City Accused of Impeding Breakup Bid

A day after laying out their vision of a new city in the San Fernando Valley, activists complained Wednesday that Los Angeles officials are obstructing the state-mandated fiscal study of the proposed breakup.

The secession group Valley VOTE also hammered the Los Angeles City Council for adopting an elaborate system Wednesday to screen each request for city data needed for the study. John M. Walker, a Valley VOTE board member, said it would “take forever” to get information.

“It’s going to be watered down and tasteless by the time it gets to us,” Walker said. “We’re looking at a bureaucratic octopus.”

Ron Deaton, the council’s chief legislative analyst, said a system approved Wednesday is the most efficient way to handle vast reams of documents secessionists are seeking.

“Running around the city in a disorganized fashion getting data from different people doesn’t assure accuracy, consistency or timeliness,” he said. “You could talk to two different people and get two different kinds of data on the same project.”

The City Council’s plan calls for supervision by the mayor and council of all responses to requests for information. The city could route each request through as many as 14 steps before releasing anything.

In some cases, agencies might not begin gathering records until a City Council committee and the full council vote to approve a plan to respond. Once the records are prepared, the council committee and the mayor would have to screen the records before releasing them.

Secessionists fear stonewalling by the city could make it impossible to finish the study in time to put their proposed divorce from Los Angeles before voters in 2002. The study must be done before any secession proposal can be placed on the ballot.

To quell those fears, the City Council approved a proposal Wednesday by Councilman Rudy Svornich, a major supporter of Harbor-area secession, to speed production of records. It will require officials to get permission from the council’s ad hoc committee on secession if they need more than 90 days to respond to any data request.

Mayor Richard Riordan and several council members oppose secession. But under state law, the mayor and council must produce data needed for the secession study.

“It’s not going to benefit anybody to stonewall,” Councilman Hal Bernson said. “I think wise heads are going to understand that.”

Los Angeles County’s Local Agency Formation Commission is preparing the study. If it concludes that a breakup is possible without harming residents of the Valley or the rest of Los Angeles, the secession proposal would be put before voters.

On Tuesday, Valley VOTE released its preliminary plan for creating the nation’s sixth-largest city. The so-called vision statement called for giving the new city the fully staffed police and fire stations already in place. Most agencies would be split according to population or geography. Major assets such as Los Angeles International Airport and the Department of Water and Power system would be shared by the new Valley city and what’s left of Los Angeles.

The city has assigned two people to work full time on collecting data for the secession study, city Administrative Officer Bill Fujioka said. They are also gathering information for LAFCO’s study of proposed secession by the San Pedro-Harbor area.

Meanwhile, members of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission reiterated their position that LAFCO should mandate disclosure of who is lobbying for or against secession measures.

Commission Deputy Director LeeAnn Pelham told the panel during a briefing on the issue Wednesday that pending state legislation might make it voluntary for LAFCO to adopt disclosure requirements.

That drew concern from ethics panel Commissioners Richard Walch and Miriam Krinsky on whether the public would ever learn who is lobbying on secession.

“It shouldn’t simply be voluntary,” Krinsky said.

Pelham agreed to continue pressing state legislators to adopt tougher disclosure requirements not just for those lobbying on secession, but also disclosure of who is contributing to secession petition drives.