Secession Watch Archive
Archive Oct. 1 - Oct. 10
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• There's a couple of secession-related stories in the new LA Weekly. The most provocative, by far, has former L.A. Times Valley edition columnist Scott Harris all but apologizing for pieces he wrote in the mid 1990s that belittled secessionists and the Valley. He calls the Times' news coverage biased against dividing up the city, and reveals some of the behind-the-scenes manuevering that went on at the media megalith on Spring Street. Harris also confesses that he wrote his column about Valley life for six years -- until the editors took it away from him -- without ever having lived in the Valley. Next in the Weekly is a profile of Gene LaPietra and his quest for secession, which he promotes as the chief financier of the Hollywood breakaway effort and a main supplier of funds to Valley secession as well.
• The Times' Patrick McGreevy weighs in with a longish recitation of the issues and unkowns still swirling around the question of water and power bills in a new Valley city. The biggest unknown is whether Los Angeles could or would charge Valley customers higher rates like it does other cities that tap the system. Based on this story, the bottom line is -- it depends on who you choose to believe.
• A campaign roundup story in the Daily News includes mayor hopeful Keith Richman's plans for the schools, some other candidates attacking the MTA's east-west busway proposal, and the official unveiling of the Valley Alliance of Liberals, now up to 17 candidates as members. The Times' roundup has the liberals, with a bit more context, and Richman too.
DN editorial: Upset about EIDC "study"
• In the UCLA Daily Bruin, the campus' student lobbyist urges students to register to vote so they can have an influence on local issues such as secession.
• The opposition campaign began airing TV spots that declare secession "a risk that's not worth taking" and make a litany of charges that were challenged Tuesday by secession leaders. The spots will be on all major broadcast and some cable channels. Both the L.A. Times and Daily News stories also give second-day details from the pro-secession fundraising reports. David Fleming (at $100,000) is the largest contributor to Valley secession, followed by Hollywood's Gene LaPietra ($50k), Galpin Ford owner Bert Boeckmann ($40k) and the Valley Realtors group (25K). The Daily News says that SFV Independence has spent all but about $121,000 of what it took in, while the Times says it owes $102,000, including $38,000 to Goddard Claussen, the campaign advice firm that quit a few weeks ago. The DN reports alone that a new citywide pro-campaign (launched by Bob Scott with $10,000 from Sanford Paris) is being called the Alliance for a New L.A.
• The Daily News' top editorial proclaims Valley secession "the last desperate step" and says that boroughs with real local authority and neighborborhood councils with teeth would have been "better solutions." Still no actual endorsement one way or another -- the editorial merely advises that "voters face a hard choice," and a second editorial beseeches people to grasp the importance of their vote. The rhetoric of the first editorial labels all anti-cityhood contributors part of a corrupt power structure, and secession supporters as seeking "nothing more than a seat at the table of power for the ordinary people of the city." The Secession Watch view? If only politics was truly that simple. It's also a stretch to categorize Fleming, Scott & Boeckmann -- well-known figures around city hall -- or even LaPietra as powerless outsiders.
• Fifteen city council candidates on the Nov. 5 ballot are unveiling today the "Valley Alliance for Liberals" hoping to counter the more conservative image of the secession campaigns. "Our purpose is to show voters that the secession movement isn't a right-wing conspiracy," said Terry Stone, a candidate in the 10th district.
DN's CD-11 overview
• The embattled Entertainment Industry Development Corp. paid $10,000 to a research arm of the county labor federation to produce a report that concludes secession would be bad for the local entertainment biz, the Daily News reports (citing the Hollywood Reporter). The theory is that having a more fractured local government would deter efforts to fight runaway production. Richard Katz of SFV Independence dismisses the work as "a conclusion in search of a report." To set the scene a bit: the EIDC gets its money from permits issued to film on location in the county, fees that would otherwise go into the public treasury. The EIDC is run by a board of elected officials, chaired by Mayor Jim Hahn. The EIDC gave $25,000 to L.A. United, Hahn's anti-secession group. Now we learn that the EIDC hired a group from organized labor, which is admantly opposed to secession, to do its study. The EIDC is under investigation by the district attorney.
