Bill Threatens to Dissolve a City Built on Water

While Mayor Richard Riordan delivered his State of the City speech Tuesday, part of his city was threatening to slip away.

The day before, the most influential business group in the San Fernando Valley, the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., voted to support a pending bill that would make it much easier for that huge expanse of L.A. to secede from the city.

The bill, by Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills), would strip the Los Angeles City Council of power to block secession. If the measure passes, a vote of Valley residents would bring municipal independence to an area whose subdivisions, plants and stores have added to L.A.’s riches for many decades.

Aware of what L.A. would lose, Riordan sought to mollify the secessionists in his speech and in a press conference afterward.

The mayor praised Valley business and industrial leaders for their 2-year-old economic development program. And at a post-speech press conference, Riordan told reporters: “The Valley is very important to the future of Los Angeles. No city can survive and prosper without a strong middle class.”

But words alone aren’t enough to stifle growing movements, popping up all over the basin, for more local control of communities, police and schools. We see it in proposals for areas to secede from the Los Angeles Unified School District, and for demands for more community control over the Police Department.

The San Fernando Valley secession movement is an important part of that phenomenon.

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Nobody should be surprised at the independence sentiment.

The city of Los Angeles is an artificial creation, with boundaries about as logical as those of the former Yugoslavia.

Like Yugoslavia, L.A. was cobbled together by politicians to satisfy a need. In our case, the need was water. In the early days, city fathers piped in water from the Owens Valley. Small communities such as Venice and the San Fernando Valley towns had to annex to L.A. to get their share of water. Powerful landowners, hungry for water for new subdivisions and plants, were behind the annexations.

Nobody objected to this during post World War II prosperity. The place was booming, and nobody cared if the operation was run out of City Hall by a government dominated by downtown business.

But the past two decades of racial, social and economic tension changed the laid-back attitude.

Valley secession cropped up in the ‘70s with a group called CIVICC, the Committee Investigating Valley Independent City/County.

In 1976, CIVICC released a study finding that Valley residents contributed 40 cents of every dollar collected from Los Angeles taxpayers, but received just 15 cents worth of services.

The study fueled anti-downtown feeling. But it didn’t really take off until the 1990s amid fierce competition for limited city dollars.

In his State of the City speech, Riordan sought to deal with secession by promoting his own plan of neighborhood power.

The mayor announced the assignment of Deputy Mayor Sharon Morris to lead an effort to give neighborhoods more power to shape city services. He adopted City Councilman Joel Wachs’ proposal for a citywide convention of people from neighborhood organizations.

After Riordan’s speech, Wachs said it could help cool down the secession drive.

“If you develop community based government, you will defuse the demand for separate cities,” he said.

I also talked to a strong Riordan supporter and major Valley political leader, attorney David Fleming, president of the Fire Commission and chairman of the Valley economic development effort. “You need to give the Valley a sense of autonomy,” he said.

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The next few weeks will be important for the Valley secession efforts and Riordan’s attempts to derail the movement.

The secessionists face many hurdles. In Sacramento, Assemblywoman Boland said she expects her bill to pass the Assembly, but to face a tough fight in the Senate, where the city of Los Angeles has more power.

City Councilman Richard Alarcon, who represents the northeast Valley, said, “I doubt the Valley would benefit from secession.” Riordan’s friend Fleming said, “The Valley will not secede when it finds out how much it will cost.”

Still, anti-City Hall feeling is evident in rich, poor and middle-class neighborhoods. A prospective candidate for mayor, state Sen. Tom Hayden, sought to tap into that in a statement issued after Riordan’s speech. “The mayor’s approach to neighborhoods so far is superficial and paternalistic,” Hayden said in a speech. “He wants to paint signs . . . and hear from selected community leaders from time to time. But he resists the delegation of power to neighborhoods over vital issues like development.”

The fight is just beginning. No telling how it will end in a city that, from the beginning, has been a fragile alliance of communities and neighborhoods.