Secession Watch Archive
Archive Aug. 31 - Sept. 10
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• L.A. County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke came out against secession, citing the results of a study she commissioned, but this move was never in doubt. Burke represents a middle-of-Los Angeles district and had been fairly hostile to the secession cause at the LAFCO hearings earlier this year. It does mean that the anti-secession side will enjoy pretty much a clean sweep among African American leaders. Of the other county Supes to take a stand, Mike Antonovich is for and Gloria Molina against.
• Secession advocates staged a media event Monday outside the offices of the Entertainment Industry Development Corporation, protesting its cash donations to the anti-breakup campaigns. Carlos Ferreyra of SFV Independence and others called for the county to take over the quasi-public entity that collects fees from studios and producers in exchange for permits to film on city streets. As the LAT and Daily News reported Saturday, the EIDC has given $10,000 of its income to the anti-secession effort headed by Mayor James Hahn, plus much more to other political candidates. In the DN, District Attorney Steve Cooley said there is reason to believe laws were broken and urged the elected officials who run the EIDC to impose sweeping reforms. A DN editorial demands that the agency be "disbanded immediately." La Opinion also covers the brewing scandal (in English from Google).
• What happens to gay rights in a new SFV city with more-conservative elected officials than Los Angeles, which has passed several gay-friendly laws? "It scares me to think that one would have to fight those battles all over again," says Tony Lucente, president of the Studio City Residents Association, in a story in Frontiers magazine. The gay and lesbian community paper notes that domestic-partner benefits for city employees and anti-discrimination ordinances could be legally abandoned 120 days after a new city forms. The story suggests that the front-runner status of mayoral hopeful Keith Richman, a Republican state Assemblyman, is reason enough to fear things could change for the worse. (It doesn't allege that Richman, a social moderate, is unfriendly to gays, only that he has not taken the lead in their behalf). A gay field operative for the secession campaign makes the counter argument, and the story acknowledges there are liberals and out-of-the-closet gays and lesbians, including SFV Independence co-chair Laurette Healey, among secession backers. Meanwhile, Mayor James Hahn is set to ride in the Valley's gay pride parade on October 13.
Also in Frontiers: The Hollywood race
From June: Conflict at Stonewall Demo Club
• Culture Watch: A letter to the editor in the L.A. Times reminisces about Von Dutch, the Valley car customizer whose art is on display at the CSUN gallery.
What the heck we're talking about
• A long story by Billy Witz in the Daily News asks whether recreation and parks would improve or decline under a new Valley city. No answer to the question is provided, or easily available.
• The L.A. Times' Daryl Kelley examines more deeply the Centennial project that would add 23,000 homes to a rural swath along Interstate 5 at the Grapevine, north of the San Fernandso Valley.
• The Times spends the day Sunday with the North Hollywood police division homicide desk, which finds itself quite busy this year.
• Three Valley candidates are critical of the tactics of the pro-break-up effort in an L.A. Times Sunday analysis that calls the secession campaign "short on cash, endorsements and high-profile candidates." While optimism abounds in the secession ranks, and loyalists predict a grassroots revolt ala Proposition 13, pollster Paul Goodwin says more soberly that, for most L.A. voters, "There's no call for revolution."
• "With secession in the air, it is especially important that the new chief understand the diversity of the city," former Secretary of State Warren Christopher says of the next Los Angeles police chief. The Times on Sunday analyzes the issues facing Mayor Jim Hahn as he ponders the open chief's job.
• Mary Helen Ponce, a Sunland writer whose wonderful book Hoyt Street let Valley suburbanites see what life was about inside the barrios of Pacoima, pens a letter to the editor in the Daily News Sunday expressing surprise that the council candidates who dub themselves "Valleywomen" have "discovered" Pacoima: "Will wonders never cease?" She urges, however, that the Northeast Valley accept their help.
• Valley Culture Watch: One in four Glendale residents are of Armenian heritage, the 2000 census found. The city has 51,854 Armenians, up 65% from a decade earlier, and another 38,504 live in the Los Angeles portion of the Valley. In all, the Los Angeles area has the greatest concentration outside Armenia.
