2 PUSH BOROUGH CONCEPT GREUEL, HAHN TO CALL FOR VOTE ON BALLOT BID.

Byline: Mariel Garza Staff Writer

Councilwomen Wendy Greuel and Janice Hahn plan to ask their fellow City Council members this week to put a charter amendment on the Nov. 5 ballot asking voters to create a borough system in Los Angeles.

The proposal, which they say would offer voters an alternative to secession, would immediately create a citizen commission to draft a charter amendment approving boroughs. If that measure is approved in November, the panel would flesh out a borough plan - detailing how many districts would be created and what their authority would be - to be considered by voters in May 2003.

``This is about committing to a borough system,'' Greuel said Monday. ``It is not talking about it. ... It's not a study.''

Any borough plan recommended by the commission would be subject to City Council approval and the veto by Mayor James Hahn - the councilwoman's brother.

Greuel and Hahn have only until July 17 - the deadline for placing measures on the November ballot - to win over at least eight other council members, some of whom have already said they oppose boroughs.

``I think we came up with something that will have support from our council colleagues,'' Hahn said.

The proposal will be reviewed today by the Council's Education and Neighborhoods Committee. It could go to the full council by Friday.

Greuel and Hahn had been working with Assemblyman Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys - who has been pushing his own boroughs proposal - on a compromise they could all support.

But Greuel said Monday they had gotten hung up on details, so she and Hahn decided to push forward with their own proposal.

Hertzberg said he had not yet seen the councilwomen's plan.

``I look forward to receiving the proposal,'' he said in a statement. ``I hope it will lead to a system that creates local control and brings government closer to people.''

Secession backers have criticized the borough proposal as a toothless, 11th-hour attempt to deflect secession by the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood, both of the which will also be on the ballot.

Attorney David Fleming, a lead secession backer as well as a longtime borough supporter, said the attempt to address the complaints about an unresponsive municipal bureaucracy is too little and too late.

``If they want to take the temperature of the electorate as far as boroughs are concerned, that's fine,'' he said. ``It's not going to stop the pressure in back of cityhood.''

Fleming was unsuccessful in his attempt to get a borough system established in the city during the last reform of the City Charter.

Janice Hahn said the borough plan is not meant to thwart secession so much as an attempt to heed the complaints of the city's residents.

``I think secession will be defeated on its own merits,'' Hahn said. ``I think the more people find out about the economic and financial burden of secession, it will be defeated. This gives people a way to say let's keep the city together, let's make it a better city ... and let's address some of the frustrations, like city departments not being accountable at the local level.''