SECESSION FANS MAY GET BREAK; BILL WOULD EXTEND PETITION DRIVE TIME.

Byline: David R. Baker Daily News Staff Writer

Assemblyman Robert Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, introduced legislation Wednesday that would give activists three more months to complete a petition drive calling for a study of San Fernando Valley secession.

Valley VOTE needs the signatures of 135,000 registered Valley voters on its petitions to trigger a public study of whether the establishment of a Valley city would be economically possible.

Leaders of Valley Voters Organized Toward Empowerment have long assumed that they had just three months to complete the petition drive, now scheduled to end Aug. 27.

Although pleased with the prospect of an extension, group officials said they still plan to finish their petition drive by the deadline, just to be safe.

``If we get an extension, great,'' said Chairman Richard Close. ``This is an insurance policy in case we fall short. But we have no intention of falling short.''

Hertzberg's bill, AB 1951, scheduled for a Senate committee hearing next week, would clarify a complex tangle of state rules governing the deadlines of petition efforts.

It also would settle a months-old disagreement over how much time the organization has to circulate petitions calling for a secession study.

Although some legislators have argued that state law already gives the group 180 days, Valley VOTE leaders have taken a much more conservative view, saying they have just 90 days.

``The current law is vague, which means groups like Valley VOTE have to guess what the deadline for gathering signatures is - and risk having a court second-guess them if they make a wrong choice,'' Hertzberg said. ``That's unfair.''

The legislation, developed with the help of Los Angeles Councilwoman Laura Chick, also represents a deft piece of last-minute lawmaking. Since little more than two weeks remain in the state legislative session, Hertzberg gutted and rewrote a bill to address the petition deadline question.

The bill, which would take effect immediately if signed into law, will need two-thirds approval in both the Assembly and Senate to pass.

Although Close and Valley VOTE President Jeff Brain would not say how signatures they had collected, the group had gathered about 100,000 by the end of July. Brain said the group now is collecting between 20,000 and 25,000 each week.

In its editorial pages, the Daily News has strongly endorsed Valley VOTE's drive to trigger a public study of secession that would determine whether breakup would be revenue-neutral to the remaining part of the city and whether the new city would be economically viable. The newspaper has contributed $60,000 to the petition-gathering effort, making it the group's largest financial contributor.

Chick said the legislation would help make amends for an incident last month in which city employees ejected Valley VOTE volunteers from Aviation Expo '98, the Van Nuys air show, attended by about 250,000 people. Group leaders had hoped to collect as many as 20,000 signatures at the two-day event, and they have said the incident seriously hurt the petition drive.

``This will right a wrong,'' Chick said.