Senate to Vote on Valley Secession Bill

SAN DIEGO — Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland decided Wednesday to send her Valley secession bill to the state Senate floor for a vote as written, rather than accept unwanted amendments.

The vote could come as early as next week.

Boland made the decision hundreds of miles from Sacramento after learning that Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward) had set the bill for a committee hearing today, but by 6 p.m. Wednesday had failed to provide her with a written copy of his proposed amendments.

“I am forced to send this bill tonight straight to the floor, because I had absolutely no time to prepare for a hearing,” said Boland (R-Granada Hills).

Reached for comment 15 minutes later, a spokesman for Lockyer said the amendments had just been put in final form and were on their way to Boland’s office at the Capitol.

“We’re giving her the amendments now,” Lockyer spokesman Sandy Harrison said.

But by then, Boland, an alternate delegate to the Republican convention in San Diego, had made up her mind and left for the evening convention session.

The crossed signals and unexpected action on the secession bill this week exemplify its bumpy history. The legislation--which is about democracy or elitism or politics, depending on who’s defining it--has caused a commotion in Los Angeles and Sacramento.

The bill does not by itself take the San Fernando Valley out of the city of Los Angeles. It would, however, remove a stumbling block to dividing the city--the veto power that the City Council now has over secession requests.

Lockyer is opposed to the bill unless it is amended to include, among other changes, a requirement for a citywide vote on secession, rather than allowing Valley voters alone to make the decision.

At a hearing last week, Lockyer gave Boland a choice between having her bill amended by him in committee or going directly to the Senate floor, where he predicted that the legislation would be defeated.

Boland asked for time to ponder her options, and Lockyer promised that no action would be taken this week while she attends the GOP convention in San Diego.

Despite that, a Lockyer spokesman said Wednesday it was necessary to set the hearing this week for the final scheduled meeting, in this legislative session, of the Appropriations Committee. Lockyer sent the bill to that committee last week because his amendments call for state funding.

Even though the bill was placed on the committee’s agenda, there is a mechanism to postpone a hearing until next week. True to his pledge, Lockyer said he would arrange to waive the necessary rules if Boland preferred to wait.

Instead, Boland opted out, saying that postponing a hearing is too chancy because time is running out on the Legislative session, which is scheduled to end this month. The bill automatically dies if it is not passed by the end of the session and would have to be reintroduced next year.

Waiting until the week after next is a problem because some legislators will be at the Democratic convention in Chicago.

“The time constraints created by the end-of-the-session crunch diminished the bill’s opportunity for passage,” Boland said in a letter to Lockyer. In an interview earlier she said, “I will not gamble with this bill.”

Lockyer rejected Boland’s contention that she had no time to prepare for a hearing.

“She’s known at least since last week’s committee hearing what the substance of our amendments are,” Lockyer said through a spokesman. “So she’s had plenty of time to think about it.”

Boland has long urged a floor vote, especially when the bill was stuck in another committee.

But Lockyer proposed a set of amendments. Besides a citywide vote, the amendments called for an 18-month study of the impacts of secession on the economy and environment of the Valley and on what would remain of Los Angeles.

The call for a Senate floor vote does not necessarily kill the Lockyer plan. The bill could be amended on the Senate floor and could be passed or rejected there.