Hed — Valley Rights
They finally got at least something right over at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. With federal officials having turned down the MTA’s latest budget revisions, it seems all but assured that a subway line for the San Fernando Valley, at least one funded with public money, is absolutely, completely and irrevocably dead.
Not that the Valley doesn’t have its share of transportation woes that need fixing. But the subway proposal was never based on need or economic viability, but rather on the whims of a small group of influential activists who concluded that if other parts of the city had a rail line, so must the Valley.
Such a narrow-minded view of our city and of the Valley’s place within it is hardly limited to the MTA. The endless secession debate, now catapulted into the state Legislature, has been kept alive by many of those same activists who keep invoking the vague precept of “Valley rights.”
We agree that on the specific, and quite narrow, point being considered in Sacramento, city councils should not have veto power in secession applications. But to spend so much time on the Valley’s right to secede is about as practical as developing a code of conduct for life on Mars.
Valley secession isn’t about to happen, and everyone knows it. The immense costs, the legal hurdles, the lukewarm response from Valley residents these and other matters of fact have been put aside in favor of emotional, “poor-me” refrains about the Valley’s perceived second-class status.
Why all the hand-wringing? Some of it probably goes back to a long-held view that Valley taxpayers do not receive their fair share of city services (a perspective that flies in the face of the Valley’s changing demographics and economics).
Some of it, too, involves simple geography. The Valley’s distance from City Hall invites tired claims that there’s a secret cadre of business and government interests that’s only interested in downtown development.
To some extent, of course, the Valley patriots have a point. Both culturally and politically, this has been a mercilessly derided place (to the point where the 818 area code has taken on a pejorative connotation). The truth, of course, is that the Valley has become a centerpiece of L.A. economic activity as well as a significant source of cultural and academic pursuits. Take a look at the area’s major growth industries entertainment and technology and see how many 818 area codes you run into.
To his credit, Mayor Richard Riordan has done an admirable job in affirming the Valley’s importance both politically and economically but not enough, it seems, to assuage the one-sided views of the above-mentioned activists, who consider anything south of Mulholland Drive to be enemy turf.
That’s a shame, for the city of Los Angeles can ill-afford the ongoing balkanization that, over the long haul, threatens its very core (and when it comes to balkanized attitudes, the Valley is hardly alone). Figuring out how to work together instead of railing against each other remains the city’s most basic challenge, as well as its most confounding.
