Secession Watch Archive
Archive Oct. 11 - Oct. 20
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• La Opinion recommends a No vote on secession for the Valley and for Hollywood. Here's the Spanish and the stumbly-as-usual Google translation.
• An essay in Sunday's Los Angeles Times Magazine critiques secession and, more tellingly, the Valley from the point of view of a Silver Lake screenwriter who grew up in the hills and spent his adolescence around Studio City. On secession, he says, "we worry about who will pave our streets and who will put out our fires. But our deeper worry is this: Our family is breaking up, and we won't have a city to call home." For more on the essay and the link, go to The Valley Observed at AmericasSuburb.com.
• In Sunday's Daily News, Lisa Mascaro delves into the emotional and political wounds opened up in the course of the Valley secession campaign. David Fleming says that for secessionists it's been building for decades. "I think this whole thing is pretty much a primal scream by the Valley," he says. Fellow secessionist Bob Scott uses the words "war" and "evil" to make his point. Hahn, for his part, voices his frustration at the secession side, calling the anti-City Hall rhetoric "an insult to all city employees who work real hard to do a good job with limited resources." Also in the DN, a short story by Harrison Sheppard points out that there's no way to know what would happen to taxes in a new Valley city.
• Los Angeles arrived at a city council size of 15 members in 1878 and today each member represents more people -- 250,000 -- than any city official in the country, the L.A. Times' Nita Lelyveld reports. Under secession, the districts in the Valley would serve about 90,000 each, and the size of districts would fall proportionately in the New Los Angeles. That always struck Secession Watch as the most unassailable and best completely predictable result of dividing into two cities. But it never was argued in a way that grabbed voters' political hearts or minds. As the story points out, it's a tricky calculus, since voters have already turned down increasing the size of the L.A. City Council in order to democratize things a bit more. For every person angry that government seems remote, the story notes, there is another who complains that it is already too big and expensive.
LAT: 1st District is break-up birthplace
• Mayor Hahn appeared at a UCLA conference Saturday to discuss secession, but wouldn't personally debate anyone from the pro side. He spoke to the group solo, and came in for criticism that he was dodging a confrontation. Here's the Daily News report and the L.A. Times report.
DN: Debate in Woodland Hills too
• Whole bunch of secession letters in the L.A. Times Sunday Opinion, and the top one from Sherman Oaks puts a challenge to L.A. City Councilmam Jack Weiss: fix the broken streetlight pole in front of my house (out since July, 2001) by Election Day and I'll vote against secession; "leave it in disrepair and I'll support the Valley's liberation."
• The Daily News is devoting a prominent spot in the print paper each day to a feature it calls "What's the Truth?" Each day deals with a disputed issue in the Valley secession campaigns. Saturday's front-page box on water and power service is typical. At the top is a partisan version of the facts from the Pro side, underneath that a partisan Con view, then the promised Truth. On Saturday's issue du jour, Truth mentions that the Local Agency Formation Commission "guaranteed" that Valley residents would pay the same rates as Angelenos. Actually, the legality and force of the guarantee are in question, and the box doesn't clear up who's correct or help a reader decide. "It is unclear how a court would rule if the city were to seek to overturn the LAFCO plan," it concludes. A useful service to voters? A way to get pro-secession arguments on the front page for 14 days? We dunno, so decide for yourself: the on-line archives include earlier "truth boxes" on efficiency, city services, police, schools, alimony and taxes. Also: On the DN Web site's district profiles page, the write-ups on the council races in the 9th and 11th districts appear to be missing.
• The L.A. Times concludes its six-part, secession-linked examination of municipal services on Saturday with a Beth Shuster story on police response time and the troubles with the 911 system. A new 311 number for non-emergency calls is coming. All in all, the series serves at most as a light briefing on the issues that surround city services. It could have been more pointed and deeper, and Secession Watch doesn't recall the pieces breaking any new ground.
• The San Francisco Examiner's Los Angeles columnist chips in an "arts and culture" piece on Gene La Pietra, under the headline "The King of Hollywood." The story focuses on his life and his efforts to create what the writer calls El Nuevo Pueblo La Pietra. The Valley isn't mentioned, but when all the final bills are paid and checks cashed, he may end up as the most generous financial supporter of Valley secession as well as of the ill-conceived Hollywood breakaway.
