Boland Gaining Political Clout on Secession Drive

For two decades she pulled determinedly at the oars like a castaway in a lifeboat.

Then, in a year of unexpectedly swift maneuvers, Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills) has risen to the crest of a wave that could reshape two of Southern California’s largest institutions--the city of Los Angeles and its school district--unlike anything since the building boom following World War II.

First came her bill last summer, making it easier for communities such as the San Fernando Valley to break away from the mammoth Los Angeles Unified School District.

Then, on Thursday, she stunned the statehouse with a legislative sneak attack that won Assembly approval of a similar bill that would help San Fernando Valley voters form a city of their own.

Overnight, Boland, a 56-year-old Granada Hills real estate broker and family woman who won her seat in the California Assembly in 1990, has emerged as one of the region’s most potent political figures.

Together, her two breakup bills have the potential to unleash long-simmering popular sentiments that could divide the nation’s second largest city in two and splinter its second largest school district into half a dozen or more pieces.

On Friday, Boland was in the spotlight. The first TV news crew caught her at a police appreciation lunch in Glendale. Then three more interviews followed in her Granada Hills office.

Later, it was up to the Odyssey Restaurant for a photo shoot overlooking her turf, and at 7:30 a studio sitting for the TV show “Life and Times.”

Observers of Boland’s long and, until recently obscure, quest to strengthen the Valley’s hand politically say it is no surprise that for now, at least, she has gained the upper hand.

“She’s kind of unstoppable, the unsinkable Paula Boland,” said Bob Scott, chairman of local issues for the influential Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. “I think she was too tenacious for a long time to realize this couldn’t be done.”

Known for her staunchly conservative beliefs rather than for dashing intellect or incisive wit, Boland has succeeded by sticking doggedly to two ideas that shared broad appeal in her northern San Fernando Valley district.

“Paula was involved in this 20, 25 years ago,” Scott said.

A Long Island, N.Y., native whose family moved to Granada Hills when she was 6, Boland first embraced Valley separatism in the 1970s, when mandatory school busing had Valley parents up in arms and a group of business leaders formed CIVICC, the Committee to Investigate an Independent Valley City/County.

The 1970s secession movement was abruptly quashed when the Legislature, at the urging of Los Angeles city officials, adopted an amendment to a bill giving the Los Angeles City Council veto power over any secession.

“People got a little frustrated because they figured you couldn’t fight City Hall, or worse, Sacramento,” Scott said.

Although the issue may have died away in the public consciousness, its adherents never gave up hope.

Years later, when she went to Sacramento, Boland had a full plate of issues, including workers’ compensation reform and tougher criminal penalties.

But Valley secession was at the top of her list.

“I promised my constituents in 1990 I would do this,” she said. “Every time I saw them after that, I promised that before I went out of office, I would do this.”

She introduced the city secession bill three years ago, she said, but then withdrew it to concentrate on the school breakup measure.

“Kids needed to come first,” she said. “Every day I read the newspaper and saw another disaster that the L.A. Unified Schools was creating, another controversy, another investigation.

“I read about AIDS classes without parents’ permission and the descriptions they gave, and nobody’s supervising it. I thought I better get these kids out of there as soon as possible.”

Having witnessed the legislative defeat of the earlier separatist drive, Boland framed her breakup initiatives as issues of democracy battling the evils of past legislative fiat and political cronyism.

“Mayor Bradley and some of his cronies went to Sacramento and inserted the veto power in a measure not for any good policy reasons but for self-serving reasons,” she said.

The power of Valley residents to decide their own future was “stolen from them in the dark of night,” she said. “I’m just taking it out in broad daylight and telling people it’s there if you want it and if you don’t want to use it that’s fine too.”

Boland’s run for office in 1990, occasioned by the retirement of Republican Assemblywoman Marian LaFollette, surprised political consultant Paul Clark, who first worked with Boland on the school busing fight in the 1970s.

The mother of three had opened her real estate office for anti-busing phone campaigns, and over the years, Clark and his wife, former U.S. Rep. Bobbi Fiedler, came to know Boland as someone who could be counted on to do some of the more tedious work associated with political campaigns.

“The thing about Paula was she was always a good soldier and she didn’t have to be a general,” Clark recalled.

He fondly recalls Boland’s quirky habit of approaching people at business meetings, parties and chamber of commerce dinners and asking them to give her a quarter, “which nobody would refuse.”

Years later he discovered she was giving the money to whatever charity had caught her interest.

“If there was nothing on the front burner, she would give it to a poor family. And nobody ever really caught on. I know over the years I’ve given that woman at least $20 in quarters,” Clark said.

Representatives of professional groups that supported Boland’s candidacy, from the San Fernando Valley Assn. of Realtors to the Police Officers Research Assn. of California, describe her as a reliable ally more than as a power broker.

“She is a very likable, very sweet lady, even though she has done a lot of shrewd stuff,” said Jay McBee, chairman of governmental affairs for the Realtors’ association.

Colleagues have said Boland raised her profile from “backbencher” to strong-arm leader in last year’s Assembly leadership battle in which Republicans painfully dethroned Doris Allen, a Republican who accepted the house speakership in a deal with Democratic power broker Willie Brown.

As some GOP members held back, Boland took the forefront with outspoken comments about Allen, such as calling her “a hypocrite as a woman” and “unfit as a leader.”

The battle, however, left Boland on poor terms with one of her former allies. Former Republican Assemblyman Paul Horcher, who was recalled as a result of the struggle, said Boland “never had more than a superficial understanding of any issue.”

Horcher said Boland was often confused when the Republican caucus met on pending legislation and had to be told by her colleagues how to vote. As a result, he said, he refuses to give Boland credit for the secession bill’s passage.

“I’m sure the Republicans were bullied to get her bills out,” Horcher said. “You can’t call it a victory. It’s a stacked deck. She’s being rewarded for being a stooge all these years.”

McBee of the Realtors’ association credited Boland with making the school district bill politically palatable to a range of key elected officials, from Mayor Richard Riordan to Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), whose support was crucial to the bill’s passage.

Although it was unclear if Boland herself dreamed up the idea of couching the debate as a matter of allowing voters to decide, she was an effective bearer of the message, McBee said.

He described her alliance with Hayden as a “coming of age, because she ended up not going along partisan lines, but working with a fairly liberal Democrat to pursue that goal.”

Even at the height of Boland’s triumph, some of her allies are taking a cautious stance on the chances of the city actually separating.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean there is going to be a secession movement,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson, another veteran of the CIVICC movement of the 1970s. “It may change the way the City Council treats the Valley. That is basically what the Valley wants.”

But Bernson said he hopes the bill passes the Senate anyway because, “then perhaps the Valley will get a little better attention,” he said.

Scott, of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., was equally circumspect, saying studies on the fiscal feasibility of secession could dampen today’s enthusiasm.

“We’re talking about 80% to 90% of the Valley who think they want to break off. But once they get the figures they may change their minds,” Scott said. “I don’t think they mind being part of the Los Angeles family. I think it’s just a matter of how the council likes to bully the Valley and outlying areas.”

Boland’s sudden notoriety raises the question of whether she is destined to become the figurehead of secession as Howard Jarvis was for property tax reform.

She said Friday that she personally supports both the breakup of the school district and the city, but does not intend to lead the grass-roots crusade herself.

“My opinion is, ‘Yes, I think it would be a wonderful city separate,’ but that’s not the issue with the bill at all. It’s what the people think.”

* THE SPIN: A way of life is at stake. B1