Senate Gets Valley Secession Bill as Debate Grows

Legislation to help the San Fernando Valley secede from Los Angeles cleared the Assembly on Monday and headed for a cloudy future in the state Senate. It also is emerging as a hot issue in next year’s mayoral election.

The chairman of the Senate Local Government Committee, moderate Republican William A. Craven of Oceanside, said Monday he has “never seen any clamor” for secession. He declared that the bill “needs a lot of investigation” and may be put off until next year so that a study can be completed.

But Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), often seen as a probable candidate for Los Angeles mayor, offered a limited endorsement and said, “No one should take for granted that the Senate will kill this bill.”

Hayden used a news conference to blast Mayor Richard Riordan and said he intends to offer amendments to the secession bill aimed at giving Los Angeles’ neighborhoods more autonomy and power and taking power away from what he called the “central business district downtown.”

The issue headed for more debate today as the Los Angeles City Council plans to discuss the bill by Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills) that passed the Assembly last Thursday. The bill (AB 2043) would remove the Los Angeles City Council’s power--embodied in state law--to veto a neighborhood’s attempt to secede.

Boland, who first proposed her bill three years ago, says she is pushing the measure because San Fernando Valley activists and residents support it. Similar sentiment exists in other parts of the city, lawmakers say. But several of the Legislature’s Los Angeles Democrats oppose secession, saying it would cause further rifts in the city.

The bill headed for the Senate on Monday after Boland beat back an attempt by Los Angeles Democrats to reconsider Thursday’s Assembly vote.

Boland said she is unsure how she will pilot her bill through the upper house. But over objections of some Los Angeles Democrats, she did win passage of similar legislation last year to permit a breakup of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“When I start my strategy, I will know--the same way I worked my school bill,” Boland said.

Although Craven said he would not prejudge the bill, he predicted that it “will be somewhat bedraggled” if and when it emerges from his committee. He suggested that the idea is headed for a study at the end of the legislative session, which would put the matter over until next year before a newly elected Legislature.

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But while Boland had little trouble keeping supporters in line in the GOP-controlled Assembly, she is in for a tougher fight in the Senate, where Democrats hold a majority--and where moderate Republican Craven is leaning against the bill.

“I just don’t know that a lot of people are jumping up and down for this bill,” Craven said. “[Boland] is running for the Senate. Sometimes you carry stuff like that because it looks good in the brochures.”

Meanwhile, Hayden said his as-yet undrafted amendment would encourage Riordan and the City Council to place a charter amendment on next year’s ballot. The charter amendment would seek to ensure that neighborhoods have more power over issues such as development.

“It’s an issue in the mayor’s race, whether or not I run,” Hayden said, adding that he does not know when he will decide whether to run. “While people in Los Angeles have failed to fully internalize that this could actually happen, it is beyond the level of light discussion. . . . The questions raised have to be addressed.”

Neighborhood activists would meet to draft such a charter amendment, Hayden said. But he suggested that, in addition to the current City Council and mayor, there might be elected neighborhood councils that could “bargain over the fate of their neighborhoods” and have the right to a referendum on issues that affect them.

He said that even if Boland’s measure is adopted without his changes, any move by the Valley to secede would face lengthy hearings and court challenges and would stretch “into the next millennium, plus 10.” He said his alternative would be a “cheaper, faster way to address it.”

“The point is to give the ‘powers that be’ a last chance,” Hayden said. “If the charter amendment were to pass, the need for the Boland bill would go away.”

Hayden said that as he envisions it, if the mayor and City Council fail to place a charter amendment on the ballot or if voters turn down such a charter amendment, Boland’s legislation would take affect by 1998.

Boland, however, was not enamored with Hayden’s idea, saying it was entwined with Los Angeles mayoral politics.

“I don’t want to get into the middle of a mayoral race,” she said. “I want to keep this bill simple--it’s democracy. Why would I complicate a simple bill?”

Riordan’s staff rejected Hayden’s charges that Los Angeles neighborhoods do not have enough say in local government and suggested that Hayden was jumping into the fray to make points with voters.

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“The mayor is proud of his administration’s efforts to make sure that neighborhoods’ voices are central to the city’s policymaking,” said Steve Sugerman, Riordan’s communications deputy. “He also thinks it is not responsible to suggest haphazard changes to the city’s government structure to further a political agenda.”

Sugerman rattled off a series of Riordan-supported programs and efforts to empower residents, including a massive “neighborhood convention” next year that will bring together hundreds of neighborhood groups at the Los Angeles Convention Center to brainstorm on solutions to local problems.

In Los Angeles, a sharply divided City Council is expected to tackle the Boland bill today. Based on interviews and a previous vote, at least nine of 15 council members oppose it.

Opponents of the measure say secession raises a welter of questions about how taxes will be affected and who would retain ownership of city-owned parks, Valley sewers and water systems.

The position of Mayor Riordan, who was swept into office with the overwhelming support of Valley voters three years ago, has remained a moving target--prompting several barbs from Hayden at his news conference.

While Riordan says he believes that a secession would hurt the San Fernando Valley and the city, he said he wants Valley residents to have the right to vote on their future. After changing his position on the Boland bill several times, the mayor now insists that he has no position on the legislation.

Supporters of Boland’s bill include council members Laura Chick, Hal Bernson, Richard Alarcon, Joel Wachs and Marvin Braude, who all represent parts of the Valley. Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr., who represents parts of San Pedro, where secession talk has lingered for years, also supports it.

Although the supporters say they want to give San Fernando Valley residents the right to “self-determination,” some, such as Chick, say they would campaign against a breakaway movement because it may only worsen conditions in the Valley.

Morain reported from Sacramento and Martin reported from Los Angeles. Staff writers Carl Ingram and Max Vanzi in Sacramento contributed to this story.