Secession Watch Archive
Archive Sept. 21 - Sept. 30
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• The Chicago Tribune's plunge into the secession coverage pool leads with candidate Keith Richman -- "a man campaigning hard to become mayor of a city that doesn't exist." The once-over by national correspondent V. Dion Haynes hits the usual bases, concluding that secession will pass in the Valley despite an imploding campaign, and paraphrases Richman acknowledging that the separation message isn't being embraced over the hill. Katz and Kuwata are quoted, but the last word goes to L.A. Council President Alex Padilla, addressing the aftermath of Nov. 5: "There needs to be a healing process and a neighborhood dialogue."
• "It took 27 years for activists in the sprawling San Fernando Valley to mount their version of a civic insurrection," reports Copley's David Zahniser in the San Diego Union-Tribune. "But with the vote on Valley secession little more than a month away, an election once described as pivotal to the city's future is failing to catch the public's imagination." In the story, Bobbi Fielder says it was a critical mistake for Valley VOTE to include the council and mayor decisions in the same election as secession. Zahniser is the Los Angeles City Hall bureau chief for Copley News Service.
• The L.A. Times makes a stab at discerning how the heavily Latino Eastside of Los Angeles feels about Valley secession, but we finish the story no smarter than before. That's because the story doesn't plumb the subject very fully. We hear from no community figures and get few thoughtful viewpoints from ordinary residents, and in the end we have no clear sense of how the Eastside feels. Some informed political analysis was called for, since if it's true as some suggest that Latinos are angry enough about declining city services to lean toward secession, in contrast to their political leaders, the Eastside could be a surprise -- and crucial -- source of voters for secession. The story sets out to make an intriguing comparison of conditions in the two areas, but the notion collapses in a specious contrast between El Sereno's most crowded park and one of the Valley's largest parks. It's the kind of story that feeds suspicions, strongly held in some quarters, that the Times' news-side editors and reporters neither like the secession proposals nor take them very seriously despite a team of five staffers assigned.
• Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, USC senior scholar and political analyst (California Journal, Channel 9, L.A. Times Sunday Opinion) offers a thought on why Goddard Claussen Porter Novelli quit as the paid strategists for the pro-secession campaign: "It may well be that they are sensing that this isn't going to win and they prefer not to have this loss on their resume." (Bottom of column...)
Earlier: Goddard Claussen resigns, is owed money
• A Daily News editorial spanks the L.A. city ethics commission for not jumping into the uproar over lavish spending and political contributions by the Entertainment Industry Development Corp. "Filmgate," the paper says, demands some action by the city's ethical watchdog, which should look into the real scandal of city government: "the downtown power structure's widespread use of public funds for its own self-interest." There are some good hits in this one -- and an aside that is amusing given the source. The paper which is almost zealous in its brow-beating on the break-up issue calls Valley secession the "pet obsession" of Mayor Hahn.
Also in the DN: Council district 2 roundup
• Plans for Centennial, the town proposed to be built on land near Gorman, are examined by the Daily News, which asks: Where will the water come from to serve the residents of 23,000 new homes? The answer is not clear. The project is envisioned on the Tejon Ranch, a giant holding (formerly owned in part by the L.A. Times' Chandler family) that straddles the mountains between Los Angeles and Kern counties. The ranch's overseers have decided to get out of the cattle business and into the real estate development game. Says land use consultant Bill Fulton: "Tejon is probably the Irvine of the 21st century."
• Valley Culture Watch: Don's Restaurant, a drive-in turned coffee shop at Glenoaks Blvd. and Santa Anita Avenue in Burbank since 1947, closed for good Sunday. The premises will re-open in a few months as a Japanese restaurant. Like Bob's Big Boy, Don's was a popular hangout and date-night burger joint for a couple of East Valley generations. The Don's sign out front will be donated to a museum, the new owner tells the Daily News.
• More Culture Watch: This could be a headline right out of the San Fernando Valley of the 1950s (and probably was): Big Church to Build on Site of Egg Ranch. Only it's happening now, at the Trafficanda Egg Ranch in West Hills.
