Secession Watch Archive
Archive Aug. 11 - Aug. 20
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• Onetime break-up advocate Bobbi Fiedler, the former Republican congresswoman from the Valley, signed the official ballot argument against secession. The founder of the 1970s anti-busing group Bustop is joined by Mayor James Hahn, former Mayor Richard Riordan, retired Lakers great Magic Johnson and county Supervisor Gloria Molina. Fiedler is the lone signer from the Valley. She had broken earlier from Valley VOTE over tactics and approach. On the other side, all but one of the signers are in the Valley. The ballot argument for secession is signed by secession leader Richard Katz, candidate Carlos Ferreyra, county Supervisor Mike D. Antonovich, Laurette Healey of the SFV Independence Committee and Andrew Mardesich, president of San Pedro Peninsula Home Owners United. The Times runs a story while the Daily News puts the full text of both arguments on its opinion page and on-line. The DN also publishes three more letters from readers who say they recently converted to the secession cause.
• In the 1940s, actor Edward Everett Horton claimed the honorary title of Governor of the San Fernando Valley for several years. One time, he even campaigned against actress Jane Russell to keep the honorific. The Times' Sue Fox today looks at the ten remaining hopefuls in the race to be called Mayor of the Valley. They include computer consultant Marc Strassman, local government gadflies Leonard Shapiro and Gregory E. Roberts, and the two men who seem willing to spend the most on their adventures in shadow political campaigning, real estate agent Mel Wilson and state Assemblyman Keith Richman. The Daily News, meanwhile, flogs the street lights issue again, leading with nine Valley City candidates in Pacoima trying to make the lack of lighting there a Valley vs. Over the Hill issue. Xavier Flores, co-chairman of the Latino Coalition for a United L.A., was there to observe that secession advocates don't have the greatest record looking out for Pacoima's interests.
Valley Secession Fever blog on the candidates: "This country wouldn't be a democracy if only its best and brightest ran for office... All of them are crazy of course to gamble on a job that may not be there at all for them, but their devotion is admirable."
• An on-line survey of Valley real estate brokers and agents is finding moderate support -- 53% to 46% -- for secession. The Southland Regional Association of Realtors, which covers the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys, has so far not taken a formal position. But its website asks members to give their opinion, and 1291 respondents had by late Monday. A separate question asking whether the group should announce a position has drawn less response -- 531 voters -- but 88% want the SRAR to take a side. The group's website explains: "The outcome will have a profound effect on Valley residents and the Valley real estate industry for decades to come." The group's former president, Mel Wilson, is a candidate for Valley City mayor.
Earlier: Katz and Padilla face off at SRAR
• San Francisco Chronicle columnist Rob Morse riffs on secession today, poking fun at Jeff Brain for orchestrating Camelot to be one of the ballot names, and suggesting that as a group the proposed names "sound more like condo subdivisions than what would be California's second-biggest city." Morse adds: "If the boundaries can be drawn right, the Giants could be playing the Valley City Dodgers."
• La Opinion has a page one story on the backgrounds of Latino candidates for Valley and Hollywood offices. Several are immigrants, including Salvadorans, Mexicans and an Argentine, while most are Mexican-American. Benito Bernal, a Valley mayoral hopeful, is a union organizer who is the son of Mexican-American farmers and grew up in the projects in Pacoima. He is quoted, along with David Hernandez, who was volunteering in the George W. Bush campaign when he decided to run for Congress against Howard Berman and later for a Valley office, and several others. Very rough English translation by Google.
• A Washington Times once-over gives more or less equal billing to the Valley and Hollywood secession efforts.
• Several big donors to the mayor's anti-secession campaign acknowledge they are in it for self-interest -- to secure future political favors from Hahn, reports Beth Shuster in Monday's L.A. Times. Ed Roski, the biggest of the givers so far, wants his development projects around town looked upon favorably. Magic Johnson wants more blacks hired at city hall. "Many of them are not doing it because they love Jim Hahn," says civic bigwig Eli Broad. "They're doing it because it's in their self-interest." Adds Demo political consultant Rick Taylor: "It's basic politics: You help me and I'll help you." It's an unusually frank look at how politics in the city often really works. Not explored, though, is the rare opportunity that secession presents to cozy up. Unlke most other city campaigns, there are no campaign donation limits. So in a way, this campaign is a surrogate for all the others where limits apply. The DN, meanwhile, rags on Broad for having too much influence over the LAUSD.
