1999: Valley secession.

'As recently as a few months ago, San Fernando Valley secessionists were widely dismissed as an oddball fringe. But now that they have obtained enough signatures on petitions to force a study of secession, their opponents no longer are so glib," the Business Journal reported in April 1999. "Mayor Richard Riordan has stepped up his verbal campaign against secession. And the L.A. City Council appears to be taking the movement more seriously, with members squabbling over whether the city should help pick up the tab for a $1.8 million study of the proposed breakup."

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said the success of the signature gathering effort was a testament to Valley residents' frustration with the city.

"The public will have a hard time understanding why it would be denied an opportunity to vote." he said.

Vote they did.

If the Valley could have decided its own fate, it would have seceded, by the narrow margin of 3,760 votes out of 245,646 ballots cast in the 2002 election. But only one in five voters elsewhere in the city of Los Angeles wanted to let the Valley go its own way. Breakaway movements in Hollywood and San Pedro were also defeated.

In the end, voters just didn't see an urgent need to break up Los Angeles.

"The pro-secession crowd never articulated a compelling vision for their proposed city," wrote Pepperdine University professor Joel Kotkin. "For the most part, they simply offered up the lame ideal of a more efficiently run Phoenix."

"Out of the Past" is published each week to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Los Angeles Business Journal.