• Mayor candidate Marc Strassman has posted a bunch of new secession-related video to view at his site called the Linux Public Broadcasting Network. Included is a recent interview with John Mack, longtime head of the Los Angeles Urban League.
• Two secession beat reporters, Harrison Sheppard of the Daily News and Sharon Bernstein of the Times, discussed the busy week of events on Warren Olney's "Which Way L.A." on Thursday. Here's the audio.
• Valley Culture Watch:The Electric Prunes were a garage rock band at Taft High School in the tradition of Valley garage bands, playing dances and clubs in the 1960s and finally breaking through with a certified hit, "I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)." That was 1966. A fascinating story in the L.A. Times Sunday Calendar section by Bob Baker finds the Prunes, now in their 50s, rehearsing at the same Woodland Hills address and heading out on the road again. "When they play, man," says Steven Van Zandt, the longtime guitarist of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, "I swear to God within 10 minutes you are transported."
• A story in the L.A. Times declares the Hollywood secession campaign flashier than the Valley's, and it certainly seems to offer more street theater and team spirit. Even so, if the polls are correct, Hollywood will be lucky if it gets half the vote percentage that Valley secession will.
• The Daily News on Sunday kicks off its coverage of the races for city council in a new Valley city. It'll be a continuing series, district by district, beginning with CD-1. Judging by today's opener, the stories won't be deep but every candidate will get their name mentioned, their photo in the paper (if they choose), a few paragraphs about their positions, and a mini-profile with Web site or e-mail address (and hot links on the DN Web site). That's more attention than the Times gives to candidates in a typical Los Angeles council race.
• Will there be lasting civic scars from the secession campaign? Perhaps not. Last week, the Times' Patt Morrison reported that secession cause leader Richard Close was on a European vacation with Ted Stein, a major money man for the anti-secession effort. Now comes the program for the 7th annual Eddy Awards dinner put on by the L.A. Economic Development Corp. Of the five dinner co-chairs, two are leading secession foes, the former mayor Richard Riordan and developer Ed Roski. Another, though, is David Fleming, the Latham & Watkins counsel who has helped finance and guide secession and who gave up a post on the City Ethics Commission to campaign for the Valley's separation. Fleming is chairman of the Valley Economic Alliance -- and he also remains a board member of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, which abhors secession so intensely that its chief executive is a fixture on the anti side of the podium at forums and panel discussions. Incidentally, two of this year's Eddy Award honorees are ardent anti-secessionists, Cardinal Roger Mahony and Eli Broad.
• A retired LAPD officer who lives in Sherman Oaks warns in an L.A. Times Op-ed piece that secession will be no policing panacea. His neighbors south of Ventura Boulevard think there will somehow be more cops in their low-crime area. Says Terry Schauer, the Valley's limited police resources would go where crime is highest, "which would not be Sherman Oaks, Encino or Studio City."
• The San Fernando Valley Federation, a coalition of smaller homeowner associations, announced it has endorsed secession. President Gordon Murley said the group voted back in the summer but withheld making its position public until closer to the election. As the Daily News points out, it's not clear who the federation's endorsement actually represents. The federation has 18 member groups, but just 12 regularly participate. All of their representatives went for secession. But in some cases, the homeowner associations those delegates are from have not taken a position. Gerald Silver of the Encino Homeowners, for instance, says his members have not been polled, but he says: "I have a right as a member (of the federation) to vote what I think is in the best interests of our group."
• Mayoral candidate Mel Wilson got the endorsement of the Southland Regional Assn. of Realtors, no real surprise since he used to head the group and still signs their legislative advocate newsletter. The L.A. Times story says, though, that rival candidate Keith Richman will be the first beneficiary of a fundraiser to be held by big secession backers David Fleming and Bert Boeckmann this Thursday. Also in the news, the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. says it will spend an undisclosed sum of money to push secession. And the new United Valley Candidates group filed papers with the city ethics commission to act as a political campaign committee, with 19 of the prospective office-holders on board. They held off criticizing the main Valley independence effort in their press conference. See original item on the group.