• Dueling, longer-than-usual thoughtful takes on the secession campaign in the blogs, with Politics in the Zeroes making the points against (though he notes he began as a supporter) and Valley Secession Fever dissecting Zeroes' arguments from the break-up side. VSF also ridicules the Times' Saturday editorial. At the latter blog, the connection sometimes runs slow, but hang in there, it usually gets there and it can be worth the wait.
• Redesigned Daily News web site has some minor glitches to work out, but it's an improvement. The search function has been restored finally -- here are the last 100 secession stories and editorials.
• The quasi-public agency that issues official filming permits in Los Angeles -- and collects fees from studios and production companies -- donated $10,000 from its coffers to Mayor Hahn's anti-secession campaign, the L.A. Times reports Saturday. Kam Kuwata, Hahn's consultant, acknowledged that the mayor solicited the donation from the Entertainment Industry Development Corp. Secession leaders called Friday for an investigation by the City Ethics Commission. The story involves a larger investigation of EIDC practices, since the fees it collects for permits are tantamount to public funds, raising the question: why are they giving any money to political campaigns? At least a dozen elected officials who sit on the EIDC board also received campaign contributions. The EDIC's mission is to promote filming in this region over Canada or other places -- so how does that square with fighting secesion?
• An anti-secession editorial in Saturday's Times doesn't actually argue anything flawed about secession, but it muses about Aristotle and has an interesting list of the U.S. cities that are larger -- in area -- than Los Angeles. These include Juneau, Anchorage and Jacksonville, Fla. A Daily News editorial urges the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. to take a position -- any position other than neutral -- on secession or forfeit its claim to speak on behalf of the Valley. And they complain that Hahn's backers are putting on the pressure...
• More grousing from within the Valley about the prospects for the pro-secession campaign, in this week's Los Angeles Business Journal ($3 to read). Martin Cooper, a vice-chair of VICA, says of business leaders, "there’s frustration and disappointment among those who support secession that a more pervasive campaign hasn’t happened yet.” Echoing what Secession Watch suggested yesterday, Cooper goes on: "These businesspeople are growing increasingly concerned that the campaign won’t be successful.” Another Valley figure, Republican political consultant Arnold Steinberg, says the pro-secession campaign has missed so many opportunities to make gains, "It’s now theoretically possible to launch a campaign, but there’s a sense that the greatest window of opportunity has passed.” Valley independence leaders quoted say they are waiting until after Labor Day and Sept. 11 to get started in earnest, but the Hollywood campaign apparently had enough of the delays and hired its own campaign advisers to pursue a different course than the Valley's firm of Goddard Claussen Porter Novelli.
• This weekend on Secession 101: How a new city would be staffed. Guests of host Ken Bernstein include Laurette Healey and Bob Scott of the San Fernando Valley Independence Committee, Maggie Whelan, general manager of the city of Los Angeles personnel department, and Julie Butcher, general manager of Service Employees International Union Local 347. The show runs Sunday at 11:30 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. and Tuesday at 8:00 p.m. on Channel 36, which is on all cable systems in the city of Los Angeles.
• In-fighting over one of the last treasures left in the endorsement goodie bag spilled into the open Thursday, as five past chairmen of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association wrote a letter urging the group's members to take a pro-secession stand. The Daily News' James Nash reports exclusively on the letter and lobbying by anti-breakup forces to get VICA to remain neutral, but the story only touches on what's at stake here. VICA enjoys the most political clout in city hall of any Valley business group because it includes a broad membership base of industry leaders from both sides of the hill, and has not ritually sung the anti-Los Angeles tune in the past. The letter by David Fleming and other past leaders argues that VICA must take a stand for secession to avoid becoming irrelevant. However, with every poll so far showing that secession will likely lose, internal debate is raging over whether it is worth risking VICA's standing as a player to make what could be a symbolic gesture of Valley solidarity. The members' ballots are due back Sept. 13, and if no position -- for, against or remain neutral -- gets a majority, the group will stay out of the race unless two-thirds of the board members agree on a stance. Several story lines already are shaping up for post-Nov. 5, and one is whither VICA as a player. Ever since it formed in 1949 to introduce industrial zoning to the west Valley, its high-level but quiet lobbying has had alot to do with creating the Valley as we know it today. One potential scenario: a negotiated face-saving middle ground that does not shatter VICA's reputation downtown.