• In a rant against Hahn's firing of pro-divorce commissioner Bob Scott, a Daily News editorial wonders what happens after Nov. 5: "If secession fails...will voters identified as secession supporters be sent packing to Burbank?"
• Rick Orlov's Monday DN column briefly mentions some of the odder political machinations around secession. Democrats are generally fighting secession, but Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, Sacramento's #2 Democrat, is backing Gene LaPietra for the Hollywood city council. No word on his position on Valley secession. Meanwhile, Assemblyman Paul Koretz of West Hollywood also backs LaPietra, but opposes Valley secession. Even so, his chief deputy, Scott Svonkin, is running for Valley city council -- with Koretz's backing. Patt Morrison's column in the Times talks about similar games around the Hollywood candidacy of billboard breast-monger Angelyne.
• The Daily News' Lisa Mascaro predicts a huge community uproar over how to improve the Ventura Freeway. As many as 600 homes, 300 businesses, seven parks and three schools would have to go to widen or double-deck the freeway, she points out. This in some of the wealthiest, most influential sections of the Valley. Would you believe there are more than 100 candidates who want to grapple with problems like this for $12,000 a year?
• Sunday's secession output is uninspired in both the Daily News and the Times. The top Daily News story is a thin look at why city employees fear secession, with Valley independence leaders suggesting the only ones who should fear a break-up are middle and upper managers. The rhetoric of secession all along, however, has demonized city workers as over-paid and over-pensioned, so of course they are suspicious.
Also in the Daily News:
• L.A. workers paid more than in "Valley-size cities."
• Asian gang crime rising in the Valley.
• Columnist Chris Weinkopf says liberal groups -- he calls them "leftist" -- betray the public by fighting secession.
• Letters outraged at Ventura Blvd. street lights.
• Three secession related letters.
• The Times runs its own thin story inside California, revisiting the diminished clout issue. A non-issue, says former Asembly Speaker Rob Hertzberg of Van Nuys, who opposes secession on other grounds. Break-up would not harm the influence of L.A. and the Valley in Sacramento, he says: "I just don't think that argument holds water." Former assemblyman Richard Katz, the head of SFV Independence, says L.A.'s legislative delegations are "infamous" for not working together anyway. The story attempts a comparison between the $11 billion in swift federal aid sent to Los Angeles after the 1994 Northridge quake and a lesser amount received in San Francisco after the 1989 Loma Prieta quake. A key fact was left out: the Northridge temblor occured directly under Los Angeles, making it the most damaging U.S. disaster ever. Loma Prieta struck more than 50 miles south of San Francisco. Aside from the Marina District (built badly on fill) and the Oakland freeway that fell, the most severe devastation was far away in Santa Cruz and Watsonville.
Also in the Times:
• Letter writer Joyce Emerson of Granada Hills points out that secession advocates fought a Valley Cultural Center and should look in the mirror. Also letters on Valley parks and excessive street repaving.
• Saturday's L.A. Times and Daily News report on dueling news conferences in Pacoima by Latinos for and against secession. The former was held by Hispanic candidates for offices in the prospective SFV city, the latter led by Los Angeles city council president Alex Padilla and state assemblyman Tony Cardenas, who plans to run (again) for the L.A. city council next spring. The recently formed Latino Coalition for a United Los Angeles participated in the anti-secession event. Not there were northeast Valley political leaders State Sen. Richard Alarcon and Cindy Montanez, the mayor of San Fernando. The pro-secession gathering sought to exploit their absence, but it didn't take since Alarcon and Montanez are against the breakup despite their differences with Padilla and Cardenas. Once again, the Times Poll results indicating that Valley Latinos support secession are repeated without the caution that, with an error margin of nine points either way, the findings are questionable at best. There's no question, though, that Latinos are intensely interested. La Opinion's story was its ninth on secesión already in August. The LAT story also notes that ten more candidates for Valley City offices were disqualified by the county Registrar-Recorder.
