PRO-SECESSION SIDE MAY TAKE INITIATIVE ROUTE.

Byline: Paul Hefner Daily News Sacramento Bureau

In what they describe as a replay of Proposition 13, San Fernando Valley activists threatened Friday to launch a statewide initiative to allow for the breakup of cities, including Valley secession from Los Angeles.

Frustrated that hostile amendments were inserted into a bill they were backing in the Legislature, leaders of Valley Voters Organized Toward Empowerment said they were thinking of taking their case directly to voters.

The group plans to move forward with crafting the initiative, tentatively called the Local Government Independence Act, if state lawmakers fail in the next few months to approve legislation lifting the City Council's veto over secession drives.

Recalling the grass-roots tax revolt of the 1970s, proponents said they would not be put off by the daunting prospect of launching a statewide campaign to alter the California Constitution.

``This is a replay of Proposition 13,'' said Valley VOTE co-chairman Richard Close, who helped lead the property tax rebellion. ``I was there. I was involved in it. When we were thrown out of the Legislature with no action, we took to the streets with an initiative.''

Valley VOTE leaders discussed the initiative process in a meeting Friday with Assemblymen Tom McClintock, R-Granada Hills, and Robert Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys. The pair are co-authors of AB 62, which would replace the council veto with a citywide vote.

Their bill sailed through the Assembly, but bogged down Wednesday in a state Senate committee hearing, where opponents pushed through a pair of amendments. The amendments call for ending council vetoes statewide and for forming a commission to study secession proposals.

Hertzberg said he would consider backing an initiative if passage of his bill proves impossible.

``Personally, if there's no way to get the bill through, if (the initiative) is consistent with the principles of the existing legislation, I'm certainly willing to sign on,'' Hertzberg said.

Close said the group's priority remains passage of acceptable legislation lifting the veto. But the organization, which saw a similar bill die in the Legislature last year, was growing impatient.

``Last year we said, Wait till '97. We've decided not to say, Wait until '98,'' Close said.

He said the group would prefer not to undertake the initiative drive, but would do so if necessary to achieve its goal.

``The goal is to motivate the Legislature,'' Close said. ``The initiative process is there to be used by the public if the Legislature does not respond. That's what we're talking about now.''

While the group was still discussing the potential provisions, the initiative would be meant to make it easier to break the Valley away from Los Angeles, Close said.

In addition to eliminating the veto, the measure would allow a detachment to occur by majority vote of the area breaking away, rather than by a citywide vote. It also would simplify the detachment process and reduce the number of petition signatures needed to put a secession drive to a vote, Close said.

To attract statewide support for the measure, members of the group are considering requiring the state to provide local governments with funding to cover any new state-mandated programs, Close said.

``That would make this measure really attractive to a lot of cities that are being forced to do a lot of programs and not being reimbursed by the state,'' he said.

A spokesman for Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer, D-Hayward, said that, while any citizen has the right to propose an initiative, there is no reason to take that step now.

``They should focus on the current legislation, which . . . is very much alive,'' said Sandy Harrison, Lockyer's press secretary.

Lockyer, who came under fire for appointing secession opponent Sen. Richard Polanco, D-Los Angeles, to the committee that adopted the amendments, has said he doesn't believe the new provisions are poison pills.

But backers of the legislation were increasingly concerned that the amended bill would make a secession campaign expensive and impractical. In particular, they questioned the amendment requiring a new commission to conduct a 10-month study of any secession proposal.

The study could be triggered by anyone - even someone the detachment would not affect, Hertzberg said.

``Presumably, somebody from Nebraska can make an objection about a proposed detachment in San Francisco,'' he said. ``It's an octopus in terms of how it operates.''

For a statewide study of the secession process, Hertzberg said he is carrying a separate bill, and an additional commission is not needed for a local study.

He said the county's Local Agency Formation Commission, or LAFCO, already would be charged with conducting a study if a secession proposal were put forward.

While there may be flaws in the LAFCO process, Hertzberg said the remedy for that problem isn't the creation of another commission.

``The worst thing about government is we keep adding more and more rooms onto this Winchester Mystery House,'' he said. ``Let's fix the LAFCO process, if that's what they want to do, and not just add another bureaucratic layer in the process.''