Secession in Voters’ Hands

A six-year campaign to break the San Fernando Valley from Los Angeles won a spot Wednesday on the November ballot, clearing the way for a historic vote and uncorking a fierce political debate over the future of the nation’s second-largest city.

The Local Agency Formation Commission voted 8 to 1 to place the secession measure on the Nov. 5 citywide ballot. Its decision came after a daylong hearing that swung between dry legalese and impassioned pleas to “free the Valley.”

“Today, what you are doing is making history,” said Paula Boland, a former state assemblywoman who has fought for Valley secession since the 1970s. “You’re telling almost a million and a half people that democracy is alive and well in this country.”

Los Angeles Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski cast the lone dissenting vote, saying she thought the panel needed more time to review the proposal.

The commission’s decision opens a debate whose outcome will determine the shape and identity of Los Angeles. With the stakes high for the Valley and the rest of the city, the campaign already has begun to attract top civic leaders and dominate the agenda of Mayor James K. Hahn, who is spearheading the fight against secession.

The mayor brings some powerful allies to his cause. Former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, billionaire Eli Broad and real estate developer Ed Roski are scheduled to meet with Hahn today to discuss how to bolster the anti-secession campaign. Hahn has vowed to raise $5 million to fight a breakup.

After the vote, the mayor called secession “a one-way ticket to financial disaster” and vowed to wage an aggressive campaign to defeat the measure.

“This fantasy that there’s this utopia around the bend where you can find better services for less money is just that, a myth, and we’re going to expose it,” Hahn said. Valley secessionists, meanwhile, hope to raise $2 million to $4 million and have hired a political consulting firm known for guiding dozens of ballot measures into law. They predicted a groundswell of support, fueled by dozens of campaigns soon to be launched for seats in the Valley city.

“They can get all the billionaires they want, but we have the public,” said Richard Close, chairman of the secession group Valley VOTE. “This is Mayor Hahn’s swan song; he has no support throughout the city. The Valley has deserted him. South-Central has deserted him.”

Secession backers promise that a Valley city would provide more efficient, responsive government. Opponents insist that it would only spawn more bureaucrats and diminish services on both sides of the Santa Monica Mountains.

While couched in the arid language of municipal budgets and services, the Valley secession drive taps deep-seated sentiments in Los Angeles, pitting those who yearn for more local control against those who see the city’s far-flung neighborhoods and unparalleled diversity as its strength.

“Support is growing throughout Los Angeles,” said Valley VOTE President Jeff Brain. “The residents, the taxpayers want a change. The opponents are selling what we call ‘fud’--fear, uncertainty and doubt ....The Valley is selling hope. We’re asking people to trust themselves to form a new city.”

In a hint of campaign themes to come, Hahn warned that secession would hurt public safety by jeopardizing bonds to pay for Valley police and fire stations. “The cost to the city’s taxpayers will go up and services will go down ... both in the Valley city and the remaining city,” he told LAFCO. “We think public safety is jeopardized.”

Addressing that concern, the commission gave the city until election day to issue the bonds.

Outside the meeting chamber, a Van Nuys woman chased after the departing mayor, shouting: “Just let us vote!” Hahn turned and faced her before a bank of television cameras. “I’m not trying to delay the vote,” he said. “I want you to vote!”

The push for Valley cityhood is one of a trio of Los Angeles secession proposals aiming for the voting booth this fall. In the next two weeks, LAFCO must decide whether to put plans for Hollywood and harbor-area independence, both hobbled by questions about their financial strength, on the ballot alongside Valley secession.

If Los Angeles were to lose all three regions, the city’s size and population would be cut roughly in half. The Valley alone has 1.35 million residents.

“It will be a real test for Hahn,” said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican political analyst. “If 1.3 million people leave his city, that could cause severe problems if he wants to get re-elected. I don’t think he wants secession as his legacy.”

Julie Butcher, head of the largest city employees union, told her members to “prepare for the biggest political fight in our city-worker lives.” She said city jobs could be threatened if secession passes.

“We’re going to marshal every resource and every city worker that we represent--and even those we don’t represent,” said Butcher, general manager of Service Employees International Union, Local 347. “A worker in South Gate understands what’s at stake. This is really about the future of public jobs. If half of the nation’s second-largest city decides to bail on the rest of us, it really has an impact on all of us.”

Secession drives have been victorious in states such as Florida, but none has been waged on the grand scale presented by the Valley.

“This is monumental,” said Peter Muller, an urban geographer at the University of Miami. “As always, Los Angeles is first. If [secession] wins, and it looks like there’s a very good chance it could, it could usher in a whole new urban era.”

Voting in favor of putting secession on the ballot were county Supervisors Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Zev Yaroslavsky, Diamond Bar Councilwoman Carol Herrera, Pico Rivera Councilwoman Beatrice Proo, retired judge James DiGiuseppe, former school board member Henri Pellissier and water board members William Wentworth and Jerry Gladbach.

To pass, secession must attract a majority of voters citywide and, in a separate tally, a majority within the breakaway area. A Times poll taken in March showed that 55% of Valley voters thought the Valley should secede, compared with 46% of the city’s entire electorate. Citywide, more voters favored secession than opposed it.

Riordan, a longtime foe of secession, questioned the depth of Valley discontent.

