers off-the-course is to their checkbooks and double/triple taxation, because golf courses are considered 'non essential.' Proof that the City always does things basakwards is that the county can make dollars off divots and the city can't. Further proof will come when the fit really hits the shan and cutting back on paramedics to save a few bucks will inevitably be followed by law suits in the billions by relatives of people who died because there were no ambulances to take them to the hospital. Oh yeah, the murder rate will go up, too. Doug McIntyre maintains that the murder rate has gone down due to good paramedic and medical care. With fewer amublances, we'll soon find out if this is true.

This is double taxation of golfers. They ALREADY pay taxes to maintain these courses, and they ALREADY pay greens fees. Now they have to pay more? Why? So Villaraigosa can have 173 staffers? So billionaire developers can continue to receive subsidies? That's BS. You want to privatize something that will REALLY benefit the public? Privatize SCHOOLS! Villaraigosa sent his kids to private schools. So did Hertzberg. So does anyone who can afford to do so.

SEIU and golf clubs have wanted this exact deal for almost 8 years now. Remains to be seen how it will work out.

The term is "Enterprise Fund" and the City has a number of Enterprise Funds already. This sounds like a great compromise between union-City-public, as long as the Golf Enterprise Fund is not then privatized at a later date. Privatization would then cost public workers their jobs and hand over a resource that taxpayers have put their money into for more than a century. That's a hell of a lot of taxpayer money essentially being 'inherited' by a private enterprise.