California Apparel News

Deep roots in the garment industry and seven years of retail experience gave Laura Chick the skills she needed to become one of the most powerful women in Los Angeles city politics.

As city controller, the fiery 61- year-old has launched several controversial audits of the city’s water and power department, its international airport and its burgeoning port, uncovering an alleged “pay to play” attitude in awarding public works contracts to campaign donors. The audits helped usher Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn out the door after last May’s mayoral election.

As a two-term city councilwoman, Chick bickered with former Mayor Richard Riordan over beefing up the police department by 3,000 officers. She wanted to know where the money was going to come from to pay for the additional force.

But the controller, whose thirdfloor corner office in City Hall East is filled with artistic posters and a collection of voodoo dolls, was a late political bloomer. She did not enter politics until she was 49, having had a varied career that started in the garment business.

Her great-uncle, Fred Pomerantz, founded the Leslie Fay dress company in 1947, a label that was a well-known staple for major department stores and hundreds of women’s boutiques.

Her father, Albert “Sonny” Newman, was working at Leslie Fay in New York when he was named the West Coast rep for the apparel company. In 1952, he and his family moved to Los Angeles, where he established his office downtown on Broadway, 12 years before the California Market Center, now home to thousands of showrooms, was built blocks away. He traveled up and down the Western edge of the United States selling Leslie Fay dresses. He was also active in Pacific Coast Travelers, an apparel and accessories association, serving as president.

“Growing up as a teen, almost all my clothes were bought wholesale,” recalled Chick, who at 5 feet 2 inches tall is always in search of good career clothing for petite women. “Clothes were a big deal.”

She went to Beverly Hills High School with the Morse brothers, whose family built the CMC, originally called the CaliforniaMart.

In the mid 1960s, Chick’s father left Leslie Fay and started working as a sales rep for Wilroy Inc., which sold women’s knitwear in synthetic material.

But by the mid-1970s, at the age of 59, he decided to switch careers and bought a misses apparel store called Ruth Faye in Glendale, Calif. The store later moved to the Glendale Galleria.

It was there that Chick, a single mother with two children in elementary school, honed her retail skills. She started helping out on a part-time basis. Within a year, she was working at the store full time.

“I was there for about six or seven years. My job was everything,” recalled Chick, sitting in her office filled with pictures of her two adult daughters; her granddaughter, Morgan; and friends and colleagues. “I really learned the business from top to bottom, from opening cartons of apparel, steaming and ticketing to selling at the front desk.”

She also did a considerable amount of buying at the CaliforniaMart and at market weeks held at the Marriott Hotel near Los Angeles International Airport.

“Then I decided that the retail business and running a store in a seven-day-a-week shopping center was not going to be the final end for me. It was a difficult decision to make because I knew it was likely that if I left, my father would have to close the store, which is what happened. Within a year, he sold it and the name was changed,” said Chick, whose father is now 94.

But she didn’t leave the garment industry; instead she found a job with a belt manufacturer in Van Nuys, Calif. “I decided I was going to reinvent myself and start at the bottom and work my way up on the business side of the industry,” she said, explaining she responded to a classified ad for a top assistant to the marketing director at Charmant Belts.

The job was not what she expected. She found herself working in a windowless room as a telemarketer with other telemarketers. That lasted six months.

“It was a turning point for me,” she said. “I said: ’Forget this bottom-up business. I’m going back to school.’” She enrolled at the University of Southern California, where she received her master’s degree in social work.

But instead of heading for a career in social work, Chick in 1988 got a job as field deputy to then–City Councilwoman Joy Picus, who represented part of the San Fernando Valley.

Chick eventually ended up challenging Picus for her job in 1992, becoming the representative of the Third District in the west San Fernando Valley for two terms until term limits forced her out.

In 2000, Chick decided to run for Los Angeles city controller, even though she doesn’t have an accounting degree. She took office in 2001, becoming the first woman in Los Angeles history to hold an elected citywide job. She won her second term in March 2005 with 82 percent of the vote.

Her job consists of being a watchdog for the city’s taxpayers. It is a role she has taken on with great gusto, auditing various city departments to see how they are spending their money.

Her audits led to allegations that the public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard had inflated its bills to several city departments by millions of dollars. Earlier this year, the firm agreed to pay $5.7 million to settle claims of over-billing the Department of Water & Power, the Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Port of Los Angeles and Los Angeles World Airports.

Her November 2003 audit of the Los Angeles airport and its commission led to allegations that a number of contracts for public works had been issued after business honchos gave political contributions to Mayor Hahn or to the campaign to keep the San Fernando Valley from seceding from Los Angeles.

Her thorough investigations led to the resignation of Ted Stein, the president of the airport commission, and Troy Edwards, the deputy mayor who was Hahn’s liaison to the airport and the harbor.

Her success in politics, she said, stems from honing her skills in the retail and apparel industries.

“I remember when I started campaigning in 1992 for the first time, it was very clear to me how important it was that I had retailing and sales in my background,” she noted. “I started fund-raising, and I realized I was selling something. I had to sell people on why they should give me some of their hardearned money. When I was a working official, I had to sell my ideas. I had to get votes. I had to get support. hellip; That background has served me well as an elected official.”