VALLEY VOTE GETS GOOD NEWS; ONLY 3% OF SIGNATURES MAY REQUIRE VERIFICATION.

Byline: David R. Baker Daily News Staff Writer

Activists circulating petitions for a study of San Fernando Valley secession may need to have only 3 percent of their signatures verified, County Counsel Lloyd W. Pellman said Wednesday, potentially saving the group more than $260,000.

Pellman's opinion, which came during a government workshop on secession, was welcome news for Valley Voters Organized Toward Empowerment, which will finish its petition drive Nov. 27.

Paying to verify all of the estimated 200,000 signatures the group will turn in would cost more than Valley VOTE spent to collect them.

``I believe that 3 percent, which is used in other instances, seems to be reasonable,'' Pellman said at a meeting of the county Local Agency Formation Commission, the body that will process the application.

But Valley VOTE leaders attending the workshop protested that they should not have to pay a verification fee, no matter how few signatures are checked.

State law ``doesn't say we have a right to petition our government only if we can afford it,'' said Valley VOTE president Jeff Brain.

The question of cost was one of many details debated as LAFCO members, with little history and few statutes to guide them, started sketching out how to study the breakup of the nation's second-largest city.

Since no California community has seceded from another in this century, no road map exists for such a move. Although the broad outlines of the proposed study are set by state law, the details must be filled in by the commission, which usually handles such noncontroversial topics as boundary changes for special districts.

``We're plowing a lot of new ground,'' said commission member and Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson.

No official decisions were made at the workshop. Many of the topics will be revisited, and perhaps settled, at another meeting Wednesday.

For Valley VOTE and the three other secession movements whose leaders attended the session, few topics had as much immediate impact as the verification of petition signatures. Valley VOTE needs 135,000 valid signatures to trigger a secession study.

Since the county charges $1.36 to check each name, Valley VOTE could potentially be stuck with a $272,000 tab if LAFCO requires all signatures to be validated. But Pellman said that officials could check a random sample instead, the same process used to verify statewide petitions.

Checking 3 percent of the names would cost about $8,160.

Valley VOTE leaders noted that other kinds of petition drives aren't charged for the same service. The complaint was echoed by secession activists from Eagle Rock and San Pedro.

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