Secession: Rising ‘What Ifs?’

Seven months away from a likely vote on San Fernando Valley secession, a new Los Angeles Times poll put support at 55% in the Valley and 46% citywide. Not surprisingly, secession advocates are elated by the close poll. We hope that residents on both sides of Mulholland Drive are sobered by it.

Los Angeles is one of the world’s best-known cities. Deciding whether to break it into as many as four parts, now that the harbor area and Hollywood have petitioned to secede as well, is one awesome responsibility. Splitting up a city this huge, erasing its history, disentangling its layers of assets and liabilities have never before been attempted.

Overseeing the process is a little-known but powerful board called the Local Agency Formation Commission. So far it has not inspired confidence in its impartiality. The partly elected, partly appointed commission seems far more eager to get secession on the ballot than to judge whether the new cities would be able to support themselves financially without harming what’s left of Los Angeles.

The commission ordered analysis of the Hollywood cityhood bid speeded up so that it could appear on the same ballot as the secession bids from the Valley and harbor areas. That, secession advocates believe, would boost the chances of each, and the commission was more than happy to oblige. It hired a private firm not so much to analyze the secessionists’ proposals but to come up with a plan that could make it onto the November ballot without being stopped by litigation. Los Angeles would continue owning all assets and providing all services to the breakaway cities, which would spend virtually all their revenues paying for these services.

A commission subcommittee has since come up with more detailed recommendations for dividing assets. A Valley city would get its parks, libraries and police and fire facilities, and Los Angeles would keep the Department of Water and Power. The breakaway city would still contract with L.A. for actual police and fire protection and many other services. The full commission will decide which if any plan is put on the ballot.

The subcommittee is on the right track in attempting to give voters more details about what secession would be like. But it’s not there yet. Aside from the question of why residents would want their city to get into the contracting business--that debate will come later--they need to know what it’s going to cost. They also need to know how things would work during a crime spree or a drought if their city was obliged to provide services to nonresidents rather than be free to move resources where required. And they need to be told what the cost would be to new and old cities if after the first few years a new city stopped using those services and developed its own.

The same poll that showed broad support for secession paradoxically found widespread satisfaction with Los Angeles. Two in three respondents said things were going well. Fewer than three in 10 said things were going badly. Voters deserve to know exactly how a breakup would make things better--or worse.