• Daily News managing editor Ron Kaye is proud of inventing the paper's angry anti-downtown, pro-Valley persona and its championing of secession, he says in Charles Rappleye's fascinating Los Angeles magazine article. (On newstands but not on-line.) "The blaring headlines, the biting critique, the single-sided analysis, all are extensions of Kaye's pugnacity," Rappleye explains. Kaye speaks openly (and raunchily) over martinis and Marlboros for the article, voicing doubts that cityhood would be any great shakes and fretting about the lack of diversity in Valley VOTE. But he cops, unabashed, to his lead role in creating the movement's media high profile. When a bill to foster secession stalled in Sacramento in 1997, he says, "I make a story of it. I get 50 letters. I make another story of it." The converted radical and Santa Monican-turned-Van Nuys chauvinist kept juicing the story. The tabloid-style crusade let the Daily News craft a profile far different than that of the downtown-centric L.A. Times. And for Kaye it became personal. "This is about truth, justice and the American way. I have found a way to give expression to my failed idealism...this [the Valley] is the dream of mankind." Some staffers left in embarassment as Kaye pushed the paper's Valley-first line, but Rappleye concludes that the strategy gave the DN an identity and new clout. The pay off might prove to be more mixed, however. Circulation is down, and the Times sells more copies in the Valley. The anti-Los Angeles rants target a niche audience -- mostly white, older, conservative and anti-urban -- that shrinks every year, due to aging and flight west and north to the newer suburbs. As its turf evolves into what author Joel Kotkin calls a Mestizo Valley, and with more resemblance than ever to Los Angeles, the Daily News' shrillness could turn out to be a bad business play. Many minorities are skeptical the paper, owned by Denver news mogul Dean Singleton, will ever change enough to represent the New Valley, and a quote in the article won't help their trust. A job applicant recalls Kaye giving her the DN credo: "We're not interested in the problems of the poor people in the San Fernando Valley, we're interested in the problems of the middle class."
Earlier:
LAT's David Shaw on the Daily News
Shaw on LAT coverage of secession
Tony Ortega on Shaw, Kaye and Singleton
L.A. Planning Report Q-and-A with Kaye
• The L.A. Business Journal marvels at the scale of development in Porter Ranch, saying there has been 3 million square feet of new commercial space built in the last five years -- half of what's allowed. It'll cost you $3 to read the story unless you subscribe. Porter Ranch is like the Valley of the 1950s and '60s in one way: residents wake to the sounds of saws and hammers, with entire tracts of new suburban homes going up all the time. This means that ridges and arroyos are being bulldozed to create level terraces, and one can almost imagine homes and back yards creeping up to the crest of the Santa Susanas someday. Most recently, the developed zone has reached Browns Canyon on the west.
• Downtown News contributor Sam Hall Kaplan predicts that secession will lose even though people he talks to are quite unhappy about city services: "There are just too many risks -- financial, political and social -- involved in secession." Kaplan is a weekend reporter for Fox 11 News, a former design critic at the L.A. Times, and the author of L.A. Lost and Found. He's also the City Observed comentator for KCRW, where the column first appeared.
• The L.A. City Council today took action on two issues mentioned here recently. It voted to look further into managing city services by region, and ordered a stretch of Glenoaks Blvd. in Sun Valley closed during street racing hours.
• Pro-secession Valley businessman Bob Scott calls his abrupt ouster from the powerful citywide planning commission after 10 years by Mayor Hahn a purge, telling Rick Orlov of the Daily News "It's just like Tiananmen Square except they're not bringing in the tanks." Officially, Scott was simply not reappointed to a new term. Deputy Mayor Matt Middlebrook denies a vendetta against secession advocates, noting that Valley VOTE bankroller Bert Boeckmann remains on the police commission. He also points out that Scott's support for secession was well known when he was last appointed, and that it's time for someone else to have a chance to serve. Scott, however, says that all city commissioners are having their arms twisted to encourage them to help in the mayor's fight against secession. In the Times story, Scott says he was asked a week ago by a Hahn advisor to switch sides. Orlov observes that since the campaign heated up, both the chairman (David Fleming) and vice chair (Scott) of the Valley Economic Alliance have lost their key city posts.
• The county Democratic Party will interview Democrats running for offices in the new Valley city and in Hollywood, and may endorse candidates in a break from the stance taken by Valley Demo clubs. Both the Valley clubs and the county party organization oppose secession. But Jeff Daar, head of the Democratic Party of the SFV, had gone further and warned potential candidates there would be no party support for them at all. About 20 Democratic candidates for offices in the Valley and Hollywood protested Daar's threat on Thursday. The Times and Daily News have somewhat different takes and details. In the DN, the Valley Democrats group denies it ever threatened to bar party support; in the LAT, a spokeswoman defends the ban on help for breakway Democrats. The DN also points out that the protesters went to the wrong address for their media event, thinking they were at the county Democratic headquarters.