Added:The longer Hwd Reporter version
• L.A. United, the anti-secession committee formed by Mayor Hahn, has raised about $4.8 million to fight against the municipal break-up, and has already spent $1 million on TV spots that have not yet run. (Daily News and the Times cover, with more details on who gave what to who, and how much is left, in the LAT). Adding in the sums collected by other campaign committees, the opposition side has taken in more than $5 million. The largest donor to L.A. United, at $300,000, has been Jerry Perenchio, the chief of Univision. Union money has also started to flow in, led by $250,000 from the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees and $200,000 from the L.A. firefighters union. Valley Independence, the top campaign arm on the pro side, said it has collected $547,000 but details were not yet available. Valley candidates had also taken in at least $439,000 themselves, $127,000 of it by Assemblyman and mayor candidate Keith Richman and $48,000 by rival Mel Wilson. Secession supporters had vowed to amass a couple of million, so it's a disappointment no matter how much they try to spin it into an virtue.
• The Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. made known what its first demand of a new city government in the Valley would be -- a cut of the business receipts tax in half within eighteen months. The group, which lobbies in City Hall, recently endorsed secession in a vote of its members.
Daily News: 10th district race
• L.A. city councilman Eric Garcetti says that he's heard things could get ugly at City Hall for secessionists -- retribution-wise -- after the Nov. 5 election, but that he and others are arguing for peace in our time. He tells the L.A. Business Journal that "there's a group of people here in City Hall that wants to squash all these folks should secession go down. Others, myself included, are saying we need to engage these individuals...appoint them to commissions, and make sure they are heard." ($3 to read on the LABJ Web site)
• A gathering of about 1,000 people Sunday at Temple Judea in Tarzana was the largest anti-secession rally yet, the Daily News reports. It included Mayor James Hahn and several Los Angeles pastors calling for unity. The L.A. Times story focuses more on the rally's call for passage of Measure K, the school funding item on the Nov. 5 ballot, and health-care funding. The DN says, by the way, that Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky joined the chorus calling for a no vote on break-up. Yaroslavsky had previously said he would not take a stand on secession, and in the Times story is quoted only calling for a vote on Measure B, which would help keep county health clinics open.
LAT feature: Which boulevard to be Main Street?
• A Daily News editorial claims, in contrast to most other media, that secession is picking up momentum, and it calls on Valley civic leaders who have kept quiet to step forward and declare themselves for cityhood. Many secretly want secession but are intimdiated by Hahn's tactics, the DN says: "They must be bold. They need to back their convictions with their word, moral support and money." The paper's reporters have not written any stories about hidden secession backers who are too scared to speak out publicly.
• Dueling letters to the editor in the Times about last week's LAT story on the big anti-secession fundraiser at the home of developer Ed Roski. Lobbyist Steve Afriat, who was quoted, contends the story was one-sided, while the leaders of Common Cause say it shined important light on the campaign money game.
Wilson played in NFL (near end of column)
• The Daily News says that secession is the underlying issue in the campaign between Rep. Howard Berman, Democrat of Mission Hills who is seeking reelection, and Republican David Hernandez, who is opposing Berman and running at the same time for mayor of the would-be Valley city.
• Howard Fine, the L.A. Business Journal political writer, forecasts near-record low voter turnout this fall, and says it will be in part because interest in secession is fading. Previous estimates of elevated turnout in the Valley have morphed into a belief that secession "will bump up turnout only slightly in the San Fernando Valley and have a negligible impact elsewhere in the city." (Second LABJ story moved to top Oct. 7 item, now that SW has had a chance to read the full story).
• Last Monday's Copley News Service piece in the San Diego Union-Tribune on secession hopes sagging finally made it into the South Bay Daily Breeze on Sunday. The story by David Zahniser was somewhat reworked for the Breeze, which has an appetite for longer L.A. stories, but the headline is still not one the break-up side would want to see: Valley Secession Zeal is Waning.
