Assemblyman Takes Revived Secession Push to the People

A Northridge assemblyman said Saturday the key to passing a bill that would remove the City Council veto over requests to secede from Los Angeles is organizing grass-roots support throughout the city.

Calling the issue “one of the great government reforms of the last few decades in California,” Republican Assemblyman Tom McClintock told members of a new citywide government-reform group that the best way to appeal to state legislators is through their constituents.

“As [community organizations] begin to demonstrate the breadth and depth of support for this movement, I think the Legislature will move in this direction,” McClintock said.

McClintock said he believes that the yearning for secession is secondary to a more fundamental desire for more local control.

“Once self-determination is restored, my guess is that the need for independence will be reduced,” McClintock said.

The day after being sworn in last week, McClintock introduced AB 62, the same bill that went down to defeat last summer when it was put forward by McClintock’s predecessor, former Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland.

The measure does not address secession but is linked with it because a move by any part of the city to detach and form its own municipality can be squelched by City Council veto. The bill would eliminate the council’s veto power.

The City Council decided to oppose the Boland measure earlier this year, with some members saying any change in current law should apply statewide and everyone in the city should have a right to vote on dividing the city, instead of just the area that wants to leave.

A compromise bill that would have included a citywide vote was defeated in a state Senate committee in August, and the McClintock bill has removed the citywide vote.

“If our right to vote is a citywide vote, it’s no right to vote,” said Sherman Oaks businessman Jeff Brain, co-chair of Valley VOTE, a group formed to lobby for the Boland bill.

The changed composition of the Legislature presents a challenge for McClintock’s bill. Democrats, many of whom view a measure that could lead to splitting the city as divisive, now control both houses.

But McClintock said that’s where grass-roots pressure from divergent communities comes in.

The debate on the old Boland bill was almost exclusively centered on the San Fernando Valley, which attempted to secede from Los Angeles in the 1970s before the council veto was imposed by the state Legislature.

After the measure was defeated, organizers of Valley VOTE reached out to other parts of Los Angeles for support, and a new group, the Alliance for Self-Determination, was formed.

Attending the alliance meeting Saturday morning were about 20 residents of the Valley, South-Central Los Angeles, Eagle Rock, Hollywood, West Los Angeles, Westchester, the Fairfax-Melrose area and Venice.

Many represented homeowner or other civic organizations interested in charter reform, the creation of independent neighborhood councils and the formation of new cities.

The disparate community representatives are bound together by their shared sense that City Hall is unresponsive to their needs.

“I was surprised to come over to the Valley and find out that white people felt like we did--that we were overlooked,” said Adrian Dove after the meeting. He represents the Congress of Racial Equality.

Underlying the debate is the question of whether a city the size of Los Angeles is too massive to govern to the satisfaction of its residents.

“The city is too large” to govern effectively, said Barbara Fine, whose group, the Benedict Canyon Homeowners Assn., has not taken a position on the bill.