• In and around Pacoima, there are still unpaved city streets with no sidewalks, and many, many neighborhoods that are dark at night with no streetlights. On Thursday, activists blasted the city's plan to replace 1,000 working street lights on Ventura and asked, quite sensibly, What about us? City officials say that Pacoima lacks lights mainly because residents there don't agree to the $53 annual voluntary tax assessment that typically pays for new lights, and they say that Ventura Blvd. is an unrelated upkeep of existing service. The Daily News, however, says in an editorial that it's all part of an anti-secession game being played by the mayor's office.
• The L.A. firefighters union explains its anti-secession position on the Times' op-ed page.
• Page One of tomorrow's Washington Post carries a Valley secession story by Rene Sanchez that hits all the main bases without adding anything new for those already keeping up on the issue. Jeff Brain of Valley VOTE and council president Alex Padilla provide the dueling quotes, along with some Valley residents. The best insight from the uninvolved view comes from urban affairs writer William Fulton, who has written extensively on Los Angeles: "The valley secessionists are on a jihad to create a new city. But I think most people in the valley just want better services, and they don't really care how they get them -- from a really big city, or just a big city." It's the Post's first front page treatment of secession this year. Alas, the headline deck, at least on the Web, is inexcusable: San Fernando [sic] Set for Ballot Showdown...
• A search for the term "secede" on the site of the Archdiocese newspaper The Tidings returns dozens of stories on...."suicide." Reflecting Cardinal Mahony's opinion, perhaps? The Cardinal's call on religious leaders to take a stand, by the way, is scrutinized by the Rev. Karen Speicher, a grad student in public policy at Pepperdine as well as a United Methodist pastor. (She also lauds the secession pages in the book, The San Fernando Valley: America's Suburb.)
• Channel 28's Rocketdyne cleanup story moves to Friday's Life and Times Tonight program, airing at 7 p.m. and midnight.
Boxer: Nuke debris goes to Sunshine Canyon dump
Earlier item on Rocketdyne and KCET
• Secession itself might be a bad thing, writes The New Republic's Michelle Cottle, but the threat of break-up is making Los Angeles a better place. In a lengthy piece that opens at the Sportsmen's Lodge in Studio City, she credits the secession cause as the only effective force for real reform in the city -- "one of the best things to happen to L.A. in decades." If the high-powered opposition to secession quashes not just the ballot question but the whole idea of reform, she says, Los Angeles will be the loser: "Not even the staunchest secession opponent disputes that Los Angeles has serious problems." She quotes Fred Siegel, an urban expert who teaches history at New York's Cooper Union: " 'The Valley's resentments of downtown are not crackpot.' The city is uniquely troubled 'both because of its sheer size and because it is so badly run.' "
Siegel analyzes L.A. politics in Public Interest
Aug. 9 tip on New Republic story
• Secession opponent Tom LaBonge, whose city council seat includes a sliver of the Valley, gets a small L.A. Times profile. He's a true student of Los Angeles, and a native as well, and says that if secession happens, "the sun would rise and all the other things would happen. But it would personally hurt me."
LAExaminer.com comments: Love Tom or loathe him
• Secession Watch has little patience for the anti-secession objection that the Valley, even with 1.35 million inhabitants and a 200-year history, doesn't measure up as city material. That's crazy. On the size and magnitude scale, at least, it outscores all but one of the 88 cities in L.A. County, the exception of course being Los Angeles. Another sign of its maturity is that, in Northridge, two rival sets of involved residents sought to launch the official neighborhood council. A Harvard graduate student dissects the efforts and critiques the neighborhood council concept in a paper presented last month.
• City Council President Alex Padilla of Pacoima kept his post even after pulling out the stops trying to elect his ally, Assemblyman Tony Cardenas, in a bitter and divisive race for the 2nd district council seat. A majority of Padilla's colleagues and some of his former allies in northeast Valley Latino circles had gone against Padilla and backed the eventual winner, Wendy Greuel. Now the council president, who has been making amends with the majority, has appointed former District Attorney Gil Garcetti to the city Ethics Commission. Gil's son Eric is one of the council members who embraced Greuel.
