Secession Advocates Don’t Know What Trouble Is Yet

Secession Advocates Don’t Know What Trouble Is Yet Commentary: From The Newsroom by Michael Hart On the evening of May 22, secession advocates in their “Free the Valley” T-shirts hooped, hollered and openly jeered a whiney Mayor James Hahn; former state Assemblywoman Paula Boland cried; Valley VOTE’s Jeff Brain had a long 15 minutes with the national media; and Los Angeles voters got the right to decide whether the San Fernando Valley would become a city. The following day, May 23, Hahn planned a quieter meeting in the comfort of his City Hall office. Expected were Eli Broad, real estate developer Ed Roski, former Mayor Richard Riordan and former Secretary of State Warren Christopher. Their only agenda topic was likely to be a strategy to stop 1.4 million people from leaving them and this time, for good. It’s my guess, however, that there was also a certain amount of how-did-we-let-it-get-this-far talk. It’s true, events and the behavior of the principal players last week indicated things have changed quickly. Last week, Hahn bickered over petty distinctions with LAFCO members, warned that the crime rate would climb, hinted at lawsuits, fretted that his administration just might have to raise water and electricity rates in the Valley and begged on the last evening of a process secessionists had worked their way through over the last decade for one more week. Meanwhile, a gracious, generous Richard Close cavalierly labeled as good news reports that potential alimony payments a Valley city would owe L.A. had escalated from $56 million to $128 million. After all, he noted, it proved once and for all that the Valley has been L.A.’s crutch all along, that a new city could take care of itself and still pay whatever it would take to get out of the relationship. Also, one day last week, the Los Angeles Times devoted an entire op-ed page to a collection of what I’m sure its editors thought were whimsical, light-hearted accounts of people who grew up in the Valley, moved “over the hill” and now wonder why we can’t all just get along. The morning after LAFCO’s vote to place the secession issue on a November ballot, National Public Radio interviewed a woman who said she “loves the Valley,” is “sick of having the rest of Los Angeles look down its nose at us,” and then giggled certainly leaving the rest of America scratching its head and wondering what L.A. could be up to this time. It is possible Hahn spent much of his Memorial Day weekend in high dudgeon, anxious to the point of distraction that after a lifetime spent aiming toward the mayor’s office he might be the one in charge when the whole thing falls apart. It is likely that, for giddy secession advocates, it really was a holiday. But bright and early the Tuesday after Memorial Day, it must have seemed clear to both sides that their work was just beginning. Particularly for those in favor of secession who feel like their biggest obstacle has been overcome, there is peril at every turn now. For instance: – Hahn’s last-gasp attempt to scare the public into believing that an escalating crime rate (that he can’t seem to curb even with an intact city government at his disposal) will only worsen on both sides of Mulholland Drive should be a clue as to the levels he and his colleagues will stoop to make their points. Expect to hear from him and the anti-secession bloc that, with a breakup, crime, taxes and utility rates will go up while what he considers the smooth, efficient delivery of municipal services will be diminished. Expect also the message to be delivered in a hit-’em-over-the-head style, designed to scare the hell out of those least able to make sense of it. Expect the message to have a kernel of truth as well. – Wall Street, business forecasters and maybe your own instincts might be telling you the economic downturn is over, but it is just beginning for government, which at every level is experiencing problems mayors and governors haven’t had to deal with for nearly a decade. Gov. Gray Davis has an anticipated state budget deficit of almost $24 billion to figure out, Hahn whines that he doesn’t have the money his predecessor had to work with and all the little Mayberrys we hear the Valley could one day be like Burbank, Glendale, Santa Clarita have budget problems. When it comes to dollars and cents, Valley VOTE picked a hell of a time to launch the municipal equivalent of a tech sector startup. – Boland may have finagled for herself a photo op the night of the LAFCO vote guaranteed to place her front and center in both the Daily News and The Times the following morning, but the other grand dame of the secession movement, former U.S. Rep. Bobbi Fiedler, was nowhere close to the limelight. That’s because earlier in the week she made it clear that, despite years of campaigning for secession, the time still is not quite right. The problem, according to Fiedler, is the dearth of political leadership in the Valley that will be required to pull off that startup, especially when it means bringing the sixth-largest city in the U.S. to life in a matter of months. Many of you who read this column already know who the likely suspects are when we talk about political leadership. Think about all the characters that will be required to fill out election ballots for 15 council districts and a mayor, then tell me how many you’d have enough confidence in to run your city. For Valley voters, the up-or-down question may be determined by the personalities they think will be their elected officials. And if they don’t like what they see, they’ll not only vote against them, but against cityhood as well. Last week may have been intoxicating, but on the first day after a long holiday weekend, it’s clear there’s a lot of work to do. Michael Hart is editor of the San Fernando Valley Business Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].