Maybe the secessionists are right. Maybe the new City of the Valley will provide dramatically improved city services, in a small-town atmosphere with smaller representational districts, at reduced costs. Maybe the San Fernando Valley will become a suburban Utopia. Maybe Assemblyman Bob Hertzberg will be its mayor. Maybe not. For the working men and women of SEIU Local 347, city workers who proudly pick up your trash, move your traffic, mow the grass in your parks, keep your sewers working and perform all sorts of basic public services, there are just too many questions, too many risks and not enough reliable answers. In this as in so many arenas, the interests of business and labor are inextricably linked. Uncertainty is bad for business. Uncertainty is bad for workers. The Valley secessionists rely on two basic assumptions: that big government is dysfunctional and neighborhoods need to be seen as central to both governance and community identity. The former argument drew significantly on the anti-government legacies of the Jarvis-Gann Initiative (Prop. 13), Newt Gingrich and, at times, Richard Riordan, who owed his initial victory to positioning himself as an outsider to the ways of government. The mayoral election of 2001 had already begun to show that the catch-all, anti-government perspective was significantly losing ground; the Sept. 11 events and the realities of a rapid economic decline, as a number of commentators have noted, helped change the perspective about government’s role. One of the major points of contention, for example, is the fate of the L.A. Department of Water & Power, in some respects the very essence of Los Angeles’ association with public rather than private solutions. The victory of public power advocates over the utilities for maintaining public control over energy during the 1920s and 1930s became an important outcome for protecting Los Angeles during the recent utility crisis. The secessionists want a piece of DWP while arguing about dysfunctional government. What could become dysfunctional, however, would be the battle over the spoils of DWP and a weakening of that public role in the face of the continuing debate over utility deregulation. On the fate of the DWP, there are far more questions than answers. How are water and electricity going to be provided to the new city? The DWP charges more for electricity when it sells it to people and businesses outside the city. If the Valley secedes, it will become just another separate city to buy electricity from L.A. Then there’s the question of who gets the electricity. In case of shortages, residents and businesses in the city of Los Angeles get priority. Outside customers are the first to be cut. Just as with electricity, LADWP is under no obligation to sell water to residents and businesses in other cities at the same rate it sells to customers in LA. It charges premium rates for others and, as a separate city, the Valley would qualify as one of those. The same is true of shortages in water as in electricity. If there is a shortage, it’s the outside customers that are cut first. Then there’s the question of water rights. No one wants to suggest that the Valley might not have access to L.A.’s water as a separate city. But we all know that there are certain interests that have always resented some of the things Los Angeles did to get its water. Some of them have been looking for a long time for a way to challenge the validity of the city’s water contracts. A contract to sell major amounts of water to a new Valley city could be just the excuse they’ve been waiting for. The average length of a water rights lawsuit in California is 23 years. That’s a whole bunch of legal bills and a quarter of a century of uncertainty. Imagine the impact this could have on property values. The second argument about government accountability and the role of neighborhoods is more complicated. Government accountability is clearly essential in Washington, Sacramento and Los Angeles City Hall. Government becomes more accountable, not when the forces of privatization and deregulation prevail, but when neighborhoods, communities and the varied diverse constituents of a city and region mobilize to stake a claim in government. The future of a united Los Angeles must be based on building community and increasing participation in governance. The role of neighborhoods in helping govern and creating community identity is part of forging genuine accountability of government. The popularity of the idea of neighborhood councils stems in part from the desire to create new community identities. Neighborhood councils are not a secessionist argument; they will function best if they are able to capture the interest of the diverse members of neighborhoods rather than as an extension of one or another particular group in those communities. Neighborhood councils will work best if they are community builders, not community dividers. As for the most basic of local government services, as is being currently discussed, the new city of the Valley would contract with the city of Los Angeles for its municipal services including police, fire, refuse collection and street maintenance for one or more years. The new city would become the largest contract city in the Western world. This means that the Valley as a new city would get its services from the same city departments that provide them now. As a separate city, Valley political leaders would have no say in how those departments are run. And Los Angeles could ask any amount it wants for those services. Does it make sense to leave the city and then turn right around and ask that same city to provide the same services they have been providing all along from the same city departments? Will the new city have any ability to control the delivery or cost of those services? Every city has problems and Los Angeles is no exception. For too long, the city of Los Angeles has acted as if it were alone, as if it did not live in a region. It’s been a city reluctant to look at good ideas that work in other places. This form of Los Angeles “exceptionalism” must die. Ours is a regional economy. Our problems are regional and require collaborative, integrated, regional solutions. We are not alone. The alternative to the myriad unanswered questions and unassessed risks is the hope and possibility born of a sea change in the municipal governance of Los Angeles. The new city charter creates opportunities for neighborhood councils to give people a greater voice in what happens in their communities. A new mayor and an almost entirely new city council are committed to empowering and involving the voice of every neighborhood across the amazing, vast quilt that is Los Angeles. Redistricting is very close and the new charter mandates significant changes in the way in which new council districts are drawn. Perceptive political thinkers predict five seats wholly situated within the San Fernando Valley. City workers are working with city management to continuously challenge the status quo to improve and enhance the level and quality of services we deliver to our customers. Area planning commissions have already begun to move planning and land use decisions to the places where these decisions should be made. Now is not the time to split up. Julie Butcher is general manager of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 347, which represents 9,000 city workers in Los Angeles. She can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]