Legislator Seeks Study on Impact of Secession

Calling the Valley secession bill “inadequate,” state Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer on Monday proposed a $1.2-million state-funded study on the impacts of splitting up Los Angeles and called for a citywide vote before such a division could occur.

Lockyer called his plan a compromise and said he was aiming for a fair middle ground between members of the Senate who want to kill the bill outright and those who support it as is.

However, neither faction was altogether happy with the Lockyer plan.

“It looks like a way of defeating the bill,” said state Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles), a supporter.

By contrast, state Sen. Richard G. Polanco (D-Los Angeles), who had vowed to bury the measure in his Elections Committee, said: “There’s a saying here, ‘You can’t make a bad bill good.’ . . . [Secession] is not good public policy and not good for the people of Los Angeles.”

Perhaps the opinion most critical to the Lockyer plan is that of the measure’s author, Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills), and she reserved judgment after receiving the proposal Monday.

In the past, Boland has vowed to withdraw her bill rather than have it ruined by “poison pill” amendments.

But Boland said Monday she was analyzing the proposal and had asked San Fernando Valley leaders to study it as well.

Lockyer (D-Hayward) said unnamed Valley leaders he has consulted with have said they need more information on the potential impacts of forming a new city. That’s what the study would be intended to do, though it would not be completed until the end of 1997.

“Many Valley leaders have a desire to know the facts before making a decision,” Lockyer said. “The current version of Assemblywoman Boland’s bill is too theoretical and needs to be made practical.”

One Valley homeowner leader supporting secession reacted negatively to Lockyer’s proposal.

“This is the Lockyer ‘democratic’ proposal that we had feared,” said Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.

“It’s an effort to give the Valley something that is in reality nothing. . . . It is an effort to kill the bill.”

Lockyer said he will offer his amendments later in the week, possibly in the Rules Committee, where he has the votes to proceed. Or the amendments might be offered in the Appropriations Committee, where Lockyer said he will send the bill for consideration as early as next week.

After that, the amended bill would still require Senate approval. The Assembly, which has already passed Boland’s bill, would have to concur with any changes.

Besides hiring a mutually agreed-upon analyst to study the economic and environmental effects of dividing the city, the Lockyer plan calls for a Blue Ribbon Commission, appointed by the governor and the Legislature, to conduct a statewide study of the current law on detachments.

The commission would be composed of academic and professional representatives, including demographers, urban economists and land-use planners. It also would have representatives of state and local government.

Los Angeles council members with both pro- and anti-secession sentiment would have a say in who would be on the commission.

The feasibility study would move ahead without the currently required first step of getting signatures from 25% of Valley residents. The study would also bypass the obscure agency that has power to rule on detachments--the Local Agency Formation Commission.

Reforming LAFCO has been the key aim of another senator and potential mayoral candidate, Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica).

Hayden, who Friday predicted the Boland bill would die, said the Lockyer plan, “a work in progress,” was a move in the right direction.

“This is an improvement over last week,” Hayden said. “The process of breaking up the stagnant, centralized power structure of Los Angeles is underway. At last things are starting to break.”