It’s Official: Supervisors Place Valley Secession on the Ballot

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors took final action Thursday to put San Fernando Valley cityhood on the Nov. 5 ballot, after resolving a dispute over how voters will be informed about the cost of secession.

The board’s unanimous vote to formally schedule the election followed a so-called protest hearing that generated little protest in the end.

Just 8,809 of the city’s 1.45 million voters filed written protests to the secession election, and only 10 addressed the board. Under state law, to stop the election, half of Los Angeles’ voters would have had to file protests.

And although the board’s role in setting the secession election was largely routine, its drafting of the ballot measure language proved crucial to both sides.

Secession opponents lobbied the supervisors to include in the measure’s wording the annual separation payments a Valley city would have to make to Los Angeles. Backers of Valley independence labeled that effort an attempt to mislead and frighten voters. They said such ballot language would falsely imply that secession would increase costs to taxpayers.

The supervisors struck a compromise Thursday that seemed acceptable to all. The ballot wording will contain a passage on the separation payments, but will make it clear that they do not involve new costs.

The 20 years of payments would compensate Los Angeles for tax revenues lost to Valley independence. They represent the amount of taxes paid by Valley residents in excess of the value of city services the region receives. They would be $127.1 million the first year and decrease by 5% annually.

The ballot measure will describe the payments as “the difference between the revenue collected in the San Fernando Valley area by the city of Los Angeles in fiscal year 2000-2001 over and above the amount expended by the city of Los Angeles in the Sam Fernando Valley area ... “

Secession campaign leader Richard Katz said he was pleased with the final language, but would have to work hard to ensure that voters understand it.

Beyond that, Katz said Thursday’s action marked a “historic” moment in the breakup campaign’s six-year battle to get secession on the ballot.

“The people in the Valley are going to get to vote on self-determination,” Katz said. “It will change the way the city will function forever for the better.”

For the Valley to become a separate city of 1.35 million people, the ballot measure must win in the Valley as well as citywide.

Deputy Mayor Matt Middlebrook said he also was happy with the wording of the measure.

“The [payment] figure had to be included,” Middlebrook said. “It’s 10% of the Valley city’s budget, and it probably was subject to the most debate of any issue debated.”

The board’s decision also set the stage for an election for mayor and 14 council seats in the proposed Valley city.

Candidates can now circulate petitions to qualify for the ballot. The paperwork deadline is Aug. 9. If secession loses, none of the offices will be filled.

The ballot measure will also give voters a chance to pick from five names for a Valley city.

Today, the Local Agency Formation Commission is scheduled to take the last step in placing the Hollywood secession measure on the same ballot. The panel is also expected to approve ballot language that will portray the Hollywood separation payments in terms similar to that of the Valley measure.

A Hollywood city would have to pay Los Angeles $21.4 million the first year, with the amount decreasing by 5% a year. A change in state law gave LAFCO final authority over the Hollywood election.

Meanwhile, Katz, a former assemblyman, faced City Council President Alex Padilla in a debate Thursday about Valley cityhood before the Southland Regional Assn. of Realtors.

Padilla, a Valley native, made his case armed with economic statistics. “If there was a poster child for not getting our fair share, it’s the northeast Valley,” he said. But the councilman painted secession as a financially and politically risky way to bring change.

Katz said secession is “about having a say in the future of our neighborhoods.”

Also Thursday, a coalition of religious and civil rights groups rallied in Studio City to announce its plans to fight secession, saying a breakup would hurt the poor.

The coalition includes the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Coalition members said they feared that a new Valley city would fail to enact Los Angeles laws designed to protect the poor and elderly.