Los Angeles Unbound
BARNES, FRED
Los Angeles Unbound Is the secession movement a fizzle or a slow-burning fuse? BY FRED BARNES Los Angeles CALIFORNIA IS HOME these days to the most dismal politics in the land. The governor's...
...Meanwhile, Hahn and his crowd spend much of their time dreaming up new edifices for downtown, including an abortive plan to build a stadium to attract a National Football League team...
...it spawned Proposition 13, the tax-cutting referendum that passed in 1978 and touched off a national anti-tax drive...
...That's certainly true in L.A...
...And it's likely to lose...
...All that was enough to stir a populist campaign, but the past few years have not been kind to middle-class populism...
...You could call it Hack-town...
...After the earthquake in 1994, the L.A...
...Secession is not a new issue...
...That meant that secession would never be possible...
...It was ground zero for anti-school busing activity that was attacked as racist in the 1970s but more recently has come to be viewed as legitimate and on the right side educationally...
...Both numbers matter because the election deck is stacked against secession...
...The scare tactics have worked...
...is so big that city hall is a 90-minute or more drive from some parts of the valley...
...When the L.A...
...The Hollywood measure has little prospect of winning, but the valley referendum is a different story...
...To win, it must be approved in both the valley and citywide...
...He got the legislature to pass a law requiring the L.A...
...A valley city would abandon gay rights...
...Cultural facilities such as museums and large auditoriums sought by the valley...
...on November 5 pass—or should it even gain a majority of San Fernando Valley voters—it could have legs...
...At its core, it involves feeling good—and not defensive or disrespected—about where you live and making your community marginally better off...
...are in West Seattle and Staten island...
...As a result, Hahn and his allies are pressing to prevent a valley majority for secession...
...The city council has 15 members, one for every 246,000 Angelenos, and the districts have been gerrymandered over the years to minimize valley clout...
...Says secession leader Richard Katz, "We're up against every piece of the establishment, every bit of the status quo, everyone who has a piece of the action...
...These are grievances familiar in other cities as well, especially vast, unwieldy, and hard-to-govern places similar to L.A...
...They'll say the leash laws are...
...in 1915 to get water from the city's aqueduct, have come to a head: chronically poor services, little Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Now, the lesser grievances of the valley, which joined L.A...
...It would never adopt rent control...
...Worse, however, is the lack of representation and the dissing...
...Hahn and company tried to block this but failed...
...The next step was to bring the issue before the Local Agency Formation Commission, an appointive body with considerable power...
...All at once, secession efforts might spring up everywhere, as tax limitation drives did after Prop...
...Among joke names suggested are Newer Jersey, offered by Jay Leno, and Porntopia, proposed because the X-rated movie industry is headquartered in the valley...
...Times poll found that 49 percent of valley residents and 43 percent of citywide residents favored valley secession...
...if the valley seceded, it would have its own council with 14 members, one for every 94,000 people...
...It wouldn't have enough police and firefighters...
...The state legislature is politically correct and liberal in the extreme and may accelerate the exodus of entrepreneurs to more pro-business states...
...The governor's race pits an incumbent with a pitiful record, Democrat Gray Davis, against a sad sack Republican, Bill Simon...
...I'm the first to admit it," says Close of feelings of inferiority...
...With that in hand, they may file suit, arguing citywide approval is legally unnecessary...
...Forget it...
...And it's now documented that the valley pays $128 million more in taxes each year than it gets back in services...
...That last charge is preposterous, says Jill Stewart, who covered secession for New Times (recently absorbed by another publication...
...Wackos they aren't, and they've got a strong case...
...Should the secession referendum on the ballot in L.A...
...As for Hahn, he brings rich new definition to the word "bland...
...Local government is supposed to be localized," says Richard Close, president of the Sherman oaks Homeowners Association and a leader in both Prop...
...The names have produced a fresh wave of derision aimed at valleyites, deepening their inferiority complex...
...This government is not local...
...13 won...
...Last April, LAFCO ruled that both the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood were viable as cities and put two secession issues on the ballot...
...The secession issue has deep roots and possible national implications...
...city council to approve any secession...
...Last spring, an LA...
...And they're not too serious...
...But at the moment, the only notable secession campaigns outside L.A...
...The only Cali-fornian with a national political voice is Barbra Streisand...
...13 and secession...
...Kotkin says he's "a dumber version of Gray Davis...
...And the result was a campaign of scare tactics...
...return on taxes, lack of respect by an aloof political class, underrepresenta-tion on the city council...
...Hahn, who says secession would be "a disaster of Biblical proportions," was shocked...
...subway was built, only a single station was located in the valley...
...Close got Camelot on the ballot based on the idea of bringing the best people to government...
...Phoenix and Houston come to mind...
...Naturally the ruling political class and its minions in every city would be arrayed against secessionists...
...The San Fernando Valley, with roughly one-third of L.A.'s population and divided from the rest of the city by the Hollywood Hills and Santa Monica Mountains, has long fostered middle-class populist movements...
...If they succeed, it will be because secession is not a primal issue...
...Times survey found that only 42 percent in the valley back secession and 27 percent citywide...
...The anti-secessionists have raised more than $3 million, hired two of L.A.'s best political consultants (Kam Kuwata and Bill Carrick), put ads on TV, used scare tactics, and generally treated secession advocates as wackos...
...It doesn't involve money, as Prop...
...Council members are distant figures...
...Last week, a new L.A...
...It would be unable to respond to another earthquake...
...Response times of police and paramedics are far longer in the valley...
...Mayor James Hahn, ex-mayor Richard Riordan, the city council, unions, most black, white, and Latino political leaders, rich developers, the downtown business crowd, real estate interests, the Los Angeles Times—they're all apoplectic about a valley breakaway and fully engaged in the fight against it...
...13 did, or touch on schools and race, as the anti-busing movement did...
...And the secession movement, directed almost entirely by volunteers, was off and running...
...There hasn't been a Southern California politician campaigning against rent control in probably 25 years," she says...
...It arose in the early 1970s, only to be thwarted by Mayor Tom Bradley...
...So do San Antonio and Las Vegas and New York and Philadelphia and Jacksonville...
...Only one of 53 House contests is close to being competitive...
...But in 1997, a Republican assemblywoman, Paula Boland, and a powerful Democrat, Bob Hertzberg, both valley residents, got the law repealed...
...Realistically, the best hope of secessionists is that the valley will approve...
...Its day will come in L.A., but probably not in 2002...
...government spent nearly $300 million renovating city hall, but took six years to repair the satellite city facility in Van Nuys in the heart of the valley...
...With the exception of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger's emergence as a major player, there's only one interesting political development in the state: the bid by the San Fernando Valley to secede from the city of Los Angeles...
...But they'll say everything's in jeopardy...
...The large districts all but guarantee the election of hacks, insists Joel Kotkin, a journalist who teaches at Pepperdine University and lives in the valley...
...Council members and a mayor's contest are on the ballot, plus five potential names for a new city (Valley City, San Fernando Valley City, Rancho San Fernando, Mission Valley, Camelot...
...Then they sought to keep important city documents on revenues and expenditures out of LAFCO's hands, but they failed at that too...
Vol. 8 • October 2002 • No. 7
