Hahn’s Secession Red Flag

Energy deregulation was such a complex issue that when it passed the California Legislature in 1998, few members could claim to understand how it would work. Must be a good idea anyway, they said. Three years later, rolling blackouts, skyrocketing utility bills and price-gouging power pirates hit the state. The lawmakers wished they’d never voted.

Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn is trying to keep secession--another complex undertaking no one really understands--from becoming this year’s budget-buster sequel. This week, he challenged the numbers being used to decide whether carving the San Fernando Valley from the rest of the city should go to a vote in November. Valley secession advocates accused him of trying to thwart the will of the people. Not true. Hahn is looking after the interests of the people who elected him.

The Local Agency Formation Commission long ago stopped trying to hide its glee at the chance to cut up big, bad Los Angeles. The nine-member panel is a hodgepodge of elected officials and appointed retirees from throughout Los Angeles County, some of them leaders of a fizzled Valley secession effort in the 1970s, others from smaller cities tired of living in the shadow of their giant neighbor.

Wednesday provided one more example of their breakup boosterism. Members of the commission scoffed at Hahn’s argument, which was backed by an independent audit, that the breakup would cost Los Angeles far more than the commission estimated. But commissioners welcomed their own staff’s attempt to rejigger the numbers to salvage a harbor area secession plan deemed dead by their own consultant and by a state audit. They are so determined to get all three secession measures, including one for Hollywood, on the November ballot that they might as well have skipped the required studies and saved taxpayers $2 million.

Hahn’s concern is that, should voters agree to the largest municipal divorce in U.S. history, it not lead to deregulation-size consequences. On Thursday, a leading bond firm cited secession in downgrading its forecast for Los Angeles’ credit standing from stable to negative. The commission ignores these warnings at the people’s peril.