Many residents of the Valley and in the Harbor area are trying to break away from the Los Angeles, claiming that they're being ignored by the LA City Council and aren't getting their fair-share of services from City Hall. State law requires that before a secession vote can be taken, the county's nonpartisan Local Agency Formation Commission must first determine that a breakup would not hurt the city's finances.

But now, LAFCO's own director is complaining that the commission still hasn't received all the data it needs from the city to make a decision. As a result of the delay, director Larry Calemine says, a secession measure might not appear on the November 2002 ballot, the date many secession supporters have been hoping for.

"We're being stonewalled," a seemingly irritated Calemine complained at a LAFCO meeting Wednesday. City officials have missed their deadline for providing all of the financial information by several months, Calemine added, while some of the data that has been forwarded contains errors that could be detrimental to the secession efforts in both the Valley and Harbor areas.

LA Mayor Richard Riordan and a majority of the City Council oppose secession. However, they deny that the city is intentionally dragging its feet or trying to sabotage secession by providing inaccurate numbers.

The delays have been caused by the huge amounts of data that must be collected and then forwarded to LAFCO, a city official claims. And the data that the city has already forwarded is indeed accurate, but is based on projections or interpretations that secessionists don't like.

Secession supporters aren't buying the city's excuses. The city is trying to "sabotage the LAFCO report by giving LAFCO incomplete and inaccurate financial information," charges Richard Close, chairman of the pro-secession Valley Voters Organized Toward Empowerment.

Close and some members of his group, commonly called Valley VOTE, wants LAFCO to sue the city in an effort to speed the secession process. But others warn that any type of legal action could delay a vote by several more years instead of getting the issue on the November 2002 ballot.