L.A. County Resists Split

Los Angeles County defeated the formation of Canyon County last November by a concerted effort of public employees.

The people on the public payroll of the world's largest county outnumber the total population (some 67,000) of Canyon County. With a heavy war chest and made-toorder figures, Canyon County was swamped.

Now Los Angeles County has gone to Sacramento with legislation that will revise the rules for county formation. Some of the changes desired by Los Angeles County would make it impossible for Canyon County ever to be formed.

A hearing on Los Angeles County's bills, all introduced in the Senate was held in Sacramento Tuesday by the Senate Local Government Committee and was attended by four local citizens, three Canyon County supporters and one opponent.

The supporters were Carl Boyer, III, of Newhall and Gill Callowhill of Saugus, both elected Canyon County Supervisors in November, along with Harry Fedderson of Castaic, runner-up to Callowhill. Representing the opposition to Canyon County was Fire Captain Scott Franklin, also representing the county employees' union. Franklin did not testify.

Senate Bill 700, first of the three Los Angeles offerings, required that a new county could not contain less than ten percent of the original county's population — which, in the case of Los Angeles County, is 700,000, roughly ten times the population of the proposed Canyon County.

After the hearing, the committee modified the figure to five percent of the original county's people — still eliminating both Canyon County and the now-petitioning South Bay County.

SB 701 provides that the state, and not the county, will pay for county-formation expenses. No one objected to that, and it was passed on to the Ways & Means Committee.

Senator Alan Robbins, a member of the committee and a representative of the San Fernando Valley, stood for an amendment that would allow the San Fernando Valley to form a county.

The amendment provided that a new county could be formed even if it cut through the territory of a city (Los Angeles).

The third Senate bill (SB 702) contained a number of technical provisions and some not so technical. Among them was a provision that three officers — Sheriff, Assessor, and District Attorney — be on the ballot along with county formation.

That was strongly opposed by local representatives on the grounds that it would make it impossible for many qualified people to run. The measure was stricken from the bill.

The way the matter stood when the Senate Bills were reported out to the floor was that the door was left open for a new county in the San Fernando Valley, but closed to the smaller proposed South Bay and Canyon counties, unless they take action immediately under a "grandfather clause."

On the other side of the Capitol, however, an Assembly bill (AB333), on the other side of the issue, was passed out of the Assembly Local Government Committee. Testifying in favor of it, by invitation of the bill's author, Assemblyman Mike Cullen, was Carl Boyer, III, of Newhall.

Boyer endorsed the Cullen bill, which would put a measure on the Los Angeles-County ballot in June 1978. The ballot measure would ask a simple question: "Do you favor splitting Los Angeles County into two or more counties?"

If the vote on the question is affirmative, the county's Economy and Efficiency Commission would then draw tentative boundaries for separation.

The measure was sent to the Finance Committee because it involves paying for an election.