• The Cleveland Plain-Dealer briefly mentions Valley secession as part of a national overview of movements where citizens take law-making into their own hands.
• In the Daily News' lead Sunday secession story, break-up leader Bob Scott gives a good summation of how cityhood is tied to the schools issue, no matter how much opponents point out that the Nov. 5 vote would not legally affect the L.A. school system. Proponents say that having a separate city -- and the passage of the Measure K school bond on the ballot -- would shift momentum toward creating new school districts in the Valley. Complicating the argument, though, is the public opposition to Valley secession by Stephanie Carter, who led the unsuccessful effort to secede from the LAUSD last year. The DN's Sunday editorial, "Fat Cats United," hits at the latest round of fund-raising by opponents of secession.
• Jeff Brain of the SFV Independence committee says that pro-secesssion leafletters were kicked out of a gathering of the city's neighborhood councils, while the anti-secession L.A. United was allowed to stay. If true, that's pretty stupid on the city's part. The Daily News has the story with comment from Mayor Hahn's spokeswoman.
• Leo Braudy, university professor at USC, offers a folksy antidote to secession as a minor aside in a Sunday Opinion piece in the L.A. Times that turns into his personal tour of the city. "Now we're being told by secession promoters that we should follow the logic of the freeways and carve the body of L.A. up into even more self-involved fragments. Perhaps, instead, each of us could try at least once a week to get out of our narrow day-to-day arteries and explore the messy, unmanageable, wonderful whole. Drive on surface streets and get lost on purpose."
• Sunday Culture Watch (Local):The legends of Dayton Canyon and the quirky couple it was named for are aired by Cecilia Rasmussen in her Then and Now column in the L.A. Times. The tale has murder, intrigue and missing buried treasure. Many may know Dayton Canyon as the rugged, mysterious oak canyon at the west end of Roscoe Boulevard. Don't look now, but 150 luxury homes are going up in what is now being called Dayton Canyon Estates -- another piece of Valley lore gets buried by the bulldozers.
• Sunday Culture Watch (National): "Paul Thomas Anderson, 32, is the unofficial poet laureate of the San Fernando Valley," writer Dave Kehr says in a Sunday New York Times article that probes the art and meaning of each of Anderson's films set in the Valley. Those are Boogie Nights, Magnolia and the new Punch-Drunk Love. The article refers to communities such as Sherman Oaks, Reseda and Encino as "new cities in the American mode, composed of strip malls, franchises of every description and vast middle-class housing developments." Close readers may notice that the Santa Monica Mountains are misnamed the San Vicentes.
NYT also reviews Punch-Drunk Love
• Harrison Sheppard in the Daily News has more details on the TV ads for secession that should begin to run Monday. They were produced by Garrett Biggs, a political consultant who also is running for a council seat, and will air only on cable -- first in the Valley, and perhaps later citywide. The first 30-second spot features a man trying to address a rude and inattentive city council and is titled, "Is Anybody Listening?" Other spots will be made available to other candidates. The story also says that secession leader Bob Scott and business leader Bill Allen are preparing to a citywide campaign push on behalf of secession but would give no details. Also, new campaign fundraising figures are due Monday.
• Anti-poverty advocates came out with a report that asserts secession would hurt the poor. Coverage in the Times and Daily News suggests the main point is that a new city might not continue L.A. ordinances such as rent control, the living wage law and domestic partner benefits. Secession leaders say that another recent report on soaring poverty in the Valley is an indictment of the status quo.
• Valley Culture Watch: About 30 Valley artists will open their studios for public tours this weekend. An LAT story talks about several of them.
• Even the Voice of America is covering secession with its own reporter. Mike O'Sullivan picked up comments from David Fleming, Richard Katz and others at last week's Milken Institute conference, and also quotes the new LAPD chief-designate on his opposition to secession.
