PUBLIC FORUM : ADVOCATES OF CITYWIDE SECESSION VOTE REBUTTED.

This letter is in regard to AB 62, the ``People's right to self-determination act,'' recently submitted to our state Legislature by Assemblyman Tom McClintock, R-Granada Hills.

A majority of our Los Angeles City Council members and many members of our state Legislature have voted against and spoken out against the ideals put forth in AB 62 and its carbon-copy predecessor, the Boland bill. Opponents of these two bills have sought to justify their position in various ways, such as posing questions regarding decreased tax revenues, possession and possible cost factors of municipal holdings, emergency services, basic city services, citywide morale and the need for general economic analysis - all very important factors, to be sure.

However, the basic, underlying premise of the right of citizens in a given local community to vote within that local community as whether to govern themselves as an entity or to remain joined to a larger local entity is about as basic as you can get in regard to American constitutional freedoms.

Opponents counter AB 62's basic premise, self-determination, with the idea that secession of a local community from a city could cause such potential adverse effects upon the city as a whole, that exception must be made to constitutional freedoms, and all affected citizens should be given the right to vote on the proposed secession impact.

If we follow the premise of the opponents to its logical conclusion, any vote or action that could possibly adversely affect any issues, entities or individuals physically removed from that community where the vote or action is taking place would have a ``basic right'' to vote in regard to that issue, entity or individual.

Therefore, I, as a voting citizen, residing within the San Fernando Valley, should be able to vote for or against all of our Los Angeles City Council members and California legislators in any election, regardless of what community they represent, under the premise that their votes and actions in their elected positions could possibly adversely impact myself and my community, even though they may be physically removed from my locality. Think about it.

Hopefully, this idea will serve to raise a few arrogant, elitist, power-hungry, political eyebrows in the city of Los Angeles and our state Legislature and spur further discussion.

- Alexander Theodore Gately

Sylmar

Jumping the gun

Your Dec. 20 editorial (``Premature politics'') deriding attempts by some elected officials to prejudge Police Chief Willie L. Williams' performance was right on the mark. The citizens of Los Angeles voted in 1992 to impose civilian oversight over the Police Department and, in particular, the employment of the chief of police.

This was a clear message to remove politics from decisions affecting the department as much as possible.

When elected officials take positions on whether to renew Chief Williams' contract before the Police Commission has conducted what should be an objective assessment of the chief's performance, they subvert the will of the voters by unnecessarily injecting politics into the process.

A decision regarding Chief Williams' contract must be based solely on the record. The stakes are too high for anything else.

- Michael Feuer 

Council member, 5th District

Los Angeles

`Irresponsible behavior'

For the most part, people don't get rich by accident and people don't become poor by accident.

If a husband and wife earn a certain amount of money each month and know they cannot afford to have more children, then why do they keep making more and more babies and expect fellow taxpayers to bail them out?

If a girl or woman doesn't have a job, or has a job that doesn't pay enough to support a family, and she also doesn't have a caring, responsible husband who'll provide financial and emotional support, then why does she get pregnant anyway and demand cradle-to-grave taxpayer-financed entitlements from the government?

If a boy or man wants lots of free-and-easy, no-strings-attached sex, with no responsibility for any children he may father, then why doesn't he get a vasectomy or at least make sure that both he and his sex partner use contraceptives every time they have sex?

We lost the War on Poverty because we did not declare a war on irresponsible behavior. This is not a moral question; it is an economic one.

Start in grade school. Tell students: No, it's not OK to make babies you have no intention of supporting without taxpayer help. No, it's not OK to have more children than you can afford without government handouts. No, it's not OK to make love then make tracks; no, you are not a macho man if you get girls pregnant then take a powder.

Until the concept of being sexually responsible becomes the hip and stylish way to go, and those who act irresponsibly - men and women - are treated as the stupid, ignorant, selfish jerks they really are, more and more children will be born into crushing poverty, and there will never be enough money to rescue them.

- Annie Caroline Schuler

West Hollywood 

Banks vs. credit unions

Now that Bank of America has successfully taken over Security Pacific National Bank, it is going to close some 200 branches. Some 2,000 bank employees will be fired in the process. They are the immediate casualties. If this were a war, they would be called the victims of friendly fire - casualties of their own command.

What about the other casualties - the consumers? What can we expect from bank closings and fewer bank employees: longer lines, longer waits, rushed treatment by the few remaining survivors, fewer options, fewer choices?

And all this at a time when the banking industry earned a record $48.5 billion in profits last year.

Adding insult to injury, the banking industry is now suing the nonprofit, consumer-friendly credit union industry. The objective is to eliminate the financial service alternatives to the bank. Eliminating competition will allow the banks to continue to increase fees, reduce savings rates, increase lending rates and provide lousy customer service in order to reap record profits.

Think of that as you wait in the teller line.

- Stuart Perlitsh

chief executive officer

Glendale Area Schools

Federal Credit Union

Montrose

Hidden agendas

In his Public Forum letter Dec. 15, Robert Jay tells us that 80 percent of the population support the passage of - among other items - a federal term-limits amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but that big money is distorting the voters' influence. This raises an interesting question.

If a politician is not eligible to run for re-election because of term limits, what incentive would he or she have to please the voters? The answer is that the politician would have little incentive and would be even more prone to cater to special interests with big money.

But more important is the hidden agenda of the current campaign to impose federal term limits. Most people who sign a petition for federal term limits amendment don't realize that they are not calling for the usual amendment to the Constitution. They are calling for a constitutional convention. It is buried in the fine print, which they don't read and they are not told that it is there.

Why is this bad? The danger is that a constitutional convention cannot be limited to the purpose for which it is called. It is conducted by delegates who are not controlled by the Constitution nor anything else. Delegates are free to do as they please. Obviously, the well-funded special-interest groups now proposing this convention would work to seek delegates favorable to their own agenda.

Whatever we do about term limits or any other amendment, let's not take the convention route. It is a dangerous path leading to almost certain compromise of our constitutionally protected rights.

- Richard Dyer

Sylmar

`The trap of moral relativism'

Re ``The trap of moral relativism,'' Viewpoint, Dec. 15:

I believe that it is a cop-out to blame the actions of Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson Jr., who were charged with the first-degree murder of their baby, on the teachings of contextual ethics.

Noncontextual ethics implies an innate sense of morality in all persons. If this is true, it shouldn't be necessary to teach ethics at all.

If it isn't true, then the teachings of contextual ethics is important, for young people need to understand that, in certain situations, it is necessary for the greater good to commit what would otherwise be considered an immoral act.

But what these people did didn't accomplish a greater good by any rational definition. I do not believe that what they were taught in an ethics class had anything to do with it.

When are people of this century going to start accepting responsibility for their actions? Maybe in the next century?

- Ronald Spatz

West Hills

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Photo: Amy Grossberg and Brian Peterson Jr. were charged with the first-degree murder of their baby.

Associated Press