Does Business Have Its Own Horse in Secession Race? From The Newsroom by Michael Hart Here may be the latest sign the secession movement is the real thing: It’s got its first high-profile politician talking out of both sides of his mouth. State Assemblyman Keith Richman, the leading candidate for mayor of a potential Valley city, has changed his position on Ahmanson Ranch, moving from being so strongly in favor of its development he wrote an op-ed piece for the San Fernando Valley Business Journal a year ago, to now saying he’s “extremely concerned about the impact on surrounding communities.” Things do, apparently, change. In the Sept. 17, 2001 issue of the Business Journal, Richman wrote a guest commentary extolling the virtues of the project and deriding the “hard-core no-growth crowd” that opposed it. He wrote that “Ahmanson Ranch officials are committed to building an environmentally sensitive project and extremists cannot forever say build it ‘somewhere else.'” On Aug. 21 of this year, he wrote a letter to the Ventura County Board of Supervisors announcing to them he was “withdrawing my support until I’m confident the traffic issues have been addressed.” Suddenly, he was no longer the only elected official anywhere close to Ahmanson Ranch who believed it was a good idea. In fact, he joined the herd of politicians willing to take advantage of the very strong opposition to it. Keith Richman is running for mayor of a potential new Valley city and those “extremists (who) cannot forever say build it ‘somewhere else'” are now voters Richman wants to endear himself to. Suffice it to say Richman is certainly not the first politician to see the error of his ways after figuring out the next job he wants comes with a new constituency that has different views from those he previously represented. So, this is nothing new to politics, or to me. The problem here is that the facts of the matter give Richman so little cover that, if anybody ever decides to call him up on the flip-flop, he’s not going to have much room to maneuver. That’s because events in the Ahmanson Ranch saga move at such a glacial pace. What in the world could have possibly occurred in the last year to make Richman change his mind? Outside of Martin Sheen’s and Rob Reiner’s guest appearances with the opposition earlier this year, nothing has changed in the debate over the development. If the 1992 traffic projections were good enough for him last September, what makes them inadequate this September? If Ahmanson Ranch would have solved a serious housing shortage before, as Richman said it would a year ago, why wouldn’t it now? The “withdrawal of support” makes sense politically. At its heart, the secession movement has a strong anti-development, pro-neighborhood and, yes, not-in-my-backyard slant to it. If enough Valley voters believe in that (and enough L.A. voters outside of the Valley don’t care), they’ll get what they want and a year from now we’ll be answering to a Mayor Richman. I’ll leave the merits and drawbacks of Ahmanson Ranch for another time (because clearly there will be plenty more time for that before and if ever the bulldozers arrive). Instead, I’ll ask a question I have asked one way or another before in this space: As the Nov. 5 decision point on secession draws closer, who is looking out for the Valley business community’s interests? Over the last few months, I have suggested those both advocating for secession and running for office in a new city make their views known on development of the Van Nuys Airport, the depth of their commitment to swift business tax reform, Los Angeles’ current living wage ordinance and now Ahmanson Ranch. There are more issues to be added to that list that I just haven’t gotten around to yet: economic development, land use policy, business permitting and licensing procedures. The most frequent response to that kind of challenge is that nitty-gritty matters like these will have to wait until the secession battle is waged and successfully won. But why should a business operator choose the secession option if it’s not in his or her best interest? And if secession is in their best interest, why can’t candidates say so? I know this gets complicated. There are people who have both lived and worked here their whole lives, who feel passionately about the San Fernando Valley’s future, and it’s hard for any of us to separate our interests at home from our interests at work. Nevertheless, somebody sooner or later has to come up with a new agenda for the business community. Somebody involved with secession needs to make it clear why dumping L.A. will benefit local companies as much as it will benefit homeowner associations and that proverbial Joe Six-Pack who’s going to get the pothole in front of his house filled. Keith Richman, with his flip-flop on Ahmanson Ranch, doesn’t appear to be the leader who is going to articulate that business agenda for us. However, neither does anybody else running for office. So if neither Richman nor anybody else running for mayor is going to advocate on behalf of the Valley’s business community, who is? And if not now, when? Michael Hart is editor of the San Fernando Valley Business Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].