• Another installment of the Associated Press series on secession is on the wires -- here it ran in the Ventura County Star -- with a report on Valley life and the image of the place. Former Monkee Mickey Dolenz confirms that the song "Pleasant Valley Sunday" was about the Valley, and actor Barry Livingston ("My Three Sons") also comments. There are several quotes from the author of the The San Fernando Valley: America's Suburb which everyone at America's Suburb appreciates. The passage that has Gene Autry crooning about "packin' his bags" for the Valley in a 1937 film raises eyebrows though. Gordon Jenkins always said he wrote those words, in a hurry, for the theme song for the 1943 Roy Rogers B-picture San Fernando Valley. The song became a hit when Bing Crosby recorded it the following year. Perhaps Jenkins plagiarized, or perhaps AP got it wrong, but before calling it an error America's Suburb will do some more checking.
• The newly designated L.A. police chief, William Bratton, waded into the secession debate in his public introduction at the North Hollywood station. "I can't even begin to imagine why they would want to secede from LA. Seriously, this is one of the great cities of the world," Bratton said. He vowed that police forces will be deployed where needed the most, which could disappoint some secessionists who think the lower-crime Valley gets shorted in the allotment of officers.
• Five council hopefuls from different districts announced Thursday that they have crafted a plan to increase police staffing in the Valley city and reduce noise at Van Nuys Airport if secession passes and they are elected. The co-signers are Joyce Pearson, Kim Thompson, Jose Roy Garcia, Richard Leyner and Ron Clary. Several other candidates attended the event where the fivesome detailed their plans and may sign on, the Daily News reports. The Times version also includes a few paragraphs on Keith Richman's plans to improve traffic.
• The campaign to separate the Valley from L.A. is similar in some ways to the Proposition 13 campaign for lower property taxes almost 25 years ago that stealthily turned into a landslide victory, the L.A. Times' Sharon Bernstein and Nita Lelyveld report. There also are some key differences, such as that voters don't have the tangible motivation of keeping an extra few thousand in their bank accounts if they vote for secession. But break-up leaders are counting on a last-minute surge of emotional support for secession like the groundswell that pushed Prop. 13 to get (the Times says) 81% of the vote in the Valley. If the Val rises up to go 81% for independence, we'll all be needing a fresh supply of maps because there will be a new metropolis in the land.
• The San Fernando Valley Independence Web site is linking to a new site called CityHallLies.com that offers a partisan view of the truth about cityhood -- nothing wrong with that -- but the site is totally anonymous. Nowhere does anyone take responsibility or ownership of the claims, though there is a link to an e-mail address. The site's Internet domain registration is not revealing either. Added: The site's administrator declined via e-mail to reveal who is behind it. Guess we have to wait for the campaign disclosure reports to learn what they're hiding.
• Newsday, the Long Island newspaper also owned by Chicago's Tribune Co., picked up the LAT analysis of Mayor Hahn's "bolder, politically savvy side" that some see in his appointment of New York's William J. Bratton as chief of police. The story makes a brief reference to the impact on Valley secession. The San Fernando Valley is all over the global news this morning. In Australia, the Melbourne Herald Sun and the Sydney Morning Herald cover the purchase of Fashion Square in Sherman Oaks by Westfield, the Aussie firm that is grafting its brand name onto so many L.A. shopping malls. There's also a review in India of the new film Punch-Drunk Love that mentions its Valley setting.
Punch-Drunk has "admirable disdain for audience expectations"
• An Op-ed in the L.A. Times by Joel Fox, an advisor to the pro-secession campaign, is notable not only because it is a rare LAT commentary that supports break-up, though it is that. Fox advances the restrained, logical argument that for all the strident rhetoric, the secession question is really a simple unemotional one: should government be reorganized? It's not the end of the world, nor would it invent Camelot. He writes: "The unglamorous truth is that the breakup of Los Angeles is neither a rebellious secession nor a revolution dethroning a king." Well said.
