It was the political volcano that nearly split Los Angeles apart.
After simmering for years, the explosion that led to the San Fernando Valley secession drive ended 10 years ago today when voters in Los Angeles rejected the Valley’s effort to break away and become its own city.
The vote count reflected how divided the issue had left the city.
In the Valley, 50.7 percent of voters approved secession. If the measure had passed, the new Valley city, with some 1.35 million people, would’ve become the sixth largest city in the United States.
However, voters in the rest of the city opposed it substantially, so it only tallied 33 percent support overall. A companion measure that would have allowed Hollywood to secede also failed – both in Hollywood and the city as a whole. And a third effort to have the San Pedro/Wilmington area also secede failed to make the ballot.
“The one question I hear is whether there will there be another secession movement,” said Richard Close, who served as chairman of Valley VOTE (Voters Organized Toward Empowerment).
“I tell them, absolutely, yes. And, if that fails, another movement will start. Eventually it will pass. It will happen again. It’s just a question of when.”
The secession movement was driven by a sense that the San Fernando Valley wasn’t getting its fair share of services and political attention from the city of Los Angeles.
Close said he does not believe the Valley’s standing relative to the rest of the city has improved in the 10 years since the secession vote.
“The issues are the same,” he said. “No. 1, there is a lack of official control. No. 2, a lack of services. Nothing has changed, except maybe it has gotten worse.”
However, others say the secession movement did bring about big change.
It’s at least partially credited for spawning the neighborhood council movement, getting the Valley another City Council district and more representation on city boards.
“I think what we’ve seen is there is more emphasis on keeping things fair in the Valley and I think there is a recognition by the City Council to be sensitive to the Valley,” said Joe Vitti, who has been Valley VOTE president since shortly after the election.
Valley VOTE, a coalition of neighborhood activists and business interests, was the chief organization pushing for secession. Today, it continues to function as a more general group pushing for Valley empowerment.
“We concentrate now on doing good things for the Valley and the city,” Vitti said.
Secession also may have cost former Mayor James Hahn his job.
Hahn, now a Superior Court judge, led the effort to keep Los Angeles intact and at times faced withering criticism from Valley activists. He lost in his 2005 re-election bid to then-Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, and some analysts believed that lingering anger in the Valley contributed to that defeat.
Hahn did not return calls for this article.
Hahn formed a group called One Los Angeles that raised more than $6 million as he appeared seemingly everywhere during the campaign to defeat secession.
As mayor he also backed gestures to grant more political power to the Valley, such as backing neighborhood councils and creating a sixth City Council district in the Valley.
He made it clear he did not want to be the mayor who was responsible for the breakup of Los Angeles.
“I was elected to be the mayor of a city I love,” Hahn said at one event during the campaign. “My challenge and the challenge to all of you who love Los Angeles is how can this diverse city move forward as one city?
Despite Hahn’s efforts, however, the movement was not to be stopped.
“Looking back, it was a really divisive time in Los Angeles history,” said Tom Hogen-Esch, a political science professor at Cal State Northridge who studied secession closely. “Los Angeles was coming out of the recession of the 1990s, there was a lot of anti-immigration discussion. And, secession was seen almost as an expression of white flight.
“Many of its leaders were from that older political generation involved in the anti-busing movement. But the issues were much more complex. It was about making an argument that power needed to be decentralized in this extremely large, complex city.”
The secession movement had roots going back four decades, with stunted efforts to break away from the city in the 1960s and 1970s. Just getting Measure F on the ballot was an achievement for the Valley activists.
Jeff Brain, who was in real estate at the time, became president of Valley VOTE and the point person on overcoming the procedural hurdles to get secession on the ballot.
“We had so much to go through,” said Brain, who now lives in Orange County and heads a company, Ceralight Global, which provides solar lighting systems around the world. “We had to get state legislation passed. We had to get through LAFCO (Local Agency Formation Commission) which wanted us to pay for the study.
“We had to break ground on a number of fronts just to get this before voters. If there is ever another secession movement, I think we made it easier for them.”
Brain said in retrospect he now believes the secessionists made a strategic mistake by putting Measure F on the ballot in 2002.
“If we had waited two years, we could have mobilized other parts of the city,” Brain said, noting that secession movements had sprouted in Hollywood and San Pedro at the time.
“And Mayor Hahn was in the Valley several times a week campaigning against us. I’m not sure he and the city could have kept that pace up for two more years.”
But others question if secession made sense for the Valley.
Councilman Richard Alarcon, who was in the state Senate at the time, had been recruited by secession leaders to run for mayor of the new city. It was an attempt to give the movement credibility by winning the support of a sitting elected official and one well entrenched in the Latino community.
Alarcon said he thought hard about it before deciding to not run for Valley mayor and to oppose secession.
“There were several reasons, but the big one was the lack of control over the Department of Water and Power,” Alarcon said.
“Without that, the city could impose much higher rates on the Valley and we couldn’t even negotiate with them. I saw that as critical and, in the end, I considered it a poison pill to secession.”
In addition, LAFCO studies determined that a new Valley city would have to pay “alimony” of $127 million to the rest of Los Angeles, an amount that would decrease to zero over 20 years.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was a councilman at the time, said he took the lessons from secession seriously and has worked to make sure the area has gotten more attention from City Hall since he became mayor in 2005.
“The secession movement reminded City Hall that the Valley is an integral and rich part of the L.A. fabric,” Villaraigosa said.
“Since I was elected mayor, I have made sure Valley voices are heard.”
Villaraigosa said 47 percent of his commissioners come from the Valley, more than $2.2 billion has been spent on transportation projects and the Valley has seen a new police station – Topanga station in Canoga Park – as well as the LAPD’s Valley Operations Bureau. Also, he said, 36 new schools have opened in the Valley.
The mayor’s office said he has appeared in the Valley for 450 to 500 events since his election.
It has also seen transportation improvements, such as the completion of the Orange Line busway across the Valley and its new extension to Chatsworth that opened this year.
City Controller Wendy Greuel was in her first race for the City Council and she used the secession sentiment to help her.
“I ran as an independent voice for the Valley,” said Greuel, who is now running for mayor. “Even though it didn’t pass, I think it forever changed the city. No one is ever going to take the Valley for granted again.”