Earlier: VICA in squeeze
• Daily News roundup story lumps together former LAPD chief Bernard Parks explaining his opposition to secession, a replacement for David Fleming being named to the city ethics panel, and a new anti-secession campaign being formed by L.A. city council member Cindy Miscikowski. On the editorial page, the paper continues its practice of spouting the talking points for the secession campaign a day or two after the news stories.
• The Column One story in the L.A. Times is a look by Sue Fox at how Van Nuys could return from civic oblivion to be the official heart of a new Valley city, if secession should occur. The story includes a nice history capsule on Van Nuys and sheds some possible light on the secession fervor of former State Supreme Court Justice Armand Arabian.
• Hollywood's secession bid isn't often in the news, but the Times on Friday carries the certified list of council candidates and a feature on some of those candidates out on the campaign trail.
• E-mail brings word of a provocative new web site, Good Riddance Valley.com, billing itself as "Angelenos in Support of Secession." The site's message is partly humorous but mostly a diatribe on the Valley as a smoggy, vapid hellhole from which the rest of L.A. should gladly secede: "Why would anyone live there anyway? Direct access to porn?" It also blasts Valley secessionists as racist and elitist, and pictures Ron Kaye, Daily News managing editor, as one of the leaders the Valley should keep on its side of the hill. At the bottom of each page is an anonymous quote, "The Valley is the root of all evil," and nowhere on the site is any hint of who is behind the group. The web site's domain name, however, is registered to Laurence Wilcox of Easterly Terrace in Los Angeles; a return e-mail has been sent off seeking more information. Added: Wilcox e-mails back, "We are a group that believe Valley secession is ultimately rational and would be positive for the southland at large. We sincerely believe every word presented and stand by our claims."
• The Daily News banners yesterday's SRAR endorsement -- even though the paper had already reported it the day before. In the story, Larry Levine, campaign consultant for One Los Angeles, responds that the real estate pros are just voting their self-interest. A DN editorial calls a city offer to place some statues at the Van Nuys Flyaway Bus terminal an insult to the Valley. On the Op-ed page, Joel Fox of the SFV Independence committee argues that the threat of higher taxes after secession is the anti campaign's big lie, and he contends that lower business taxes in a new city would lure corporations to relocate to the Valley.
• The L.A. Times covers former police chief Bernard Parks, now a city council candidate in Los Angeles, coming out against secession. It's not much of a news angle but still got picked up by, among others, KPCC 89.3 FM and KABC channel 7. Today's "Only in L.A." column by Steve Harvey also carries some quotes about the Valley and secession from AmericasSuburb.com.
• The L.A. Weekly devotes this week's paper to a special report on the Los Angeles Police Department that looks impressive at a casual glance. It focuses on the search for a new chief -- an issue that's bound to come up in the secession campaigns -- and offers a lot of historical sweep, including a look back at the aftermath of the Rodney King beating that took place in the northeast Valley. The Weekly says much has changed about the LAPD, with a key piece of evidence being that the left-leaning alternative paper got great cooperation from the department for its stories.
Warren Olney with the Weekly editors
Meyerson: "Valleywhites" a crucial political tribe
• Uh-oh, four straight items that mention Keith Richman...but there he was tonight, exchanging verbal jousts at USC with John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League since 1969, touching on the racial suspicions that swirl (mostly unmentioned) around secession. They disagreed, civilly, over Richman's rhetorical objection to the title of the debate, "Secession: Its Impact on Jews and Other Minorities," and again when Mack suggested that white flight was part of the motivation for secession. Richman offered that blacks should gain power in a smaller Los Angeles, a point on which Mack said that his "folk" don't agree. The panel of debaters also included councilman Jack Weiss, who opposes the break-up, and Laurette Healey for "independence," the term now preferred by the pro side. Former mayor Richard Riordan got the first word, calling for more civic togetherness, then he left the room. A lively discussion that ranged widely over the issues then ensued. Adelphia Cable's cameras took it all in.