• A cross-section of L.A. Latino elected leaders who are potential rivals -- from City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo to county Supervisor Gloria Molina to State Sen. Richard Alarcon -- restated their opposition to secession in a Mission Hills media event. About 100 pro-secession hecklers also showed up, the L.A. Times reports. The Daily News observes that the opposition includes every elected Latino in the L.A. portion of the Valley. Elsewhere, the L.A. Headquarters Assn., which represents businesses based in L.A., came out against the break-up. Another KABC-TV poll by Survey USA showed the secession arguments gaining somewhat. It found 57%-38% for secession among likely Valley voters, about the same as last time, but there was a six-vote shift citywide toward the break-up proposal, which the poll found would now lose 53%-43%. The automated polling method that Survey USA uses is apparently more questionable than others, but the Daily News gave the survey good play and the pro-side was heartened by the apparent rise in strength. Interesting note, the DN says the survey found the Latino backing for secession among likely voters holding up, as previous surveys have suggested.
La Opinion calls lineup the most Latino solidarity since Prop. 187 but runs it inside
Daily News does CD-5 candidates
• Michael Hart, the editor of the SFV Business Journal who correctly predicted the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. would endorse secession, lines up in this week's issue with the Secession Watch analysis that the force of VICA's statement is muted, since just 30% of members voted for break-up. His column is on the SFVBJ Web site, but three other secession-related stories in the issue will cost you. They are writer Jackie Fox's take on the lobbying of VICA by Mayor James Hahn, a story on the pro-secession side making light of the departure of campaign strategist Goddard Claussen, and a look at how cityhood did not solve all the problems of Santa Clarita. There's also a defense of the Entertainment Industry Development Corp. by a member of VICA.
• Mayor Jim Hahn will come to the Valley tomorrow morning to introduce his selection as new chief of the LAPD, William J. Bratton. The event will be held at the North Hollywood police division rather than at City Hall or Parker Center. Now I wonder why that is?
• The number of alternative newspaper voices in Los Angeles just thinned considerably. New Times L.A. will shut down under a agreement between its corporate owner and the corporate owners of the LA Weekly, which will continue. On the secession issue, New Times published political columnist Jill Stewart's favorable-to-secession, pro-Valley and anti-Hahn views. The Weekly has been staunchly against secession as part of its championing of the L.A. labor movement and various progressive causes. The Weekly seems generally bemused about most things Valley -- although it did run Barry Lopez's stunning remembrance of his West Valley childhood earlier this year. Added: By late Wednesday, the New Times Web site was bouncing browsers to the LA Weekly site. No word on the fate of the New Times on-line archives.
Reason Online has something to say
LAT: first-person look back and a business story
Riordan in DN: New weekly a few months away
• Some secession advocates are bothered that Richard Katz, the co-chair and leading spokesman for the SFV Independence committee, has been spending most of the campaign week in Sacramento for his day job as a member of the state Water Resources Control Board and energy adviser to Gov. Gray Davis. Katz says he can keep up with the Valley by phone and computer, and he appears regularly at debates and in the press, but an unidentified candidate says in the L.A. Times story, "It hurts when he is out of town that we don't have the central guidance. He is the only one who can stand up to the mayor articulately." The Katz issue is noteworthy since observers continue to note that the pro campaign seems to be poorly run, and last week the campaign's hired strategists walked away. Also, an LAT report from Westchester, where upset about LAX might translate into votes for Valley secession.
• The Daily News weighs in on the Ed Roski fundraiser (see top Oct. 1 item, next) and adds an in-your-face quote from Steve Afriat, the City Hall lobbyist who is directing the new anti-secession effort free of charge: "The reason why we're involved in this issue is we would rather deal with a calm, well-structured, competent city of Los Angeles government than a fly-by-night, kooky San Fernando Valley government." Afriat, like many of the lobbyists at the Toluca Lake fundraiser, has business pending before the city more or less all the time.