• The Daily News begins the weekend with a campaign roundup that touches on appeals to African American voters, a big showdown Saturday at UCLA with Mayor James Hahn and secession advocates, a street fair in Sherman Oaks and precinct walking by Valley city candidates. The Times roundup catches up with the Alliance for a New Los Angeles, the group that has about 18 days to entice secession voters outside the Valley, and new pro-separation ads beginning to air on cable TV in the Valley.
• With a nod to the late Chick Hearn, L.A. Business Journal editor Mark Lacter declares the Valley secession campaign has reached "garbage time." "Let me be among the first to congratulate Mayor James Hahn and his anti-secession campaign for their resounding victory in the Nov. 5 election - as well as offer my condolences to those earnest supporters of the San Fernando Valley breakup proposal," Lacter begins his weekly column. Strip away all the rhetoric and the voters, he says, were just not in the mood -- in a post 9-11 world in which North Korea might now have nukes -- to take a chance on something like secession. It's an era of making do with the devil you know: "The impulse is to lead as risk-averse a life as possible: stay home, eat meatloaf, watch videos, root for the Angels and hope for the best. Creating some new city that’s being peddled with vague promises but mostly unknowns is not exactly a priority - and it’s hardly encouraged by common sense."
• Richard Close, the chair of Valley VOTE, says he won't be part of another secession effort if the current break-up measure loses on Nov. 5. He predicts that there will be another try, but says in the L.A. Times, "I really don't have the fire to start over again." The story covers a debate held Thursday night in Universal City by the Los Angeles Police Protective League. (Here's the Daily News report on the debate). Also in the Times is the penultimate entry in the paper's series on city services and secession, this one about fire protection. Even break-up advocates want to keep the L.A. city fire department, it seems. Tomorrow: police.
Audio: Close questions LAT Poll on "Which Way L.A?"
• More than 60% of the candidates for office in a new Valley city said they back a campaign-reform notion called "clean money" in which hopefuls receive public funds for their election effort. Most private fundraising is forbidden under the plan, which is not in use in any large city. Council candidate Paula Boland calls it "ludicrous," and mayor candidate Keith Richman said he doesn't know enough yet to say if he likes it. Low in the Daily News story is a report from the Sherman Oaks Homeowner Association meeting where the group's endorsement of secession was questioned.
• A political analysis in the San Jose Mercury focuses on Latino voters as the swing voters of the Valley secession contest. The campaign over break-up has, says writer Laura Kurtzman, "given a platform to a new group of Latino leaders with middle-class concerns -- such as the burden of high business taxes -- that even secession opponents concede will have to be reckoned with."
• William Safire, the longtime Republican columnist on the New York Times Op-ed page, doesn't take sides, but he does opine today that the secession campaign here (and elsewhere) can be a "most useful waker-upper" of apathetic politicians and voters -- the "Great Discombobulator" of the status quo. He lapses into Valspeak, portraying Mayor Hahn as thinking "all this griping is grody to the max," and predicts Hahn will learn a lesson about paying heed to the Valley and conclude that, "like, wow: I hear you." Among the benefits that should be afforded after the election, Safire impishly suggests, is "smaller and more prescriptive English classes for valley girls." Note to Bill: it was Bing Crosby who sang most famously about making his home in the Valley, and Roy Rogers, but not Gene Autry.
• The L.A. Times offers up a feature story on the West Valley as a follow-up to yesterday's Times Poll results. The section west of the San Diego Freeway is where secession sentiment remains the highest, based on the poll. Another follow is a story on how the poll deflates interest in the race for Valley mayor, which had an invisble quality to it for most Valley voters anyway. For the Thursday trifecta, the Times runs another in its series on city services, this one looking at stop signs and tales of trying to deal with the city hall bureaucracy.
LAT Op-ed: Venice is next, and a meditation on break-up...
• A Daily News editorial praises the candidates running for Valley offices and says it is wrong to discount their talents simply because they have not run for elective office before. There's plenty of leadership portential on the ballot, the paper vows.
• State Sen. Tom McClintock from Ventura County told a press conference he would resist any move by Mayor James Hahn to seek a state law blocking a repeat Valley secession bid. McClintock, a Republican, is running for state controller. Former assemblywoman Paula Boland, who pushed for the law that made it easier for secession to reach the ballot, joined in assailing Hahn's remarks saying that secession should not be allowed to come up repeatedly if it fails to win.
