Many Dire Forecasts, Few Facts in Secession Debate

To listen to secessionists, the proposed cities of Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley will be gleaming citadels of government efficiency, latter-day promised lands freed of an oppressive City Hall.

Lend an ear to Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn and other secession foes, and the same proposed cities sound vulnerable to every calamity but a plague of locusts. Earthquakes, fires, financial ruin, even a terrorist attack, may lurk around the corner, opponents warn, finding them unprepared.

The loaded language on both sides of the secession debate--comparing a municipal breakup to the biblical story of Exodus, the American Revolution, the Civil War and the end of South African apartheid--hints at the highly emotional appeals to come.

Unlike many traditional campaigns over issues or candidates, the two secession proposals on the Nov. 5 ballot offer so many unknowns, at such high stakes, that many arguments can be easily twisted to support either side. The result, political experts say, is likely to be a debate based more on passion than reason.

The campaign is expected to intensify after a summer lull, with both camps planning a drumbeat of mail and television ads in the fall. Hahn’s anti-secession team plans to raise $5 million for the effort, while secession backers hope to collect at least $4 million.

The money will bring to the airwaves conflicting messages of hope and despair.

Attentive Politicians

Secession backers aim to convince voters in all parts of Los Angeles that smaller cities mean more attentive elected officials providing better, cheaper services. They imply that a split could eventually help fix public schools, even though the secession measure would not change the existing school system.

Opponents argue that a breakup would only spawn more politicians while endangering city finances and services across the board, especially public safety.

Both sides have taken a broad approach rather than crafting distinct messages for specific ethnic or income groups, although that could change as the campaigns sharpen their focus.

Secession supporters paint City Hall as a dark, distant empire, where arrogant politicians and power brokers gorge at the taxpayers’ trough while shortchanging the people paying the bills.

“It’s the billionaires versus the people,” said Richard Close, chairman of the secession group Valley VOTE.

Reject the downtown political elite, secessionists tell voters in the breakaway regions, and everything will improve. “Local control”--even in a Valley city of 1.35 million--will banish government waste and boost services. Council districts will be smaller, politicians more responsive.

Polishing the Message

But proponents must also polish the other side of the secession coin: the remainder of Los Angeles. To win, they need voter approval not just within the breakaway areas, but also among voters citywide.

So secession supporters are now leavening gripes against downtown with more upbeat promises that resonate across the city.

“This is good for all areas of the city,” said Ben Goddard, the campaign manager recently hired by secessionists. “Government will be much closer to the people in the new Los Angeles and in the Valley and Hollywood. It’s a win-win for everyone. Smaller is better. It’s more responsive to people’s needs.”

But anti-secessionists believe a similar message of control also works for them. The approach plays on fear of the unknown: Approve secession, and who knows what disasters could be unleashed. Keeping the city whole means keeping things from spinning out of control, so everyone can rest assured that Los Angeles police and firefighters will be there when needed.

“The whole idea is: Is it worth the risk?” said Kam Kuwata, political strategist for the mayor’s anti-secession campaign. “If a Northridge earthquake hits or a Sept. 11 hits, will they be ready for that?”

The what-ifs tend to play on fears about financial and physical security. Would services be cut? Could taxes go up? What about water and power bills? Would public safety suffer? Would a Valley city be able to float bonds to build more police stations?

“Many people fear the unknown,” said Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State Los Angeles. “With secession, the unknowns are so vast. There’s no historical guideposts for this, so the anti-secession side will be stressing: ‘As problematic as you see the city now, all sorts of horrors await you’ ” if a breakup occurs.

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt

Secession supporters have already coined a catch-all phrase to dispel the power of such scary images. They call it “fud”--fear, uncertainty and doubt. It has even begun to pop up as a verb, as in: “There goes the mayor, fudding again,” whenever Hahn warns of secession’s dire consequences.

