By HOWARD FINE

Staff Reporter

Just as we are now living with the consequences of all the decisions that governments made 20 years ago, government decisions being made today will affect L.A. businesses and residents for much of the next century, let alone the next 20 years.

Just look at four major public policy issues now being debated: charter reform implementation; secession of the San Fernando Valley; expansion of Los Angeles International Airport; and the battle over cable access to homes for the Internet age.

The ultimate outcome of these issues could profoundly change the region. The fact that decisions about them are all being made at roughly the same time makes this one of the most critical periods in the region’s history.

While L.A. voters overwhelmingly approved a blueprint for charter reform last month, the extent to which city government will change depends on how the City Council, the soon-to-be-established Department of Neighborhood Empowerment and Mayor Richard Riordan actually implement the new charter.

“The government will craft what charter reform really means,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College.

The most far-reaching changes of charter reform are likely to be felt from the neighborhood councils and area planning commissions, which, in theory, are meant to decentralize power from City Hall. But the extent of the neighborhood councils’ advisory powers and planning commissions’ jurisdiction has yet to be determined.

If these bodies end up with little actual power, it could further fuel the secession movements now underway in various parts of the city. The San Fernando Valley and Harbor area are furthest along. The Valley already has gotten enough signatures to force the Local Agency Formation Commission to study the issue; the Harbor area came up 15 votes short in its initial effort but is widely expected to soon garner enough support to gain LAFCO consideration.

Over the next 18 to 24 months, LAFCO will study the costs and benefits of splitting off the Valley and the Harbor area from the city. Once that study is complete, the real debate will begin over whether and how to divide assets, like the Port of Los Angeles, and how to share revenues. (The secession initiatives must be deemed “revenue neutral” to be put on the ballot.) Both secession proposals could come to a citywide vote within three years.

Meanwhile, other areas of the city, such as the Westside and Eagle Rock, also are considering secession, although they are not nearly as far along. Whether they formally join the secession movement is still up in the air.

“The secession issue has taken on a life of its own,” Bebitch Jeffe said.

Of course, if any of these areas ultimately secede, it would dramatically change the very nature of the city. It would reverse the consolidation trend that took place in the early decades of this century, through which L.A. became the Southern California’s dominant city.

As if this weren’t enough, the region’s long-term fate is also being determined with regard to infrastructure.

Perhaps the most controversial issue and the one likely to dominate the headlines for at least several more years is the proposed expansion of Los Angeles International Airport. Riordan has made the expansion effort one of the cornerstones of his second term, although a final decision is not likely until well after a new mayor is sworn in. Riordan and fellow expansion proponents say an expanded LAX is absolutely vital if L.A. is to remain globally competitive.

The most recent plan calls for reconfiguring the runways and adding terminals on the west side of the airport, allowing for up to 90 million passengers a year. (Currently, about 62 million passengers use LAX annually.) Other plans being considered would add one or even two runways and allow for 98 million passengers a year.

But LAX expansion plans have run into severe turbulence from neighboring cities, like El Segundo, where residents object to the additional noise and traffic an expanded facility would create. They are pushing instead for other regional airports, especially the airfield near Palmdale.

Airports are not the only infrastructure issue that could change the region in the next 20 years. The Alameda Corridor rail link from the L.A.-Long Beach port complex to downtown now expected to be completed by 2002 will likely have profound impacts, allowing for more cargo traffic and easing congestion throughout south L.A.

However, the full impact of the Alameda Corridor will likely not be felt unless the Alameda Corridor East extension project is fully funded and built within the next 10 years. That proposed extension would either elevate or submerge railways at road intersections through the San Gabriel Valley and greatly ease the flow of goods from the ports to the major rail terminals in the Inland Empire.

“The ports, the Alameda Corridor and Alameda Corridor East projects, and expanding the region’s airport capacity are all absolutely vital for the region to be globally competitive,” said Stephen Erie, a UC San Diego professor who has studied L.A.’s infrastructure.

Also key for the next 20 years and beyond will be decisions reached in Washington and Sacramento regarding the state’s water supply, which is regarded as crucial to accommodate future growth. For the last 20 years, talks have dragged on over how to divvy up the water flowing through the San Francisco Bay-Sacramento River Delta region. Agreement between farmers, environmentalists, and Northern and Southern California urban water users still remains far off. And the thorny issue of how to allocate the dwindling allotment of Colorado River water remains unresolved.

Meanwhile, another infrastructure issue has exploded in recent months: access to the region’s homes and businesses through fiber-optic cable modems.

Two telecom-industry groups are fighting over who will get to reap the billions of dollars in potential profits from hooking people up to the Internet. In one corner are the cable companies, being led by AT & T; Corp. They favor a continuation of the local monopoly franchise system now in place for cable television. In the other corner are local phone companies and Internet service providers, which want access to the cable lines.

In many ways, the debate is similar to the furious battles that took place over who would be granted cable television franchises. Those decisions, made 20 years ago, remain critical today.

“The decision that the city is going to make is a huge one, a massive one,” said Rohit Shukla, president and chief executive of the Los Angeles Regional Technology Alliance, a high-tech policy group. “To the extent that the city intervenes, it will bias the outcome one way or another, which in turn will affect the degree and speed of Internet access rollout in this community.”

Just this month, change rocked another government body. On July 1, three new reform-oriented members and one reform-minded incumbent were elected to the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The board now faces tough choices on how to increase teacher and administrator accountability.

“Reducing class size, changing the curriculum, developing better career-training programs these are absolutely critical to ensuring that we train people to meet future job needs,” said Ezunial Burts, president and chief executive of the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. “Without a well-trained workforce, businesses in L.A. can’t continue to grow and prosper.”

While statewide education reform tops the Sacramento agenda and is getting the lion’s share of increased funding from the state’s $4.5 billion surplus, a host of other decisions loom that could greatly increase the cost of doing business.

Among the issues being considered are proposals to increase workers’ compensation and unemployment benefits; reform of health maintenance organizations; and repeal of the ban on daily overtime pay.