No Captives for City Councils

In the final, frantic hours of the legislative session, the Assembly last weekend approved a bill that would make it possible for communities like the San Fernando Valley to secede from their mother cities. Gov. Pete Wilson should sign AB 62, which removes the power of city councils statewide to unilaterally block secession efforts. Stripping councils of that veto power restores the balance necessary to keep municipal government responsive and accountable.

Breaking apart a city as diverse and vibrant as Los Angeles is a bad idea, and The Times does not support it. Even worse, though, is the notion that a city council by itself can hold communities in orbit against their will. It throws out of whack the contract between the government and the governed. The bill of Assemblymen Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks) and Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) replaces a council’s unlikely blessing with a simple requirement--a majority vote in both the area that wants to secede and the city as a whole. That’s about as democratic as it gets.

Yet the bill was opposed by big cities such as San Jose and San Diego as well as the League of California Cities. Opponents claim it opens the door for rich neighborhoods to break away and thereby avoid their responsibilities to poorer areas. That point is well taken, but state laws governing secession are tough and the process is complicated, making it unlikely that many neighborhoods could secede.

Under state law, municipal divorces may not fiscally damage either the new or the old city. Another obstacle is that civic property such as sewers, streets, airports and ports would have to be divided. Only after these sorts of issues were settled by a county’s Local Agency Formation Commission could the issue be brought to voters. Hertzberg and McClintock’s legislation doesn’t make secession easy--nor should it. But it restores a little power to neighborhoods tired being ignored by City Hall.