The Rest of Us Pay

As he has for the past two years, Mayor Richard Riordan came to the San Fernando Valley earlier this month with a simple message: Let’s fix rather than fracture Los Angeles. And as they have for the past two years, leaders of the Valley cityhood movement thanked the mayor for coming and vowed to press ahead with their dream of a new municipality.

By now, the prospect of a Valley city is more real than ever. Valley Voters Organized Toward Empowerment, or VOTE, has collected more than enough signatures on a petition demanding that the Local Agency Formation Commission launch a multimillion-dollar study of the effects of Valley secession. But as so often is the case in this drive, questions arose last week over who should pay. And how much. The debate this time is not over the study itself--although its financing remains unresolved--but over the verification of VOTE’s signatures. And as so often is the case with VOTE, the answer remains that someone else should foot the bill.

VOTE won a victory last week when the Los Angeles County Counsel’s office issued an opinion stating that LAFCO could use a sampling technique to verify signatures on the secession petition. That’s important because LAFCO traditionally requires a full count of signatures and then sends the bill to the group submitting the petition. The opinion could cut the potential costs of verification from $270,000 to less than $20,000. Obviously, VOTE and its anonymous financial backers prefer the latter.

Not that it makes much difference. The Board of Supervisors is likely to waive the fee. And it may find a way to fund the feasibility study, too. So VOTE leaders probably will get their wish. Their drive for a city of their own will no doubt be financed by taxpayers from Long Beach to Lancaster. Carving that money out of a budget--whether the city’s or the county’s--means making choices. Public money is not without limits. What gets axed to pay for VOTE’s demands?

Were this just a matter of a study, the whole affair might not be so contentious. But anyone who thinks this drive is just about a study--as VOTE’s official line promises--is lying to themselves. The study and an eventual vote on secession are inextricably linked. The rules governing this process make no allowance for a simple study. It’s all or nothing. If the study concludes that the Valley could support itself financially without harming the rest of the city, a vote automatically follows.

And it looks as if it all will be paid for not by the zealots pushing this folly but by taxpayers everywhere, regardless of their position on secession. So it’s no wonder that secessionists turned a deaf ear to the mayor’s logical pleas to keep Los Angeles together. They have nothing to lose. But the rest of us will have to pay for their mistakes.