• The Local Agency Formation Commission took its final official action on the question of Valley cityhood, approving language for the Nov. 5 ballot. The state board came in for criticism during the years that it pondered the Valley's request for an election, mostly for the past activism in the Valley of executive director Larry Calemine. Less was said about deputy Sandor Winger, also active in Valley political circles. It may turn out that the most influential person at LAFCO, however, has been Zev Yaroslavsky, the elected county Supervisor. Wearing his LAFCO hat, he asked pointed questions of Los Angeles representatives along the way -- while fellow supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke aimed her barbs at the Valley folks -- and Yaroslavsky is both blamed and credited by some with giving secession a crucial nudge onto the ballot.
• Secession activist Gerald Silver and others see City Hall arrogance toward the Valley in a plan to replace a motley assortment of street lamps along 17 miles of Ventura Boulevard with new lighting on 40-foot-high poles. That's more than 1,000 new light standards. Not everyone along Ventura is unhappy with the idea.
• Police services in a new Valley city would have to get better because they couldn't get any worse than what the LAPD provides, the Daily News editorial page declares. This might come as a shock to many Valley residents who feel that, other than the DWP, the LAPD is the best thing about being connected with Los Angeles and who want to keep the department even if secession occurs.
• Memo to candidates: you want voters, here are two ideas. Work the long lines at In-N-Out Burger stands across the Valley. The best newspaper story about Los Angeles today is a New York Times look at the local chain's cult of burger worshippers. In a sidebar, the NYT also samples L.A.'s burgerless burgers (free registration required at NYT). Or try Zuma Beach, sometimes called "Encino-by-the-Sea." It's been a Valley-flavored stretch of sand forever, reachable through picturesque Malibu Canyon in lieu of the painfully slow 405 Freeway. This afternoon, enough Vals to elect a council member cooled off at Zuma and looked on as a dolphin pod and sea lions frolicked in the surf between lifeguard towers 6 and 7.
Scott Harris column on Zuma and the Valley, 1998
• Boroughs are the subject of a "she said-he said" bout pitting Jill Stewart vs. council president Alex Padilla's spokesman on the New Times letters page.
• Major studios and Hollywood guilds -- and nearly the entire Los Angeles entertainment industry -- are sitting out the secession debate, the Hollywood Reporter says today. Only IATSE, the AFL-CIO affiliated guild for technicans and several crafts that opposes secession, has a formal position. Other major players are laying low, apparently hoping to avoid any divisiveness until Nov. 5 then go on with life as usual. Both the Valley and Hollywood secession areas have important entertainment institutions within their borders. Neither campaign, however, was able to attract influential show business figures for their early support. Now that both efforts are considered long shots, there's little impetus to get involved.
Variety June 12: Hahn pitches unity to unions
• Channel 28's "Life & Times" has a report by Gay Yee on the Valley's major environmental cleanup -- the Rocketdyne-Atomics International site in the hills above Chatsworth -- on tap for the Thursday show. The Santa Susana Field Laboratory opened in the late 1940s, first as a remote spot where scientists tried to "reverse-engineer" the Nazi V-2 rocket, and it became a busy test site during the Cold War space race. Lots of bad stuff was left behind. The property includes the headwaters, such as they are, of the Los Angeles River.
• The September issue of Los Angeles Magazine will report on the L.A. Daily News and its chosen role as the unofficial megaphone for Valley secession. Managing editor Ron Kaye is the focus of the piece, due out this week. It was freelanced by Charles Rappleye of the L.A. Weekly.
• Even with the Valley a hot topic in the media, some people just never know what to make of the place. The latest example: the Not for Tourists Guide to Los Angeles, which proudly offers shopping and living tips on 52 "neighborhoods." Unlike some L.A. guides, NFT ventures into the Valley, but not very far. The advice stops abruptly at Reseda Blvd. on the west and Roscoe Blvd. on the north, leaving an explained void on the guide's map. Maybe the New York-based editors heeded the quip from an old L.A. Times "Laugh Lines" column -- "Roscoe: the very name conjures up images of having driven too far north" -- or maybe they are just clueless.
Quips and jokes at the Valley's expense
The Valley's image through the years
• A Daily News editorial advises the secessionists to get cracking and make their best pitch to Angelenos on the far side of the hill. The paper urges using the smaller-is-better-card to help sell the idea to skeptical non-Valleyites. But the DN acknowledges that the effort is in a deep hole, with only 5% of L.A. voters in the recent KABC poll still undecided how they will vote -- and a sizable majority already planning to vote down the Valley's bid for separation.
