REPORT A NOTE OF CITY HALL BUREAUCRACY.

Byline: Kimit Muston Local View

I'm not sure what to call it. Maybe the Connell Report, after Kathleen Connell. Or maybe just The Report. I sure can't call it by its actual tongue-twisting title, ``California State Controller's Review Of The Proposed San Fernando Valley Special Reorganization Comprehensive Fiscal Analysis'' (pause for breath), because if I did, saying it would take up all the discussion time between now and November.

The report was requested by the city of Los Angeles and is supposed to be a nonpartisan review of the Local Agency Formation Commission's CFA (or Comprehensive Fiscal - oh, you figure it out!).

The idea was that the report would be nonpartisan, except of course that when Connell was running for mayor last year she said that she didn't think secession was a good idea. Oops. But this is numbers, right? And numbers don't lie. Just ask the stockholders and employees of Enron and Arthur Andersen.

The law says that no Valley city can form unless we avoid doing harm to Los Angeles, regardless of the damage they've done to us over the past 20 years, and the new Valley city must be economically viable on its own.

The LAFCO CFA showed that we could survive very well on our own, and if we paid alimony for three to 15 years, depending on who crunches the numbers, we can even avoid undue harm to our mother municipality.

Needless to say, City Hall disagreed and submitted a whole bunch of questions to the Controller's Office, the gist of which was ``Don't you think the Valley is foolish to want us to stop picking their pockets?''

If you read only the front of Connell's report you find that on all procedural points it supports the LAFCO methods and conclusions.

But in the best nonpartisan fashion, the report also found one serious problem for the Valley: we will have ``insufficient reserves'' in our first few budgets - only 0.4 percent to 1.3 percent, instead of the 4 percent to 5 percent average.

Reserves are the money you keep in the bank in case of a big flood or an earthquake or a fire or somebody sues the city. Like how often does one of those things happen in California?

Anyway, while admitting there is ``no authority for determining sufficient reserves,'' the report expressed real concern about the financial stability of a young Valley city.

That's what you get if you read the front of the report. But if you read the inside of the report you discover that the folks inside the Controller's Office came away just as frustrated, appalled and infuriated with the City Hall bureaucracy as everybody else who has ever had to deal with it.

To start with the report quotes from the original LAFCO CFA that the city of Los Angeles ``does not retain records that identify the location of many assets financed with leased bonds.''

In other words, the accountants in Sacramento found the bookkeeping at City Hall ``scary.'' Only fools or crooks keep books like that.

And then the report details dealings with the city's Information Technology Office, which insisted it had 147 systems that were ``critical'' and required separate alimony contracts with the Valley, each one of which would require a three-person team working ``one person year'' to negotiate at a total cost of $16 million.

And just what were these 147 ``critical'' systems that would be harmed if Los Angeles lost its Valley cash cow?

Why such vital citywide functions as care for the Wilmington Cemetery down in San Pedro, scheduling for the mayor and printing labels in his office and tracking the purchase of savings bonds.

The report dryly adds, ``They (the department of info tech) provided no justification to support why each 'critical system' would require a separate contract or to explain why each contract would require a person-year to negotiate except to say that it was based on past experience.''

The stunned silence in Sacramento was almost palpable on the printed page.

Remember, this is a $91 million-a-year city department. Past experience? I'm not sure I want to know their past experience. As a taxpayer, it's liable to give me nightmares.

But why would the Controller's Office include such an anecdote in a dispassionate, professional report? Unless, of course, they are trying to tell us something, like ``Get out while you can.''

I'll tell you what, low reserves or high reserves, if the Valley can't run a city hall more stable than that, bring on the flood, baby; I'm building an ark.