EDITORIAL : MORE POLITICS SELF-DETERMINATION BILL FOR VALLEY IS IN DANGER AGAIN.

THE long-awaited showdown set for Wednesday on whether the people of the San Fernando Valley will win back the right to determine their own political destiny suddenly took an unexpected - and potentially disastrous - turn Monday.

The acid test for AB 62 stripping the Los Angeles City Council of its veto power over secession movements is Wednesday's vote in the state Senate's Local Government Committee.

Valley leaders were confident they had the needed four votes to get out of the committee after a full and fair hearing - confident until Monday when the political games once again began to try and preserve the tyranny of the Los Angeles City Council over the Valley.

Sen. Charles Calderon, D-Montebello, who supported lifting the veto power, resigned from the Local Government Committee and was immediately replaced by Sen. Richard Polanco, D-Los Angeles, one of the most vehement opponents of the Valley's demands for equal political rights.

The man who named Polanco was none other than State Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer, D-Hayward. It was Lockyer who scuttled the right-to-secede bill last year but who has promised repeatedly not to interfere with an honest vote on the issue this year.

Did Lockyer break his promise in a hardball play that the legislature hasn't seen since Willie Brown went home to San Francisco?

He claims no, that both Calderon and Polanco share the same point of view in opposing breakup of the city.

The question on the table is one of basic political fairness and integrity.

If the Senate kills this bill because of backdoor political shenanigans, it will do nothing to raise the stature and credibility of the state Legislature.

We hope we did not mistakenly put our trust in Lockyer's stated good intentions, in his professed commitment to this very important, basic democratic principle.

If Senate Democrats allow this injustice to be perpetuated, they surely must know there is a political price to be paid now and in the future. Hard as it may be to put aside their private advantages, this is the time to rise up and put the public interest first.

Continued repression of the Valley's right to fight for its own political identity should not be in anyone's interest for any reason.