Valley, South Bay Secession Drives Run Into Roadblocks

After an early rush of momentum, efforts to split the San Fernando Valley and San Pedro and Wilmington from Los Angeles are slowing down, and secessionists fear chances of a vote before 2004 are increasingly looking slim.

The delays represent a major setback for activists in both areas who had hoped to place secession on the ballot next year, or 2002 at the latest.

The Local Agency Formation Commission, the nine-member panel overseeing a study on both secession bids, has decided not to begin work until it hires a consultant. It expects to take at least five months to do so.

Once the study is underway, the commission says it could take as long as four years--twice the previous prediction--according to a formal contract description of the work distributed to potential consultants. That could push an election back to 2004 or possibly later--without factoring in the likelihood of a lawsuit.

Even if the study takes 25 months, as the commission’s current schedule holds, the results would most likely come too late to place secession on the 2002 ballot, as had been the hope. That would automatically push the vote back to 2004, because according to state law on secession attempts, breakup elections can only occur in even-numbered years.

Leaders of Valley VOTE, the main group behind the Valley secession campaign, are growing frustrated with what they see as a bureaucracy dragging its feet.

“We’re getting concerned about this process,” Valley VOTE President Jeff Brain said. “At this rate, it’s going to take them longer to hire a consultant than it took us to collect a quarter-million signatures” to trigger the study and possible vote on what would be the largest municipal divorce in American history.

Leaders of Harbor VOTE, one of two groups campaigning to secede in San Pedro and Wilmington, also believe the study is needlessly bogging down.

“I don’t know why it’s taking so long,” said Bill Silverthorn, Harbor VOTE’s executive director. “Does it take this long just to get started? It’s very frustrating. I don’t know what they do between the meetings, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of movement here.”

LAFCO officials say they are simply moving carefully, making sure the momentous issues surrounding the possible dissolution of America’s second-largest city receive proper scrutiny.

Because LAFCO did not obtain money to conduct a Valley secession study until this past summer--and not until fall for San Pedro and Wilmington to do so--it had to postpone the work of picking an expert, LAFCO Executive Director Larry Calemine said. And because it does not want to further slow the process and rebid for a consultant should the work take longer than scheduled, LAFCO is drafting the contract for up to four years.

But LAFCO is still hoping to complete the study faster, Calemine said.

“This is a humongous thing,” he said. “We hope to get it done within two years. But delays do occur. There could be lawsuits, there could be environmental issues. We have to protect ourselves, and make sure the [consultant’s] contract is done the right way. We have to give it time.”

On one point, everyone seems to agree: The hiring of a secession consultant could be one of the most important issues LAFCO ever makes.

The consultant would shape the secession study, a comprehensive financial analysis on the consequences of deconstructing Los Angeles. LAFCO will ultimately use the study to determine whether either secession attempt can be put to a public vote. Secession requires a majority vote of both the area seceding and the whole city.

Whether LAFCO is proceeding as it should is hardly a matter of general agreement among LAFCO members. Instead, the process is turning into a showcase for the various political wills at work on the panel, a locally appointed arm of the Legislature with sweeping power over land annexations and creation of cities.

Yaroslavsky’s Role

Although county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and City Councilman Hal Bernson, both LAFCO members, have taken vocal stands backing a prompt secession study, they have widely conflicting opinions on how it is being handled. And while Yaroslavsky is one of the more powerful politicians in Los Angeles, he has become nearly powerless on LAFCO, marginalized by a majority loyal to Calemine and led by Bernson and LAFCO Chairman Thomas Jackson, a Huntington Park councilman.

Yaroslavsky has lost numerous LAFCO votes in recent months on such issues as increased disclosure of lobbying activities and maintaining a secession subcommittee he chaired. He asserts Calemine, Bernson, Jackson and others want to continue running LAFCO the way they have for years, though they are now under the spotlight as never before due to the secession issue.

He has openly questioned Calemine’s management style, and pressed for more board control and public scrutiny of the panel’s actions. One of the more controversial decisions made by Calemine, without board approval, was his recent hiring of Sandor L. Winger as his top assistant--a new position created to help move along the secession study.

Winger, who is married to a top Bernson aide and a longtime friend of Bernson and Calemine, has no prior LAFCO experience. The job pays $60,000 a year.

“This gets at the way this agency operates,” Yaroslavsky said. “It has been run this way a long time, because no one pays attention. Outside the public eye, they run this thing like a mom-and-pop store, and they can’t do that anymore. They’re playing in the big leagues now, with big money and big issues.”

Bernson did not respond to requests for comment.

Azusa Mayor Christina Cruz--Madrid, who serves as a LAFCO alternate, was the first to publicly question how Winger could have been hired without discussion or a candidate search. After a closed session last week in which the panel debated how Winger was hired, and whether he should be fired, he was kept on.

“I’m not comfortable with the way this was done,” said Cruz-Madrid, who added she was not aware that Calemine, Bernson and Winger were friends until told by a reporter. “This is a public agency; we are spending taxpayer money, and we have to be able to withstand scrutiny.”

Defending Hiring

Calemine said he hired Winger--who has worked as a consultant to Bernson and others and serves as chairman of a Van Nuys Airport advisory committee--because he has known Winger personally for many years and “knew how he handled things.” Winger, Bernson and Calemine were all involved in an organization that campaigned unsuccessfully for Valley secession two decades ago.

“I did not need someone from a planning department,” Calemine said. “I needed somebody who had some experience working with governmental agencies, somebody who knew how to bring people to the table and get things done.

“If anyone knows Sandy, they know he is a professional,” Calemine said. “Whether he is friends with Hal Bernson, or Zev Yaroslavsky, or anyone else on the board, I don’t really know how that matters.”

For his part, Winger said he is qualified for the post.

“Absolutely,” he said. “I have the particular background suited for this job.”

When The Times asked Calemine for a copy of Winger’s resume, however, Winger intervened, and Calemine refused to provide it.

Calemine served side by side as an alternate LAFCO board member with many of the current panelists, including Bernson and Jackson, the LAFCO chairman, before they appointed him in 1995 to the $75,000-a-year executive director’s job. He was initially disqualified from the job in 1993 over a conflict of interest because he was still serving on the board at the time he was being considered.

Although he has a distaste for the way LAFCO continues to conduct business, Yaroslavsky said it is “a little premature” to conclude the secession study will be a victim of delays.

Stall Expected

Valley VOTE Chairman Richard Close, an attorney who also serves as an alternate LAFCO member, agreed, but said there is reason for concern.

“Selecting the consultant is taking longer than it should, longer than I had hoped,” Close said. “I hope it’s not an indication of things to come. It’s reasonable to assume that the city will stall, and LAFCO will need to push the city. Someone may also have to push LAFCO to make sure this is not studied ad nauseam.”