Corona Wants to Go It Alone

Get this. The city of Corona wants to form its own county. Not break away with some other cities and form a new county, but start one by itself, all 36 square miles of it.

Corona isn’t one of Southern California’s hot spots. When Larry Calemine, executive officer of the Los Angeles Local Agency Formation Commission--a man who makes his living knowing about local governments--was told about the city’s plan, he said: “Corona’s in Orange County.” That was after he stopped laughing. Close, Larry. Actually, it’s in Riverside County, just over the line from Orange County.

But at least one Corona councilman wanted to make Calemine’s mistake come true.

Riverside County Supervisor John Tavaglione, who represents Corona, said “a very reliable and important individual” told him a Corona city councilman had made inquiries about joining Orange County.

“When I checked further, someone confirmed it,” he said.

While some people think Corona is closer in atmosphere to Orange County than Riverside County, a “Don’t Tread On Me” independence movement seems to have won out on the council.

But the proposal that’s gained the most ground is to become a county unto itself.

There’s one city in the state that also is a county--San Francisco. But there the similarities end. San Francisco, after all, has a football team.

Corona Mayor Darrell Talbert, 36, said that when he brought up the secession idea two or three months ago, “it was met with a resounding set of laughs” from his staff. “I’m young and I come up with off-the-wall things.”

He was serious. The all-Republican council and the city manager allocated $21,000 this week for a study to determine if secession is feasible.

“It’s laughable,” said Tavaglione. “It’s almost to the point where you get the feeling they want to build a wall around their city and charge admission or have a pass to get into the city.”

Serious secession movements have sprung up in the San Fernando Valley and San Pedro, but even if successful, those communities would remain in Los Angeles County.

It’s not unusual for unincorporated areas like West Hollywood or Aliso Viejo to gain cityhood instead of remaining under county jurisdiction. Or for entire regions to break away and form their own county. Orange County was part of Los Angeles County until 1889. Corona’s home, Riverside County, was carved out of San Bernardino and San Diego counties in 1893.

No new county has been formed since 1907, when Imperial County was formed from San Diego County.

Since the state legislature liberalized the law in 1974, there have been eight efforts to form new counties. All have failed.

No city has ever gone off by itself.

Corona has seen explosive growth in the last three decades, with the population jumping 64%, to 133,000, in the last decade.

Corona officials say they are frustrated that the city receives less in services from the county than its citizens pay in tax revenues. They complain that many outsiders are using their parks for soccer leagues, and their libraries, and that development regulations aren’t as strict for housing in county areas as they are in Corona.

“That’s a problem for almost every incorporated city,” said Max Neiman, a political scientist at UC Riverside. “One solution is if it’s so good to be unincorporated, Corona should disestablish itself as a city.”

Forming a new county is a complicated process and one that is almost politically insurmountable, said Peter Detwiler, a staff consultant to the state Senate Local Government Committee.

First, the petition to form a new county must be signed by 25% of the registered voters there. If the new county has less than 5% of the existing county’s population, then 10% of the voters in the rest of the county also must sign the petition.

Once the signatures are declared valid, the governor must appoint a five-member commission to hold public hearings and issue a nonbinding report.

In order for the new county to be established, more than half the voters in both the proposed county and the old county must approve.

Even if the county is approved, then the new government must set up services like jails, probation, indigent care and child protective services.

“To explore taking on those additional responsibilities at such a huge cost is ludicrous,” Supervisor Tavaglione said.

Talbert said he has received calls from several Riverside County cities he would not name and he expects them to wage their own fights to break away.

The last four attempts to form new counties all were in rural portions of the state, far different places from Corona, part of the Southern California sprawl. “Those places weren’t weren’t too happy with the 20th century,” Detwiler said.