1977 BREAKAWAY PROPONENT HEADS AGENCY WITH KEY POWER.

Byline: Mark Katches Daily News Sacramento Bureau

The head of a key agency that would analyze any Valley secession movement is a West Hills resident who helped lead a 1977 campaign to separate the San Fernando Valley from the city of Los Angeles.

There is no organized secession movement in the Valley today, but talk of secession has been revived by Assemblywoman Paula Boland's legislation to eliminate the City Council's veto power over such a movement.

Supporters of Boland's bill say the issue is one of self-determination and respect - that the Valley is not treated fairly in the apportionment of city resources and attention.

But should an actual secession drive emerge, the question would first have to be put to the Los Angeles County Local Agency Formation Commission - which has the power under state law to block partition if it believes the new city could not support itself or the city left behind would be economically crippled.

The newly appointed executive director of the Los Angeles County LAFCO is Larry Calemine, who was a major proponent of an earlier Valley secession movement.

In 1977, Calemine was a member of the grass-roots Committee Investigating Valley Independent City/County.

``The movement was gathering so much speed, it almost seemed like it was going to be pulled off,'' said Calemine, who served with Boland as a member of CIVICC.

``Then the politics came into play. That made it impossible,'' he said. ``It essentially killed it.''

In fact, laws adopted by the Legislature dating back to the late 1800s have stacked the deck against aspiring secessionists.

State lawmakers first tackled the issue in 1889 by requiring residents seeking to form a new city to get petitions signed by 20 percent of the registered voters in the entire city - not just the area wishing to secede.

The measure also required that a secession be approved by a ``double majority'' of voters in both the secession area and the city as a whole.

Back then, city councils did not have veto power, and Coronado was able to break away from San Diego in 1890 by mounting a successful petition drive and winning a double majority election.

There have been no recorded successful detachment proceedings in California since, said legislative analysts who have researched the issue.

The last major secession effort that made it past a Local Agency Formation Commission was a 1975 drive by a group of San Ysidro landowners to leave the city of San Diego.

The movement's chief opponent was San Diego's then-mayor, Pete Wilson, who urged the San Diego County LAFCO to reject the efforts of the border town to break off its 26 square miles and 41,400 residents.

The commission nonetheless approved the partition - but San Ysidro's breakaway effort failed when the Wilson administration filed a lawsuit demanding an environmental impact report.

Without the money to pay for it, the efforts of the developers in San Ysidro fizzled.

Wilson has not taken a position on AB 2043 by Boland, R-Granada Hills. Spokesman Sean Walsh said the governor's opposition to the San Ysidro secession movement will have no bearing on any position he takes on the Boland legislation.

``I think Pete Wilson will look at this measure on its own merits,'' Boland said.

Boland's bill removes the Los Angeles City Council's power to block a vote by residents in the San Fernando Valley who wish to secede by amending the Knox Municipal Reorganization Act of 1977.

The Knox bill, adopted in the midst of a fierce political battle in which CIVICC played a pivotal role, created the five-step process for secession by consolidating eight laws governing annexation, detachment and incorporation proceedings.

Although the petition threshold was lowered to 20 percent of registered voters from the area seeking to detach, the measure included other checks and balances, including the city council veto, that could stop a secession dead in its tracks - even if there was a groundswell of community support.