• Somewhere between a dozen and 25 Valley office seekers will form a new campaign arm, United Valley Candidates, as fallout continues over the abrupt departure of the hired-gun strategists from the main pro-secession campaign. The new group will officially announce itself today and has scheduled an Oct. 7 event to meet with voters. Armineh S. Chelebian, running for the Valley city council, said, "There is a feeling that if we sit and wait for the San Fernando Valley Independence Committee to do everything for us, it's not going to happen." Other candidates said the resignation of Independence campaign strategists Goddard Claussen Porter Novelli was a good thing and that they wouldn't be missed. Stories are in the Times and Daily News, which also has that the Independence effort has opened new offices in Van Nuys and Westchester.
• Assemblyman Keith Richman and a host of other Valley candidates vowed Thursday they would cut the business tax in a new city. However, the difficulty new city officials would have in keeping that promise came up a lot in a secession discussion at Thursday's Milken Foundation conference on California. Larry Kosmont, whose study saying that L.A. is the moxt expensive California city to do business in is widely cited by secessionists, predicted that a Valley city would face budgetary woes. "Taxes will not be cut. This city is going to need every dollar it can get," he said. That's because of the limited means any new city has to raise its revenue under California law, and a new city would face enormous pressure to improve services, Kosmont explained. But to pay for those higher services a city would have to collect the taxes from intensive real estate development: "To change its future, the only way is to urbanize its corridors" such as Ventura Boulevard, Kosmont said.
Richman: Valley should do filming permits
• A 16-page voter's guide to secession is available to download (in PDF format) from The Civic Forum. The group plans to distribute 50,000 printed copies before the election. In their words, "We have done the very most that is humanly possible to assure a fair and even-handed product: the document's content has been reviewed by representatives of the pro- and anti-secession movements, and, since both sides continue to believe it is biased against their own position, we've probably achieved our goal!"
• Goddard Claussen Porter Novelli quit as the chief strategists for the Valley secession campaign, another sign that things may be going seriously awry on the break-up side. Richard Katz, the campaign's chairman, offered the benign spin that the firm's work was done, and Goddard Claussen politely refused to explain their departure. But Calabasas campaign consultant Arnold Steinberg, who both the L.A. Times and Daily News report had predicted this turn of events, says it leaves the pro campaign "in the lurch." The reality appears to be that the independence effort isn't attracting the cash it needs to be competitive. The Hollywood campaign, which is already on TV with ads due to benefactor Gene LaPietra, had earlier severed its ties with Goddard Claussen.
• Secession campaign leader Richard Katz called on Mayor James Hahn to debate someone from the break-up side, but again the mayor took the position of thanks, but no thanks. When you lead in the polls, you can do that. He's been advised to not let the anti-secession campaign be about him. The pro-secession effort and the Daily News (which has the story) have sought to position Hahn as the chief villain in the Valley's grievances against the city, and to make independence at least partly a referendum on his leadership, even though he's been in charge not even two years.
DN: City Hall to blame for poverty rise
Hahn on EIDC return: A distraction
• Mayor candidate Mel Wilson met the press outside a Van Nuys fire station Wednesday and gave his plan for adding paramedics and police officers in a new city. Another mayor candidate, Benny Bernal, called for more and better preschool programs to help reduce crime. Meanwhile, mayor hopeful Bruce Boyer and three council candidates said they would retain the $1,000-a-month salary that new city officials would get, and not seek to increase it.
• How hot has it been in the Valley? Hot enough to drive ants up to the third floor apartment of Polizeros.com in search of a drink and a meal.
• Larry Mantle spoke on yesterday's Airtalk with CalTech political science professor Michael Alvarez about secession and other Nov. 5 election issues. KPCC-FM (89.3) now posts Airtalk and Talk of the City audio on-line. Valley commentator Joel Kotkin was on today though the subject was housing.
