A Way of Life Is at Stake in Secession Fight

It’s the little things, the small inconveniences suffered by homeowners and businesses, that help make San Fernando Valley secession such a powerful movement.

You can’t find a parking place at the ramshackle City Hall branch in Van Nuys. The ultimate decisions about neighborhood policing are made downtown by LAPD bureaucrats.

You have to travel downtown for permits for the biggest building projects. Water rates, which always seem too high, are set downtown by an agency the Valley loves to hate, the Department of Water and Power.

Then add something really big to the list--a movement sweeping the city from the Valley to San Pedro fueled by a burning desire for local control over decisions that that shape a way of life. Neighborhoods want to decide whether to permit liquor stores near churches, strip malls in residential areas or to gate their streets to keep criminals out.

Put all this together and it’s easy to see why Old Los Angeles forces are afraid that Valley secessionists, who won an Assembly approval for an important breakaway bill Thursday, might now win Senate passage for the measure.

The bill, by Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills), would take away the City Council’s power to block secession.

The Los Angeles team appears in disarray. The Angelenos will try to reverse the Assembly vote on the Boland measure, but it would be a major upset. Mayor Richard Riordan said: “I’m not going to lobby for it or against it. Frankly, I wish it wasn’t there.”

And he’s captain of the L.A. team. “I think this is serious,” said Norm Boyer, Los Angeles’ chief Sacramento lobbyist, who is leading the fight against the secession bill.

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It’s serious because of the nature of the Valley and the lifestyle favored by so many of its residents.

The Valley was settled after World War II by free-spirited vets and war plant workers who left old L.A. neighborhoods for a better life in the subdivisions that sprang up in the empty fields north of the Santa Monica Mountains.

There, in housing tracts in Van Nuys, Reseda, Studio City, Sherman Oaks, North Hollywood and other communities, they built a way of life around single family homes, backyards, barbecues and the neighborhood school.

Originally, the settlers were white. In recent years, they have been joined by Latinos, African Americans and Asian Americans. In many Valley areas, the races live in much closer proximity than on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains.

A few years ago, The Times did a study of the voting habits of Latino families who had moved from working class Boyle Heights to middle class Valley neighborhoods. As they moved upscale, the study found, their voting tended to become more conservative, resembling that of their new neighbors.

This indicated that class, rather than race, was a dominant force in the Valley. And the class is, to a large extent, middle. In fact, the Valley is the heart and soul of middle class L.A.

I’ve interviewed these residents in their homes over the years and attended meetings of their neighborhood and business groups. Usually, the conversation turns to the small things that bother them: the perception that they’re being shortchanged when it comes to things like police protection, tree trimming, garbage collection and water service.

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These feelings will be in play as Angelenos desperately try to reverse the Assembly vote and, at the same time, prepare for a Senate fight.

One L.A. team member told me the Senate vote would be tight, with the odds on Los Angeles beating the Boland bill just 3-2.

Sources say in the Senate, L.A. will attempt to build an alliance with city employee unions and with big businesses who have a stake in the present centralized operation.

This is the traditional back-room alliance politics of Sacramento. Once, the back-room deals would have been enough. But it’s no longer a sure bet in a Legislature made unstable by term limits, where lawmakers, facing uncertain political futures, are keenly aware of the grievances, big and small, running through suburban California.