• SFV Independence hopes that today's formal endorsement of secession by the Southland Regional Association of Realtors turns into an army of real estate agents telling clients they would save about $1,400 on a typical home sale because a new city won't have L.A.'s document transfer tax. "This is great for us," co-chair Laurette Healey tells Secession Watch. She adds that having the backing of a group that represents 7,200 real estate professionals helps diminish the argument that secession could hurt property values. Olga Moretti, president of SRAR, called the group's endorsement an unusual step, but she added that "secession is too big an issue for us to sit on the sidelines." Mayoral candidates Mel Wilson and Keith Richman -- who also both attended yesterday's rent-control event put on by SFV Independence -- pitched this morning for the group's endorsement. The issue of backing a specific candidate, however, is still being pondered, Moretti says.
• Mayoral candidate Mel Wilson alerts Secession Watch that his campaign web site is now on-line: www.melwilsonformayor.com. It includes a bio, his positions and pictures of his family. Assemblyman Keith Richman tells SW that his site is in design and should be posted soon. Victor N. Viereck, a CPA running for council in the 12th district, also got his site going.
• In his editor's column in the new issue of the San Fernando Valley Business Journal, editor Michael Hart tweaks mayoral candidate Keith Richman a bit for changing positions on the Ahmanson Ranch development, and says Richman and the other candidates don't yet look like the right people to articulate a business agenda in secession. "Somebody involved with secession needs to make it clear why dumping L.A. will benefit local companies as much as it will benefit homeowner associations and that proverbial Joe Six-Pack who’s going to get the pothole in front of his house filled," Hart writes. That one you can read for free. Two other pieces in the issue will cost you $3 each: political campaign experts voicing doubts about how the pro-secession campaign is going, and a story on the female candidates who banded together last week.
Earlier: Richman rethinks Ahmanson, 2nd item
Earlier: VICA in squeeze
• The Valley's real estate brokers and agents will indeed endorse secession today, the Daily News and the Times report. Gaining more local control and ending the city's document transfer tax on property sales were the persuaders, according to officials of the Southland Regional Association of Realtors. Kam Kuwata, consultant for the L.A. United campaign, dismisses the move as a favor to mayoral candidate Mel Wilson, an agent who used to head SRAR. Both papers also report that 98 of the 111 candidates still on the ballot for offices in the new city have pledged to retain the Los Angeles rent control ordinance. La Opinion also has the rent control story.
• This just in: SRAR will announce its position tomorrow at 10 a.m. at its offices, 7232 Balboa Blvd. in Van Nuys. A clue: mayoral candidates Mel Wilson and Keith Richman and leaders of the SFV Independence Committee are expected to attend.
Original post: Secession wins! That is, it won in the straw poll conducted on-line by the Southland Regional Association of Realtors. The final numbers are 1324 for Valley secession, 733 against and 12 no opinion. The percentages are 64-35 to kiss L.A. goodbye and take the divorce. Fewer than half of those who voted on secession, though, want the Valley-based group to actually take a stand. Only 724 respondents want SRAR to get involved to that degree. No official word yet from SRAR on what -- if anything -- it plans to do.
• Dean Singleton is not a well-known name in the Valley, but he should be -- he owns the Daily News. The New York Times profiles the Denver-based head of MediaNews Group, which owns 46 daily newspapers and 81 non-dailies. The DN and his other Los Angeles-area papers don't figure in the story, but the piece credits Singleton with evolving from a publisher who cares solely about cutting costs into a newspaperman who invests in quality reporting. He says that, at age 51 with multiple sclerosis, he wants to build a great newspaper in his lifetime. Alas, it will be his hometown Denver Post, not the Daily News. The DN began publishing in 1911 as the Van Nuys News, grew fat as the give-away Valley News and Green Sheet, and remained under local ownership until the 1970s. It was bought first by Chicago's Tribune Co. -- current owners of the L.A. Times -- then was sold to Jack Kent Cooke before Singleton snatched up the paper.
