VIEWPOINT/Los Angeles drama lacks a director
Los Angeles residents are lining up for a literal blockbuster as the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood vie for secession on this November’s ballot. Will the story have a happy ending?
The battle for the Valley is more than 20 years old, beginning with rancor over Proposition 13 and city busing. Widely regarded as “white flight,” early attempts to secede were quashed when the state legislature gave large cities power to veto secession. That rule was repealed in 1997, and, by that time, the Valley’s population Ñ 1.4 million residents Ñ had shifted from largely white to multi-ethnic.
The battle had shifted, too. Claiming that Los Angeles is simply too large to provide efficient government and adequate services to all of its sprawling regions, the Valley separatists renewed their bid for cityhood.
Others joined. Residents of Los Angeles’s Harbor area Ñ home to current mayor James Hahn Ñ studied their own breakaway move and determined that a separate Harbor City would not be financially sound. Hollywood followed and is taking its case to voters.
The San Fernando Valley encompasses nearly half of Los Angeles’s land and more than one-third of its residents. If the region breaks away, it will become the sixth largest city in the country, and Los Angeles will fall to third behind New York and Chicago. If Hollywood departs with the Valley, Los Angeles will lose 40 percent of its total residents.
Despite the stakes, and despite the secessionists mantra of smaller, more responsive government, Los Angeles leaders did not respond. They simply ignored the threat.
“I don’t think anybody ever thought secession had a prayer,” County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky told the Los Angeles Times in April. “Nobody at City Hall did.”
Responding now, first-term Mayor Hahn sounds more like a doomsayer than a man intent on addressing problems or offering alternatives. Secession will “throw [Los Angeles] into chaos,” he says. It is “a one-way ticket to financial disaster.” It “could throw us back into a recession.” And the emotional chart-topper: “We think public safety is jeopardized.”
For secession to pass, the measure must be approved by a majority of voters in Los Angeles and by a majority in the breakaway area. A March poll showed that 46 percent of Los Angeles voters and 55 percent of Valley voters supported Valley secession. But that was before the move was placed on the ballot and before both sides launched their multi-million-dollar campaigns.
City Hall’s lack of leadership on the secession issue ensures that, whichever decision the voters make, Los Angeles will emerge sharply divided Ñ by property lines or by politics. Hahn still has a chance to direct that ending, but he will need more than scare tactics and a megaphone to do it.