• A Valley secession debate held Wednesday at Mount St. Mary's campus will be broadcast today on KPCC (89.3), on the "Talk of the City" program at 1 p.m. The participants include former mayor Richard Riordan and Valley VOTE chairman Richard Close.
• A new L.A. Times Poll finds the Valley secession juggernaut seriously reeling as voters approach Election Day, now less than three weeks off. Citywide, voters judged likely to show up on Nov. 5 reject the break-up by a 2-1 margin, 56% to 27%, with 17% undecided. Counting just the Valley, the margin among likely voters is much closer, but secession still trails 47% to 42%, with 11% yet to decide. Those undecideds, and the margin of error, make the unofficial race for claiming rights to the Valley too close to call, but there's really no good spin in this poll for secessionistas. Break-up trails on the home turf because the East Valley is now firmly opposed, 54% to 36%. The West Valley remains in favor, but it's close: 46% to 42%. The message of the poll is substantial erosion of the secession position since the Times Poll in June. That poll surveyed registered voters, not just those determined to vote, and while the divorce was opposed citywide even then, the Valley gave passage a 15% edge. That June poll also was the source of wishful thinking that Latinos were behind secession, but as a lab scientist might say, that result could not be replicated. The new poll finds Latinos oppose Valley secession, as do senior citizens, renters, Democrats, liberals, Republican women and citywide conservatives. Support is strong only among white men and Republican men in the Valley. As for Hollywood secession, it loses big everywhere -- end of story. Among the Valley candidates, nobody is popular and they remain unknown to the voters; Keith Richman would lead the pack today with 13%. Meanwhile, Mayor Jim Hahn's rankings are up, due in part to the popularity of his choice of police chief, William Bratton.
• Do the rank-and-file members of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association, perhaps the Valley's most unfluential neighborhood group, support secession? There have always been questions, even though the longtime president, Richard Close, is a leader of Valley VOTE. The Sherman Oaks board voted to back secession, but a caucus of members plans to challenge that decision at a meeting tonight. Also, mayor candidate Bruce Boyer is first to hit the TV cable with campaign ads -- but he tells the Daily News he will refuse to disclose his sources of money, in violation of city ethics laws.
Editorial page really mad at Hahn now
• The merits of being a general law city (as the Valley would be) versus a charter city (as L.A. is) are discussed in a Daily News piece by Harrison Sheppard.
• Picking up on comments Mayor Jim Hahn made in the L.A. Business Journal, the Daily News leads with Hahn saying he will seek a state law to prevent secession from returning to the ballot any time soon after Nov. 5. "I'm not going to spend my whole term in office fighting every six months secession efforts," the mayor said (yes, that's the exact quote). A DN reporter (it's a double byline with Beth Barrett and Harrison Sheppard) got Hahn on the phone and prodded him to talk, and talk he did. He explained why he is not addressing the VICA conference on Nov. 1, argued the issue of unequal services between richer and poorer areas, and ranted about the Daily News' role in getting the secession effort off the ground: "Should we do it [have an election] every time someone like the Daily News funds petition drives?" In the story, secession leader Richard Close, an attorney, says there will be a legal challenge if the break-up wins in the Valley but loses citywide.
• The L.A. Times continues its series on city services with a look at how the city's new area planning board's are doing. The focal point is a case study of the decision to forbid Chuck E. Cheese from opening in Woodland Hills after neighbors complained. The one question Secession Watch would like to have seen answered, or at least explored, is the effect of special interest lobbying and campaign contributions on these local boards created by city charter reform three years ago; we knew to expect that decisions made by the citywide planning commission and zoning appeals boards could be influenced, but are these neighborhood boards really above politics? OK, a second question: is anybody stating a serious, thought-out vision of how the Valley would be better planned as a separate city? It's been a half-century of planning decisions, more than anything, that has made the Valley into what it is today, for better and worse.
• The Daily News covers the entertainment guilds' press conference and notes what the AP story (next item) did not -- that they issued a report done by the anti-secession county labor federation and paid for by the now-controversial Entertainment Industry Development Corp. The DN story also catches up on the CSUN economists who think secession is not a bad idea, first reported Saturday in the LAT.
