Valley Secession Bill Draws Horsepower North of Mulholland

Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills), who last year introduced successful legislation to make it easier to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District, is busy pushing her bill that would do the same for the city of Los Angeles.

And though the idea has support from other areas of L.A., Boland’s proposal draws most of its strength from north of Mulholland Drive.

“Don’t take my word for it. Just go out on the street anywhere in the San Fernando Valley and say, ‘How would you feel about a breakaway?’ . . . And you’ll get 10 to 1 in favor,” Boland contends.

Under current state law, all cities currently wield veto power over efforts by communities to secede and form their own municipalities.

Boland’s bill would remove that power--but only from cities with more than 2 million people. In other words, only Los Angeles.

“If there are other cities in the state” where a group of residents wish to break away, Boland says, “their Assembly members can turn around and carry their own bill.”

At present, the proposal does not enjoy the same momentum and cachet that Boland’s previous legislation to ease a school district breakup did. And this time, it’s unlikely that she’ll find an ally in state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), who helped push her schools breakup bill through the Democrat-controlled Senate last year but who is now contemplating a run at becoming mayor of L.A.--in its entirety.

“I’m certainly going to be looking” for someone to fill Hayden’s role this time around, says Boland, who is herself gunning for the Senate this November in the 21st District (Glendale-Burbank-Pasadena).

In Los Angeles City Hall, Boland’s proposal has an advocate in Councilwoman Laura Chick, who represents the West Valley.

“The voters should have an opportunity to express their will, and therefore, I’m supportive of putting it on the ballot for a vote by the people of Los Angeles and the Valley,” Chick says.

But as it stands now, Chick herself opposes a Valley secession.

“The city of L.A. is a wonderful, dynamic city with a lot of advantages for funding, for maximizing the resources we have,” Chick says. “I don’t see the problems facing the Valley as much different from the problems facing the rest of the city.”

Chick does support dividing the school district into smaller units to deal with the “many problems of an unwieldy, overly centralized administrative system,” she says.

But can’t the same be said of the city government, of which she is a representative?

Not at all, says Chick.

“We are as responsive as our current budget is allowing us to be. I am not at all convinced that a separate city comprising the San Fernando Valley will be any better off in terms of resources,” Chick says. “In fact, I’m concerned it will be worse off.”

Quick Thinking

Twenty-four hours is a long time in politics.

In fact, a few hours is apparently all it takes for a losing candidate to switch gears from one election and start thinking about the next--and for a loftier office, to boot.

That’s what happened on election night last week for Francine Oschin, who ran unsuccessfully against Bob Hertzberg for the Democratic nod in the 40th Assembly District.

The polls had scarcely closed when Oschin conceded the race to Hertzberg and announced that she was setting up a committee to explore a bid to replace state Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Van Nuys) in the 20th District. Rosenthal, first elected in 1982, must leave in 1998 because of term limits.

“I need to look at the kind of options there are out there. I really enjoyed running,” said Oschin, whom Hertzberg trounced in the primary 72% to 28%. “I didn’t enjoy fund-raising, but I loved everything else about it.”

Oschin, now back at her job as an aide to Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson, credits Hertzberg’s lopsided win to his long election buildup over a period of three years and says she would have to do the same to win a state race in the future. Within the next week or so, Oschin plans to send a letter to her supporters telling them, “I’m still here. I’m still interested.”

“I need to make sure I keep them on board,” she says.

Of course, political watchers think that one of her possible opponents for Rosenthal’s seat could well be the same man who beat her just a week ago.

Hertzberg, an attorney whose campaign attracted big bucks from political action committees and fellow lawyers, dismisses such speculation.

“I can’t even think about it. Who even knows?” Hertzberg said. “Right now I’m focusing intently both winning the general [election] and developing the necessary infrastructure to govern” in Sacramento.

Kissed Off

When morning disc jockey Rick Dees and Los Angeles mayor-millionaire Richard Riordan switched jobs for April Fools’ Day, the politics of show biz shone through.

On the air, Dees kept saying Riordan was in the “Hollywood” studios of radio station KIIS-FM. But the post office for KIIS is way over the hill, firmly outside the city of Los Angeles, in Burbank.

For the mayor, city boundaries make a big difference in business tax opportunities and voters. For the D.J., location is more concept than concrete.

“It’s much sexier to say Hollywood than Burbank,” Dees shrugged when challenged on his facts. “It’s all image.”

After all, the Hollywood sign in Griffith Park is in Los Feliz.

Just Say No

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter has such distaste for smoking that a few years ago she hung a “No Smoking” sign outside of her City Hall office door.

While the sentiment was genuine, the sign was moot: It is illegal to smoke anywhere in City Hall.

Soon after Galanter’s sign went up, Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, whose office is adjacent to Galanter’s, got into the act by hanging a “No Gifts” sign outside of her office door.

The sign was meant to be a statement against all the palm greasing and under-the-counter gift giving that tends to go on in politics.

Councilman Hal Bernson, who walks past the two signs every day on his way to his office, decided he didn’t want to be the only holdout on the hall. So he hung a sign outside of his door this week with the simple message: “NO.”

No what?

No to everything, explained Bernson’s assistant deputy Francine Oschin.

Out of the Picture

One of the things Bernson says no to is prostitution.

As head of the council’s Planning and Land Use Committee, he has often imposed tough restrictions on motels along Sepulveda Boulevard in Van Nuys that are frequented by prostitutes.

In December, Bernson proposed another, more unusual approach to combating the problem. He suggested that the city use its public access cable channel to broadcast the names and pictures of men arrested for soliciting prostitutes and releasing the information to newspapers.

The idea was to shame the so-called “johns” out of soliciting prostitutes.

But when he brought up the idea in council, Assistant City Atty. Gail Weingard warned that the city may be found liable if it publishes such photos and later finds that the arrestee has been found to be innocent.

“God bless the city attorney,” Bernson said sarcastically. “But the city attorney doesn’t make the laws. We do.”

The council supported Bernson’s proposal and asked the city attorney’s office to return to the council in 30 days with a report on how to implement it.

Perhaps the city attorney doesn’t make the laws but Bernson has learned that the city attorney has an important role in the process.

Four months have passed since the council approved the proposal but it has not been implemented because the city attorney’s office is still studying the potential liability of the proposal.

An angry Oschin called the city attorney’s office the “black hole” of City Hall.

Polls Apart

If Paul Stepanek’s latest poll is correct, he is about to pull off the greatest political upset of the election season.

Stepanek, a Republican who is challenging Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) in the 29th Congressional District race, lost to Waxman by 40 points two years ago. But a recent press release declares that the two men are now in a “dead heat race.”

What gives?

Stepanek’s poll, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, gives Waxman 35% of the vote compared to 38% support for Stepanek. But the fine print is critical here. The poll waxed positive on Stepanek and slammed Waxman’s “record on term limits, congressional reform, education, violence in the media and taxes.”

In the end, the results may say more about the ability of savvy pollsters to sway public opinion in a telephone call than about how many people are going to pull the Stepanek lever in the voting booth in November.

Chu, Wilgoren and Martin reported from Los Angeles. Lacey reported from Washington, D.C.