Cut the Contradictions

Actions, the dictum goes, speak louder than words. They often speak truer as well. So when members of the group petitioning for a study of San Fernando Valley secession held a party last weekend, their actions spoke more than their contradictory words ever could. Members of Valley Voters Organized Toward Empowerment, or VOTE, hobnobbed at Valley Presbyterian Hospital on Dec. 6 with pacifiers on their lapels and talked openly about “the birth of the nation’s sixth-largest city.”

This from a group whose leaders have argued since the beginning of their petition drive earlier this year that they wanted only to study the effects of breaking apart Los Angeles, that it was a study of civics that offered the potential to improve government for everyone from Chatsworth to San Pedro. Of course, it was a preposterous idea from the start: launching the most divisive campaign in the city’s history without having a clear opinion on its outcome.

The public facade of impartiality was a convenient fiction that helped keep VOTE’s coalition of homeowners and business leaders together as the group gathered the signatures necessary to force a study by the Local Agency Formation Commission, the body that oversees the drawing of municipal boundaries. Despite what VOTE said to reporters and public officials, its message to frustrated voters in parking lots across the Valley was clear: Sign here for the safer streets, better schools and more efficient government that come with a city of your own.

Never mind that a Valley city separate from Los Angeles would still be home to 1.6 million people--about 16 times the size of Burbank, the city secession advocates appropriately point to as a model of good civic management. Or that its initial system of government would offer less, not more, representation for average residents. Never mind that two commissions--one elected, one appointed--are revising Los Angeles’ cumbersome charter and may put meaningful reform before voters.

So what’s the advantage? There is little--except to those who expect to see their personal power grow in a new Valley city. Nothing The Times has heard in this debate leads it to believe that ordinary residents--the people expected to pay--will have any greater access to government than they do now.

If this fight were simply about a study there would be no fight. The question of whether the Valley--or any other part of the city, for that matter--gets shortchanged by City Hall deserves a close look. Government must be accountable to the people it serves, and Los Angeles bureaucracy often seems unchecked, unmanaged and inaccessible. The Times does not oppose a study. In fact, this newspaper has argued for the ability of Valley VOTE to pursue its study and for the removal of the City Council’s veto power over secession movements.

But VOTE’s campaign clearly has never been about a study. It is a first step in a larger campaign. Voters deserve to know that, just as they deserve to know who pays VOTE’s bills. VOTE can continue to operate in secret, it can continue to say one thing in public and do another thing in private, but like the municipal government it so justifiably criticizes, it must be held accountable. If VOTE’s leadership expects voters to embrace a new Valley city, it has to offer better than the doublespeak they get now from City Hall.