Secession Could Benefit Poor, Clergy Group Says

Los Angeles is failing its poor, and splitting the city in two could result in better help for the neediest, a delegation of San Fernando Valley clerics on Wednesday told a panel investigating the morality of secession.

Six religious leaders and others addressed a panel convened by Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony and appointed by the multidenominational Council of Religious Leaders.

“We are confident that we made a compelling case that the people of Los Angeles, particularly the poor, seek to gain a great deal by reorganizing Los Angeles into two smaller cities,” said Barry A. Smedberg, executive director of the San Fernando Valley Interfaith Council, at a news conference after the two-hour closed-door session at the Archdiocesan Catholic Center near downtown.

The panel is looking into the moral and ethical implications of proposals for the Valley, Hollywood and Harbor areas to break away from Los Angeles.

Several said the panel should consider the consequences of the city’s failure to serve the poor, as well as the effect of secession by the Valley.

Smedberg, whose interfaith council represents about 420 Valley congregations, said the session was “very productive and enlightening.” He told the panel that Valley cityhood has been structured so as not to drain money from the rest of Los Angeles.

The Rev. Ron Culmer told the working group that only 1% of the Los Angeles city budget is for housing, health and community development, compared with 13% in Burbank and 20% in Glendale.

“My chief concern as a minister of the church is to be a voice for the poor, and I spoke of how having the Valley separating from Los Angeles could be a way in which the poor are empowered,” said Culmer, pastor of St. Martin in the Fields Episcopal Church in Canoga Park.

He and Ellen Michiel, a Catholic lay minister who heads a Valley affordable-housing agency, also said smaller cities could better tailor social programs to local needs.

Participants said some panel members acknowledged the city’s shortcomings but questioned whether secession is the best solution.

There may be other alternatives, but some, including charter reform, have not yet shown results, said the Rev. Zedar Broadous, president of the Valley branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

Broadous, a member of the board of Valley VOTE, the main group pushing Valley secession, told the panel he doesn’t see the breakaway proposal will amount to the more affluent abandoning the poor. He said he himself is undecided on secession.

“I don’t see this as a white-flight issue,” said Broadous, an associate minister at Calvary Baptist Church in Pacoima.

The Valley clerics were accompanied by Adrian Dove, president of the California Congress for Racial Equality. Dove, a resident of South-Central, told the working group that poor residents of his area and the Valley would have better access to their government in smaller cities.

Tod Tamberg, a spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, said the panel will convey the information it collects to the Council of Religious Leaders, which may or may not issue a report, depending on whether it determines there is a moral or ethical problem.

“These meetings are informational meetings, so it was an opportunity for the people who are representing Valley secession to give us their best arguments as to why secession is the only option,” Tamberg said.

Meanwhile, leaders representing the board of directors of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. sent a letter to Mahony on Wednesday objecting that the working group “is neither open in its processes nor balanced in its membership.”

The letter, signed by Bob Scott, Randall Neudeck and Sanford Paris, co-chairs of a VICA committee on secession, urged the working group to hold its meetings in public and to weigh political and economic issues. Scott is also a board member for Valley VOTE.

“It is our belief that the special reorganization process is not a religious exercise but one of political analysis,” they wrote.

Others addressing the panel were the Rev. Scott Bauer of the Church on the Way; Jeff Brain, President of Valley VOTE; former Assemblyman Richard Katz, a board member of Valley VOTE; and Benny Bernal, a union activist from the northeast Valley.