Secession Fight Shrugged Off in Legislature

Should the San Fernando Valley be allowed to split from the city of Los Angeles? You won’t get any argument from most legislators on that question. One way or the other.

Ask a state legislator whether the L.A. City Council should be stripped of its power to veto Valley secession and the reaction is likely to be not just ambivalence, but outright indifference. A nonchalant shrug.

Indeed, many lawmakers--those not from L.A.--seemingly couldn’t care less whether the nation’s second-largest city stays intact or is split to smithereens. The prevailing attitude is that this is an L.A. issue. Let the Angelenos deal with it.

Besides, if there’s a loud clamor in the Valley for secession, few in Sacramento are hearing it.

Assemblywoman Paula Boland’s bill to make it easier for the Valley to secede is a yawner for most non-L.A. lawmakers. A big reason is that they detect little evidence of it generating real excitement in Los Angeles.

Nor do they see much prospect of the city ever actually splitting, regardless of what happens to this bill. Bashing City Hall is one thing; having the will and energy to create a new city is quite another.

After all, the lawmakers ask rhetorically, what has come from a similar Valley-backed bill they passed last year to permit breakup of the L.A. school system? Virtually nothing.

Politicians recognize election year politics. They also can spot a brush-back pitch tossed at the downtown establishment. And they know about media hype.

“Paula’s reacting to an opportunity to get a little ink, and I can’t blame her for that. She’s running for office,” says a fellow Republican, veteran Sen. William A. Craven of Oceanside. Craven is chairman of the Senate Local Government Committee, the secessionists’ next stop.

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This all works just fine for Assemblywoman Boland, politically and legislatively.

A Granada Hills resident since childhood, but facing Assembly term limits, the 56-year-old former real estate agent has moved to Glendale to run for an open Senate seat. Charges that she’s a carpetbagger are being drowned out by the commotion over her secession bill. Although only 10% of the district’s voters live in L.A. city, many probably are impressed by anyone willing to fight the downtown crowd.

“We’re underserved and understaffed,” she says, echoing the Valley’s historic complaint. “We’ve never gotten our fair share. . . .

“All you have to see is [the movie] ‘Chinatown’ to know what went on. L.A. held us hostage. We had to join the city [in 1913] to get water.”

As for Capitol indifference, Boland thrives when she and her bills aren’t taken seriously. It’s then easier to finesse. And she’s tenacious.

The conservative lawmaker teamed with an unlikely partner, liberal Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), to push through the L.A. school district breakup bill. She also has maneuvered passage of several anti-crime measures, including one that removes the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases.

About a month ago, I asked two Valley lawmakers about Boland’s secession bill. They both dismissed it as just “some Paula thing.” Later, hardly anybody was paying attention when she brought up the measure on the Assembly floor and quickly, with no debate, narrowly won passage.

Caught off guard, L.A. Democrats and lobbyists complained that Boland had said she wouldn’t take up the bill that day. Her mind changed, Boland says, when Democratic leader Richard Katz of Sylmar “made a snide remark” to a Valley reporter that she wasn’t taking it up because she didn’t have the votes. “Of course I had the votes,” she says.

“Did I start out being sneaky? No. Did I wind up being shrewd? You bet.”

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Now the bill is in the Senate and most eyes still are glazed.

“I’m a noncombatant,” says Senate leader Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward). “This is a local fight.”

Like other legislators, Lockyer sees no reason to get involved when even L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan lacks the interest and/or courage to take a stand. As of now, he says, the bill “is more likely to pass than not.”

But Lockyer says he does worry that the bill could set a precedent for other city breakups and encourage “re-tribalizing in our society.”

Committee chairman Craven--a former city manager and county supervisor--says, “This has to be studied more,” probably with hearings next fall, between Legislature sessions.

Craven is not indifferent. Should the Valley be allowed to split? Not without considerably more thought than Sacramento has given that question so far, he says.

This bill may stall for awhile.