Singleton profiled in Salt Lake weekly
• Culture Watch: An Op-ed piece in the Daily News pans a plan by CBS to revive "The Beverly Hillbillies," using real Southerners instead of actors. Seems like a good time to remind people that "Hillbillies," a popular 1960s sitcom in which an Appalachian family became oil-rich and drove west to a Beverly Hills mansion, was a knockoff off "The Adventures of the Real McCoys." The McCoys were a rural family that used its found money to drive west to -- the San Fernando Valley! Amos McCoy, played by real-life Valley rancher Walter Brennan, settled his clan on a farm in the late 1950s suburbs. Many hijinks ensued. The longtime "Honorary Governor" of the Valley, Edward Everett Horton, even made a guest appearance.
• The L.A. Times lightly profiles Kam Kuwata, chief strategist for the anti-secession campaign L.A. United. In the story by Sue Fox, a fellow Democratic campaign consultant observes that Kuwata plays his cards very close to the vest. No kidding. The story reveals essentially nothing about the campaign except that Kuwata has begun using a token office in Sherman Oaks, and he wants to win. Compare the softball approach taken with Kuwata (headline: "A Dapper Strategist...") to this much more pointed LAT profile of anti-secession leader Jeff Brain ("An Unlikely Leader..."). Granted, Brain has more dubious qualities to him, but still, it would be nice to learn a little about how the campaign operates, what the fall strategy will be and how the various anti-secession efforts are being (or not being) coordinated.
• Mayor Hahn stumped for anti-secession votes at the traditional Labor Day rally in L.A. on Monday. There are now just 64 days to the showdown, and things will be getting more serious. Secession Watch will be on hand at many of the major events, beginning with Wednesday night's forum at USC. Later in the month, expect a high-grade debate at the Milken Institute's annual State of the State conference on Sept. 26 in Century City. The first full session of the day is titled "Should the Valley Go?" with speakers David Fleming from the SFV Economic Alliance, Richard Katz from SFV Independence, Rusty Hammer of the Greater L.A. Chamber of Commerce and Fernando Guerra of Loyola's Center for the Study of Los Angeles. L.A. Times business columnist James Flanigan moderates.
Labor Day Weekend, Aug. 31 - Sept. 2
• A Sherman Oaks creative services firm that runs the Free the Valley web site -- and that sells merchandise bearing the slogan -- is offering to help the break-up campaign. There's no sign its brand of help is what the campaign wants, but it brings some wit to what has been a mostly humorless exercise. The site has its Top 10 reasons the Valley should secede, including (10) Possible NBA expansion team...the Toluca Lakers, (9) Plenty of has-been celebrities to run for mayor, and (2) Because it would be, like, totally bitchin'. The site also offers some in-your-face ideas for billboards to be posted over the hill in L.A.:
It's Not You - It's Us
Don't Worry - We Can Still Be Friends
If You Love Something - Set It Free
Free Tibet - Free Willy - Free The Valley
• More bad news for commuters who use I-5 to reach the Valley through the old Newhall Pass. There's another 23,000 new homes planned up that way, this time in what would be a new community dubbed Centennial on the top of the Grapevine near Frazier Park. These are in addition to the 21,600 homes planned for Newhall Ranch, the 5,000-plus units the Las Lomas developer wants to build right in the pass, and the continuing growth of the Stevenson Ranch mega-development.
• Valley Culture Watch: On Tuesday, the Valley's car culture tradition goes legit when the CSUN art gallery opens a show commemorating the pinstripe art of Von Dutch. Dutch was an icon on the Van Nuys Boulevard cruising strip in the 1950s and 1960s along with car customizing pioneers Ed (Big Daddy) Roth and George Barris, and his reputation endures. Vin Diesel wore a Von Dutch shirt in the recent film The Fast and the Furious. The Times' Patricia Ward Biederman wrote the story.
• The Daily News runs a brief Labor Day editorial raising an eyebrow at the city's crackdown last week on a balloon bearing a pro-secession message that flew, briefly, over Hollywood.
