Lockyer Offers Boland Choice on Secession Bill

Breaking a tense stalemate, the Democratic leader of the state Senate agreed Thursday to send the original version of the Valley secession bill to the Senate floor, but warned it would be defeated unless amended as he proposed.

At an afternoon Rules Committee meeting, state Sen. President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) offered secession bill author, Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland (R-Granada Hills), a choice between sending the bill straight to a floor vote--something she has repeatedly sought--or sending it to the Appropriations Committee.

At the committee, the bill would be amended to call for an 18-month study of the impacts of dividing the city, and a separate statewide study of detachment law. The City Council veto power would be scrapped and a citywide vote on secession added.

Lockyer made it clear Thursday that Boland’s bill as it is written now would be doomed on the Senate floor because she lacks the votes to get it passed.

“We’ll take the bill to the floor and that’s it,” he said.

Boland, however, appeared to be thinking about acceding to what has thus far been a deal-breaker--a citywide vote on a secession attempt.

Boland, who will be in San Diego at the GOP convention next week, asked for time to consider her options, and Lockyer agreed to delay action until her return. However, according to some legislative sources, Boland has privately agreed to compromise with the bill’s opponents on this issue.

Lockyer said Boland asked him Thursday whether he would back the bill if she agreed to a citywide vote. Until that conversation, Lockyer said, he had planned to send the bill to the floor and be done with it, but reconsidered in hopes that a compromise could still be reached.

State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), who has also urged compromise, has been trying to persuade Boland to accept changes in her bill so reform of city government can move ahead.

Hayden, like Lockyer, said the bill can’t pass the Senate as is.

“She has the right to take it up a blind alley,” Hayden said. “It’s her bill. [But] we’d all be better off if the author would embrace the decision she seems to have already made.”

Earlier, however, Boland made it clear she was fed up with other legislators’ meddling in her legislation.

“This is my bill,” she told Lockyer.

Ron Deaton, Los Angeles’ chief legislative analyst, meanwhile, said he would recommend that the City Council back the Boland bill if a citywide vote is added. “Our bottom line is a citywide vote,” he said Thursday.

In its original form, the Boland bill strips the City Council of its veto power over secession, giving decision-making power solely to voters in the area seeking to secede.

Lockyer’s proposal, which passed the Rules Committee unanimously, follows weeks of acrimony as Boland demanded her bill be released from the committee. Lockyer balked, saying she brought the delay on herself by agreeing to amend the bill in another committee.

Nonetheless, Boland gained two things from Thursday’s hearing: time and an end to the bottleneck.

“The bill moved one mini-step further today,” she said.

Underscoring the point that election-year politics are a factor in the secession debate, Lockyer misspoke at one point in the hearing, saying “politics” instead of policy. Then he confessed, “I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what would be good politics. . . . I couldn’t figure it out.”

Boland is running for the 21st Senate seat against Democrat Adam Schiff, a former federal prosecutor; some Democrats have accused her of using the issue to draw attention to her campaign.

“I must say maybe working with Adam Schiff next year would be easier,” Lockyer said, adding that Boland had been “scrappy and feisty” in pushing for her bill.