Whose Best Interest?

San Fernando Valley secessionists have moved beyond squabbling over who gets the furniture in their longed-for divorce from the rest of Los Angeles. Now they want to halt maintenance on the house--never mind the consequences to its residents.

Valley secession leaders Richard Close, Jeff Brain and Tony Pasano said last week that they would campaign against a $352-million citywide bond measure for fire stations and animal shelters because passage could, according to Close, “make it more expensive and complicated for the Valley to become a separate city.”

Keep in mind that the question of Valley cityhood won’t even go on the ballot until 2002 at the earliest--if, that is, the county commission now studying the proposal agrees it should go to a vote. Delays, legal or otherwise, could push a vote back to the next even-numbered year, 2004, or beyond. And voters could ultimately say no.

In the meantime, Los Angeles is supposed to sit on its hands and do nothing that could “complicate” a divorce?

The bonds would provide funding to upgrade or build 19 new fire stations and to upgrade the city’s animal shelters and add two new ones. North Hollywood and Sun Valley would be among the Valley sites receiving fire station funds; the East Valley, which is plagued by dangerous packs of stray dogs, would get a new animal shelter.

You would think that secessionists would welcome such public safety improvements in the Valley, if not in the rest of Los Angeles. But they counter that City Hall can’t be trusted to deliver on its promises. And it’s true that design flaws and cost overruns led to years-long delays in delivering facilities funded by earlier bond issues and contributed to voter skepticism. Mustering the two-thirds majority needed for approving the bonds in November will be hard enough without active opposition if last year’s defeated $744-million combined police and fire bond initiative is any gauge.

City Hall obviously needs to do all it can to assure voters that their money will be spent responsibly. But the secessionists’ position announced last week doesn’t allow for reassurances. They say that bond issues should go on hold, period, lest they get in the way of Valley cityhood. Never mind how much a lack of adequate facilities “complicates” emergency services or animal control. After all, complaining about a lack of city services makes a better argument for secession.

Ironically, one of the tests for putting secession to a vote is whether breaking up Los Angeles would harm either a new city or what’s left of the old one. If secessionists are now campaigning against public safety, we’d argue it already has.