DN: Not all enviros oppose secession
SW must agree: We're all Angels fans now
• AP is moving a story that three Hollywood guilds and unions spoke out Monday against secession, arguing that having a trio of cities (L.A., SFV and Hollywood) where now there is one would make it harder to film here. The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the International Cinematographers Guild and the costumers union held a small rally in Studio City. The story is available on the Web site of KNBC channel 4, which also lets viewers cast their vote. The results as of 5 p.m. Monday: Valley and Hollywood should secede, 45%; L.A. should remian as is, 36%; Valley should secede, 10%; Hollywood should secede, 5%; I don't know, 3%. There have been 2704 votes entered.
• And in the magazines...Neither is on-line, but secession stories are out in the current Los Angeles and Valley. As you'd expect, the pieces are quite different. In Los Angeles the secession confrontation is much ado about not much: "The most anemic civil war the world has yet to witness." As for the cast, the writer says that "both sides are playing with mighty thin material," but Mayor Jim Hahn gets it the worst: "Leading the charge of a non-existent army over empty battlefields, broom in hand, is that glorified janitor, James Hahn." Secession or not, the piece condludes that the election clash "can only speed the emergence of a civic leadership more reflective of the city's new demographic realities." In Valley, the bi-monthly whose publisher and editor-in-chief is Jane Boeckmann, wife of secession leader Bert Boeckmann, the cause is viewed with more gravity. "This monumental decision," the writer says, would undo the 1915 coercion of the Valley into the city's clutches. He calls the Valley not a natural extension of Los Angeles: "Rather, it is an annex, a designation that has remained unchanged since 1915." (By that odd standard, most of the city is invalid since nearly all of it was annexed). Paula Boland speaks, along with Keith Richman -- they are the only candidates mentioned. The visceral message is stated by business leader and secessionist Bob Scott: "The Valley is a colony, very much the way the colonies were back before the Revolutionary War. Why should the Valley remain as an annex to the City of Los Angeles? There is no justification for it."
• If you live in the Valley, you'll be lugging in and eventually tossing out a ton of political mail over the next three weeks. The millions of dollars amassed to fight secession are about to be transformed into waves of mailers, brochures and letters urging you to vote no. The pro side and a few of the candidates likely will get some mail out too, and there will be TV and radio spots to be absorbed. While the overall question is all but settled -- almost no one seems to think secession will pass -- the prize still up for grabs is who will win the Valley. "We've got to defeat it in the Valley," anti-secession leader tells Larry Levine tells the L.A. Times. Turnout will be key: "It's a question of who gets more demoralized," Berkeley political scientist Bruce Cain says. Also in the Times: Just about everything that could be said about street paving and pothole-filling in Los Angeles.
LAT letter: Sepulveda Blvd. is the one!
• The Daily News' Mariel Garza updates the fight between horse owners in Chatsworth and the city council over plans for a parcel of land owned by Ted Stein, an advisor to Mayor Hahn who is also a leading opponent of secession.
• Despite what the invites say, Mayor Jim Hahn won't be speaking before the pro-secession Valley Industry and Commerce Association at the lobbying group's annual conference on Nov. 1, four days before the election. It's the first time in 10 years that the sitting L.A. mayor won't give a "state of the Valley" address at the VICA gathering, the SFV Business Journal says. The story says that Hahn's people cancelled after the invitations were printed; however, Hahn's office tells Secession Watch that VICA never confirmed the mayor's attendance before going to print. Both sources agree that the mayor offered to speak on an alternate date. In the sister L.A. Business Journal, Hahn looks ahead to the post-election area in a story, and also sits down with the paper's editors and reporters to discuss the Valley and other city issues. ($3 to read LABJ stories)
• The L.A. Times editorial page comes out Sunday with its formal endorsement of no votes across the board on secession. The page, of course, has been arguing against secession for many years, so this new piece mostly covers old ground. The editorial acknowledges the merits of some secession arguments, but asks that "Angelenos don't give up" on Los Angeles. It also addresses the respect question, briefly: "The Valley is the middle-class heart of a city increasingly split between the rich and poor." A factual catch: Camelot is not the top choice of any secession leaders, at least not that has been reliably reported. It was pushed for the ballot (by secession co-leader Jeff Brain) as kind of a lark. It may have been a dumb idea, but there's no reason to build it up bigger than it is. Also: Taking a page from the Daily News, the Times on Sunday began a series examining L.A. city services, through the lens of secession and the Valley. The first installment is heavy on rehash of issues raised already by secessionists and the Daily News. It's not a deeply probing story, but it's just the first day. Let's see where it all goes.
