Secession Bill Now Test of Nerves

As recently as a week ago, passage of legislation making it easier for the San Fernando Valley to divorce Los Angeles seemed a pretty safe bet. The bill, by Assemblymen Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) and Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks), would require just a majority vote of the entire city to determine whether a particular neighborhood could break off on its own.

But the odds turned sour last week as a state Senate committee amended the bill to apply not just to Los Angeles, but to cities statewide. That provision turns off a lot of legislators, who fear that their districts might then face the same kind of neighborhood Balkanization tearing the seams of Los Angeles.

The intent of the changes suggested by Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) was clearly to make the bill less palatable when it hits the Senate floor later this summer. Polanco is openly critical of the proposal, which removes the City Council’s veto power over breakaway movements.

The Times remains opposed to a split of Los Angeles as counterproductive and expensive, but is supportive of efforts to transfer power from City Hall to neighborhoods--and not just in Southern California. If the true aim of McClintock and Hertzberg’s bill is to give voters the power to choose their own path, then that’s a right residents everywhere ought to have. Polanco makes no bones about wanting the bill dead, but--politics aside--his amendment makes a fair amount of sense.

Now comes the real test of legislators from other parts of the state. It was easy to support the McClintock-Hertzberg bill when it applied only to Los Angeles. But its appeal should not shrink simply because its purview has grown. If the power of a neighborhood to decide makes sense in Encino, it should make just as much sense in Eureka.