Mel Wilson's plan to ease traffic
• Jeff Rabin of the L.A. Times didn't drop it when he couldn't get an invite to Monday's $500-a-person anti-secession fundraiser at the Toluca Lake home of developer Ed Roski. He went ahead and reported out a solid story on the various conflicts of interest inherent in a new anti-secession campaign entity, the Public Safety Coalition, that was the night's beneficiary. The new group is headed by three sitting city council members and the LAPD officers' union. Many of those on the Monday event's host committee, from Roski to billboard lobbyist Ken Spiker Jr. to Valley jack-of-all-lobby-trades Steve Afriat, have business pending before the city council and various city commissions, Rabin shows. It's further evidence that, quite aside from the merits of fighting against the break-up of L.A., the anti-secession campaign has morphed into a frenzy of political feeding, free of the usual contribution limits. If you wish to curry favor for a hotel development or some other project, the law won't let you give much to the key councilmember's reelection coffers - but there's no restriction on what you and your hired guns can give to the councilmember's anti-secession committee. SW suspects that Rabin looks forward to poring over all the post-election disclosure reports to tote up who got money from whom and to reconcile how all the pocketfuls of cash -- which don't actually appear to be needed to defeat secession -- end up being used.
Police Protective League says ad aired in error
• The editorial page of the Daily News, setting a tone for the final push toward Nov. 5, calls the secession campaign a battle for the future of Los Angeles between David and Goliath, between "a noble effort" and a "fear-mongering political machine." While continuing to heap scorn on Jim Hahn, the DN also seems to rue that the pro-secession side has delivered less than hoped. It calls the Valley Independence Committee "the 90-pound weakling of the secession debate" and praises the caucus of candidates who decided last week to go their own way. "For secession to succeed, the battle will have to be fought at the grass-roots level...The challenge for all L.A. voters heading into Nov. 5 will be to look beyond the distortions of the anti-secession campaign and the structural weaknesses of the independence movement."
• Secession Watch was hopeful that the Daily News' 3rd council district round-up would solve the mystery: Where is Paula Boland and why is the only candidate with an elective track record laying so low? Alas, it doesn't. Meanwhile, 8th district hopeful Garrett Biggs has filmed TV spots and plans to air them on cable starting next week.
• In the October issue of California Journal, the Sacramento monthly on state politics: Former L.A. Times columnist Scott Harris initially derided talk of splitting off the vast San Fernando Valley from Los Angeles. Now he's ready to eat crow if Valleyistas prevail in November. (Story not on-line). Harris had been the columnist for the Valley Edition in the mid-1990s when the Times put out a full news section and Valley-centric front page every day from a busy newsroom in Chatsworth, complete with senior editors who enjoyed great autonomy from the paper's hierarchy downtown. Today, a skeleton staff and no top editors sit in Chatsworth, and far fewer stories from the Valley get published -- the result of cost saving and a conclusion that the Daily News, which also reduced its news coverage, posed less of a competitive threat. The shift in ideology by new chief editor John Carroll to produce essentially one L.A. Times for all readers was also a journalism decision, but it had contradictory effects: it cut sharply into the volume of local news and focus that Valley readers get, and it raised the Valley's profile elsewhere in Los Angeles. That's because now, whatever Valley news the Times does run appears in all papers; most of it used to run only in the Valley, including editorials and a weekly commentary page. That's one reason, Secession Watch believes, that the potency of the secession movement took so many by surprise in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Valleyistas -- a term first used by Harris -- still grumble about losing their own news section in the Times.
• Secession Sketchbook, the occasional LAT feature by James Ricci, visits with a Sherman Oaks coffee roaster who is kind of the Anti-Valleyista. He lives in the Valley, but he drives downtown to work out at the L.A. Athletic Club, has season tickets to the L.A. Chamber Orchestra, and volunteers in a mid-Wilshire soup kitchen. "I don't even know how to get to Chatsworth," he admits. Uh, care to guess how he feels about secession?
• The Daily News proclaims the playoff-bound Anaheim Angels the Valley's team, based on the local roots of five players. No mention of Gene Autry, the longtime Angels owner who lived in the Valley until his death. OK, here's what SW believes --- the Valley produced hall of famer Don Drysdale, and Studio City was the home of the superlative Sandy Koufax in his playing days. The Valley will always be Dodgers country.
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