2 State Senate Committees Hear Complaints : Cityhood Backers Call for Reform of Incorporation Process

Drawing upon recent experience, Santa Clarita and Calabasas cityhood proponents urged the state Tuesday to find a fairer, clearer and more objective method of deciding community requests to form cities.

But a key Senate Republican later was skeptical that major legislative reform is likely.

Leaders of the Los Angeles County cityhood movements told members of two Senate committees meeting in Van Nuys that the criteria for drawing boundaries for new cities are so ill-defined that borders appear to be chosen arbitrarily.

“The rationale is so broad it really is at whim,” said Robert Hill, president of the Calabasas Cityhood Committee. “There’s a mishmash of why people are allowed in or are allowed to stay out.”

The county’s Local Agency Formation Commission last week eliminated three residential areas and an industrial park from Calabasas’ proposed city boundaries--a blow to the 2 1/2-year effort to incorporate the sparsely developed ranchland.

‘More Equitable System’

Art Donnelly, president of the City of Santa Clarita Formation Committee, called upon the Legislature to adopt “a more equitable system than exists.” He noted that his committee had sought to establish a 95-square-mile city before LAFCO whittled the fast-growing region’s municipality to 40 square miles, which voters approved Nov. 3.

LAFCO was the focus of the afternoon hearing--as well as the cityhood proponents’ ire. The local activists charged that LAFCO had provided inaccurate or insufficient information and demonstrated bias against their efforts.

But Ruth Benell, LAFCO’s longtime executive director, told the senators that she saw no need to change the process of deciding cityhood initiatives.

“It seems to me that the process is working pretty well in Los Angeles County,” Benell said. Whether those involved in cityhood movements are pleased with LAFCO “depends on who gets what they want,” she added.

LAFCO is one of 57 county-based agencies set up by the Legislature in 1963 to oversee incorporations and annexations. It has broad authority to reject cityhood proposals and redraw proposed municipal boundaries.

Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), who chairs the Senate Local Government Committee that co-sponsored the hearing, said afterward that improved communication between LAFCO and cityhood proponents may be needed more than major legislative reform.

“I’m not sure we need a state law,” she said. “Communication is lacking. There are many misperceptions. You’re dealing with a highly charged situation.”

Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia), an outspoken LAFCO critic who participated in Tuesday’s hearing, has vowed to introduce a bill in 1988 that would overhaul LAFCO’s operation.

It would shift the source of the agency’s funding from the counties to the state and attempt to provide more detailed and binding guidelines for LAFCO decisions. It would also require that a legislator or county supervisor who represents the area seeking cityhood join LAFCO during deliberations on that area’s application.

Davis acknowledged that the bill would face the formidable opposition of the Building Industry Assn., LAFCO organizations statewide and counties.

Referring to the bill’s stipulation that additional state money go to LAFCO, Bergeson said: “It’s not going to happen.”

But she agreed with Davis that the threat of legislation could prod the various interests to agree on some changes in the LAFCO process.

Davis, who represents both Santa Clarita and Calabasas, said after the hearing that his goal is to force Los Angeles County’s LAFCO “to be more fair and thoughtful and considerate in the process and not so uniformly aligned with the developers.”

He reiterated that the county’s LAFCO has an inherent conflict of interest because two of its seven members are county supervisors and a third is appointed by the supervisors. The others are a San Fernando Valley resident and three councilmen from cities within the county, including one from the City of Los Angeles.

The basis for Davis’ charge is that unincorporated areas generate tax revenues for the county and sometimes provide supervisors with campaign contributions from developers building homes in the area.

Much of the land omitted from Santa Clarita’s boundaries and Calabasas’ proposed borders is undeveloped property earmarked for construction. Decisions on its development will remain with the Board of Supervisors, the majority of whom are considered pro-development. Newly formed city governments are generally expected to back slow-growth policies since restricting construction is often an impetus for incorporation.

Calling Santa Clarita’s stormy incorporation battle “a terrible experience,” Davis said LAFCO should act as “an impartial, quasi-judicial body instead of as an advocate for one of the parties.”

Benell later denied that the county supervisors dominate LAFCO’s decision-making. She said the board does not control a majority of votes. The two supervisors and the board’s citizen appointee had not demonstrated a pattern of voting in the county’s interests, she said.

Connie Worden, vice president of the City of Santa Clarita Formation Committee, said the incorporation process should include an early meeting among the LAFCO staff, homeowners, industry representatives, builders and county agencies to draw an interim map for a proposed city.

She also called for clearer procedures and a more independent and impartial commission for determining a new city’s boundaries. She said an independent audit should be commissioned to review the revenue and expenditure figures used to decide the proposed municipality’s financial viability.

“There is a fundamental absence of understanding of the roles of the county and the city,” Worden said. “A critical dialogue is needed to spell out these roles.”