Obscure Board Could Decide Valley Secession

It is an innocuous state agency that typically goes about adjusting the boundaries of water and sanitation districts in Los Angeles County with little controversy or scrutiny.

But if San Fernando Valley secessionists have their way, the Local Agency Formation Commission, LAFCO, will be in the spotlight as never before when it rules on a breakup of the nation’s second-largest city.

The commission is the only government body with the authority to judge a Valley secession proposal--and its decision can be overturned only by a court of law.

“LAFCO has never had a challenge of this magnitude in recent history,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, one of nine appointed commission board members.

Although such a decision is still years away--if ever--the agency’s staff and board members cringe at the thought of ruling on a proposal that could create the sixth-largest city in the nation and in the process shrink Los Angeles by one-third.

“LAFCO will be criticized by all sides,” said its executive director, Larry Calemine, a former developer and civil engineer. “No one ever expected anything this big to come down the pike.”

Calemine works for a governing board that includes a florist, a veterinarian, a retired municipal judge and several politicians, all appointed by the Board of Supervisors, the City Council, special districts and cities.

The agency has a staff of three full-time employees and a budget of about $400,000.

So it is no surprise that it is already fretting about how it will fund the studies needed to evaluate the massive and unprecedented breakaway proposal.

“We are not going to be able to do this job with the staff that we have,” said Chairman Thomas E. Jackson, a Huntington Park councilman who owns a flower shop in that city. “Someone is going to have to come up with the bucks.”

Calemine has estimated that studies to determine how to divide public facilities and bond debts, among other issues, would cost more than $1 million.

State law allows the Local Agency Formation Commission to impose the cost of the studies on the petitioners--in this case, Valley secessionists. But Yaroslavsky opposes such a move, saying it’s the role of government to pay for such costs.

“We don’t ask people who run for office to bear the cost of the election,” he said. “That is a government responsibility.”

Jeff Brain, co-founder of Valley VOTE, a group formed to support a bill to ease Valley secession, also wants LAFCO to fund the studies because he fears that critics may question the integrity of any studies funded by Valley VOTE.

Secession talk gained steam last year when then-Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills) pushed a bill to remove the City Council’s power to veto a secession drive. She argued that the veto power robbed Valley voters of the right to decide their fate.

Boland’s bill died in committee but was revived this year by Assemblymen Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) and Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks). Gov. Pete Wilson signed it last month, reigniting the hopes of Valley secessionists.

But breaking up is hard to do.

Before the Local Agency Formation Commission can evaluate the feasibility of secession, activists must collect the signatures of 20% of the Valley’s registered voters--about 100,000 signatures.

If they succeed, secession advocates would submit the petition to the commission, requiring it to launch a study which, for a successful breakaway, must find that secession would be “revenue neutral,” meaning the breakaway cannot cost either the Valley or the rest of Los Angeles any extra money, or make a profit for either.

The revenue-neutral requirement was included in state law in 1992 by financially strapped counties worried that breakaway efforts would be money-driven.

If the study concludes that a Valley secession would be revenue neutral, the commission can decide to endorse the secession application and send it to the county Board of Supervisors, which would schedule a citywide vote on the matter.

State law requires secession support by a majority of voters citywide and in the Valley before a breakaway can be completed.

Already, commission staff and board members are bracing for what they expect will be a long, bitter, litigious squabble.

Local Agency Formation Commissions were created--one in each county--by the state Legislature in 1963 to give local officials the power to create boundaries for cities, school districts, water districts and other jurisdictions.

Like most of its counterparts, the agency in Los Angeles operates nearly anonymously on matters considered so dull that meetings are rarely attended by anyone other than bureaucrats and applicants who have business before the panel.

The commission received some attention two years ago when it picked Calemine--who had been an alternate board member--as its executive director. The county counsel had issued an opinion that Calemine was ineligible for the $75,000-a-year post because he had served on the panel during the job search.

But Calemine argued that he had dismissed himself from meetings when discussion of the job arose. Critics also said that Calemine, through his work as a developer, had too many ties to real estate interests that might have business before the board.

The panel dismissed such criticism and appointed Calemine, in part because he and another board member were the only candidates.

Calemine dismisses criticism on his ties to developers, saying no one has since questioned his integrity.

The commission’s track record does not offer a clear pattern on which to base a guess about how it might rule on Valley secession.

For instance, the commission approved the incorporation of West Hollywood in 1984, Santa Clarita in 1987, Calabasas in 1989 and Malibu in 1991. But all three efforts took years to complete and required an iron-willed persistence from cityhood advocates.

But in 1986, the commission rejected an effort to create the city of Marina del Rey from 804 acres of unincorporated land surrounded by the city of Los Angeles and the ocean.

It determined that a city of Marina del Rey would lose $2 million in its first year and that the incorporation drive was based too much on rent-control issues.

But some staff members have at one point expressed sympathy for a Valley secession.

Calemine and Councilman Hal Bernson, a longtime member of the commission board, were leaders in the Committee Investigating Valley Independent City/County, a group formed in the 1970s to study the possibility of withdrawing the Valley from the city and county.

Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowner Assn. and an alternate on the commission board, is one of the most outspoken proponents of a Valley secession and helped form Valley VOTE, a group that supported a bill to make secession easier.

But all three reject suggestions that their past or current positions will prevent them from impartially judging a Valley secession.

“It’s OK to come in with certain points of view,” Close said. “If we are not allowed to vote, that is like saying a legislator with a view on the death penalty should not be allowed to vote on a bill having to do with the death penalty.”