Why It Matters: What's going on with the La Jolla independence fight

The fight for La Jolla’s independence is officially on. And just like many historic revolutions, it’s starting with the exchange of stern letters. But these ones even have footnotes.

This all has to do with a government agency with a long name: the San Diego Local Agency Formation Commission or LAFCO. And it recently issued a surprising decision.

It decided the group that wants to make La Jolla its own city collected enough signatures to start the process. The San Diego County Registrar of Voters had determined too many signatures were invalid but LAFCO said they were fine.

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But it was so close that now there’s a fight about exactly what a valid signature is.

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria called LAFCO’s move to allow the signatures outrageous and threatened to sue. Here’s why:

The La Jolla independence group needs 6,750 signatures from registered voters who live in La Jolla. They turned in more than that. LAFCO pays the registrar of voters to check those signatures.

The registrar said The La Jollans were short signatures. LAFCO gave them two more weeks to gather more. The registrar decided they were still 218 signatures short.

But then LAFCO officials decided 239 more signatures were actually fine. They said they were only missing things like a ZIP code, or a person’s name was different from the voter roll by something simple like “Chris” versus “Christopher.”

But Gloria complained that some of the submissions were illegible and just plain incorrect.

"During the City’s observation of the secondary review, LAFCO’s representatives appeared to exercise significant discretion in favor of the Proponents, instead of deferring to the ROV’s subject matter expertise," Gloria wrote in a letter to LAFCO.

Game on.

If the city can’t stop things, LAFCO will begin the long process of negotiating how much money La Jolla would have to pay San Diego to leave. Along with thousands of other big and little decisions.

Then, finally, LAFCO would vote on approving the deal.

If they approve it, La Jollans would vote on whether to leave. If they vote yes, then all of San Diego will vote.

It will take 100 years (not really) but we’ll follow it every step of the way.