“This is not like an angry revolution going on. I think it’s just some people who came up with the idea and some politicians in Sacramento that really should have minded their own business,” Riordan said. “Right now, I think support both for and against secession is paper thin. Hopefully, people are starting to focus on it. We’ve got to educate them.”

Voters will be asked simply to approve or deny Valley independence. But underpinning that question are reams of budget data showing, at least in the eyes of LAFCO, that the Valley could thrive as a separate city without injuring the financial well-being of the city it leaves behind.

Los Angeles officials have hotly contested that finding, arguing that secession would punch a multimillion-dollar hole in the city treasury. Debate over financial effects raged until the eleventh-hour Tuesday, when LAFCO again revised its calculations and more than doubled the amount an independent Valley would have to pay Los Angeles to make up for lost tax revenue.

Pellissier, LAFCO’s chairman, said the vote puts the onus on secession supporters to make their case.

“I’m delighted we were able to reach the conclusion we did, but the facts were there,” Pellissier said. “We made the decision that they should have the right to vote. It’s fiscally viable.”

A breakup would disrupt almost a century and a half of nonstop Los Angeles expansion. The Valley, once a patchwork of ranchland and orchards, joined the city in 1915 so that it could obtain water from the 233-mile Los Angeles Aqueduct. Areas with their own wells, such as Burbank and Glendale, remained independent.

If Valley secession is approved by voters, the new city would be born on July 1, 2003. It would instantly become the nation’s sixth-largest city, bigger than Phoenix, San Diego, Dallas and Detroit.

The Valley would have a $1-billion budget, an elected mayor and 14 city council members. Voters who live in the Valley would elect those leaders and choose the city’s name on the same November ballot. The five selections range from the obvious (San Fernando Valley) to the dreamy (Camelot).

To keep Los Angeles financially whole, the Valley would have to pay $128 million the first year. This so-called alimony payment would drop 5% annually over 20 years.

For at least its first year, the fledgling city would remain tightly bound to Los Angeles. The Valley would contract with Los Angeles for almost all municipal services, but eventually could set up its own departments and hire employees.

But many uncertainties remain about the long-term health of both cities. Los Angeles officials still say their city will be left with centralized costs, such as running the 911 system, if the Valley breaks away. A financial firm last week warned investors that secession might hurt Los Angeles’ bond rating.

“There’s so much more we as a city need to know before we can make a qualified or educated decision,” said Xavier Flores, vice president of the Mexican American Political Assn., which opposes secession. “The residents of Los Angeles, and that includes people in the Valley, have everything to lose. If there is a mistake or an oversight, we’re the ones who are going to have to pay.”

The breakup would displace the four Los Angeles City Council members who represent the Valley and force the remainder of the city to redraw its council districts. As an alternative to secession, Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, a newly elected Valley representative, has proposed a system that would divide the city into boroughs, each with power to make local planning and budget decisions.

In some ways, a Valley city would always rely on Los Angeles. After almost nine decades together, the two regions were found to be so intertwined that certain systems, like water, power and sewer lines, would be impossible to untangle. So LAFCO decided that the old city would be forced to provide utility services to the Valley at the same rates Los Angeles customers pay.

Barring a successful lawsuit, the LAFCO decision is all but final. Only a written protest from half of the Valley’s registered voters--about 300,000 people--could derail the election.

But LAFCO still has time to tinker with the breakup plan. California law requires a 30-day “reconsideration” period, during which any interested party can ask the commission to review its decision.

The county Board of Supervisors will then hold a hearing on the written protests before formally placing the measure on the ballot. The supervisors have no discretion over the breakup plan; their role is merely administrative.

For Valley secession leaders, a determined band of mostly white, mostly male suburbanites, getting their proposal onto the ballot is a stunning victory. It required years of steady pressure against state and local governments that once swatted aside the idea of secession like a harmless, if bothersome, fly.

An early Valley cityhood drive was crushed in the 1970s when the state Legislature, at the urging of then-Mayor Tom Bradley, gave large cities veto power over secession.

But grumbling over city services and the Valley’s perceived lack of clout at City Hall persisted. Two decades later, some leaders of the original secession movement were finally in a position to do something about it. Boland, who was by then an assemblywoman, revived the issue in 1996 with a bill that would have granted voters the power to approve secessions. The measure failed. The following year, state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) and Assemblyman Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks) crafted a compromise requiring secession proposals to win voter approval in both the breakaway area and the city at large. In 1997, Gov. Pete Wilson signed the so-called Valley secession bill, breathing new life into dormant movements throughout suburban Los Angeles.

Valley secessionists were the first to collect enough signatures--from 25% of registered voters--to force a study of Valley cityhood. It took LAFCO more than two years and $2 million to conduct the analysis. In a series of findings, the agency concluded that secession was viable, and it dismissed city arguments to the contrary.

“I think there’s an underlying feeling that people should have a right to self-determination wherever it’s feasible,” said William Fulton, an urban planner and author of books about Southern California growth.

Even as the secession drive spun forward, the Valley grew to resemble more and more the city it sought to escape.

A Valley city, though still whiter than the rest of Los Angeles, would have nearly even numbers of white and Latino residents. Democrats now outnumber Republicans in most Valley districts. And among the leafy bedroom communities are large pockets of poverty, particularly in the northeast Valley.

Times staff writers Matea Gold, Kristina Sauerwein and Nita Lelyveld contributed to this report.