• Author and critic David L. Ulin, saying his piece against secession in the L.A. Weekly, spins a tale of a future Los Angeles riven by "a convocation of wizards gathered to cast a spell upon the people, telling them L.A.’s problems had become intractable, that the only solution was to secede." After the Valley and Hollywood follow Carthay Circle, West Adams, Fairfax, Venice, Century City. The former Los Angeles splinters into rival enclaves, not unlike the "burbclaves" of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, thousands of armed mini-cities with walls, guard towers, tolls and curfews. Then the people rise up to stop the madness and demand reunification, a movement that prevails in a five-day siege of the Beverly Hills border: "L.A. was again a community - a community with no center, no fixed identity, but a community nonetheless. And when the bulldozers finally started rolling forward, Sullivan looked up at the clear blue, soon-to-be-unpartitioned sky, and knew that there was now a chance that everyone might live happily ever after, after all."
Also in the Weekly: Tia Chucha Cafe in Sylmar
• The Valley Industry and Commerce Association gives a big boost to the secession cause by endorsing break-up in a vote of members. The statement by the Valley's most influential business group is huge, even if the vote itself reflects deep ambivalence. Of 285 ballots sent to member companies, just 174 were returned. Of those, only 86, or 49%, called on VICA to endorse secession, while 71 said either take no position or didn't state a preference, and 17 members were opposed. So just 30% of VICA's members sparked what could be the most important decision in the group's history. VICA has been arguably the Valley's most effective business lobbyist at City Hall since its 1949 founding, but on Tuesday chairman Fred Gaines declared, "The creation of a new Valley city will be good for business on both sides of the hill." Whether the endorsement will turn into major money for the pro campaign remains to be seen, but it does mark a clean sweep of leading business groups in the Valley. In the Times story, secession foe Kam Kuwata gloats crudely that the anti campaign made the secessionists sweat to win the VICA endorsement: "Basically, they lost the entire summer working on this." The LAT also reports that the police union in L.A. has begun to air radio ads opposing the break-up.
UCLA Anderson Forecast: Good and bad
• The poverty rate in the Valley soared to 15.3% in the 1990s, jumping by more than half, but it remains much lower than the 26% rate in the rest of Los Angeles, according to an analysis for the Daily News by CSUN professor Eugene Turner.
• A Daily News editorial calls the Entertainment Industry Development Corp. nothing but a political slush fund "rife with abuse."
Secession advocate Antonovich returns $1,000
• Secession issues command key spots in the SFV Business Journal dated Sept. 16, on newstands and the Web now. Editor Michael Hart opines that there seem to be two camps in the Valley business community: those who feel the break-up fight is lost, and optimists who feel it could win but are anxiously waiting for the campaign to get serious. He predicts, incidentally, that VICA will endorse secession, and discusses whether the Valley's "premier business advocacy group" should have jumped in sooner. Separately, reporter Jacqueline Fox revisits the Vyonne Burke-sponsored study on secession's impact on blacks, and talks to critics who say it was a case of Over The Hill playing the race card. Those two SFVBJ items are free; for $3 each, you can also click on an interview with mayoral candidate Keith Richman and yet another feature story on the woman at Valley Pet News who believes that cityhood would be good for cats and dogs. After she was written up by Secession Watch, she also appeared in the L.A. Times.
• A brief story on L.A. United returning its $25,000 donation from the Entertainment Industry Development Corp. makes the pages of BackStage.com, by way of the Hollywood Reporter.
• A lot of business owners would love to be free of the Los Angeles' business receipts tax and other city levies, the Daily News' Evan Pondel finds. For some it's the driving motivation for their support of secession, along with the other rules and costs that make L.A. an expensive place to do business. "The business climate in the Valley is a disaster," says Walt Mosher, chairman of Pacoima-based Precision Dynamics.
• The Daily News editorial page declares its new love for Ruth Galanter, praising the councilwoman's recent candid remarks on the poor condition of her inherited Valley district. The editorial reasonably assigns blame to the Valley's elected politicians, but does seem rather glib in saying their only sin was in turning loyal to the downtown Establishment. This lets Valley civic leaders off the hook for decades of exerting influence over zoning and other far-reaching decisions, excuses lethargic Valley voters who rewarded the pols by sending them back to city hall year after year, and downplays the effect of plain old incompetence.