• Joel Fox, the former president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., signed on with the secession side Tuesday. He's a link to the 1970s when the Valley first rose up politically, to push Proposition 13 to victory and to defeat school busing for desegregation. Meanwhile, 25 Asian American groups including the Valley Korean American Assn. stood with Jim Hahn to announce a new opposition group, Asians for United Los Angeles.
• Audio has been posted from The California Report's dispatch on Friday about the SFV mayor's race. It's audio of LAT staff writer Patrick McGreevey and aired locally on KPCC 89.3 FM.
• At Hansen Dam there's upset about the noise and disruption from filming of "Charlie's Angels 2" and plans for the shooting of "Helldorado." In the latter action film, a western town will be blown up and possibly terrorized by stampeding cattle. The secession angle? A policy on permits for filming would be an issue facing the new city. On one side, fees can be a lucrative revenue source for a city, and fear of runaway production is almost palpable among show business people at Starbucks tables all over the Valley. But sometimes, ordinary residents get pretty tired of the film crews' intrusions. So it's another issue Valley candidates should state their positions on.
• In a "Voices of the Valley" piece on the L.A. Times front page, Nita Lelyveld lets longtime denizens explain why they love living in the Valley and resent being looked down upon by the city dwellers over the hill. Many of these Valleyites are not actvists but are inclined to vote for secession, even if they don't feel cityhood offers all the answers. "It's not going to be Camelot," says Steve Bidermann. "It's not going to be nirvana. But I really do think it's going to be a much nicer place to live." On the Times' secession team, Lelyveld seems to be the designated writer of long talkers about the Valley sensibility, and she does a good job with it.
Lelyveld's July 22 LAT Magazine piece
• Politicos came to Van Nuys Monday for lunch with the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. but the S-word -- secession -- was off the agenda, writes Massie Ritsch in the Times. Too bad, because VICA is the one bellwether group in the Valley that could give secession a boost of credibility and momentum, or pop the bubble by opposing it. For now, the influential association is undecided pending a vote of the clearly divided membership in September.
• Polling done for KABC Channel 7 found that secession has majority support in the Valley but is losing ground elsewhere in the city, and the measure would lose 56%-40% if the election were today. In the Valley, 57% of likely voters said they would cast their ballot to break away from Los Angeles, with 40% against and only 3% undecided. Outside the Valley, the edge is 69-26 against, so even assuming a healthy Valley turnout the break-up goes down. The numbers are similar to what the same pollster found in May for the Valley, but in the rest of the city the trend is bad for secession. As we've been saying here, the poll's editor tells the Daily News, "They (the numbers) say the whole fight is outside the Valley." There's the usual "we'll be OK" spin by Richard Katz of SFV Independence, and the usual doomsday spin by Kam Kuwata of the mayor's L.A. United campaign. The Latino canard comes up again -- they score highest of any bloc on the pro side in the Valley -- but the margin of error is probably too high to be reliable. Still, Hispanic voters will clearly be influential, and a half-dozen Latino candidates for SFV City offices got together Monday to talk up what cityhood would do for community clout.
DN: Amateur hour on the campaign trail...
• Neal Peirce of the Washington Post Writers Group likes the Hertzberg boroughs plan and tends to align with the Kevin Starr "great world city" way of thinking. "Will L.A. listen to vision, think federation? Or will it focus on the fears and resentments behind secession? On the answer, one suspects, rides its future."
Hertzberg on boroughs
Actual borough plan, big PDF file
• The Sacramento Bee takes a light look at Richard Katz, the chairman of the San Fernando Valley Independence campaign who is the oddity in the secession ranks. In a movement thick with Republicans and political novices, he's a former member of the state Assembly's Democratic leadership, a troubleshooter for Gov. Gray Davis on the power crisis, and a Davis appointee to the state Water Resources Control Board. He served 16 years in the Assembly before being termed out in 1996, and made serious runs for mayor of Los Angeles and the state Senate. So what's he doing here? He's not running for anything, and the longtime resident of Sylmar says he's just out to help the legions who feel Los Angeles doesn't work well any more. He vows to sign up 3,000 volunteers for the cityhood campaign with hopes they will excite the disaffected masses. If that potential force truly is amassing, though, it has yet to show it embraces secession. Meanwhile, Katz is apparently not afraid of losing Democratic friends over his secession role -- an intriguing topic that wasn't broached by the Bee.
