New Plan Leaves Secessionists Feeling Down in the Valley

The new plan for a San Fernando Valley city that would remain deeply dependent on Los Angeles has demoralized some of secession’s most ardent supporters and left them wondering if their campaign is dead.

Secessionist Polly Ward of Studio City called it “a recipe for disaster” that would doom the movement.

“We’d be better off staying as part of Los Angeles than to accept this,” said Ward, one of several leaders of the Valley VOTE secession group who are no longer sure they will support cityhood.

The dampened spirits come just as the political campaign to keep Los Angeles whole is taking shape. Even before the release of the new secession plan Friday, advisors to Mayor James K. Hahn had begun plotting anti-secession strategy.

And for the first time, secession opponents in the Valley have started organizing their own drive.

“Being part of L.A. means something,” said Larry Levine, a Van Nuys political consultant who has volunteered his services to fight secession. “This is a big sophisticated metropolitan area with a lot of the attributes of a major city,” Levine said. “We enjoy being part of a big city and want to be part of a big city.”

The politics of secession were scrambled Friday when the Local Agency Formation Commission for Los Angeles County released a revised plan for Valley cityhood. LAFCO could change the proposal again after public hearings.

Secessionists vowed to lobby aggressively to persuade the nine LAFCO commissioners to offer voters a plan that would give the Valley more independence.

The new plan recommends that a new Valley city contract with Los Angeles for police, fire, trash collection and every other municipal service. A Valley mayor and council would govern the city of 1.4 million people with a staff of just 19 people. The Valley government would own nothing but its streets. Every park, library and other municipal asset would remain the property of Los Angeles. And the fledgling city would pay Los Angeles $1 billion a year for services--nearly every dime of the Valley’s tax revenues.

The arrangement would last up to three years. After that, Los Angeles and the Valley city would have to negotiate any transfer of services, property or employees.

“I think this will kill secession,” said Harry Coleman, a longtime supporter of Valley cityhood who leads the North Hills Community Coordinating Council, a homeowners group. “I’m not sure of secession myself.”

J. Richard Leyner, chairman of the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley, fears the new proposal will invigorate the anti-secession forces among municipal labor unions.

“There’s no security for the people working for the city,” said Leyner, a Valley VOTE board member. “They don’t know where they’re going to stand. Is the existing city going to be burdened with all the police officers and firefighters and city workers if we decide we don’t want them? What’s going to happen? Will they have their jobs?”

Not every secessionist was left dejected by LAFCO’s abrupt reversal from its initial proposal to slice apart nearly every city agency and asset.

“I think it’s a vastly superior plan,” said Bruce Bialosky, a Studio City accountant and secession advocate. “In the end, it will be a lot less disruptive.”

Former state Assemblyman Richard Katz of Sylmar, a Valley VOTE board member, said the new plan might also galvanize voters north of Mulholland Drive to support secession.

“It could just reinforce the forgotten stepchild syndrome that the Valley has suffered from for 30 or 40 years,” Katz said.

LAFCO could revise the plan yet again before it decides whether to put it on the November 2002 ballot.

Carlos Ferreyra, a chief petitioner on the secession application to LAFCO, called the plan “a slap in the face” to the Valley.

“This is not what I put my name on as chief petitioner for,” he said.

To secession opponents, the new plan was an unexpected gift. Political advisors to Hahn, the presumed leader of any effort to defeat secession, already had held discussions on how to structure and finance the campaign. LAFCO’s new report will make the job easier by turning the Valley’s “divorce” into a very messy one, said Hahn political strategist Bill Carrick.

“Look at how complicated it is,” he said. “It takes a lot of energy out of the secession campaign.”

Among Hahn’s expected allies in the campaign are leaders of the downtown business community, including Eli Broad, the billionaire real estate and finance mogul.

“I, as a citizen, believe secession would be god awful for the entire city, including the Valley,” Broad said.

In the Valley, there has been little in the way of an anti-secession movement. But City Council President Alex Padilla of Sylmar has become an outspoken foe of Valley cityhood, and signs of a broader effort within the Valley to kill secession have begun to emerge.

Levine and a dozen other longtime Valley residents and businesspeople gathered at a Tarzana home last month to create a group to fight secession. They are drafting bylaws and will invite about 200 people to meet Oct. 17 at the Holiday Inn Express in Van Nuys.