• Fresh off a buzz-generating first story on rats in Beverly Hills, the New York Times' new man in L.A., Charlie LeDuff, chips in 1200 words on Valley secession. He leads with the nostalgia for the Valley of yore angle, told via Jerry England in Chatsworth (including a photo on horseback). The story doesn't fess up that England's a city council candidate though. The piece jumps off from the poll numbers to spend a fair bit of time pondering what follows a secession defeat. There's talk from both sides of the issue coming back for another try two years hence. This begs for further reporting by someone local. Would the LAFCO process start all over, with new petitions and studies? With no appreciably better chance of secession prevailing, would it be harder a second time to build a motivated team to lead the cause? Could Camelot be left off the ballot next time? (OK, kidding on that one.) The NYT quotes Mayor Hahn, council president Alex Padilla, the ubiquitous quip foursome of Close and Katz, Kuwata and Levine -- and yours truly -- and revisits the record of intra-mural secessions where one Valley community quits another.
• Valley candidate David Hernandez gets some coverage in La Opinion as one of three Latino Republicans running in local elections this fall. He's one of the two-timers: he's running for a secession seat and also against Howard Berman for Congress.
• Columnist Dan Walters in the Sacramento Bee mentions Valley secession as an example of the local conflicts and calls for change that he says are making state politicians irrelevant. Instead of looking to elected officials for answers, voters are settling the big questions themselves, Walters argues: "The questions being asked in Los Angeles this year can easily be applied to the state as a whole."
• The Philadelphia Inquirer sent a national correspondent out to do a once-over, lightly pegged to mild secession sentiment in Philly's Northeast enclave and the size comparison to a Valley city. Surprising number of factual errors -- six council members not two, American Graffiti was about Modesto not the SFV, it's Kam Kuwata not Katawa, for example -- but it has a decent rendering of the point of view that the core of the Valley's historic grievance is about respect. He commits a bad, in SW's view, when he lets Larry Levine give some needed perspective, but qualifies him only as a longtime Valleyite not as a paid anti-secession campaign partisan. (Oscar Mendoza also appears as a civilian, not a candidate). Secession Watch may start to keep track of the imagery the out-of-towners choose to use in their ledes -- this one goes the 1776 route.
• After seeing the Daily News Sunday article on the mayor candidates, blogger Steve Smith concludes "I'm beginning to think my write-in candidacy is doable." Smith, who lives "south of Valley Vista" in Sherman Oaks, writes at Smythe's World. Among the planks in his, um, platform, he'd like to see an NFL franchise at a stadium to be built in the Encino hills. Yeah, it's tongue-in-cheek...
• Patt Morrison says in her "Inside Politics" column in the L.A. Times that Ted Stein, the city power player (and public enemy #1 in Chatsworth) whose Encino home served as host to a big anti-secession fundraiser recently, is vacationing in Spain with---Richard Close, the head of Valley VOTE. It's the second time the rivals and their wives have traveled together, she reports. Close jokes that taking Stein out of the country gives his side a chance to catch up. Morrison also has an item that mayor candidate Bruce Boyer planned to disrupt the Stein event, but had the wrong address.
• The Hollywood secession question isn't capturing much of the public's fascination, the L.A. Times finds during a day of hanging around as both sides try to attract some interest.
• A Daily News editorial urges voters not to be concerned that the Valley candidates differ on the details -- "which can always be worked out later." It's the common desire to not be like Los Angeles that matters.
• Associated Press is working on a series of occasional secession stories out of its Los Angeles bureau. This look at Hollywood secession suggests they are starting to move out on the wire.
