Davis Signs Legislation on Secession Disclosure

Gov. Gray Davis on Wednesday signed into law a measure providing for the disclosure of contributors and spending by groups pushing city secessions.

Davis also approved a bill guaranteeing that a new city in the San Fernando Valley will have at least 12 City Council members if a political breakaway takes place.

Both bills were written by Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks) to address issues that have brought heated debate as the Valley and other areas of Los Angeles proposed to break away.

“Disclosure is important,” Hertzberg said Wednesday. “It is always in the public interest to understand what forces are behind whatever political efforts are out there.”

The bill empowers the Local Agency Formation Commission in each California county to force disclosure of the names of financial backers of groups such as Valley VOTE. That group has acknowledged spending more than $500,000 to push San Fernando Valley secession but has refused to reveal its donors or detail its expenditures.

The biggest backer in 1998 turned out to be the Daily News of Los Angeles, which campaigned for secession.

Movements to secede from the city of Los Angeles also are underway in the Harbor and Hollywood areas.

The disclosure bill requires the commission in each county to hold a hearing in 2001 to consider new rules involving contributions, expenses and lobbying activity, but does not require their adoption.

For that reason, the law is seen as a “halfway measure” by Robert Stern, head of the Center for Governmental Studies and an author of some of the state’s campaign reform laws.

“This is a step, but it’s too bad it did not require disclosure,” Stern said. “The public should know who is behind these secession movements.”

Hertzberg said the law was intended to leave the decision to local authorities.

Any disclosure requirements adopted next year would not apply to groups such as Valley VOTE and Harbor VOTE, which already have filed secession applications. The law becomes effective on Jan. 1.

“We didn’t want to change the rules in the middle of the process,” Hertzberg said.

But if LAFCO puts the Valley and Harbor cityhood proposals on the ballot in 2002, the state Political Reform Act would apply to backers of those movements.

LAFCO members in Los Angeles County said they would seriously consider adopting some form of disclosure requirement, although there is uncertainty about how tough the rules would be.

Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson said the public should know who is supporting an initiative on secession, but said he is not sure whether there is a compelling need to know who is financing the early stages of an application for a cityhood study.

Valley VOTE Chairman Richard Close, an alternate on LAFCO, also had some concerns about how much would be disclosed, for fear that contributors might face retaliation from City Hall opponents of secession.

“We don’t want to have a chilling effect on people contributing,” Close said. “If they are a city commissioner, the mayor or City Council may remove them from the commission.”

But LeeAnn Pelham, deputy director of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission, said the public has a right to know who is bankrolling an effort to break up the city.

“Disclosure is important in terms of letting the public know what kinds of interests are out there trying to influence the process,” Pelham said.

Pelham had asked LAFCO last year to require disclosure of Valley VOTE contributors but the panel declined, saying it did not have the authority under existing state law.

The disclosure provision is part of a larger bill providing an overhaul of local agency formation commissions, which exist in each county to oversee applications for setting municipal boundaries.

“LAFCOs were created to help reign in urban sprawl,” Hertzberg said. “This bill gives them much better tools to do the job.”

The legislation gives commissions the power to consider the availability of water, for instance, in deciding whether to create new cities.