Secession and Solomon

The San Fernando Valley could be a financially viable city should it break away from the rest of Los Angeles, according to a report released Wednesday on the fiscal impact of secession. But it’s a little early for secessionists to start packing the dishes. The preliminary report produces more questions than answers on what the Valley would gain from a municipal divorce.

The analysis, commissioned by the government agency overseeing the secession process, challenges the assumption that a Valley city would be truly autonomous. The budget it lays out assumes that a new city would contract with the remaining city of Los Angeles for water, power, sewer, police dispatch, information management and employee pension services. Trying to duplicate these services--building a new sewage treatment plant, for example--would be prohibitively expensive or, in the case of redesigning the city’s large-scale computer system, both costly and staggeringly complex. Secession, then, would leave a Valley city dependent on the same services that secessionists so frequently complain are inadequate, but as a customer, not a co-owner.

A new Valley city could also find itself without the assets that many secessionists assumed it would get in a divorce. The report says Los Angeles would retain certain water rights beneath the Valley and ownership of the Van Nuys Airport, assertions certain to lead to a court battle.

Equally controversial is a finding that a new Valley city might have to pay yearly “alimony” of $68 million to make up a city revenue shortfall, the estimated difference between the more than $1 billion the city is estimated to have received in revenues from the Valley in 2000-2001 and $976 million in expenditures. According to the law that governs breakup efforts, a secession proposal must be “revenue-neutral” to qualify for the ballot.

Secessionists seized on the $68-million shortfall as proof that the Valley does not receive its fair share of services. However, services are not necessarily determined by geography or population. For example, police officers are deployed where there is crime. If the study reveals egregious discrepancies, the city should take steps to correct them--but in a budget of more than $1 billion, is $68 million really worth seceding over?

Debate over the merits of secession will continue as the petitioners file their final separation plan and Los Angeles its response. Late this year, the Local Agency Formation Commission will release a revised fiscal study. Then LAFCO’s executive officer will issue recommendations on the secession proposal. After public hearings, the commission will vote on whether to put the proposal to a citywide vote.

“We need to all look for the wisdom of Solomon,” John Walker, a secession backer, told the commissioners Wednesday. We agree--and remind him that when the two women in the biblical story asked the king to settle which was the real mother, Solomon only threatened to cut the child in two.