• When Mayor James K. Hahn crosses Mulholland Drive these days, he leaves friendly territory behind," begins a story in the Sunday Washington Post by L.A. bureau chief William Booth. The piece says that Hahn has begun to alienate the Valley voters who elected him, and perhaps more important to his political future, is raising doubts even among his friends that he is up to the job of leading Los Angeles. In the Post's reckoning, Eli Broad and others stepped in to rescue the L.A. United effort, unimpressed by the mayor's early strategy against secession. Arnold Steinberg, the GOP political consultant who has extra cred with reporters because he is a Valley conservative who talks critically about secession, says Hahn has lucked out: "He is lucky that secession is such a bumbling effort." More brutal assessment of Hahn from David Fleming, the secession bankroller and Hahn appointee who gave up his post on the Ethics Commission to campaign for break-up. He calls the mayor "a child of the status quo" and a follower, "not a leader." (Fleming's name is misspelled on the Post Web site).
• In an opinion piece in the Daily News, CSUN professor Shirley Svorny brings some reasoned analysis to the discussion of cities (including L.A.) and their ability to attract and use federal funds. She supports breaking up Los Angeles, but suggests that "concern over federal funds is a poor criterion for judging the merits of secession." Rather, voters should look at all the benefits of a smaller city, she says.
Audio of Svorny on "Which Way L.A." last week
"L.A. in Context" from Rose Institute (PDF)
• Ladies and gentlemen, here are your candidates for mayor of the Valley. James Nash in the Daily News gives a few grafs to all 10, from the presumed majors to the local government gadflies and everyone in between. Belief in smaller, more responsive government is the common thread, Nash concludes. Aside from the issues, it would be nice to see some solid reporting on their political track records -- what have they stood for before? -- and on their motives for running. Richman and Wilson, for instance, seem to have nothing to lose except some money, but what will they gain even if secession goes down to defeat? Higher profiles in local politics is one aspect, and Richman will have his Assembly seat, but maybe there is more to it. Some of the same questions should, and hopefully will be, asked of the council candidates by somebody.
• The Contra Costa Times drops in on the Valley and declares it to be "an unlikely place for a rebellion." Unlikely? While the strength of secession sentiment is still untested, most observers who look at the Valley's history would say it's exactly the kind of place that would talk about leaving. In the story, which also looks at the Hollywood breakup campaigns, a professor at Cal State Sacramento says secession would likely spark imitators around the state.
• Valley Culture Watch: Oops, White Oleander was left off last week's list of upcoming films where the story is set at least partly in the Valley. White Oleander, from the Jane Fitch novel, stars Michelle Pfeiffer, Renee Zellweger and Robin Wright Penn but the girl at the center of the story, Astrid, is played by Alison Lohman.
• Valley Culture Watch II: Nice quote from historian Matt Roth in a Daily News story on Mulholland Drive, which opened in 1924 as a scenic dirt road to nowhere: "It's the perfect highway for Los Angeles -- it cost $1 million, it didn't go anywhere, but it looked fabulous."
• Valley Culture Watch III: Angelo Buono, one of the infamous Hillside Stranglers who kidnapped women off Valley streets and tortured and killed them in his Glendale garage, died in his prison cell. "Oh, good!" former DA Robert Philibosian exclaimed at hearing the news.
= = = What is the old saying about best-laid plans going awry?... Secession Watch found itself on the road with a defective Internet hookup from Thursday to Sunday. Brief entries for Sept. 19-21 are posted below. Entries for Sunday Sept. 22, will be posted shortly. It's back to business as usual on Monday. Sorry for any inconvenience.
= = =
• Saturday roundup: The anti-secession L.A. United campaign revealed it had gotten $25,000, not $10,000, from the quasi-public Entertainment Industry Development Corp., and will return the cash. Elected officials also queued up to get off the EIDC gravy train. Times report, Daily News report ... Candidates for Valley mayor have differing opinions on whether a new city should move right away to break up the school district. The Daily News and the Times have stories ... Good insight into the differences in city infrastructure between the Valley and the Westside in a Daily News story on uprooted city council lame-duck Ruth Galanter: "Frankly, the Westside doesn't realize how good they've got it." Related story on sewers coming -- finally -- to a Sun Valley neighborhood.
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