• Secession advocates are gearing up to raise their profile over the hill in coastal L.A. after Labor Day. First up is Wednesday, Sept. 4, at USC when mayoral hopeful Keith Richman will go head to head with L.A. city councilman Jack Weiss and John Mack of the Los Angeles Urban League. The event, to be moderated by USC senior scholar and political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, is sponsored by the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life.
• Labor Day history nugget: In 1936, the Valley (population 120,000) went the entire Labor Day weekend without reporting a single crime.
• Forget Burbank. Perhaps the small adjacent city that the Valley should emulate (if secession occurs) is the exclusive enclave of Hidden Hills, population 1,875. It's a real incorporated city with a mayor and city council, though its 1.6 square miles are off limits to the public behind gates. A number of celebrities live there, and it always appears near the top of any list of affluent U.S. cities. Forbes magazine reported last year that one of the most expensive homes in the country was on the market there: a 92-acre horse ranch for $50 million. If you're curious what Hidden Hills looks like, there's a photo spread of one home and garden in Sunday's Los Angeles Times Magazine (not on-line). Click these links to see the community in its natural state in the 1950s and a scene that might make you wish you had bought land when it was cheap.
• For the first time in awhile, the L.A. Times writes an editorial reiterating its stance against secession. There are no surprises, but the paper's editorial board recommends Sunday that boroughs remain under discussion even if secession loses, and acknowledges meekly that "like any big, diverse and powerful city, L.A. could always stand improvement." It lacks the fire of past editorials, and errs slightly in its history, suggesting that the Valley of 1915 was covered in citrus orchards. There were scattered orange and peach groves, but the predominant look at the time was of fallowed wheat fields and pasture. Citrus acreage grew after 1915 as irrigation water from the Owens Valley aqueduct became available.
• On the Daily News' Sunday Op-ed page, a writer uses the occasion of his 20-year reunion from North Hollywood High School to wax on the diversity of his fellow Valleyites of the 1980s. Speaking of diversity, the Times carries a story Sunday on this weekend's cricket championships in Van Nuys. The DN editorial page carries five letters for secession, about its usual Sunday quota. The lead letter, curiously, is signed by a citizen of Canyon Country.
• The national board of the Mexican American Political Association met -- peacefully -- on Saturday and decided not to take a position on secession. Local issue, the group said. It did, however, reinstate the Valley chapter, which opposes the break-up. Also in the Times, angst over development plans in the Northeast Valley is explored in a story by Wendy Thermos in the California section.
Explainer: See last weekend's MAPA reports
• About a dozen candidates affiliated with the new secession group Valleywomen turned out in Pacoima as promised Saturday to talk about street lights. The Daily News reports they drew a contingent of opponents including from the Valley chapter of MAPA. Based on the story, it appears no one on either side was won over. Also in the DN, Rick Orlov offers an analysis of city efforts to decentralize services in advance of the secession vote.
• A Valley landmark, Dutton's Books, has been at the same Laurel Canyon Boulevard address since 1961. It's not in the news, but its sister store (actually, run by the brother of the North Hollywood shop's proprietor) may be forced to move from its longtime Brentwood location by a planned development and the resulting higher rent. Story is in the L.A. Business Journal (free but registration required.)
• Candidate Marc Strassman has posted another revealing questionnaire seeking his positions, this one from the Valley Progressive Coalition. It asks about rent control, living wage ordinances, privatization of water and power, and instant runoff voting. He answers them all. It's interesting to see what questions that groups and the media ask.
• Hollywood VOTE unveiled a newly invigorated web site Friday, and it just highlights how static the Valley secession sites have gotten. SFV Independence seems to have stopped updating, and the other side is no better. One Los Angeles is still inviting voters to a rally held last June, and Mayor Hahn's L.A. United doesn't appear to be on-line at all.
• Before the MTA can even cut through the controversy over its proposed east-west busway across the Valley, plans for a north-south route are drawing heat.
• Labor Day politics preview: The SFV Interfaith Council and the Valley Labor Political Education Council get together to talk secession at 7 p.m. Monday at the United Methodist Church in Northridge. Secession foe Julie Butcher, general manager of SEIU Local 347, and Rabbi Alan Henkin of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations will discuss the labor and religious angles.
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