The Divorce Is in Trouble

Before it even got rolling, the so-called revolution to break apart Los Angeles appears to be faltering. The problem is few residents seem to care, despite the claims of organizers that neighborhoods from San Pedro to Chatsworth are so frustrated with the city’s dysfunctional government that the only way to fix it is to flee it. As secession advocates in the San Fernando Valley learned this week, the biggest obstacle to a new city is the biggest obstacle to a better city--apathy.

Leaders of Valley Voters Organized Toward Empowerment, or VOTE, predict that they will be unable to meet the deadline for gathering enough names on a petition to start the long, expensive process of dividing Los Angeles. So they’re asking for an extension to collect the required 135,000 signatures from Valley voters.

Instead of the three months allowed by law, they want six months and have called on local legislators to get them the extra time. Although a municipal breakup of this magnitude is unprecedented, state law grants most campaigns to redraw boundaries six months to get petitions signed. Big cities get only three. The reason: State legislators rightly thought it should be made difficult to divide a city like Los Angeles.

Secession should be a weapon of last resort, a final goodbye to a local government so corrupt and capricious that it’s beyond repair. If Los Angeles has truly reached that point, as secession leaders argue, then collecting the necessary signatures in three months should be a snap. That it isn’t should send a message.

No one should think that Los Angeles government is perfect. In fact, it’s a mess. Yes, the City Council often acts like a pack of selfish children. Yes, it can take weeks to get city agencies to act. Yes, red tape sometimes strangles economic development. But despite the very real failures of the L.A. bureaucracy, the city can and should be salvaged. Two commissions--one elected, one appointed--are working diligently on a careful, reasoned reform of the city’s charter.

Charter reform holds the promise of a better Los Angeles, one that builds on the strengths and differences of the city. Secession holds the danger of the rise of even more local governments as screwed up as Los Angeles’.

How secession efforts fare in the Valley is important because similar groups are already forming on the Westside, in the Harbor and in South-Central. All are united under the banner of better government.

Here’s the contradiction: Even as earnest efforts are underway to create a better government, the secessionists march forward with plans for a municipal divorce. If better government is indeed their goal, then the neighborhood patriots ought to at least work toward charter reform before they start laying dynamite to blow apart Los Angeles.