Boland to Send Secession Bill to Senate Floor

Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland decided Wednesday to send her San Fernando Valley secession bill to the state Senate floor for a vote as written, rather than accept unwanted amendments.

The vote on the bill could come as early as next week.

Boland (R-Granada Hills) made the decision hundreds of miles from Sacramento after learning that Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) had scheduled the bill for a committee hearing today, but by 6 p.m. had failed to provide Boland with a written copy of his proposed amendments.

“I am forced to send this bill tonight straight to the floor because I had absolutely no time to prepare for a hearing,” Boland said.

Reached for comment 15 minutes later, a spokesman for Lockyer said the amendments had just been put in final form and were on their way to Boland’s office.

“We’re giving her the amendments now,” Lockyer aide Sandy Harrison said.

But by then, Boland, an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention in San Diego, had made up her mind and left for the event.

The crossed signals and unexpected action on the secession bill this week exemplifies its bumpy history. The legislation--which is about democracy or elitism or politics, depending on who’s defining it--has caused a commotion in Los Angeles and Sacramento.

The bill does not itself take the San Fernando Valley out of the city of Los Angeles. It would, however, remove a stumbling block to dividing the city--the veto power that the City Council now wields over secession requests.

Lockyer is opposed to the bill unless it is amended to include, among other changes, a requirement for a citywide vote on secession, rather than allowing Valley voters alone to make the decision.

At a hearing last week, Lockyer gave Boland a choice between having her bill amended by him in committee or going directly to the Senate floor, where he predicted it would be defeated.

Boland asked for time to ponder her options and Lockyer promised no action would be taken this week while she attends the GOP convention.

Despite that, a Lockyer spokesman explained Wednesday, it was necessary to set the hearing this week for the final scheduled meeting, in this legislative session, of the Appropriations Committee. Lockyer sent the bill to that committee last week because his amendments call for state funding.

Even though the bill was placed on the committee’s agenda, there is a mechanism to postpone the hearing until next week. True to his pledge, Lockyer said he would arrange to waive the necessary rules if Boland preferred to wait.

Instead, Boland opted out, saying that postponing a hearing is too risky because time is running out in the legislative session, which is scheduled to end this month. The bill automatically dies if it is not passed by the end of the session and would have to be reintroduced next year.

Waiting until the week after next is a problem because some state legislators will be attending the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

“The time constraints created by the end of the session crunch diminished the bill’s opportunity for passage,” Boland wrote in a letter to Lockyer.

“I will not gamble with this bill,” Boland said earlier in an interview.

Lockyer rejected Boland’s contention that she had no time to prepare for a hearing.

“She’s known at least since last week’s committee hearing what the substance of our amendments are,” Lockyer said through a spokesman. “So she’s had plenty of time to think about it.”

Boland has long urged a floor vote, especially when the bill was stuck in another committee.

Lockyer, however, proposed a set of amendments. In addition to a citywide vote, the amendments called for an 18-month study of the impacts of secession on the economy and environment of the Valley and on what would remain of the city of Los Angeles.

A blue-ribbon commission, funded by the state, would also be selected to update state law on detachments and incorporation. Lockyer said current laws are based on the agrarian California of the past and do not meet modern needs.

The call for a Senate floor vote does not necessarily kill the Lockyer plan. The bill could be amended on the Senate floor as well as passed or rejected there.

On Wednesday, Boland would not estimate her chance of success, but last week she disagreed with Lockyer’s assertion that she is two votes shy of victory on her “best day.”