EDITORIAL MEASURE OF A CITY SECESSION LEADERS MUST STRENGTHEN THEIR COMMITMENT TO THE NORTHEAST VALLEY.

THE San Fernando Valley secessionists and candidates for Valley city offices who held a rally in Pacoima on Monday to protest the lack of street lights raised a great question for the politicians in Los Angeles City Hall:

Why are the poorest sections of the San Fernando Valley consistently underserved by the downtown power structure?

To which City Hall responded with a question of its own: What guarantee is there that an independent Valley could do any better?

For their part, the nine candidates and the Valley Independence Committee, which staged the event, offered the promise that they would work hard for the Northeast Valley and other poor neighborhoods.

It's true that Valley leadership would be closer to the people, and yes, the new city could probably run more efficiently than City Hall's bloated bureaucracy. But these are merely abstractions when what is needed is a clear and unequivocal commitment.

In the weeks before the Nov. 5 election, we hope to see real, concrete proposals put forward that would commit the government of the Valley city to improving the quality of life throughout the Valley, and most especially in the areas that have been most neglected.

Under the L.A.-Valley divorce plan, an independent Valley would pay $127 million to L.A. City Hall in its first year of independence - the amount Valley residents already send over the hill in taxes that exceed the services they get in return.

But that figure is set to decrease by 5 percent each year, until it disappears entirely in 20 years. In total, a post-secession Valley would save $1.3 billion in its first two decades - money that can be invested in building a healthier community for all its residents.

It would take only a tiny fraction of that money to pay for street lights in Pacoima and other communities whose residents can't afford the $1,600 fee charged by Los Angeles City Hall - an appalling policy that punishes the poor for their poverty.

The savings in alimony payments could help pay for a lot of other neglected services, too, like paving roads, fixing sidewalks throughout the new city's neighborhoods, hiring more police officers, funding anti-gang efforts.

The prospective leaders of an independent San Fernando Valley are staring at a cash windfall worth almost $7 million in the city's second year alone - just shy of the amount that City Hall is spending over five years to replace 1,000 functioning street lights along all 17 miles of Ventura Boulevard.

We have long proclaimed the Northeast Valley as ground zero for testing whether City Hall and the Los Angeles Unified School District are capable of responding to the needs of the Valley as a whole.

A city is no better than its neediest neighborhoods. When housing laws go unenforced, as they have for so long in Los Angeles, neighborhoods that could be saved turn into slums. When law enforcement is ineffective, gangs flourish and crime eats at the whole community like a cancer.

Few measurements of a city's health are more telling than the status of its most disadvantaged neighborhoods, whether they are safe, clean and well- maintained.

By that standard, L.A. City Hall has failed dismally. And it is by that same standard that candidates for leadership of the proposed city of the San Fernando Valley must be measured as well.

They must convince a skeptical public that they have the commitment and ability to do better for the neediest, for the richest and for everyone in between.