Earlier in the Bee:"Hollywood is dead" Messy L.A. Divorce
• Stepping back for a sober analysis of the Valley secession campaign, David Zahniser of Copley News Service says breakup advocates are on the defensive and striving to get back on track. Three months ago, it was Los Angeles officials reeling from a series of missteps and setbacks in the LAFCO process. Now, it's the breakup side trying to rationalize being cash-poor and explain away a secret meeting with Hahn to discuss compromise that, Zahniser suggests, undermined "six years of hard work by Valley activists." The story's narrative line is that the Valley quest is similar to a failed effort by some Carson residents to pull out of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Massive spending by teachers unions and others squashed that effort. Its parent leader, Carolyn Harris, warns secessionists to be realistic about their passions: “I didn't lose my hair, I didn't lose my soul and I didn't hock my house. That's the advice I'd give the Valley.”
• One thing's for sure, with all the money being tossed around, and no limits, everybody will be tired of seeing anti-secession TV ads before Nov. 5 gets here. Mayor Hahn will raise another bunch of cash for his TV campaign at a $2,500-per-person event on Sept. 9 at the Encino home of developer Ted Stein, Rick Orlov reports. The Police Protective League now plans to buy it's own air time. Orlov is also the first to print that some of the 121 candidates running for offices are no doubt hoping to get their names known well enough to have a shot at the Los Angeles city council next year.
• In the Times, Secession Sketchbook revisits the day in 1998 when signature gatherers on behalf of a secession study were forcibly removed from the air show at Van Nuys Airport. The event -- writer James Ricci calls it the secession movement's symbolic Boston Massacre -- lit a fire under the activists who are needed to stoke a fledgling cause like secession, and brought the movement publicity it needed. Fallout from the ill-advised ejection includes $45,000 paid by the city to Valley VOTE to settle a federal lawsuit. Ricci takes a drive with one of the ejectees, Myra Ferrante, to tell the story.
• The Daily News editorial page tweaks Mayor Jim Hahn (again) for raising almost $2 million to fight secession and for the complaints filed by breakup advocates alleging that Hahn improperly uses city offices and e-mail for the campaign. In a piece titled "Subsidizing Hahn," the paper calls the activity "unethical and probably illegal" but doesn't advance the issue.
• Some things never change in the Valley. Early Saturday morning, more than 60 drag racers and cruisers were arrested and 98 onlookers cited in a crackdown on street racing along Glenoaks Boulevard in Sun Valley. This stuff has been going on somewhere in the Valley since at least the 1940s, with Glenoaks the locale of choice for some years now. What will the candidates say about the evil -- or the local tradition, take your choice -- of street racing? This may fuel the debate: last week, a Palmdale teenager got probation and community service for vehicular manslaughter in a drag racing death.
Greuel: Make watching them race a crime
• Attendance estimates for the Rally in the Valley range from about 200 in the L.A. Times and on Fox News to 400 in the Daily News to 700 in La Opinion. While Fox devoted most of its coverage to Angelyne, the put-on candidate in the pink Corvette in Hollywood, the three papers gave the most attention to Mel Wilson, the Democrat who jumped late into the race for Valley mayor. Wilson is a past president of the United Chambers of Commerce, the biggest business group to endorse secession, as well as a leader of the real estate community -- and an African American who grew up in Pacoima. He served on the city fire commission with secession backer David Fleming while Richard Riordan was mayor and also sat on the MTA board. Wilson said if elected he would seek to cut business taxes, keep the LAPD as the new city's police force and give real power to neighborhood councils. The Times also noted the first recent appearance at a secession event of L.A. city police commissioner Bert Boeckmann, whose Galpin Ford dealership has served as unofficial headquarters for the cityhood forces. Boeckmann, who had given generously to Valley VOTE, says he'll help several candidates, but has yet to state unequivocally that he favors secession.
Polizeros: Angelyne provides "badly-needed absurdity"
• "In a smaller city, if you are not happy during the evening or weekend, you can look up the mayor in the phone book and call at home," writes Carl Boyer, who helped lead the cityhood effort in Santa Clarita and served two terms as mayor. The career history teacher at San Fernando High contributes a piece to the Daily News op-ed page on how smoothly that city incorporation went. Boyer is writing a book on Santa Clarita's cityhood and plans to include a chapter on Valley secession. His article runs alongside others by state assemblywoman Fran Pavley, who was in on the early cityhood of Agoura Hills, and a Reseda ex-patriate living in Westlake Village, all extolling the virtues of small cities. The Daily News does a news story (quoting Boyer) to go with the opinion pieces.
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