Concurrent Votes Are Wrinkle in Secession

Plans for the election of a pioneer government to run a new San Fernando Valley city offer a preview of the political upheaval that would be sparked next year by breaking apart Los Angeles.

The election of the Valley’s first mayor and City Council could take place at the same time as the proposed secession referendum in November 2002, and it already poses problems for cityhood planners.

The ballot would give voters a chance to anoint a new generation of political leaders or prolong the careers of longtime elected officials facing term limits. And as cityhood planners lay the groundwork for the proposed election, civil rights groups, secession advocates and politicians are beginning to grasp the breadth of its impact.

To start, the Los Angeles City Council would be tossed into a political muddle.

Council President Alex Padilla of Pacoima and three other Valley members would lose their entire districts to the new city if secession passed. Unless they moved to homes south of Mulholland Drive, they would be ousted in mid-term under the City Charter rule that council members live in Los Angeles, city lawyers say.

Three other members would lose thousands of constituents because the Valley neighborhoods in their districts would be ceded to the new city.

To govern the shrunken Los Angeles on the south side of the Santa Monica Mountains, the council would have to reapportion itself into smaller districts. Such radical redistricting, experts say, would be fraught with potential violations of the laws that safeguard the rights of minority voters.

“It’s going to cause tremendous disruption,” said David Ely, a redistricting specialist who advises the council.

North of the Hollywood Hills, the Valley city would face similar issues in establishing its own council. Padilla’s predominantly Latino district in the northeast Valley, for example, was drawn largely to advance Latino representation after years of voting rights litigation.

“There is a danger whenever you get involved in redistricting that the rights of minority voters will be ignored, and they’ll be gerrymandered in a way that dilutes their vote,” said Steven Reyes, a voting rights attorney at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Next week, the Local Agency Formation Commission, the panel weighing whether to put secession on the ballot, plans to vote on hiring a consultant to draw maps for at least 14 council districts in a new Valley city. The consultant, PDQ GeoDemographics, would prepare the maps within 90 days, allowing scores of would-be candidates to ponder running for new Valley offices.

The commission plans to hire another consultant in the fall to ensure the maps comply with the voting rights laws.

For politicians scouting their career options, the Valley’s first municipal election would offer a host of job opportunities.

Chief among the potential Valley mayoral contenders is Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks), who declined to say whether he would run. Others include former Assemblyman Richard Katz of Sylmar, who said he was not interested “at this point,” and state Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sun Valley), who said he would “take a serious look at it,” but still expects to run next year for reelection.

The timing of an election of a Valley mayor and council is a key decision for the commission. The choice is between putting it on the same November 2002 ballot with the proposed secession referendum (the results would be moot if voters opt to keep Los Angeles united) or calling the election only after voters have approved cityhood.

Valley separatists are divided on whether the referendum and municipal election should be at the same time. One camp says campaign spending by a crowd of mayoral and council candidates would help promote passage of the secession proposal. With organized labor, the downtown business establishment and Los Angeles elected officials expected to mobilize against Valley cityhood, these secessionists say they need all the support they can get from candidates.

“It’s in the best interests of everybody to have it at the same time,” said J. Richard Leyner, a board member at the Valley VOTE secession group.

But another separatist camp fears a simultaneous referendum and municipal election would undermine cityhood prospects as candidates with competing agendas divert attention from secession.

“It’s going to be a blood bath,” said former Rep. Bobbi Fiedler of Northridge, who has championed Valley independence for more than 25 years. “You’re going to have an extremely negative campaign.”

Secession advocate Harry Coleman, Fiedler’s husband, said good candidates would be reluctant to run in an election that would be null if voters reject cityhood.

“You get some guy that’s going to put up $1 million to be the mayor of the new city, and the secession movement doesn’t pass, he’s out the money and the office,” Coleman said.

A Valley election combined with the referendum has also raised concerns among Latino leaders who oppose secession. They say a ballot crowded with candidates for Valley offices could confuse voters into voting mistakenly for cityhood.

“People are going to assume that it’s a done deal,” said Xavier Flores, treasurer of the San Fernando Valley chapter of the Mexican American Political Assn. “It seems skewed. It would be a great waste of time, resources, you name it.”

Voters in Malibu, Calabasas, Santa Clarita and other recently established California cities elected their first mayors and councils on the same ballot that carried the cityhood measure. But carving a Valley city out of Los Angeles is a vastly more complex endeavor, and the commission has no legal obligation to hold a dual election for secession and municipal offices.

Whatever the commission decides, it’s clear that one of the election’s most important consequences could be the radical overhaul of the Los Angeles City Council.

In a study released in March, the commission said that in the event of secession, Padilla and the other Los Angeles council members from the Valley would lose their districts, but could remain in office as members at large.

But lawyers at the city attorney’s office disagree. In a report last month, they found that the four council members with districts wholly in the Valley would lose their offices.

Members “who reside in a council district that would no longer be part of the city would cease to be residents of the city when the areas in which they live are no longer within the city,” the report found. “Consequently, they would no longer be members of the council, and their offices would become vacant.”

Padilla spokesman David Gershwin said the council president had no comment on the possible loss of his district, but the “furthest thing from his mind” was a run for office in a new Valley city.