Backers Plan to Challenge Hahn to a Series of Debates

San Fernando Valley secession backers said Friday that they plan to challenge Mayor James K. Hahn, who is leading the campaign against breaking up Los Angeles, to a series of one-on-one debates throughout the city.

Hahn did not respond immediately to the challenge, but a consultant for the anti-secession campaign said he expected there would be a number of debates through the summer and fall.

Also on Friday, the harbor area secession proposal--long troubled by questions about its budget--won what could be a last-minute reprieve when the head of the Local Agency Formation Commission said he would request more time to review it. If the commission agrees, a public vote on the idea may be delayed until 2004.

The ballot measure on Valley secession, meanwhile, will be put to a vote Nov. 5. To prevail, it needs the support of a majority of Valley residents and a majority of the voters citywide.

“Let the public decide what kind of government we’re going to have here in Los Angeles,” said Richard Katz, a former assemblyman who represented the Valley from 1980 to 1996. He is a member of the board of directors of the secession group Valley VOTE.

“We will be in every neighborhood so that voters throughout Los Angeles will have a clear voice,” he said.

Katz’s comments Friday at the Valley Municipal Building in Van Nuys were repeatedly interrupted by hecklers, including a group of elderly women, and by the wailing sirens of ambulances leaving the fire station across the street.

As Katz trumpeted the Valley’s breakaway, joining with other area leaders in hailing the benefits of independence, he was interrupted by a vocal dissenter.

“You don’t speak for me, buster!” hollered Lillian Kohn, an 81-year-old great-grandmother from North Hollywood who thumped her cane for emphasis. She was part of an outspoken cluster of Gray Panthers who have joined the anti-secession group One Los Angeles.

About 10 secession opponents protested at the campaign kickoff, where they were countered by about 40 secession supporters, many of them waving red-white-and-blue signs.

The two sides skirmished as people jostled to get their posters in front of television cameras.

The event’s message was one that secession backers have delivered many times: Valley residents--as well as those on the other side of the hill--will enjoy more accountable and less costly government if Los Angeles breaks apart.

“The independence of the San Fernando Valley will transform one sullen and dissatisfied city, saddled with an unresponsive and arrogant City Hall, into two great cities with governments much closer to the people,” said state Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), who helped change California law to allow voters to decide secession proposals.

Several Latino supporters who live in the Valley also spoke, saying that secession would benefit the impoverished reaches of the northeast Valley. That point is an especially sensitive one, as secession advocates have bitterly disputed the suggestion that their cause is motivated by a desire to break away from the minority communities of Los Angeles.

Recent census figures show that the largest ethnic group in the Valley city would be Latinos, who would make up 43% of the population, followed by whites with 41%. The Valley city would have a far smaller percentage of African Americans than the city of Los Angeles.

Also on Friday, a well-known black writer and activist denounced Valley secession backers’ efforts to promote their cause in South-Central Los Angeles.

“Secession will raise taxes and gut public services,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the National Alliance for Positive Action, in a statement. He pledged a campaign to educate people about the “political and financial disaster of secession to black and Latino residents.”

In Van Nuys, secession leader Richard Close said he planned to issue the debate challenge to Hahn next week. Hahn advisor Bill Carrick responded that the mayor’s L.A. United campaign would participate in many debates.

“There are scores and scores of invitations coming in from all over the city,” he said. “I think things are going to rock along here with ever-increasing intensity.”

In a separate development, LAFCO Executive Director Larry Calemine said he would ask the commission to delay its vote on placing the harbor secession measure on the November ballot.

Calemine, who just two weeks ago said a harbor city would not be able to survive financially without Los Angeles, said he wanted extra time to review information that might show otherwise. He also would examine new figures submitted by the city of Los Angeles, which is arguing that the area cannot survive and should not be split off.

Andrew Mardesich, co-chairman of the harbor secession effort, said he was relieved to hear that the proposal, considered all but dead, might be revived.

Reviewing the new material could mean that harbor cityhood would go before voters in 2004 instead of this fall, as proponents initially had hoped.

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Times staff writer Sharon Bernstein contributed to this report.