• The St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times sent its national correspondent out to look at Valley secession, and in his Sunday story Stephen Buckley poses the question: Is the Valley running from a battered, dysfunctional Los Angeles, or is it running from itself? In the piece, Jerry England unofficially takes the record as the Valley character that visiting journalists most like to introduce in the lede of their stories. Once again, though, Jerry's place of honor never mentions his candidacy. Terry Stone ("ex-hippie and unrepentant liberal") and Jose (Roy) Garcia ("famous for his United Nations Soccer League") do get some ink, and there are quotes from Prof. Hogen-Esch at CSUN and Mr. America's Suburb. --- Wait! It's not just out-of-towners who like Jerry. He's also the lede of a Sunday story in the South Bay Daily Breeze by David Zahniser. The report focuses on whether the L.A. City Council and other local bodies lack respect for the people who elect them. England definitely thinks so: "Clearly they view us as insignificant." He's not revealed as a candidate in the Breeze either, but really, he is. He's in the council race in the 3rd district from his beloved Chatsworth.
• In a Sacramento Bee update on the campaigns by Laura Mecoy, mayor candidate Keith Richman explains why it has been so hard for the pro side, including himself, to pry cash away from sympathetic political givers: "People question whether the city is going to come into being at all and whether they should contribute money for an office that may not exist."
• The Daily News writes an entire story around the assertion by secession advocates that the Valley would be more culturally rich if it left Los Angeles. More context and probing about the actual demand for Valley-centric arts would have helped. There is good big-picture perspective, however, from author and Valley Village resident Joel Kotkin: "Valley secession is part of a process of the Valley coming to a consciousness of itself -- culturally and politically." Also, the DN goes precinct walking with secession foes and finds a range of opinion in the West Valley.
Muston: Galanter good, Greuel bad
• Sportsmen's Lodge, the site of many secession events and other political gatherings, will get city cultural-historic landmark status if the Studio City Residents Assn. and the L.A. Conservancy have their way. Good history of the place in a Daily News story by Dana Bartholomew: it opened along Ventura Road in 1914 as a trout pond and fishing lodge, put in restaurant seats in 1945, and became a stars' hangout. "Sportsmen's Lodge, in a sense, is one of the quintessential Valley social and cultural landmarks -- it almost screams San Fernando Valley," said Ken Bernstein, director of preservation for the conservancy.
• In the Jewish Journal this week, writer Gene Lichtenstein reports on the USC conference on secession and Jews from a couple of weeks ago, and gives a short scorecard of the Jewish community breakdown on break-up.
• Fifteen CSUN economists released a letter in which they debunk claims that secession would hurt the economy of Los Angeles or the new cities in the Valley and Hollywood. Rather, they see break-up making the cities run more efficiently and responsively, and thus better able to attract business. The professors did not actually endorse secession, but Prof. Shirley Svorny, who is a secession backer, said the letter was intended to counter claims from the Mayor Hahn side of the debate. Sharon Bernstein of the Times appears to have it alone (based on Web sites), but both the LAT and Daily News covered event in which Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg and gay activists urged a no vote on secession, saying it threatened to undo years of legislation that protect gay men and lesbians.
14th and last DN district story
• The Woodland Hills-Warner Center Neighborhood Council became the first of these local citizen panels to endorse secession, voting 11-5 with one abstention to support breaking up Los Angeles. The council's chairwoman said she got some pressure calls from city officials urging the group not to take the position. The Daily News story says there is some "irony" in the endorsement since the city-sponsored advisory bodies were created in part to deflate secession's balloon; the writer apparently doesn't see any irony in the fact that none of the other 50 local councils in the city, including 14 in the Valley, have voted for secession. Also, the Tarzana Residents Assn. voted to oppose, while the Tarzana chamber of commerce announced that it had chosen back in August to endorse secession. And a group of candidates came out with a plan for how to begin forming the city if the voters decide to create the new burg. The L.A. Times round-up of the day has the neighborhood council vote, the candidates' plan, and the Sierra Club deciding to oppose secession.
DN's 13th district story
• The San Fernando Valley History Digital Library at CSUN will use a $137,000 state library grant to expand its on-line archive to include documents on secession, among other topics, the Daily News reports. The digital library already offers a large collection of Valley history photographs and documents that are easily searchable on-line.
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