Hollywood, Harbor Towns Face Uphill Secession Fight

By LAURENCE DARMIENTO

Staff Reporter

It’s not just Valley secession, of course. On the table are proposed insurrections in Hollywood and the Harbor area that threaten to further break up the city.

Separate studies have come up with different conclusions about the financial viability of each would-be breakaway. One said that Hollywood could make it on its own. Another said that the three Harbor communities seeking emancipation San Pedro, Wilmington and Harbor City could not.

State law requires that a viability threshold be met before the matter is placed before voters. The Los Angeles County Local Agency Formation Commission is scheduled to decide on separate measures for the two areas in May and June.

“It’s likely the finding will be made on Hollywood, but it’s not so clear about San Pedro,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, a key LAFCO commission member. “But I want to hear what (the proponents) have to say.”

If one or both communities get placed on the ballot, it could dramatically change the election dynamic. That’s because secession would require separate majority votes of both the community involved and the city at large. The more potential pro-secession votes that wind up on the ballot, the more likely that the overall city tally would favor a breakup in one or more areas.

The Harbor’s secession movement took a hit earlier this month when state Controller Kathleen Connell ruled the area could not survive as a separate city unless it made significant cuts in municipal services, which could affect its ability to provide police and fire protection.

The controller’s report, which she completed at the request of Mayor James Hahn, supported an earlier study by the Local Agency Formation Commission, or LAFCO, which also questioned the Harbor area’s fiscal viability. It concluded that the area generates $34 million less in revenue that it consumes in services.

Those conclusions prompted the California State Lands Commission to rule unanimously that any Harbor city couldn’t include the majority of the land occupied by the Port of Los Angeles.

But proponents of a Harbor city, which would have a population of about 150,000, plan to push on.

“We have three working refineries and all the revenues are there. They just don’t want us to break up the city,” said Frank Fasullo, a general contractor and a founding member of Harbor Vote, one of the community organizations advocating secession.

Secession advocates say they can make the cuts by running their city more efficiently. Moreover, now that the lands commission has recommended that the proposed city not include the port, it would not have any special expenditures or responsibilities stemming from that massive complex.

But even if Harbor secession advocates are able to convince LAFCO commissioners when they vote on May 22, the fiscal findings have provided fertile ground for secession critics.

“Right out of the gate they are saying they are going to have a 30 percent cut in services,” said Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Matt Middlebrook. “The rest of San Pedro and the Harbor area in no way should accept the bill of goods being sold to them.”

The city of Los Angeles has asked Connell to review LAFCO’s fiscal analysis of the proposed Hollywood city, but already there is belief that her findings, expected in the next few weeks, will support the proposal’s feasibility.

LAFCO’s study of Hollywood found that with its tourism revenue the city could thrive on its own, with a budget of $176 million and a surplus of $6 million after a few years.

“We expect that her announcement will be exactly what LAFCO determined that we are viable and that we would cause no hardship to the remaining city of Los Angeles,” said Gene La Pietra, a Hollywood nightclub and caf & #233; owner. La Pietra is founder and president of Hollywood Vote, the organization leading the secession campaign.

The LAFCO study found that the Hollywood area generates so much revenue that it would owe Los Angeles only between $11 million and $25 million annually in so called “mitigation payments,” since any incorporation must be “revenue neutral” under state law.

Moreover, the LAFCO subcommittee setting terms for the break-up recommended last month that the new city be allowed to keep such assets as park, police and fire stations and that Los Angeles be prohibited from charging Hollywood residents higher utility rates.

Now secession advocates are readying themselves for what they expect will be a massive political battle after the scheduled June 5 vote by LAFCO on whether to put the Hollywood secession proposal before voters.

Advocates clearly expect the June vote to go their way, but they acknowledge the larger task remains convincing the rest of the Los Angeles to give up what has become its worldwide identity.

“It would rip the geographic and cultural center out of the city,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Eric Garcetti, who represents the area and opposes the secession but understands the residents’ desire for more local control. “It’s always easier to believe in the unknown than to improve the world we live in.”