Now that Valley and Hollywood cityhood questions have made the ballot, opponents of all stripes have bolted into action--leading to multiple variations on the anti-secession theme.

There are municipal union leaders, warning that secession would jeopardize thousands of city jobs; Gray Panthers, concerned about the impact on senior services; and, yes, a few billionaires such as real estate mogul Eli Broad, who want to enhance Los Angeles’ status as a cultural capital and the nation’s second-largest city.

Some civic leaders, including former Mayor Richard Riordan and former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, are trying to put a positive spin on the anti-secession campaign.

They emphasize Los Angeles’ attributes and seek to inspire unity.

Hahn, who has been criticized for being too negative, sometimes points to neighborhood councils as evidence that the city is moving in the right direction.

He has also taken to citing the “greatness” of Los Angeles, but usually without specific examples.

“It’s a great, great city,” the mayor said at a recent anti-secession rally in the Valley. “It’s the greatest city in the world because of the great people who live here.”

Other secession opponents, joined under the grass-roots group One Los Angeles, have started distributing campaign literature listing the alleged dangers of Valley secession.

“Reduced services everywhere,” one flier predicts. “A tax raise for the Valley.”

That’s the exact opposite of what the secession leaders promise. So who’s right?

Differing Conclusions

The trouble is, so many studies have reached so many different conclusions that each side can point to data that appear to prove its point.

Even the Local Agency Formation Commission, the state panel that studied secession’s financial impact for two years before putting it on the ballot, has issued conflicting reports.

In his final analysis, LAFCO Executive Director Larry Calemine concluded that the Hollywood and Valley cities would have sufficient reserves in their early years.

“Our overarching challenge will be to communicate the real bottom line,” Goddard said. “People will start to discover that the facts refute the fear argument.”

Several campaign veterans, however, said negative campaigns can be quite effective. Hahn used such tactics to his advantage in last year’s mayoral race, when he dinged Villaraigosa with a television ad depicting a crack pipe and suggesting that his opponent was soft on drugs.

“The bottom line is, time and again, negative campaigns have impacts,” said Mark Fabiani, a Democratic strategist who served as deputy mayor in Tom Bradley’s administration and directed communications for Al Gore’s 2000 presidential race. “They move voters.”

Secessionists, too, can point to plenty of negatives that might move voters--away from Los Angeles.

“There are less police on the streets now than four years ago. Crime rates are going through the roof, particularly in the Valley,” said former Assemblyman Richard Katz, a leader of the Valley breakaway bid. “Some of what the mayor is predicting is already happening on his watch.”

Ethnic Debate

So far, both sides have stepped lightly around issues of race and ethnicity. The pro-secession camp insists that leaving Los Angeles is not a matter of “white flight,” pointing out that Latinos would be the largest group in a Valley city. Valley VOTE leaders say support for a study of secession was strongest in the northeast Valley, a predominantly Latino area.

They also have reached out to black community leaders in South Los Angeles, but their message, once again, was general: A smaller city would benefit everyone.

In recent days, however, Hahn has begun to say that he fears “communities of color” and immigrants would be left behind economically if the Valley and Hollywood secede.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, an African American commentator, has written several columns warning that secession could hurt black and Latino city workers, reduce services and increase taxes for the poor.

On other fronts, secession opponents plan to point out that a breakup would have no impact on the Los Angeles Unified School District. But some secessionists, including Hollywood nightclub owner Gene La Pietra, say slicing up the troubled district is the next step.

So far, much of the spin has been confined to small rallies and news conferences, radio interviews and newspaper articles.

Changing Scope

Although both sides boast of having armies of volunteers, the attendance at most gatherings to discuss secession has numbered in the dozens.

If voters do decide to break up Los Angeles, the real scope of change, good or bad, will probably not be clear for years.

“We’re not very good at predicting the future,” said Bruce Cain, a professor of political science at UC Berkeley.

“If the true consequences of secession were agreed upon and everybody knew them, it would lower the level of hysteria and fear.”