Stifling a Schism.

Adopting the borough system is the best way to counter secessionists

As he settles into office, Mayor James Hahn's most pressing challenge will be to avoid becoming the Mikhail Gorbachev of Los Angeles. Having achieved his life's ambition to run his hometown, Hahn may have arrived just in time to preside over its very dissolution.

Although underestimated, both by this observer and even many of his supporters, Hahn may be uniquely qualified to solve the secessionist question -- if he moves with uncharacteristic boldness and imagination.

Ultimately the secession question turns on healing a kind of ecclesiastical division that has existed in Los Angeles for generations. On the one hand there is what could be classified as "the high church" - that is, the traditional elites who in the past were affiliated with the Episcopal Church and more recently, the Catholic hierarchy and the Westside Jewish establishment.

The essential characteristics of "high church" theology in Los Angeles are a combination of elitism and noblesse oblige. Like its medieval antecedents, High Church people believe both in the power of institutions and in the need for the rich to act on behalf of the poor.

High Church Los Angeles is more about geography and attitude than ideology. In the 1950s it was epitomized by the Committee of 25, which was Republican and corporate. Today it is dominated by the successor elites of contemporary Los Angeles -- the Catholic Church, the foundations, the labor union leadership and major universities -- all of which tend to be, at least superficially, more liberal. Its members are largely Westside in orientation, with pockets of concentration in places like Hancock Park.

High Church Los Angeles is increasingly united by one passion: to keep Los Angeles unified as a great urban center. Its prime spokesmen -- from former Mayor Richard Riordan and Cardinal Roger Mahony to moguls like Eli Broad -- are dead set about any discussion of secession.

Hahn favored by 'low church'

To hold the city together, L.A.'s high churchmen are willing to ally themselves with unions and Latino nationalists, who, for their own reasons, want to keep the status quo. This is what explains the odd coalition that gathered around former Assembly Speaker Villaraigosa.

Perhaps to his own surprise, Hahn was not the choice of the high churchmen, almost all of who fell under the spell of the charismatic Villaraigosa. Instead, Hahn became the unlikely favorite of what may be called "low church" Los Angeles -- generally the middle class homeowners spread out from South Los Angeles, his base, to the San Fernando Valley.

Critically, Hahn has natural connections to Low Church Los Angeles. As a member of the highly decentralized, grassroots oriented Church of Christ, notes historian Kevin Starr, Hahn is tied theologically to what used to be referred to as "the folks" -- the largely Midwestern and southern migrants who settled in Los Angeles during the first half of the 20th Century.

His geography also is on target. Hahn comes from working class San Pedro, a much-ignored subsection of Los Angeles whose claim to fame has been its harbor -- nurturing L.A.'s pursuit as Capital of the Pacific Rim. As for the people who live there, not much has been done. San Pedro, the place, has not exactly been the epicenter of the High Church's concerns.

Is the San Fernando Valley, the area whose support threw the election to Hahn, the real epicenter of Low Church L.A.? The Valley, after all, epitomizes the kind of middle class values that the High Churchmen often disdain.

Secession is born of this disdain. People who live in Sherman Oaks or Granada Hills are tired of paying taxes in order to build monuments to grandiosity -- like the proposed subsidized downtown playground for Rupert Murdoch and other elite figures near Staples -- only to see their own demands for decent city services turned aside. They are sick of being gerrymandered so that Westside types get to represent them downtown instead of local "folks." With 80 percent of Valley workers having jobs north of Mulholland, there are few purely economic arguments for them to follow the lead of the elites south of the hills.

Secession not a moral issue

Perhaps the unkindest cut to the Low Church Valley has been the attempt by Mahony to label secession as a "moral issue." Here you have the elite of the elite -- in the name of Almighty -- attacking secession as a middle class assault on the interests of the poor. Never mind that the Valley is about as ethnically diverse as the city, has its own poor, and far less of the super-rich than the other side of the hill. Valley Catholics are particularly incensed.

"That's why there was a reformation," jokes David Fleming, chairman of the Valley Economic Alliance and one of the major architects of the secession movement. "It's bullshit," he says, "that we are running away from the poor. We do more for our poor than they do for ours." Martin Luther, where are you when we need you?

But unlike some secessionists, Fleming is hardly intent on starting a local version of the Thirty Years War. His preference is for reform, not revolution. Fleming proposes decentralizing city decision through the creation of 30 or 40 boroughs, each of which would have power over critical local land use issues that now are decided downtown.

The borough system Fleming supports is modeled on the successful versions in Tokyo and London, as opposed to New York's failed five borough systems. Rampant "nimbyism," which some in the business elite claim would be the result of giving power back to the "folks," would be constrained because the boroughs would also share incentives by sharing the tax benefits of development. That's something L.A. neighborhoods today lack. Right now all they get is extra traffic.

Model for 21st century

This plan is the essence of reason. It also allows for those things that would best be kept together, like the LAPD and the DWP, to maintain a unified structure. "The borough system is the best of all worlds," the Universal City based attorney believes. "It keeps our strength as a major world city and it brings government closer to the neighborhoods."

Fleming hopes that the High Church elites of L.A. would be open to such reforms, particularly if the secession movement gathered more steam. He is encouraged that one of the leading intellectual lights of the city's High Church, historian Starr, long has advocated a borough system. "This is a model for federated autonomy -- the business model of the 21st Century," Starr suggests.

Starr is close to both Riordan and the Cardinal. Maybe he can talk some sense to them. He says some major corporate leaders, such as developer Ed Roski, have also expressed interest in the idea.

But the person who really needs to act is Hahn, along with wunderkind City Council President Alex Padilla, himself a Valley representative. A bold proposal for a borough system could do wonders to reinvigorate public life in Los Angeles and help bridge the gap between the High Church elite and the Low Church activists.

Ultimately, this may be the best solution for Los Angeles. Quintessentially a city of neighborhoods, and small congregations, Los Angeles also needs the inspiration and sweeping vision that is the glory of the High Church. Only by uniting these two aspects of the city can Los Angeles reach for the unique destiny that still could await it in the new century.